A Desirable Husband

  ‘I do at parties, now.’

  ‘Do you live in London, Mr Parnell?’ said Miranda, addressing Darcy directly for the first time.

  ‘No, in Cambridge.’

  ‘Darcy is a don,’ said Finola, puffing at her cigarette, and wondering what Miranda would think of this.

  ‘No, really?’

  ‘Really. I work frightfully hard, too.’

  ‘Writing, I suppose?’

  Finola looked at Miranda’s clothes, which she priced with envious pleasure at more than a hundred pounds. She wore dark grey, with an orange belt round her waist, a little hat and crinkled gloves. Finola smiled, remembering that ever since she had come out Miranda had been particularly elegant, though once she had dressed like Alice.

  The party was now at its most noisy, and the guests had no need to make a tight little crowd by the fireplace, for the whole room was full and people elbowed each other with excuses. Finola remained in her place, sipping and smoking, refusing to leave Darcy and Miranda to talk, for she wanted to talk with Miranda herself, and did not suppose she would be likely to see her again. She wanted to find out whether Miranda knew that Alice was still alive.

  She started to listen properly again, and heard Miranda telling Darcy that she was about to start up a little decorating business, purely for amusement. She had bought a shop in Bruton Street and would be selling materials designed by herself. ‘Using my maiden name, so as not to embarrass my husband’s family. Miranda Pagett Designs, you see, sounds rather nice doesn’t it?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll be very good at it,’ said Finola. ‘I remember you did up that room in the house where you had the ball for your twenty-first birthday.’

  ‘Yes, but this will be professional, and rather a nightmare I think. Finola, I shouldn’t be jabbering like this. Tell me, how’s Alice?’ Miranda looked straight into her face.

  ‘Still alive,’ said Finola, ‘and quite well. So’s Anatole.’

  ‘I am glad,’ said Miranda, lighting another cigarette. ‘I bought a painting of hers the other day.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Finola.

  Miranda turned to Darcy, smiling again. ‘I used to live with Finola’s parents, you see,’ she said. ‘But lately we’ve been rather out of touch.’ Miranda had been living in France since she was twenty-two, but she had written to Alice for a few years after her marriage. She remembered Finola’s half-sisters. ‘How are Liza and Jenny, Fin?’

  ‘Liza’s still married, she’s very well,’ said Finola. She blinked, and was obliged to shout as a large man behind her laughed aloud. ‘Jenny was killed in Spain. Didn’t you know?’ This had happened too long ago for either of them to be grieved or even awkward now.

  *

  Darcy went on that evening to see a professor of Imperial College whom he rather despised, and Finola returned to Egerton Gardens where Carlotta, her cook, had left her some soup and potato salad. She took this upstairs on a tray, because Carlotta never liked her to be in the kitchen.

  When she was alone she thought about Gerard, who ought to telephone her tonight. Finola considered that she had better not ring Combe Chalcot herself, and then she reminded herself that it was ridiculous to hesitate to ring her husband, or to wait, watching, for his telephone call. She did not ring or leave the telephone, and sat smoking half-cigarettes, wondering whether things would have been different if she had not been a virgin at the time of her marriage. Usually she thought that Gerard had been a reward for her chastity.

  She cried a little, thinking of how unhappy she had been before she married, and of Gerard in Dorset now. When she was young Finola had had no men of whom she had been able to think as proper suitors and admirers. She had wriggled and shuddered when men had tried to kiss her (as sometimes they had), yet she had wished there had been more than three occasions. She had thought for years about one man, called Charles, who had never shown interest in her; and the conviction that she was a superfluous woman had been terrible at twenty-three. It had been less bad at twenty-seven, when she had had no hope.

  She had met Gerard in Portsmouth in November, 1943, when she had been a year in the Wrens. He had reminded her at first of Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility – though he was older even than Colonel Brandon – because he had helped her to walk one day when she had twisted her ankle on board ship. He had not quite carried her, as Willoughby had carried Marianne, and she had thought that she was very much too old to be deceived by him as Marianne at seventeen had been.

