An Absolute Scandal

by Penny Vincenzi

  Chapter 57

  DECEMBER 1990

  “Well, this is it.”

  “Yes, ’fraid so.”

  “I shall miss these,” Joel bent to kiss her breasts, “and this,” moving lower. “Take care of it all, won’t you?”

  “Of course I will. And it’s not for long. After all.”

  “It will seem long.”

  “Yes, I know. But then next time we’re together, it’ll be so different. It’ll be proper.”

  “I don’t know if I want to be properly together with you. I’ve enjoyed improper.”

  “Well, me too. But—”

  “You won’t forget about me over Christmas, will you?”

  “Probably,” she said, smiling and thinking she could never, ever forget him, even if she never saw him again; he was imprinted on her, part of her now, part of her thinking and her doing, there as she woke and talked and worked and played with her children and drove her car and cooked and shopped and drifted off to sleep at night: whether he was with her or not.

  “Well, I’ll try not to forget you,” he said. “But it won’t be easy.” She hated these times, getting up, dressing, leaving him when she longed to stay, driving home too fast, suddenly fearful for the children who she was betraying, even as she betrayed their father.

  “Love you. And thank you so, so much for my present.” It was a mobile phone; it meant they could hear each other’s voices whenever they wanted.

  “And it’ll help, maybe on the day. You can call me just as often as you like.”

  “But don’t you dare use it over Christmas.”

  “I can’t promise that, I’m afraid. Too much to ask.”

  “I won’t take it then. I’ll leave it behind.”

  “Well, that’s really sensible. Oh Debbie, I love you too. And see you on the twenty-seventh.”

  That was the day they had agreed she would return to London to join him, the day she would break the news, leaving Richard and the children to be comforted by Flora.

  “The twenty-seventh. Definitely hopefully.”

  “Don’t say that, Joel. Just—definitely.”

  “Just definitely.”

  Mr. Edmund-Jones had the white hair and almost transparent skin of the very old, and the hand he held out to her was bony and etched with large brown freckles, the nails long and yellowing. He wore striped trousers and a black jacket, and a slightly grubby Old Wykehamist tie. He smiled at her, showing some surprisingly good teeth, and gestured to the chair in front of his desk.

  “How do you do, Mrs. Fielding. Do please sit down. May I offer you some refreshment? Some tea, or perhaps coffee—we find some of our younger clients prefer coffee these days…”

  So I’m a younger client, Flora thought; the idea was at once both pleasing and intriguing.

  “I’d prefer tea,” she said, “thank you.”

  “Good, good. Mrs. Andrews, tea for two if you please, and do bring in the Dundee cake.”

  Mrs. Andrews withdrew and for a very long time there was no sign of either tea or Dundee cake; Flora wondered if she might have forgotten.

  “Well, now,” said Mr. Edmund-Jones, “I expect you have some questions for me.”

  “I do,” said Flora. “Indeed, I do. Obviously, and most important, if I don’t own Broken Bay House, who does?”

  “A trust. The beneficiary of which is your grandson,” said Mr. Edmund-Jones. “As you really should know.”

  “My—my grandson!” Flora said. Alexander, with his skinny legs and knock-knees, his floppy brown hair, and his high-pitched ten-year-old voice. How could he possibly own Broken Bay House?

  “Yes, indeed. I do apologise for not realising your husband had died.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I really should study the obituary notices. Somehow there’s never time. I’m so sorry, Mrs. Fielding. Such a charming man.”

  “Well, thank you. Yes, indeed he was. But how, why, isn’t the house mine? I don’t understand.”

  “Because you’re a female,” said Mr. Edmund-Jones.

  “But why does that mean I can’t own the house?”

  “Mrs. Fielding, Broken Bay House is a male entail, held in trust for the eldest grandson’s first grandson. I know you have a grandson, because your husband told me.”

  “Oh,” said Flora. She felt rather dizzy. “So—so what happens to the house?”

