The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets (26 page)

I don’t mean to create the
impression that Charlotte and I spent all our time swanning around London and
buying clothes, for quite apart from my lectures and endless round of essays, I
had my job with Christopher. Charlotte liked visiting me in the shop, and
Christopher became defensive and offhand in her presence, which was, I felt, a
sure-fire sign of his fascination with her. As an old Etonian he was of very
little interest to Charlotte. She said that men who had been to boarding school
never understood women, but she admired the way he ran his shop and she liked
to watch him talking to customers. She constantly fired questions at him (why
did he put that particular bowl in the window? what was the difference between
running the business in the winter and the summer? why didn’t he play music in
the shop?) until he was groaning with irritation. I wondered what Christopher
would say if he knew that Charlotte was Clare Delancy’s niece — I still hadn’t
summoned the courage to mention her to him.

For most of the week,
Charlotte was entirely at the mercy of Aunt Clare and her memoirs. During
January, Aunt Clare got into the amiable habit of inviting me over to Kensington
once a week, for tea. These teas usually. though not always, took place at
three-thirty on a Friday when she and Charlotte had finished working, and they
never went on beyond five o’clock. They were an hour and a half of pure
fascination. Her study itself remained a valuable insight into the life of a
woman who never ceased to surprise me. One of the most curious aspects of the
room was how the level of chaos — the number of books, the state of perpetual
disarray — never altered. No one ever seemed to tidy up or put anything away,
yet there was never a visible increase in dust or clutter, which gave one the
odd sensation of walking onto the same film set every week.
On The Origin of
Species
never moved from the place I had noted it in on my first visit, and
every Friday I ran my eye over the same postcard to Richard about Wootton
Bassett. As a result, the room seemed preserved in amber, which would have been
quite disconcerting were it not for the variety in atmosphere each week that
ranged from high elation at the completion of an exciting chapter
(and so
began a lifelong friendship with the art of keeping secrets
was a favourite
of mine) to bitter irritation when Aunt Clare was ‘lost for adjectives’.

‘One
can only use so many words to describe the heat of the Far East,’ she
complained one afternoon, ‘and I believe I have ransacked the English language
for every one of them.’

‘Dry,
oppressive, stifling, overwhelming?’ I suggested with all the flourish of one
who had never been east of Paris.

‘Already
used all of those,’ said Aunt Clare dismissively. ‘Except for overwhelming. I
was
never
overwhelmed. Perhaps we should make that point, Charlotte?
Despite
the intensity of the heat, I was never overwhelmed.’

Tap, tap, tap went Charlotte’s long
fingers at the typewriter. She typed enviably quickly. much faster, I am sure,
than any of the girls on the popular secretarial courses, and she rarely messed
up the manuscript with any mistakes.
Never overwhelmed,
indeed. I could
believe that, for the harder Aunt Clare worked, the younger and brighter she
looked. (Charlotte said it was all to do with the therapeutic nature of writing
one’s autobiography and that we should try it too. I said I was quite keen on
this idea but if anyone ever read it, I should age seventy years overnight out
of sheer nerves.) ‘That will do for today. Charlotte,’ Aunt Clare would say
when Charlotte started to sag. ‘Cover that machine up at once —I can’t bear to
look at it any longer — and send Phoebe in with tea.

Ah,
tea. I became as greedy as Charlotte when it came to tea in that house. There
was something about the taste of hot buttered toast with gooseberry jam in Aunt
Clare’s study that could never be replicated anywhere else. On a couple of
occasions, Harry joined us just as I was stuffing a second piece of chocolate
cake into my mouth, or reaching for a third ginger scone. He never seemed to
notice, and he never ate much himself, but boys, I have noticed, don’t get as
fanatical about sweet things as girls. The more time that I spent with Harry,
the younger he seemed to become, and I revised my view of him as having always
seemed a man. Twenty-five did not seem so jolly old after all, and although he
still refused to accept my fixation with Johnnie Ray and pop music, I realised
that like Charlotte and me he was just beginning to live. The war had scuppered
most of his teenage years, and for that I felt desperately sorry. Then, one
Thursday afternoon, Aunt Clare and Charlotte had not arrived back from a trip
to Barkers to buy more ribbon for the typewriter, and Harry and I found
ourselves alone for the first half an hour of tea. He stood by the fireplace,
smoking a cigarette, murky eyes as amused as ever. Sometimes I felt quite easy
with Harry; other times, I felt crippled with shyness.

‘How do
you find your new job?’ I asked awkwardly.

‘Quite
easily. Apparently one takes the bus to Oxford Street and walks the rest.’

‘I
meant— ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘Is
your boss a nice man?’ ‘Probably.’

‘What
do you mean?’

Harry
gave me a look. ‘Can you keep a secret?’

‘Yes.’
Who, on hearing those words, ever says no, I wondered. ‘I haven’t been into the
office once. I called up on the first day and said that I had accepted an offer
from another firm.’

‘Harry!’
I exclaimed, thoroughly shocked. ‘How on earth are you going to hide
this
one
from your mother?’

‘Oh,
she’s lost interest in me now she thinks I’m employed. Right now she’s so
gripped by getting the rip-roaring fable that is her life story into print that
I don’t think she’d notice if I grew another head. No doubt she won’t bump into
Sir Richard until Christmas, which gives me eight months to get my career in
magic off the ground. And I should warn you that I won’t listen to anything you
say. unless you wish to praise me for my enterprising cunning.’