  Finola had discovered at a party two days later that he came from the sort of family about which she had always had romantic ideas. She was not ashamed of liking this because she liked and loved him even more for things which were not obvious, for his never trying to kiss her, till after they were engaged. She had never been able to tell him how intensely she adored him, and thought he would vanish if she did not look at him constantly, although she knew it was her duty not to be possessive.

  ‘I didn’t deserve it, God,’ she said to the telephone. It rang, and she jumped.

  Gerard spoke, and told her in his low, preoccupied, fond voice about Hugh’s being so much better, and Amelia’s expecting puppies; and he said he would be back tomorrow. Finola said she was glad, then slowly put down the receiver, and contemplated it.

  Darcy came in just as she had finished on the telephone. ‘Ghastly evening – now darling, you must tell me all about the fascinating Madame de Saint-Gaël.’

  ‘Darcy, I just knew you were going to say that,’ said Finola, turning round a moment later. She knew that, if she had not met Miranda Pagett at the cocktail party, she would not have wasted time in thinking how lonely she had been ten years before, and of Gerard’s exotic punctilio about which no one else would ever know. Miranda would think Gerard frightfully amusing.

  ‘Do you hate her, Finola? Did she shine you down when you were a pretty young thing?’

  ‘When I knew Miranda I was much too young to be shone down by anybody,’ said Finola, who had gone to Miranda’s twenty-first birthday ball when she was only fourteen, and looked a little older, and had been rather pretty. ‘She’s at least six years older than I am. And you needn’t say she doesn’t look it,’ she added, smiling a little.

  ‘Certainly not, darling! Now do tell.’

  ‘Oh, it was a very big drama,’ said Finola, who was suddenly quite cheerful. ‘Will you get me a drink, please, Darcy, whisky and water?’

  He went to pour two weak drinks, and then sat down opposite her. Finola took a crude and enjoyable mouthful of whisky. ‘She ran away from school you see, when she was fourteen or fifteen, and Alice found her in Kensington Gardens. Really she did, it doesn’t sound real, does it? Anyway, she brought her back and then Miranda lived with us for two whole years, her family never knew about it, and then her brother found her quite by accident, when they’d been thinking she was dead for ages, of course.’

  ‘My dear, how ghastly!’

  ‘I know,’ said Finola, bending down to adjust the seams of her nylons. ‘She wouldn’t get in touch with them, and Alice, you know what she is, wouldn’t make her – Alice was very fond of her. Of course, when she was found she had to go back to her family.’ It did not sound, she thought, at all like a very big drama. ‘I always thought it was wrong of her to run away like that,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t think of it really from her parents’ point of view then, it was just that I used to absolutely long to go to boarding school, you see.’

  ‘Oh, Finola!’

  ‘Honestly. Doesn’t it sound silly? I thought it was all too glamorous for words.’ She looked back to Miranda’s stay at Bramham Gardens, and did not think that she, Finola, had been much more perverse than other children. ‘And as for me hating her, I admired her enormously, and didn’t want to admire her, that was it.’

  Darcy was gazing at the invitations on the mantelpiece, wondering how to get in touch discreetly and delicately with Madame de Saint-Gaël. Finola’s information was interesting, and he intended to ask her more, but he was
sure that the story of the French marriage would be even more fascinating, and Miranda alone could tell him, and make it lead to other things.

  ‘Dear old sex,’ said Darcy, closing his eyes.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE DOWAGER

  In August 1951, Darcy received his decree absolute, and he met Miranda by accident at another party in London, and had from her an invitation to a third party when she should be back from Paris. The summer passed rather quietly for Gerard and Finola, and Alice and Anatole, and Hugh’s death in September was something of a shock to them all.

  *

  Ten minutes before his last, violent heart attack, Hugh was upsetting himself over Russian spies in the top civil service, and income tax at 9s 6d in the pound, and the family thought he was so much better and so normal that there was nothing to be feared from his private rage. Finola and Gerard were at Combe Chalcot when he died, but they were not in the study with him when he suffered the heart attack. His wife was there.

  When she saw her husband collapse, Constance was at first speechless. A moment later she shouted at him, then breathlessly she opened the door and called to the staff. ‘Mr Parnell has had another attack – he must be moved – go and fetch Mr Gerard.’ Mainwaring, the butler, and his wife stared at each other. ‘A doctor. We ought to have a doctor,’ said Constance.

