‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, there were, weren’t there? Joe, what’s been the matter with you lately? You’ve been so odd, so hostile. It’s upset me.’
‘Oh,’ he said, at once upset and oddly pleased he could still upset her, ‘oh, nothing. Some old wounds reopened, that’s all. I’m sorry.’
‘What old wounds?’
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I – well, I saw Magnus Phillips. Just by chance. It knocked me off my perch, that’s all. Reminded me how much I hated him.’
‘Oh, Joe,’ said Caroline, and her face was soft, sad as it seldom was, ‘I’m so sorry. So terribly sorry. I should never have done that. Never. It was madness. Total madness. Anyway,’ she added more briskly, ‘you consoled yourself fairly well, didn’t you? Making the gossip columns with a film star.’
‘Briefly,’ he said.
‘What was she like?’ she said curiously.
‘Self-obsessed,’ he said simply. ‘In every way.’ And laughed.
Caroline laughed too. ‘I’m glad to hear it. Joe, what are you staring at?’
‘You,’ said Joe. ‘I always forget how beautiful you are. Much more beautiful than Rose. Than anyone.’
‘Oh, Joe,’ said Caroline. ‘I’m not beautiful. I’m an old woman.’
‘Caroline,’ said Joe, ‘to me you are still the woman who walked into the Coffee House Club that day. So gorgeous, so sexy, you took my breath away. Literally.’
‘Well,’ said Caroline, ‘well, you weren’t so bad yourself.’ She looked at him and smiled. ‘Still aren’t. Not really.’
‘Not so good either,’ said Joe. ‘Getting senile. I looked at Chloe this morning and thought this time tomorrow she’d be Lady Windsor and I almost burst into tears.’
‘Now, Joe,’ said Caroline, ‘that is not senility. You’ve always been like that. That was the first thing I loved about you, the way you cried.’ She looked at him closely. ‘Joe, you’re not crying now, are you? Joe, whatever for? Is it Chloe?’
‘No,’ he said, blowing his nose hard, ‘it isn’t Chloe. It’s you. I miss you, Caroline, I really do. Sorry,’ he added, smiling rather weakly at her.
‘I miss you too,’ said Caroline. ‘Actually. I –’ She seemed to be about to say something: then suddenly stood up decisively. ‘Well, I’d better be on my way. There’s my cab now. We’re going to be very late tomorrow. Goodnight, Joe.’
‘Goodnight, Caroline.’
He sighed as he shut the door; he felt very bleak.
The day of the investiture was perfect; blue-skied and slightly mistily golden. It was obviously going to stay that way or get even nicer; it was also clearly going to be very hot.
Kitty was much better: a little irritable, but hungry. Pandora went off to school grumbling wildly, after bidding a very sleepy Piers goodbye and good luck. Chloe took Ned to school, rang Stebbings to make sure that everything was all right, that the florists had arrived, that the caterers were on their way (not Browne and Lowe, Piers said Jean had decided against them, which meant he had decided against them; he didn’t like her employing them, saying with some justification that she found it even harder than usual to relax), that the chairs and tables were all up, the cloths and napkins in place, and said she would be down immediately after lunch. She wished fervently she was simply staff and not hostess for the evening.
She had set her mind resolutely against anything except the day ahead; so far it seemed to be working. She could think of nothing else.
Her hairdresser arrived at nine thirty to comb her hair out; she suggested he should have a go at Piers’s at the same time. Piers was roaming the house, literally, going from room to room, glassy pale; he had been sick twice already, and was sipping iced water neurotically. He seemed far more nervous that he was even before a first night.
‘Piers,’ said Chloe, ‘I’m going to change now. Why don’t you let Nicky tidy your hair up? I suppose that meeting at Prendergast’s stopped you getting to Truefitt and Hill yesterday?’
‘What? Oh yes. Pity.’
‘What was it about? Jean said it was terribly high-powered.’
‘Oh – nothing much. Tax,’ said Piers.
‘Oh, right. Well, go on, Nicky’s in my room now. And then you should get changed.’
