Scarlett sat silent. She had obviously fallen far from favor.
“Cake?”
“No, thank you.”
“You should eat more. You’re very thin.”
“I like being thin,” said Scarlett firmly.
“Very well. If you think you look better that way.”
“I do.”
She was beginning to get the measure of Mrs. Frost. She was a bully, and you dealt with bullies by facing them down. But …
“Now, I’m not going to tell you I’m pleased about this marriage, because I’m not. You’re a very nice girl, and I like you very much. But you are simply not Mark’s intellectual equal. I’m sure everything is hunky-dory now. Lots of lovey-dovey talk, lots of sex, lots of excitement. But in the years to come, then what, eh? What are you going to talk about?”
“What we talk about now, I expect,” said Scarlett.
“And that is? Certainly not the subjects that truly interest him.”
“Which are?”
“Oh, my dear girl, if you have to ask that’s extremely indicative.”
“Of what?”
“Of the yawning chasm between you.”
Scarlett felt the tears rising, crushed them, and said, quite quietly, “You must excuse me, Mrs. Frost. I don’t have all afternoon; I have a business to run.”
She saw herself out; as she passed through the hall she saw Dorothy hovering in a doorway, and could have sworn she saw an expression of approval on her pinched, pale face, and even the shadow of a smile.
Just the same, and in spite of her rage and indignation, she knew Mrs. Frost was actually right, and when Mark rang her that night, she said she was very sorry, but she had a lot of work to do, and that it would probably extend into the next evening as well; clearly hurt, he said he would wait to hear from her; he wouldn’t bother her again. And maybe, she thought, it would be better for both of them if neither of them ever bothered the other again.
A brief note, in her unmistakably foreign-looking writing:
Giovanni is coming to London when I come to be a witness for Eliza, and he has suggested you join us at the opera on the Wednesday night. Please, please tell him you are to be away; I could not bear to see you.
M.
Jeremy read this through eyes blurred with tears. And understood and felt the same and told Lucilla he wanted to make a trip to New York the week of Eliza’s custody case.
“Jeremy, you can’t. I’m sorry. It’s the week of the European conference and all the CEOs are coming to London; it’s been in the diary for months. I’ve fixed meetings, dinners, the opera—”
“The opera? Which night?”
“The Wednesday. Jeremy, you can’t have forgotten; it’s Traviata; oh, dear, you’re so tired, aren’t you? Why don’t I clear the diary for the following week and book you into that hotel on St. Bart’s you like so much?” Lucilla’s large brown eyes looked at him with concern; he managed to smile at her.
“No, no, I don’t want to go then, too hot. I might take myself down to Norfolk, though, that week, if you could see your way to facilitating that. Bless you, darling.”
Now how in God’s name did he tell Mariella? He could hardly write. And he had to warn her, say when he would be at the opera house. Maybe, maybe … yes, the one person in the world he could trust …
“Oh, Jeremy, darling, darling Jeremy, I’m so sorry. How sad, how dreadfully, dreadfully sad. For both of you. I can’t imagine how much it must hurt.”
“Unbearably,” said Jeremy with a heavy sigh.
“Oh, God, what a tragic story. Yes, of course I’ll write to her; I’ll wrap it all up in fashion gossip and I’ll just say you’ll be at the opera house on the Wednesday and you asked me to tell her. She’ll understand and then she can ring me if she wants. Poor Jeremy. You look so tired.”
“I am tired,” he said. “Unhappiness is very exhausting. I’ve never known it before.”
“Not even when I broke off our engagement?”
“My darling, I’m afraid not. This seems to be my first experience of love. I hope that doesn’t offend you.”
“Of course not,” said Eliza, giving him a kiss.
Four days later came a phone call from a distraught Mariella to Eliza. “Please, please tell Jeremy that is the night we too are going to the opera. Tell him I beg him not to come.”
“I’ll try. But it’s work; they’re clients. Oh, darling Mariella, you must be so unhappy, and I’m so sorry.”
