A Desirable Husband (20 page)

It was the end of February, 1954, and Finola, Gerard and Darcy were talking in Constance’s old sitting-room after dinner. Miranda had replaced the coral paint with a simple white and yellow paper which looked very well by firelight, though cold on a winter day.

They were talking about how shameful it was for people in their position ever to complain about anything, when there were so many horrors in the world, and about the century’s nightmare of absolute power which was absolutely efficient. They spoke of George Orwell and Kafka and Zamyatin’s
We.
Gerard said that the only hope for such a future lay in pestilence and famine, which the police of the great orthodoxy could not control. He clutched his temples as he spoke, thinking that natural disaster would in fact only give them greater power, at least in the short term. Darcy said the scientists would see to it that such things became impossible except in politically useful circumstances. Then Finola burst into tears.

‘Fin
ola
, darling!’ said Darcy. ‘I
am
sorry.’

Gerard raised his head. ‘Don’t think about it,’ he told her. He sat down beside Finola and put his arm round her waist, and she wept on his shoulder, but rather stiffly, as though she did not know him very well. This was only because Darcy was present. ‘You don’t want to hurt the baby,’ Gerard reminded her. ‘There, darling.’ She was nearly five months pregnant now, and Darcy had professed to be stunned by this news when Gerard wrote to him.

‘I
do
think about it,’ she said. ‘I think about it often. I can’t sleep sometimes. I know they’ll get us,
something
will get us!
L-living as we do, I mean
utterly
against all that, what does it
mean
to people down here? And you think of people in Russia, and the Germans, and people starving …’

‘You must trust in God,’ said Gerard without embarrassment. ‘And carry on
believing
in good, in what we … It’s the only hope for any of us, and nothing’s more fatal than absolute despair about the future.’

‘What people call austerity and realism. Think of Baby Bunting instead,’ said Darcy, pouring himself some more coffee. ‘What
I
want to know, both of you, is what you intend to tell the children about their new-little-brother-or-sister. Do they believe in the stork?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Gerard, smiling slightly as he and Finola adjusted their thoughts. They supposed that Darcy was right.

‘They’ve never asked, either of them,’ sniffed Finola. ‘It’s very funny. I suppose when I get simply enormous – Richard at least will be bound to notice
something
.’

‘But how
does
one explain to the little innocents?’ said Darcy. ‘All very well to say one should answer their questions truthfully – which I believe is the modern orthoddoxy, that word again – but what
phrases
does one actually use? Does one draw diagrams, or what? So embarrassing.’

‘Richard did ask me what gelding meant, the other day, when we were coming back from the gymkhana,’ said Finola with a slight effort, reaching for her tapestry. The men started recrossing their legs.

‘He’d overheard someone or something. I told him it was a different kind of stallion and he’d better ask you, Gerard. Didn’t he, actually?’

‘No, he didn’t.’

‘I suppose you ought to explain to him, if he does ask anything about all that. I’ll tell Eleanor, I don’t mind telling her’. She sighed.

‘I simply don’t see how I
can
, you don’t quite understand what’s involved, darling,’ he said to Finola. He added: ‘Yes, all right, I do see that I must.’

‘How did you find out the Facts, Finola?’ said Darcy.

‘Oh, Darcy, you can imagine what it was like, the way I grew up,’ said Finola. ‘I just gathered – nobody thought anything of talking about it quite openly. It was very sensible, really. The way they brought me up
was
sensible.’

‘And what about you, brother?’

Gerard looked up, a little sadly. ‘Did I never tell you? Oh, before I went to Eton, Father said, “Of course you know all about that, I suppose?”, very embarrassed, and I said, “Oh yes, of course,” which was absolutely untrue.’ He paused, smiling slightly. ‘I found out from a book in the end, and I was sixteen then, which seems – I remember ordering it from some newspaper or other, in secret, of course, and I came downstairs at half past six for a week, just in case the parcel should have arrived. I remember it well.’

‘Have you still got it? Perhaps we could give it to Richard,’ said Finola.

‘No, I burnt it when I finished with it.’

