Pride and Avarice

by Nicholas Coleridge

  Outside his immediate family, Ross noticed how few people made any reference to his marital difficulties. At work, even his closest colleagues avoided any allusion, not wanting to intrude on the Boss’s private life; at Chawbury, the phone hardly rang, their neighbours worried about putting their foot in it. Of their friends, the only one who made contact was Serena who left a message on BT callminder: ‘Look, Ross, I saw all that stuff in the Mail. I don’t know how accurate it is—probably complete balls—but if you’re around this weekend and want to come over for supper, give us a bell. It’ll just be Nigel and me and Ollie in the kitchen, totally casual.’ Grateful for the company, Ross took her up on the offer and felt loads better for it. Serena produced a chicken casserole from the Aga and mashed potatoes, and he sank several glasses of Rioja and the world began to feel a better place. It was his first visit to the Hardens’ cottage, he hadn’t appreciated quite how modest it was or how tight they were for money. Nigel hadn’t had a proper job for six years and, aside from Serena’s intermittent fees as a decorator, they lived on air. Nigel’s most recent venture, selling water coolers to friends for their kitchens, had disappointed expectations, and he was now selling school fee schemes on commission. After supper, the four of them sat in a row on the sofa and watched an Indiana Jones video, with a duvet over their knees for cosiness and warmth. Ollie had seen the movie so many times he knew the dialogue by heart and spoke along in sync. He was a very nice kid, Ross decided.

  Visits to Serena’s cottage soon became Ross’s sole weekend respite from work. He drove over to watch sport on Sky with Ollie and Nigel, or DVDs with Serena, and when the weather improved to play swingball and badminton with Ollie in the back garden. The normality of these visits helped keep him sane, he was eternally grateful for them and for the fact Serena never questioned him about the Dawn situation unless he first brought it up himself. Since the turbulent afternoon when he’d discovered her in the lay-by and delivered her back to her car, Serena had never made any further overture to him. He sensed, however, that her life with Nigel was unhappy.

  Once, on a hot summer’s afternoon when he’d gone inside to fetch a drink, the telephone in the Hardens’ cottage started ringing and Ross picked it up.

  ‘Serena?’ a man’s voice asked.

  ‘Serena’s outside on the patio. Who shall I say is calling?’

  The caller cut himself off.

  Afterwards, Ross thought he’d recognised the voice as Miles. It was oddly unsettling.

  Alone at Chawbury for the weekend, as so often these days, Miles concluded women are unfathomable. Certainly one woman in particular, and that was Serena.

  He had been ringing her several times a week, leaving messages on her mobile and also on the landline. Sometimes she returned his calls, but generally not, and always with excuses for not meeting up. It was almost as if she was giving him the brush-off.

  In his confidence and arrogance, Miles found it impossible to credit. Logically, it made no sense. There she was, barely a penny to her name, living in a poky grooms’ cottage on the Mountleighs’ charity, with a loser of a husband and no prospects. And here was he, suddenly available, rich and attractive with everything going for him, and she was refusing to bite. Either she’d lost her marbles or there was someone else sniffing around. Last time he’d called, a man had picked up the phone and it wasn’t Nigel. What’s more, Miles had a suspicion about who it had been.

  Prowling crossly around the Manor, his pleasure in the place was further undermined with each passing weekend. Stefani the New Zealand housekeeper had been given her marching orders but her replacement was, if anything, worse. This time they’d gone for an English one, Angie, a single mother with toddler in tow. The toddler, Bethany, trailed round the house behind her mum while she did her housework, covering every surface with sticky little fingers and had already broken two porcelain snuff boxes. Only that morning, Miles stepped out of bed and trod on a piece of Lego in his bare feet, clearly dropped by Bethany. The food Angie served up was inedible. When Miles complained, she said she wasn’t accustomed to cooking from fresh and couldn’t she provide Freeza Mart ready meals, since he was on his own.

