A Winter's Child (12 page)

‘Oh, Claire – hello.' Nola, reclining with her provocative ease and languor on the cushions of a low settee, blinked heavy-lidded, transparent eyes through the smoke of her cigarette, looking boneless, fluid, excessively smart in a narrow sage-green dress with foxtails loosely draped around her neck, her greeting so offhand that for a moment Claire wondered if the invitation had been forgotten, regretted, or had turned out not to be convenient after all.

But, if so, Nola quickly decided to make the best of it, bidding Claire to come in and sit down with a series of gestures acquired during the days of her enthusiasm for the
Ballet Russe.

‘Come and meet Major Hardie. Kit – this is my sister-in-law, Jeremy's wife. Now then, Claire, you don't remember Kit Hardie do you? No. I suppose he'd be just before your time.'

His handshake was warm and firm and decided, his hands well manicured but hard, wholly masculine, wholly capable, Claire thought, of breaking in a horse to the bridle or whipping in a pack of fractious hounds. There was a humorous crinkling of fine lines, she noticed, at his eye corners while the eyes themselves were a bright keen blue, sportsman's eyes, accustomed to scanning the mists of Autumn mornings, for the early pheasant, the running fox. A country gentleman, to whom the command of soldiers in battle must have seemed as natural as the ordering of gamekeepers and hunt servants, his air of authority softened by the jaunty good humour, the slightly quizzical nonchalance of the leisured classes who quite simply do not expect to be disobeyed.

‘Hello,' he said, a pleasant modern greeting spoken in a rich, male voice in which she detected a trace, although only a faint one, of the far north. Scotland perhaps? Grouse and heather and malt whisky with a veneer of cosmopolitan sophistication. A bankrupt laird, perhaps, as they all seemed to be these days, with a taste for
foie gras
and vintage champagne? It suited him. And as he took command of her, installing her in the chair he thought would best suit her, pouring her wine, she was aware of two things, her own leap of response to his charm and a pang of disappointment that it should be squandered on Nola.

‘Yes,' said Nola, who had seen the response and could easily guess the rest. ‘My friend, Major Hardie.'

And suddenly shooting her lazy eyes wide open she smiled straight at Claire, put down her empty glass and laid her hand briefly on the Major's knee.

My
friend. My find. My diversion. She smiled again.
Mine,
dear. Claire nodded. And there was no thought in either head of embarrassment or offended morality.

‘I am an unfaithful wife,' conveyed Nola's subtle mind. ‘Are you going to tell my husband?'

‘No,' answered Claire's. And reading very accurately Claire's unwillingness either to judge or be involved Nola's smile deepened into satisfaction. Good. She had expected no less. Not friendship of course and certainly not loyalty, Nola having encountered these things far too seldom to set much store by them. But an ‘arrangement' between two women who might while the arrangement lasted – be of use to one another.

‘Tell lies for me,' said her long light eyes, her indolent smile. ‘And now and then, if I can remember, I might tell lies for you.'

Claire raised her glass. So did the Major.

‘Here's to – what shall we drink to?' he said.

Nola stirred slightly on the divan, rearranging her furs. He would drink to her, one way or another. She would see to that. For as long as it pleased her.
Diverted
her. And then, when it stopped mattering, as she supposed it would;
then,
when it had all turned stale and fiat, both she and her Major could drink to anyone they chose. Anyone, she thought, who would have them. But not yet.

‘Anything you like,' she murmured as if she was making a promise. ‘Or to the Crown Hotel – which might save us from death by boredom next winter.'

And when Claire looked her enquiry she added ‘Have you forgotten the Faxby winter, dear child? Long and cold and nothing to do but suffocate in the bosom of one's family? Kit is going to change all that – aren't you, my darling. He has just taken over the management of this hotel and he's going to see to it – aren't you, Kit? – that we all get our fair share of decadence and evil… Or, at the very least, rich food and fine wine and jazz. One should give him another medal for it.'

