Sensible Life (33 page)

“But it’s still dark.”

“There’s a moon. Go on, it won’t be very far.”

“Really? D’you mean—”

“Yes, go on.” She waved him on and stood watching the car lights twist through trees as the track led downhill. If I had not been asleep, she thought, I would know how far I am from the nearest village. I could go now, turn round and go, but I can’t, my suitcase is in the car. She started to walk.

The house squatted black in the moonlight with silver eyes. Standing on the grass of an unkempt lawn, hearing the sea at the foot of the valley and the brush and creak of trees in the wood, she listened, hearing too the click of the car’s engine cool where Hubert had left it, its door swinging open in the quiet. The chocolate had made her thirsty but she was loath to disturb Hubert; she felt de trop. A stream trickling from a gravelled gully at the side of the house fell from pool to pool stepped down the slope into a wood. She squatted, cupped her hands in the reflection of her face and drank.

“Come with me.” Hubert took her hand, still wet from the pool, and led her in through a door which opened immediately into a stone-flagged room where she breathed in years of woodsmoke. “Look.” He pointed to a Regency mirror above the mantelshelf. Stuck round the trim was a collection of postcards arranged in order of date. “Expect me sooner or later,” read the messages in English, German, Italian, French, Dutch, and pasted in the middle one bearing a message in Russian. “And this,” Hubert whispered, shining the torch close to the glass. “Can you read it?” Traced in the dust on the glass Flora was able to make out the word “Welcome.”

“Makes me look a proper Charlie, a perfect fool,” said Hubert. “I thought I was being so funny; what possessed me to be so crass?”

Flora said, “The one in Russian says, ‘May you be happy and blest.’ Something like that. The spelling is all haywire, of course.”

Hubert shone the torch in her face. “So you
cheated
?” There was anger and relief in his voice. “You deceived me?”

Flora pushed the torch aside; it seemed to her then that there had always been an element of deception in their relationship. “We don’t need that,” she said, “it’s getting light.”

Hubert said, “I don’t think the welcome was for me, do you?”

Flora said, “I think it was for both of you.”

“I certainly hope so.” Hubert shook off remorse. “I should hate to think I contributed to his demise.”

“You wished him dead,” said Flora matter-of-factly, “and now he is.”

“Only,” Hubert prevaricated, “because he would not make friends. If he had, it would have been quite different.”

Flora said, “Might have been,” sceptically.

Hubert laughed. “To be honest, what I used to want was to be invited to stay, to bath in a bathroom with six baths. It sounded so exotic. But this morning, oh gosh it must be yesterday, the solicitor told me half the house had been burned down and the baths—”

“Five of them are dug into the slope, transformed into pools, I was looking at them when you came out just now—rather fun.”

For a moment Hubert felt he could throttle her for cheating him of part of his discovery. “Tait told me something—oh—”

“What? What did he tell you?”

Hubert began to laugh. “He reminded me that Pengappah is entailed on my male heir. Perhaps,” said Hubert, chuckling, “we’d better look sharp, get married and beget.”

Flora said, “You are a swine,” and hit him.

When the quarrel stopped Hubert held Flora in his arms, but she said, “I must get away. Where’s my suitcase? I should never have come, never!”

“Darling, I was joking.” He stroked her hair. “I’m sorry, so sorry. Don’t let’s quarrel, please. Look, it’s light, it’s Christmas. Happy Christmas.”

She said, “All right, but I can’t marry you. I can’t explain. I’m sorry about it, but Happy Christmas.”

Hubert said, “Come and explore the house with me,” and surprised himself wishing Cosmo was with them.

C
OMING DOWN TO BREAKFAST
Milly viewed the Christmas tree in the hall. Cosmo and Mabs, Nigel, Henry and Tashie had decorated it the previous day. It was beautiful, silver and gold with white candles, a far cry from the jolly but glaring arrangements that had been the genre of nursery and schooldays, when every colour of the rainbow had jumbled so thickly on the tree it had been almost impossible to see a pine needle. Their parcels under the tree were sophisticated, artful wrappings of pale blues and pinks tied with gold and silver ribbon. She could recognise her own contributions in the glaring reds, greens and yellows she was used to using. Perhaps, thought Milly with nostalgia, we shall revert to bumptious vulgarity as the grandchildren grow?