  ‘You go for Mr Gerard, Sarah,’ said Mainwaring. His wife obeyed him, shaking her head.

  ‘Madam, we can’t move him upstairs, we must get him onto the settee, me and Mr Gerard that is.’ He paused, and said in a stricken way: ‘He’s in a bad way, madam. I’m afraid –’

  ‘I am aware of that!’ said Constance. ‘Where on earth have you been, Gerard? Help Mainwaring to move your father – really Finola, what can you do?’ She was crying now from shock and anger, and Finola took her arm and said: ‘Hush, Constance.’

  Hugh was still just breathing, and he did not seem to be at peace. Mainwaring and Gerard laid him clumsily on the uncomfortable sofa, and then Gerard felt his heart. There went through his mind the words of the Litany – ‘from battle and murder and from sudden death, Good Lord deliver us’, but they did not seem very important.

  ‘Don’t die, Father,’ he said. The others were a little shocked.

  ‘Brandy,’ murmured Hugh. ‘Good dog.’

  Five minutes later when he was quite dead, everyone felt less useless. It had been impossible to leave the room for a moment when he was so obviously and so suddenly dying: Constance, Gerard and Finola had moved only to take chairs. Mainwaring and Sarah, unnoticed by the door, had felt it would look callous to leave the family, though they knew that Mrs Daly the cook was still unaware of what was happening.

  All waited some seconds after Hugh first lay perfectly still, as though he might move again. Then Gerard, sorrowfully embarrassed, turned and said to Mainwaring, who he thought should have left them: ‘We must get a doctor. Mainwaring, please ring Dr Dovey.’ He looked at Finola, who thought of death certificates and the undertaker.

  ‘Get out, all of you,’ said Constance to their surprise. ‘Leave me.’ A doctor, she thought.

  Finola and Gerard hovered for a moment, avoiding each other’s eyes, but they did as she said when they remembered she was a widow. Constance watched them go, and exchanged a look with Finola just as she closed the door. She knew they wanted to sedate her.

  After a little ticking silence, in which she listened to the clock on the mantelpiece and the murmurs in the hall, she remembered a phrase she had read somewhere: ‘Her husband’s corpse’.

  She soon made herself ill with crying.

  *

  The doctor, the undertaker and the vicar of the parish all came up to the Cedar House during the afternoon. Nothing was said between Gerard and the vicar about Hugh’s disregard for religion or the wish he had sometimes expressed to be buried in the woods where his pheasants were bred, just by the gamekeeper’s cottage. Gerard knew that he would not seriously have wanted something which would have puzzled and upset the local people. He wished, when he was talking with the clergyman, that he were not the eldest son and responsible, so that he might have time to appreciate the true nature of death, and every man’s losing his father. If he had been in London when Hugh died, he would have been able to use his thoughts properly. Yet he must be glad that he had been present, though he could not think he had behaved as he ought: something of this he implied to the vicar. Later he reproached himself for such small hints, which were designed, he thought, to attract attention to himself and not to Hugh.

  The vicar and the family compromised as to where Hugh was to be buried. They decided that he should have a simple private grave in the churchyard, which would be closer to his own idea than the burial in the family crypt which Constance thought proper. She wanted to be buried in the crypt herself.

  At five o’clock, when Gerard was with the undertaker and Constance was in bed, dosed with veronal by the doctor, Finola began to telephone the rest of the family. It had seemed right to leave two or three hours between Hugh’s death and this task, the only one given her by Gerard. She tried first to reach Darcy and she rang several times in half an hour, as though it was of immediate and frustrating importance. He was constantly engaged. When she did get through, a female voice told her he was giving a supervision in college, and would not be back till late. Finola swore when she heard this.

  A little later, when her distress was still divided between the body on the study sofa and the need to telephone Darcy, Finola tried to reach her parents. When she dialled Great Queen Street, the London telephone was raised and at once slammed down. This happened twice and the third time she shouted very angrily: ‘It’s Finola!’

