A Desirable Husband

by Frances Vernon

  ‘I think she would be better off with an older husband.’

  ‘What a funny person you are, Mrs Parnell.’ She opened her lips to say for the second time, ‘Do call me Finola’, but he continued: ‘All this wood is for sale, I suppose?’ There were two great piles of wet logs in a slight dip on the hill, some twenty yards away.

  ‘Some of it’s for the house, most of it actually. It’s only firewood. One of the beeches came down in a gale last February, it was rotten you see.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ murmured Winston suddenly. ‘I do think this place is rather marvellous.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I think! Turn round,’ she said, ‘you can see down into the garden from up here, there’s the roof of the house, you see.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, turning and drawing in the sharp air. ‘I should hate to live in the country.’

  ‘I find it so marvellous not to have to live with the smogs,’ said Finola, after a moment’s pause. ‘All that horrible, greasy dirt one can’t get out of anything. But I must say one misses it sometimes. We used to have country holidays when I was a little girl, going to stay with my great-aunt Caitlin, and I simply loved it there, but of course living permanently down here is rather different.’ She paused, plodding further up the slope with Winston two paces to the right, behind her. ‘Actually, you were right about moving bringing some difficulties, even though it has solved some others, you know.’

  Winston looked at her tangled hair, which was clear ginger in the thin sunlight. He considered asking more about this, and directly referring to their having tea in Sloane Street, but said instead with grave friendliness: ‘Tell me about this great-aunt. Alice mentioned her once.’

  Finola, surprised, said: ‘I was very fond of her, we all were – she lived to be over ninety, so I was twelve when she died. I don’t know if Alice told you she made a fortune, on the Stock Exchange. She used to collect things. Pictures, furniture, the lot, her house was absolutely crammed.’

  ‘Very unusual for a woman of her day, to make a large fortune.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Finola. ‘She was brilliant in her way, and apparently she was quite ravishing as well, when she was young, blue eyes put in with a smutty finger, and all that. Her first husband’s family was quite grand, Anglo-Irish, and they were horrified when he married her of course. She had great character.’ She added: ‘She was devoted to Alice, she adored my grandfather, you see.’

  ‘I see. And you used to stay with her.’

  ‘Yes, all of us used to go.’

  ‘I used to spend holidays in the country too, sometimes, when I was a child,’ said Winston.

  ‘Did you?’ Finola turned.

  ‘Yes, one of my father’s more prosperous brothers kept a pub near Ashbourne. We lived in Derby, you see, most of the time.’

  ‘Yes, Gerard did tell me … Were you happy as a child?’

  They had come to Sarey’s Copse, and were looking down at a layer of dry leaves, which they turned over with their feet to show dark and pleasing rot.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes, I was very fortunate. I suppose because my parents were always proud of me.’

  Finola grew a little nervous at this confidence which she had provoked. ‘Do you still see them?’

  ‘Every Christmas.’

  ‘Things must have been quite difficult, once,’ Finola suggested. ‘I hope you don’t mind my –’

  ‘Pretty bad in some ways, just about the time I went up to Cambridge. You are talking about class, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Finola. ‘But it’s entirely a question of manners, isn’t it, so why shouldn’t I mention it?’

  ‘Almost entirely a question of manners, Mrs Parnell.’

  They walked on for a while, and Finola thought that his ‘Mrs Parnell’ sounded rather intimate. ‘Winston,’ she said, ‘are you ambitious? Do you think of yourself as ambitious?’

  ‘No. If I’d been ambitious as you call it, I’d have been in the Cabinet by now,’ he said.

  ‘You’re very confident!’ said Finola, who could not think that this remark was self-mockery, a very proper joke.

  ‘Thank you, Finola. Yes, I am confident, I suppose,’ he said, looking at her. ‘The thing is, I always wanted an – absorbing interest in life, and there’s nothing more fascinating than cultivating oneself.’

  ‘I see,’ she said. ‘Yes, I do see it must be fascinating, proving other people’s theories – their prejudices – proving them wrong.’

