The Runaway Daughter

by Joanna Rees

  ‘Don’t listen to her,’ Jane admonished. ‘He must be serious, if he’s had these delivered.’

  ‘I can’t meet him,’ Vita said, panicking.

  ‘Why not? It’s just a man asking to see you. It’s not a big deal,’ Nancy reassured her. ‘Go and have fun.’ But Vita sensed a hint of forced bravery in her encouragement.

  ‘I haven’t got anything to wear.’

  ‘The red,’ Nancy said, nodding over to the rail.

  ‘But that’s your favourite.’

  ‘You can borrow it,’ Nancy replied, with a shrug.

  She really was too lucky to have a friend like Nancy.

  ‘But don’t overdo it, kiddo. After today, let’s face it, you really don’t have any time for a boyfriend.’

  67

  Champagne and Oysters

  The band, Kettner’s Five, was playing ‘The Girl Friend’, the hit from the Broadway musical, as Archie and Vita were seated at their table by a smart and very subservient waiter. She glanced around the oak-panelled dining room, spotting the other waiters flitting between the tables, holding silver trays aloft between the well-dressed diners, the air filled with the sound of conversation, the clank of silver cutlery on bone china and the chime of cut-glass crystal.

  ‘Doesn’t it make you want to dance,’ she told Archie, jangling her shoulders in time to the music. She felt quite giddy after the large glass of champagne she’d just drunk, way too fast, at the bar, and her body fizzed with nervous energy. ‘Isn’t she cute, isn’t she sweet,’ she sang along to the melody, but suddenly she felt embarrassed. Might Archie think she was singing the song about herself? As if she might ever be his girlfriend.

  Maybe she should stop trying to behave as if she were Nancy and be more demure, but she really was so nervous.

  ‘Whenever we go out dancing, we always dance to this one.’

  ‘We?’ Archie enquired.

  ‘Nancy. And my friends Percy and Edward.’

  He looked taken aback. ‘That sounds like quite a cosy foursome.’

  Vita laughed. ‘Oh, it’s really not like that at all. Percy works with us on the costumes. And Edward – he just helps us get into places.’

  She bit her lip, seeing Archie’s reaction. Admitting that they all used Edward for his money and status now seemed crass. She tried to make amends. ‘That sounds wrong. He really is quite a hoot. In fact, you might know him. Edward Sopel?’

  Archie’s thin smile faded altogether now. He put his napkin down on his lap and didn’t say anything. The waiter presented the menus, and the champagne bucket was brought to their table and their glasses filled. Archie ordered oysters, but his tone was overly formal as he asked her for her preference. She told him she’d take his advice, but he didn’t meet her eye. What had she said? Why was he suddenly so frosty?

  ‘Well? Do you know Edward?’ Vita pressed, when they were left alone. He nodded briefly. ‘And?’ Why was Archie being so guarded?

  ‘I don’t . . .’ He paused. ‘I don’t approve of his . . . well, sort.’

  ‘His sort?’

  ‘He’s a homosexual,’ Archie whispered, his eyebrows drawn together.

  Vita leant forward. ‘Don’t say it like that.’

  ‘You mean, you know?’ Archie suddenly stared up at her as if seeing Vita in a new light and she blushed.

  ‘He’s a friend,’ she said indignantly. ‘What he does in his own time is nothing to do with me. But as far as I’m concerned, he’s nothing but a gentleman.’

  She didn’t meet his eye, but fiddled with her cutlery. If Archie knew about Edward, then maybe he knew about Percy, too. What if her bragging about their friendship got Percy into trouble?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Archie said with a sigh. ‘Let’s not start on the wrong foot, dear Vita. It’s just . . .’

  ‘Just what?’ She felt close to tears.

  ‘I remember Sopel from school, that’s all. He got one of my friends expelled. And, before that, into the most frightful trouble. He’s all smiles and charm, but in my opinion he isn’t a good man. I don’t like him thinking that he’s a friend of yours. If I’m honest, I really don’t approve of homosexuality of any kind.’

  ‘What about women?’ Vita asked.