‘Yes, all right,’ said Piers irritably. ‘I’m perfectly capable of telling the time.’ He rushed into the bathroom and she heard him retching again; she had been about to ask him why he was still seeing Faraday, but decided this was not the moment.
She was just zipping up her dress when the phone rang. It was Joe. ‘Hallo, poppet. Just rang to wish you luck.’
‘Oh, Joe, thank you. I did ring you yesterday, twice, but you weren’t there. Was it really urgent?’
‘Oh – no. No, not really.’ He sounded vague. ‘Just a couple of things. And I thought I might miss you today. To wish you luck, you know. Both of you,’ he added carefully, ‘and we’ll see you tonight.’
‘Yes. I hear you were interviewing Annunciata.’
‘Yes,’ he said and he sounded very determinedly bright. ‘Yes, she seems to have made it at last. Got a proper part in the Jesus Christ Superstar film. She’s quite good apparently.’
‘I’m so glad,’ said Chloe, equally determinedly bright.
Piers appeared in the doorway, ashen-faced but calm now, in his wing-collared shirt and nothing else.
‘I’ve just discovered I haven’t got any black socks,’ he said. ‘Could you send Rosemary out quickly to get some? And help me tie this tie, I’m all thumbs.’
Chloe went to his dressing room, found a dozen pairs of black socks, and brought them to him, trying not to look smug; he looked at them and said, ‘Really, Chloe, I can’t wear those, they’re far too thick. I wanted silk.’
‘Well, it’s either woollen socks or keeping the Queen waiting,’ said Chloe. ‘Your decision, Piers.’
Piers put on the woollen socks.
He was having a crisis with his cufflinks; Chloe fixed them for him. He was shaking violently; he was also very cold. Chloe felt a sudden, unexpected warmth towards him, reached up on an impulse and kissed him.
‘You’ll be fine,’ she said.
‘I hope so,’ he said, and then he smiled down at her and said, ‘I love you, you know.’
‘Do you?’ said Chloe, looking at him very directly, feeling the warmth leave her again. ‘Do you really?’
‘Yes,’ he said, clearly surprised by the question. ‘Yes, I really do.’
‘Piers,’ she said, ‘Piers, I don’t –’ ‘understand you at all’ she had been going to say, but then Kitty ran in and hugged his legs, and he sighed, clearly irritated, and disentangled her a little too firmly, and said, ‘I have to finish dressing,’ and disappeared into his dressing room.
The car arrived at nine forty-five: the gates of the palace opened at ten. Rosemary and Kitty stood on the steps to see them off, taking endless photographs. There were a couple of journalists there as well. As she stood there, smiling determinedly, Chloe heard the phone ringing and debated telling Rosemary to answer it; then she said, ‘Come on, Piers, let’s go,’ and they were in the car, Piers gripping her hand almost maniacally as they went through Belgrave Square, round Hyde Park Corner and down Constitution Hill to join the long line of other cars making their way into the forecourt of Buckingham Palace, and she looked out of the window, and thought how extraordinary it was that a man who could hold hundreds of people spellbound in a theatre night after night, who could calmly watch himself in the presence of the highest in the land and in his profession, on a screen magnified twenty, a hundred times, every tiny facial gesture under scrutiny, who could make a charming, gracious, amusing speech as he held his Oscar, who could sing in public for the first time in his life together with the chorus of the English National Opera, how extraordinary it was that such a
man could be reduced to naked, quivering terror at the prospect of kneeling before one small, rather unremarkable-looking woman and not having to say a single word.
They followed the red carpet into the palace, where they were separated; Piers was taken into a room with the other recipients (where, he told her afterwards, he stood for an hour, with no coffee, nowhere to sit down, no lavatory even, feeling increasingly more dreadful: the only relief being when he was able to practise his kneeling on the kneeling stool – ‘The Major Domo kept saying right knee right hand and I was so sure I’d get it wrong) while Chloe went up the Grand Staircase, along the corridor, into the ballroom. She felt more and more as if she was dreaming, as if she was watching some other person, dressed in a stiff navy blue dress, accompanying a man she did not know; she settled on her gilt chair, stared at the pair of thrones ahead of her on the dais and waited. Everything, including the Yeoman of the Guard who flanked the room, seemed to be red and gold. A band was playing in the gallery behind them, a most extraordinary mixture of music, it seemed to her, or was it just her mood, from Elgar to My Fair Lady.
