A Desirable Husband

by Frances Vernon

  Darcy edged his feet towards hers. He had not seen Miranda since May, when she had first agreed to sleep with him, for she had spent most of the summer in France. She had not made time for him on her trips to London to visit her shop in Bruton Street, where Darcy had been four times, and bought nothing. She was a talented designer of materials and quite a busy woman, and he supposed she was frightened of falling in love with him. He believed that a horrible adventure in her youth had turned her from a proud and passionate girl into a woman who thought little of taking lovers; but she never told him anything at all.

  Another punt passed them, beyond the hanging branches of their tree, and its occupants bothered to glance at them. Darcy thought he really was too old to lie down beside Miranda, let alone on top of her.

  ‘Shall we go back up-river?’ she said.

  ‘Is it up-river or down? I’ve never known,’ he replied, startled by her voice.

  ‘If we’d brought an oar,’ said Miranda, ‘I could row us.’

  ‘There’s an oar beside you. Bad luck.’

  ‘Oh, darling.’ She sat up, and blinked at the oar. ‘Come on, then.’

  Miranda used the oar with vigour, swapping from side to side and splashing the floor of the punt. She seemed to be taking an amused interest in her second sight of Queens’, King’s and Trinity, Magdalene and John’s: she was thinking that very few undergraduates must enjoy this sort of thing. The sky was lowering, and it was growing colder, and she did not think Cambridge beautiful in comparison with Paris, though she liked being in a punt with Darcy and wondering about those who could manage to live there.

  It was not yet Full Term, but as Darcy had said, several undergraduates were up. In Sidney Street, Miranda noticed a worried-looking girl, with hair curled like the new Queen’s and a very bad skin, hurrying along in a wet cotton dress with a pile of folders under her arm. She said, shouting as a car ran past: ‘Darcy, have you ever had an affair with an undergraduette?’

  ‘“Undergraduette”’ is journalese and out of date,’ he said. Miranda was wearing Darcy’s mackintosh, and he was very cold, and dripping.

  ‘I apologise. But do tell me.’

  ‘No, I have not.’ He had always waited until after the girl’s graduation, if his liking for her lasted so long. They marched down towards St. Andrew’s Street, and through the gate of Christ’s.

  Darcy was a Fellow of Christ’s College, and there he had a fine room with tall windows, lined with the coloured and uneven spines of books. It was both comfortable and tidy, as Trumpington Street was not, and it was furnished with a mixture of good pieces from Combe Chalcot and battered college things. When she entered the room, Miranda could believe that Darcy really was an academic, and not an erudite joker. Nothing seemed to indicate that he might be unhappy: she would not let him see she was impressed, for she thought it would not be good for him.

  *

  Miranda lay back in her armchair and smiled at the handsome undergraduate of twenty-three who was making sure she was quite comfortable by lighting her cigarettes. He handed her a drink, and spilt a little of it on her frock, which she told him was quite all right.

  She was not put out at being in a room with four men and no other women: she knew quite well that she could not be a nuisance, and she liked to listen; and sometimes to make a brief remark which turned charmed attention to herself, but not for too long. In Paris she was a famous hostess, and people said she ran what was almost a salon.

  The handsome undergraduate, who had been the last to join the party and had not yet spoken directly to her, leant towards Miranda and said: ‘Vous n’étiez jamais à l’université vous-même, madame?’

  ‘You don’t have to talk French,’ she said. She cultivated the slightest French accent in England. ‘And no, I never was. I find all this quite fascinating, I only wish Darcy could have arranged for me to dine at High Table.’ He was to take her to a restaurant, before they returned to Trumpington Street, and it was now eight o’clock.

  ‘Oh, what a pity!’

  She had heard Darcy make the most brisk and cheerfully appreciative remarks about an article which this undergraduate had submitted to the Cambridge Review, and she had been almost annoyed by his speaking in a way so unfamiliar. He was now talking about College domestic arrangements with a second and equally good-looking undergraduate: listening to them was Winston Lowell, who had come up for the night, and whose face Miranda thought she recognised. This was not unusual; she went, she reflected, to so many parties.

