by Parks, Adele
‘Yes, the tricky bit is not getting entangled,’ commented Ava. She reached for a cigarette and cast a pertinent look at Lydia, but Lydia was oblivious.
Her stomach was beginning to swell now; she was about five months’ pregnant. Lawrence talked about an imminent arrival. Ava couldn’t believe that he hadn’t realised the baby wasn’t his. Perhaps he had. Maybe he’d decided to accept the child. Ava didn’t know whether that was because he wanted Lydia to stay, or because he desperately wanted an heir, or because he simply wanted to avoid the humiliation and outrage that would ensue if they separated. She wasn’t even sure if the matter had been discussed between the couple. If it had, Lydia had not related the conversation to her friends. In fact she never mentioned the child’s parentage, or the issue of how she would explain the baby being born approximately four months after Lawrence was anticipating. Perhaps she was in denial. Publically, at least, Lawrence appeared suitably delighted by the news that he was going to be a father, although like many men of their generation and class he clearly did not feel he had to become too caught up in the business of the actual pregnancy. He would reserve his enthusiasm for when the child was actually born.
Ava was relieved that Sergeant Major Edgar Trent’s name had not fallen from Lydia’s lips. Lydia restricted herself to conversations about the decoration for the nursery, and names. At the moment she was refusing to interview nannies; she insisted she wanted to take care of the child herself. Nonsense. That was not the type of thing their sort did, but no one had pointed out as much just yet; not even Sarah, who was normally the oracle on all things maternal. Ava wondered whether Lydia recognised the generous chivalry of Lawrence’s silence, or whether she felt hideously obliged. Trapped.
55
LYDIA WAS BEGINNING to know silences as well as she knew speech. With Lawrence there were silences because they had nothing truthful to say to one another any more. Small talk had sufficed for so long but now it was exposed as dreary and dishonest. How had she ever appreciated his small talk? Now she despised his inability to say anything worthwhile. Their marriage was currently no more than an arrangement where two wary strangers shared a drawing room, a dining room and a name. They did not share a bed, and Lydia was determined they never would again. Since they did not talk to one another, she had no idea what Lawrence thought about their cold and pragmatic arrangement, or – and this was especially distressing in so many ways – whether he had even noticed it. They both pretended that the combination of the stiflingly hot summer and her pregnancy had necessitated separate bedrooms. Neither commented that now, when the leaves were falling fast and a dusky mist extinguished the autumn hues into a bland greyness, she was probably cold, alone at night.
Her friends were silent because they withheld, they tiptoed around her, rather than blurt their condemnation, fear or disgust. She watched them now talking about Beatrice’s vivacious charge. A young woman who was just starting out. Lydia envied her and pitied her. The joys. The heartbreak.
Her friends seemed animated, interested. She couldn’t join in. She wished she had it in her to humour Bea and at least pretend an interest in the young woman she was presenting at court, but she didn’t. She could not summon the required energy. It took every iota of self-control to remain perched on the bar stool, sipping her Virgin Mary; really she wanted to run. Out of the nightclub and along the London streets. She could imagine her feet pounding the pavement but she couldn’t imagine what direction they’d go in. Where could she go?
Her own silence was the silence of utter seclusion and horror. Even if she tried to articulate her heartbreak, she knew she would fail. There were no words big or deep or epic enough; nor were there any that were discreet and careful enough either.
When he first disappeared, she had succumbed to bouts of uncontrolled crying, exhaustion, headaches and a loss of appetite. Sarah had commented that they were the very same symptoms she’d suffered when Arthur had died. Sarah had held her hand while she lay in bed or sat naked in the bath, weeping. It was good of her. Lydia had appreciated her physical presence combined with her mute acceptance that Lydia must grieve. However, after two weeks Sarah had told her she had to pull herself together.
‘How can you say that?’
‘It’s what they said to me.’
