‘Come the recession, I can get a job as a wine waiter.’ He laughed as he poured.
‘A recession? Surely America is leading the world.’
‘There’s a great big bubble blowing in the States, Lucy, and bubbles burst.’
‘Don’t be silly, Max,’ said Ammabelle shortly.
‘Does she always dismiss her husband so readily, and in public?’ thought Lucy, but she smiled as Max’s wife turned to her.
‘He’s made millions, Lucy. He’s every bit as fine a businessman as even my dear late father was. And, would you believe, we had to coax him to take his father’s Senate seat.’
‘But you don’t go into the Senate to make money, do you?’ Lucy asked before she could stop herself.
‘Touché,’ laughed Max and his eyes smiled at her across the rim of the glass.
Mrs du Pay, Ammabelle, was annoyed. ‘Of course not. I just meant that we need men with brains in government and Max has brains.’
‘Government needs men with hearts too, Mother, and that’s why Daddy’s successful.’
‘I’ve ordered you some fruit juice, Son,’ said Max quickly.
Was there an undertone there? The boy said nothing but poured himself a glass of juice. Silently and solemnly he toasted the adults and then he flopped down beside Lucy, almost spilling her drink.
‘Gosh, I’m sorry, ma’am,’ said Brook, but he was looking at his mother. ‘Sometimes I can’t handle my legs – like a colt, you know, all legs and no body.’
‘You just need to think of others, Brook,’ said Mrs du Pay, ‘and don’t interrupt. His father spoils him abominably, Lucy. You were telling us all about your visit to Dr Stopes’ clinic?’
‘Was I?’ thought Lucy.
‘There are no clinics such as this anywhere else in Britain at the moment,’ she said. ‘I shall be pleased to learn more from Doctor Stopes and to pass the information on to my patients.’
‘Bravo, Lucy. What men fail to understand is that a child not only drains a woman’s body of all strength and vigour for nine months, but continues to make demands of his poor mother every minute of every day and often night, too, until he is quite grown up. If only the agonies were over with the birth pangs.’
‘What an unutterably selfish woman,’ thought Lucy as she looked at Brook’s young, fresh face. It registered nothing. Had he heard it so often before that he no longer listened or no longer minded? Max’s lean brown hand was on the boy’s knee.
‘I’ve never had the joys or the pains of a child myself, Ammabelle, and so I can’t really agree or disagree, but even the poorest of my patients in the meanest of circumstances seems to feel that the joys of motherhood far outweigh the pain.’
‘Even those with nine, ten or even more children whom they cannot afford to feed or clothe?’
‘Well, they don’t want them when they’re carrying them, and too many resort to unbelievable methods to rid themselves of unwanted pregnancies, but once that child is in their arms . . .’ She stopped and looked at the boy, and the bleakest moment of her entire life came back to her. It was not the day she realized that she had lost Max, but that awful moment in Rose’s bathroom when she knew that there was to be no baby, no baby to grow into this beautiful, sensitive boy. ‘He should be mine . . .’ her thoughts repeated.
‘What are your professional feelings about legalized abortion, Lucy?’ asked Max across the darkness and she was glad to answer.
‘I went into medicine to save life, and so to deliberately take life would hardly be acceptable, but there have been cases, even in my experience, where it is necessary to think of the greater good, to sacrifice the child to save the mother. I welcome Doctor Stopes and her teaching. To prevent conception is surely the answer, for the duchess or the mill-girl.’
‘Bravo, Lucy! You are a shining light in your profession. Too many doctors mumble platitudes about woman’s natural function. Let them try it.’ Ammabelle stood up. ‘Now I hope you will take pity on my family and dine with them. I was dragged to the ballet last night when all I really needed was rest, and today I have trailed all over London looking at pictures, some of them quite ghastly, and I shall go to bed and have a little toast and soup. I am exhausted. No, don’t come with me, Max. I want you and Brook to have a nice evening and I am too tired to be gay.’
She held up her cheek to be kissed, gave Lucy a hand that felt like paper, and drifted away to the stairs.
