She had decided to save money and go on the bus – or, rather, two of them, as she would have to change at Marble Arch. But it was one of those still, raw, freezing evenings when the lack of a breeze simply made one dread fog. It was extremely cold waiting for the bus, but if she gave in and took a taxi she would arrive far too early. She must wait.
In the end, however, she had to take a taxi from Marble Arch, as after another freezing wait and no sign of a seventy-three, she knew she would be late if she waited any longer.
She had only once before been to Edward’s club – or at any rate this club of Edward’s, and over the years she had been forced to recognize that, as mistress, she could not be seen on what was tacitly known to be family territory. It was a place where she knew he had taken Teddy for treats before or after school, where he went for a quiet evening with one of his brothers, where, of course, he took Villy. He would be known to most of the other members, and to be seen there with a woman not his wife or relative would cause talk. She understood this but, nonetheless, it had been another small resentment. She supposed that now Louise was acting as a kind of chaperone.
They were in the room where ladies were allowed to have drinks with members, off which was the dining room where they were allowed to dine with members. The heavy velvet curtains were drawn, and apart from a colossal chandelier, there were various little lamps with parchment shades that provided patches of mellower light. Edward and Louise were seated in cavernous armchairs in a far corner of the room that contained a number of other people having drinks.
Edward rose on seeing her. ‘There you are, darling,’ he said, as though she was late, but he absolutely wasn’t going to blame her (she wasn’t late – she had arrived just when he had told her to). He kissed her cheek. ‘Louise, this is Diana.’ He clicked his fingers and the waiter, serving drinks at the other end of the room, immediately responded. She exchanged wary smiles with Louise, who she had to admit was really rather beautiful, long glossy hair hanging down each side of her face, eyes like Edward’s but with heavier, darker brows and a mouth that turned up at the corners. She wore a black silk dress with a low rounded neck. When she pushed her hair aside, Diana saw that she had enviably high cheekbones and that she was wearing opal and diamond earrings.
‘We’re drinking martinis – would that suit you, darling?’
But she was so cold that she said she would prefer whisky. When the drinks were ordered, and she was seated in the third, enormous chair, Edward said, ‘I’ve sort of been putting Louise in the picture. She’s enormously understanding, as I knew she would be.’
Not knowing from this how far into the picture Louise had been put, Diana smiled again. Nor did she, during that evening, find out, so she concentrated on trying to get Louise to like her. To begin with, she appeared not to make much progress. Louise did not seem to want to talk about her famous husband, or her child, answering questions about either with a small, remote, dismissive smile which ensured silence and a fresh start. She admired Louise’s dress – it was unusual, the skirt swathed tightly in front and gathered to a small bustle with a loose bowed sash. She was amazingly slender, with long, childish arms and pretty, long-fingered hands (her own were her worst feature, large and shapeless: she always noticed other women’s hands).
‘I had it made,’ Louise said. ‘Michael brought the silk back from Paris when he went there and I found this tailor in Soho called Mr Perfect. He can make anything – you just tell him what you want. He has an enormous wife who is corseted from just below her neck to just above her knees – she looks like a torpedo, but she is very nice as well. And Dad gave me these earrings. He simply loves buying jewellery, but I expect you know that.’
She suddenly remembered driving away from Lansdowne Road with him, and Villy’s jewel box falling open on her knees and how sick with jealousy she had felt. This feeling was interrupted by Louise, who, with a far friendlier smile, offered to give her Mr Perfect’s address and telephone number.
Edward looked at them fondly. ‘My two favourite women,’ he said.
What really broke the ice was talking about the theatre and asking Louise what plays she had acted in. Louise became animated and told her about the student rep, and the extraordinary house they had lived in and how they had all managed on one meal a day and had lain down in the road to get a hitch to the theatre in the mornings – it was three miles and if they couldn’t afford the bus they had to walk it.
Edward said, good heavens, he’d no idea it was as spartan as that, and she had turned to him and said, ‘But you never came to see. You were the only parents who never came, even when I was playing the lead in Granite,’ and Diana saw that this hurt his feelings. He shifted in his chair and muttered something, but Louise went on, ‘My mother thought I should be doing something to do with the war, you see, and of course Dad agreed with her. Well, you didn’t disagree, did you, Dad?’
