Sometimes she imagined climbing inside the mind of the younger woman and tasting her freedom, her shamelessness, her ambition. Then Kitty would be permitted to view the horizon as these clever, earning, self-sufficient younger sisters saw it. Then again, sometimes she imagined it was possible to knock a way out of the pretty shell in which Julian kept her. But not for long: anxiety and fear would reclaim her. It was ridiculous to think she could earn her living in the conventional manner. Anyway, she loved Julian too much.
To get on with Friday.
The morning. Around her breakfast tray lay copies of the day’s newspapers, to be tidied out of sight. From them, Kitty extracted various opinions of the British economy and the latest play to hit London’s West End, which she planned to recycle, with subtle amendments, during dinner with Julian. These days, having an opinion was always useful.
Next, the bath and the process of creaming, patting and disguising. After she had applied her makeup, Kitty shrugged off her dressing-gown and pulled open a drawer in the cupboard. It was stacked with silk shirts, all tenderly folded and stowed. So expensive, so beautiful, so desirable. A second drawer revealed cashmere jumpers: grey, écru and white. Kitty sorted through them, their texture emitting a luxurious message through her skin, and picked the one for the day.
She pushed her feet into a pair of new high-heeled crocodile shoes. Finally, she checked the financial pages of The Times.
Yes. The portfolio was in excellent shape. Each of her lovers had given her something, including the one who had left a large sum in his will. (Of course, the children had screamed blue murder.) To her surprise, Kitty discovered that she had an instinct for the stock market, a feel for the swell of loss and gain. Neither was she too greedy: Kitty knew when to cut her losses.
At the beginning, when Julian had been so besotted (but not, she reminded herself, enough to marry her), he had taken time to explain the market. It was a curve, he said, that went either up or down. But you had to be careful. If you magnified any portion of that curve, even smaller variations would be revealed. ‘By all means take advantage of them,’ he had said, ‘but don’t try to explain the whole picture from them.’ Kitty always smiled at the recollection. It was so characteristic of her lover, interfering, cajoling, anxious to explain how to see things. Oh, he had been at his best when expounding his theory: impassioned, alive, powerful.
But she had seen the point at once. One way or another, she had been operating on the same principle all her adult life.
‘Of course,’ whispered a cocktail-party acquaintance into Kitty’s ear back in those early days, ‘Julian’s name is mud among certain elements in the City. They don’t go much on his philosophy. Julian is thought to be someone who preaches the good of his operations and, at the same time, is completely ruthless. I mean,’ murmured the putative friend, ‘One does not like to be spitted and, at the same time, to be told it’s good for you, does one?’
At the time, this view of Julian had disturbed Kitty, for it was not always possible to know what you were letting yourself in for when you made a sexual arrangement. That was before she fell in love with him. Now, Kitty felt her knowledge of Julian to be far superior. She knew, she knew – because she loved him – that his cool, detached manner hid a sadness that she could not quite understand and never would.
Kitty had taken her finances into her own hands, and Julian thoroughly approved. Now, she had such a sweet man to advise her, and they enjoyed very nice conversations on a weekly basis.
Kitty breakfasted on grapefruit and black coffee. Then she swallowed several vitamin pills, checked the fridge and put on her pale blue jacket. For years now, she had held a block booking at the beautician’s for Friday mornings. Nine thirty sharp to eleven thirty. Today that resulted in the smoothest of legs and underarms, and in scented, massaged flesh. Now it was time to do the weekend shopping.
Lymouth was crowded. In the last two years, a couple of supermarkets had appeared in the high street and brought in extra custom. Kitty emerged from the second, more expensive one, and encountered Vita Huntingdon, who was bearing several monogrammed bags.
Kitty smiled. ‘Special occasion?’
‘Daisy Wright’s fiftieth.’ Vita’s large, big-boned face was flushed. ‘They’re making quite a thing of it.’ Having imparted this information so carelessly, Vita obviously immediately regretted it. Kitty knew why: she herself had not been invited.