Lydia appreciated Sarah’s empathy. She generously equated her own phenomenal loss – her husband’s death – with Lydia’s lover’s desertion. Lydia recognised that Sarah was being as sympathetic as humanly possible, and even if her extreme indulgence was a result of feeling guilty about kissing Lawrence that night, Lydia felt grateful and indebted. She wished she could tell Sarah not to worry, that she was welcome to Lawrence, but it would shame Sarah. Humiliate everyone involved. Another silence had to lay siege to reality. Lydia saw that there were some similarities between their losses, but there was one terrible difference too.
Arthur hadn’t wanted to go. Edgar had.
Lydia didn’t know if it would be better if he were dead. She had briefly entertained the thought that he might be. Loathing the idea, and yet in a terrible dark part of her almost wanting it at the same time. But she knew he was not dead. She felt his presence in the world. She’d feel his death. Besides, not many ghosts packed up all their possessions and left their lodgings spick and span.
Months had passed and she still couldn’t rouse herself. She knew she was boring her friends. ‘You’re behaving foolishly,’ Ava snapped one day. ‘This excessive emotion is terribly common, darling. You must move on.’ Lydia did try to keep alert in company. Exercise was vital; she had the baby to think about, but depression seeped into every pore and fibre of her body. She was not sure whether what she felt for Edgar was hilarious, or feeble or phenomenal; she only wished she was still able to feel it about anything.
The Silver Cat was a very smart nightclub. Possibly the most lavish and elegant that Lydia had visited. Everything shone as people abandoned themselves to a few hours of intense pleasure. She wished that she and Edgar could have danced on the waxed wooden floor, underneath the vast mirrored ceiling. Then she considered the notion that he might very well be here. Dancing. Why not? He had to be somewhere. He loved jazz and was thrilled with the players who flocked to England from America’s Deep South. ‘Music and this sort of dancing transcends all class barriers,’ he’d told her. Music was equally theirs.
She scanned the room, carefully examining every man who was swinging back and forth, elbows bent, arms facing forward as if they were going to clap another set of hands. It was futile. Few were as tall as Edgar, or as broad; none was as compelling. He was not here. She remembered dancing the Lindy Hop with him. He’d swung her high up off the ground. She’d thought he might drop her. And now he had. She believed he was a long way away. Long gone. The joyful, lusty dancing couples haunted her. She tried hard to concentrate on her friends’ conversations and caught snippets.
‘Nightclubs are opening up in rows and rows.’
‘The dressmakers are dizzy with work.’
‘I went for a ride in Freddie’s new motor car. It’s a dream.’
Lydia thought of the conversations she’d had with Edgar. They’d been bigger. He’d told her how surreal it was that there were shops, comfortable beds, clean clothes in the towns just half an hour’s walk from the front line, and yet the men were up to their waists in mud. Living like animals. Becoming animals. ‘At first I was outraged that this was the case, then amused. Well, hysterical, I suppose,’ he’d confided. Then he’d become angry and challenging with her. ‘It’s the same now, isn’t it. You live in your palatial home; other people live under bridges and in cardboard boxes.’
‘It’s not the same.’
‘Isn’t it? What’s the difference?’
She hadn’t been able to think of one.
Could it have been the differences that made him leave? she wondered. In the end, were they insurmountable? For him, at least?
She’d once asked him if he felt guilty for surviving. He’d re
plied, ‘Yes. All the time. Every day. Every minute. Except …’
‘Except when?’
‘Except now. When I’m with you.’
It made no sense. How could that have just stopped?
‘Do you know, gals, I think I might have to call it a night.’ Lydia tried to smile, but the concerned expressions from Sarah and Bea and the frustrated one from Ava suggested she had failed.
‘It’s not yet ten o’clock, Lydia. Really?’
‘The baby. I’m so frightfully tired. Such inexpressible weariness …’ Lydia trailed off. She’d used the excuse of her pregnancy frequently to avoid lunches and soirées, to avoid sport and to go home early; she didn’t have to be too specific.
Ava rolled her eyes, no doubt thanking God for condoms. She thought that the inconvenience the pregnancy had brought to Lydia was astounding. Lydia thought it was the only thing that was keeping her going. She kissed her friends good night, but as she leaned into Ava, Ava pulled away.
‘I’m sorry, Lydia darling. I know this is ghastly to hear, but this nonsense really has to stop.’
