by Parks, Adele
Instead he’d called her hysterical and sent her to bed like a naughty child.
She did not believe she was hysterical, misguided or even superstitious; she saw things clearly. There was a moment when the men of their generation had been required to stand up and define themselves as men. Lawrence had hidden behind a desk, and now they were being punished for his cowardice. It was what she believed and it was therefore real. Loss could not be avoided. It would seek you out. Why should they think they could be any different from anyone else? They had no right. Lydia blinked repeatedly. She was surprised to find tears welling in her eyes. It would not do. She must find a way to bury the thought again. She could not think of her husband this way. It would destroy them.
‘Look, isn’t that the Duchess of Feversham?’ asked Beatrice, breathless with excitement and the ethereal whisper of potential scandal.
‘Yes, it is,’ replied Lydia, who was considerably more composed. She surveyed the indulged, coddled people with indifference. She was accustomed. She had grown up with them and was aware of all that they had to offer and all that they lacked. The Duchess of Feversham was a soured woman who existed within a loveless marriage; both she and her husband regularly took younger lovers. Lydia was not judgemental; she just found their set-up depressing. However, the war had limited Beatrice’s exposure to society, and she was still considerably more romantic about the aristocrats she hailed from. Lydia considered that the war had changed the playing field so significantly that it was unlikely that Bea would ever become as weary as Lydia found she was tonight. Bea would not have the resources to fund a continued association with this society, or even a role within it. Lydia found this particular train of thought upsetting and so shied away from it. She preferred to pretend that Sarah and Beatrice had the same money and opportunities as she possessed. It was better not to think about the truth of things. Although the idea that she was forever thinking it was better not to think did not bear examination either. She roused herself. Chummily, cheerfully she commented, ‘You’ve seen her out many times before; why the fuss, Bea?’
‘Yes, at parties, where we might have been in the same room along with three hundred others, but tonight we’re only forty. It’s almost intimate.’
‘Actually we’re thirty-nine,’ corrected Lydia, thinking of Lawrence.
‘No, we are forty. Ava told me that the Duchess of Feversham has brought along an extra man,’ chipped in Sarah.
‘Oh. Who?’ asked Beatrice breathlessly. It was hard for Lydia to maintain the pretence that they were even when Bea insisted on being so green, so artless, so easily impressed and urgent.
‘I have no idea.’
‘Her latest lover, no doubt,’ offered Lydia.
‘I only know that he catapulted through the ranks during the war. Terribly brave. Went in as a commoner, came out practically one of us,’ said Sarah.
‘Well, Ava’s mother will be pleased. Whoever he is, he’ll even up the seating plan, although it is all rather last-minute,’ commented Bea.
‘She will.’
‘Ava has dined at the duchess’s house several times,’ mused Beatrice.
‘Yes, she has.’
‘I wonder which house exactly. You do know they have half a dozen.’
‘Yes.’ They all knew this, had always known it, but Bea never tired of repeating the fact. Probably because her own assets were depreciating, she had become obsessively interested in those who had money to burn. It wasn’t greed or even jealousy; her fascination was similar to that of a palaeontologist studying dinosaur bones: she simply wanted to know all there was to know about this strange and alien species. Lydia decided to throw her a nugget. ‘The Duchess pays up to a thousand guineas a night in fees for the entertainers at her parties, you know.’
Bea gasped. ‘What do they do for that?’
‘Quite literally anything, I imagine.’
‘They say she has had all her underwear embroidered with coronets,’ chipped in Sarah.
‘And she’s just bought a second Rolls-Royce,’ added Lydia.
‘No?’
‘This time in purple. It has the coronet on it too.’
‘Well!’
It wasn’t clear if Bea was impressed with the ostentation or horrified by it, but her face stretched and contorted like melted rubber. Suddenly Lydia felt enormous affection for her friend. It must be lovely to be so bothered. Lydia found she was rarely bothered about anything nowadays. ‘I think we should go in to dinner. I heard the gong,’ she said calmly.
‘Who is taking you in?’ Bea looked concerned again. As one of the least important guests at the table, she couldn’t hope that Lady Pondson-Callow would have allocated her a spare man. Lydia, as a married woman, was more entitled to an escort. Bea quickly started to calculate who might be taking whom. Would there be anyone left for her?
‘Shall we all three go in together?’ suggested Lydia, linking her arms through the sisters’.
‘Dare we?’ Bea giggled.
‘Oh, with you two flanking me, I feel equal to it,’ smiled Lydia.
‘She had not expected to see him ever again, but as she had fallen asleep imagining him for nine days, when she did turn and see him at her side, he felt strangely familiar. Lofty, magnificent, audacious. So familiar she dispensed with formality and talked to him as though they were picking up a conversation they’d started in the drawing room, just five minutes ago.
‘I didn’t know you knew Miss Pondson-Callow.’
‘I don’t. I came with the Duchess of Feversham. Miss Pondson-Callow called her this afternoon and asked for a spare man. That’s who I am; a spare man.’ Lydia felt sick at the thought that he’d arrived with the notorious duchess.