  Increasingly, he found himself brooding over Dawn’s coup in bagging Lord Pendleton, which had to be the least expected, least welcome development. Miles couldn’t fathom what James saw in her, and disliked his subservient role in handling their PR in the newspapers. Already he had endured several long telephone conversations with Dawn, listening to her complaints about press intrusion and counselling her about what and what not to say. He made several calls on her behalf to editors to pull derogatory features they’d been planning about her, when secretly he’d have loved them to run. God, he could have told them a thing or two about Dawn, the calculating social mountaineer.

  Was it really possible James would go through with it and marry her? Surely he’d come to his senses. Miles longed to tell it to him straight, to pull no punches, but on the couple of occasions he’d been limbering up to do so, something in James’s manner made him back off. Instead, he found himself obliged to make himself pleasant to Dawn and pretend he was delighted about everything. James made it clear he wanted Dawn to accompany him to every social function as if she was already his wife, and requested Straker Communications ensure she was included by name on every invitation. When the Queen toured the Chelsea Flower Show and visited the woodland garden sponsored by Pendletons plc, it was Dawn who greeted Her Majesty with Lord Pendleton and escorted her and the Duke of Edinburgh around the plot.

  It occurred to Miles that if anyone was going to become the next Lady Pendleton, Davina would have been a far more appropriate candidate. In fact, in many ways, it would have been the perfect solution, cementing his ties with James for all time and, of course, solving the problem of a divorce settlement. If she’d left him for a Pendleton, there would surely be no question of a pay-off.

  Not for the first time, Miles felt his wife had badly let him down.

  59.

  ‘Davina? Miles.’

  Her husband’s voice down the telephone made her jump. She had hardly exchanged one word with him in months.

  ‘I think I left my dress studs in Holland Park Square,’ Miles said. ‘I need them tonight for a dinner. I’m coming round to collect them.’

  Davina felt a rush of panic. She’d been painting at her easel in the kitchen: a view from the window of the communal garden. ‘Ok … when were you thinking of coming exactly?’

  She could hear Miles consulting his chauffeur, Makepiece, in the background. ‘We should be there in fifteen minutes, traffic permitting,’ he told her.

  Davina looked round the kitchen in dismay. The place wasn’t in any state to receive him. Normally, she’d have spent several hours preparing for her husband’s return, most of the day in fact. She scanned the room, seeing today’s and yesterday’s Daily Mail open on the table, plates from lunch uncleared, a coffee cup draining by the sink. Next to the back door an umbrella was propped against the wall, and a pair of her outdoor shoes on the mat. Miles hated shoes not put away in their proper places.

  All her familiar feelings of rising panic came to her. Oh God, the hall! None of the lights were switched on upstairs, and there were several more pairs of shoes underneath the hall table. And then she noticed her hands covered with paint and she’d never be able to scrub it off before he got there.

  She began madly rushing about the house, but then, just as abruptly, stopped. No, this was too much. There were separated, this was her house, her home. She didn’t need to worry any more. She exhaled, caught her reflection in a mirror and almost laughed at her audacity and bravery. She was damned if she was tidying up for him. Instead she put the kettle on, ran a comb through her hair and felt, for the first time, that she was a free woman.

  The doorbell rang and before she could answer it she heard a key in the lock. Miles had kept his key to the front door. He entered the hall, noticed the jumble of shoes on the floor, the lack of lights, swi
tched on a lamp and sniffed. The house smelt beautiful, of fresh flowers and furniture polish. Not musty like Chawbury. It smelt how Chawbury used to smell, before.

  Davina called up, ‘I’m downstairs in the kitchen. The kettle’s just boiled. Have you time for a cup of tea?’

  ‘Er, maybe. I’ll find the studs first.’

  He went upstairs to his old dressing room. It was a lot less tidy than it used to be, with Davina’s clothes and old magazines and books lying around, and she had hung up some of her own new watercolours in the spaces where he’d removed their better paintings to Mount Street. The watercolours looked quite good there, he had to admit. In their bedroom there was another jug of spring flowers.

  Retrieving his studs, he went downstairs to the kitchen. Davina’s appearance startled him. She was wearing a painting smock covered in paint splats, and the kitchen was disturbingly messy. He noticed her hands which were a disgrace, like she’d been fingerpainting. He straightened up a picture on the wall above the fireplace. Davina looked younger than he remembered. Scruffy, certainly, but definitely younger. And annoyingly carefree.