At eleven, precisely, the Queen appeared, smiling, walked down towards the dais. Chloe half expected to see the corgis with her. She looked very small, very neat, prettier, less forbidding, than she did in photographs. Piers who had been presented to her once before at premières, and seen her several times, had told Chloe that, but she was still surprised. The band played the national anthem, and the Queen stood listening to it rather intently as if it was a tune she had not heard before; then she smiled and said, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen please be seated.’
The recipients began to move, one by one, perfectly choreographed, from the side of the ballroom towards the dais; Chloe watched in the same odd state of detachment, saw Piers pause, bow, walk forward, go down on one knee, looking up at the Queen, watched the blade of the sword flash as it touched first his right shoulder then his left, and wondered why she could not see very well. She realized as he walked backwards away from Her Majesty again, his face still solemn, but softer, easier, and bowed for the second time, that it was because her eyes were filled with tears.
Then it was over and they were outside, besieged by photographers, and he was laughing, relaxed, easy with them, with her, clearly enchanted with everything but most of all himself, and she said, more amused than anything at his patent childlike pleasure and delight, ‘Darling, well done, congratulations,’ and they drove to the Garrick where he got out of the car after kissing her and saying, ‘Goodbye, Lady Windsor, I shall see you later.’ Then, limp with relief at being free of him for a few hours, she sank back and watched the centre of London become the rather plain sprawl of the Cromwell Road, the plainer one of the Great West Road, and then the squalid outposts of London Airport; and then it began to soften, change, broaden out, and by half past two they were in the rolling green charm of Berkshire, and at three o’clock she was sitting drinking tea in the kitchen of Stebbings, answering questions about glasses and flowers and microphones and coat rails and Portaloos and wondering if perhaps she had not imagined the entire happenings of the morning.
At four the children arrived in a car with Rosemary; at six Piers arrived, laughing, flushed, still high on pleasure. He kissed them all, said the lunch had been wonderful, marvellous, and first he was going down to the stables to see Dream Street and the other horses and then he was going to have a nap and then a swim, and after that he would feel quite himself again and get ready for the evening. Pandora told him he looked like a prince, and he told her he felt like one, but he was only just a boring old knight, and she said should she curtsy to him, and he said yes, she certainly should; Chloe said, ‘Piers really!’ and he said, ‘Oh darling, don’t be so stuffy,’ and Pandora jumped off her chair and ran over to him, and dropped the most beautiful curtsy, learnt from Miss Vacani and said, ‘I am truly honoured to make your acquaintance, Sir Piers,’ and he bowed and kissed her hand. While Chloe was trying to smile, and Ned was jumping up and down trying to win some attention for himself, Jean Potts came in and said Mick McHugh, one of the stable-lads, had just been thrown by Dream Street and that the horse had fallen on him, and could Piers come to the stables straight away.
Mick McHugh suffered some very serious injuries, including a collapsed lung, caused by its being ruptured by two of his ribs and was in intensive care, but declared out of danger by early evening. Dream Street had broken a leg in the fall and had to be shot.
Chloe found Piers weeping in the tack room, a huge tumbler of whisky in his hand placed there by Jean Potts, who had followed him out to the stables and witnessed at first hand his terrible distress.
‘Piers, I’m so sorry. So terribly sorry. I –’ She raised her hands towards him, and then dropped them again as if aware of how useless she was being.
‘I’ll leave you,’ she said quietly, and went up to their room. The day had darkened; great clouds were rolling up from the west, and the sky was streaked orange and red behind them, dramatic, threatening. Chloe felt chilled as well as sad about Dream Street, anxious about the evening; she felt a sense of great unease, almost of danger; and was even half inclined (while knowing it was impossible, absurd) to cancel the party, to keep her family together, safely about her, the doors closed against intruders. Then she told herself that she was being absurd, that the death of a horse, however upsetting, could hardly rank as a major tragedy and that of course everything should go ahead, it would comfort Piers, restore his happiness. And seized upon the loss of Dream Street as an excuse to ignore the message waiting for her from Jean that her mother had rung and would she ring her back right away. She had enough to deal with; they could both wait.
