A Gathering Storm (16 page)

Beatrice stood in the hall for a moment, listening to the tension that crackled through the house. From the dining room Mrs Wincanton could be heard giving orders. Bless the butler nodded a greeting as he passed through with a callow youth in train, each of them bearing a tray of champagne flutes. From the floor above emanated a girlish shriek of temper followed by a throaty laugh. Angie and Peter. Picking up her luggage with a sigh, Beatrice went upstairs.

She reached Angie’s room in time to see Peter sauntering out of it, hands in trouser pockets and with a sneery smile pasted on his face. When he noticed Beatrice, his expression went blank in that strange shy way he had. Muttering, ‘Hello,’ he dodged past her.

‘Hello, Peter.’ He’d grown appreciably since she last saw him at the beginning of the summer. Sixteen he was now – taller, the coarser, adult features beginning to form. Where Ed was assuming the best side of each of his parents, his mother’s temperate blonde beauty and his father’s handsome physique, the leaner Celtic looks of some more remote ancestor were blooming darkly in Peter. His cleverness, though, and the moody air were all his own. Beatrice felt awkward with him and pitied him in equal measure. She had gathered from comments Ed let drop that, though no longer bullied, Peter lacked friends at school and that his shyness and surliness drew unfair comparisons with his elder brother. Ed clearly felt sorry for him and had done his best to protect him. Now Ed had gone up to university Peter was alone and no one was certain how he fared.

‘Go away!’ Angie cried, when Beatrice knocked on the half-open door.

‘It’s me,’ Beatrice said, going in.

‘Thank heavens you’ve come. No one here has time to help me with my dress.’ She was standing at the basin in petticoat and stockings. On the bed lay the most beguiling confection of pale green satin and froths of white lace.

‘Oh, Angie,’ Beatrice cried, fingering the silky fabric. ‘It’s beautiful.’ She helped Angie pull it over her head, aware of the girl’s warm back under her fingers as she fastened the column of tiny buttons. The cut of the gown flattered Angie’s curves perfectly, and against the green her skin glowed luminous, without a flaw. The fashionably natural waves of her honey-coloured hair needed merely the flick of a brush. Soon pearls gleamed at her ears and throat.

Beatrice stood back to see the effect. Manners or no, Angie had certainly acquired a kind of allure abroad, a sophistication. She looked perfect.

‘How am I?’ Angie asked, twisting and turning to see her reflection in the big cheval mirror.

‘Wonderful,’ said Beatrice. ‘The dress is lovely with your hair.’

‘Now it’s your turn,’ Angie said happily, and Beatrice opened her box and took out her precious dress.

Moments later, Beatrice took her turn by the mirror, a curious expression on her face.

‘Oh,’ Angie said, staring at her. ‘I think I’m going to cry.’

It was the first time Beatrice had seen herself full-length in the dress and she couldn’t believe that the stranger who looked back, rather a beautiful stranger, was herself. The blue and the silver glimmered against her glossy dark curls, highlighting her pointed ivory face and bright chestnut eyes. Her mother’s sapphire pendant lay on her collarbone, and she clipped on the matching drop earrings. They pinched her ears madly, but the pain must be borne. She slipped her feet into the silver kid sandals her mother had bought in Truro.

‘You’re not little brown Bea any more!’ Angie whispered. The face looking over Beatrice’s shoulder in the mirror did not show admiration so much as envy, and Beatrice was shocked. But when she turned to look at Angie the expression had been smoothed away. All was as serene as before.

‘Come on,’ Angie said, handing her some gloves, and they went downstairs together.

The hall was already full of men in dinner jackets and women in opulent dresses divesting themselves of coats, hats and fur wraps, taking glasses from the young boy’s tray, noticing the wonderful Christmas tree covered in candles before moving into the drawing room to be greeted by Mr and Mrs Wincanton.

As the girls came down the stairs, they were received by a sea of admiring faces. They were looking not just at Angie, but at both of them – blonde and brunette, light and dark, a pair of opposites, but both lovely.

Just then, Bless opened the front door, and there on the doorstep stood Rafe.

He paused on the threshold, looking from Beatrice to Angie and back to Beatrice, who smiled at him shyly, but it was Angie who pushed forward to greet him.

‘Oh, Rafe, you’re nice and early,’ she said, taking his coat. ‘Don’t we all look grown-up?’

‘You both look very well,’ he stammered, and blushed. His eyes said ‘stunning’ and Angie laughed, one of her golden infectious giggles.

‘Thank you. So do you, doesn’t he, Bea?’