Kitty felt the bars around her status in Lymouth lock into position. ‘How lovely,’ she said, in her lightest voice. ‘Is it a big do?’
Vita attempted to steer into less choppy waters. ‘It’s on Wednesday,’ she said, as if that explained the lack of an invitation on Kitty’s mantelpiece. ‘So, you see, Kitty dear, Julian wouldn’t be around, would he? It’s in the evening, with a marquee. I shall be wearing my thermal undies.’ As she got deeper into it, Vita’s jaw made a sawing motion. She swallowed. ‘Must dash.’
Kitty stood aside. ‘Lovely day.’
‘Isn’t it.’
It’s not so much that I’m a kept woman, Kitty transferred the shopping from one hand to the other, but the precariousness of my position. They think that, at any minute, I might make a play for one of their husbands. They think I know the ropes of ‘all that’, the irony being that they have probably given up ‘all that’ some time ago. They don’t like being reminded so blatantly of ‘all that’.
Then she smiled to herself. It was perfectly true. She did know the ropes of ‘all that’. Very well indeed.
Kitty put her shopping into the car and drove back along a sun-drenched sea-front. Today, as it was so often on this strip of the coast, the water was the light, joyous blue of spring, clear and controlled-looking.
How stupid of her to be affected by Vita.
On impulse, she parked the car and got out. The sun was almost blinding. She fumbled for her dark glasses and toyed briefly with the idea of a walk, but in her expensive high heels she would only sink into the sand and stumble over the stones.
If you were a married woman, you were invited to fiftieth-birthday parties, but if single or divorced you made do with flower rotas and coffee mornings.
So be it.
The gulls screamed and coasted on the updraughts above her head. Kitty felt disturbed suddenly by the sea’s wideness, its infinite capacity, and turned away. A tiny cascade of sand slipped down a large black rock in front of the car, grain by grain, slipping down, like the days of her own life.
Tell the truth, Kitty. Do you care that much? The truth? These days, you are not so anxious for company, but much more for companionship and intimacy. It no longer mattered that Kitty often spent days alone – except for Theo, of course. Sometimes, after one of these periods of solitude, she became jumpy and remembered that she ought to do something. Attend a lecture? Hold a lunch party? Take painting lessons? Yet none of these appealed very much, and an insistent voice continued to whisper, ‘Look again, think again.’
She started up the car. The water was so blue today, reminding her of the blissful times with Julian when she had surrendered to passionate love in a way that had never been true of her time with Charles, Harry or Robin.
A salt smell, the slap of water running up the sand, the sudden eddies of a chill wind through the car window: it was time to go.
Back at the cottage, Kitty hung up her blue jacket on a padded coat hanger. It exuded a faint scent of wet wool and salt and, for a second or two, her mind went inexplicably, frighteningly blank, as it did sometimes. With a little cry, she buried her face in Julian’s spare jacket, which hung on the next peg.
The phone rang in her small but fashionable kitchen, with its distressed paintwork and double cooker, while she was unpacking the shopping.
‘Kitty,’ said Julian, ‘I won’t make this evening. OK? But come over to me in the morning. Sorry.’
‘What are you doing?’ Kitty’s body felt heavy with disappointment.
There was a slight pause. ‘I’m taking Agnes Campion
out to dinner after the Portcullis do.’
‘Ah, the girl on the card.’
‘Yes.’
No more needed to be said. From time to time Julian, well… did this. Nothing serious and, to be fair, Kitty was free to do the same. But she did not want her freedom. That they gave each other a little leeway was part of the bargain and Julian always insisted that Kitty trust him. She strove to do so, but each time it happened she felt she was hovering on the edge of an abyss which, as she forced herself to look into it, seemed ever darker and deeper.
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask why she had not been invited to the Portcullis reception – surely, it was her place to be at his side? – when he said, ‘Listen, Kitty, I’ll see you on Saturday’
She put down the phone.
‘Gidday, darl.’
