‘I’m glad I’m sleeping with you,’ whispered Cordelia as we followed Maggie to be shown the bathroom. ‘It’s very cold, isn’t it, when you’re not being cooked by the fire.’ She shivered and I noticed her eyes lacked their usual brightness.
The bathroom was large and you could have stored lumps of ice in it without them melting. The bath itself was the size of a sarcophagus and a small flight of steps had been thoughtfully provided to step into it. The lavatory was mounted on a platform and set within a wooden throne. A weighing-machine, like a giant balance scale with a set of weights in a pan on one side and a wicker chair on the other, was the kind of thing that normally would have delighted Cordelia. She looked around with lacklustre eyes and shivered again.
‘Drinks in the drawing room from a quarter past seven,’ said Maggie. ‘Is there anything I can get you young ladies before I go?’
‘Actually, Lady Pye, do you think I could have a bath and go to bed?’ asked Cordelia. ‘I couldn’t eat a thing. I may have food poisoning,’ she added importantly.
‘Laws!’ Maggie looked horrified. ‘Had I better send for the doctor?’
‘It isn’t as bad as all that,’ I said. ‘But perhaps it would be better for Cordelia to have an early night.’
While the bath was running I unpacked our things. I marvelled at the sight of my beautiful new clothes, hanging from the rail. My own made-up face staring back at me from the mirror at the back of the closet startled me. Could that sophisticated creature really be Harriet Byng? My grey shapeless underwear dispelled any vain ideas of myself as a woman of the world. I selected an elegant black dress with a tight bodice, long sleeves and a low square neckline. Years ago my godmother had left me her garnet choker, which I had never worn. It filled up the bareness admirably.
Maggie came back with two hot-water bottles, the old-fashioned stone kind with a cork, which she put between the sheets. Cordelia returned from the bathroom and climbed into bed. But despite four blankets as well as an eiderdown she still shuddered with cold. I looked at her anxiously as I prepared to go downstairs. ‘How’s the tum?’
‘Feels as though it’s on a choppy sea … O-oh. Let’s keep off the subject. I hope we’re going to like it here. All the time I was in the bath someone was rattling the door-handle. When he got to hammering on the door and shouting, I unlocked it. This awful old fossil with a big white moustache said it was bad manners to hog the one and only bathroom. I said I thought it was very bad manners to spoil my bath by thumping on the door. He said in his day children were seen and not heard and I said I hoped he’d been better-looking when he was a child or his parents would have had a bad time of it. He went bright red and slammed the door. I’d have given him a taste of his own medicine but I was feeling too ill.’
‘Darling, that was rather disrespectful. Well, never mind,’ I said cravenly, seeing Cordelia look mutinous. ‘It’s just that the sort of people we know are unusually free and easy. People who live in the country are much more old-fashioned and –’
‘How come you’re such an authority? You can hardly tell a cow from a horse.’
This was true. My knowledge of rural etiquette was garnered from novels and was no doubt wildly out of date.
‘I’ll come to bed as early as I can,’ I said pacifically.
‘Your hair looks nice.’
I had tied it into a knot at the back with the long ends falling loose. I had nearly lost my temper with it as hair is not one of the things I have ever been good at. ‘It said how to do it in Vogue.’
‘It wasn’t very long ago you and Ophelia had a row and you said Vogue was a piece of capital propagation for the fashion industry.’
‘Capitalist propaganda. It means saying things to influence other people, not necessarily truthfully, in this case to make them spend money. Propagation is breeding plants and things –’
Cordelia gave a howl. ‘Shut up lecturing. You ought to have been a beastly school teacher.’
‘Sorry. You’re tired. I should have thought.’
She stared at me resentfully from above the rim of the bedclothes. ‘It’s extremely aggravating at any time, tired or not. I suppose this new you that cares about clothes and idle luxury is because of Max.’
‘Certainly not! If you must know, I don’t want Rupert to feel that he’s wasted his money on a slattern. It was so generous of him. I want him to feel it was worth it.’
‘Sez you! Well, I think it’s a pity it’ll all be thrown away on two faggots and a lot of ancient old druids.’
‘Cordelia! You shouldn’t call Rupert and Archie something so unkind!’
