It didn’t really get too bad until lunch-time: Maria Woolf greeted her with a chilling courtesy before kissing Piers effusively on the lips and telling him she had missed him and she wanted to hear every tiny detail of what he had been up to; but then she was mercifully distracted by yet another guest, and Piers led Chloe off, his arm through hers, introducing her to endless people. Chloe stood, smiling prettily, trying not to notice how bored everyone seemed by everything she had to say, got caught up in a conversation with someone and then suddenly realized Piers was gone from her side and, panic-stricken, excused herself and went off through the crowds trying to find him.
Then: ‘Lunch’ came a cry from the terrace of the house, and Maria Woolf stood there, ringing a bell loudly, and laughing, with Piers beside her; whereupon they disappeared into the house, a great snake of people following them. Chloe hurried forwards: at least now she knew where Piers was. She found it hard to get into the house; she kept pushing gently, and saying ‘excuse me’, hurried straight past the vast buffet table, heaped with silver dishes of whole salmon, rose-pink beef, chicken baked in golden pastry (noting even in her misery that that was a nice idea and one to copy), of piles of new potatoes and asparagus and mangetouts and great bowls of salad, thinking that Piers would surely have her food ready for her, would not have completely neglected her, and arrived, slightly breathless, in the dining room, with its seemingly endless tables, and there at last was Piers. Only he was not looking for her, and had no extra plate in front of him, but was sitting between Maria Woolf and another woman, and was engaged in filling their glasses with wine, and listening with rapt attention to what Maria was saying while slightly absent-mindedly patting the hand of the other. Every other chair at the table was taken by people all of whom knew one another and were chattering and laughing; he had clearly forgotten all about her. Chloe felt sick; she backed out, her eyes fixed on his face, like a rabbit in front of a fox, praying he would not see her, and bumped into one of the waiters, his arms full of bottles of wine.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘oh, I’m so sorry, could you possibly tell me where the lavatory is?’
The waiter looked at her with a chilly courtesy and said, ‘Yes, madam, through the lobby just over there.’
She fled to it, bolted herself in and sat there, numb with misery, not knowing what to do, but somehow insanely praying that Piers would notice that she was missing and come in search of her; he would send someone in perhaps, she would hear her name. But no one came; and after ten or fifteen minutes she came out and brushed her hair and put some perfume on, and went cautiously into the hall.
Everyone had disappeared: there was a huge heady hum from the dining room. Chloe went forwards and looked cautiously through the door; the room was full, there were no empty spaces at any table. Piers was still engrossed in conversation with Maria Woolf, careless of her absence. A couple of people looked up amusedly at her and half smiled, then returned to their food; she stood there, as if turned to stone, a great lump in her throat, feeling conspicuous, ridiculous, humiliated. She was just about to run again, when she felt a hand on her shoulder.
‘Hallo, Mrs Windsor-to-be. Got delayed? Me too. You’re much too pretty to eat lunch by yourself. Shall we go in together, and you can sit and tell me all about yourself. Come along, pick up a plate and we’ll find a quiet corner and can get to know one another.’
Chloe looked up and found herself staring at one of the most outrageously good-looking men she had ever seen. He was tall, and very heavily built; he had thick fair hair, and intensely blue eyes in a tanned face, and he had very shaggy eyebrows which gave him a slightly rakish air, made his looks less too-good-to-be-true. He was rather over-dressed for the occasion, she noticed, even in her confusion, in a dark grey suit, although he had removed his tie and his striped blue and cream shirt was open at the neck. He was about thirty-five, she thought, maybe a little older, and when he smiled at her, his face crinkled up in a way that somehow made him look like a small boy.
He settled her in a corner, and said, ‘I’m Ludovic. Ludovic Ingram. Lawyer by trade although not by nature. Friend of our hostess, friend of your fiancé. Funny to think of old Piers being a fiancé. He looks much too old for you. Why don’t you ditch him and marry me instead? I’m a free man, just divorced, it’d be much more fun for you.’
