Consider the Lily (38 page)

‘Tim Coats?’

She glanced at Kit, raising an eyebrow. ‘I suppose so. I owe it to him. I’ve kept him waiting too long.’

‘I don’t like him.’

She went quite pale and twisted her head away. ‘Stop it, Kit, and say goodbye to New York.’

Kit did as he was told, and watched luggage being wheeled on board, passengers clogging the gangways. A few cars had edged close to the ship, and their horns mingled with the chorus of farewells. It was a noisy scene: brash, cheerful, with the high gloss of American efficiency.

‘You shouldn’t be here with me, you know.’ Daisy waved at Sally Allsop. ‘Mrs Guntripp might leap to conclusions.’

‘Hardly. Where is she?’

‘Settling the daughters in their stateroom.’

‘Then she won’t know.’

Daisy sighed and lowered her eyelashes, hiding her expression. ‘No.’

Kit fastened on details: a strand of hair had escaped from behind one ear and lay on Daisy’s cheek, and one sleeve pressed into a tiny fold of flesh under her arm. Daisy’s beauty was growing more assured and settled, and although he hankered for the wilder Daisy with whom he had fallen in love in France, it still maddened him. She shifted, cupped her chin in her hands, and crossed one long leg in front of the other. Kit returned to his contemplation of the quay.

Neither had intended to meet up with the other. But they did, at a Mary Sopwith’s weekend houseparty at Great Neck where they drank cocktails on a terrace overlooking the sea. Mary was rich and liked new faces and Kit, fresh from the unfriendly reception of his Boston cousins, accepted her invitation to go south with the same houseparty to visit Charleston and New Orleans where he had drunk too much planter’s punch and danced to a Creole band under the dripping Spanish moss. Nevertheless, he and Daisy behaved in exemplary fashion, and never held a conversation alone. Looking back over the games of golf, sailing expeditions, cocktail parties and dances, it had been an intensely aware time – the stretched glove waiting for the hand, the senses climbing to a pitch of acute sensitivity.

Like New York, the week had been fun... fun – but painful, and, if he analysed it truthfully, addictive.

Daisy marched white-gloved fingers along the rail and touched his wrist lightly.

‘I’m pleased you’re here, Kit.’

Kit forced himself not to return the gesture. It might trigger the unstoppable. For here was Daisy: a breathing canvas of skin, pores, hair, of secret, folded flesh and blue vein and he wanted to devour her as once he had devoured sugar mice. He was afraid it would take only the flick of the beautiful mouth for him to hustle her to his cabin, spread her wide and use her until he was quiet.

Instead, he concentrated on the ropes being uncoiled from the tenders by the crew, and listened as goodbyes tuned up to crescendo. The woman next to Kit began to cry noisily and the child beside her jumped up and down, screaming, ‘Daddy!’ The pilot tug bucked its way towards the river mouth and, with a second eerie hoot from her funnel, in which was distilled a history of departure, the
Île de France
burst the forest of streamers between her and the quay and eased away from her berth. A ribbon of water between land and ship widened into a canal, a river, then a channel.

The engines made the deck hum underfoot. Daisy put up a hand to shade her eyes and watched as the cityscape was lost to the mist. Past Battery Park the breeze sharpened, and Daisy pulled her jacket round her shoulders and stood with her arms folded over her breasts.

‘I’ve forgotten what it’s like to feel cold,’ she said.

‘Goodbye, Statue of Liberty.’ The child had stopped crying and bounced up and down in front of his mother. The statue loomed close and then drifted away. New York was behind them.

Daisy pulled her jacket even tighter so it strained the material, and flashed Kit a determined smile. ‘Let’s go inside,’ she said. ‘You’d better say hallo to Mrs Guntripp and Chloë and Peggy. They’ll expect you to dine with them. Beware Chloë. She’s terribly nice and innocent.’

‘I’m a respectable married man,’ said Kit.

Silence.

‘Married, yes.’

They stared at each other for a full five seconds. In the end, it was Daisy who pulled away her gaze. ‘What are we waiting for?’

At the Guntripp table during the first-night dinner, Kit played up, with the right degree of skill, to the Guntripp daughters’ expectation, which was to be treated as adults. Freshly shaven, hair sleeked back, and folded loosely into a chair ready to talk, he was a debutante’s dream. As Daisy had warned, Chloë was at the awkward stage: too innocent to check her enthusiasms and not clever enough to mask her inexperience. But she was charming and pretty, with a hint of an inner life, and Kit listened as she chatted on to the accompaniment of silver clattering on porcelain. Particularly as artless Chloë supplied him with titbits about Daisy.