From the way Louise said, ‘My mother’, Diana divined that there was a good deal of tension there. She said, ‘One so wants one’s children to fulfil themselves, to be happy and to do what they want. But so often they don’t know what they want. I think it’s wonderful that you were so sure.’
And Louise – she was really hardly more than a child, after all – positively glowed.
She went on to talk about the current theatre in London. Had she seen Coward’s new play Blithe Spirit? It had a marvellous actress called Margaret Rutherford in it as the medium, and Kay Hammond was delicious as the spirit. Edward said he really liked her: she’d been in a frightfully funny play called French Without Tears. She had ‘oomph’, he said, and Diana made a little conspiratorial face to Louise that meant then would confuse ‘oomph’ with acting ability. Edward said he’d take them to Blithe Spirit if they liked. He did not seem to mind, or notice, that she was ganging up on him with his daughter – seemed only delighted that they were getting on.
By the time they were having coffee and brandy, Louise was calling her Diana – at her request – and had accepted a second brandy. She had drunk a good deal before, during and after dinner, and Diana was surprised at her capacity. Wrongly, as it turned out. When Louise disappeared to go to the lavatory Edward congratulated her. ‘Darling, she loves you. You hit just the right note with her. I can’t talk to her about Shakespeare and performances and all that sort of thing.’
‘What have you exactly told her?’
‘Oh. That you are the only woman in the world for me – that kind of thing.’
‘And about Susan?’
‘Well – no. I haven’t mentioned that. I did tell her that it had been going on for a long time. She asked if you had a husband, and I told her about that.’ There was a slight pause, and then he said, ‘You do like her, don’t you, darling?’
‘I think she’s lovely. She looks very like you.’
‘Nonsense,’ he said, but he was clearly pleased. ‘She thinks it would be better to get Villy into a house before I tell her.’
‘Oh, does she?’
‘Well, when I talked about it, she agreed.’
Which was not really the same thing, she thought, but did not say so.
The waiter came round for last orders for drinks – they were back in the ladies’ room – and Louise was still absent. She said she would go and see if she was all right. She had to ask the way from the drinks waiter, who explained that it wouldn’t be upstairs because only members were allowed to use them, and pointed out a passage at the back of the hall.
She found Louise hanging over a basin laving her face with cold water. She looked up as Diana came in; her face was white and glistening. ‘I should never have tried lobster,’ she said. ‘I might have known it would make me sick.’
Diana handed her a towel. ‘You poor girl!’ but as Louise took it, she said, ‘Oh, God! It’s starting again!’ and retired to the lavatory.
By the time she finally emerged, Diana had repaired her face, considered and rejected going to tell Edward that they might be some time.
‘It’s kind of you to wait. Sorry to be so revolting.’
‘It’s horrid for you. Bad luck.’ She saw the reflection of Louise’s wan face in the mirror above the basin – saw also, then, that her eyes had filled with tears.
‘I used to have to eat lobster when I was pregnant,’ she said, ‘and I used to feel dreadfully sick then. It was silly of me to have it at all.’
Diana said nothing. It seemed a very unlikely story, but she also remembered that when young she had intensely resented the idea that she might have drunk too much.
‘Oh dear, I seem to have gone a sort of greenish colour.’
‘I’ve got some rouge if you’d like it.’
‘Oh, thanks. Then I won’t have to tell Dad. And then he won’t ask me if I’m having another baby.’
It had just occurred to Diana that pregnancy rather than drink might be the trouble. ‘Are you?’
‘Oh no! I couldn’t be. God forbid!’
She had finished with the rouge and was now dragging a comb through the damp strands of tangled hair. ‘Do you love him?’
There was something so urgent, as well as unexpected about the question, that she was taken aback – found herself looking at the girl in the mirror whose eyes met hers with a direct curiosity that was irresistible.
‘Yes,’ she heard herself say, and then, relieved that she could say it, ‘yes, I do. Very much.’
‘Oh, well, then. You should go ahead. Nothing should keep you apart.’
