Yrs truly
Brian Meredith
‘Isn’t that sweet?’ she said to Charlotte and Puppy, who liked to be with her when she read her post, and indeed often removed the empty envelopes and scattered them carefully round the garden. ‘What a kind, nice man he must be.’
She thought for a bit, and then decided it would be better if she met Mr Meredith, rather than Angela Barlowe (whose husband’s ring it actually was). You never knew, some of the details might be painful for her. And at least, she realized, she would be able to find out exactly where Colin Barlowe had spent his last hours.
There was absolutely no reason, she decided, for Charles to be told about it.
Ben and the boys were booked on the flying boat, leaving for Melbourne on 27 May. They had their passports, their visas, Ben had a work permit. Initially he would do clerical work; he had decided to see what the land of opportunity could offer him once they had settled down. The boys were apprehensive, excited, the envy of their friends, particularly over the flying. The journey would be endless, almost six days, with overnight stops in Cairo, Karachi, Singapore … every time David thought about it, he smiled.
Life, they were told with enormous authority by those in the know who had any idea at all about Australia, would consist of one long beach party, sunbathing, surfing, and drinking ice-cold beer, interspersed with the occasional deep-sea fishing trip. The girls, it was well known, were all blonde and only ever wore bikinis. On Christmas Day they would barbecue a turkey on the beach. It didn’t sound too bad. David was keener than Daniel now, particularly about the bikini-clad girls. Daniel had a recurring nightmare: they were being pushed onto a great aeroplane, just him and David, along with a lot of other children, just as they had been pushed onto the train at Waterloo all those years ago, and people kept saying be brave, be brave, and he could see his dad waving, miles away behind a barrier, and he wouldn’t get on, Dad wouldn’t, just kept on standing there, and the plane started moving away and still his dad wasn’t on it, and then right out of reach from all of them there was Grace, Grace with Charlotte and Floss, calling them. And while he tried to attract her attention, yelling, ‘Grace, Grace,’ and waving furiously, frantically, the plane started to lift into the air, and still she didn’t hear him, nor did she see, and he would wake up, crying, sweating, and lie staring at the picture of Charlotte and Floss, and wishing they could go back to the Mill House instead of Melbourne.
Ben had heard him calling for Grace; he wondered if he ever did the same thing in his sleep.
The night before the party, Grace was running over the table plan in the marquee, thinking that everything seemed to be going very smoothly, when Charles came out and asked her where his dinner jacket was.
‘At the dry-cleaners, Charles, I told you.’
‘Which dry-cleaners?’
‘Townsend’s in Salisbury.’
‘Why not the one in Shaftesbury?’
‘Because I hardly ever go to Shaftesbury at the moment.’
‘Well, you’ll have to pick it up,’ he said, ‘because I certainly haven’t got time.’
‘Charles, I can’t. Not tomorrow. Not all the way to Salisbury. Surely you can—’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I can’t. I’ve got meetings all day. Why didn’t you get it today?’
‘Because I had a lecture this afternoon, and it didn’t finish until the cleaner’s was closed. It’s Wednesday, it’s early closing day.’
‘Oh God,’ he said, ‘so I have to make a special trip into Salisbury to fetch my dinner jacket. Because you had a lecture.’
‘Charles, that’s nonsense. You’ve got the car, you can be there in half an hour, it’s not fair to blame my lecture.’
‘I do blame it,’ he said, ‘I blame it, that course, for a lot of things. It’s taking up too much of your time and your attention, it wears you out as far as I can see, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it wasn’t a factor in preventing you from becoming pregnant.’
‘Oh really!’ said Grace. ‘That’s absurd. It’s no time at all since you – since we decided. I can’t—’
‘It’s several months,’ said Charles. ‘And I think this course nonsense has gone on long enough. I want it to stop. You won’t have time to teach, anyway, when you do have a child, the whole thing is nonsense. I agreed initially, when you – well, when I first came home. But now I’m getting extremely tired of it and the way it’s used as an excuse for everything. I think you should tell them you won’t be coming any more. Is that quite clear?’