‘Miss Chudleigh was so kind to us when we met in New York. She arranged outings, and never let us get stuck with difficult people. And all when she was so busy herself.’ Chloë’s tone was a compound of how-does-she-do-it? and will-I-ever-be-like-that? (No, thought Kit.) ‘Miss Chudleigh’s cabin is awash with the most exquisite flowers, some of them quite rare. Orchids and lilies and things. Mother says if we’re ever half as popular... doesn’t she, Miss Chudleigh?’

Kit may have been talking but he was also watching. Every move of Daisy’s acquired significance: the way she drank or picked up her fork, turned to her neighbour or wiped her mouth with the napkin. Across the maidenhair fern in the table centrepiece Daisy said, ‘Chloë is exaggerating. Chloë, I do think by now you know me well enough to call me Daisy.’

‘Have you enjoyed your trip to the United States, Mr Dysart?’ Mrs Guntripp was dressed in eau-de-Nil satin with a matching turban pulled low over her forehead. Her plump fingers scuttled over the glasses at her
placement
and selected the water tumbler.

‘Weren’t you on business, Mr Dysart? You probably had no time to enjoy yourself,’ Chloë cut in, earning a reproving frown from her mother.

Kit began to light a cigarette and realized it was too early in the meal. ‘Yes, the trip was for business but I’ve also enjoyed myself.’

‘Was it successful? The business? Should we drink to it?’ Daisy raised her wine glass.

‘Not really, no.’ Kit thought there was no point in disguising the results. ‘I thought some property shares I held might be valuable. Still, I’ll hang on to them for the moment.’

Mrs Guntripp was surprised. Everyone knew that Kit Dysart was bankrolled by his wife, so why the bother of a trip to the other side of the world? But she raised her glass and smiled ingratiatingly.

‘Well,’ said the irrepressible Chloë, who had no idea as yet of the Machiavellian reflections of Society mothers, ‘you can make up for the business bit with pleasure during the next few days. The band is supposed to be simply something.’

Sitting beside her sister, Peggy blushed for Chloë’s forwardness.

Watching Daisy’s fingers curl around the stem of her wine glass and the fascinating way her upper lip stretched over the rim, Kit was, at last, at liberty to smoke a cigarette.

‘They’re very sweet,’ Daisy said later, meaning the girls, when she and Kit were walking round the deck. It was midnight and the lights of the liner shone like gold coins in the blackness. ‘Do be careful – they’ll develop a frightful crush on you.’

‘No harm in that. All’s fair, etcetera, etcetera.’ Kit was amused. ‘I’ll dance with both tomorrow.’

‘You’re in danger of becoming very conceited,’ said Daisy mildly. ‘Are you going to flirt with them all the way to Southampton?’

‘Probably.’

Daisy wandered across the bleached deck to the rail. ‘What will you do when you get home?’

‘Pick up the reins. What else?’

‘No trips with Max to somewhere no one has heard of?’

Kit laughed. ‘Maybe.’

In the dark her voice floated back to Kit, seemingly careless and dreamy. ‘Is Matty happy, do you think?’

She did not deceive Kit, who propped himself against Number Six lifeboat and felt for his cigarettes. ‘Matty?’ He had forgotten about his wife and the sound of her name gave him a jolt. ‘To be honest, I don’t know if she is or not.’

‘That
is
honest, at least.’ Daisy’s pale green dress shimmered as she swung round. The rail pressed into her back and she curved her body against it, which emphasized the full breasts. Kit wondered if she was doing it on purpose. He drew in a deep lungful of smoke.

‘Would you know if I was happy?’

He joined Daisy at the rail, keeping three feet or so between them. ‘I don’t know. But I like to think I might because I would recognize it from my own experience.’ He finished his cigarette, threw the stub overboard and then said, ‘I shouldn’t be saying these things to you.’

‘Do you know what I think, my Kit? I think you rub along nicely with your wife and your home.’

‘Rubbing along is quite different from being happy.’

‘It’s what most of us do,’ she said, surprising him. ‘Some people are grateful to rub along because they don’t like hurricanes and tempests. I suspect you might be one.’

An entwined couple walked past. The man had his arm around the girl and she was whispering to him. They did not notice Kit and Daisy. As they rounded the lifeboats, the breeze hit them and the girl gave a soft shriek. Her lover drew her even closer and they disappeared. Watching them, Kit felt a pang of envy to be like that again. ‘And you, Daisy?’ he asked. ‘Are you rubbing along?’