  Davina was feeling suddenly nervous, alone with her husband for the first time since Laetitia’s funeral. She kept thinking of the vile letters they’d been sending each other through their respective solictors, and the wounding, unjust things he’d said about her. She wondered whether she should kiss him hello, and decided best not.

  Instead, she said, ‘I’ve made you Earl Grey. I hope that’s still what you like?’

  ‘Actually I don’t think I’ve got time,’ Miles replied, sounding uncommonly flustered. ‘I need to be changed and at the Dorchester in under an hour.’

  He had seen more than enough already.

  60.

  ‘Are you happy darling? You’d tell me if you weren’t?’ Dawn was mixing James a drink in the first-floor drawing room of their Cadogan Square flat.

  ‘Very happy. No complaints whatever,’ replied her lover, wincing slightly at being asked such a direct and personal question. A low evening sun sent bright shafts through the nine sash windows and onto forty impeccably hung oil paintings. Dawn lowered the blinds to protect the Bacons, Hodgkins and Frank Stellas. This wonderful room, laterally converted across three first-floor apartments, sometimes seemed more like an art gallery than a home, and came with awesome responsibilities. Hardly a day went by without an overseas curator, art historian or expert from an auction house requesting to see the pictures, and Dawn quickly learnt to be selective or they’d never have got any one-on-one time together at all.

  Sitting in his favourite chair, watching Dawn realign the magazines and auction catalogues on the coffee table, James felt he was a fortunate man indeed. Little by little, his grief over Laetitia had abated, and he knew this owed everything to Dawn. Her arrival miraculously put an end to the disruption and desolation of his wife’s death. He still missed Laetitia deeply but, if he were honest, there had lately been a blurring between the old and new regimes. It could almost be said to be business as usual. Looking at her now, it could have been Laetitia sitting there. They dressed very similarly and Dawn was sipping a Dubonnet and soda which had been Laetitia’s own favourite drink. She even smelt like Laetita, wearing the same scent, and lit the same rose-fragranced candles in the bathroom. James was no expert, but he could almost swear Dawn’s hair colour had turned more like his wife’s.

  And, of course, it was wonderful having someone to organise his life again and keep in touch with his office. Dawn was awfully good at it, just as Laetitia had been, handling those awkward conversations with chefs and gardeners that James dreaded. Dawn was more formal with staff than Laetitia, James noticed, saying, ‘Lord Pendleton wants you to do such-and-such,’ and ‘Lord Pendleton would like you to bring the car round to the front immediately,’ which was laying it on a bit thick, but she’d learn. The previous weekend when they’d been flying out to Venice for the Biennale, Dawn had become stressed in the queue to check-in and complained when some economy passengers were looked after ahead of them. ‘Excuse me,’ Dawn had said. ‘Lord Pendleton and I are travelling in first. I think we have priority.’ James calmed her down and apologised to everyone, but it embarrassed him. Next weekend they were off to Salzburg for the music.

  Dawn’s passion for classical music grew all the time, and she already talked about continuing Laetitia’s charity work bringing cultural events to inner-city schools. She was planning on holding her first committee meeting in the library at Longparish Priory at some time in the autumn.

  James was impressed by her single-minded fervour for the higher things in life. Just occasionally, he wished she could be less inflexible about it all. When he asked to see the musical Billy Elliot as his birthday treat, Dawn was discouraging and took him to the Royal Festival Hall to listen to Mozart instead.

  In Greg’s opinion, the democratic process was getting way out of hand. He had been as good as told by his mates at Millbank the seat was his for the asking, but this was the third weekend of the selection process and it was dragging on and on, with no end in sight. He was fed up being cross-questioned by self-important Droitwich borough councillors, who seemed to expect him to be impressed by them and banged ad infinitum about local politics, as if he cared. He wanted to say, ‘For fuck’s sake, Tony and Gordon want me to have this seat. What is your problem, comrades? It’s going to happen, so stop pissing about.’