Diana saw that there were still, or again, tears in her eyes.
When they rejoined Edward, he seemed neither to have noticed how long they had been nor that Louise looked ill. At Diana’s insistence, he drove Louise to Edwardes Square before they went back to the flat.
‘You’re not to worry about me. I shall be perfectly all right.’
But as the taxi drove away from the cottage and she turned in her seat to see her mother standing at the garden gate waving, with a gesture that looked as though she was warding off flies, Zoë felt pretty sure that she would not be. Maud’s death had been so sudden that her mother was clearly still in shock. She had gone to the island in response to the telegram – ‘Maud passed away last night. Very sudden. Mummy.’ She had set out immediately, having tried and failed to get through to her mother on the telephone. She had arrived at Cotter’s End to find the door locked, but just as she was going in search of a telephone to see if she could ring the Lawrences or Fenwicks, the latter turned up, Miss Fenwick driving a battered old Vauxhall, the front of which was entirely full of Mrs Fenwick. In the back was Zoë’s mother.
‘There!’ Miss Fenwick exclaimed. ‘What did I tell you? I knew your daughter would turn up.’
‘We just came back to see if things were all right,’ she explained, as she helped Mrs Headford out of the car. ‘But I had the strangest feeling that you might be here. Isn’t that a wonderful piece of luck?’ Her excruciating cheeriness changed sharply to a tragic undertone as she said to Zoë, ‘It’s been a terrible shock for her. I don’t think she’s been able to take it in. All right, Mother, I’m just coming. Mother didn’t really want the outing before her lunch, but I couldn’t leave her to herself.’
Her mother walked slowly round from the car. She wore her old camel-coloured coat and a black woolly turban that was not quite straight.
‘Have you got your key, Cicely?’ Miss Fenwick called from the car.
‘I thought you had it.’
‘I put it in your purse, dear. Have a look, just to make sure.’
Mrs Headford fumbled in her stiff, glossy handbag, which opened suddenly. A bottle of pills, a pink comb, a small hand mirror and half of a fountain pen skidded across the frosty path between them. ‘Oh dear!’ Zoë, who had been going to kiss her mother, stooped to retrieve everything.
‘Have you found it, dear?’
‘What? Oh – the key.’ She fumbled again and produced an imitation snakeskin purse with a zip fastener. The open bag hung drunkenly on her arm while she battled with the zip on the purse.
‘Let me do it.’ Zoë took it. The zip was stuck because its teeth had caught the lining, and she had to wrench it open. The purse contained a ten-shilling note and sixpences, but no key.
‘I remember now. I put it in my coat pocket to be more handy.’
Zoë put all the things back into her mother’s bag.
‘I’ll bring over your night things after Mother’s had her rest,’ Miss Fenwick called, and the car moved off with a convulsive leap.
‘I should have told her there was no need. I have other night things and I don’t want to be a burden.’
They had walked up the path to the front door, which her mother failed to unlock. ‘Maud always had the key,’ she said, as she stood aside for Zoë to do it.
‘It opens anti-clockwise, Mummy, that’s why you couldn’t do it.’
The house had the dank, silent air of a place abandoned for far longer than twenty-four hours. It was extremely cold.
‘I think we’d better light the fire, Mummy, before we have lunch.’
‘Do you, dear? Maud used to leave it until after tea.’
‘But isn’t it rather cold?’
‘Well, it is cold weather, dear, so it would be.’
They had gone down the passage to the small sitting room. Two glasses and a sherry decanter stood on the rickety table by the window, whose curtains were drawn. Zoë opened them and the increased light seemed mostly to reveal a kind of ashy dust everywhere. Her mother’s crochet lay splayed on her usual armchair. The fireplace was full of ash; a vase of dead chrysanthemums stood on the mantelpiece, which had Christmas cards leaning against the china rabbits and bottles of striped and coloured sand.
