Objects of Desire (17 page)

They had been good-natured and charming, laughing at themselves and the little world they lived in, and admitting, ‘Not many that we use.’

Page had thought she’d be bored at such frivolity but she hadn’t been, not in the least. They were intelligent and amusing and lived in different worlds, just as interesting and valid as hers.

These English beauties with impeccable backgrounds, born to privilege, made the older women as welcome in their circle as they had Sally. They were full of chatter about a shopping expedition the following day. On the hunt for hats for Ascot, they invited Page and Anoushka to join them and then go on for lunch at San Lorenzo.

Page heard herself say, ‘Why not?’ That seemed to make them all jollier than ever.

Anoushka said, ‘I would like a hat with a crown of egret feathers.’ And everyone laughed.

It had seemed to Sally that this was the right time to make her announcement. The chatter stopped instantly. The smiles vanished from everyone’s faces. Chopsticks were poised in mid air and tears welled up in Sally’s eyes. She fought them back.

‘Piers would say that that was not an accurate way for me to state the case. He would prefer that I said it was amicable. Well, it is amicable but only because I have no choice.’

This was where the famous English reserve came into play. Her three young friends remained silent. Not a word of shock or surprise, none of sympathy. Had they known what Sally had not, that it had always been on the cards? Yes, probably. Page and Anoushka had thought that after their first look at Sally Brown, and having met Piers Hazlit for only a few minutes.

Anoushka felt Sally’s pain and reached across the table to take her hand in hers. This woman had only
known her for a few hours whereas her friends had known her for years. Yet until Anoushka had made that gesture of friendship they could not reach out to her. Sally had embarrassed them. Anoushka had to remind herself how the English despise embarrassment, how they tend to ignore it. It was to them somehow bad manners to create a situation that might cause it. For the first time Anoushka understood that and, surprisingly, thought the English were right.

Until a few minutes ago Sally was a friend to these girls. Now she’s an embarrassment, in the same way I would have been to everyone I knew had I stayed in Lakeside, she thought. Between the pancake rolls, the chicken in ginger and spring onions, the duck and plum sauce, the beef in black bean sauce and the fried sea weed, Sally had become one of the new female underclass.

Fiona put down the bowl of rice she had been holding. Her deep sigh attracted the attention of all the women round the table. ‘Well, Sally, it won’t be the first time you’ve had to go to the Royal enclosure without Piers. We’ve the same party we have every year going to Ascot. You’ll just have to put on a brave smile and wear a bigger, more elegant hat than usual.’

The other two girls brightened up. That obviously seemed to be the right attitude to adopt to this uncomfortable news their friend had just announced. They actually returned to their food with enthusiasm until Sally’s next announcement.

‘I won’t be going to Ascot.’

‘But we’re all going shopping for hats tomorrow. Of course you’ll go,
and
have a good time. You’ll be with us, and there will be plenty of dishy men there. Many admirers of yours,’ said Helen.

Again silence fell round the table, good friends not knowing what to say to make it better for Sally. Finally Fiona spoke up again. ‘Where are you going to go? What are you going to do? Oh, this is dreadful, simply dreadful of Piers. I’ve known him since I was a child. He’s kind and generous and would never just throw you out. He’ll provide for you. Oh, Sally, he is doing that, isn’t he?’

‘We haven’t discussed it.’

Lady Caldera said, ‘In my grandfather’s day they bought their women hat shops.’

There were gasps of astonishment from the other two girlfriends. ‘Cally, you’re so insensitive!’ said Fiona.

‘And stupid. And what exactly do you mean by “their women”? Sally was never some kept mistress of a married man, like one of your grandfather’s women. She and Piers have been sharing a life for years,’ said Helen. ‘This is like a divorce.’

‘Not when you haven’t been married,’ said Fiona. ‘Sorry, Sally. We’re saying all the wrong things.’

‘Are there any right things to say? Actually there isn’t much to say. Let’s just accept the bad news,’ she said.

‘I wasn’t referring to my grandfather, Helen, merely what happened in his time,’ said Lady Caldera defensively.

‘Oh,
please
, Cally, everyone in London says if it hadn’t been for your grandfather and his voracious appetite for beautiful and clever women, and his fortune, there would be no Bond Street. It’s always been a standing joke that the chic shop was created in bed.’

