‘You don’t mean you came all the way here just to … just to …?’
‘Just to kiss you? Yes. Even my impatient ardour is deterred by the thought of making love in this benighted wood. Besides, there isn’t time. Tell me, my love … are you my love?’
He looked at me intently.
I was, at that moment, incapable of lying. ‘Yes. For good or ill, and I suppose it must be for ill.’
‘Don’t!’ He held me tightly. ‘I won’t let anything hurt you. Trust me.’
So I did.
‘I admit the man has talent,’ said Kit. ‘Despite my natural antipathy, I have to hand it to him. He knew you’d need a romantic gesture rather than a postcard and a box of chocolates.’
‘You needn’t tell me I was a gullible fool,’ I said. ‘I know it.’
‘I didn’t mean that. The thing is, you were already in love with him. He just had to break down your resistance. So there you were. At the beginning of an incandescent love affair. The die was cast.’
‘Yes. Before then we were just playing. Although it was heady with romance, everything that occurred before that declaration in the laurels meant comparatively little. Afterwards it seemed to me that everything important – that is to say, my ideas about myself and other people, my presumptions about the future – was substantially changed. And pain was ever present, heightening the pleasure, a sort of fixative of experience.’
‘You mean you felt guilty?’
‘I’m ashamed to admit that for some time, several weeks, I didn’t feel guilty at all. Anna seemed a hardly real figure in Burgo’s life. He rarely mentioned her name. She seemed to have nothing at all to do with me. I assumed they had some sort of understanding. That’s if I thought about her at all. At first I was so overwhelmed by feelings of … well, let’s call it infatuation, that nothing else mattered. The pain came from excessive excitement. An overdose of adrenaline. Because we couldn’t see each other often, the affair had to be carried on in my head. I must have been impossibly vague and unreachable. I drifted through the days that followed, cooking, cleaning, carrying trays in a dream, waiting for him to call, imagining what it would be like to see him again. Every minute of every hour I thought about him. When I got back to the house I found a ruined saucepan and a kitchen full of smoke. Oliver had left the bath running. He’d been so busy trying to mop up the bathroom floor with anything he could lay his hands on, including every clean towel in the linen cupboard and quite a few of the hated napkins I’d just ironed, he’d forgotten about the caramel. I didn’t feel so much as a flicker of annoyance. America and Russia could have gone to war, Africa and India have starved, Sussex might have been submerged by a tidal wave and I wouldn’t have given a damn. I only thought about Burgo. You see, I had never been in love before.’
‘And once you’d had a taste of it, it went straight to your head like wine-cup.’
‘I must be a sadly repressed sort of person.’
‘I think you’re perfectly adorable.’
I peered through the streaming window at banks of trees hanging over the road. Now the lower slopes of the mountains were clothed with green and looked more friendly, like parts of Italy. ‘We must be near Kilmuree.’
‘Four miles. I hope you brought an umbrella.’
‘It never occurred to me. I was so desperate to get out of the house without the press spotting me that I’ve probably brought all the wrong things.’
‘How did you manage it?’
‘A friend helped me. Oddly enough, she came to interview me for a newspaper.’
‘That sounds intriguing. You’ve just got time to tell me.’
FOURTEEN
Three days after Burgo’s and my love affair became carrion for the nation to peck over for the juiciest bits, I was standing in the kitchen measuring spoons of Bengers into a pan of warm milk for my mother. She had given up eating proper food, complaining that everything made her feel sick, and existed on invalidish things like Slippery Elm and eggnog with brandy. And of course sweets by the bagful. I suppose she was trying to sweeten a life that had become sour. The current craving was for coffee fondants.
‘Just a minute,’ said Kit. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt when you’ve just got going but I thought your mother had been restored to health months ago by the great Frederick Newmarch.’