He would have plenty of those, Claire thought, turning to him with interest and some surprise, wondering what a man like this one might know of hotels beyond the knowledge of a guest who would expect to be well served without caring or even thinking to enquire the ways and means of it. And what might he know of rich food beyond the pleasure of ordering it in a London restaurant? Throughout his youth an unseen presence named ‘Cook'would have encouraged his appetite with robust English flavours. Later a more voluble ‘Chef'would have emerged, at his command, from various famous kitchens to receive his praises or his blame. The army would have given him a servant to shield him yet again, not from danger or sudden death which were properly considered to be the business of gentlemen but from the tedious domestic mysteries of boot polish, the boiling of water, the frying of eggs.

What could he possibly know of the management of the crumbling, ailing, never popular Crown Hotel?

‘The owners have given me
carte blanche,'
he said, ‘which is very noble of them, or would be, if it wasn't pretty clear that they really haven't much to lose. I've got a year to make a go of it – hence the repairs and renewals. And if I fail, then the whole thing, including myself, goes under the hammer.'

Already, on so short an acquaintance, she was finding it hard to associate him with failure. But, just the same, knowing Faxby as she did, the undertaking seemed risky to her, the kind of rash venture into which ex-officers all over the country for whom there was no peacetime employment were throwing themselves, taking the same mad chances with their savings and their wound gratuities as they had been trained to take with their lives in battle. And she had not judged this man to be reckless.

‘Does Faxby need another hotel, Major Hardie?'

Who came to Faxby, after all, but commercial travellers with trains to catch who would have to be provided with very good reasons for deserting the station hotels?

‘No,' he said, his calm assessment taking her by surprise. ‘I think Faxby has just the number of hotels she needs and exactly the kind she deserves. The bedrooms are adequate and the service doesn't leave too much to be desired. But should you wish to take a friend out to dinner – well, the Great Northern serves thick brown soup and plain boiled cabbage, whereas the Midland –!'

He gave an exaggerated shudder, so that she was laughing as she asked him ‘And what does the Crown serve?'

‘Nothing as yet. The kitchen ceiling collapsed the day I arrived, right on top of me, I might add, which wouldn't have mattered too much if I hadn't had my little Belgian friend with me. A chef of some ability, as a matter of fact, who didn't take it well when a ton of rotten plaster descended on him. I expect you know how these Latins tend to make a fuss. But he calmed down in the end – being a refugee and having nowhere else to go. So now, here he is with a brand new ceiling and brand new stoves to go with it, waiting for opening day. And I just think you might be tempted – if you
did
want to treat a friend to a good dinner – by his green turtle soup or his oyster souffle. Followed by – well, lobster
a la bordelaise
– how's that? – or a saddle of venison.
Very
nice. And strawberries in Curacao and brandy topped with a layer of
Créme Chantilly
a yard thick.'

‘Major Hardie – where can one get food like that these days?'

‘Perhaps you'll just believe me when I say that one can. At a price, of course. But Faxby can afford it, with her textile magnates and ironmasters turned armaments manufacturers, and her engineers. They tell me there are more millionaires per acre in Faxby than anywhere else in the country, unless it should be Bradford.'

‘I dare say.' And she looked, without her being aware of it and somewhat to his gratification, worried for him, anxious to put him right. ‘But they're not lobster
a La bordelaise
millionaires, are they? Major, how well do you know Faxby?'

‘Oh-passably.'

She very much doubted it. For one thing, had he spent any significant length of time in Faxby, where handsome, urbane gentlemen were never in great supply, he could not have remained unnoticed. He would have been sought after, invited everywhere, certainly to High Meadows. He would have been remembered. And since she had never heard of him, what more could he have done than pass through as someone's weekend guest, at the shooting parties perhaps which used to be held at one or two of the old estates beyond Faxby Green, before their owners went bankrupt or got killed? And knowing, by instinct, that the Major must be penniless too, suspecting that he was basing his judgement of Faxby's tastes on his own, acquired under far more sophisticated skies, she turned to him in alarm.

‘People just don't dine out here, Major. In fact, where
do
people dine out except in London? And no one could call Faxby smart. We have no theatres here, except the Princes which is really only a music hall, so there's no need for theatre suppers. And the cinema crowds could hardly pay your prices. While as for taking friends out to dinner, people in Faxby who can afford to entertain do so in their own homes, with their own staff.'