  ‘Women and women?’ Archie exclaimed. ‘Goodness me, Vita. That’s even worse.’

  She was shocked by how clear-cut his opinions were. She thought of Lolly and Ra at the club, and then of her own shameful secret with Nancy – and how horrified Archie would be, if he were ever to find out. But then her defensiveness kicked in. How could he make such sweeping generalizations, when each situation was different? Besides, she knew far more about Edward than she did about Archie himself. If he was going to judge her friends like this, then perhaps she should leave.

  ‘People have made mistakes in their past,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘And—’

  ‘Yes, they have,’ Archie interrupted hastily, putting his warm hand over hers in a sort of absolution. ‘It sounds to me as if you have so much more fun with your friends than I ever have. I’m jealous, if you must know.’

  She looked up into his eyes.

  ‘Your life is . . . different from mine. That’s all. I’m not judging anyone. Least of all you. You’re . . . well, you’re wonderful.’

  She smiled tentatively at him, touched by his compliment. Archie smiled back and then the waiter came and poured more champagne.

  After that, the conversation flowed easily, and soon a whole platter of oysters arrived and was placed on a silver stand. Vita giggled, peering round it at Archie. She’d never eaten oysters before and asked him to instruct her.

  She forced the first oyster down, chewing it briefly, feeling the saltiness flood her mouth and trying not to gag, reminding herself that this was the height of sophistication.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked, watching her intently for a reaction.

  ‘They’re . . . interesting.’

  ‘Try these ones. These are different,’ he said, pointing to the oyster shell in front of her. She ate another one, enjoying it more this time. ‘More creamy, don’t you think? We always have them as a special treat at Hartwell. Jeffers, our butler, has a man who brings them from the coast.’

  ‘Hartwell?’

  ‘Our estate,’ he said.

  His estate? He said it so casually, as one might say ‘our motorcar’, and Vita remembered Edith’s declaration that his family was loaded.

  ‘We used to have competitions to see how many oysters we could eat in one go.’

  ‘We?’ she asked, cheekily echoing their earlier conversation, just to make sure the air was clear between them.

  ‘Horace and me.’

  ‘Who’s Horace?’ she asked, dabbing her mouth with her napkin and taking another slug of champagne. She was drinking too much, but she couldn’t help it.

  ‘He was my brother,’ Archie said, before suddenly taking a sharp breath. ‘The war, you know. Terrible thing . . .’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  She looked at him as she slowly put down her champagne glass. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him about Clement. That she was missing a brother, too. But she couldn’t. As much as she longed to share this common bond, she knew she didn’t have the right to mourn with people like Archie, who lived with the hole where their brave brother should be.

  Because she was glad that her brother was dead. It was a sinful, terrible thing to think, but now Vita held her breath and allowed herself to say his name in her head, testing how painful it was, like tentatively touching a scar. Clement. If only he could see her now. Eating oysters in a London restaurant. With someone as sophisticated as Archie. He’d go that strange puce colour he went when he flew into one of his rages. Then he’d ruin it for her.

  He’d been like that over everything she’d ever possessed, every person she’d liked. Most days now she shuddered inwardly at the thought of Clement and put him resolutely out of her mind, but this was the first moment she felt triumph as well as
the sickening guilt that sometimes stopped her in her tracks. Because Clement couldn’t get her now, she reminded herself. Sitting opposite Archie Fenwick, she felt safe. Whatever happened in the future, it would be of her own making and not Clement’s.

  ‘Let’s not be glum, my dear,’ Archie said, suddenly composing himself and smiling. ‘What’s done is done. And, as they say, you can’t change the past. So let’s drink to the future.’

  He raised his glass and Vita smiled, clinking her glass against his. ‘To the future,’ she said, smiling back at him. Please, God, let it involve you, she thought.

  68

  Georgie

  Archie was a good talker. He warmed to his theme over dinner, describing the river and lake where he and his brother had fished as boys, and the tall trees they’d climbed at Hartwell. It sounded like a charmed childhood – especially the way he depicted it – as if those days had a kind of golden glow. He was so good at description that Vita couldn’t help picturing it all, is if it were a movie.