  He was fed up staying at the bed and breakfast run by the constituency agent’s sister. They’d been given the same bedroom three Saturdays in a row and Greg had come to despise the pink acrylic bedcover, the corn dolly in the fireplace, the paper-thin walls and two different patterned wallpapers on opposite walls. Not to mention the breakfast ritual with a choice of tinned juices, pineapple or tomato, followed by Ricicles or Freeza Mart Flakes and finally the heaving Full English. Greg would have moved to the big Edwardian hotel on the main square which looked a lot plusher, but Mollie thought it’d be impolite and prejudice his chances with the committee.

  Mollie, needless to say, hadn’t put a foot wrong all through the process. Whenever Greg threatened to say something cutting—like when the Mayor banged on about what a diamond bloke John Prescott was, and how he’d always had this sneaking respect for Mrs Thatcher despite him being a lifelong Labour man—Mollie headed him off and made things ok. To his amazement, Mollie genuinely seemed to connect with these people and chatted away about their kids, local schools and hospitals. The delivery of state education and health were two of Greg’s buzztopics—he’d helped develop party policy on ‘the knowledge economy’ going forward—but that didn’t mean he wanted to hear how Mandy and Darren were coping with their GCSEs or about the waiting list for hernia ops in Droitwich General Hospital.

  As he’d predicted before their wedding, Mollie’s job as a state sector teacher was playing brilliantly with the committee. One of them was a headteacher herself, and Greg quickly antagonised the contrary old bat, but Mollie was winning her round with staff-room banalities and agreeing with her how Ofsted’s league tables (one of Greg’s pet enthusiasms) were demoralising under-resourced schools. When the chair of the committee asked him a difficult question about his experience of ‘disenfranchised local kids, you coming from London and having no kids yourself,’ it was Mollie who had chimed in, reminding the committee Greg had been born and raised in the West Midlands and how both Greg and she came from broken families, their parents having split up, so they could easily empathise with people in similar situations. And then Greg, who seldom mentioned his connection to Ross or Freeza Mart, gave an emotional speech about his dad’s commitment to providing cheap food for decent hardworking socialist families, and how he’d persuade Freeza Mart to pay for the refurbishment of the local swimming baths if he was given the opportunity to represent the constituency. At the end of the session everyone applauded and Mollie said afterwards how brilliant he’d been, and told him she loved being married to such an inspirational idealist.

  On the t
rain back to London, having secured the nomination and celebrating with wine in the buffet carriage, Mollie felt wonderfully fulfilled and happy, and amorously suggested to the prospective Member of Parliament for Droitwich and Redditch they should consider starting a family of their own.

  ‘No way,’ Greg replied. ‘I’ve got a constituency to nurse now. I’m going to need your total support every weekend meeting the voters. We won’t have any time for kids.’

  61.

  ‘This may sound strange,’ Dawn told Serena as they sat together on the terrace at Longparish Priory drinking mid-morning coffee, ‘but I already feel I’ve lived here for years. I feel so settled. Though there’s so much that wants doing. I’ve been telling James, there’s so much untapped potential for the estate.’

  Serena was fascinated to see her friend for almost the first time in eight months. Dawn did, indeed, look fully at ease in her new life as the de facto chatelaine of the Pendleton seat. Where once she had been awed by her predecessor and by the unattainable perfection of everything she undertook, Dawn now regarded Laetitia and her legacy with less tolerance. As she became more familiar with the set-up, she identified guest bedrooms, and particularly bathrooms, that urgently needed updating, and found herself surprised Laetitia had let things slide. Serena was already working with Dawn on several new schemes.

  ‘If you could bring us a little more warm milk, Lagdon,’ Dawn instructed her butler. ‘And Mrs Harden might like to be offered an Elizabeth Shaw mint.’

  ‘No chocolates, I mustn’t,’ Serena said quickly. ‘I’m watching my weight.’

  ‘One does have to be vigilant,’ Dawn agreed. ‘James has put on a little weight too. I blame myself, I’ve been feeding him up. So I’ve told chef to exclude cream from every dish.’