That brought smiles to everyone’s face. It seemed to break the gloomy atmosphere that had settled over the table. When Cally admitted, with a puzzled look on her face, ‘I have heard that, and always wondered what it meant,’ they all broke into nervous laughter, but laughter nevertheless.

‘What does this really mean in practical terms?’ asked Helen. ‘I mean, where will you live, what will you do now that you no longer have Piers to look after? Oh, this has to be ghastly for you, Sally. You did look after him so well.’

‘It is beastly. Piers and I have been together a very long time. I never thought about it ending. I’ve a life with him, I don’t know what it’s going to be like without him.’

‘The same,’ said Fiona.

‘Never. You’re either trying to be kind or you’re fooling yourself if you think that. I know it, and so does Piers. And you, my friends, have to understand it too. That’s why I won’t be buying a hat for Ascot this year and nor will I be going.’

‘You can’t just hide yourself away, Sally.’

‘I don’t intend to. I’m going on a great adventure, leaving old horizons behind and looking for new ones.
And Page and Anoushka are too. We’re joining forces.’

‘I don’t understand. You’re leaving London?’

‘Yes.’

‘For good.’

‘I’ve no idea. But I would doubt that.’

‘Leaving for where?’

‘Don’t know that either.’

‘There are an awful lot of don’t knows, Sally.’ That was an apprehensive Helen.

‘Yes, isn’t it exciting?’ And having said that, Sally realised that it was. Very exciting.

‘Oh, Page, Sally’s being so vague. Do tell us what you three are up to, where you’re going?’ asked Cally.

Page could sense the atmosphere round the table changing, a less distressed look on Sally’s face than had appeared when she had broken the news to her girlfriends. ‘It’s all quite simple, Cally. The adventure has gone out of our lives. We seem to be missing something essential so we’re going in search of it.’

‘Men.’

‘Fiona!’ This time it was Sally, Cally and Helen who were aghast at the gaffe.

Page began to laugh. There was a certain charm and innocence about these young English beauties. Like rare hot-house flowers they flourished in their enclosed little world. Naive about both the good and the bad, everything outside that charmed circle they lived and thrived in. Page envied them and hoped that they would remain cushioned from the rough and tumble of a hard cold world, with all its excitement and despair.
They were in their way fragile flowers. ‘Fiona, do we look like women who can’t get a man when we want one?’

‘Hardly. Actually when you walked through the restaurant to join us, I saw you as an impressively attractive trio. So did every man in the room by the way heads turned. But, Page, you’re not looking for men, are you?’ asked Fiona, a note of incredulity in her voice.

‘No, Fiona. I can’t speak for the others but I can for me. Men, yes. Sex, yes. But I want more. A new skyline to stand against, maybe many new skylines to stand against. New things to see and learn from and to extend myself with, and maybe even love, a deep, abiding, mutual love. I discount nothing, no longer seek anything in particular. It may come, it may not, but the bottom line for me has to be ultimate happiness. I’ve had everything else.’

Anoushka listened to Page and wondered why she could articulate what Anoushka wanted, what Anoushka had so mistakenly believed she had. Had her ego blinded her to the reality of her situation? Did it take a stranger to speak for her? Obviously it had, and did. Years of loving Robert, wanting to please him at any price, had blinkered her. If she had known what she had been doing there was something whorish about that. Another ugly realisation about herself. She couldn’t bear thinking about it and so did what she was used to doing, blocking any unpleasant challenge out of her mind.

Sally reacted by accepting that Piers was taking care of her, maybe not with a hat shop but he had found Page and Anoushka and was interested in her happiness, even though, or was it because, it was to be without him? The male mind could be so perverse.

Helen asked, ‘Do tell us more, where are you going? When will this adventure begin?’

Anoushka, Sally and Page looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders, then began to laugh. ‘I guess we haven’t decided,’ said Page. ‘We haven’t even talked about that.’

‘Well, it’s begun for me. I’m here having dinner with women. I’ve never had dinner with a group of women out on a night on their own. I’m going to Switzerland tomorrow, and then on to Paris to strike a deal in Greek and Roman coins of antiquity and become an independently wealthy woman. Off on a great adventure and I don’t know where, how or when,’ Anoushka said with a look of excitement which until then had not been evident to the women round the table.