Theo breezed his way into the kitchen carrying the bag with the Equipment. Dusters, bleached and ironed. Cloths for wet work. Cloths for dry work. A stiff nailbrush for obdurate corners. Dettol – the dead giveaway to fellow obsessives. Polish. Lavatory-cleaner. Sink-cleaner. Cream-cleaner. Drawer-cleaner. Bacteria-destroying-cleaner. Window-cleaner.
Sharp but a little madder-looking than of late, Theo grinned at the frozen Kitty. ‘How’s my beaut? Orright?’
She lifted her hand off the phone and her spirits lifted, just a little. Tine. And you?’
For a moment, Theo’s face was a mask of terror and pain, a reflection of the anarchy occupying his head. Then because it was Kitty, whom he loved, asking the question, he pulled himself together. ‘It’s ruddy bad at the mo, if you must know, but a person has to trudge on.’
‘Have they adjusted your medication, Theo?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t ask.’
‘Tea, then.’ Kitty swung into action. In the grip of his bad times, Theo would launch himself at the house, bearing his industrial-size bottle of Dettol, and scrub until the house smelt like a field hospital and Kitty was forced to throw open every window.
They were both outsiders, and the echoes of destruction emanating from the battlefield of Theo’s mind were a small price to pay for the comfort of having him.
‘For the comfort of having each other, darl,’ Theo would have corrected.
In the London flat on the Friday afternoon, Bel hooked a finger into Agnes’s waistband and pulled. ‘A tight black number, I think.’
Agnes allowed herself to be dragged into Bel’s bedroom. ‘Black’s not my colour.’
‘Believe me, darling,’ Bel’s thin hand lay heavy on Agnes, ‘it’s better to go forth armed. Ask any general.’
She opened the cupboard and peered in. ‘It’s a pity you’re so big.’
In Bel’s world a size eight was big. ‘Sticks and stones,’ murmured Agnes, submitting gracefully and thankfully, and pulled off her sweater.
So Agnes waited in a sleeveless black dress (‘I’ll freeze,’ she protested. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ replied Bel. ‘Anyway lust will warm you’) and glittering earrings for Julian Knox, who had insisted on picking her up.
When he arrived, punctually and decisively, but rather pale and preoccupied, he said immediately, ‘You look stunning.’
‘Thank you.’ The dress rustled against Agnes’s skin. ‘I’m sorry I’ve made you go out of your way.’
‘I wanted to pick you up.’ As Julian helped her into the car, he added, ‘There are no ulterior motives.’
‘I expect that’s rubbish,’ she replied, happy and excited at the vista that was panning out nicely.
He fitted the key into the ignition but his eyes continued to rest on her loosened hair. ‘You’re right,’ he said eventually, and both laughed.
At half past ten, Kitty went upstairs to her pretty bedroom, took off her clothes, folded them away and swallowed a homeopathic sleeping pill (less damaging to the skin). It did not work.
10
The reception was being held in a house in a renovated Queen Anne terrace close to the Houses of Parliament. It was, Julian informed Agnes, a contact party arranged by the lobbyists Portcullis employed to persuade key people that a project for a riverside development outside Peterborough was viable. A minister had promised to appear.
‘But you’re the host, then,’ she exclaimed. ‘And I’ve made you late.’
‘Yes, I suppose you have.’ He was unfazed by his dereliction of duty and she was impressed by his good humour. ‘But not too late.’
‘You should have told me.’ Agnes got smartly out of the car.
He tucked his arm under hers. ‘Yes, I suppose I should, but don’t worry, not too many people will have turned up yet. They come late and leave early, and the trick is to drink and talk as much as possible.’
But by the time Agnes and Julian had ascended the stairs to the beautifully proportioned room, a couple of the minister’s juniors were already tackling the champagne with an expression that suggested that no vintage could or would ever influence their judgement.
Agnes’s spirits rose even higher. The party looked interesting and might yield some subjects for Bel and her, the surroundings were lovely and there was dinner to look forward to afterwards. She ran her hand over the material of her dress and felt the satisfactory concave curve of her waist. Sometimes, things did fall into place and it was possible to move on from mistakes. It was important, therefore, never to give up hope, or to lose grace and desire, and to try to build on what had gone before.
