‘Oh, for God’s sake! Look, you can go on ahead. I know my way now.’
‘Don’t get huffy, Miss Perfectly Pretty. OK, I’m sorry.’ When I did not reply, he stopped and pulled my arm so that I was facing him. ‘I really am sorry, Harriet. I’m a prat sometimes. I don’t know why I have to be so stupid and I hate myself even when I’m being it. You’re right to be angry when you were only trying to help. Give me another chance.’
There was something like real wretchedness in his face, despite the ridiculous beard and the unpleasant nose-chain, which made me relent.
‘All right, you’re forgiven. This time.’ I smiled. ‘Come on, let’s walk faster. I’m cold.’
‘But, really,’ we were moving briskly now, ‘isn’t there some man languishing in London, desperate for a lusty glance from those dark doe eyes, who matters more than old school chums?’
I didn’t answer then because I saw someone coming out of the house and down the steps on to the drive. Though the light was draining fast from the sky, flinging a cloak of ultramarine across the countryside, I knew it was Max.
‘Don’t be shy,’ said Jonno. ‘You can trust me to keep the secrets of your innocent girlish heart. Unless I’m drunk, of course, which, I regret to say, I very often am.’ Then he saw Max. ‘There’s that actor bloke. A pearl of masculine beauty and doesn’t he know it!’
‘How can you say that? You’ve hardly spoken to him.’
‘I know. I’ve been too smashed. But there were some chicks from the village up here yesterday wanting his autograph and practically wetting themselves at the sight of him. He put on the charm like he was Robert Redford. But I have to admit – reluctantly – surrounded by a pack of simpering giggling birds, I’d have done the same. Put it down to jealousy on my part.’
‘There you are.’ Max was within calling distance now. ‘You said twenty minutes. It’s been three-quarters of an hour. I was worried. But I see I needn’t have been.’ He smiled at Jonno. It was too dark to decide quite what sort of smile it was. ‘Been clearing the head, Jonno?’ Before he could answer, Max said, ‘You ought to come in, Harriet. It must be below freezing.’
‘I got lost.’ I tried to walk between them, which was difficult because Max had taken my arm and was walking at a faster pace than Jonno. I was conscious of the pressure of Max’s hand.
‘So that’s it, Miss P-P,’ said Jonno, in a low voice. ‘I ought to have guessed. I’d better tell the groupies hanging about the stable yard that they’re wasting their time.’
He veered off abruptly and was swallowed up by shadows.
‘Do you like that boy?’ Max asked.
‘I don’t know. Yes, perhaps. I feel sorry for him, anyway.’
‘He’s an ass.’
‘Mm. But I like some asses.’
Max seemed to be considering this. Then he said, ‘Is that possible? Isn’t respect part of liking?’
‘Probably it ought to be. But the truth is, I usually like people if they seem to like me. Not very praiseworthy, I know.’
‘So Jonno’s been making advances, has he?’
‘Not at all. He’s pretty rude most of the time. But I get the impression he’s very lonely.’
‘He’s a self-indulgent yahoo,’ said Max dismissively.
We were nearly up at the house by this time. Lights from the ground-floor windows daubed the snow with yellow squares. Maggie was in the dining room, unfolding the shutters, her hands encased in the white gloves she wore to protect polished surfaces and antique textiles from fingermarks. Such meticulousness was touching, as though Maggie poured into the house all the tenderness that was rebuffed by those she lived with.
‘Can we extrapolate from that that it’s enough for someone to be in love with you to have you return the feeling?’ Max said as we stood in the porch among mackintoshes, gumboots and walking sticks. He turned me round to face him. The waterfall sounded very loud. I was thankful the porch was dark. It was dreadfully cold and I tried not to shiver. ‘Harriet. Answer me.’
When I did not, he bent his head and kissed me on the mouth. I returned the kiss, out of politeness at first but then because a mixture of emotions, both pleasant and unpleasant, made me forget about being polite.
Dodge had kissed me in quite a different way, like a hungry dog that has lighted on a delicious snack and is impatient to wolf it down. Max kissed me with deliberation, a mindfulness that told me he was in charge and knew exactly what he was about. He would lead me where I was certain to like to go. I had only to relinquish my will and everything would follow. Something like happiness filled my mind and body briefly, and the sighing of the wind and the thundering of the water suggested that passion cannot be governed by resolve. Then I reminded myself that Max had a wife who had tried to kill herself. That was when my misgivings eclipsed the gladness.
