‘Oh, I’d like to meet them again, and I’m sure Mrs Daly will be able to rustle up something, but please do give her my apologies. I’ll be down at about six, O.K.?’ In London, Finola quickly hung up.
‘Very well, Finola, naturally you’re extremely welcome! “O.K.” indeed,’ she said as she threw the receiver back on the hook. ‘Where she picks up such expressions! Really not a word of our generation,’ she added to excuse her crossness.
‘Very regrettable,’ said William.
‘You see what I have to put up with.’
‘I must say –’ he looked unhappy. ‘To return to what we were saying, to be perfectly frank, in my opinion you’re not – er – going completely mad, Constance. Really my dear.’
‘You don’t think so?’ said Constance, and raised her eyes: dark-rimmed, dark amber eyes like Gerard’s.
‘No, no, certainly not.’ He smiled slightly, and coughed. ‘Not that I wish to offend you.’
‘I hope,’ she said, ‘that poor dear Mary will be well enough to get up for dinner. If she isn’t, I’m sure I shan’t be!’
‘Yes,’ said William, ‘yes, I do hope she will be, my dear.’
Mainwaring came in with the afternoon post, which he laid down beside Constance. She saw that on the top there was a letter from Gerard, and she opened it straight away.
He began, ‘My dear mother,’ and ended, ‘your affectionate son,’ and he told her that he had decided it would be right for her to remain at Combe Chalcot, and that her own arguments were in fact partly responsible for his decision. Constance’s hands shook a little: when she had written her violent letters to her son, accusing him of hating her, of being greedy, and wanting to despoil the estate, she had meant what she said; though after each letter was posted, she had regretted writing it and pushed the thought of it away. She loved Combe Chalcot, and clung to the thought that her distress was genuine. Her distress at missing Hugh was surprisingly so. Hugh still seemed at times to be at the Cedar House, but he was never a nuisance now.
She looked at William, and saw that he really could not understand that sometimes she did indeed feel mad, just like her sons, though they had crying fits, not rages. She mouthed the words, ‘just as well’.
‘Gerard says he will allow me to stay here, actually,’ she said aloud, but quietly, looking from William to Trumpy the dog. ‘Here Trumpy, yes, good boy. It’s most kind of him, I must say.’ She stroked Trumpy’s back.
‘Yes, indeed,’ said William at last. ‘Most kind, Constance. I don’t quite understand, you know, quite what could have – your picture of his behaviour did give me quite a different impression, my dear. I hope – well, I think I’ll just go upstairs and see how Mary is getting on. Naturally I’m glad for your sake.’
Constance was delighted, and she re-read the letter, which annoyed her a little. But she was again immensely content when she looked at her sitting-room, and thought of never having to go. She had chosen Bath to go to almost as a penance, and she thought now this had been a mistake: a little house near Oxford would perhaps have been better.
*
Finola arrived at the Cedar House at half-past six, and by that time Constance had realised that William was on the verge of disapproving of her. She came close to being angry with Gerard for capitulating against all her predictions. She was also very much upset to think that Finola would be spending the night at the Manor: Constance realised, as the younger Parnells did not, that the whole story of their troubles would now be known to all the Van Leydens’ friends, to the village and the rest of the county. She herself did not yet know, as Katie did through Miranda, that Gerard had come down in secret and had wanted to see her.
‘My dear, it’s simply too ridiculous for you to stop the night with Katie. Sarah’s not gone back to the lodge yet and she can perfectly well air the bed in the blue spare-room,’ said Constance when she and Finola and William were in her sitting-room before dinner, drinking sherry. ‘After all, you’ll always be – this is your –’
‘No thanks, Constance, it’s very sweet of you of course, but Katie’s expecting me. How are you, Sir William?’
‘Very well – very well indeed. And Mary’s as well as can be expected, she’s looking forward to seeing you again. How is Gerard?’
‘Oh he’s as well as can be expected too,’ said Finola, sipping.