  “Well, nothing very much,” said Mr. Edmund-Jones. “Ah, Mrs. Andrews, tea. How nice. Perhaps you would be Mother, Mrs. Fielding?”

  She smiled at him rather weakly, and poured out the tea. He nodded approvingly as she added the milk.

  “So nice to see it properly done. My mother always divided people into Mifs and non-Mifs.”

  “She did?” said Flora. Any minute now a white rabbit would surely run through the office.

  “Indeed, Milk in First. Not the right way at all. Cake, Mrs. Fielding?”

  “Er, no thank you,” said Flora. The cake looked as dusty as the office.

  “Very well. Now, what did you ask me?”

  “What might happen next.”

  “As I said, nothing very much. I imagine your grandson is quite young?”

  “He’s ten.”

  “Yes, I see. Well, unless you and he are on very bad terms, I would expect him to allow you to remain there, until your demise. On his reaching twenty-one, the entail passes the house to him, subject to it passing on his death to his eldest grandson. Your grandson will be entitled to live there for his lifetime. If he dies without a grandson, it will pass to the eldest living male in the family succession.” He pulled out a file from one of his drawers.

  “It’s all in here,” he said, leafing through the tattered, yellow pages. “Fascinating story. Began with the first owner of the house, John Fielding, who had it built in 1780. John had had a bit of a ne’er-do-well son called David, a gambler, and John was afraid that he might try to sell the house at some point in the future to pay his debts. So he set up an entailed settlement cutting out David and leaving everything in trust for David’s son, John’s grandson, and thereafter to each eldest grandson, thus ensuring that the house could never be sold or bequeathed; only designated. That is what is meant by a male entail, and we as trustees hold it for your grandson.”

  “But I have to sell the house,” said Flora, slightly desperately. “I have considerable debts to Lloyd’s of London. They are insisting on it.”

  “Well, I’m afraid that is their misfortune,” said Mr. Edmund-Jones. “Lloyd’s can’t lay a finger on Broken Bay House. They will have to—what is that rather vulgar modern expression—ah yes, they will have to whistle for their money. Dreadful business, that. I have several clients who have been completely ruined by it.”

  “So—sorry to go back over this and I must seem very stupid to you, but does this mean I can stay in the house? That it can’t be taken away from me.”

  “Well, unless, as I say, you and your grandson are on bad terms. In which case, after his reaching his majority, he could ask you to leave. Insist on it, in fact. But I presume that is not the case.”

  An image rose before Flora’s eyes of Alexander curled up on the battered kitchen sofa beside her, saying sleepily, “You’re a really great granny, you know.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “No.”

  The first thing she did when she got home was pour herself a very large whiskey. Then she sat down at the telephone and dialled not Richard’s number or even Debbie’s but the Beaumonts’.

  Elizabeth answered it. “Oh, hello, Flora. How nice to hear from you. Thank you so much for your note.”

  “Not at all. Such lovely news. How are you feeling? Tired, I expect.”

  “Yes, I am a bit.”

  “Is Tilly there?”

  “No, she’s not, I’m afraid. She’s out with her friends. Is there something wrong with Boy, or—”

  “There is absolutely nothing wrong with Boy. He’s never looked better. No, I would very much like to speak to Till
y, that’s all.”

  “Well,” said Elizabeth briskly, “I could be trusted with a message, you know.”

  “Elizabeth,” said Flora, “I know this must be hugely annoying for you, but I do desperately want to tell Tilly this news myself. It’s so important to…to both of us. Perhaps you could ask her to ring me when she gets in. Will she be very long?”

  “I have no idea, I’m afraid.” Elizabeth’s tone was cool still. “But not late, no. She has to be in by ten at the latest.”

  “Then could you please ask her to ring me? As soon as you possibly can?”

  “Yes, all right,” said Elizabeth. “As soon as I possibly can.” Irritating woman, she thought, returning to her packing. She just had to control everything. But Simon had been very fond of her, and she had done a lot for Tilly. God, she was tired. She’d be lucky to stay awake until ten at this rate. Maybe she should leave a note out for Tilly, in case. It was only eight.