‘Oh, yes. I’d forgotten I hadn’t told you about all that. The pills cured her hypothyroidism remarkably quickly. Her skin improved, her hair grew back, her voice lightened. Physically she looked better than I’d seen her for a long time. I planned to go back to London in September. Sarah said I could have my old room and my boss had agreed to have me back. And Burgo and I would be able to see more of each other, though we’d managed to meet most weeks in Sussex and occasionally I’d been able to get up to London for half a day. Of course, it was never enough. And that, I suppose, fanned the flames of passion.’ I paused, wincing inwardly at this cold analysis of our love. But I had to try to detach myself. ‘Anyway, I was telling you about my mother. Though she’d stopped grumbling about aches and pains, she refused to get dressed and wouldn’t leave her room. And she wouldn’t give up that beastly commode, though I knew she was capable of walking to the lavatory.
‘Burgo got Frederick Newmarch to call again and he said that there was nothing wrong with her as far as he could see but he thought she was seriously depressed. He advised a complete change, perhaps a holiday abroad. My father wouldn’t take her. He only likes visiting war graves or battlefields: not the thing for lifting depression. So I went to the local travel agent for brochures about cheap places to go in France, my heart absolutely in my boots because I didn’t want to be away from Burgo. Then my mother put paid to all that by deciding to get out of bed and go upstairs.
‘It was the first time for nearly five months that she’d been outside her own room. It was a crazy thing to do. I was on my way to the Fisherman’s Reel – the little pub where Burgo and I used to meet – my father was in London and Mrs Treadgold, who was supposed to be looking after her, was in the kitchen, listening to The Archers. Oliver was still in bed. Was it a coincidence that my mother chose one of the few moments when there was no one around to see or hear her? Anyway she managed, despite being as weak as water after lying so long in bed, to drag herself up to the top of the stairs and then fell down the entire flight, breaking an arm and a leg.’
‘You think she did it deliberately?’
‘I don’t know. There was no reason for her to go upstairs. I was afraid that she’d meant to kill herself. I felt I hadn’t been nearly nice enough. Of course the entire process began all over again. Two weeks in hospital, National Health this time, and heavens, did she complain! Then home, encased in plaster, to be looked after. She seemed to cheer up a bit then. If it hadn’t been for Burgo it would have been me who was suicidal.
‘I embarked on a new policy of calm endurance and tried even harder to please. I was so sorry for her. My father was cold to her, unsympathetic, whereas I was loved by this marvellous man … Anyway, the fractures mended, though it took ages. Another four months. By January she was more or less better. Just when I was thinking it might be possible to go back to London, she upset a pot of tea all over herself. She was burned from her neck to her waist. Back to hospital. Luckily, though the scalded area was large, it wasn’t deep. She was home after a week. But the burn didn’t heal. I think she picked off the new skin during the night.’
‘Oh dear, you poor girl. Was it because she didn’t want you to go away?’
‘If I’d believed that it might have been easier in many ways. I’d have felt needed. No, she’s always preferred Oliver. Though when he stopped being a gentle confiding little boy she withdrew from him too. I was always too independent and bossy. I know I am. I love making something good out of something hopeless. Once I grew old enough to be effective what affection she had for me waned almost completely. And now I was trying to make her well when she didn’t want to be. What’s more she saw all my attempt
s to make the house and garden more attractive as criticism. We were both to be pitied in the circumstances. I think she just enjoys lying in bed, being waited on, reading escapist novels and eating sweets, not having to go out into a world that holds no pleasure for her. I was simply a means to an end. All she needs is a more or less willing slave.’
‘So you stayed.’
‘I was afraid if I left she’d do something worse to herself. I don’t know what I thought was going to happen in the future. That she might become bored with being an invalid. Or that Burgo might force the issue by deciding to divorce his wife so he could marry me. Yes, I suppose that’s what I hoped. That he would take matters out of my hands and into his own. I was becoming increasingly dependent on him. He had become my happiness, my salvation. But, of course, that didn’t happen. The Conservative Party stormed into power under the leadership of Margot Holland; she selected him to be her youngest minister and his face was splashed all over the newspapers. Someone saw the opportunity to make some cash. It sounds awfully squalid, doesn’t it?’