‘If only you had been coming for the night you might have had a bath, and changed, Finola,’ said Constance.
‘Oh, I’ll have a bath at Katie’s and she’ll lend me a toothbrush I expect. It didn’t seem worth bringing something to change into, just for one night. You know my primitive upbringing.’
‘Mary,’ said Constance, as William’s wife entered. ‘You remember Finola, don’t you?’ She got up and smiled at her guest, and seemed to lead her over to her daughter-in-law, as though she were a child.
‘How nice to see you, Lady Warren,’ said Finola, looking down into the little wrinkled face of the sickly and vague old lady, and then smiling faintly at Constance behind her. She had discounted most of what Darcy had told her about Constance and the Warrens.
*
William and Mary went up to bed as soon as they had drunk their coffee after dinner, and Constance and Finola had been alone together and silent for three minutes now.
Finola thought to herself as she turned to look, that Constance was old and ugly and wicked and fat. She bit her lip to control a frightening desire to slap her mother-in-law’s loose cheek, as she sat there with her feet apart under the yellow light, insolently staring at her. Fatness, except in dogs, had always repelled Finola, and Constance, who had been a beauty, now had a sagging bosom, and squashy hips, and a double chin. As she recognised for the first time her bodily revulsion, which she had suppressed for Gerard’s sake and Hugh’s, Finola felt suddenly free. She had been trying to think hopelessly of cold and dignified things to say.
‘How hateful you are, Constance. I mean – you can be awfully unpleasant at times.’
There was silence.
Finola’s heart started flapping with nervous violence, as it had last done years ago, when she had been robbed in the street, and insulted, and pushed off the pavement by the thief: she stared at Constance’s pastry-white face, unable to turn away her eyes. Her lips moved.
Constance said: ‘Really, Finola, what an unattractive thing to say. Of course, I always thought you were lacking in proper self-control.’
‘I!’ said Finola, dreadfully embarrassed. ‘I am incapable of self-control? You – well, Constance, what do you think of yourself? Do you think you have self control? What about those letters you wrote to Gerard? Making him cry, and you know he can’t stand it?’
Constance said a moment later: ‘I think you had better go and lie down, Finola, Mainwaring can drive you to the Van Leydens’, you’re in no fit state to drive.’
Finola was horrified. She said to herself: you can’t have ruined everything already. You can’t.
‘I shan’t go and lie down,’ she said at last. ‘We are going to talk. If you go to bed I’ll come up and talk in your room. I’m sorry I was rude. But we’re going to discuss things properly.’
Constance blinked. ‘There is nothing to discuss. Gerard’s letter came this afternoon, and I imagine that’s what you think you want to discuss. But he’s quite happy for me to stay in this house and I’m afraid that is the end of the matter.’
‘He is not quite happy. He’s been bullied into it by you. He is worried about you being unhappy – my God, what about him? Do you care, Constance?’
‘Do try to control yourself, Finola.’
‘I have perfect self-control. I wouldn’t have married Gerard if I hadn’t. Anyway, anyway – tell me this. Do you really mean to stay here when you know it’s not what Hugh intended and everybody else knows it’s not, too? You’ve won, haven’t you, isn’t that enough? You’ve won just by forcing him to write that stupid letter.’
‘I really don’t see the point of this convers
ation.’
‘Yes you do, Constance. You do. We’re not going to just let things slide, let you have your own way.’ She paused, felt exhausted and pointless, and was then revived by a thought. ‘If you have any’ – she could not say honour, that would be too much – ‘any decency and, and proper moral pride, Christian pride, you’ll write to Gerard and say he’s very kind but on second thoughts you really ought to let us have the house. Then you’ll get lots of credit for generosity as well as everything else. Won’t it be marvellous? Gerard will be overcome.’
‘I dare say,’ said Constance. She was breathing hard: Finola thought perhaps she would have a heart attack, like Hugh, and then Gerard would divorce her.
‘I have fought for this house, Finola. I have lived here since before you were born and why should I go? Why should I?’
