Reckless (30 page)

‘And you want a bridge from me to Mountbatten, and from Mountbatten to the prime minister.’

‘And from Macmillan to Kennedy.’

‘Yes. I can see that.’

Rupert sat in silence, pondering. Stephen went into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee.

‘Tell me, Eugene,’ said Rupert at last, ‘isn’t an initiative of this sort unusual for a man in your position?’

‘I think so, yes.’

‘You must be a very ambitious man.’

‘Ah, I see. You think I do this for my own glory.’ He turned and called to Stephen in the kitchen. ‘Am I a vain man, Stephen?’

‘Vain as a peacock,’ Stephen called back.

Ivanov laughed.

‘In my squadron,’ he said, ‘in the Black Sea fleet, I was graded the top of my artillery class. The number one. I was handpicked to join the Academy of the Soviet Army. I received an honorary gold medal. So yes, I have a high opinion of myself. But let me also tell you about my father. He fought on the Valdai in ’41. He was awarded the highest combat decorations,
the Order of Lenin, and the Order of the Red Banner. But he was very badly wounded, and sent back to us in Sverdlosk. I was fifteen years old. I saw how war had turned him into an old man. He died only a few years later. Because of that, even though I wear a uniform and am a patriotic citizen, I hate war. I fear war. And I will do all in my power to prevent it.’

Stephen came in with a tray of coffee.

‘Wouldn’t that be something?’ he said. ‘I can see the headlines now: “Men of Goodwill Save the World.”’

‘There’ll be no headlines,’ said Ivanov. ‘The leaders will take the credit.’

‘So describe to me,’ said Rupert, ‘the kind of traffic that will pass over this bridge of yours, that will save the world.’

‘I will give you an example,’ said Ivanov. ‘A Soviet missile shoots down an American spyplane that enters Soviet airspace. The American public demands reprisals. The Soviet leadership threatens to attack the base of the spyplane. The American military pushes for a pre-emptive attack. The rhetoric on both sides becomes more belligerent. Through our bridge we communicate that the aggressive words are all for the maintenance of national prestige. There will be no attacks. The American president is able to restrain his generals. So the incident passes.’

‘Well,’ said Rupert after a pause. ‘That’s all very interesting.’

‘We have a deal?’

At this point Pamela came in, carrying a brown paper package.

‘Oh, hello, Rupert,’ she said. ‘Are you having your secret meeting?’

‘Very secret,’ said Ivanov, pointing out of the window. ‘See? No car. I gave my escort the slip, as you say.’

‘Is it all right if I go and lie down in Christine’s room?’ Pamela said to Stephen. ‘I’m feeling really done in. I can’t face slogging all the way out to Brook Green.’

‘Go ahead,’ said Stephen. ‘I’ve no idea where Christine is.’

Pamela gave them all a faint wave and left. Rupert rose.

‘Let’s keep in touch,’ he said, shaking Ivanov’s hand. ‘You interest me very much. Who knows what the future will bring?’

André arranged for Pamela to be driven down to his house in the country by a friend of his called Bobby Marchant. Bobby and Charlotte, his girlfriend or wife, were to be weekend guests too. Pamela had understood that the weekend was to be André and herself alone, and that in accepting the invitation she had tacitly agreed to sleep with him. Now she was not so sure. She was nervous about the prospect of her first sexual experience; both excited and apprehensive; but most of all she wanted it over and done with.

Bobby drove a Bentley convertible. He was big and handsome, with dark swept-back hair and a broad chest like a rugby forward, which it turned out he had been at school. Charlotte was small and blonde, and more or less asleep, curled up on the car’s back seat.

‘She had a very late night,’ said Bobby, smiling, showing excellent white teeth. ‘She’ll be fine in an hour or two.’

Pamela got in the front seat beside Bobby, and he drove off through a maze of London streets, over Putney Bridge. As they went they talked about André.

‘Cleverest chap I’ve ever met,’ said Bobby. ‘Best friend a man could have.’

‘Were you at school with him?’

‘Not school, no. We met at Oxford.’

‘I’m in a terrible muddle about André’s nationality. He’s Belgian, isn’t he?’

‘Probably. I think his dad’s Belgian. His mother’s English, very top-drawer. She’s Lady Tillemans, by the way. You’ll meet her. Very unusual woman. She lives at Herriard.’

Herriard was their destination. Pamela had thought it was the name of a village. Now it sounded like a house.