‘As far as I’m concerned, nothing that was associated with you could be squalid.’
‘That’s the kindest thing anyone’s ever said to me.’
‘I mean it. Don’t cry, Bobbie. You don’t want to mess up your face when you’re about to meet these new people. Tell me about the journalist who found you this Irish job.’
‘What a knight errant you are!’ I sniffed. ‘Fancy a man understanding the importance of mascara. All right, where was I? I remember, mixing Bengers for my mother with tears running down my face. Eating coffee fondants.’
‘Go on.’
I wondered as I stirred and chewed and wept if I could outdo my mother in misery now. I might as well join the library myself and put in a regular order on my own behalf at the sweet shop.
Since the arrival of droves of reporters we had locked all the external doors and closed the shutters of the downstairs rooms. Brough had removed the pull from the bell and we had unplugged the telephone. My father complained bitterly about being compelled to live under a pall of darkness and was absent from breakfast until after dinner. Fortunately the morning room was always so gloomy and my mother’s concentration on the written word so complete that she hardly noticed. Oliver was asleep during most of the day anyway so it made no difference to him. The only person who was actually having a good time as a result of my persecution by the Fourth Estate was Brough. He had never ceased to regret the end of the Second World War and was now in his element. He patrolled the grounds night and day with his shotgun, an expression of manic ferocity animating his usually sullen features.
Entombed in a dismal silence that was broken only by foolhardy reporters hammering on the windows and doors and rattling the letterbox until routed by Brough, I thought I might well be going mad. My sole outlook on the world was through one of the kitchen windows which opened on to the woodshed, coal bunker and dustbin area. It seemed safe to leave this window unshuttered.
The coffee fondant was actually rather disgusting but I found my hand reaching automatically towards the bag for another when someone sprang up in front of me on the other side of the window. I yelled with shock and was about to turn and run when something familiar about her made me pause.
‘Bobbie! It’s me! Harriet Byng!’ said the girl, putting her face close to the glass.
I undid the bolts of the back door. ‘Quick! Come in!’
Harriet squealed as she saw Brough advancing, squinting down the barrel of his gun, his eyes inflamed with killer fury. After I had persuaded him to go and have a cup of tea and a biscuit to calm himself, I closed and rebolted the door and then examined my unexpected visitor.
I had met Harriet Byng at the wedding of her elder sister. Ophelia and I had been friends for some years. We had never been particularly close but we moved in the same circles in London and we liked the same kind of things. Ophelia was beautiful with huge blue eyes and silvery-blonde hair and had exquisite taste. I found her particular brand of hedonism and extreme single-mindedness intriguing. She could be entertaining or appallingly difficult but she was never dull. Other people complained that Ophelia was selfish and heartless but they had been proved wrong when she had succumbed to the charms of a good-looking but comparatively poor police inspector. I had been asked to the wedding a month ago and there met Harriet, one of Ophelia’s three younger sisters. Harriet and I had had a long and interesting conversation about – among other things – the ideal lunatic asylum, the novels of Louise de Vilmorin and our favourite things to eat.
Harriet was quite unlike Ophelia, in looks as well as character. Her hair was long and straight and a rich dark brown. Her eyes were dark too and bright with intelligence. Her skin was pale and it was fascinating to watch the colour in her face come and go for Harriet was shy and blushed like a child. I thought her beauty bewitching, of a different order from anyone else’s. Her ingenuous sweetness was not the least of her attractions and I was amused to observe that a tall, distinguished-looking older man had her under his eye most of the time. This turned out to be Rupert Wolvespurges, the artistic director of the English Opera House, and Harriet confided that they were in love.
‘Oh, Bobbie!’ Harriet hugged me tightly. ‘How are you, you poor dear thing?’