‘I know.' The warm blue eyes seemed to twinkle. ‘It has been ever thus. But can it continue?'

‘I see no reason why it shouldn't.'

‘Then let me show you one. We shall see an end'to the shortage of cream and butter and the shops will be piled high with sugar again before long. But what about housemaids?'

What about them? She had been born into a world in which housemaids were so natural a part of the landscape that although women like her mother and Miriam Swanfield might spend cosy hours bewailing their inefficiency, their annoying tendency to take cold, or burst into tears, or get themselves seduced by soldiers, she had never for one moment seriously contemplated life without them.

‘I'm not sure,' he said, although she knew he was quite certain, ‘just how those girls will settle down again, now that they've found out they can get higher wages for shorter hours in the factories. And it takes a lot of housemaids to fetch and carry and do the dishes when madam orders dinner for twenty-four and breakfast for a dozen. She might find it more convenient to give her dinner-parties at the Crown Hotel.'

‘I do hope so.'

‘Thank you. But you don't believe it?' She smiled and slightly inclined her head.

‘Major Hardie, you are a brave man.'

‘Of course he is. He has a chestful of medals to prove it.' Nola's voice sounded lazy, still half-asleep, her pointed face betraying some kind of secretive amusement Claire did not try to understand.

‘Ah well – as to that …' But before the Major could brush aside his gallantry in approved heroic fashion there came a knock at the door, a respectful voice calling him away to more serious matters.

‘Major Hardie sir, the builder's here.'

He got up, excused himself for just a moment, and as the door closed behind him Nola opened her light eyes very wide and looking straight at Claire said flatly, throwing the words at her and bidding her make the best of them, ‘He was the butler at High Meadows. Naturally you didn't know.'

Silence. A struggle – no easy one – not merely to speak, but for breath. Yet she knew she must speak, and she did so. For after all she had been shocked before, had been hit hard before, and in the gut, by women striking for their own amusement. Perhaps like Nola. Perhaps not.

‘No. I didn't know.' And why on earth should it matter? Surely the war had swept away all that nonsense about class, about knowing one's place and keeping one's place. Rightly so. She had never believed it, never liked it. Yet, just the same, from generation to generation, girls brought up as she had been, in households where young grooms and footmen were often handsome and therefore dangerous, had been fed a defence of prejudice and taboos. The traces – faint and unpleasant and furtive – remained. And while Nola's infidelity as such had seemed a matter of indifference, the fact that it should be with her husband's former butler troubled her. She knew, all too exactly, how Benedict Swanfield, Miriam and Dorothy and anyone considered by them to be ‘decent' people would react to it. And although she did not share their class loyalties, their class blindness, she was, nevertheless, uneasy. And, moreover, she felt a fool.

‘Yes,' said Nola flatly, ‘the family butler. What a scandal, eh! He enlisted in the summer of 1914, right at the start, so I daresay you never met him. Not that nice girls ever look at gentlemen's gentlemen in any case. But if the class thing should be worrying you – and I suppose it is – then let me put your mind at rest. I never noticed him when he was at High Meadows. I don't suppose Miriam ever really noticed him either until he left and she realized just how he'd been running the house like clockwork and making it all look so easy – which is what professionalism is all about. Or so he tells me, at any rate. I met him a year ago at a party in London and all I saw was a damnably attractive man – in uniform, of course, which always helps, especially when it has as many ribbons and decorations as his. You'll understand that.'

‘Yes. I do.'

‘And I meant what I said about his having a chestful of medals. They gave him just about everything they could give him for “conspicuous gallantry in the field” and all that. Over and above the call of duty is the phrase they use, except with Kit the first thing one has to understand is that his duty is always and absolutely to himself. He got the medals and the prestige, but he survived. That's what Kit Hardie is. A survivor. And an opportunist. He takes advantage. So unless you
want
to be taken advantage of – and it
can
be rather fun – then beware. The owners of this hotel are called Crozier – my cousins Arnold and Bernard, who own an awful lot of things.'