And she had sat there, listening to him, not required to say anything at all, picking her way through her food, and feeling slowly better suddenly, and thinking that she had never felt more fond of anyone in her life. By the time Piers finally saw her, came over and said, ‘Chloe, there you are, wherever have you been?’ she was able to say quite coolly, ‘Talking to this extremely attractive gentleman, Piers,’ and even when they were going home in the car she didn’t make a fuss, didn’t make an issue of it. But ever since then she had remembered that day, and its total misery and, more than that, a sense of rage with Piers that he had allowed it to happen to her; it became a yardstick by which she measured other unpleasant things, and very few of them came near to it.
A few days later she was able to talk to Piers about it, to try and explain how terrible it had been, how hurtful she had found his behaviour; but he had laughed and taken her in his arms and told her she was imagining things, that he would have been delighted had she come over to the table, and he knew she was going to love such occasions in no time at all. ‘You mustn’t be so sensitive, darling, everyone loves you, really they do.’
She doubted that; what she did not doubt was that Piers loved her. Or that she loved him. Whatever she had to endure, whoever she had to deal with, it was worth it. She just wished everyone else could see how wrong they were, and how happy she was.
They were married on a golden late September day, in a small, rather bleak ceremony at the register office in Ipswich, followed by a small and really very charming reception at the Moat House. Joe and Caroline had been surprised by Piers’s insistence that he wanted no fuss, and that he wanted it kept out of the papers; for a man who liked the maximum of fuss about everything, whose life indeed was dedicated to fuss, it seemed a strange remark.
His mother was too old and frail to come: she had a bad heart and could not leave the nursing home in Sussex, but Chloe told Joe that she had met her several times, that she was a sweet, rather beautiful old lady called Flavia, had told Chloe she was so thrilled that Piers was finally going to settle down again and with such a lovely girl that she really felt she could dance at the wedding. Piers’s best man was Damian Lutyens, who was writing the lyrics for the Lady; he was a very nice young man, with wild dark hair and burning dark eyes, whom Chloe liked very much, but he still seemed a puzzling choice to Joe, who didn’t like him, and in his darkest hours, and in the privacy of his own thoughts, wondered about his exact relationship with Piers; why, after all, could there not have been some long-standing friend produced, more his own age, rather than this somewhat exotic young man? It all contributed to his sense of panic and foreboding.
The Woolfs had been invited, because Piers said Maria would be so outraged if they weren’t that she would withdraw her backing from the Lady immediately; Chloe was appalled, but hadn’t argued. Also David and Liza Montague were coming: Liza was an opera singer, a diva, and David a conductor, and they were rather different from the Woolfs, and very kind to Chloe. Liza had known Piers from RADA days, and had been a close friend of Guinevere’s, but it didn’t seem to prejudice her against Chloe in any way. She was dark and imposing, rather large and very beautiful and much given to taking Chloe to her large bosom and telling her if ever she needed a friend, she would be there. The only other guests from Piers’s side were Tabitha Levine, which delighted Joe, a young playwright called Giles Forrest, who was being hailed as the new Osborne and had written a play called The Kingdom which Piers was reading, ‘with a capital R, you understand,’ he said to Chloe, and Giles Fawcett, one of the new wave of theatre critics, some said the new Tynan, a very close f
riend of both Piers and the Montagues.
Apart from the Woolfs, and just possibly Tabitha Levine, Chloe was happy with the guest list and her only problem was finding guests of her own to match up to it. There were her friends, none of whom were at all impressive, indeed she wondered what on earth the Woolfs would make of them, and more importantly how they would behave towards them; there was dear Mrs Brownlowe who was in any case doing the catering so would be there in a rather below-the-salt capacity anyway; and, with the exception of Joe, there was nobody other than her family, and of course the Bamforths, whom she wanted. The thought made her feel miserable and more of a failure than ever; the unbidden thought that Fleur would no doubt have had dozens of clever, smart people to invite to a wedding entered her head and she had some trouble dismissing it. In the end, she decided to ask three of her closest friends and their escorts, her brothers and the Bamforths and leave it at that. Piers was faintly amused at the invitation to the Bamforths and even questioned its wisdom, but Chloe was uncharacteristically firm. ‘There have been times when I couldn’t have got through without Jack and they’re coming,’ she said, and walked out of the door.