  ‘So, is Darcy a good tutor – supervisor?’ she said to the boy on her right. She had taken in neither undergraduate’s name.

  ‘What can I say?’

  ‘I’m the best supervisor in the university, it’s why I’m tolerated,’ said Darcy. ‘Isn’t it, James? Oh, and if we’re going to talk more shop in spite of you, Miranda, I’ll tell you that I was more than shocked to see that you’ve been writing for Scrutiny, Lowell. So-called reviews.’

  ‘It’s an excellent institution,’ said Winston, whose hands were crossed behind his head. He had been thinking about Miranda, whom he knew Alice Molloy had loved. She had not told him that, he had guessed from her discretion. ‘What would you do without it?’

  ‘A journal edited by Leavis,’ said Darcy, speaking in a bored voice but enjoying himself under the affectionate gaze of the undergraduates, who had heard all this before, ‘could only be a rag of the lowest type.’ He added, looking at his fingernails: ‘The other day I was standing just behind Leavis on Trinity Bridge, beautifully placed you see and, oh, the temptation.’ Miranda reflected that Darcy was certainly strong enough to throw a man over a bridge: the wounded arm which had kept him in the Home Guard from the time of Dunkirk had healed entirely long ago.

  ‘So actually your dislike’s just personal?’ said James.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Darcy.

  Winston Lowell filled a pipe and lit it, and by this gesture Miranda was reminded of Anatole Brécu. She remembered that she had met Winston at a party of Finola Parnell’s in April: her farewell party, given a week before Egerton Gardens was put up for sale.

  ‘Of course it may be true that you’ve only got to compare Lady Chatterley’s Lover with – with the tiger-skin woman’s Three Weeks to see how awful it is, but was it wise to say so, in front of Leavis?’ said the other undergraduate.

  Miranda smiled at the two bold young men.

  ‘What do you think, Madame de Saint-Gaël?’ said Winston suddenly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Miranda. ‘I don’t suppose he would print a remark like that. Would you, Darcy?’

  ‘There are limits,’ he agreed, looking at her.

  The talk moved in and out of university shop. Darcy stood in front of his fireplace, drinking whisky, dressed in very old, elegant tweeds with a dirty handkerchief protruding from his sleeve. Miranda, who believed that men in general were incapable of sincere love for women, had an idea that Darcy had had a most upsetting affair with some person when he was very young. She did not intend to ask him about this, nor did she want to speak of her own affairs. She supposed that at dinner she might ask about his children, whose names she did not know, and who were living now with their maternal grandmother. It would not be politeness; she wanted to know, for she had always had strong views on children. Her own three sons were all far older than Darcy’s: two were at the Lycée in Paris, and the eldest was doing his military service. She was fond of them all, but she wished before each birth that the child would be a daughter, someone to whom she could talk about England, her childhood and the strange time at Bramham Gardens.

  She had not had a love affair with an Englishman since 1938, and she had never thought to have one with an affected scholar whose body was both vigorous and clumsy. She was surprised by how much Darcy touched her, and how old he made her feel.

  Just as she realised that she was the oldest person present, as well as the only woman, the two undergraduates got up to go.

  ‘Such nice boys,’ said
Darcy when the door closed behind them.

  ‘Yes, they were charming,’ said Miranda.

  ‘I’m afraid they work too hard, it’s always the same with the ones who’ve done their National Service.’

  ‘It was different, of course, before the war,’ said Winston. ‘By the way Parnell, I meant to ask you, how are your brother and sister-in-law?’

  ‘Oh, haven’t you heard from them?’ Darcy suspected that he admired Finola.

  ‘Well, I’ve had an invitation to stay with them,’ said Winston, who had spoken a few times with Gerard at the London Library, since it had been established that he was a close friend of Darcy’s, and since Finola had told Gerard how nice he had been about giving her tea at Bendicks’ when she was half-dead with Christmas shopping. Gerard felt that pleasant people were very scarce, and should be encouraged.