  He was impressed by this, but said: ‘You make me sound a rather unattractive person, Finola.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t really mean to! That’s the village, over there, d’you mind if we go down to the shop? We’ve run out of cigarettes at the house, and I must get some.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  Combe Chalcot was a moderate-sized village, built round a crossroads. It had a primary school and a pub as well as its shop, but the church was a mile away in Chalcot St Anne. The other village was a slightly larger place, and it was pretty enough to attract tourists, which Combe Chalcot was not.

  On the way towards the shop, Finola answered Winston’s questions about the village, and the local school, and the two rather large, remote cottages which were grandly referred to as the West and East Lodges. The only Parnell with social ambitions had built a mansion with two lodges and a folly in 1731: the mansion had soon burnt down, and the stone had later been used to build the Cedar House, but the lodges had survived. Winston suggested this was a story with a moral, which Finola thought rather suspicious.

  In the shop, which was a little bare of goods, but which already had a large box full of poppies for Armistice Day, they met Katie Van Leyden. Finola introduced Winston to her.

  ‘Taking the children to the bonfire tonight?’ said Katie to Finola, when they had all finished making their purchases and were outside in the street again.

  ‘Oh yes, I think we ought to go, really,’ said Finola, with vague thoughts of Nanny. Katie, whose son was at prep school, had never employed a nanny.

  ‘I must say, I damn this new schoolmistress for putting the children up to it,’ said Katie quite cheerfully. ‘I gather it’s what she calls project work. Of course the cricket pitch’ll be ruined with half the village trampling over it, or so Mr Butterworth says, but it’s anything for a bit of excitement, in a place like this.’ They were gathered round Katie’s car, and no one seemed to be in earshot.

  ‘It should be rather fun for the children all the same,’ said Winston mildly. ‘Shouldn’t it?’

  ‘They’ll get over-excited and make themselves sick with toffee-apples,’ said Katie. ‘Still, I must hope you enjoy it, Mr Lowell.’ They blinked at each other.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about it,’ said Finola. ‘You don’t need to go – do stay at home with a nice whisky and soda, if you want to!’

  ‘I should rather like to come,’ said Winston.

  She wondered why he always said so little, and she thought of the returning walk ahead of them.

  ‘Let me take you back up,’ said Katie, opening the door.

  Finola drew breath, for this possibility truly had not occurred to her.

  ‘How sweet of you, Katie – Winston, would you mind if we drove back?’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said, just as she was thinking it was stupid to consult him.

  ‘You’ll have to squeeze in,’ said Katie. ‘Push all that junk on the floor, Finola.’

  It was a very small, smelly and noisy car, and Winston took up a great deal of space.

  *

  At six o’clock Finola stood gazing at the bonfire, which was not quite as large as the schoolmistress had hoped, and was burning at present only on one side. The fireworks had not yet begun, and the sky was perfectly black. A few people had brought electric torches, and one group of children had come with a jam-jar lantern on a stick, but the only other light was the fire itself. The cold soaked up through the gumboots of those watching.

  Eleanor was with Nanny,
who had said she wanted to see the sights, but Richard was not with the family. He had spoken to none of them since their party reached the cricket pitch. He was poking the bonfire with some other little boys, yelling and giggling and having conker fights.

  ‘At least Richard’s enjoying himself,’ said Katie Van Leyden beside Finola. She added: ‘You’d think Edward would be dying to come, as there’s precious little else to do at half-term, but no. He and Jack are glued to the television screen – I thought that television was a disgraceful waste of money, but I must say it keeps ’em both out of my hair like nothing else.’

  Finola laughed. ‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever get a television, Gerard would not approve, and I can’t see – oh dear, I suppose Richard will want us to get one, he told me Billy Barnes’ mother has bought one and Billy stays up to watch it till nine o’clock.’

  ‘Mrs James says old Mr Barnes pinched it, she is the most awful old gossip.’