‘Will you dine with us, Doctor Lucy?’
Brook sounded as if her really wanted her company and she wanted to be with them, just once. ‘I’d love to dine with you, Brook,’ she said; Max was not to think she wanted to be with him. She followed Ammabelle upstairs and washed and changed as quickly as possible. As always, she found herself remembering the dress she had bought in Venice. She had never had another occasion to wear it and now, of course, it was a museum piece. ‘Face it, Lucy. You are an old woman and life has passed you by. You are not going down there to pretend you are a family.’ But still she had to admit that she was glad, glad that Ammabelle had been too . . . tired to dine with her husband and son.
‘But there’s no need for me to be quite so dowdy,’ she decided as she walked downstairs in a serviceable wool dress that she had brightened up with pearls and her grandmother’s amethyst brooch.
Max and his son greeted her with obvious pleasure. ‘Americans are so polite,’ thought Lucy, not for the first time. ‘They would never let me know they think they’re dining with a frumpy old maid.’
‘I thought the Dorchester,’ said Max, taking Lucy’s arm and leading her outside. ‘We can dance after dinner the way . . . well, we can remember our youth.’
‘You don’t dance, Dad,’ said Brook. ‘You and Mother sit out all the time back home. But I learned to do the waltz at school, Doctor Lucy . . .’ The boy blushed at his audacity and subsided into silence.
‘How can you refuse such a charming invitation, Lucy? I will hobble in after Rudolph Valentino here, and maybe you have a pill I could use if it all gets too exciting for me . . .’
‘Aw, Dad.’ The boy was embarrassed and suddenly looked his age. ‘Doctor Lucy knows what I mean.’
‘Of course I do, Brook, my dear, and if you’re sure you would like to dance, I would be honoured to be your partner.’
‘I don’t really want to,’ the boy answered honestly, ‘but I have to at home, at family parties and such. Everybody wants to dance with me, but they know Dad’s a senator and they know he’s rich and I sometimes think I could be bowlegged and have adenoids . . . you know. Things like that never seemed to bother Dad.’
Lucy remembered the young Max. No, it would never have occurred to him that he was popular because he was rich, but this boy was a more sensitive soul.
Max was smiling. He understood his son more than the boy knew, and that he loved him was so obvious. No, she must not find herself wishing, wishing . . .
‘I feel guilty eating all this wonderful food while Ammabelle eats toast alone,’ she said later as a sumptuous dessert was placed reverently before her. Did Max and his son look at one another quickly before laughing off the remark and devoting themselves to their own puddings?
Later, they sat drinking coffee and watching the dancers. Brook excused himself and went off to find the gentlemen’s room.
And then Max said, ‘This feels good, Lucy, feels right.’
‘Please, Max. If you say anything, I’ll leave.’
‘You won’t run out on the boy. He likes you.’
‘He’s a puppy; he likes everyone.’
‘No, he doesn’t like everyone.’ His voice was cold and tired and he leaned across the table, his face inches from her own. She could not get away from him, she had to hear his explanation and she wanted to hear it, no matter how much she told herself that it did not matter to her. ‘I couldn’t write at first, Lucy. My father had already died when I reached home, and I spent every moment arranging the funeral, comforting my mother and
dealing with all the business affairs. It was to escape . . . it was to make up my mind about marriage and career that I went to Europe, and there I found you again.’ He laughed, for a moment as young as his son. ‘I should have hauled you off on a white charger that night at the Russian embassy, but I had this fool idea I had to let you grow a little, experiment a little. God, you were lovely, and you didn’t know it, or at least acted like you didn’t – and that was so refreshing, and then I was so much older.’
‘Please, Max. I can’t listen to this.’
‘I loved you, love you more than I have ever loved any woman. Even now in that silly old-lady frock. Hell, Lucy, are you forty yet?’
‘I’m fifty, as you well know. I must go, Max,’ She half rose from her chair and he stood beside her, and she was as aware of him as she had ever been. She could smell his strength, his vulnerability – God help her, his masculinity. Knees weak, she sank back into her chair and with trembling hands sipped at the glass of champagne that stood, all its bubbles long gone, beside her coffee.