‘I think we’d better both have a glass of sherry.’ Her mother went to the glass-fronted cupboard that contained glasses and tea-cups. ‘It was good of you to come,’ she said, and her eyes, which were puffy from crying, filled with tears. Zoë put her arms round the soft, stiff body and her mother broke into convulsive, wailing little sobs. ‘She was quite all right yesterday morning. At breakfast we had a little piece of fried bread because somebody had given Maud a tin of mushrooms and we were finishing them up as they were too rich for one meal. She was going shopping after – she always went on Tuesdays – and she was going to change my library book, but I’d left it upstairs. She would go – she wouldn’t let me fetch it. I heard a crash and I thought she’d fallen down, and I went out and there she was – just lying there!’
For a moment she was speechless, and covered her face with the handkerchief Zoë gave her. ‘I thought she’d fainted and I went to get a glass of water, but you know how it is when something unexpected happens – I couldn’t find a clean glass and then I had to let the tap run because the pipes are funny here and she always said let the tap run. When I went back to her, I realized – I realized that she wasn’t breathing. I went and rang the doctor and then I went back and sat on the stairs with her. Oh, Zoë! It was such a dreadful shock!’
Zoë settled her in her chair and poured out the sherry. ‘Then what happened?’ She felt it was good for her mother to tell the whole story.
‘I took off her hat.’ She looked at her daughter as though appealing for approval. ‘It seemed wrong for her to be lying there in her hat.’
‘Drink some sherry, Mummy, it will do you good.’
During the rest of the sherry – there was enough left for two drinks each – she had learned that the doctor had come and said that Maud had had a heart attack. He had arranged for her to be taken away, and he had rung Miss Fenwick who had come and fetched her: ‘They didn’t think I should be alone, you see. Everyone was very kind – very thoughtful.’ She had come back this morning to collect some clothes and to see if the cat was all right. ‘I sent you the telegram, because I thought you ought to know.’
She had lit the fire and then gone to the kitchen to find something for them to eat. They had lunched off a small tin of baked beans with toast.
During the next few days before the funeral she had learned: from the doctor that, in fact, Maud’s heart had been in what he described as a dicky state, ‘But she never wanted it mentioned or known because she didn’t want to worry your mother’; from a lawyer in Ryde, who came out to see them, that Maud had left the cottage and its contents to her mother, together with what he said would amount to a few thousand pounds, ‘Her pension, of course, stops at her death’; and from her mother that she had every intention of staying on in the cottage. Zoë had suggested that she might like to return to London, but her mother had said, ‘No, dear. I have friends here. Cotter’s End is my home. And, after all, I’m used to being on my own.’
But years with Maud had softened her up. It had been Maud who had shopped and cooked for them both, who had made the decisions, who drove the car – her mother had never driven. It had been Maud who had paid their bills, who had got repairs to the cottage done, had taken things to be mended, had collected her mother’s prescriptions.
The days before the funeral had been spent in helping her mother clear out poor Maud’s clothes, all bought to be serviceable and most having done more than could be expected of them. The vicar said that they could go to the bring-and-buy stall for the Christmas bazaar and her mother seemed to think this was what Maud would have wished. Presumptions about her friend’s desires loomed large during those days, and chief among these was the notion that Maud would have wished her to remain in the cottage. ‘I’m sure that’s why she left it to me,’ she kept saying. After the funeral, friends had crowded into the small sitting room for tea and sandwiches and sherry, kindly donated by Colonel Lawrence, whose dog ate most of the sandwiches – potted meat and Maud’s marrow and ginger jam.
Zoë had a talk with the doctor about her mother’s health, which he said was considerably better than Maud’s had been. The Lawrences and Miss Fenwick said that they would take turns to take her mother to town to shop. Doris Patterson, who had been coming in once a week to do the rough for them at the cottage, offered to come twice, which Zoë felt her mother could afford. Everybody had been kind and helpful, but Zoë, who had noticed how her mother stood by while she struggled with meals and washing-up, was still worried. She suggested that perhaps some of Maud’s money (possibly all of it) might be spent on putting in central heating in the cottage, but her mother was dead against the idea; she was certain that Maud would not have wished it. ‘She always said that central heating was death to good furniture.’ The good furniture consisted of the glass-fronted corner cupboard and a chest of drawers in Maud’s bedroom, but there was no point in arguing.
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 156