‘Why not? It’s what Pa says. I didn’t mean it unkindly. It’s what they are. I really like them so what difference does it make? You’re the one that minds about them being queer, obviously.’
‘All right. Don’t let’s argue. Want me to bring you up something to eat? Some bread and butter or cocoa –’
Cordelia gave a scream and put her hands over her ears.
TWENTY
I identified the drawing room from the murmur of conversation that flowed from its open door. I wished Cordelia was with me. My mother was so good at entrances. She always came into a room in a rush, with her chin uplifted and her hands outstretched as though acknowledging ecstatic applause. ‘Darlings!’ she would say with a breathy decre-scendo, ‘How thrilling to see you all.’ This created a stir of excitement and everyone would stop talking and look pleased and interested. This was much more successful than sidling up forlornly to the backs of people already engaged in conversation, hoping to be noticed.
I hesitated on the threshold, imitating my mother’s mannerisms and mouthing the words to give myself courage.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ Rupert was standing behind me, holding an ice bucket. He had changed into a dinner jacket and looked tremendously ‘swave’ as Cordelia would have said.
‘Nothing. Breathing exercises. I’m still stiff from being in the car.’
Rupert gave me one of his looks, combining disbelief with exasperation. Probably he was wondering whether I was a consummate liar or a congenital idiot. ‘Go on in, then.’
The drawing room was very grand, with a marvellous old plaster ceiling from which hung bosses three feet long, like stalactites. Full-length paintings of men and women wearing doublets, ruffs, huge dresses and inimical expressions decorated the walls. Some people were standing by an enormous fireplace with glasses in their hands, talking. The smell of wood-smoke was mixed with the scent of hyacinths, of which there was a great bowl of white ones on a table.
Archie waved from the centre of the gathering. I felt so self-conscious that the blood rushed to my cheeks as I crossed what felt like a large expanse of Persian carpet to join them. He took my arm in a proprietorial manner and at once I felt better. Archie’s evening clothes were distinguished by a violet-coloured cummerbund and pretty amethyst dress studs. A black patch shaped like a star near the corner of his mouth accentuated the lily-whiteness of his face. I was pleased to see he was wearing the sparkly lavender eye shadow we had chosen together. ‘Now let me introduce you. Miss Harriet Byng, Colonel and Mrs Mordaker.’
I shook hands with a couple who definitely fell into the druid category. Mrs Mordaker was the sort of woman who considers personal adornment the mark of the harlot. She wore a woollen shirt-waister in an unbecoming shade of beige and stout shoes suitable for striding across moors in. Her only concession to feminine frippery was a kirby grip holding back her iron-grey hair. She practically threw away my hand in her eagerness to give Dirk a pat on the head.
‘Ha! Now there’s a splendid fellow! Can’t abide little yapping dogs. Give me a St Bernard any day. Paw, sir!’
Dirk looked up, perplexed, before giving a piercing yip in Mrs Mordaker’s ear that made her start backwards, knocking the colonel’s arm and treading on his foot.
‘For God’s sake, woman!’ her husband snarled as the whisky slopped about in his glass. He had a bony red face and a low thr
usting brow from beneath which angry eyes gleamed like wild animals peering out from a rocky crevice. ‘You’ve probably bust m’ toe. Leave the brute alone.’
‘And this is Georgia Bisset.’
My hand was taken by a woman with cold eyes, chestnut-brown like aniseed balls. She wore a smart glittery suit and shoes with high thin heels you could have performed surgery with. Her hair, streaked with platinum highlights, was lacquered into a stiff helmet. She could have been launched in the prow of a lifeboat without damage to her coiffure. She was not bad-looking except for being deficient in the chin department. She stared at my hair and my clothes and turned bored eyes away.
‘Harriet is a madly successful journalist,’ said Archie with a sly glance at me.
Georgia’s eyes switched back to my face and her face softened into a pussycat smile. It was something that usually happened when people found out who my parents were, transforming me in a split second from a person of absolutely no importance into someone worth being nice to. ‘Really? How clever.’
‘Well, not actually –’
I had been going to say that I worked for a local rag but Archie said quickly, ‘Harriet is a war correspondent and is obliged to be discreet so you mustn’t pester her about her assignments because she won’t tell you.’