‘Let me introduce Chantal.’ Julian guided a chic-looking girl in a short skirt into Agnes’s orbit. She was looking up adoringly at Julian. ‘Chantal works for the lobbyists in the Brussels office and keeps us informed as to what is going on there. Chantal, you might have seen some of Agnes’s television work.’
Chantal’s expression adjusted into professional interest. ‘I’m afraid not.’ She smiled with wide, knowing eyes at Agnes. ‘By the way, how’s Kitty?’ She floated the question past Agnes to Julian.
Kitty?
His answer was instantaneous. ‘She’s fine. She’s coming up in a couple of weeks. She sends her regards. Agnes, there are people I must talk to.’ He moved away and was immediately buttonholed by two well-known politicians.
Chantal’s attention did not waver as she explained to Agnes that her company’s role was to make sure that the right politicians received the briefing papers and to arrange site visits. Then they discussed the art of manipulating vested interests, which, they agreed politely, was one of the main functions of politics. Chantal’s gaze slithered between Agnes and the figure of Julian, now surrounded by a circle of businessmen and politicians at the other end of the room.
Who is Kitty?
A chill made free with Agnes’s bare arms and exposed spine. Gradually, the wonderful excited feeling drained away. No doubt Kitty was his wife, and she told herself wearily that she should have known, should have asked a few questions and, furthermore, she was a fool to be lured into an arena where it was plain that she was not the wife.
She looked around at the smart, hustling gathering and felt the beat of their indifference and the weight of greed. Chantal was talking smoothly about the possible release of tied agricultural buildings on to the housing market, and Agnes remembered Andrew Kelsey. She felt her anger stir for him too.
When Julian reappeared at her elbow after a tête-à-tête with the minister and the party was breaking up, she said, ‘I’m sorry but I’m very tired. I’ll think I’ll go straight home.’
The excuse was transparent but he said at once, ‘Of course.’
After a silent ride, the car drew up at the flat. ‘You seem angry,’ he said. ‘Did someone offend you? If they did, I’m sorry. But I thought you might be interested in the set-up.’
It was as if all their conversations had never happened and a curious formality had taken over. ‘I was,’ she replied, ‘and you’ve been very kind.’
He pressed his hand briefly against his eyes. ‘Actually, I’m tired too, so I’ll say goodnight.’
The gesture touched her and slipp
ed past her defences. Anyway, she wanted to know who Kitty was. To be told, perhaps, that she was his sister. She wanted to smooth things over and go back to the beginning of the evening. ‘Would you like to come in and have some scrambled eggs? I think Bel is out.’
He leaned back in the car seat. ‘Do you mean it?’
‘I mean it.’
He hesitated and she was terrified that he was listening to the voice of common sense. Then he said he would like that – if she wasn’t too tired to crack an egg, and Agnes laughed and replied that her cooking was terrible, whatever her state, and the atmosphere suddenly changed.
He sat on the sofa with a glass of wine and watched her whisk in and out of the kitchen. ‘There was another reason I asked you out.’
‘Yes…’ Agnes pushed some eating implements at him. ‘Would you mind putting these on the table while I go and find a cardigan?’
‘You sent me the letters and, like you, I became rather hooked and I got Angela to do a bit of digging. I know it’s a coincidence that I’ve been reading up about the SOE but there is some basis for thinking that my theory might hold water.’
He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and, while Agnes made the salad, he read out to her, ‘“The records show that in July 1942 the first women SOE agents went into France. They would have trained for at least six months previously.” So Jack’s first letter in January 1942 would fit.’ He glanced down at his notes. ‘“They trained in various places including a manor near Guildford, Arisaig in Scotland and Beaulieu.”’
Agnes put the food on the table and while they ate, pushing bits of information back and forth, a shared story began to take shape as to where Mary might have trained and been infiltrated. ‘Don’t you think she would have confided in him?’ The eggs were heavy and leathery and Agnes’s hunger was quickly satisfied. She put down her knife and fork.
Secrets of the Heart Page 8