  Some paces behind them Eleanor, who stood between Gerard and Nanny, was chanting: ‘Re-member, remember, the Fifth of November, Gunpowder, Treason, and Plot. I don’t see no reason, Why Gunpowder Treason, Should ever be forgot.’ Nanny was full of praise.

  Richard had come into the sitting-room that afternoon and made his first shameful scene in front of his parents. He had been oblivious of Winston and Jenny – to whom Katie was now recounting some of the problems involved in the W.I. members’ selling baked potatoes in the cricket pavilion. Finola looked at their headscarfed shapes, and heard their voices: Katie, like Miranda Pagett, had the knack of making almost any subject interesting, if she chose.

  Richard had been white with emotion, thought Finola, just because Nanny had told him that she would be taking him and his sister to the bonfire.

  ‘I won’t go! I won’t go, I’ll go alone!’ he had shouted at Gerard and Finola. ‘You won’t buy me a p-pony, you won’t ever let me do anything.’

  Winston had not left the room when he began to talk like this, and Finola had supposed this was because they had all wished to imply that the problem was not serious.

  She and Gerard, very much distressed, had thought at first that Richard must already be ashamed of his father’s position in the village. When they heard once more that he wanted a pony although none of his village-friends had one (as well as a watch and an airgun to boast of), they realised that he was afraid of seeming babyish. They had sat in silence, on different armchairs, while he cried and told them how important it was. Gerard, who was rather less surprised and annoyed than Finola, had spoken with cold kindness about how he might be right, but he must control himself; then Finola had got up and taken her son outside.

  She remembered sitting down in the grey hall, and holding his hand. She had been surprised by his not withdrawing it. Finola had not tried to show that she was cross with him, because she was afraid to do that, and unused to doing it. She had told him briefly that he of all children had no need to work himself up, and he must remember it: that Nanny wanted to see the fireworks herself, and to look after Eleanor, and would have no intention of holding his hand. Then Richard had told her that Nanny said she would see to it that he did not go near the fire, because he might burn his fingers.

  Finola had not thought before that Nanny, so good with young children, had serious faults, and she had asked Richard whether he was still fond of her. He could not answer.

  ‘I don’t think I was wrong to let Richard go off with his friends from school,’ she said abruptly to Winston, who joined her, making a remark about the likelihood of rain. ‘Do you? When I was his age I was going about London on my own, running errands and things, it never occurred to Alice I might be run over, once she’d told me about how to cross the road.’

  ‘So was I,’ said Winston.

  ‘Oh, yes, of course.’ She hesitated.

  There was a bang as the first firework exploded, and a few shouts and claps from the children as the red and green stars shot into the blackness, and then went out. Winston smiled upwards.

  ‘Of course, it must have been very much the same for you,’ said Finola. ‘It isn’t that I want to cosset my children too much!’ she continued. ‘It’s that – oh, I suppose all parents want to give their children whatever they didn’t have themselves, security and comfort and so on.’

  ‘That was what you missed yourself?’

  ‘I thought so,’ said Finola. ‘I was a very silly child – nervous and delicate, you know, but I used to long to be quite different, a sort of jolly-hockey-sticks schoolgirl. I’m beginning to think both of mine may end up frightfully hearty, I’ve never seen Richard read anything for pleasure except awful comics he gets at school. And Eleanor’s already rather tomboyish, she can be terribly noisy. I don’t mind, it’s …’

  The fireworks were being quickly exploded, one after the other, and Finola, distracted by the sparks and the banging, wondered why she was excusing herself in this way to Winston, who seemed quietly interested and amused, as he had been by her other indiscretions about Constance. She wanted suddenly to tell him that he was too reserved and detached a person to be very attractive, he was only intriguing. She did not think, now, that he would ever try to touch her.

  Finola noticed, as she turned her head a little to the right, that Gerard was very near her. She was sure that he was trying to listen. He was also nodding and shifting his feet, as the old lady who kept the post office told him about her grandson’s new job. Gerard was holding an electric torch, swinging its beam along the sparse pale lawn.