I could see Georgia’s mind was busy. Should she crush my pretensions or make a friend of me? She gave me a brilliant smile. ‘How fascinating! I love your dress. French, isn’t it? You must meet Emilio, my fiancé. Darling, this is …’
‘Harriet Byng,’ I supplied.
Emilio took my hand and held on to it. He was, I guessed, ten years younger than Georgia. He had curly black hair smoothed down with brilliantine, and an olive, pock-marked skin. His eyes were dark, the whites an unusual shade of primrose. ‘Hola!’ he said with a foreign accent, possibly Spanish. ‘We should be frighten of you, yes? You must be very kind to poor Emilio and not use big words he not unnerstand.’ He grinned like a friendly crocodile and looked meltingly into my eyes.
I shot Archie a look of reproach.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, evidently warming to his self-appointed task of making me either the most popular or the most hated person present. ‘Harriet is enormously empathetic. In her work she meets so many unhappy souls in the most desperate plights – fathers shot, husbands tortured, children missing, mothers raped – it hardly bears thinking about. She can turn the most hardened guerrilla to putty.’
‘M-hm!’ Emilio lifted my hand to his lips and nuzzled it before bestowing a damp kiss. ‘What a del-eecious idea.’
‘Now, Emilio,’ Archie tapped him on the arm and removed my hand, ‘remember where you are. Harriet, this is Elfrida Gilderoy.’
‘Do call me Freddie,’ said a young woman with wonderful red curls and a bright, charming face. ‘We’ve already met, in London, but it was years ago and you won’t remember. Fay Swann’s my stepmother. I used to help Fay with decorating.’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, of course.’ I remembered a girl with red hair coming to our house with Fay. Portia and I used to run away and hide. We were always mistrustful of Fay’s gushing manner and hated the asphyxiating scent she wore. Freddie was older than Ophelia so we had classed her as grown-up. My father had once said that Freddie was a cracking good painter and a thorn in Fay’s side. ‘Ophelia’s working for Fay now, did you know?’ I said. ‘She’s having a lovely time.’
‘I didn’t,’ Freddie said. ‘I don’t see much of Fay these days. How extraordinary to find you here. I recognised you the minute you came in.’
‘Did you?’ I was surprised and pleased.
‘Oh yes. You’ve got a very distinctive look, those dark eyes exactly like – quite different from your mother and sisters.’ I knew she had been about to mention my father and then thought better of it. I was glad she had decided not to. I still found it difficult to talk about his arrest and imprisonment in a social kind of way. My eyes always got watery and that mean little imp in my stomach had a nip and a chew, that I was afraid showed on my face. ‘There were always so many people in your house,’ Freddie went on, ‘and you seemed to have such fun. I used to feel rather envious. Our house was always silent. You were the serious one, running round after your naughty little sister and rescuing her from coal buckets and window ledges.’
‘Cordelia’s here. She’s having an early night but I hope she’ll come down tomorrow.’
‘She was another fair one with huge blue eyes. A very pretty baby.’
‘She still is. Pretty, I mean. No longer a baby, of course.’
‘But yours is the face I should like to paint.’
No doubt Freddie was being polite. ‘Is that what you do?’
‘I’m painting Sir Oswald. We arrived four days ago and I’ve been hard at work ever since.’
‘I’d love to see it.’
‘So you shall. But now you must meet Vere, my husband.’
As far as I knew, Fay had not mentioned to my mother that Freddie was married. Then I remembered that a year ago there had been something of – not a scandal exactly, but a subject for excited gossip, when Freddie had run away from her eligible, well-heeled fiancé on the eve of her marriage. Ma had been not a little annoyed as she had bought a beautiful hat for what was to have been an extremely smart wedding. Freddie drew me over to where a man was standing apart from everyone else, studying a shelf of books. ‘Darling, say hello to Harriet.’
Vere started as though his thoughts had been miles away. I was already suffering from an overburdened memory after so many introductions, but his name was unusual enough to fix itself in my mind, in association with a tall man with prominent cheekbones, a brown skin, as though he spent a lot of time outdoors, and short grey hair. He had dreamy eyes of an indeterminate colour. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Do you like Fielding?’
‘Oh, yes. That is, I’ve only read Tom Jones but I loved it.’
