The House of Vandekar (29 page)

She turned away and slumped down into an armchair. ‘Because Brian wouldn't want to sponge,' she said. ‘You know what he's like. I'd come home much more if we had a sitting room of our own. He likes to be independent. I don't think Mother will be too pleased though.'

She glanced at Hugo quickly. He had gone back to reading his book and didn't take the bait. She shifted restlessly. Why did Brian have to go out for a walk with her mother? He hated walking. They'd been gone for over an hour.

‘Perhaps it's not a good idea after all,' she said.

‘What isn't?' Hugo had thought the matter was decided.

‘Being here as often as Richard and Diana,' she answered. Being with Alice was what she meant. She was sorry she had made an issue about the rooms.

‘Why on earth not?' He laid the book aside. ‘I like to see you. You know that, Fern.' He looked tired these days, and in the years since she had married he had become more withdrawn. Unlike Alice, whose energy and appetite for life never seemed to flag. Stamping round the countryside on a bitterly cold day … Fern was sorry she'd been difficult with him.

‘I know,' she said. ‘I love coming home, Daddy, and I love being with you. I didn't mean to be demanding. It's just that everything's for Richard. Richard this and Richard that. And, of course, they've produced a baby and we haven't.'

‘Now that
is
ridiculous,' Hugo protested. ‘It makes not the slightest difference to me. I find the whole grandparent business a total bore, if you want to know. So don't get any nonsense about that into your head.'

She looked gratified. They exchanged understanding smiles.

‘Perhaps I shouldn't say this,' she said, ‘but have you noticed how much Richard drinks?'

‘No, I haven't. Does he?'

‘Like a fish. I'm surprised you haven't noticed.'

‘I don't pay too much attention to Richard,' Hugo remarked. ‘Your mother makes up for both of us. Why should he drink? He never did before.' He didn't sound very interested.

‘I don't know,' Fern shook her head. ‘I'm surprised Mother doesn't do something about it.'

‘It's just a phase, I expect,' he said. ‘It must be teatime. I suppose we'd better wait for Brian and your mother.'

Fern got up and came over to him. She bent down and kissed him on the cheek. Her reward was the rare softening of his expression as he looked up at her.

‘If you want tea, then I'll ring for it,' she said. ‘They can't stay out much longer, it's getting dark!'

The lights were on in the west wing. Alice noticed them as she and her son-in-law rounded the corner of the building. They'd walked farther and for longer than they intended. She had a plan for a folly at the far end of the lake. She wanted Brian's opinion of the site.

He loved Ashton, she thought. He seemed instinctively to appreciate and understand its beauty. And he had original views that stimulated her imagination.

‘Well,' he said. ‘I'd be happy to go and see this temple, if you'd like. The drawing looks fine, but a lot depends on the colour of the stone and the density of the green. Copper can weather quite variably.'

‘I'd like you to come with me,' Alice said. ‘Hugo's so busy and he hates careering round the countryside at weekends. If I telephone we might even go over tomorrow morning.'

‘I'd enjoy that,' he said.

They went into the house and through to the back cloakroom. Brian helped Alice off with her coat. ‘You wouldn't do me a favour, would you Lady V.?'

Alice said, ‘I do wish you wouldn't call me that. It sounds like a deodorant!'

Brian laughed. ‘No, it doesn't. I can't call you Alice, Fern'd kill me. And I don't fancy trying to call my father-in-law Hugo!'

‘I guess not,' she agreed. ‘What's the favour?'

‘Talk to Fern. Stop her working herself up into a state about getting pregnant. It'll never happen unless she relaxes.'

Alice sighed. ‘You must know I can't talk to Fern about anything. She just thinks I'm interfering. Hugo might be able to. He's the only one who can get through to her. I'm sorry about this – it's such a waste of time. Children aren't always a blessing. Anyway, I'll see what I can do.'

‘Thanks,' he said. ‘So long as she doesn't know I've talked to you. She'd take it the wrong way.'

‘That's a waste of time too,' Alice retorted. ‘But it's nothing new. She's very lucky to have met you, Brian. I hope I don't lose my temper one day and tell her so.'

