‘I can’t afford to re-do the whole house,’ said Finola, frowning in a way which Miranda had always thought made her very jolie-laide. She coloured up slightly, though a part of her had expected Miranda to be blunt, to ask questions. ‘It’s just a few rooms, I’m sure I told you. And we won’t be getting any new furniture, or anything like that, of course.’ She hesitated, and smiled slightly. ‘I like your things, and you know you used to say how I had no taste, when we were children – girls.’
‘I was too rotten to you, when we were children,’ said Miranda, reaching for a masculine-looking blotter full of papers. ‘I’m sure you do have taste – that’s a very pretty skirt you’re wearing.’
‘I’m glad you like it!’ said Finola, crossing her legs. ‘But if you don’t charge absolutely ridiculous prices, I’d still like you to help me with the house, Miranda. I want to make it better than it is, I can’t afford mistakes, and I know quite well I’m not good at things like that.’
Miranda was doodling. ‘Don’t you like it as it is? I thought your mother-in-law did it rather well. She may be an awful bogus old woman, but …’
‘Yes, I know it’s very nice,’ said Finola, ‘but it’s all rather boring, and anyway I want a change.’
‘Well,’ said Miranda, ‘I’d be delighted to do it. I know roughly what it’s like of course, so I can bring some things down, and I can stay with Katie for a couple of days.’
‘If you like, but you’d be very welcome to stay with us. I mean, please do come and stay. Oh, and the thing is, it’s just the materials and the advice I want – I can get people to make up curtains and paint the walls and so on.’
‘Advice?’ said Miranda.
‘About what to choose.’
‘Yes, of course. What I have heard described as “a comprehensive interior decorating service”.’
‘I’m sure that means workmen as well,’ said Finola, who refused to be annoyed. She felt now that full redecoration was after all a very simple business, too simple to warrant seeing Miranda.
‘Yes, it does actually. I beg your pardon. No, Finola, I’d love to come and stay with you, and if you buy everything from me I won’t charge you a penny for my advice – even if you don’t take it. Is that all right?’ She was smiling: one corner of her crooked mouth was pulled up, the other turned down. ‘I do usually charge, you see.’
‘Well, you’re a business woman, I suppose! How expensive are your things, Miranda?’
‘That depends on what things.’
‘Yes, of course, but roughly?’
‘Materials I suppose from about fifteen shillings to eight or nine guineas a yard,’ said Miranda.
‘Nine guineas a yard!’
‘Don’t worry, we’ll manage. Just let me look at my diary, have you got yours?’
They examined their diaries and succeeded, after murmuring about parties, and even more boring engagements, and seeing Darcy, in fixing a date for Miranda to come down to Combe Chalcot. Then Miranda pushed back her chair and stared out at the houses opposite.
‘How funny it seems, having you in here, Fin,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you came, I thought you didn’t like me – not at all.’
Finola looked towards the office door, clutching her bag rather as though she were being interviewed for a job. ‘Do you want me to like you?’ she said rather stiffly.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Miranda. ‘You are part of a very good time in my life, after all. I feel I can’t really get in touch with Alice – don’t ask me why, I’m sure you think I should, even if Alice – well, but it would be good to see you sometimes, now.’ She broke the end of her pencil, pressing it on the blotter. Her face was neither tense nor unhappy.
‘It’s kind of you to say so,’ said Finola. ‘I suppose I am suspicious of you, after all we’re very different, Miranda.’
‘Yes, of course. Oh well.’
‘The thing is,’ said Finola, looking down, ‘I think you’ve only just met Gerard, and you see he doesn’t know that you know Darcy. I do, because Darcy and I are quite friendly and he doesn’t think I’d be shocked, you know he likes to boast a bit – I’m sorry – but you see Gerard is very religious and he has frightfully strong ideas about things, and he might not like it if – if you showed you were a very cynical sort of person.’
Miranda did not look away from her face while she was talking. ‘I won’t say anything to offend him, Fin dear, I promise.’
‘I am glad. I’m sure it’ll all be all right.’ Finola got up to go. ‘I’ll see you on the tenth, then, we’ll talk about everything then, shall we?’