Lydia glanced towards Bea and Sarah, hoping for some support; they looked at their shoes, unprepared to give her any more. She felt drained and picked upon. No doubt she was hormonal, too. They would use all these excuses and explanations when later the three friends discussed and considered her reaction. Lydia thought there was only one reason for her inability to stay calm and not just passively nod, as she had done so far, to the suggestion that she shut up and put up.
She loved Edgar Trent.
He was everything to her. Her world was ripped wide. The core of her exposed and raw. She didn’t understand how or why she felt as she did, but she was resolute. ‘I don’t know what you mean by nonsense,’ she snapped.
‘He’s not coming back, Lydia. And you have to get used to the idea.’ Ava didn’t add that many millions of women had done so before her, in more tragic and senseless circumstances; it was implicit.
Lydia muttered the thought that she nursed and cherished, the one that made her weak and ridiculous, the thought that every abandoned lover secretly nurtured. ‘He might.’
‘He’s married, Lydia.’ Ava let the words be absorbed.
‘What?’
‘I had a detective follow him. I discovered he was married.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Well it’s true.’ Ava kept her tone flat. The loud jazz beat in Lydia’s head and she couldn’t make sense of what she was being told.
‘But I asked him. At the beginning.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘He said not.’
‘He lied.’
Lydia shook her head violently. ‘You’ve made a mistake.’ She looked up at Ava with defiance.
‘I’ve met her. She’s real. He left with her.’
‘How do you know he left with her?’ Lydia was becoming increasingly high-pitched as shock and hysteria hijacked her sense of decorum.
Ava took a deep drag on her cigarette, blew the smoke away from her friends, sighed and then replied, ‘Because I spoke to him. I made it possible. The only reason they weren’t together was lack of money. So I gave him some.’
‘You gave him money to leave me?’ Lydia gasped, choking on the words and the betrayal.
‘You make it sound so vulgar.’
‘You paid him off?’ Sarah and Bea reached for Lydia as she stumbled. They thought for a moment that she might collapse. She glared at them, and they shrank from her raw pain.
Ava looked as calm and assured as she always did. She had not intended to tell Lydia that Trent was married, but Lydia simply wouldn’t let him go. She was messing everything up for herself. Drastic measures were necessary. ‘What if I did? He took it, didn’t he? Then he disappeared.’
Lydia was quivering like a beggar in the snow. She groped around for her bag, unsettling her drink. It crashed to the floor. Tomato-juice blood and shards of glistening glass tears.
‘He’s not coming back, Lydia. Face it, old girl.’
Lydia put her hands over her ears and shook her head. She wanted to be deaf to this cruelty. Ava felt she had to push on. Once and for all close this thing.
‘Oh, Lydia, he should have been a bit of fun; why did you have to take it so seriously? Darling, I do have to wonder – and I’ve wondered this for a very long time, since I first saw him mess up the snow at my father’s house – is he just one of those who likes to spoil perfection? I think we have to agree. Quite simply, the sergeant major is a bounder.’
56
LAWRENCE HAD COME to London with his wife. He preferred the countryside, but he’d had to meet with his lawyers, and besides, he didn’t like Lydia gallivanting around on her own in her condition. It wouldn’t do. Both Sarah and Ava had been adamant that Lydia needed a break in town, needed to have a girls’ night out, as they called it. She certainly needed something. She was definitely blue; what was that term people were using nowadays? Grummy. Yes, that was it. She was grummy. He didn’t understand why. They’d longed for this baby. He’d thought it would make everything all right, but she wasn’t blooming the way a woman should. He had never been close to a woman who was about to give birth – he was the youngest in his family so he hadn’t seen his mother pregnant, and there were no sisters or sisters-in-law – but he did think that she was perhaps a bit on the small side. He’d thought she was worrying about that. So he had consulted the best doctors in the country. Two different ones. After examining her, they’d both said the same thing: that she was perfectly well and that the pregnancy was progressing just as it ought. They said she was the correct weight for her stage. He’d been surprised but relieved. He assumed other women ate for two, let themselves become undisciplined and greedy. That wasn’t Lydia’s style. He thought she’d buck up once the doctors had reassured her that all was well, but she hadn’t. He didn’t understand it. Surely a baby ought to put paid to all this nonsense she was harbouring about them being punished because he hadn’t been on the front line.