‘What a surprise,’ she mumbled.
‘Life is full of them.’
‘We met in the café on Marble Arch. Maison Lyons, a week last Thursday.’ She added the detail because she was terrified that he might not remember the incident, so brief and insignificant in reality; so large and all-consuming in her mind. The moment she offered the circumstances she felt silly, exposed.
But he did remember her. ‘I don’t think we actually met.’
‘True, there was no formal introduction.’
The eyes again. Too knowing, too deep, too vivid to allow her a modest pretence of disregard. It was obvious he knew the effect he had on women. He’d probably known since he was a boy holding on to his mama’s apron. Sitting next to him now, she had the chance to notice more details. He had a lean, ravenous face, draped with a clear, almost translucent skin. He was sinewy, taut, well-defined, strong. Lydia didn’t doubt that it was the war that had shaved off all that was unnecessary about him.
He picked up a wide, shallow glass of champagne and sipped at the lip while holding her gaze. ‘I’m Edgar Trent. And you are Mrs …?’
‘Lady Chatfield.’
‘But I should call you …?’
‘You should call me Lady Chatfield, but I think you are going to call me Lydia.’
‘I think I am going to call you Lid.’
‘Nobody calls me Lid.’
‘I didn’t imagine they would.’
‘It isn’t any sort of name. It’s simply a reduction.’
‘Yes. It’s plain and confident. You’ll grow into it.’
With this he turned away from her and started to talk to the lady seated on his right, as was the proper etiquette. Lydia felt a spike of indignation that he was implying she wasn’t yet straightforward or confident, and at the same time she was doused in a vibrant sense of excitement as she realised he was flirting with her. Pulling her out. Wrapping her in the golden light of his notice. She looked up and saw that Sarah was sitting opposite her. She was beaming and mouthed, ‘Isn’t that …?’ Lydia nodded. ‘How strange, what a coincidence,’ Sarah mouthed again. Lydia turned to look up the table, where her eyes met Ava’s. Ava winked at her. It was a knowing gesture, too knowing. Uncomfortable, Lydia quickly looked away.
She tried
to talk to the old chap sitting to her left as they drank their soup, as she was expected to. He was a friend of Ava’s father and the usual type of gentleman that Lydia found around her own parents’ table. He had a portly body, a creased face and a triangular clump of hair in the centre of his head. He was affable and polite, but Lydia identified something in his manner that she recognised with increasing frequency nowadays in men her father’s age – he was apologetic.
The last generation were distinctly divided.
Some arrogantly demanded that the world return to what they had known before: a world where everyone knew their place and stayed in it. The old men who thought that way, with their red faces, deep tones and bulbous noses, droned on pompously. They seemed irritable and impotent. The other half were intimidated by the generation that had fought in the Great War. These old men had nothing similar to compare it with; the Boer War was dwarfed by comparison. They could not relate and yet they’d let it happen. They were ashamed that they were alive when so many of their sons were dead. These sorts were confused and dismayed by the losses too, but not the loss of order; specifically the loss of life. They felt they’d let down their sons. Which indeed they had. This chap was the latter sort. The more bearable. He talked about his pheasant shoots, his dogs, the difficulty in finding a skilled man to repair the hundred miles of dry-stone walling that surrounded his estate, but what he had to say was not said with the entitlement of old; his tone was more one of humble gratitude. He was aware that he was privileged, but he seemed to understand that his biggest privilege was that his son had been too old to fight, his grandsons too young. He talked of his large family with affection and recognition that they were an accomplishment. Not because they would inherit his land and titles, but because they rode, danced and sang, squabbled, drank and gambled. They were alive.
Normally Lydia would have found this man a jovial enough dinner companion. As a woman who considered herself way beyond common flirtation or dalliance, her preferred companions were the old, interesting fellows; the ones who appreciated her conversation and her beauty but placed her far away from suspicion. Tonight, time stretched endlessly, reminding her of the tedious journeys she’d made as a child in the rumbling brougham. When will we get there? she’d nagged. Although the carriages had been considered the ultimate in comfort, Lydia had loathed the stale, cramped journeys and only managed them by focusing on the moment she’d be allowed to tumble out and run free, stretching her legs. She felt the same sense of confinement now. She held her body rigid and unyielding, pointing, like a magnet points north, towards the old man, because she dreaded that if she turned her head – even a fraction – and allowed herself a glimpse of Edgar Trent, she would not be able to drag her eyes away from him again. Ever again.