  ‘Really? Oh, well, you must tell me what you think of their set-up. It’s rather odd in some ways, you see Finola had the most frightful row with my mother and practically forced her out of the house. Of course, Gerard didn’t like that at all. I’m sure I told you how awkward my mother was being, it was last year’s big drama,’ he added.

  ‘Did she? Good Lord,’ said Winston.

  ‘Finola?’ said Miranda. ‘I quite agree with you, Mr Lowell. One can’t see it, somehow.’

  Winston thought that he might ask Finola out to lunch with him, or to the theatre in London: he supposed he must wait till after his visit to Combe Chalcot, for he could not frighten her with a letter. He liked Gerard, but thought him now an enlightened despot. Finola would go to him, and he would not give her permission to lunch alone with a man in a restaurant, unless the invitation were casual, public and blatant.

  Darcy and Miranda discovered that Winston intended to go straight back to London after leaving them, because his dinner engagement in Cambridge had been cancelled. They decided not to be alone together at supper, but only in bed. They took him with them to a restaurant where they ate well, and talked about class in France and England, and what people meant by saying that one had had a good war.

  Miranda told them about how she had worked for the Resistance, about how she had listened for the words on the wireless: ‘Les cigarettes Gitanes sent les meilleurs.’ She described going out with torches at night in response to this code, flashing her lights as a signal to those who were to drop men or supplies, and she told them how terrified she had been of the Gestapo. Neither man, though Winston had fought with great gallantry, had come quite so close to the Gestapo as that.

  When Winston took a taxi to the station, Darcy and Miranda decided to walk back to Trumpington Street. It was too cold now to look at the colleges through which they took brisk detours, and they were oddly full of energy, but they felt both better and more tired after they had paused to kiss each other harshly on Silver Street bridge.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE DRESSING ROOM

  A pale fire burned opposite the cold sunny window, where Gerard stood holding a letter in his hand. It was from Christie’s, informing him that a painting which the family had always thought to be a Brueghel was merely of the Dutch school, and really worth very little. He looked down at it, read it again, and, though he knew he should have put it into one of the metal filing cabinets which disfigured the study wall, he threw it on the fire and returned to the window.

  His study looked out towards the front and the open gateway, and the road beyond where occasional cars droned past. There was talk of turning this lane into a road with cat’s eyes; Gerard had protested to the County Council, but he had as yet had no reply. He would have to speak about it tonight, at the parish council meeting.

  Gerard withdrew a little from the window as he saw Finola come through the gateway with her daughter, her niece Jenny, and the dogs, which Constance had left behind though he had begged her to take them if she wanted them. Gerard knew that his wife would be troubled if she were to see him looking purposeless. He meant to sit down at his desk again, but he was surprised by the appearance in the gateway of several children with bare mauve legs and choking coats and mufflers, who were pushing each other and seemed to be saying: ‘Go on!’ Gerard realised, as two of them walked forward with a stuffed sack in a wheelbarrow, what they were doing. He remained at the window to watch.

  Finola turned and hurried towards them, and Gerard saw her bend over the guy as though it were a baby.

  ‘Penny for the guy, Mrs Parnell?’ said one little girl in her slow, adenoidal voice, glancing over her shoulder at the group by the wall, and rubbing her legs together. ‘Please, ma’am.’

  ‘Of course! Let me see if I’ve got any money – yes, you’re in luck, here’s a shilling. Richard told me you were going to have a bonfire. Will you be having fireworks as well?’

  The girl took a breath. ‘Oh, yes, Mrs Parnell, just by the cricket pitch. Richard’s still poorly, is he?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, Cathy, but he does want to go. Perhaps he’ll be better on Thursday.’

  Eleanor, who had followed her mother, stared at the older girls, and they stared back. She was too young for school, but Richard had been for two terms at the village school, and now spoke with a broad Dorset accent which everyone said was charming, and would in any case soon be lost. Finola and Gerard had not liked the look of the private day school in Shaftesbury which had been recommended to them.