Lawrence was pleasantly surprised when he heard Lydia arrive home at ten thirty. He’d thought that Ava might have her out till all hours. He stood up and waited for her to come into the drawing room; perhaps they could have a cup of Horlicks together. She didn’t come in; he heard her footsteps bound upstairs. The under butler knocked and said he thought perhaps the countess was unwell.
Lawrence knew he had to go and investigate. What would the servants say if he didn’t respond to his wife when she was in a delicate condition? Yet he dreaded it. Talking about all this baby business was woman’s work; he wondered whether he ought to send Dickenson up instead. He might have, except he heard banging and crashing coming from Lydia’s bedroom, and he was pretty certain that whatever was happening in there wasn’t something he wanted a maid to witness.
He pushed open the bedroom door and found her pulling out drawers and rummaging through them with great haste and little care. She flung open the bedside cabinet and rattled around in that, and then turned to the wardrobe. She hurriedly flicked through garments and then, seemingly not finding what she was looking for, began to pull them off their silk hangers and throw them on the floor. He heard two of the dresses rip.
‘Lydia, what are you doing? Stop it at once.’
He thought perhaps she was packing, but she didn’t seem to be attempting to retrieve any particular item and there was no sign of suitcases. She cried, ‘There’s nothing. Nothing. I can’t find a thing.’
‘What are you looking for?’
‘Proof. Proof that he was.’ He thought she had broken off her sentence without finishing it, but it appeared that that was all she wanted to say. Proof that he was.
‘Who? What are you talking about?’
Lydia continued to frantically rummage, but did not answer his question.
‘A cinema or bus ticket. A telegram. Something! Why didn’t I keep a thing?’
‘Stop this at once, Lydia.’ Lawrence was beginning to f
eel distinctly unnerved. She was making no sense at all and he loathed hysteria. He caught her by the shoulders and forced her to turn to him. She squirmed out from under his grip and dropped to her hands and knees to look under the bed. He bent down, caught hold of her wrists and with a little force pulled her up on to the bed. ‘Sit there and tell me what is going on.’
Lydia’s face was streaked with tears and pain. She seemed to hesitate for a second, and then seemed too exhausted to resist.
‘I had an affair,’ she sighed.
The words flapped around the room. Lawrence was so totally and utterly surprised by them that his initial reaction was a sort of spluttering cough of amusement, disbelief and then outrage. ‘What? Who?’
‘Sergeant Major Edgar Trent.’
Lawrence could not fail to hear the pride and excitement in his wife’s voice as she announced her lover’s name. He knew exactly who Sergeant Major Edgar Trent was. The non-commissioned officer who had blasted on to the scene this year. The man was known for his bravery and was an asset on a hunt. He often had dirt under his fingernails, but no one ever commented because somehow – and of course this was impossible after three years – people thought the dirt was probably from France. Ridiculous. It couldn’t possibly have lingered there, but in some way it might have. The sergeant major was popular in the smoking room; always had a story and a considered opinion if one asked him to contribute. Lawrence had thought he was a good sort – not quite one of them, obviously, but a decent enough chap. Now he despised him and thought he was a low and brutal cad.
‘Do you love him?’
‘Yes, I do.’
Lawrence fell back on to the stool in front of the dressing table. It was a flimsy, puny stool and the sad weight of him nearly toppled it. He maintained his balance but his dignity was shot through. He slouched rather than holding himself rigid as he had done all his life. He had always remained upright. Much good it had done him. He raced through a jagged cacophony of emotions. He was incredulous. It could not be. Not Lydia. No, not his dear and sincere Lydia. But it was so! She had just confessed it. It was an absolute and filthy diabolical certainty. It was an outrage. Soiled, disgusting, wrong. Damn you. Just wrong. Then the outrage left him. He was crumpled like a sheet of writing paper, screwed up and tossed into the waste-paper basket.