‘Yes,’ said Grace, ‘it’s quite clear. Thank you. But I’m not going to do it.’
‘You have to,’ said Charles simply, ‘I’m afraid. It’s quite expensive. I can simply stop paying the fees. All right? Now then, if I have to go and get my dinner jacket, I shall have to do some work now. I’ll sleep in the guest room. Goodnight, Grace.’
Sometimes, even now, she thought of leaving him.
The party went beautifully. Everyone said so. The marquee looked wonderful, the flowers were lovely, the caterer, down from London and hugely expensive, a great success. She stood on the doorstep of the Mill House looking, she knew, very pretty, in a new, almost full-skirted pale blue satin dress, made by Mrs Babbage but copied from a picture in Vogue, her hair put up for the evening, and wearing more make-up than usual. Charles, in a stiff, awkward truce, had told her she looked very nice indeed. Clifford told her she looked beautiful; even Muriel told her she looked very pretty. People arrived, half strangers, the people who had ignored her all through the war, kissed her, told her how lovely it was to see her. She moved dreamlike from table to table through dinner, chatting to everyone, her mind only half on the evening.
‘This is wonderful, darling,’ said Clarissa, ‘a real triumph. Charles has just been telling me how brilliantly you’ve organized this marvellous party. He’s so proud of you, Grace.’
‘Is he?’
‘Yes,’ she said, her face very serious, ‘yes he is. He does love you, Grace. Very much. I know – well, I know it’s hard. But—’
‘It’s so hard,’ said Grace simply, ‘that I still don’t know how to bear it, quite a lot of the time.’
She was standing by the buffet, rather half heartedly making up a plate of desserts for Muriel, when Jack came over. He smiled at her. ‘Lovely party. What a clever girl you are.’
‘Not really,’ said Grace, ‘I just found a few clever people to do it for me.’
‘That’s a skill in itself,’ he said, ‘delegation. Not easy at all. Here, let me help you. Are you all right? You look a bit flushed?’
‘I’m fine,’ said Grace quickly, ‘but it is quite warm, isn’t it? With all the people in here.’
‘Look,’ he said, ‘you go outside for a minute, I’ll bring your plate.’
‘It’s for Muriel,’ said Grace.
‘Well I’ll take it to her. Off you go, find some fresh air.’
She was sitting on the swing seat, trying to keep her thoughts clear of the past, of other occasions she had sat there, when he appeared again.
‘Just checking on you,’ he said, ‘practising my medical skills.’
‘Honestly, I’m fine,’ she said, ‘don’t worry about me, Jack.’
‘But I do worry about you,’ he said, ‘we both do, Clarissa and I. We think you’re wonderful.’
‘Oh nonsense,’ said Grace, but his kindness, his concern made her heart ache suddenly, fiercely, ‘I’m very lucky really.’
‘Well, it’s all relative,’ he said after a long pause, ‘of course you are in lots of ways. I am in lots of ways. But I still can’t help being angry sometimes. Resentful at others. We’d hardly be human otherwise, would we?’
‘No,’ said Grace, surprised at his suddenly letting down his guard; he was always so heartily cheerful. She realised he was actually quite drunk. ‘No I suppose not.’
‘If it wasn’t for my work,’ he said, ‘I sometimes think I’d go quite mad. Now I am lucky, being able to do that
. And to have Clarissa of course. She’s – well, she’s been magnificent. Not always easy for her either.’
‘No,’ said Grace. She felt slightly nervous suddenly; feeling herself with the old sensation of things being out of control, of being in dangerous territory.
‘I nearly lost her, you know,’ he said, ‘back in the beginning. It was hard for her. Terribly hard.’
‘Yes.’
‘You knew, didn’t you?’ he said suddenly.
‘Knew what?’
‘About Giles. About Clarissa and Giles.’
‘Jack I don’t know what you’re—’
‘Dear Grace, it’s all right. And of course you knew. I’m not stupid. I saw you covering up for them, that night, so very sweetly. And very competently too. I was impressed. Deception doesn’t come easily to you, does it?’