‘You should try Joseph Andrews. Not such a good story but with characteristic Fielding touches. Let me see.’
He pulled a book from the shelves and began to leaf through it. Freddie took it from him and turned him round to face me. ‘Darling, you’re not supposed to be thinking about literary criticism just now. You must talk.’
He frowned abstractedly in my direction and pulled at his bow tie, which was crooked, making it much worse. ‘Sorry. Was I being rude? I don’t know how Freddie puts up with me.’ He rested his eyes on her face for a moment. That glance changed my idea of him. I could not remember seeing such an expression of tenderness on a man’s face before. Even Ronnie, the most steadfast worshipper I knew, lacked such ardent devotion when he gazed at Ma. I wondered if anyone would ever look at me like that. I feared, sorrowfully, that it was quite impossible.
After that I was introduced to an extraordinarily ancient old lady dressed in purple, her spine so bent I could only see the top of her head. I met a peer, Cordelia’s bathroom adversary, and a bishop – with a moustache and a bald head respectively. After that I lost any hope of remembering anyone’s name or a single thing I was told about them.
‘Jonno!’ Archie hailed a young man who slammed the door on entering, making the flames leap up in the sudden draught. ‘How are you, you execrable boy?’
Jonno was one of the young people with whom I was supposed to fit in. It was difficult to see what we might have in common, apart from the fact that we both had ponytails. Jonno’s was fair, wispy and greasy. His beard was more luxuriant – than his hair, I mean; luckily I am beardless. It covered almost all of his face except for his nose and forehead. He reminded me of that hairy creature in Star Wars called Chewbacca – Cordelia made me see it three times – half-man, half-ape, whose repertory had been limited to agonised looks and incomprehensible groans. Jonno wore a dog-collar with brutal-looking studs round his neck. This was bad enough but worse was the chain of safety pins, one end attached to the belt of his tight leather trousers, the other end fastened through the septum of his nose. It made me feel sick to
think of the consequences if he caught it on anything. It was a style statement intended to convey a message – something like ‘You’d better look out.’ What it said to me was ‘I am afraid.’ I did not make the mistake, however, of thinking this meant he was harmless. Fear makes people do terrible things. One only has to think of wars.
‘Oh, my!’ Archie looked Jonno up and down, then made him turn round. ‘What a roguish little outfit! What’s this emblazoned on your back? Now this you must see, everyone. A skull-and-crossbones! Really, Jonno, did you do it? I love the flames in the eye-sockets. And what is this message? “Kiss my Arse.” Oh!’ Archie gave an elaborate shudder. ‘What an exciting creature you are!’
Jonno scowled, then laughed. ‘Wotcha, Archie, you old bum-bandit. How’s it going? Hi, Rupe.’
‘Hi,’ said Rupert with, I thought, an inflection of irony. ‘Harriet, this is Jonno Pye.’
I held out my hand. Instead of taking it Jonno formed his own into a gun and pretended to shoot me. ‘Bang! Hi, Harriet. Is there any whisky?’
‘Over here,’ said Rupert. ‘Come on, I want to talk to you.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Archie to me. ‘It’s just a tiresome little phase. The spring tide of testosterone. Jonno will grow out of it. He’s already greatly improved.’
‘You amaze me.’
‘He got in with some naughty boys at school and some even naughtier ones at university. He’s all at sea. What Jonno needs is the love of a good woman.’ He looked at me speculatively.
‘No.’ I am not often firm. By nature I am compliant to the point of utter spinelessness but on this occasion I was adamant. ‘Surely you don’t believe that men need women to make them into reasonable people.’
Archie pulled a rueful face. ‘Oh, but I do. Women – when they have left the dizzy, splashing cygnet stage and become swans, that is – are so much more astute than men. They have a sense of perspective and can take the long view. I’m afraid charming little boy cygnets always turn into ducks. We are the slaves of impulse, unable to resist temptation. We throw away all that is precious for one juicy-looking worm. Afterwards, when it’s too late, we’re sorry. When I think what I could be if I could only love a woman. The heaven of knowing there was a firm hand on the tiller of my little craft. But,’ he shrugged, ‘it was not to be.’
Clouds among the Stars Page 30