She asked her mother if there was anyone she would like to ask, and Caroline had said she really thought it would be better not, that the mix was daunting enough already without hurling Suffolk middle-aged society into it, and Chloe had said fine, that was absolutely all right by her, and was about to leave the room when Caroline called her back.
Chloe,’ she said, just slightly carefully, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve thought about telling Piers about – well, about your –’
Chloe, flushing with something approaching outrage, said of course she hadn’t, that it was nothing, absolutely nothing to do with him, with them, with anybody, and she hoped, indeed prayed, that Piers would never hear anything of it. ‘I hope you agree,’ she added.
‘In that case,’ said Caroline crisply, ‘we certainly shouldn’t ask anyone from old Suffolk. You never know what someone might say, what might slip out. And yes, Chloe, I do agree with you.’
Two days before the wedding, Piers rang Caroline: ‘Caroline, I wonder if it would be too awful to inflict one more guest on you?’
‘Not too awful, but quite,’ said Caroline coldly. ‘Who is it?’
‘A journalist friend of mine. He’s been away in the States. I wasn’t expecting him to be in the country, but we go back a long way and he’d be very hurt if he was excluded.’
‘Oh, all right,’ said Caroline with a sigh, ‘but you know it’s sit-down, I’ll have to rejig everything. I hope he’s not married?’
‘He’s not. Thank you, Caroline. His name’s Magnus Phillips. I expect Joe will know him.’
Joe was at once intrigued and amused. ‘Magnus Phillips is the original yellow journalist. The worst sort. He’s just been writing a gloves-off book about the ballet. Very nasty. I’m extremely surprised Piers should claim him as a friend. Must have misread him. You’ll probably like him,’ he added.
‘Why should I like him?’ said Caroline.
‘Because you like rough trade,’ said Joe, kissing her briefly, ‘and they don’t come much rougher than Magnus.’
Caroline turned her face away from him.
Chloe wore a dress by Ossie Clark for her wedding, in cream crepe, long and slightly high-waisted which dealt with any suspicion of a burgeoning bump in her stomach. She had her hair dressed in a tumble of tendrilly ringlets with fresh white roses set in it, and she looked so lovely that even Caroline had a lump in her throat as she looked at her coming into the register office on Joe’s arm. Piers was wearing a very light grey suit for the wedding, with a cream silk shirt – ‘specially made for my wedding,’ he said to Joe – and a dark red tie; he looked ridiculously handsome. Damian was more flamboyant in cream linen; but he also looked wonderful.
Joe was in the suit he had bought for lunch at the Caprice with Tabitha (a fact he did not feel it necessary to acquaint Caroline or Chloe with), but he arrived very late the night before the wedding having managed to leave his only respectable shoes behind in London. He had enormous feet and none of even Toby’s shoes fitted him; it was a question therefore of wearing either the white plimsolls he had arrived in or a very heavy pair of brogues which had been William’s, and which Caroline had for some reason kept, or alternatively dashing round Ipswich in a panic just before the wedding.
Chloe said she thought the plimsolls would be better, and more in keeping with the rather eccentric occasion, but Caroline said she thought the brogues; they both agreed that if they let him loose on Ipswich they would never see him again. In the end Joe wore the brogues which were a size too small and made a very loud noise as he walked in them, and then changed into the plimsolls when they got back to the Moat House: none of which escaped the beady attentions of Maria Woolf, and which distracted Chloe very efficiently from her nerves.