  Finola continued, breathing quickly: ‘I do want them to be happy more than anything else in the world, which I suppose isn’t a very original thing to say. Even though I have left them largely to Nanny till now – I couldn’t trust myself, you see.’

  Gerard overheard all this and as soon as he could, he joined his wife and Winston, though he did not say very much when he was at last beside them. They continued talking. Winston glanced at him and Finola did not, once she was sure he was there. Like Finola, Gerard noticed Winston’s rather remote sympathy, and believed he must be a good confidant, because he seemed attached to no one and nothing, incapable of gossip, or of dismissing what was unfamiliar as incomprehensible rubbish. Gerard felt that he himself could even have told him about his fears of modernity, of displacement, and about the conspicuous behaviour of some very rich cousins of his, of which Hugh used to say: ‘It’s just encouraging socialists, this selling things off and gadding about.’ Gerard thought his own and Hugh’s discretion and conscience far more likely to encourage socialists. He fully accepted this.

  Finola did not wish to exclude her husband, as she talked without looking at him of her rather isolated and muddled girlhood, about which she had never told Gerard very much: only that she had felt somewhat frustrated, waiting for him, at school and later, before the war, when she was working as a jeweller and living in a little flat in her parents’ house.

  ‘When I was about fourteen I used to weep for hours about nothing, really, just working myself up because I almost enjoyed it,’ she said. ‘Oh dear, I remember it so well. I used to say something over and over, something like …’ – her voice became prettily strangled, but not too loud – ‘“He staid not for scaur, and he stopped not for stone, he swam the Eske river where ford there was none – blah, blah, for a laggard in love and a dastard in war was to wed the fair Ellen of young Lochinvar” – until I thought I really was fair Ellen and at any minute I would be borne off, on a pillion! Oh dear.’

  ‘Goodness,’ said Winston, ‘you don’t still?’

  ‘She is a matron now,’ said Gerard in the same tone.

  ‘Oh, really!’ Beneath her hurried pleasure in talking as she had not before, and being indulged so unexpectedly by both men, Finola was still rather cross: she felt as though she had itching powder in her brain, and would be perfectly comfortable if it were not for that.

  Other people were enjoying themselves more than they had expected. The bonfire was now flaring, its thick smoke lit by th
e flames; and the children gathered round it presented an uncivilised appearance. Richard was still among them and so, although her parents did not know it, was Eleanor, who had strayed and was being sought by Nanny. The spasmodic light and noise on the cricket pitch were such that Finola was reminded oddly of a very uncomfortable, night-time bedroom on a busy London street, and her legs ached at the thought.

  It was not long before the Parnells left the bonfire and returned home for dinner, over which Gerard broached the subject of prospective revolution.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE RECEPTION OF CONSTANCE

  Constance’s cottage near Headington was two storeys high, built of heavy Oxford stone and ornamented with a trellised veranda in the Picturesque manner of the 1820s. Everyone said that it must be ideal. There were eight rooms, none of which was very comfortable, and the kitchen was inconvenient; but Constance said she did not mind this, because she had chosen the house for its very pretty garden, which she intended lavishly to alter. She also liked it because she had several friends in the neighbourhood, and there was a certain pleasure, which she could not always acknowledge, in returning to the country where she had spent her childhood: her father had been Warden of an Oxford College. She often said she was glad that she had not gone to Bath.

  Early in March, 1953, Constance went to stay at Combe Chalcot for the first time since her move the previous April. She took several days to prepare for her visit, for in the past year she had allowed herself to grow unused to making practical arrangements. She said, all the same, that she longed for a change of some sort, for occupation and for friends. She had not accepted any of her friends’ invitations to stay, because she felt too unhappy, at once restless and lethargic. Constance had not even gone to Sedley Warren since moving, and this rather worried William, to whom she wrote every second day. She told him in her letters that she was trying very hard not to hate Gerard and his wife in a poisonous, unchristian and unreasonable way, because she knew how dangerous that was, and she said that when she was in Dorset she intended to be very very good.