‘Because you’ve got to and you know it. I quite agree it’s a great pity we aren’t fabulously rich so that Gerard could have a – a secondary seat or something, but that’s the way it is!’
‘You are not going to run this place until I’m dead.’
‘Oh, stop being melodramatic. Gerard’s already running it, from London, and it’s bloody inconvenient too.’
‘Running it as far as he’s capable of running anything!’
‘Gerard is going to look after the estate exactly as Hugh would have wished.’
‘Of course Hugh would have wished him to sell High Manor Farm, and Six-Acre, and the little coppice!’
‘Actually,’ said Finola, ‘he left a letter with the Will, and he said that, as they’re not part of the rest of the estate, it would be best to sell them to help with the death duties.’
Constance let out her breath. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘But he did, actually.’
‘All right. Very well.’
Finola was surprised to see how much Constance was affected by her information, and began to feel a little guilty. There was quiet for a while, and they listened to the spitting of the fire. Finola tried hard to think of something more to say: the memory of her childishness and fear was coming back, and she could not think of those.
‘I always thought Gerard was a coward,’ Constance remarked. ‘Why didn’t he come himself? Why did he send you?’
‘Finola collected herself. ‘He doesn’t know I’m here.’
‘Oh, in that case I’m going to tell him. Do you think he’ll be pleased?’
Finola was pale. ‘I am going to tell him,’ she said.
They waited. ‘I’ve always wondered why on earth he didn’t marry Marjorie Pelham-Colville. She would have made him such a good wife.’ Constance was swinging the pendant round her neck.
‘You know she turned him down,’ said Finola calmly. ‘That’s why.’
‘And so he took you on the rebound.’
‘On the rebound, ten years later or whatever it was?’
Constance got up and Finola was repelled. She did not leave her place behind the big armchair, and she did not take her eyes from her mother-in-law: she had been told that like her parents, she had, when she wanted, a most formidable stare.
‘I don’t care,’ said Constance. ‘I don’t care, you shouldn’t have married him, and you know it. Just to get this place.’ She was standing very upright, like Finola, and she looked very like Gerard in spite of her figure, when out of the harsh yellow light.
‘I married him because I loved him,’ said Finola, quite gently. ‘And you know that. And I wouldn’t really care for living here if it wasn’t what Gerard wanted, underneath. You should think of him, Constance.’
‘The real thing is, you want to make me suffer.’ Constance was crying now.
‘No, no I don’t. But you’ve got to see, Constance! It can’t be like this, it just can’t.’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Constance. ‘You just don’t understand. Do you ever think of anything but yourself? How do you think I could live somewhere else? Do you know when I came here, 1902?’ She paused. ‘When Hugh brought me here …’ Finola did not drop her eyes in shame, but she thought as she had not before.
She was glad Constance could not express herself better. She could see alone, well enough, the stays and dragging skirts and frock-coats, the nine indoor servants in impractical uniform, the calling-cards and eight-course dinners, the victoria and the pony-trap, and the icy candle-lit corridors. The changes in everyday life since those days seemed all to be sensible, comfortable changes, inside the garden wall of the Cedar House. Outside, to Constance, they would not seem so, though it was most unlikely she would ever see very modern people, or a shockingly post-war place.
‘It must be awful almost to – to go out into the world. That’s it, isn’t it?’
‘So frightfully perceptive of you, I must say.’
‘But you don’t even have to leave the estate! Why don’t you go and live in the West Lodge? Or there’s Rectory Cottage, or …’
‘No. Either here or nowhere. I will not live with you.’
‘Well then. But it’s not as though you’re poor, Constance. You’re quite rich, you know you are. You could buy a very nice place somewhere, you’d have Mrs Daly with you, it’s still possible to get help, especially for someone who’s good with staff like you are – you could go and live in Derbyshire near Sedley Warren, wouldn’t that be nice? There’s no need to go to Bath.’
‘Not a very attractive thing to say, Finola,’ said Constance. Her voice rose for the first time. ‘You mean to insinuate …’
‘No, I don’t!’ said Finola. She was taken aback.