‘Oh, the miseries of youth,’ said Darcy. ‘The frightful visions one has of Portman bringing this indecent work to the breakfast table. “I’m sure it’s Aunt Mary’s birthday-present, Gerard – really, why
won
’
t
you open it?”’

‘Don’t go on about it, please, Darcy.’ He remembered studying the book in one of the spare-room lavatories, the cold, and the conviction that he would be discovered. He looked at Finola.

‘Oh dear, I’m getting so sleepy,’ said Finola. ‘I always do when I’m pregnant. I’d better go to bed.’

‘I’ll come up soon, darling,’ said Gerard.

She kissed his cheek, and said, “Night, Darcy. Don’t tease him.’

Finola went slowly upstairs, and saw that the light was on under Richard’s door. Though he was supposed to be asleep, she could not bestir herself to tell him so, and she smiled quietly as she wondered what he could be doing in there. She and Gerard were thinking of sending him away to school in the autumn, when the baby would be two months old. He had said several times that he wanted to go, but his parents could not quite believe him.

Finola was sure that the new baby would be a girl and, though she and Eleanor had never been very close, she looked forward to having two young daughters and a son growing up. She would call the baby Isabella Caroline, a strong, full-sounding Parnell name of which Gerard approved. Finola went into her bedroom, where she switched on the lights and the electric fire and began to undress. She murmured nonsense all the while, pretending that she was talking to the baby.

When Gerard began to sleep with her again, after their ten months in separate rooms, Finola had simply forgotten all about the need to use a cap. Not until she realised she was pregnant had she remembered that, a year ago, she had longed so foolishly to have another baby. She had been almost afraid at first to tell Gerard that she was expecting a child, because he did not believe in large families, and he would certainly say they were both too old to have another. Finola, remembering, grew doubtful for a moment: her husband would after all be seventy-one when Isabella was twenty, and she herself would be nearly sixty.

Gerard had pointed this out, when she did tell him. He had asked her how this mistake had come about – but then suddenly he had said that it was his fault, and it would be delightful, after all their stupid troubles, to have another child. He said this because he felt that, if they had another baby, they would perhaps no longer need to make such harrowing love as they had been making over the past three months. They would behave properly.

Finola climbed into bed, and allowed herself to think about Gerard’s solicitude, which was even greater than it had been when she was expecting her second child. He fussed, forbade worry and made Finola take unnecessary rests: he did not quite see that she was a very lucky woman, who felt at her serenely idle best when she was pregnant. In serene idleness, she loved his attentions. She could make him run any little errand for her, stay in the house when she wanted him, chat with her, and cuddle her. She supposed
that in a month’s time or so, he would find the last a little difficult, and smiled to herself.

In her pregnant calm, Finola had realised that, though she would have to obey Gerard’s requests as long as she lived with him, she would at least not be obliged secretly to supervise him as well. It seemed to her that other wives exhausted themselves by doing exactly that. Easy enough, Finola knew, to find a man whose whims had to be managed or gratified, like those of a spoilt child who could make life pretty good hell. Difficult, she thought, to find an authoritative man who, like Gerard, might irritate, but was competent, protective and honourable. One could not mind being dominated by such a rare man as that.

Isabella Caroline would be born at Combe Chalcot. Finola’s gynaecologist in Wimpole Street, whom she had been to see once, had said that there was no reason to think delivery would be complicated. He had told her that of course he could not think she was right in not wanting a hospital confinement, but she insisted all the same on lying in at the Cedar House. Richard had been born there, in the last year of the war. It had not been easy, then: Finola remembered how Gerard had been unable to come home, though he had tried to arrange his leave so that he could be with her. His plans had been spoilt when they had all thought it settled. She remembered Constance’s panic about the midwife, whom she insisted was drunk, and Hugh’s running up to London for two days on the petrol he had managed to save for the event.

Eleanor’s birth in cold Queen Charlotte’s Hospital had also been difficult, but this new child’s arrival would not be like either of her other children’s births.