  And thus it was that she went to bed early, leaving a note on the hall table for Tilly; and Tilly burst into her bedroom just after ten, her eyes shining, her pale face flushed, great tears welling in her large blue eyes, and woke her as she drifted into oblivion—and now she’d have trouble getting back to sleep, bloody, bloody Flora Fielding…

  “Mummy, Mummy, the most wonderful thing. Flora can stay in her house, and Boy can stay with her! Some peculiar legal thing. Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t that just totally amazing?”

  And Elizabeth was forced to admit that it was indeed totally amazing.

  A lot of it had to be guesswork. She pieced the story together, with the help of such solid facts as Mr. Edmund-Jones was able to supply, and with her rather more intimate knowledge of William. He had certainly never mentioned a trust, but that was William, in every way. He had been quite a lot older than her, twenty-five years older, and very old-fashioned in all his attitudes. Flora, marrying him at the age of nineteen, highly unconventional herself, had been kept in the dark about many things, including his income and his financial status.

  He had loved her very much, but he had always made it plain that because she was a woman, she did not need—and indeed should not ask for—knowledge of his affairs. Just as he did not expect her to discuss her housekeeping or maternal problems with him, he did not expect to discuss his financial ones with her.

  They did not use Harris and Harris as their day-to-day solicitors; a firm in Swansea had handled all their affairs. The will had been absolutely straightforward, and everything had been bequeathed to her; he often said that he must revise it, but he had died so suddenly that any plans he might have had were not incorporated.

  She also wondered if he had not entirely trusted her when they were first married, however much he loved her. And any revelations would have become more difficult to make as the years went by, as the lack of trust had to be confessed to.

  And of course there was another explanation for a possible lack of trust, she thought soberly, staring into the darkness; she had always hoped and indeed had been fairly sure that he had never known of it, but what if he had? She felt a stab of remorse and then of fear; and then crushed them both. Set it aside, Flora, she told herself. As you did then.

  He must have planned to tell Richard at some point, but Alexander had only been four when William had died—with a suddenness that not only had shocked everyone but had removed any opportunity for the setting in order of his affairs.

  She roamed the house for a while, smiling, savouring it, savouring it remaining hers. She leaned on the gate overlooking her Meadow, and stood there a long time, careless of the cold, drinking in the great expanse of sea and sky; and then went out to the yard and told the horses. They took the news calmly. And then she went indoors and stood at the dining-room window in a state of joyful excitement, looking down at the sea and waiting impatiently for Tilly’s call.

  Tilly had been one of her first thoughts; that she and Boy need not be parted. There was no way she could have allowed Elizabeth to tell her; it was rarely granted to human beings to grant perfect happiness themselves, and she intended to make the very most of it.

  Blue was a man in love. He often wondered what on earth he had thought about or talked about before Molly Rose had been born. Lucinda, of course, and then, in descending order, his work, and his sundry expensive toys like the Ferrari and his Jet Ski; but none of them had even begun to occupy his mind in this all-consuming way. He thought of her the moment he woke up in the morning, leaping out of bed to go and gaze at her before she woke—or, more frequently, while the maternity nurse fed her or changed her, for she was an early riser—and last thing at night, as he drifted off to sleep, while listening anxiously for her cries which he was convinced the nurse wouldn’t hear.

  Lucinda could never remember being so happy. She had been warned so many times, by people in her antenatal classes, by her mother and her sister, by friends, by magazine articles—even by Mr. Clark—that she would have a letdown, that she would feel tired and sore and depressed, that she might have trouble with feeding, that she would be desperate for sleep: but she experienced none of those things. She glided through the days and indeed the weeks in a haze of absolute contentment. She recovered physically with extraordinary speed, and was going out for walks with Blue and the baby only a week after the birth, and even did some Christmas shopping—“Not that going to Harvey Nichols was exactly arduous”—and Molly Rose was absurdly well-behaved, slithering off her mother’s breast with a loud burp when she was sated and then into a deep sleep.