She would not allow herself to look at him throughout the course, yet her being was with him entirely. She was conscious of him – tantalisingly close to her, right next to her – in the purest and most exquisite sense of being conscious of a thing. She sensed his movements as though the rippling of his shoulder muscles, the bend of his elbow, the turn of his head caused a tsunami in the air between them. On three, maybe four occasions, she experienced the warmth of his actual touch as his jacketed arm nudged against her bare one. His contact felt firm and deliberate; she did not believe it was accidental. She could smell him. Early on in the evening he smelt of Pears soap, no nonsense. Later, she imagined, he would smell of cigarettes and red wine, a lot of nonsense. Whilst listening to her companion talk about dry-stone walling, her ears strained to pick up Edgar Trent’s tones. His laugh, which came often and loud, rattled through her body. It caught in her chest. It settled between her legs. She was quickly drunk, although she was unsure if it was the champagne or him that had caused the intoxication. After a millennium, the crockery was cleared, the fish was served and it was the appropriate moment to rotate once again and speak with him.
The wait had been too much, too long. It had been cruel and had destroyed any chance she had of remaining aloof or appropriate. She turned to him, helpless.
‘So, Lid, say something that will impress me.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Oh, that doesn’t impress me at all. Try again.’ He picked up his glass and glugged back the entire contents as though he was in a hurry.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I think you do. Isn’t this what is expected at events such as these? You say something audacious. I say something flattering. We begin a flirtation. A flirtation at the very least, or perhaps a love affair at most.’
‘I don’t … I don’t …’ She wanted to say she didn’t understand, but she did.
‘Sorry, have I ruined everything by jumping the gun? Should I have played along more subtly?’
Recovering, Lydia said, ‘You’re being very rude, Sergeant Major Trent.’
‘Am I? I don’t mean to be. I’m delighted that your friend has sat us next to one another. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather flirt with.’ He brushed his eyes over the other guests as though confirming his selection. He swiftly licked his firm, cushioned lips and added, ‘Flirt at the least.’
‘I don’t think that’s why we were seated together. No one even knew you were coming until today. You are only making up the numbers because my husband has to work and couldn’t be here.’
‘But you wouldn’t have been seated next to your husband,’ Edgar Trent pointed out.
Lydia faltered. ‘No, I don’t suppose I would have.’
‘The seating plan has been tampered with. We’ve been set up.’
As Lydia accepted the thought, she turned her head once again towards Ava, who was staring right back at her. Ava raised her glass; Lydia felt the truth of the gesture like a poke.
‘Our hostess clearly hopes that we’ll flirt to a shocking, shameful, unprecedented level.’ He flicked his eyes around the table for a second time. ‘Consider, this place is full of those distinguished by birth but not much else, the academic erudite who talk about theology and economics but not much else and eminent businessmen who value money but not much else. She needs to be entertained.’
‘I don’t think Ava would do that, set us up, as you say, simply for entertainment.’ But even as Lydia heard the words tip out of her mouth, she knew that it was just the sort of thing Ava would do. She also became aware that simply by having this conversation she was flirting with him. Very much so. It wasn’t a suitable conversation; it was open to misinterpretation. She ought to cut it dead. She really ought. ‘Besides, you arrived with the Duchess of Feversham. Surely she’s the lady you need to be flirting with.’ She flashed him a look that deftly communicated her knowledge that he must be more than flirting with the duchess. ‘I’m no use to you at all.’
‘I did arrive with the Duchess of Feversham, but I’m her cover. Matthew Northbrook is her lover. Those in the know are aware of that.’ Ava was in the know. ‘You see, people think of me as a ladies’ man.’
‘Do they just?’
‘They do, and so I’m a likely suspect as the duchess’s lover, but blameless if anyone does any digging about, therefore a brilliant foil.’
‘I see.’
‘Quite clever, don’t you think?’
‘I suppose. But then those sorts have to be.’
‘What sorts?’
Lydia paused, then added, ‘The adulterous sort. I imagine it takes quite some planning.’ She’d picked her words carefully. She wanted him to know she was not that sort. She was not an adulterer. Never had been. Never wanted to be.
Edgar paused; they both reached for their glasses, both found them empty. Lydia inclined her head a fraction, enough for the under butler to be by their side in an instant. He offered the wine but Edgar waved it away and asked for a cocktail. It wasn’t done to drink cocktails with dinner. Lydia had a feeling Edgar knew as much and didn’t care.
‘So are you a ladies’ man?’ she asked, once their drinks had been delivered. She’d chosen to reject the wine as well and join
him in drinking cocktails, just to be polite. Or was it impolite? She wasn’t sure. ‘Is it a fair assessment?’
‘It is.’ His words had a physical impact. It was as though he had leaned over and licked her mind and – shockingly – her upper thighs too. Because she felt him. She felt him in an absolute sense. ‘It’s a common and general turn of phrase but essentially accurate. What do they think of you?’ he asked.
‘They think of me as happily married.’
‘Do they now?’
‘They do.’
‘And are you happily married? Is that a fair assessment?’ Lydia paused for a beat longer than she should have. ‘I see.’ And he had. He’d seen a green light, because Lydia was breathless and slow.
‘Well of course,’ she muttered finally, but she sounded unconvincing, unconvinced. Why? She was happily married. Not today, obviously. There were issues, but generally speaking she was happy.