“I have not known how to be unhappy before,” said Mariella simply.
Eliza felt she could hardly remember not being unhappy. And frightened too, more so every day. She kept looking at Emmie, as she sat on her swing laughing at her, or cuddled up to her watching children’s TV, or kicking Mouse determinedly into a dozy trot, or telling her sleepily at bedtime that she loved her, and she was the best mummy in the world, and thinking that if she did lose her, she wouldn’t even want to live anymore. But … it was beginning to seem more and more likely.
Philip and Toby had called her to a meeting and said they really thought a robust judge—“which he will be, Eliza, almost certainly”—would want at the very least to read her psychotherapist’s report, and that they would like to discuss the whole matter with her. “She will need your permission to waive confidentiality, you see.” Eliza was silent.
“Eliza,” said Philip gently, “if you refuse, you will not only alienate the judge, who can still compel Mrs. Miller to release it, but it will look very much as if you have something to hide.”
“Yes,” she said, “yes, I’m sorry. And I … I will. But it could be very bad for me—us. You might want to give up on me altogether.”
“May I say,” said Toby Gilmour, half smiling, “that, speaking personally, but I feel confident for both of us, I would never do that. It is quite simply unimaginable. And you’re talking to a man, you know, who has seen the very worst of human behaviour. Now come along; let’s get it over and done with. And if it’s really so dreadful that I do actually feel shocked, I shall eat my wig. How’s that?”
And she had told them about it without sparing herself, her gaze fixed firmly to the floor, and when she had finished there was a silence and then Toby Gilmour said, “My dear, dear Mrs. Shaw”—and she could hear the smile in his voice—“or perhaps, now that I am getting to know some of your most intimate secrets, I could manage Eliza—look at me.”
She did so, with great difficulty.
“Now,” he said, “listen very carefully, please. What you’ve described to me—us—is, of course, unfortunate, under the circumstances. It is also absolutely understandable, and was provoked, and quite considerably so, both by your having lost your baby and by Emmie, who is clearly manipulative and very sophisticated. If everyone who lashed out once or twice at a child were fingered, I suspect most of the nation would be under the scrutiny of the social services. Nevertheless, your husband will no doubt make excellent capital of it, and we will have to be very fully prepared for that. Now, I think the best thing we can do is approach Mrs. Miller, and ask her if she would be agreeable to our going to see her.”
Four unhappy days and a lot of thinking later, and having shed many tears and seen in many sleepless dawns, Scarlett made up her mind and rang Mrs. Frost and asked her if she could come and see her.
She wore a suit in blazing red, the skirt distinctly shorter than she normally wore, and the heels her highest pair; she carried a large bouquet of roses. She rang the doorbell, stalked past Dorothy with a brief nod, and went into the drawing room, where Mrs. Frost sat in her wheelchair, looking more than usually stern. They glared at each other for a moment; then Scarlett said, “I brought you some flowers. I know you may not be entirely pleased—”
“Not in the least.”
“But my mother brought me up not to arrive empty-handed. She isn’t very intellectual either, but she has very good manners.”
“I’m pleased to hear it,” said Mrs. Frost.
“Anyway
, I have come to continue the conversation I had to terminate the other day. I apologize for that.”
Mrs. Frost nodded; her eyes were bright with either apprehension or anticipation; Scarlett couldn’t be sure which.
“I think we should get straight to the point, not waste time on social niceties. Now, as I recall, you were asking me what we talked about when we were alone together.”
“I did indeed.”
“Right. Well, we talk about him and we talk about me. We talk about what I do and we talk about what he does. We talk about what we’re going to have for dinner and who is going to cook it. Now, all those things seem to me pretty important, just as important, I would propose, as the things you think we should be talking about. Which I presume are literature and art and the meaning of life. Actually we have got onto the meaning of life.”
“Really. And what do you think it is?”
“We’re not sure yet,” said Scarlett firmly “It’s an interesting ongoing discussion that we have. All the time.”