‘When my father died I was devastated.’ That was all he would ever say to excuse himself, but Lucy had met many women like Ammabelle du Pay. She was only too aware of the fragile ropes that bind the strongest men, the unvoiced blackmail, the feelings of unwarranted guilt. There had been one tonight. ‘Why, you all go and enjoy yourselves and poor little exhausted me (exhausted from the birth of one child twelve years before) will just stay here with a little hot soup.’ But still she must not listen.
‘I don’t know when I asked Ammabelle to honour me by becoming my wife, but I must have done and I could not back out and embarrass her and her family and hurt my own sorely grieving mother. She died happy, just after Brook was born.’
He believed all this, he really believed it. There was nothing devious about Max du Pay. He was just a century behind his time. Lucy could just hear the weak echoes of those soft Southern voices that had trapped him in a loveless marriage. No, she must stop this thinking. He was an international statesman, a world traveller. She knew enough to know that a sexual relationship went on in marriages where there was no real affection. And if Ammabelle du Pay pleaded exhaustion, no doubt her husband found physical consolation outside the bonds of holy matrimony. She thought of Isa: ‘You’ve made your bed, noo lie on it.’ By marrying Ammabelle he had effectively made Lucy’s bed too, and she was quite happy. She had medicine and she had Robin, and she could not live without either.
‘You could have written, Max, to explain, just even to let me know that you were alive.’
He bowed his head in shame. ‘I have no excuse. But you didn’t write either, Lucy. I hoped and prayed, and then decided your first love had won.’
‘Well, it did win and I have Robin.’
‘Robin?’
‘My goddaughter. Her parents both died in the war; her mother was my partner.’
‘Were you bombed? I didn’t think Dundee, the bridge maybe . . .’
‘She went to France to work in a hospital, really a convent where she and Kier had spent part of their honeymoon. Why, what’s wrong?’
‘This is unbelievable, but I must have met her. As you know, we didn’t come in to the war until near the end, April 1917. We lost a lot of men around the Argonne area, and in 1918 the president asked several of us – senators, congressmen – to tour the war zones, see our boys had supplies. We found the convent near this little town called Le Tréport just a day or two after some Germans had arrived. There was an old French doctor, and a young Scotch girl who looked like a Georgia breeze would blow her away. We gave them supplies – heck, they had everybody’s walking wounded in there, Brits, Canadians, French, Germans, and not so much as an aspirin. I asked this old nun what language they communicated in and she said, “The language of love.” Pretty soppy, maybe, but old nuns can get away with stuff like that. But you say your partner died there? What a waste! They thought the world of her.’
‘I’m glad. I’ll tell her daughter.’
He was gazing at her with such intensity that she stopped. ‘What is it, Max?’
‘I was so close to you. I could have spoken about you and I didn’t even know.’
‘And Rose? We know so little of her last days.’ Speak about Rose, about anything except themselves, except the longing to hold him in her arms, to be held by him.
‘Like I said . . . looked like a puff of wind would blow her over, but she worked all the hours God gave her and then some.’
‘Her daughter will want to know.’
‘Well, she looked happy. They all did. There was this incredible atmosphere there, you could just feel it.’
They sat quietly. Anyone watching would have thought them absorbed in the music, but they were each thinking of Rose Nesbitt, Max with nostalgia and Lucy with a mixture of sadness and love.
Brook came back and Lucy and Max laughed as he tried to stifle a yawn.
‘I think we should go?’ suggested Lucy.
Brook looked relieved; he would not have to dance. It was impossible to read the expression on Max’s face.
The doorman summoned a cab and they sat in silence as the famous buildings of the world’s most famous city slipped by in the moonlight.
‘You go on up to your room, Brook,’ said Max at the door of the club. ‘I think we’ll walk a while.’
Lucy could not speak. She was not tired and she wanted to walk with him through the starlit streets of London, just once, just once.