‘Are his parents divorced?’

‘Not divorced, as far as I know. Detached, more like. But they have so many houses, and move about so much, I don’t see how anyone could ever know.’

‘Everyone seems to be so fearfully rich. It makes my head spin.’

‘All the Tillemans are rich. I think they may be the richest family in Europe, I’m not sure. But André never flashes it about. I don’t think he cares a rap about money. All he spends it on is art.’

He threw her a glance.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen his collection?’

‘No.’

‘Quite something.’

‘I think André almost wishes he wasn’t rich,’ said Pamela.

‘You could be right. But I’ll tell you what, Herriard’s a nice place. You’ll see, you get well looked after there. It takes money to be a good host.’

‘It takes money for most things,’ said Pamela with a sigh.

‘You don’t need to worry,’ said Bobby. ‘A girl as gorgeous as you shouldn’t need to pay for a thing. André’s a lucky fellow to have you.’

Pamela wasn’t at all sure that André did have her. Perhaps by the end of the weekend her status would be clearer.

‘So where do your people come from?’ said Bobby.

‘Sussex.’

‘Do you know the Egremonts?’

‘No,’ said Pamela. ‘We’re not at all grand. My stepfather sells wine.’

‘Oh, really? Where?’

‘It’s called Caulder & Avenell, in St James.’

‘I know the place. Good business, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘What do you do, Bobby?’

‘I work for a bank. I persuade people to buy things for more than they’re worth, and sell things for less than they’re worth.’

‘Why would anybody do that?’

‘Ignorance. Greed. Vanity.’

‘But you don’t have any of that?’

‘I have all of it.’

He grinned at her. Pamela found herself liking him.

‘So who’s the girl asleep in the back?’

‘The girl asleep in the back is my wife. We’ve been married four months.’

‘Congratulations.’

Herriard turned out to be both a village and a house. The house was set in a park down a long winding drive. It was a classic early nineteenth-century gentleman’s residence, free from the usual Victorian additions, set on a slight rise, overlooking grounds that, according to Bobby, had been laid out by Humphrey Repton.

André himself came out to greet them. He was wearing a jersey and casual trousers, but still looked stylishly elegant. While Bobby roused Charlotte from the back seat, André kissed Pamela chastely on one cheek.

‘I’m so happy you’ve come,’ he said.

Commonplace words, but he held her eyes as he said them, and spoke as if he meant it. He then led her into the house to meet his mother.

Lady Tillemans was in a back pantry, cutting the long stalks off a heap of dahlias. She was a tall woman with greying hair pinned up in a bun, and a gravely beautiful face like her son’s. She wore a dark-green apron and wielded a pair of secateurs.

‘Mummy, this is Pamela.’

‘How good of you to come,’ said Lady Tillemans, not pausing in her work. Her voice was low, almost masculine. ‘Aren’t we lucky with the weather?’

André then led Pamela upstairs and along a passage to her bedroom. The room was pretty and feminine, with pink toile de Jouy curtains. The wide bed had a quilted counterpane embroidered with roses. There was a tall wardrobe, and a dressing table with a mirror on the wall above it.

‘You should be comfortable here. The bathroom’s across the passage.’

‘It’s lovely,’ said Pamela.

‘I’ll leave you to sort yourself out. Come downstairs when you’re ready. No rush.’

Left alone, Pamela unpacked her overnight bag and puzzled over what to wear now, and what to wear for dinner, and what to expect later. Would André sleep with her tonight? And if so, where? He had shown her to a room of her own, not to his bedroom; but this was his mother’s house, and presumably the decencies had to be observed. On the other hand, she could have misread the signals. Just because he moved in the same circles as Christine and Mandy did not mean he shared their appetite for promiscuity.

Then she remembered the man at the party who said to her, ‘Do you fuck?’ This was André’s world. Her instincts, she was sure, were not deceiving her.

That left the question of when she should insert the Dutch cap. Not at the last minute. She shuddered at the picture of herself breaking away from an intimate embrace to struggle with
the spring-lined rubber and the cream. It must be done ahead of time. Teddy Sugden had set a limit of eight hours. It was now coming up to five in the afternoon. She had no way of knowing how late they might stay up. Best to wait.

She put on a simple cotton frock, and hung up her blue silk for later.

She came down to find Lady Tillemans arranging her flowers in the big drawing room.