‘Yes, let’s. I’ll see you out, Fin, one can’t neglect a valuable customer.’
On the way down, Finola made her laugh by telling her that, for a hundred pounds, the Van Leydens had sold their peers’ robes and coronets to a young couple who wished to attend the Coronation. ‘Katie says that as they’re fairly new, they might have been able to get more for them, but she let the moth get into them you see, in the dressing-up box, and she didn’t find out until she’d sold them.’
‘Katie is very sweet in some ways,’ said Miranda. She thought Katie’s existence without money, in the country, must be quite terrible. She herself enjoyed being a Marquise, but she did not think that Katie’s title, dubiously acquired by her father-in-law just after the Great War, could be much of a compensation.
‘She never stands any nonsense, though,’ said Finola.
Miranda went back upstairs to her austere little office, which led from a charming drawing-room, and there she gazed at the telephone.
She knew very well that her successful life was not in the least hollow, but she thought that in conversation with Finola she had implied that it was. She had friends who were truly attached to her. Even her husband, who was ten years her senior and who had always been complaisant and unfaithful, was sincerely fond of her. She preferred Henri de Saint-Gaël to other men she had known, though only because after twenty-two years he was to some extent predictable, and did not require constant entertaining; but in spite of this, she had a natural fear of being thought to be a woman in love with her husband. Darcy Parnell was the only person to have advanced this theory to her face, and he was soon convinced that it was not true.
It was more agreeable, Miranda considered, to think in a foolish and romantic way of a heartless worldly existence, than to give herself the intellectual discipline her glinting mind had always lacked. The lack was the cause, she supposed, of her irritated boredom and sentimental thoughts, but it was true that in a headstrong, unkind way, she had been quite happy at Bramham Gardens with Alice Molloy. Really, she had been happier in Paris than she had been there. Miranda thought that if she had never shared a bed with Alice when she was a girl, she might have been able to be friends with her now. Darcy did not know of her affair with Alice, and she supposed he would be most fascinated to hear about it, but it embarrassed her now to think of those days.
Miranda knew that she should break her habit of sleeping with men whom she rather despised, which she had adopted for its ease and safety in 1935, but she found it very difficult. ‘One does so like to feel superior,’ she said to the telephone. She picked up the receiver and asked the operator for Darcy’s Cambridge number: she meant to tell him about Finola’s visit, and talk with him about her virtue, and sweetness, and tough little will.
*
When Finola left Miranda, she took a bus to Pimlico, where Winston Lowell lived. It was nearly six when she found his house, in a slightly dilapidated street, and she was very nervous, partly because she was late. She had never visited him at his flat before, but it was quite her fault that she was here now, for she had told him she would like to see it: As she pressed the labelled bell, she whispered: ‘I did want to see, but just that. God, he can’t think I want him to – oh, goodness, I’m tired – You shouldn’t have tried to see them both in one day.’
It seemed a long time before he came down. Finola had seen him alone four times since his comin
g down to Combe Chalcot in November. They had met in restaurants for lunch, and in January he had taken her to see Maria Marten at the Arts Theatre. She felt she was conducting a real love affair, but one which must surely be guiltless, for she did not love Winston, and he had never even tried to touch her. She wanted only to talk, and to have something a little secret from her husband and her parents and everyone in Dorset. Finola supposed Gerard would still call her friendship with Winston adultery of the heart.
Winston pulled the door open, just as she was scratching at her gloves and thinking how foolish she had been to expect him to keep such a dreadful appointment. ‘I’m sorry I took so long, Finola,’ he said, touching her forehead with his lips. ‘My flat’s three flights up. Do come in.’
‘I shouldn’t have asked if I could come!’ said Finola. ‘You must be awfully busy.’
‘Not at all,’ said Winston. He was dressed in his civil-servant’s clothes, but he had loosened his collar and tie. He smiled at her, and closed the door behind her, so that the narrow hall was made dark.