Rafe, too, was all grown up, tall and dashing in formal dress, his fair hair soft in the light of the candles. As they helped themselves to champagne, Beatrice couldn’t keep her eyes off him.

‘Well met, Ashton!’ called Ed, coming across and clasping Rafe’s hand. And turning to Angie and Beatrice, ‘I say, you girls look . . .’ He trailed to a halt.

‘Don’t they?’ Rafe said, the first rush of champagne hitting its mark.

‘Shall we take you to Mummy and Daddy?’ Angie asked. She was looking at Rafe, who immediately presented his arm to escort her. Beatrice pushed away her disappointment to take Ed’s.

‘Darlings!’ Oenone said, as they passed into the drawing room. ‘So lovely. And boys, you look so handsome. Where’s Peter, by the way? Is he down?’ No one seemed to know.

‘Who are these exquisite young things? I don’t remember inviting them,’ Michael Wincanton said. Angie squealed delightedly. ‘Oh, Daddy, don’t be silly,’ she said, and leaned to kiss him. Over his daughter’s shoulder, Mr Wincanton looked Beatrice up and down with open appreciation. He reached to clap his son on the shoulder and to shake hands with Rafe.

They moved past Angie’s parents, further into the room, where they merged with the other younger visitors, the children Ed and Angie and latterly Beatrice had played tennis and shared dancing lessons with, whose birthday parties they’d won prizes at and who were now, many of them, at their first proper adult party, awkward, spotty and gangly, most shy and self-conscious. The girls grouped together in little giggling groups for safety, peeping at the boys, who squared up to one another like young bucks clashing antlers, ignoring the girls.

‘Beatrice, that’s such a clever dress,’ said Deirdre Garnett, large-framed and deep-voiced. ‘No one would guess about your poor legs.’ Everyone heard her and everyone immediately stared at Beatrice’s skirts, as though wondering if she wore callipers underneath.

‘My legs are completely fine, thank you,’ she said in her coldest tone. ‘The doctor says I’ll be perfectly all right.’ She’d liked to have added, ‘Which is more than I can say about you and your fat hips, Deirdre,’ but of course didn’t.

She wandered off crossly to where Rafe was standing by the fire, already deep in discussion with Ed, who loved talking politics. ‘I say we should stop him now, before he gets the idea anything goes.’

‘But we’re hardly prepared for a war,’ Rafe replied. ‘My uncle says we don’t have the weapons or the planes.’

‘We’re rearming like mad,’ Ed said. ‘My father reckons we’ll be ready for him.’

‘Oh, you’re not talking about war tonight, are you?’ Beatrice said. Rafe was glancing across the room and when she followed the line of his gaze she realized he was watching Angelina. Angie was whispering into the ear of a man Beatrice didn’t know, a rather obviously good-looking man in his forties, with a moustache and an overly familiar manner.

‘Who’s that?’ Beatrice asked.

‘Oh, some businessman my father knows from the local Party. He’s been coming to the house rather a lot recently to see my mother.’ Ed’s eyes were unreadable, but the undercurrent of his voice was disapproving. Whether this man came to see Oenone or her daughter, he clearly had what her father called ‘an eye for the ladies’. She remembered the tensions that Oenone’s previous admirer Rollo Treloar had once caused and hoped that there wouldn’t be another row between Angie’s parents.

‘I told Mother I’d see where Pete’s got to,’ Ed said, excusing himself.

‘Here, let’s find ourselves another drink,’ Rafe said, and they moved out into the hall where Bless filled their glasses, and from there to the library, cosy with its crackling fire, dark red curtains and old leather chairs. ‘I’m glad I’ve got you alone,’ Rafe said. ‘There’s something I must tell you. I had a letter. Mother’s on her way home.’

‘When? Oh, Rafe, surely that’s good news!’

‘She’ll arrive early in the New Year. Everybody’s so worried about the international situation it seems sensible. But the thing is, Bea, I’ll be spending the holidays in London from now on. That’s where my stepfather has a place, you see. I won’t be down here so often. That is, I’ll try to come, but it’s not going to be easy. We’ll still be friends, of course, won’t we?’

Beatrice felt all her energy draining. She would be away at school, then in Gloucestershire with her grandparents, or here. She wouldn’t see Rafe unless she went to London. Suddenly it was as though she was looking down a long, grim tunnel that wound she knew not where.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked her anxiously.

‘Yes,’ she lied, but she felt the corners of her mouth turn down. ‘But I’ll miss you, Rafe.’ She couldn’t help herself. Her throat prickled.