‘And it’s begun for me. I’ve never had a girlie dinner. And I’ve never wanted to share my adventures with other women. And I’ve never solicited for companions through an international newspaper,’ said a smiling Page. She looked at Sally, hoping that the adventure had begun for her too.

‘My adventure has certainly begun. I’m not having lunch with Evelyn on Thursday. And I’m not going to buy a hat for Ascot tomorrow. And I won’t be in the Royal enclosure with you girls and without Piers this
year. And I’m running away from a world I love and know one day I will come back to when I have it all,
and
ultimate happiness, not just a tentative piece of it.’

All three girls were clearly intrigued. ‘How will you decide where you’re going?’ asked Cally.

‘A pin in a map? Not a bad idea. We might like to visit or even take up residence there for a while. Well, why not? We’re all going to do our own thing, whatever that is, wherever we go. I have a job, one I never dreamed possible. Nor I’m sure did anyone else. I’m going to translate the works of Hadon Calder into Japanese.’

Helen and Fiona were clearly impressed with Anoushka’s announcement. ‘Have you met him?’ asked Fiona.

‘Yes,’ she answered. And realised that all the women at the table were interested in her in the way she always hoped Robert’s friends might have been, for herself, for what she was doing with her life, not merely as an appendage of her husband’s.

‘Maybe we can do a little better than a pin in a map. For example, let’s say we ask ourselves whether we want to stay in London. A question and answer thing like that,’ suggested Sally.

‘Good idea,’ said Cally.

Sally’s friends were taking a real interest in this voyage of hers and in her new companions. It was somehow flattering for the would-be travellers, to confirm that they were on their way.

‘London?’ questioned Fiona.

‘No.’ A loud reply in unison from the women.

‘Paris?’ that was Cally again. The no was unanimous again.

‘Rome?’ suggested Helen.

This time it was a shaking of heads. No, Rome held no interest for them.

‘It seems to me that you don’t want to stay in big cities,’ said Cally, who seemed to be seriously fascinated by the women’s adventure.

‘Do we?’ asked Sally.

The three women looked at each other. ‘Not for the moment anyway,’ said Page. And the other two agreed, saying that they did not discount a city of their choice when the time was right for them.

‘Well, at least you have established something. In fact the one who should be sitting here is Piers. This is just his kind of thing, an expedition to God knows where, for who knows how long?’ said Cally.

A rolling of eyes and a loud whisper from Helen. ‘Cally, you clod!’

Sally, who was sitting next to her, placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s OK, Cally, I’m not going to burst into tears every time Piers’s name is mentioned. In fact it was Piers who found the ad and brought it to my attention. He’s even met Anoushka and Page.’

‘More like vetted us,’ remarked Page.

‘Well, that’s a relief. That means he intends to pay for it, and you’d damned well better let him, Sally,’ said Fiona.

‘Money?’ said Anoushka. ‘I suppose we should talk about that.’

‘You aren’t very organised if you haven’t even worked out the money side of things. You’re extremely casual about this expedition of yours,’ said Helen.

‘Yes, I guess we are,’ said Page.

‘And hopefully we’ll stay that way. I’ve had one life where my husband organised me to death,’ added Anoushka.

A look of surprise at such frank talk shone on all the English girls’ faces.

‘Oh, damn, there I go revealing too much at the wrong time. It’s getting to be a habit with me,’ said Anoushka, so charmingly everyone came out with some little word to put her back at her ease. The best of which was Cally’s.

‘Would that we English could be more open, it would certainly make us easier to live with.’

‘But less English,’ said Fiona.

Almost in unison the English girls at the table said, ‘Oh, no, wouldn’t like that, not one bit.’ They liked their Englishness and all it stood for.

‘Not to worry. Such openness is not in the genes,’ said Cally. That brought smiles from round the table.

‘About the money? Let’s get back to that. All expenses split three ways?’

‘Perfect, Sally. Agreed.’ The three of them were resolved.

‘The amount? How much will we each put in the pot?’ asked Sally.

‘Fifty thousand dollars and see how we go?’ suggested Page.