‘Oh, but I think you do and you know it. Do you know, I often wonder if you’re quite faithful to Gerard –’
‘Oh, do be quiet,’ said Finola blushing.
Constance was very close to her now. ‘You’ve always hated me, so has Gerard.’ This was the sort of thing about which Darcy had told Finola. So was her accusation of infidelity.
‘Don’t loom over me, please Constance. Oh, go away. You’ve been the worst possible mother to Gerard and Darcy – undermining all his confidence – how you ever came to produce such a son – don’t you ever feel guilty? Don’t you see what you’ve done?’
They stopped, both rather dazed by having flared with miserable rage at precisely the same moment. Finola suddenly thought it was mad for them to loathe each other, and terrible for them to speak so loudly. It was as though Gerard could hear them.
‘Constance, I’m sorry, do let’s –’
‘You’re sorry! Sorry!’
‘Yes. You’re crying. You know you’re in the wrong. I don’t say it’s right for me to talk to you like this but you’re more wrong.’ Constance had not gone back to her chair, and Finola began to feel that this was an advantage.
‘What absolute nonsense.’
‘Do you love Gerard? Do you care anything for him?’
‘He’s my son, naturally I care for him!’
‘Then why don’t you let him have what’s his, without a fuss? You know he isn’t all those things you’ve called him. You know he’s good and – and dutiful and he’d let you have practically anything you wanted – God, I almost wish Hugh had left you this place for your lifetime! Constance you know you can’t take advantage of him in this way.’ It was working, she saw it was working, it must be what Darcy called her steady grey gaze. ‘Be – be charitable, can’t you? Don’t make it all bitter – spoil it for us all – you won’t be happy here, queening it over him, not when everyone knows. We’ll do all we can to help you – but you must write and say you’ve had second thoughts. You must. And I’m sorry I’ve been so beastly to you.’
‘I simply don’t understand,’ said Constance. ‘And I really do – rather dislike you from the bottom of my heart.’ She thought how full her heart was: like her sons, she had revelations sometimes of what a cruel stupid person she was. Finola did not know this.
‘I’m sorry.’
Constance brushed past her.
‘But you’ll write, won’t you? You wi
ll write? I know you will.’
Her mother-in-law did not answer as she went out, without closing the door. Finola stood for a few moments with her mouth open, then went to get herself a drink. She remembered suddenly that she had cigarettes with her, and she lit one in a hurry shaking and trying not to smile. Soon she would have to go to Katie’s, and she could tell Katie, tell her about everything except what she now felt, that she had allowed the perverse Mr Lowell to persuade her to behave like this, and not regret it.
Part Two
LONDON TO DORSETSHIRE
1952–1953
CHAPTER 9
SUMMER, 1952
It was a late afternoon in July. Concentrated sunlight fell on the warm west front of the house, on the Gloire de Dijon roses and dark wistaria; but there were quick chill gusts of wind blowing, and these had made tea on the terrace less pleasant than it should have been. Gerard, who was sitting over the remains of iced coffee and biscuits with a book in front of him, did not go indoors in spite of the breeze, but raised his eyes from time to time to the group playing croquet on the lawn near the gateway, under the cedars.
‘Men against women, that will be fair,’ said Anatole.
‘No, no, I insist on playing either with you or Richard – Alice is such a hopeless player!’ said Finola.
‘I like that!’
‘I shall play with Grandanatole,’ said Richard.
‘We allow you to decide,’ said Finola.
Richard kicked one of the balls, and the game began.
Anatole was an excellent player in spite of his twisted leg and ill-balanced body, and Richard, who used a child’s mallet, was a better one than his grandmother: she had to be told where to aim by her opponents, then always hit too strongly in the wrong direction. Finola was competent, and she thought that croquet was a perfect game for bored people after tea.
Two balls knocked together and then Anatole, limping round the lawn, had several shots. ‘Red to play,’ he said at last.
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