  She cried so rarely that when she did everyone remarked upon it, and even if she was awake, lay contentedly squinting at the mobiles which hung above her cot and her pram. Nor did she favour the behaviour pattern best known to babies of sleeping peacefully all day and commencing to scream at around six o’clock in the evening until far into the night; she lay, squinting happily, or slept peacefully on.

  She was also extremely pretty, and a few days before Christmas she did unarguably smile properly for the first time. They knew it was a smile and not wind because Lucinda screamed to Blue to come and see, and although she had stopped, she did it again quite quickly. It was the usual rather uncertain, wobbly smile, the small face almost surprised by it; but a smile it was.

  “She is clearly quite incredibly advanced,” said Lucinda, “and you are right to be so proud of her, Blue.”

  “Aren’t you proud too?” he said and, “Yes,” said Lucinda, “of course I am. Oh look—look, Blue, here it comes again!” And indeed it did, and repeatedly throughout the evening until, quite exhausted by all her efforts, Molly Rose fell asleep.

  “Isn’t that lovely? What a wonderful Christmas present,” said Lucinda. “I just don’t think I want anything else ever again.”

  “That’s a pity,” said Blue, “’cos I got you this. Better take it back then.”

  “This” was a small blue Tiffany box, tied up with a white ribbon. “Don’t you dare,” said Lucinda, snatching it from him, and then: “Oh Blue,” gazing into it at a diamond eternity ring, “Blue, I must have been terribly good in a former life to deserve you. And Molly Rose, of course.”

  Nigel was going to stay with his Norfolk relatives for Christmas; the prospect was profoundly depressing, but he could see no alternative, apart from spending it alone in his new flat.

  Once the divorce was through, he felt he could at least begin to look forward. The revenue from letting the house would be considerable. He still felt a degree of disquiet about the whole plan—it wasn’t quite the sort of thing he had been brought up to think one did, but he would be clearing over half of his debt to Lloyd’s, and whenever he felt particularly bad, he thought of poor Gillian Thompson and several of the other tragic people featured in Joel Strickland’s article, and found his conscience eased. And there was Catherine Morgan, of course: her experiences had been dreadful. Who would have dreamed that the conduct of a company that had been so generally assumed to be upright and gentlemanly could have led people into such dist
ress and, indeed, danger?

  Nigel sighed. He was doing it again—thinking of Catherine; he tried very hard to keep her out of his thoughts. And failed. She was so…so sweet. Sweet and gentle and really rather brave: leaving London and her friends, moving to a place where she knew no one, where she would have no independence, to live with what sounded like the most dreadful people: and all to ensure her children’s happiness.

  He had considered inviting her and the children up for a day before Christmas, perhaps to see a show, but every time he plucked up the courage, approached the phone even, he saw that picture of the three of them going into the house, little Caroline in that other man’s arms, and decided against it. He wasn’t risking his heart a second time.

  Leaving the house hadn’t actually been as dreadful as Elizabeth had expected. It had hurt, of course; but Simon was so much a part of that house, with all the contradictory experiences of living with him, being married to him, and it might be easier now, in some ways at least, to say goodbye to him, to accept that he was gone.

  She had seen a house that she liked very much: smaller, of course, but charming in its own way, early Victorian, in Little Venice, close to the canal, with lovely light, tall rooms, the street overhung with trees, and a quiet green garden. She could see her new life being lived there, for it was large enough for the older children to lead their lives and entertain their friends, while small enough to contain her and the baby without a sense of being surrounded with too much space. The children had all liked it, bagged rooms, staked out their territories. The rented place was all right; they would survive Christmas in it, and then in the New Year, the inquest would soon be behind them for better or for worse. They had discussed Christmas very honestly, had agreed it was just something to get through, that they could do it together.

  “I think we should go to church,” Annabel had said rather unexpectedly, “on Christmas morning, give the day a focus,” and the other two had agreed. They would have scruffy lunch, Tilly said, and supper in the evening. “Maybe even beef or something,” said Toby, “not turkey and all that.”