‘No,’ she said, her voice very low.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘I understand. I knew there’d been someone, and I worked out who it was quite easily. And I forgave them long ago. I know what it did for Clarissa, helped her to come to terms with me. Me and the face. That’s how I think of it, you know. The face. Not my face, the face.’
‘Oh Jack. Jack, I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be. As long as Florence never knows that’s all that really matters. And of course Clarissa and I have never mentioned it. There are places in every marriage that are best not entered, don’t you think? But I have wanted to thank you for a long time, for what you did that night, for all of us. I wish we could help you in return.’
‘You do help me,’ said Grace, leaning up impulsively, kissing him tenderly, almost lingeringly on the mouth, ‘just by being there.’
‘Thank you,’ he said gently. ‘Thank you. For the kiss, I mean. It’s not often a pretty woman does that, these days. Come along, we’d better get back.’
Later she was dancing with some man called Reggie she had never met but who had told her three times already how lovely it was to see her again.
‘Old Charles is looking a lot better,’ he said, ‘I haven’t seen him for six months or so. Terrible war, he must have had. Those months on his own, more or less in hiding and then getting captured again, – doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘No,’ said Grace.
‘And then being so badly wounded, and then months in prison camps – God, I don’t know how he came through it at all. Without cracking up. Got a DSO I heard. For the Italian business.’
‘Yes.’
‘You must be very proud of him.’
‘Oh I am,’ said Grace mechanically.
As she lay in bed that night, accepting Charles’s apologies (and a slightly ambivalent retraction of his demand that she gave up the course), his thanks for organizing the party so well, she felt she had reached some kind of a watershed: that she could at least envisage now settling down, being happy. She thought for a long time about Jack, about his courage, in accepting things, difficult, terrible things, that he could not change; if he could do it, then surely so could she. And she was not so incompetent after all, could clearly be in time, the kind of wife Charles wanted, giving parties, looking nice, saying the right thing. It might not be what she wanted, but was it really so bad?
And besides, how could she even think of leaving him, leaving her husband, her husband the hero?
Chapter 35
Early May 1946
Charles had bought a horse. Or rather half a horse. Muriel had bought the other half, he told her. ‘What, you mean the hind legs? As in the pantomime?’ said Grace icily. She could never remember being so angry. First that he should have spent what she knew must be a great deal of money on a horse when she had been pleading unsuccessfully for months for a car: second that he should have liaised clearly in secret with his mother over it.
Even Clifford came as near to disloyalty to both of them as he was capable of when he said, ‘Never mind, darling, I’ll give you half a car if you like.’
The horse was a thoroughbred, extremely beautiful, a bright bay mare called Lara. Grace was terrified of her; she was very young and what the previous owner called feisty. ‘You’ve got an absolute humdinger there,’ he said to Charles, watching her careering round and round the paddock after she had been released from the horsebox. ‘I know you’re going to enjoy her. Mind you,’ he added to Muriel, who had come down to witness the arrival, ‘she does take a bit of riding. He’ll have his work cut out with her at first.’
‘Oh, he’ll be able to handle her easily,’ said Muriel. ‘And he’ll enjoy it so much. He’s missed having a horse dreadfully. But ever since his marriage it’s been out of the question, I’m afraid.’
‘Muriel,’ said Grace, finding herself quite unable to swallow this one, ‘Charles hasn’t had a horse because of the war. He hasn’t been here.’
‘Well, yes, I suppose that was a factor,’ said Muriel grudgingly.
Lara was actually too much for Charles. Even Grace could see that. She was immensely strong, she had quite a nasty temper and she was very jumpy. She shied at everything: not just tractors and cars, and other large unexpected objects, but birds, rabbits, the wind in the hedges. For some reason she hated cows; getting her to walk past a field of them was almost impossible. Charles had to dismount and lead her, while she danced all over the road. She had a nasty habit of taking the bit, she had twice bolted with Charles, and she also did an extremely theatrical double buck, so that if she didn’t dislodge him the first time, she almost always got him off the second.