‘I hope you don't too,' he agreed.

Alice said, ‘You go in and have tea. I'm going up to see how Nancy is. She had a temperature this morning. I expect it's just a little cold, but that nanny is behaving as if she had pneumonia.'

She had never expected to love the child. She was pleased for Richard because he was so thrilled that Diana was pregnant within a few months of their marriage. She was happy for his wife, who still seemed so much of a child herself. But there was something about the tiny girl that touched her. The child didn't even look like her son, so there was no rational explanation. She had a thatch of bright red hair and a crumpled little monkey face. To her own amazement, Alice thought Nancy was adorable.

It seemed that the marriage was a success. Alice's worries had been unfounded. They made a perfect couple – her handsome Richard, his pretty little bride with the new baby. But that was two years ago.

She had lied to Brian. She wasn't going to the nursery. She was going up to see her son. It was ironic that they should have chosen the west wing. Their quarters were immediately above the room where she had nursed Nick back to health and sanity, only to lose him in the end. She never passed that door without thinking of him. And of his son, who had whisky on his breath at breakfast.

She was halfway up the stairs when she met Diana coming down.

‘Oh, hello, Lady Alice!' Immediately there was the bright smile which Alice was learning to mistrust. ‘I was coming to join you all for tea. Nancy's still a bit sniffly, so I thought she'd better stay in the same atmosphere. Nanny said –'

‘Isn't Richard coming?' Alice cut across her.

‘He's got a headache.' The answer was so quick she knew it was rehearsed. ‘He may be getting Nancy's cold. He'll be down later.'

‘I'll go and see him,' Alice said.

Diana didn't stand aside. ‘He's asleep,' she said. ‘I gave him two aspirin and he lay down. He was asleep when I looked in just now.'

It had been going on for a year. Too many drinks at night when they were spending a quiet evening. Too many drinks at weekends when Ashton was full of guests. Obviously drunk at shooting lunches. Diana appearing without him with some excuse. The smell of drink that couldn't be washed away the next morning. For a whole year Alice had said nothing, clinging to the hope that it wasn't serious. Just a phase some men went through. An exaggeration on her part. He was happy, doing well, in love with his wife and thrilled with his child. There was no reason.

She looked at Diana. There was a guilty colour in her face and the bright smile was fading.

‘He's drunk,' Alice said. ‘Don't lie to me. Get out of the way!'

He wasn't asleep. He was unconscious, sprawled out in a chair, his arms dangling, his legs stuck out in front of him, an empty glass on the floor. He was snoring. For a moment Alice stood and looked down at him. His hair was on end, his face pink and shiny with sweat. She had never imagined he could look repulsive to her, but he did. She felt a surge of disgust and anger. There was nothing to be done. In the cinema you threw a bucket of water over a drunk and that revived them. But this was real life. She turned away and locked the sitting-room door from the outside. No one must go in and find him like that. Then she went downstairs and joined the rest of the family round the tea table.

Fern was pouring in her place. Alice said, ‘I'm sorry I'm late. I went up to check on Nancy.' She saw Diana's frightened gaze flicker. ‘We had such a nice walk. Hugo darling, I think a folly down by the lake where that view opens up would be just perfect.'

She took a cup of tea. Anchovy sandwiches. She said she adored anchovies, they made a change from cucumber. ‘Poor Richard's got the flu,' she announced. She spoke directly to Diana. ‘He'd better stay in bed this evening. Don't let him come down to dinner.'

‘No, I won't,' was the reply. ‘He's feeling so rotten.'

She's an accomplished actress, Alice thought suddenly. Or do I mean liar? Nobody would guess from the way she said that that we were both lying.

As they separated to dress for dinner, Alice slipped her daughter-in-law the key. ‘Keep him locked in,' she said under her breath. ‘Tomorrow I want to see both of you.'

‘Oh, Dick, Dick, why did you do it? What are we going to say to her?'