“Huh.” It was impressive, what she managed to put into that sound.
“But you see, there are plenty of people in his life who are his intellectual equals, but he’s still fallen in love with me. I’m what he wants. With all my shortcomings. I think you have to face that.”
“What about his friends, eh? How can you communicate with them?”
“Actually,” said Scarlett, “he doesn’t have many. He’s too shy. He really is very shy indeed, isn’t he? I wonder why, and whether anything could have been done to help him when he was a small boy. I do think it possibly could have, but it clearly wasn’t. I expect you were too busy. Still, he’s got me now, and maybe I can help.”
“I doubt it very much,” said Mrs. Frost.
“Well, we shall see. Anyway, back to his friends. The ones I’ve met are very nice to me. They quite often want to talk about my company. It seems to interest them a lot.”
“Extraordinary. And your friends, does Mark have conversations with them?”
“He hasn’t met many of them. I haven’t told anyone about us yet, not my family, not anyone, really.”
“ ‘Nor’ dear, ‘nor.’ Not ‘not.’ ”
“That is really rather rude,” said Scarlett. “Extremely rude, in fact. I don’t know why you think that just because you write poetry it’s all right to insult me. It’s quite beyond my limited intellectual capacity.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Frost, surprising her, “yes, I can see it was rude. I apologize. I still think, if you’re proceeding with this marriage, you’re making an appalling mistake.”
“Obviously I’ve given it very careful consideration, since our last conversation,” said Scarlett, “and equally obviously, of course, you have a point. I am not Mark’s intellectual equal and I never will be. I do accept that. But I sort of think it doesn’t matter. Because I’m good at things he isn’t good at, and I think between us it’ll work pretty well. And we are going to get married, because we want to get married. And moreover, we want you to be there. Well, I don’t, to be honest. But Mark does. He adores you. And he’s very good to you, I think.”
“Yes, that’s true. But I can’t give it my blessing. You can marry him if you like, but it will be against my wishes and without my presence.”
“And what good will that do you?” said Scarlett. “None at all. Mark’s not going to not marry me. And don’t correct my grammar, please. He’ll just marry me feeling unhappy, wishing you were there. And he’ll find it hard to forgive you. He has this vision of us being married on Trisos, with you reading the epithalamium—you see, I can say it and I know what it is, and I am trying to become better educated. So if you don’t do that, and you don’t come, not only will I know you’re mean and vindictive, but more important, he will too. Which is not what you want, I imagine. If you do come and you do write it, only I will know. Well, actually I’ll know you’re not. And he can continue to think you’re a saint. Which I also know you’re not. So—your choice, Mrs. Frost. Over to you.”
There was a long silence; then Mrs. Frost suddenly put her hands together and clapped them sharply, several times.
“Very good,” she said, “very good indeed. Well, you may be uneducated, but you’re certainly not stupid. You may go now. I’m tired and I’m giving a poetry recital tonight at the Festival Hall. I’ll think about what you said.”
Scarlett left, hoping devoutly that her confidence in herself was not misplaced.
Two days later, Mark walked into Scarlett’s office beaming happily, holding a large white envelope. It contained a sheet of white parchment paper covered in perfect cursive writing. “The epithalamium,” he said. “It’s beautiful. And my mother tells me she thinks she can arrange to come to Trisos for our wedding after all. She is a wonderfully brave and generous woman.”
“She is indeed,” said Scarlett. “I must send her some chocolates.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Emmie felt if she kept saying it, they might change their minds. She was so terribly afraid the whole thing was her fault, because she’d been so naughty. It had been so horrible, that night, when they’d talked to her and told her what they were going to do: live in two houses, one each, with her living in one or the other.
“But why?” she kept saying, trying not to cry. “Why not the same house like now; it’s nice now; why do we have to change it?”
And they’d gone on and on about how they didn’t get on very well anymore. “Yes, you do,” she said, beginning to cry, “yes, you do.” But no, her mother said, they were arguing a lot, a bit like Emmie and her friends argued, and that made them miserable, and they thought it would be better if they lived in different houses.