Winston’s flat consisted of a good-sized but low-ceilinged sitting-room, a small bedroom, and a tiny kitchen and bathroom. All the rooms were painted eau-de-Nil, and furnished with odd Victorian pieces which he said he had picked up here and there. The place had the usual half-finished look of a bachelor’s rooms, but it was comfortable, and the mess and the cat’s basket, neither of which she had expected, reminded Finola of Bramham Gardens. A typewriter stood on the table, and beside it was a cut-glass decanter full of sherry.
‘Sherry, Finola?’
‘No, thank you! I didn’t know you liked cats,’ she said, as the big tabby torn stretched in his basket, and spat at her.
‘Stop that, Tortoise,’ said Winston to the cat, who was now sharpening his nails on the leg of a Windsor chair. To Finola’s surprise, he obeyed him. ‘He’s very fierce sometimes,’ Winston explained, ‘but you mustn’t be afraid of him.’
‘Oh, mustn’t I?’ said Finola. She was looking round with her lips sucked in, thinking how cleverly Winston had managed on little money. ‘I like this,’ she said.
‘I think I’ll be moving soon,’ he said. ‘You see, I’ll be able to afford a better address, which is very important.’
‘Oh, will you keep on and on moving, until you’ve got a really grand house in – in Curzon Street or somewhere?’ said Finola, smiling. ‘When you’re Sir Winston Lowell, Permanent Under-Secretary of State?’
‘I don’t think I’ll ever get as far as that,’ said Winston. ‘Sit down, Finola.’
He watched her choose a hard chair and sit down on its edge. He fiddled with his cufflinks as he looked at her, and realised that he could not kiss her yet, she would run away: she was to him as good as a virgin, and Gerard Parnell did not deserve her. He thought he might at least tell her that, and listen to her shocked objections.
Winston guessed that Gerard and Finola did not sleep together: his fond view of Gerard, and certain things Finola had said, led him to think that. She was, of course, very shy and discreet, and he presumed that Gerard had not spoilt his chastity since the birth of Eleanor. He found this admirable and fascinating.
‘When did I last see you?’ said Finola, pulling at her earrings.
‘When you came up in March, to buy linen at Harrods.’
‘Oh, yes, of course. Fancy remembering that,’ she said with a swift look at him.
‘Well, Finola, how are things at Combe Chalcot? How’s Gerard?’ Winston, leaning back in his chair, knitted the fingers of his stubby brown hands.
‘Oh, it’s all right, I think Gerard’s settling down,’ said Finola, and realised this was about time too. She watched the cat, and thought: he’s a friend now, after all, and you know he’ll never try and do anything to you, so you can talk to him, you won’t have another chance.
Quite suddenly, she forgot to address herself on the subject, and said in a voice which charmed him by its natural impulsiveness: ‘Oh Winston, he is difficult sometimes, like all men! Honestly, I’m beginning to wish we’d never had to move. Oh, it’s not him that’s wrong, it’s the whole place, I don’t wonder it depresses him. I can’t tell you how utterly boring it is sometimes, these awful dinner parties one goes to, where one owes people endlessly, people one doesn’t like. And I can’t keep up with half their talk, especially horsey talk, you know, I still don’t know what a point-to-point is, I get it mixed up with steeplechasing. And we’re going to have to get a pony for Richard, and then I’ll really have to learn so he isn’t ashamed of me – oh, I know it all sounds so obvious, and just what one would expect, but all the same I wasn’t really expecting it.’
‘Poor Fin,’ said Winston, who knew that name was used only by those who had known her since she was a child. He still liked to experiment with her names. ‘But of course the obvious things wouldn’t worry you, if it weren’t for other things.’
‘Yes, but one can’t pin down the other things. Oh dear, I wish I could admit to Alice and Anatole they were quite right to be doubtful about me in the country, but I can’t, not after all this time, I do have too much pride!’ She was smiling.
‘Of course you have,’ said Winston, shifting in his chair.
Finola looked at him and decided again that he could never attract her as Gerard had done. He aroused in her a quivering and almost nauseous awareness not of him, but of herself as a delicate, gentle, shy woman-child, who must be treated with the wisest tender indulgence.
‘Anyway, I can’t bear self-pity so that’s quite enough of that,’ she said, remembering that she had just vindited his own predictions on the subject. ‘I saw Miranda Pagett today, I mean Miranda de Saint-Gaël, I beg her pardon.’