Diana was crying. It made him miserable when she cried. He'd done his best to sober up, but he had enough drink in his system to be instantly lit up by even a small shot. He hated her to cry. He hated himself even more, because it was his failure that was the cause of it all. His failure to match the endless, anguished demands for more and more sex that finally left him impotent and exhausted. At first a drink or two had helped. It made him feel confident, forget the miseries of the last attempt to satisfy her, try again. Even so, he had to fail in the end. He couldn't keep pace with her. Sometimes, lying beside her in the dark, before he anaesthetized himself with alcohol, he couldn't believe that the insatiable demands were made by the same girl who was sweet-natured, loving to her child and to him, still unspoiled in every other way. He felt he was being eaten alive.

But he still loved her. He loved her when he discovered that she was slipping away in the afternoons in London and seeing an old boyfriend. He only found out by accident, having seen her leaving a block of flats in Knightsbridge as he drove past in a taxi. She told a tissue of lies that evening when he asked her how she'd spent her day. He looked in her diary and saw the initial J and a scribbled ‘2.15' on the same date.

She had carried on lying, weeping and inventing, while he swallowed two glasses of whisky and kept on demanding the truth. In the end he had given up. She went to bed and sobbed herself to sleep.

He left without waking her the next morning. He went to the block of flats and took a note of the names on the index. He looked them up in the telephone directory and rang each in turn. Only one reacted when he said he had a message from Mrs Vandekar. It was a man. He hung up. He got drunk before he went home because he was so afraid he might beat her into telling the truth. She tried to make it up. She begged him to forget it, not to ask, just to believe she loved him more than anything in the world, and he'd never need to be jealous or suspicious because
nobody
meant anything to her except him. And Nancy. She clutched at the baby in desperation for forgiveness. She cuddled her and the little girl began to whimper. Richard took them both in his arms and wept with them.

He didn't follow her or pry again. He knew when she went to the flat in Knightsbridge because there was an aura of guilty excitement about her, and she would pour him a drink and make an extra fuss of him.

He dreaded going to Ashton. He dreaded his mother suspecting that he wasn't happy and blaming Diana. He fooled himself that he could control his drinking and for some time he managed to deceive them all.

But now the game was up. He said as much to Diana. ‘It's no use, darling, I know my mother. You may lie to me, and I may lie about how many drinks I've had and where I've put the Scotch, but we won't get away with it with her!'

‘What are we going to tell her? You won't say anything about me, will you? Promise me? Please, please, don't say anything, will you?'

‘About our little problem? My little problem? It's not that little, is it? It was big enough when we started.'

‘Oh don't,' she begged him. ‘Don't say horrid things like that. You've had a drink, haven't you? She'll know. She'll know as soon as she sees you.'

‘I won't tell her,' he said. ‘I won't tell her you just can't have enough of it. And if I can't do it, you'll sneak off to someone else. Oh, for Christ's sake, do you think I didn't know? How's Knightsbridge? Haven't you worn him out yet? Sorry. Sorry, sorry … I shouldn't have said that. I wish we could tell her, Di. She'd know what to do. I wish you'd let me trust her.'

She sprang up. ‘No! No!' she cried. ‘I'll kill myself if you do. I'll kill myself! Dick, please, don't you know what would happen? She'd make you divorce me. She'd throw me out …'

He got up and went into the bathroom. There was whisky in the medicine cabinet. He reached for it and then hesitated. Better not. He had to keep his head. There were tears in his eyes. Mother could help us. I know she could. But she'd never forgive Diana. If I could stop the booze, we might pull ourselves together. ‘If only she wouldn't lie' – he said it out loud in anguish – ‘if only she'd tell me, and then we could try to talk it out. But she lies and pretends there's nothing the matter. I'm twenty-four and I'm impotent. I can't tell my mother that. I can't tell anyone what's happened to me …'

He came back into their bedroom. He took in a deep breath and steadied himself. ‘When is she coming?'

‘After breakfast,' Diana whispered miserably.

Richard said slowly, ‘It's better if we don't sit up here waiting. Better we go downstairs and talk to her.'

‘Oh, I can't … I don't want to …'

‘Then I will,' he said. ‘You stay here. She doesn't want to talk to you. I'm the one who's got to face her. If you start your fairy stories with her, she'll know we're hiding something. Leave it to me.'