‘I think they’re playing tennis,’ she said. ‘I expect they’re hoping you’ll go and admire them.’

She gave Pamela a keen appraising look as she said this.

‘Then I’d better not let them down,’ Pamela said.

‘Oh, no,’ replied Lady Tillemans. ‘We must never let the boys down.’

Pamela laughed, presuming this to be said jokingly, but Lady Tillemans did not laugh.

‘You’ll find the court beyond the stables,’ she said.

Pamela went out by a side door and across an empty stable block. The late afternoon sun lay golden on the grey stone of the buildings. Beyond the stables was a tennis court surrounded by a high wire fence. André and Bobby, both in whites, were playing hard. Bobby was excellent, which Pamela would have expected. The surprise was André. He was slighter than Bobby, and his serves lacked Bobby’s raw power, but he was fast and accurate. It became clear that he was winning.

As they changed ends they turned and briefly saluted her, raising their racquets. Then they resumed play with fierce concentration. Pamela sat in the warm sun and watched them. She made no attempt to follow the score. Instead she let her eyes linger over their leaping bodies, over their long bare legs and sweeping arms. André graceful and beautiful, Bobby muscular and very male. She had never seen a man entirely naked.

They came to the end of the set and stopped at last. Pamela clapped. André had won. Both were sweating and happy.

‘I let him win,’ said Bobby to Pamela. ‘Never show a man up in front of his girl.’

Pamela liked Bobby for that.

‘Quick hose down,’ said André, ‘then I’ll show you the park.’

‘I’ll go and rouse Charlotte,’ said Bobby. ‘I swear that girl could sleep for England.’

André re-emerged in a white open-neck shirt and white linen trousers, in honour of the golden evening.

‘You look fresh as a daisy,’ said Pamela. Then, annoyed with herself for saying something so obvious, ‘What is it that’s so fresh about daisies anyway?’

They strolled arm-in-arm down a grassy walk between high beeches to what had once been a sunken garden. It had been allowed to grow wild, but in a discreetly managed way. The stone pavers and low walls were overrun with acanthus and ox-eye daisies and soft-pink rock roses. At one end there was an open-fronted pagoda. They stood in its shade and looked back up the handsome vista to the main house.

‘It’s a lovely place, André,’ said Pamela.

He took her in his arms and kissed her briefly and lightly on her lips.

‘I’ve never seen anyone as lovely as you,’ he said. ‘I can’t take my eyes off you.’

‘You don’t have to,’ she said, smiling prettily. ‘I won’t wear out.’

‘How do you like Bobby?’

‘I like Bobby very much. He seems to me to be very straightforward.’

‘More so than me?’

‘Much more. You’re not straightforward at all. You’re’ – she searched for a word – ‘enigmatic.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t mean to be.’

‘Then tell me more about yourself.’

‘What would you like to know? My age? My inside leg measurement?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘I’m thirty-two. That also happens to be my inside leg measurement.’

‘As you grow older will your legs grow longer?’

‘We shall have to see,’ he said.

‘And you’ve never married?’

‘Not so far.’

‘Why is that?’

‘My darling girl,’ he said, ‘surely you don’t need to ask? I’m a spoilt child. You must blame my mother.’

‘You don’t seem like a child to me. You seem like the most grown-up person I know.’

‘Ah. You’ve spotted my secret. Beneath this debonair appearance, I’m actually over a thousand years old.’

They walked back across the sunken garden, back up the beech avenue.

‘As well as blaming your mother,’ said Pamela, ‘I hope you thank her for all she’s given you.’

‘Yes, of course,’ he said. Then after a pause, ‘But one can be given too much.’

‘Money, perhaps,’ said Pamela. ‘I was meaning love.’

‘One can be given too much love,’ said André.

‘I don’t see how,’ said Pamela. ‘It seems to me that the more love anyone’s given, the better.’

André said nothing to this. He seemed to be pondering the point.

To provoke him, Pamela said, ‘But I expect, being a man, you don’t believe in love.’

‘On the contrary,’ he replied. ‘I believe in love, as you put
it. But my mother – does she love me? There’s a kind of love that’s more than love. She lives for me. My happiness is her happiness.’

Pamela hardly knew how to respond. She understood that André was confiding in her, but was he proud of this strange love or burdened by it?

‘I have no secrets from her,’ André continued. ‘To her, nothing I do can ever be wrong. She never judges me. All she asks is that I never close the door between us.’