He leant forward and with a finger lifted a tear from her cheek. ‘Bea,’ he said. ‘Oh, don’t cry. We’ll still see one another, I promise.’

She tried hard not to weep, but all the frustration and worry of the last months was surging to the surface. She’d felt so trapped. So bored. Sometimes she’d believed she’d be at home for ever, looking after her parents as they grew older and with her father getting more unwell and more tetchy. These were her thoughts, but instead she said, ‘I’ll miss our holidays together.’

‘Don’t, please,’ Rafe said. ‘Something will turn up, you’ll see.’ He put his arm round her and hugged her and she laid her head on his shoulder. His grip tightened. They stood together a moment or two, then he released her and said gently, ‘I’ll tell you what, why don’t you go up and wash your face, then we’ll find a bit of supper.’

She nodded, unaccountably disappointed. She walked slowly up the stairs, unable to control her tears now, then blundered along the corridor to the bathroom, which mercifully was unoccupied. She dabbed cold water on her face, dried it on the wafer-cotton towel, quickly patted her hair into place, then sat on the side of the bath staring glumly into the distance. Rafe didn’t see her as anything but a friend. She couldn’t blame him, not really. He had the whole of his life before him, university and a career, maybe as a great doctor. And now she would be part of his past, not his future. To stop herself crying again, she pinched herself hard, then after one more look at her tragic face in the mirror, unlocked the door. By the stairs she paused, then turned back. She should fetch a spare handkerchief from her case.

As she opened the door to Angelina’s room, she caught a movement in the darkness further down the corridor. ‘Hetty, shouldn’t you be in bed, dear?’ she called. ‘Oh, it’s you.’

Peter moved out of the shadows.

‘What are you doing up here?’ Beatrice asked. ‘They’ve been looking for you.’

‘Have they? Not very hard then. I’ve been in my room all the time.’ He came and stood in the doorway, watching as she searched for the handkerchief. Angelina had left her bedside light on, and it cast strange shadows across the room.

‘Why don’t you go downstairs?’ she asked. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘I could ask the same of you.’ He followed her into the room and she pitied him his awkwardness, in an evening suit that was too big for him, the tie hanging awry. He knocked against the dressing-table, upsetting Angelina’s glass bottles. ‘Damn.’

‘Oh, I’ll see to it.’ She went over and started to put everything straight.

He pulled at his collar, irritated by its stiffness. They stared at each other in the dressing-table mirror. Two miserable faces.

‘You’re the same, aren’t you,’ he said finally. ‘They get to you, don’t they?’

‘Who?’ she asked, puzzled.

‘All of them. They’re so . . . self-absorbed, aren’t they? Ed’s not so bad, he can’t help having to be responsible, but Father and Mother and my bloody sisters.’ He looked around the room and now she saw it as through his eyes. Discarded clothes were strewn over the floor, a couple of fashion magazines lay open on the pink and white frilled eiderdown; Angie had spilt a box of face powder on the floor by the basin and not bothered to clear it up. Beatrice hadn’t thought about it before, how Angie moved through life assuming that someone else would always clear up after her. Was this what Peter meant? Her own little case and the box for her dress, she had set neatly against the wall, ready for when the Brookers’ driver came for her and Rafe at midnight.

‘Peter, what’s wrong?’ she asked. He had a wild look about him. ‘Why don’t you come down?’

He shrugged. ‘I’d rather be tortured on a rack. What would I say to all those people? I hardly know them.’ She saw he hated the whole idea of the party, the small talk, pretending to look as though he was enjoying himself. ‘And that man,’ he muttered. ‘How my mother has the nerve . . .’

‘Who do you mean?’ But again she read his mind. The bold-looking man with the moustache. It must be Oenone he came to visit. ‘How do you know, Peter?’ she asked him. ‘You might be wrong.’

‘I know, all right? I’ve seen them together, Brent Jarvis and my mother.’ And he uttered a word she didn’t know the meaning of, but it sounded horrid.

‘Don’t, Peter.’

‘Why are you defending her?’

‘She’s your mother. She loves you. And she’s always been kind to me.’

‘That’s what you think, is it? Bea, she’s just using you. They’re all using you. They use everybody, don’t you see?’

‘That’s a horrible thing to say, Peter. You must be ill or something.’

‘No, it’s the truth. They all want power in their own crooked little ways – my father in his Cabinet, my mother out here, doing whatever she likes, and Angelina’s worst of all. Watch out for Angelina. If she sees someone else wants something, she takes it. She can’t help it. She has a need to be the centre of attention.’