“It wouldn’t be better,” she said, trying now not to cry. “It wouldn’t be better; it would be better if you stopped arguing and lived in the same house. That’s what you tell me when I do it, with Alice and Hattie and people, to stop arguing and make up with my friends, and I do.”
“It’s not quite the same thing, Emmie,” her father said, and she told him that yes, it was; it was exactly the same thing; you could stop arguing if you really tried.
“Please,” she said, starting to cry again and this time not being able to stop, “please try again. I don’t want to live with just one of you; I don’t; I don’t; I want to live with both of you. Please, Mummy, please, Daddy”—and she was crying so hard now she couldn’t even see them properly—“please try again, please, please.”
And then her father said, very quietly, “I’m sorry, Emmie, but we can’t,” and her mother said, “You heard what Daddy said.”
Next day she went to school, but it was very hard to think about anything else, and she didn’t even want to go out to play, and suddenly in the middle of reading she was sick, in a great horrible puddle on her desk, and Miss Barnes took her out and helped her wash her face and rang home, and her mother came to fetch her and she drove her home, saying, “I’m sorry, Emmie,” to her, over and over again.
And then a few nights later, when she was in bed, she heard the worst thing of all, which was her parents shouting at each other and then her mother running downstairs and her father making an awful sort of choking noise and she realised he was crying and she couldn’t believe it because men didn’t cry, and she ran downstairs to find her mother and said, “Come, come quickly; Daddy’s crying,” and her mother said of course he wasn’t crying, and she said yes, he was, and she pulled her mother upstairs and they stood outside one of the bedrooms and the noise went on inside, and her mother just looked at her and didn’t do anything, and Emmie tried to go in, but the door was locked, and she started to shout, “Daddy, Daddy, let me in,” and finally he opened it and picked her up and said, “Emmie, I’m sorry,” and there were tears on his face and that was almost the most frightening thing of all, that a grown-up man could actually cry, and she said if he was sorry to stop arguing with Mummy, and he said she didn’t understand and put her down
again, and ran down the stairs and out of the house.
That was when she began to be afraid it was her fault: that they were arguing about her, because she was often so naughty, and she asked her mother whether they would be able to stay in the same house if she was good all the time, and her mother gave her the same awful, sad look her father had and said no, she was sorry, they wouldn’t.
That weekend, at Granny’s house, it had been all right for a bit, and Granny had been so kind to her, and she rode Mouse a lot and felt much better, and her mother seemed happier too, and she thought maybe they’d changed their minds, but when she asked her grandmother whether she knew about them living in different houses, she said yes, she did, and she was very sorry about it, and then Emmie realised it must be true.
And when it was time to go home, she went up to the lavatory on the top floor and locked herself in and said she wouldn’t come out until her mother had promised to make friends with her father, but she didn’t, and they both, Granny and her mother, kept banging on the door telling her to open it, and she wouldn’t, but in the end, Mr. Horrocks arrived—she could hear his voice outside—and there was a lot of banging and pushing and pulling, and when the door finally came off, she was standing on the lavatory, screaming, staring at them, and her grandmother said, “Oh, Eliza, this is dreadful; what have you both done?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Gilmour—Toby—but I need to see you very urgently. Philip’s out of town till Wednesday and this can’t wait; it really can’t … One of his assistants has offered to bring me down to your chambers … I want to stop this awful case; I want Matt to have Emmie …”
Toby Gilmour had, until that morning, felt fairly ambivalent towards Eliza Shaw. He had found her very attractive from their first meeting; he had grown almost fond of her over the weeks, the long, hard, emotional weeks, as the case was prepared and she lurched from fear to confidence and back to fear again, and yet still somehow managed—almost always—to be charming. She was not in any way the type of woman he usually admired; he liked them highly educated, crisply intellectual, and in a career path that he recognized, not dizzy and flippant and, while clearly hugely intelligent, doing a job that was by any standards lightweight.
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