By the time the first guests came rolling up the drive, the rain had begun: light powdery stuff, more mist than anything. Piers and she stood at the front door with the children, greeting their guests, apologizing for their incompetence at controlling the weather, smiling, accepting congratulations, felicitations, gifts. Piers was laughing, easy again; only the tautness of his jaw told of his pain, his grief over the belated horse.
After half an hour it was raining harder, grey sheets of the stuff, and a driving wind had set in. It was cold; Chloe worried about her women guests, in their summer clothes, fine lawns and silks and floating gauze, sleeveless, strapless (and the younger ones virtually skirtless as well). She phoned the marquee people to tell them to bring some heaters over, but there was no one there; she wished there was some warm food, asked the caterers if they could make some soup, but of course it was too late. She offered shawls, jumpers, wraps, which most people declined, and then stood, some of the women wearing their husbands’ dinner jackets, shivering in the marquee, drinking the chilled champagne, the Bellinis, the Bucks Fizz. It was a nightmare, every hostess’s nightmare; she felt like sending everyone home, telling them to come back another day.
And then Ludovic arrived, wonderfully handsome in a white dinner jacket, with a pretty girl on his arm who looked young enough to be his daughter (‘Just cover,’ he whispered in Chloe’s ear), and gave her a huge bear-like hug and followed her into the marquee. ‘Shit,’ he said loudly, audibly, rubbing his hands together, ‘it’s fucking freezing in here. Maybe we could do some keep-fit or something, Chloe, warm us all up.’
Everyone laughed, made blessedly easier at once; then ‘Let’s have some music and dancing before dinner,’ said Piers. ‘It’s a good idea, Ludo, get warm that way.’
It worked. The DJ was summoned abruptly from the kitchen and started playing, people started dancing, rather determinedly, and by nine thirty when supper was served, the heat of the bodies had warmed the marquee to such an extent that the men were taking off their jackets voluntarily.
Thank God, thought Chloe, maybe it was going after all to be all right; and everyone seemed very happy, the dancing had mixed the groups as well as warming them, there was a buzz of conversation and laughter louder than supper-level. Piers had r
elaxed, had enjoyed meeting the challenge, solving the problem; he was sitting at a table with Maria Woolf on one side of him and Pandora on the other, looking very easy, telling jokes, laughing at other people’s. It brought back sharply for Chloe that other occasion, more than six years ago, the terrible lunch when she had had no table to sit at, no one to talk to, and she reflected briefly that nothing had really changed so very much. Then she felt an arm round her shoulders and it was Damian. ‘Hallo, dear Lady Windsor,’ he said and took her hand and kissed it and begged her to join him, and to tell him about the morning; she sat down and the Montagues were at the table, and so was Annunciata, with a young man who looked quite extraordinarily like the boy who played Tadzio in Death in Venice, and so was Ludovic with his girlfriend whose name was Candida, and they all told Chloe how lovely she looked, and how much too absurdly young to be the mother of her large family and what a wonderful party she had organized yet again, and how proud of Piers she must be and what a success she had made of the marriage, and she realized things had actually changed a great deal.
She suddenly noticed her mother had still not arrived, or Joe; surely they should be here by now. She hoped nothing had happened to them, that they hadn’t had an accident on the road in the torrential rain. Joe was quite likely to be late, but Caroline had promised they would come together.
When she saw Joe and Caroline, standing together in the doorway of the marquee, she was disproportionately pleased; she went over, hugged them both, brushed aside their apologies, fetched them drinks, led them to the buffet table; by then Piers was gone, back to his table, back to his audience, and she concentrated on looking after her mother and Joe. They both seemed slightly strained, but she had been through such intense strain herself that day it seemed almost a natural state of affairs.
‘I rang you,’ said Caroline, slightly reproachfully, as Chloe led her to a table, followed by Joe. ‘Didn’t you get the message? It was important, Chloe. I – I wanted to –’
AN Outrageous Affair Page 87