They did not talk but walked companionably for a while. Lucy had no real idea of where she was but it did not matter, nothing really mattered. After a while he felt for her hand, and she tensed a little and then relaxed. Was there any harm, just once, in pretending that there was no Ammabelle, no Brook, no Robin?
They were on a bridge crossing the river. Above them they could see the carved front of the abbey soaring into the heavens.
‘A beautiful sight,’ said Max and his voice was husky. It was inevitable: Lucy turned into his arms with a sigh and for a while they stood and she relaxed against his heart, at ease, at home. When he bent his head she turned her face to him like a flower to the sun that gives it life. Her heart soared higher than the façade of the beautiful building behind them. She was a girl again, on a bridge over the Grand Canal. No, no, she was not. Feverishly she pulled herself away.
‘Max, no, this is madness.’
He stopped her protestations with his lips and for a moment she fought, and then gave herself up to the feelings that were overwhelming her, feelings that had not abated in fourteen years but had lain, disciplined, just under her control. This time it was Max who stopped.
‘Oh, God, Lucy, what a bloody mess I have made of everything.’
‘We made it together.’
‘Let’s walk some more or, so help me, I won’t be responsible.’
‘I can’t lose you again, Lucy,’ he went on. ‘I fought the yearning for fourteen years and one sight of you at that desk with that silly little hat . . . You’re wearing it again; it’s a doctory litle hat!’
She unpinned the hat and threw it into the Thames and then she unpinned her hair and let the pins fall unheeded to the ground.
‘My God, don’t do that.’ His voice was harsh and rough. ‘You’re such an innnocent, Doctor Lucy, or is that something they teach in medical school – “Let down your hair when you want to entice a man.” ’
‘No, but they do teach how to blow out the fire if it’s started.’
He laughed and hugged her, the spontaneous gesture of a brother, not a lover.
‘Time to get a cab. Come on.’ He tucked her arm into his and they walked towards a busier street. ‘I can’t divorce my wife, Lucy. I wish I could. It’s not that she loves me . . . you see, she’s . . .’ He stopped; he would not be even more disloyal. ‘Can we, at least, write one another, even maybe call when they get these transatlantic lines in, see one another when I’m in Europe? I could send the boy to school here; I could come over
every year . . .’
She said nothing, for she could not speak. Her heart was breaking for the despair and anguish in his voice. She wished they had not met . . . No, she didn’t. Oh God, oh God, it was an impossibility. What good could come of it? Better to make a clean break, to cut out the heartache.’
She heard her voice. ‘I’ll write, as a friend, at Christmas time.’
He had hailed a cab and, to her surprise, handed her in and gave the driver the address and the fare.
His voice was calm but his eyes were unutterably sad.
‘Until Christmas, friend of my heart,’ he said and stepped back into the shadows.
23
Dundee, 1921
LUCY LEFT EARLY next morning, or that morning, for Dundee, and therefore did not see Max or any member of his family again. She had not slept but had packed her few clothes and the toys bought for Robin into her small overnight bag and then, fully dressed, had lain down on the bed to wait for her early morning tea. Over and over again she had relived those moments with Max by the river. Her feelings for him had not died as, for fourteen years, she had fought to convince herself that they had. Instead they had grown and matured like the fine wines of which he was fond, but he would not divorce his wife and Lucy would not – when she was rational and the blood was not raging through her fevered veins – have wanted him to take such a drastic step.
By the time the chambermaid arrived with the tray, she was going over and over the things she had learned in Doctor Stopes’ clinic, and which she intended to utilize as soon as she returned to her practice. There was a parcel on the tray – from one of London’s finest jewellers, and beautifully wrapped. Max’s card, in a small envelope, was beside it.
The box contained a small gold brooch in the shape of an exquisitely formed butterfly; the body of the butterfly was a perfect ruby.
‘Merry Christmas past’ was the inscription on the card.
‘I can’t accept jewellery from a man,’ said Lucy to herself as she pinned the brooch to the front of her dress.
Rich Girl, Poor Girl Page 28