  ‘Did you ever travel somewhere special as a child?’ he asked, eventually.

  She shook her head, wishing he’d continue and not ask her about herself. She didn’t have the courage to tell him that the wider world away from Lancashire was a mystery that she’d only read and heard about from her parents. Parents who had taught her that the world was a dangerous and unsuitable place – particularly for her. That her place was at home. Doing what she was told.

  ‘No. My parents had a . . . business,’ she said, suddenly trying to invent a suitable lie on the spot. ‘We had to stay nearby. But I long to travel,’ she hurried on, keen to change the subject. ‘Paris, New York, Rome – I want to go everywhere. Paris, mainly. My friend Nancy is going there. So she says.’ She sighed for a moment, feeling upset once again at the thought. ‘I wish she wasn’t.’

  Archie smiled at her. ‘Paris isn’t so far. You can visit.’

  Looking across at him, she felt herself expanding – blossoming like one of those glorious blooms that had filled her dressing room. He seemed to take it for granted that dancing was something she was only doing for now, and that her horizons were much grander, as if she were on some sort of predestined life journey – the same kind as people like him did, in which foreign travel and new adventures were the order of the day. And for one dizzying moment she started to believe that she might be.

  ‘Tell me about where you grew up,’ he said.

  ‘There’s not much to tell,’ she lied, as the facade of Darton Hall rose in her mind like the smoke from the chimney stacks at the nearby mills. ‘My parents were ordinary folk . . .’

  She pictured her mother and father, and how irritated her father would feel to be described as ordinary. But it was true. She could see that, now that she’d seen life in London. Her parents were hard-faced and stern, stuck firmly in a bygone era. She thought of the staff who cowered under her father’s steely command, and the grudging respect of the workers.

  ‘My father was never the same after the war,’ she said, with a shrug. He was richer, harder, meaner, she wanted to say; one of the few industrialists who had capitalized fully on other people’s misery. He’d positively relished the war, cheating the authorities so that Clement had been saved from fighting, on a technicality, and had stayed in the comfort of his own home.

  ‘You said they had a business?’

  She thought of the mills – that claustrophobic, horrible heat, the spinning mules eating the cotton as fast as they could. In her mind, it was like an inferno. Like hell.

  ‘Oh . . . yes,’ she stalled. ‘They sold fires.’

  ‘Fires?’ Archie sounded shocked.

  ‘You know, fireplaces for homes,’ she stalled, thinking on the spot and feeling her pulse race, trying to conjure up the kind of family that a girl like Verity Casey might plausibly have. Anything that would never give any hint of the truth about Darton. ‘That sort of thing. Furnishings,’ she elaborated, ‘antiques.’ She winced inwardly, aware of the thin ice of deception that she was now treading. Fireplaces? It sounded far-fetched, even to her.

  ‘Oh,’ Archie said and she looked up. She could tell that she’d disappointed him. She could hear it in his voice, but then she realized a moment later that it was something else bothering him.

  ‘Archie?’ A young woman in a heavily jewelled dress and a mink stole was standing by their table, and Vita twisted round to look at her. ‘I thought it was you!’

  Vita’s knife clanked against her plate and she picked up her napkin, as Archie stood to greet the young woman.

  ‘We were expecting you earlier,’ she said, sticking out her lip.

  Her heavily made-up eyes danced with mischief as she looked at Archie and down at Vita, making it clear that she assumed Vita was the reason he hadn’t fulfilled his social obligation. This wasn’t the same woman she had seen with Archie at the Café de Paris, Vita realized. She was another one of Archie’s set . . . an even prettier one.

  ‘Do meet Miss Casey, Georgie,’ Archie said. ‘She’s from the Zip.’

  ‘Oh, really? Well, how do you do,’ the woman said, extending her hand to Vita, who noticed her perfectly manicured nails and diamond bracelet. A sinking feeling settled in the pit of her stomach as she smiled weakly. Having just spoken of her working-class parents – albeit having invented them – the contrast between the two women couldn’t be more marked.

  Everything about Georgie was so groomed, and now Vita felt how tatty and home-made her red dress really was. She thought of Nancy and wondered what she would do in this situation, but inside she felt herself shrivelling.