  ‘Fin? Oh, I’m sorry, I thought it was the Inland Revenue,’ said Alice, lifting the telephone to her ear. ‘They’ve been a bloody nuisance lately, Anatole filled in some form wrong.’

  ‘Well then why don’t you take the telephone off the hook?’ She thought of the stupidity of Alice.

  ‘It goes wrong if I do that. You sound in a dreadful state, Fin, is everything all right?’

  Finola took a deep breath. ‘I was just trying to ring, to tell you that Gerard’s father’s just died. I think you ought to know.’ Tears began to slip down her face, and she sat down. She had not cried before.

  ‘Oh Fin. I thought you said he was better?’

  ‘He was! But he had a sudden attack, just this afternoon – it was only ten minutes, I promise you, practically instantaneous and it was so horrible.’

  ‘You were there?’

  ‘Yes, yes I was.’

  ‘Oh, Finola.’ Alice paused. ‘And I don’t think you’ve ever seen anyone die before, have you, not even in the war?’

  ‘No. I’ve seen corpses, dead people. Well, it’s no good talking! I just thought you ought to know.’

  ‘How is that woman, Constance I mean, how is she taking it? And Gerard?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. I must go, Alice, I must try and ring Darcy.’

  ‘Would you like Anatole to ring, later?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I would. Thank you, Alice.’

  Finola put down the telephone, ashamed of having cried in front of her mother.

  A short while afterwards, Gerard came in. It was now past six o’clock, he saw, the hour at which Hugh had considered it permissible to start drinking whisky.

  ‘Has the undertaker gone?’ said Finola, pushing her hair off her forehead. She had tried to sew quietly, since talking to Alice.

  ‘Yes, just now. You’ve been crying.’

  ‘Yes. Does that surprise you?’

  ‘My dear. No.’ He sat down beside her and put his head in his hands.

  ‘Constance is still in bed?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Gerard, what will happen now?’

  ‘Oh Finola, I don’t know.’ They had been warned many times by Hugh about death duties, and valuations, and difficulties with Constance. Gerard began to cry and Finola put her arm round h
im. She had never been embarrassed by emotional men; one of her earliest memories was of Anatole in tears, of trying to comfort him in her shabby back bedroom at Bramham Gardens, when she was three years old.

  ‘Dearest, you’re so different,’ said Gerard.

  ‘You are silly. Oh dear, you and Darcy are very much alike, you know!’ She added: ‘I couldn’t get through to him.’

  ‘No, we’re not,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry you couldn’t get hold of him.’ At last, he was thinking of Hugh’s soul. He wanted to go up to his room to pray properly, but he knew he must comfort Finola first. Gravely he disengaged himself from her arm and picked up her hand, his favourite caress. He wondered what he could say to her. ‘We’ve been happy, Finola, haven’t we?’ he said, as though she were his mistress of whom he was still quite fond, but whom it was his pleasant duty to leave.

  *

  Next day at ten o’clock, Constance was still in bed. She would see neither Gerard nor Finola, and she knew they would be wandering about on the ground floor of the house, wearing their soberest tweeds, and talking about her. She did not intend to leave her bedroom until the funeral tomorrow, when she would wear the black coat and skirt she had ordered years ago for her brother Colonel Charles Winter’s memorial service. Constance had decided to wear for the next eighteen months only grey, beige and white. She had often said she regretted that full mourning had gone out since the Great War, but she possessed only the one black suit, and could not go against the custom of the times she disliked in buying more.

  Constance was sitting upright in bed, drinking tea which Sarah had brought her. She was fiddling with a packet of cachets faivres, although she had not taken one in spite of having a headache. She disapproved of taking medicines except in emergency, when ordered by the doctor, and had never allowed her sons to be ill unnecessarily.

  She could see herself in the handsome mirror opposite her bed. She made a large, white and dignified figure whose full age was not apparent at a distance of twenty feet even when her grey hair was plaited for the night. The glass showed also her coral-pink pillows, the Adam green, faint-striped wallpaper, and the dark painting of fruit and flowers above the bed which, like many things at Combe Chalcot, was a quietly noticeable variation on conventional good taste. She rather despised those who had watery old flower-prints on their bedroom walls.