‘Oh, did you? Is she still a friend of Darcy’s?’
Finola giggled at Winston’s mentioning this, and then was ashamed of herself. ‘Sorry. Yes, she is as far as I know. Oh, I wonder why Darcy always falls for these terribly sophisticated women who’re nasty to him.’
‘Is Madame la Marquise nasty to him?’ Winston, who had twice met Miranda, had amused and annoyed Finola by calling her that.
‘Oh, I don’t know! He says he likes high-minded young girls, but you notice he never actually becomes at all serious about them, I suppose none of them compares with the ideal. I do wish I could find someone nice for him, he lives in such squalor at the moment.’
‘You must put your mind to it,’ said Winston.
‘Perhaps he’ll marry Miranda, get her to divorce her husband, no, annul the marriage or whatever. Oh dear.’
‘I certainly think he’s in love with her,’ said Winston.
‘Really? Oh, no.’
‘Oh, yes. Darcy is a great one for falling in love.’
‘Yes, I know, but …’
‘I rather admire him,’ said Winston, looking up into the far corner of the room. ‘And Gerard, too. They’re very much brothers, don’t you think, in spite of certain things? I often think I should have liked to be like them.’
‘But you – you have other things – more stamina!’ suggested Finola.
‘So I hope,’ said Winston, raising his broad eyebrows.
‘You’ve done so much more, in a way.’
He said suddenly: ‘Tell me Finola, what was the most satisfying moment in your life?’
‘What a funny question,’ said Finola at last. She paused. ‘Do you mean triumphant or more – more affectionate? Because certainly the happiest day of my life was when Gerard proposed to me, but I didn’t feel at all triumphant.’ She had felt very humble, yet strong, which was odd and ageing to remember. ‘What about you?’
‘As you say, I’ve done quite a lot in a way.’
‘Are you making fun of me in some …?’
‘No, why should I? I’ll tell you the best moment of my life, and you must remember I’m not a nice person.’
Finola looked upset, and supposed that he was about to describe some sexual excess.
‘I told you I did quite well in the war,’
said Winston. He had joined up as a private soldier in the Welsh Guards, where several of his Cambridge friends were officer cadets; he had later won the Military Cross, and had been promoted from the ranks in 1942. ‘Well, when I came back from Germany I had a certain amount of money, and I decided to spend some of it on decent clothes. So I went to a very grand tailor’s – on Darcy’s recommendation – and when I went into the shop, some doorman called out: “Captain Lowell of the Guards!”’ He did not describe this further, but added: ‘You see, that was important to me, Finola. Of course, I did remember that a gentleman does not think of these things.’
‘And the very grand tailor came forward rubbing his hands, I suppose,’ said Finola, thinking there must surely be something more important than this, which he was concealing. ‘You’d arrived, you mean? Oh dear, I wish I could really arrive. I know –’
‘Oh, you don’t know where you want to arrive, Finola.’
The doorbell rang. ‘Is that for you?’ said Finola.
‘Oh yes, that’s Alice. I asked her to come and chaperone you. I knew Gerard wouldn’t approve of your coming here.’
For a moment, Finola was unable to laugh. ‘Winston! Oh, you beast!’
He stood up, and paused by the doorway for a moment, because he had never seen her show such merriment before. Then he hurried downstairs to let in Alice.
‘Mother of God,’ said Alice, when she entered the sitting-room. ‘What are you doing here, Fin?’
Finola was still laughing. ‘Waiting for you to come and chaperone me, Mummy. Didn’t Winston tell you? He said he had!’
Alice opened her mouth. ‘He did not. Well, I suppose Gerard would approve! I did know you were seeing Winston in London sometimes,’ she said.
‘Did you?’
Winston was standing behind Alice, looking from one to the other.
‘Yes, and I was hoping you weren’t making a fool of yourself. I suppose you can’t be, now.’
‘Alice! What about free love, and rejection of bourgeois principles?’
‘I don’t know what’s come over you,’ said her mother. ‘At least Winston seems to know that all that can’t apply to you. Well, give me a drink, Winston, now you’ve got me here!’ She sat down.
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