With a jingle of bracelets, Daisy reached up and brushed her fingers across Kit’s mouth, and he found himself snatching her hand and pressing kisses into the palm.

‘Kit,’ she said, low and anguished, and retrieved her hand. ‘I have to ask you again. Why did you marry Matty?’

He considered a long moment before he answered. If he was absolutely truthful, Kit was not sure. ‘Why did I marry Matty? Drink? I went on a blinder that night and I wasn’t thinking properly. I believed you when you said you had someone else. I was angry with you. Fear of my father...’

‘I’d just thought I’d ask,’ she said. ‘To see if the answers were the same. Can I have a cigarette?’ She bent over Kit’s lighter. ‘I’ve thought and thought about this, Kit. You hesitated over me, who you said you loved, but jumped at Matty, a virtual stranger.’ She inhaled smoke with a gasp. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever understand.’

The water slapped loudly against the ship’s side and Kit had to confront the extent of the wound he had inflicted on Daisy – and himself.

‘I’m sorry, Daisy.’

She turned away, and he watched the glow of her cigarette tip in the gloom. ‘I forgive you, Kit. Of course I do. I was to blame as well, you know. But I want to tell you something which is very selfish. I don’t want to bury our love affair... so it’s conveniently forgotten.’

‘No chance of that.’

‘Of course there is. It’s the easiest thing to do and everyone likes things smoothed over, including you, my darling.’

‘Daisy...’

She shook her head at him. ‘I think you broke my heart, Kit, and at one point I thought I’d never recover. In a sense I won’t. But I’ve learnt. Life is about broken hearts and disappointment. Everyone has to deal with those from time to time. With a bit of luck...’

‘Yes?’

‘With a bit of luck you come out stronger.’

The
Île de France
ploughed onwards. A light swung towards them and illuminated the davits holding the lifeboats. A gull screamed into the night. Heavy with guilt and appalled at his mistake, Kit said, ‘We must leave it alone, Daisy.’

She moved away from him, but she had drunk a quantity of champagne at dinner. ‘No. For once we will say what we really mean, Kit. I am tired of thinking about you, of hurting. Of puzzling at it. Of
hating
you. And you might have the decency to explain. Really explain.’

‘I have.’

Their faces were almost touching. Kit felt Daisy’s breath on his lips and smelt clean skin and face powder, overlaid with expensive perfume. He closed his eyes and imagined taking her lower lip between his teeth and worrying it until her mouth opened under his.

‘All right,’ he said, sounding so anguished that Daisy almost made him stop. ‘I suppose I must have married Matty for her money. I don’t know. I really don’t know.’

She let out her breath with a sigh. ‘I’m sorry, Kit,’ she said, regretting her belligerence. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’

‘Don’t.’ He grabbed one of her wrists, then backed her against the rail. A satin shoulder strap fell down over her arm.

‘What do you think I feel?’ he said, bending to kiss the white hollow between shoulder and breast. ‘How do you think I like my own stupidity?’

Terrified yet exalted with emotion, Daisy moved her hand up to cradle the back of his head and held it for a second to her breasts.

Almost immediately, Kit straightened. ‘I’m sorry, Daisy. I shouldn’t have done that.’

‘Kit...’

Very slowly he adjusted the fallen strap. Daisy made no move to prevent him. Unable to stop there, Kit ran his finger over her collarbone to her breast, and she shivered uncontrollably at his touch. Suddenly afraid to lose control, she said, tough and flippant, ‘Making up for lost time?’

‘Now it’s you being stupid,’ he replied. ‘You must see, I didn’t understand the power of you and me. I also thought I had no choice, but of course I did.’

‘Ah...’ Daisy’s unhappiness folded round her like a cloak, and with an odd little sound, she began to cry.

‘Daisy, you’re only twenty-three. There will be others.’

Angry with herself, she wiped a hand over the tears, then, because she did not have a handkerchief, held it awkwardly in front of her. ‘There have been others.’

Kit dug in his pocket for his. ‘Real lovers?’ he asked, and dried her hand, regretting the question.

A door opened onto the deck from the first-class saloon and band music filtered into the night: a sweet, spun-sugar confection.

‘Yes, real lovers,’ Daisy said. ‘One or two. And you?’

He thought of his wife and of the bed he occasionally occupied with her. ‘No. I owe Matty that much.’

‘Damn and blast Matty,’ said Daisy suddenly. ‘Damn and blast her.’