‘Nothing
cunning about not having any money,’ I said pertly. ‘I’m playing the circuit at
weekends. That keeps me in smokes. Anyway,’ he went on, ‘I’ve always been
hopeless at maths. If I hadn’t dropped out, they would have sacked me within a
week.’

‘It
sounds as if you’ve got it all worked out.’

‘I’m a
magician; it’s in our nature to have everything worked out. How are you,
anyway? Weeping for Johnnie as usual?’

‘Oh
shut up. I don’t tease you about your obsession with the American.’

Harry
grinned. ‘Touché.
Au contraire,
you were rather helpful to me over the
American. Which brings me on to something else…’ He paused and I felt a
flutter of dread mixed with a flicker of excitement.

‘What
do you mean by that?’

‘I need
you to help me again.’

‘Oh no.
No way.’ I shook my head vigorously.

‘At
least let me explain.’ He threw the last of his cigarette into the
fire. ‘Then you can make your own mind up.’

‘I’m
not listening!’

Harry
grinned. ‘George is organising a soirée for Marina’s birthday. Nothing fancy,
just fifty close friends for dinner at the Ritz.’

‘How
terribly low key of him.’

‘Isn’t
it? It’s taking place next month so you’ve a couple of weeks to fret about it.’

‘Why
should it be of any concern to me?’

‘Because
Charlotte’s been invited. And you and I have been invited. And we’ve both
accepted.’

‘I don’t
understand,’ I said grimly. understanding perfectly. Harry gave me a pleading
grin. ‘Think about it, sweetheart.’

‘Marina
won’t want
me
there—’

‘Well,
that’s exactly the point, isn’t it? George was only too keen to make sure you
would be accompanying me so that Marina gets the message, once and for all,
that I’ve lost all interest in
her.
As far as he’s concerned, once I’m
well and truly spoken for, he has nothing else to fear. You should have read
the letter he enclosed with the invitation.
I do hope your sweet friend
Penelope can come. Marina thought her a perfect delight.’

‘It
didn’t say that!’

‘Yes it
did!’

I
digested this for a moment. ‘No. I won’t do it again. I just wont. Something in
me felt furious with him for even asking me. Harry said nothing, so I ploughed
on. ‘I still can’t quite make out where all this is heading. All I know is that
I’m the one who’s going to get hurt.’

‘You’ve
been reading too many magazines. You won’t get hurt.’ ‘Harry crossed the room
to where I was standing and stood right up close to me and irrationally. all I
could think about was how long his hair was getting. I tried to make myself a
little shorter by slouching slightly on one leg like a horse at rest. Harry,
observant as ever, laughed. ‘If only you weren’t so bloody tall,’ he groaned. ‘It’s
the only thing that makes us implausible.’

‘I don’t
see why.’ I said defensively. ‘Plenty of men like tall women.

‘Oh, I
don’t doubt that for a second,’ said Harry (confirming that he was not one of
them), ‘but there’s something very suspicious about a tall girl falling for a
shorter man.

‘I don’t
think so,’ I said. ‘Height should never be an issue in the face of true love.’

Harry
grinned. ‘You’re getting the hang of this,’ he said approvingly. Then he put
his hands on my shoulders and bowed his head in shame. ‘Call me what you like,
but I’ve got one last chance to get her,’ he said, returning to the topic in
hand. ‘She was shaken by you after the engagement party. This could push her
over the edge.’

‘Charming.
I thought you were madly in love with the girl.’

‘I am,
I am!’ he said, crossing back over to the fireplace and reaching for another
cigarette. ‘And if she marries Rogerson I’ll never forgive myself, and neither
will she.’

‘And
you honestly believe this plan will work?’

‘I know
the way her mind works. One more night of you and me together, and she’ll snap.’

‘Then
what? When she’s finished snapping?’

‘She’ll
come back to me, of course.

‘And
what about me?’

‘Well,
sweetheart, I can’t imagine that you’ll be too heartbroken to let me go. Of
course, you could pretend to be; that would be rather nice— ‘But I’ll for ever
be seen as the poor girl dumped for the rich American.’

‘I
imagine it will make you a source of great fascination to the rest of the male
species. Men love girls they can protect from the evil of a former lover.’

‘Girls
of six foot don’t tend to radiate the need for protection,’ I snapped.

‘Don’t
be so silly. You’ll seem like a beautiful baby giraffe with a broken leg. They’ll
want to nurse you back to health.’

I gave
him my best what-are-you-talking-about look, which never normally comes off I
think I did quite well this time, probably because I genuinely meant it for
once.

‘As far
as I can see, there’s nothing in this for me at all. The first time it was all
a bit of fun, but this is taking things a step too far, Harry,’ I said firmly.

‘I’ve
thought of that too.’

‘What
do you mean?’

He
lowered his voice a little. ‘You need payment this time. Something to make the
whole, horrific ordeal worthwhile.’

I was
about to open my mouth and say that nothing on earth would persuade me to think
that that was anything other than a terrible idea, but something in me paused
to listen to what he had to say next. He pulled something out of his pocket. ‘Here.’

‘What —
what are they?’ I muttered, but I knew even before I had finished asking the
question.

‘Two
tickets to Johnnie Ray at the Palladium in April. Rare as guinea pigs, I can
tell you.’

‘How
did you—’ I whispered, heart hammering, trying hard not to whoop.

‘Let’s
just say the roulette wheel, several dry martinis, a collection of rich
gamblers and a sprinkle of magic were involved. From what I’ve heard about him,
Johnnie Ray himself would be proud of me.’ He grinned. ‘I’ll leave it up to you
to tell Charlotte.’