  Then Vita remembered Nancy’s rule – that paying someone a compliment always bought one time.

  ‘Oh, I do love your stole,’ she ventured confidently as soon as she got a moment, deflecting the conversation away from Archie.

  ‘Thank you,’ the woman said, pulling the fur up to her chin and stroking her jawline luxuriously with it. Her diamonds sparked. ‘Isn’t it wonderful? It’s not mine,’ she added in a confidential whisper. ‘It’s my sister’s. Maud would positively skin me alive if she knew I had it on.’

  ‘She would,’ Archie said affectionately.

  ‘So don’t you blow my cover, you,’ she said, extending a finger and pressing Archie’s nose. ‘And I won’t blow yours.’

  Archie looked embarrassed.

  ‘Don’t be a stranger, Archie,’ she said, giving him a look charged with meaning. ‘Toodle-oo.’

  Archie sat back down in his seat and didn’t meet Vita’s searching gaze. What had all that been about? Was she an old flame of his? She certainly acted like there was far more to their relationship than she was letting on.

  ‘Is she . . .’ Vita began.

  ‘She’s a childhood friend,’ he explained quickly. ‘My mother is her godmother. Georgie’s a little exuberant, but sweet underneath.’

  69

  Archie’s Secret

  Vita couldn’t stop thinking about ‘sweet’ Georgie and how much she’d soured the evening, as her crème brûlée arrived. Why did she feel so unsettled? Was it jealousy? Because Georgie was so rich and beautiful? Or was it indignation? Because Georgie had ever so subtly looked down her nose at Vita? Or perhaps it was the nagging feeling – not from anything particular she’d said, but simply from her manner – that she and Archie were sharing some kind of ‘in’ joke.

  But, as Vita kept having to remind herself, she wasn’t Anna Darton. She was Verity Casey. A dancing girl who didn’t have anything at all in common with Archie’s friends. The kind of girl who had no right to Archie Fenwick.

  She thought about telling Archie about Top Drawer, but she had the feeling it would only make things worse. Georgie most probably had her clothes made by the likes of Mrs Clifford-Meade. Telling Archie about her connection might lower her even further in his estimation. She didn’t want to tell him about getting the meeting with Lance Kenton, either. Or the dubious way in which Nancy had secured the appointment. It was all too new and
too fragile to stand up to Archie’s scrutiny.

  ‘Do you want to know the secret?’ he asked in a soft voice, and she looked up into his earnest gaze. And she saw then that he knew exactly how she felt.

  ‘All right then.’

  She wondered if Georgie was looking back at them. And if she might be seeing this. She admired Archie for not caring, as he took her hand over the table.

  And she knew that he was about to be honest. And that he deserved her honesty, too. That if she were ever to fall in love with him – which, looking into his eyes now, might be a distinct possibility – then she had to come clean herself. And tell him her secret. He deserved it. The truth.

  He was silent for a moment, as if steeling his nerve, and then he spoke.

  ‘Well, it’s the damnedest thing, but you see, ever since I saw you that night at the Café de Paris and our eyes met, I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind. Not for a second. It was like a thunderbolt. Like I realized: well, there she is, old chap.’

  How could he make it sound so simple? How could he be so brave? State the truth so unashamedly and openly? She couldn’t believe he’d admitted it. That he’d felt it, too. It hadn’t just been her. There really had been a spark.

  And now he was presenting that truth like a gift. He’d made it real. Real and true – and it terrified her.

  ‘And I was going to tell you that night. When I came to see you. But then you were dancing with your friend, and I lost my nerve. And I acted . . . well, I acted like a bashful idiot.’

  A round, fat silence seemed to suspend itself over them, as Archie’s words, which had been so softly spoken, seemed to get louder and become a declaration. A declaration that changed everything.

  But then the waiter came to pour more drinks and the moment was broken, the silence punctured, leaving only a tense husk. Archie pulled his hands away from hers and gave her an anguished grimace. The waiter fussed, wiping away crumbs on the pristine white tablecloth, and Vita watched, reeling from what Archie had said.