“Happy Christmas,” she said, opening the dining-room door. “Happy Christmas.” She kissed her husband. They had kissed already when Molly’s successor, Bridgid, brought their morning tea, a kiss rasped against Angus’ bristles. Now he was shaved her kiss lingered on his sweet-smelling weather-beaten skin. “Happy Christmas, my darlings.” She sat down. “Is this my post? What a heap of last-minute cards; people do cut things fine. I
do
enjoy Christmas.” She looked round the table at her family, and Tashie and Henry so close they almost counted as family, as did Hubert and Joyce, habitual visitors but absent this year. “I popped into the nursery on my way, the Nannies are already trying to contain the times’ excitement.” Round the table Milly’s darlings gave her cheerful greetings as they opened their letters, or ate their breakfasts.

Cosmo brought his mother coffee. “What can I get you, Ma?” He kissed her cheek.

“I think I’ll look at my post first.” Milly sorted through letters. “What is this? And this?” she exclaimed, discovering two parcels tied with ribbons. “A mystery. No name on them.”

“Presents extra for an extra special wife.” Angus beamed as Milly flushed with pleasure. “Open them,” he said, pouting out his moustache. She was a fine woman, he thought, watching her untie the parcels, as fine as she had been at eighteen, the darling of his heart. He would have liked to voice this thought but was inhibited by the presence of his children, who were exchanging surreptitious smiles. Come to think of it, he had never actually called her the darling of his heart; would she laugh if he did?

Struggling with tight knots, Milly exclaimed, “Oh darling, you shouldn’t,” and “Floris, my absolute favourite,” and “Honestly, Angus, how could you? Fortnum’s chocolate truffles. What about my figure?”

Angus was delighted by the success of his parcels. “Your figure suits me as it is.”

Milly said, “What a cheat to spring such a surprise. My mingy contributions are under the tree. What a darling you are.” Nigel, catching Mabs’ eye, hoped that their union would be as affectionate in twenty years’ time; Henry, infected by the atmosphere, kissed Tashie; Cosmo, reaching for the toast rack, experienced a twinge of loss, wishing he had Hubert to keep him company.

Milly began opening her letters. “Cards, cards, there are always some from people I forget.” She sipped her coffee. “Ah, Rosa, and her good news! Felix has a son. I’d forgotten he was expecting when we were told last week.”

“Felix?” Mabs raised an eyebrow. “Felix?”

“His wife, silly. Oh dear, a card from Felicity Green, I never send her one. And look at this, from your dressmaker, Mabs. I don’t go to her these days.”

“A hint that you should?” suggested Tashie.

Angus, looking up from bacon and egg, said, “Touting.”

Milly said, “Hum, well, perhaps. Who do we know in India? I don’t recognise the writing.”

“Try opening it.” Cosmo reached for the marmalade. “Pass the butter, Nigel.”

Milly slit the envelope. “Vita Trevelyan. Who is Vita Trevelyan?”

“Flora’s mother,” said Tashie.

“You must remember her,” said Mabs. “You couldn’t stand her.”

“What can she want? Difficult writing.” Milly looked at the letter askance.

“Try reading it,” said Henry, who was enjoying his grilled kidneys and deplored conversation at breakfast. Tashie kicked his shin to remind him that he was not in his own house.

Nigel got up to help himself to kedgeree.

“You’ll get frightfully fat if you eat so much,” said Mabs with wifely disapproval.

“Fortifying myself against Christmas lunch,” said Nigel amiably. “The more I eat, the more I can.”

Pursing her lips as she read the letter, Milly said, “My goodness, how peculiar.”

“Out loud, Ma,” suggested Cosmo.

Milly read: “‘Dear Mrs. Leigh, Forgive me for bothering you but I remember you were kind enough to have Flora to stay’” (but I did not invite her again when I should have, oh dear, oh dear, how can I have been so mean?). “‘She was to have joined us here’—here must be, yes, it’s postmarked and addressed Peshawar. Where’s that?”

“North-West Frontier,” said Angus. “No pigsticking. They hunt jackals. Good fun, I’m told.”

“Father,” said Mabs, “you digress.”

Milly read on, her voice rising on a tide of incredulity. “‘She sailed from Tilbury in early October, seen off by one of the mistresses from her school, but when our bearer met the ship at Bombay there was only her trunk with all the lovely clothes I had had made for her by the little dressmaker we all went to in Dinard that year’—I’d quite forgotten how she monopolised her—”

“Go on, Mother,” urged Mabs.

“‘We wrote to the school thinking she might have returned there’—why should she do that?—‘but they were as surprised as we are and had received no news.’—Why do tiresome people receive not get?”

“Mother—”

“‘—a letter arrived here in early December to say she does not want to come to India, she will earn her own living’—from the girl?”