These were the first words of sympathy that had been addressed to me since the scandalized world had been apprised of my affair with Burgo and they reduced me to a storm of sobbing. Harriet steered me to a chair and put on the kettle, then sat down next to me, holding my hand in hers until I had got over the worst.
‘Gosh, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a hanky? Mine are all upstairs.’
Harriet hadn’t so I used the drying-up cloth which was anyway a more suitable size for the deluge that had been provoked by the sound of a friendly voice.
‘It’s all too silly,’ I said. ‘I don’t know why I’m being such a baby.’
‘I do,’ said Harriet. ‘It’s really terrifying having those people harrying you, like hounds after a poor darling fox. You get the feeling they’re going to rip you to pieces if they catch you. And they make up the most ridiculous stories about you and suddenly you find yourself wondering if they might be true. You get frightened that any minute you’re going to go raving mad. After a while, though, you get used to it.’ I remembered then that Harriet’s father had only the year before been arrested for murder – wrongly, as it turned out. But for weeks stories and photographs of Harriet’s remarkably handsome and interesting family had filled the gossip columns and one could scarcely pick up a magazine or newspaper without seeing one or all of their faces as they went into the fishmonger’s or came out of a cinema. ‘Honestly, though it’s hard to believe, the reporters doorstepped us for so long that we actually got quite friendly with them. Some of them are perfectly nice people. It just takes a bit of getting used to.’
‘I’m sure you’re right. I’ve got to pull myself together. I haven’t been sleeping and … It must have been so much worse for you with your father in prison.’
‘That was truly awful.’ Harriet shook her head as she thought about it, as though to rid herself of the memory. ‘But, darling Bobbie, never mind the press for a minute. You can keep them outside and in the end they’ll get fed up and it’ll be yesterday’s news. But what about you? Have you been able to see him?’
‘No. If you mean Burgo.’
She squeezed my hand. ‘You love him terribly?’
‘Yes. Yes, I do.’
‘And will he … is he going to leave his wife?’
‘If he leaves her he’s finished as a politician. Margot Holland can’t have a disgraced minister in tow. As the first woman Prime Minister she’s got to have higher standards, work harder and do everything much better than any man. She supports Burgo all the way, naturally: she wouldn’t have appointed him Minister for Culture if she didn’t think he’d do a brilliant job. He’s only thirty-five and she’s promoted him over the heads of several
older and more likely candidates. Of course it’s made him enemies.’
‘People are envious of him, you mean?’
‘Well, on the face of it he seems to have everything: brains, career, rich wife, willing mistress. The anti-Burgo faction is also largely anti-Holland, though that’s more or less kept under wraps, of course. The scandal’s given ammunition to those Conservatives who feel their manhood’s threatened by having a female boss. As well as to the Labour Party, of course. The only chance Burgo’s got of holding out against those who are baying for his blood is to be repentant and to persuade his wife to put on a public show of reconciliation with him. After that it depends on the tide of popular opinion. But plenty of politicians have had affairs and survived, provided they showed proper contrition and behaved themselves ever after.’
Harriet got up to make the tea. Keeping her back to me, she asked, ‘Is that what he’s going to do?’
‘He’s telephoned every day since the news broke. Each time he says he loves me and that he’s going to give everything up for me.’
Harriet turned round. ‘Oh, thank goodness! That’s all right, then.’
I shook my head. ‘He hasn’t said it doesn’t matter to him. That he doesn’t mind giving it all up for me. I can hear in his voice what a wrench it is. He’s always wanted this. He’s terrifically ambitious; he wants to be able to change things. One of the things I love about him is his energy and the fact that it’s channelled into real achievement. He doesn’t care about status symbols, possessions, houses, cars, cellars filled with rare vintages. He doesn’t care about winning. What thrills him is informing people, changing their opinions about things he thinks are important. Managing to get a bill read about reforming the laws on assisted suicide or doing something to help ex-prisoners buoys him up for days at a time.’
Moonshine Page 18