*

Darcy was in Gerard’s study, where his brother had told him to work if he felt like it. He was writing a new book, whose working title was
Nature
and
Propriety
:
the
rise
and
fall
of
the
Sentimental
Novel.
At present he was not working properly. A bound volume of family papers lay on his lap,
and he was re-reading the letters which Miss Lucinda Parnell had written to Samuel Richardson, in which she had begged him to make
Sir
Charles
Grandison
a tragical story, though not quite so tragic as
Clarissa.
The novelist’s replies had been lost, and Darcy had never succeeded in tracing them, though he had looked everywhere. Eight years before, his discovery of his ancestress’ letters had given him the personal interest in his subject which he needed to work. He never betrayed this in his writings.

Gerard came in, and looked at his brother, who was sitting in the cold light of the window, smiling and whispering to himself. ‘Perhaps you’d better take that volume back to Cambridge,’ he said. He knew what it was.

‘May I? Do you remember our revered papa saying it was too frail to be taken out of the house?’

‘Yes, I remember.’

Darcy watched Gerard walk over to his desk and handle a few papers lying there. ‘I’m sorry, Brother, have you got work to do?’

‘No,’ sighed Gerard. ‘I’ve been in the estate office all morning. It’s nearly lunchtime.’

‘I want to ask you something,’ said Darcy. He had been about to say, “Tell me, Brother, do you envy me at all?”, but thought better of it. ‘I want to know whether you’d approve of my marrying Miranda de Saint-Gaël.’

‘Darcy, she’s already married!’ said Gerard, when he had recovered.

‘I want her to get a divorce.’

‘And does she want to get a divorce? My God, you’re quite impossible sometimes!’

‘Angry, Brother?’

‘No,’ said Gerard, rubbing his head. ‘You are a fool, Darcy.’

‘Really not at all surprising that I’m a fool and quite impossible. Miranda has that effect on one.’

‘You’ve always been a fool. Why the hell do you want to marry the woman?’

‘I love her.’

‘Oh, don’t talk such bloody rubbish. According to your ideas that’s no reason for marriage in the first place.’ Gerard slammed a drawer of his desk.

‘I am a man of sentiment,’ said Darcy.

‘You’re an incompetent woman-chasing idiot.’

‘Now
why
are you so furious?’

‘Your attitude – your irresponsible attitude. One wretched woman after another, and how you could have been so crassly irresponsible as to have three children with Isabel –’

Darcy became quietly angry. ‘What a pity you couldn’t manage a little wickedness in your own life, Gerard.’

‘Please get out, Darcy.’ He was sorry. He knew that his brother hated to make people miserable, and that he had always found it extremely difficult to discard a woman who loved him. He had never simply deserted anyone, as Gerard had deserted his first, married mistress. Gerard closed his eyes as Darcy slowly replaced the volume of papers in a lower shelf, and waited. He was afraid of telling Darcy he was so feminine, in so many ways, that if he had not run after endless women, anyone would have taken him for a queer.

‘You must forgive me,’ he said at last. ‘It’s none of my business whom you marry. I hope you make a success of it.’

‘You don’t know how much I envy you,’ said Darcy a moment later.

‘You mean the estate, I suppose.’

‘Oh, don’t be stupid. I’m talking about Finola. I also envy you your temperament,’ said Darcy. ‘Though that may surprise you.’

‘Ask Finola what she would think of your marrying Madame de Saint Gaël,’ said Gerard. ‘On second thoughts, don’t.’

Darcy opened his mouth, but he was interrupted by the cook’s ringing the bell for lunch. Both he and Gerard decided not to continue talking.

At lunch, Finola sat daydreaming and the children talked about the disgustingness of the new cook’s stew. Eleanor
complained about Carlotta’s leaving unnecessarily, though it had been explained to her several times that she had always wanted to run a restaurant in London with her son, and was now able to do this. Gerard and Darcy tried to have a polite talk about the poems of St John of the Cross, an interest they had in common, but the children’s conversation made this difficult. Eleanor and Richard knew that something odd was happening between their parents.

Suddenly they stopped complaining, and everyone thought they were going to be as good and quiet in the adults’ presence as they had been a year or two before. Then Richard raised one arm and scratched his armpit, pushing out his lower lip and mumbling, ‘Ape-man, itch-scratch.’ He glanced at Eleanor, who tried not to giggle. They had had a quarrel that morning. ‘Ape-man itch-scratch,’ said Richard again, louder. Eleanor started to laugh and to imitate him.