Maria was wearing a white suit, and a very ostentatious white fox stole which she flung about her dramatically whenever she felt attention being withdrawn; she also insisted on making a short speech before they all sat down to lunch, saying she knew she was something of an interloper on a wonderfully charming family occasion, but she was absolutely too thrilled to be there. They had all forgotten about the mysterious Magnus Phillips, who had not in any case been coming to the register office, when there was an immensely loud throbbing noise coming up the drive and they all watched through the drawing-room windows as a leather-clad figure dismounted from a very large BMW motorbike.
‘Good Lord,’ said Piers, ‘it’s Magnus. Old devil.’ He was obviously very impressed.
Magnus walked in through the front door, pulling off his helmet. ‘Good afternoon,’ he said to Caroline, ‘Magnus Phillips. I’m so sorry I’m so late. Bike failure. I did my best. Can I change?’
‘Of course,’ said Caroline, icy with composure, ‘we’re just going into lunch. Janey, do show Mr Phillips one of the guest rooms.’
She was unduly ruffled and upset by Magnus Phillips’s behaviour; his reappearance ten minutes later, looking rather different, in a dark suit and very sober tie, only slightly soothed her.
He bent over her hand and bowed, elaborately formal. ‘Lady Hunterton,’ he said, ‘again, let me apologize. I broke down in the middle of the A12. It hasn’t ever happened to me before. I hope I haven’t disrupted the nuptials.’
‘No, of course not,’ said Caroline, slightly irritably, struggling to sound polite, ‘I’m sorry you’ve had such trouble.’
Magnus Phillips straightened up and half smiled at her and she found herself unwillingly and helplessly disturbed by what she saw. He was dark-haired, almost swarthy, average height, very heavily built, with powerfully broad shoulders and very large, strong-looking hands. He was expensively dressed in a dark grey three-piece suit, which had appeared from a bag on the back of his bike and was only slightly creased, light blue shirt and grey and red striped tie and he wore rather too much jewellery: gold watch, large gold signet ring, ostentatious gold cufflinks. He looked, she thought, like a successful gangster. His brilliant dark eyes were fixed on her with immense interest, as if she was worthy of close and careful study, and, at the same time, with great appreciation.
‘Are you really the mother of the bride? Not a sister of some kind?’ His voice was deliberately working class, deep and rough, and very sexy.
‘No,’ said Caroline, briskly detaching herself from his gaze. ‘Very much her mother. Now do come along in. Piers, your errant guest is ready, shall we go in?’
Lunch went well: Caroline sat next to Damian and found him charming and engaging, and watched Joe patently finding Tabitha charming and engaging at the other end of the table. Maria was busy impressing Giles Forrest and Sir Jack was patently hugely charmed by Chloe’s best friend, Lucinda Bryant Smith, from Wycombe Abbey. The Montagues chatted to everyone, and kept distracting Jack Bamforth fr
om his role as wine waiter to ask him about a racehorse they were in the process of buying, and Chloe sat in a daze of happiness and wondered when she might wake up.
After lunch Joe made a short and very sweet speech about how he wasn’t exactly losing a daughter, because he didn’t have one, and hoped he wasn’t gaining a son because he was much younger than the bridegroom. Then Piers stood up and said he did know that his good fortune was truly quite incredible, and that he knew he had a wife whose gifts and attributes were simply too long to list, but he would make a start by saying she was beautiful, clever, sweet-natured and quite incredibly brave in taking him on, and that he would do everything in his power to take care of her, and then he bent over her and took both her hands in his and kissed them and said, ‘Thank you for marrying me, Chloe.’
The muffled but unmistakable sound of Toby and Jolyon making sick noises quite cheered Joe and got him through the day.
After that everyone got very relaxed, and drank a great deal more. Damian tried to explain to Caroline what a lyricist was, and Giles Forrest said he hoped Damian’s work on the Lady was better than his work on Angels, and Damian said so did he. Caroline asked what was Angels, and Magnus Phillips, his dark eyes bright with malice, said it was a show that Damian and Piers had collaborated on a couple of years earlier that had flopped.
AN Outrageous Affair Page 40