  Cathy and her companion turned and hurried back towards the gateway with the wheelbarrow rattling. Finola, Eleanor and Jenny went into the house, and removed their coats and gumboots in the gun-room. This was a slow process, for Eleanor liked to sit down and have her outer clothes removed for her. ‘We’d better go and see poor Richard,’ said Finola, combing her daughter’s hair until she scowled.

  ‘Let’s!’ said Jenny, who was very obliging.

  Finola ran her hands under the cold tap. She was pleased with herself for having remembered that the sturdy blonde child was Cathy Wilkes, either the second or the third daughter of Mrs Wilkes whose husband was tenant of Oak Melton Farm. The other child she had not been able to name, but she connected her face, in an uncertain way, with a sale of sheep in Dorchester.

  Gerard knew that he could never ask directly anybody’s name, for he was trying to be as courteous a landlord as his father. He had asked Finola to discover these things for him when he had returned with a terrible headache from the Michaelmas rent audit. On that day, many of those who had come to pay had chatted briefly about their families as well as the repairs needed to their houses, as they tried to learn how Gerard would really differ from Hugh. They never told him their names or which houses they lived in, and when they paid the agent or paid in cash, he could not even glance surreptitiously at the name on a cheque. He could not ask his agent, because the agent assumed that he knew. Some of the old people had faces which had been familiar to him since he was a child, but he still did not know their names. They called him ‘Mr Gerard’, and sometimes touched their caps, and made him incline his head and smile a great deal.

  Gerard and Finola had discussed at some length whether it would be a good idea to ask the well-liked Katie Van Leyden who everybody was. Finola had done this occasionally, though Gerard had asked her not to: he had pointed out that the story of their difficulties with Constance was known to all the village through Mrs James, Katie’s daily, who had listened to her discussing them on the telephone.

  ‘He’ll miss seeing the fireworks awfully, if he isn’t better,’ said Jenny as they went upstairs.

  ‘I know. They’ve never seen fireworks before, either of them.’

  Richard was cross, because he had been taken from his new bedroom back to the nursery, where Nanny could take care of him. He was convalescing from a bout of flu.

  ‘You’ll miss the fireworks,’ said Eleanor, trailing in behind her mother and Jenny, and looking at her brother, who was red-faced in bed.

  ‘I shan’t! That’s all you know,’ said her brother.

  ‘Yes you will.’

  ‘No
I won’t.’

  ‘There’s no need for a quarrel,’ said Finola. ‘I do hope you’ll be well enough to go, Richard.’

  ‘I shall be, Mummy,’ he said, looking down at the counterpane. ‘I am now.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ She wanted another baby: her vigorous, black-haired children were not enough for her. They were usually polite to their parents, as their parents were to them, but they loved and were cheeky to Nanny. Finola believed that Richard and Eleanor thought she and Gerard good, wise and dull.

  ‘Jenny, you play trains with me!’ said Eleanor. ‘And Richard if he must.’

  ‘Of course I will!’ said Jenny, blushing. ‘Can Richard join us, Aunt Finola – is he well enough?’

  ‘If he likes,’ said Finola. ‘I’m sure it can’t hurt you to get out of bed for a while, Richard, but do put on your dressing-gown.’

  ‘Thanks, Mummy.’ He sounded doubtful: he was a little too old for nursery trains, but he reflected that he could supervise the other two.

  Finola smiled a little at Jenny, who was blonde and plump but had Anatole’s pointed features, and went downstairs to see Gerard. She was thinking hard about how very nice another baby would be.

  ‘Gerard? Are you very busy?’

  ‘No, not especially – what is it, darling?’

  She came into the study and he got up and sat down on the sofa with her, for it seemed to him that it would be both rude and formal to talk to her from his desk.

  ‘It’s just this dinner-party next week, darling,’ said Finola in a low voice, looking at the door. ‘I mean – the Macleans can’t come, and who are we going to ask instead? Any suggestions?’