“Bravo,” said Nigel. “Spunk.”

“Nigel dear, she goes on. ‘Not unnaturally, since she is only seventeen, we are concerned and would like to get in touch—we wondered whether you or any of your family had been contacted—apologies for troubling you.’ What a peculiar letter. What a strange way, oh, here she says in a postscript, even more peculiar, she seems to have left the ship in Marseilles. Good heavens, what an extraordinary—”

“White-slavers.” Nigel forked kedgeree into his mouth. “They drug and kidnap.”

“Don’t be stupid,” said Mabs. “Idiot.”

“She came to see me,” wailed Tashie. “She seemed—we were just going away for a week’s shooting. I told you, Mabs, d’you remember? I telephoned. You were in your bath.”

“She didn’t want to go to India and we did absolutely bloody nothing,” said Mabs. “Oh, God.”

“Don’t swear, Mabs, it’s ugly,” said Milly.

“Hubert, Joyce and I saw her off,” said Cosmo, “at Tilbury.”

“How did she seem?” asked Henry.

“All right.” But had she been all right?

“We were all rather jolly, cracked a bottle of champagne to wish her well. Joyce’s idea, actually.” I was drunk, thought Cosmo, and Joyce seemed to have charge of me. I was sleeping with her, wasn’t I? Why didn’t I latch on? Why didn’t I help?

“When she stayed here,” said Milly, examining Vita’s letter for nonexistent clues, “I thought she was rather—it strikes me that—well, she was quite—” (Quite what? A danger? A girl one couldn’t ask to come again in case one’s son or husband found her attractive? Which she was. Oh God, I am belittled.) “Well, my goodness, to step off the ship just like that and disappear seems strange, if not actually disreputable.”

Angus said, “Is that the telephone? It’s all right, I’ll answer it. I’m expecting a call. She seemed a sensible girl to me,” he said as he left the room.

“Nothing wrong with Father’s hearing,” said Mabs. Or mine, thought Cosmo. Listening to his father in the hall, he heard:

“Yes, my dear fellow, yes, of course, I’ll see about it, yes. Happy Chris—Goodbye.” Angus replaced the receiver. His heart was beating uncomfortably; he went to sit in the library. Why, he asked himself, had he not told Milly at the time? Nothing had happened, no need to feel guilty; since when was it wrong to give a pretty girl lunch? Nothing wrong in that. Then the second chance to tell her had come just now when Milly opened her presents. He could have made a joke of it, told her how he had been extravagant in Hardy’s—those salmon flies, the lures—told her how Flora had suggested Floris, suggested Fortnum’s, been charming at lunch, been in her own words “sensible.” Oh yes, thought Angus, the girl was sensible, sensible in the French sense. I am sixty-six, old enough to be her grandfather, but not, he thought ruefully, too old to think how beautiful it would be to get her into bed. One wouldn’t try, of course, it was only an idea, but try explaining that to Milly. “Oh bugger,” said Angus out loud. “Bugger, bugger, bugger.” He walked to the window and stared out at the winter sky.

Coming into the room Cosmo said, “Father, there’s an argument. The girls want to bring their babies to church; Mother wants you to decide.”

Re-focusing his thoughts, Angus said, “Let infant shrieks drown the Christmas message, slew the carols off course? Bloody good idea, all hell let loose, whyever not?”

His father’s tone was so belligerent Cosmo took a step backwards, but in the doorway he said, “You’ve seen her, haven’t you?”

Angus said, “Who? Certainly not. No idea.”

Cosmo said, “Thanks,” and retreated into the hall, convinced that the telephone had not rung.

F
INDING THE DOOR OPEN
Cosmo peered in; Hubert knelt with his back to him, puffing with a pair of bellows at a recalcitrant fire. The wood was damp and his measure of success small, for each time a spark crackled and pale flames licked a down draught billowed smoke in his face, making him rock back on his heels cursing. Then, suddenly, flames took hold with a hungry crackle and purred sweetly up.

Cosmo said, “Eureka. Bravely done.”

Hubert swung round. “What brings you here? How did you find the way?”

“There are such things as ordnance maps, trains, taxis and so on. I walked from the village.” Cosmo stepped inside. “Shall you not be hospitable and ask me in? I brought you a bottle of whisky. Nice,” he said, looking round. “Is Pengappah what you expected? Dreams come true? Will you show me round your estate?”

“I thought you were spending Christmas at Coppermalt,” said Hubert ungraciously.