Charles was undeterred by this; Grace came to admire his courage. He rode every day, early in the morning, refusing to give in to Lara; by the end of the first week he was covered in bruises and had a badly sprained wrist.
‘You’ll have to wait for that to get better, surely,’ she said, when the doctor had left after strapping it up.
‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘can’t do that, she’ll get even fresher, got to keep working at her.’
‘Fresh!’ said Grace. ‘Is that what you call it?’
She had written to Brian Meredith; she said she would like to meet him in London, some time during the next month, that she was most grateful for his kindness. She suggested three dates, and said that any of them would suit her, and if he would like to write or to telephone her during the day (she underlined this) they could agree on the most suitable. She didn’t attempt to explain that the ring had actually belonged to Colin Barlowe. It would be a lot simpler to do that when she saw him.
After ten days he still hadn’t answered; she was surprised, and sent another little note, in case he hadn’t got the first.
Daniel had passed the scholarship to the grammar school. He wanted to tell Grace. ‘I’d never have done it without her,’ he said, ‘her and Sir Clifford. I want to tell them both.’
‘Well, write to her,’ said Ben, ‘but I don’t know if she’ll be able to see you this time.’
Grace had written a short, sad letter to the boys saying she didn’t think she would be able to meet them again for quite a long time. She said she was very busy with her music studies. They had both been rather upset; Ben had read between the lines, known what it meant and tried to explain to them.
‘Her husband is jealous, I expect. It’s understandable. He doesn’t like her seeing you, because he thinks she might want to see me again.’
‘Well, I ’spect she does,’ Daniel had said, entirely reasonable, ‘anyone’d want to see you.’
Ben gave him a hug. ‘Yeah, well, thanks. I wish you were right.’
‘You still miss her too, Dad?’
‘Terribly,’ said Ben, ‘sometimes so much I think I can’t stand it.’
Now he said again, ‘Yes, you write to her, Daniel. Or maybe write to Sir Clifford, tell him to tell her, that might be better.’
‘I wish I could go to the grammar school,’ said Daniel wistfully, ‘I wish we could stay here, and I could go.’
‘I know you do, Dan. But we’ve gone over and over this and I still think it�
�s the best thing. To go, I mean.’
‘Course it is,’ said David, looking up from his homework. ‘Don’t be selfish, Dan. Anyway, think of the surfing. That’s better than going to any rotten old school.’
‘You’ll still have to go to school sometimes, David,’ said Ben.
While he was sorting things out and packing, he found a book Clarissa had lent him: a book of O’Henry stories which she’d said she knew he would like. ‘Clarissa,’ it said on the flyleaf, ‘the most fabulous story of them all. My love, Jack.’
It clearly had to go back, only he didn’t know her address. He wrote her a note, and another to Clifford at the Priory, explaining that he must ask him to forward it.
A week later Clarissa wrote:
Darling Ben,
How lovely to hear from you, and thank you for the book. Sweet of you, and I had been looking for it.
I can hardly bear to think of you going so far away. But I do understand. I think it’s a wonderfully clever idea. So marvellous for the children too.
Grace is doing splendidly. It is hard for her, and she is very, very brave.
Now, Ben, I see that you are leaving from Victoria. I absolutely insist you stay here the night before. It will be much easier for you than dragging up from Salisbury that day, and then we can say goodbye. Florence would like to see you too, and sends her love. She is immensely important now, a councillor; and Giles has a part in the most marvellous new musical. Second lead! Imogen is at school and between you and me greatly improved by it. I have a bit of news: I’m going to be a mama! What do you think of that? Wildly unsuitable really, don’t you think? But Jack and I are both thrilled to bits. The baby will just have to come to work with me and sit quietly in a corner, as I can’t possibly leave. We are absolutely snowed under with work, moving to bigger offices.
Jack is loving his medical studies, and passed his first exams with the most impossibly high flying colours.
Best love, darling Ben. The beds will be made up for you on 26 May. I will have no excuses!
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