I pulled away and leaned back against the door jamb. ‘Max, please, this isn’t a good idea.’
‘You shouldn’t be so damned seductive if you don’t want to be kissed.’
Max put his hands on my shoulders, pinning me to the wall within the circle of his embrace and looked at me intently, without speaking. When I hung my head, in an agony of self-consciousness, he took hold of my chin, none too gently, and forced me to look up. This was weakening stuff. I was desperate not to sniff though I knew my nose was about to run catastrophically. I tried to keep the picture of an unhappy woman before my eyes, in place of Max’s face.
‘Harriet!’ he said at last, a new note of urgency in his voice. ‘I must be possessed. All day whatever I’m doing or saying I’m really only thinking of you. Even during the night that’s all I think of. Especially during the night. When you’re in the room I can’t take my eyes off you without an effort of will. I’ve never felt like this about anyone before.’
The image of Caroline faded just a little. I was about to confess to being in a similar state when the front door opened abruptly and our tryst was illumined by the light in the vestibule. Max dropped his arms to his sides and stepped back.
‘What an importunate pair you are!’ Rupert was unsmiling. ‘Miss Tipple is convinced you are either the police coming to warn us of the escape of a dangerous and insatiable rapist or – worse – the rapist himself. Maggie has gone to fetch her some brandy.’
‘What do you mean?’ I felt bewildered.
‘You’re leaning against the doorbell.’
TWENTY-THREE
Christmas Eve
Dearest Maria-Alba,
Thank you so much for your letter, which arrived safely this morning despite the postman having to walk all the way up from the village. We had another fall of snow in the night and his van was stuck. Cordelia is quite better and I can assure you she is getting the best food possible, so please don’t worry. Maggie’s cooking is nearly as good as yours only more English. I told you, didn’t I, in my last letter what we had to eat out first evening at Pye Hall and I can only say that the standard hasn’t gone down at all. We’ll all be incredibly fat at this rate. Maggie looks so disappointed if you don’t eat up. She’s a really motherly sort of person and it’s a shame she hasn’t any children of her own. Jonno and Annabel take her completely for granted.
Anyway, for dinner last night we had crème Constance, which is a curried soup, followed by roast duck with a wonderful sauce. I particularly asked Maggie what was in it so I could describe it to you properly. It is made with shallots, that’s a kind of onion, I think, and red wine, orange juice, redcurrant jelly and something called a demi-glace. With it we had roast potatoes, carrots, leeks and an orange salad. For pudding there were plums baked with rosemary and a white coffee ice, perfectly delicious, and cheese afterwards. Then everything is taken off the table, including the cloth, which is made in strips so it can be done with minimum disturbance and it’s laid for dessert, fresh and glacéed fruit and nuts. Maggie and Mrs Whale are tremendously efficient but I’m always aware of how hard they work while the rest of us sit about. But when Freddie offered to help
clear away the plates Sir Oswald nearly burst a blood vessel. So we none of us dared move. For lunch the day before yesterday we had eggs in a cream sauce …
There was much more about food because I knew that apart from the wellbeing of our family it was the only thing that really interested Maria-Alba.
At this moment Cordelia is getting ready to come down for drinks before dinner. She insisted on my waiting downstairs as she wants to knock us all dead with envy and admiration, even me. We are a smaller audience for her now as the bishop and his wife have left, which is disappointing as she was a very interesting and peculiar woman. Lord Bevel and his wife have gone too. And the two middle-aged women whose names I never did discover. A really awful couple called Colonel and Mrs Mordaker are staying until Boxing Day. At least they are dreadful but you can’t help feeling sorry for her. He bullies her all the time and now Archie is giving him a taste of his own medicine. Archie is unrepentantly wicked but quite wonderful. So for Christmas there’ll be – apart from us four and the Pyes – Freddie and Vere, Georgia Bisset, Emilio, and Miss Tipple, a rather marvellous old lady, much given to speaking her mind. Oh, and someone I forgot to mention in my last letter, Max Frensham. Do you remember him? He used to come to Ma and Pa’s parties.
We usually have a very amusing time when we all meet up for lunch or dinner – we in this context being Rupert, Archie, Freddie, Vere, Max and me. Sir Oswald doesn’t care about anything but eating as far as I can tell, and Maggie is too busy to enjoy herself, except I think she likes housework. I hope so. Jonno is always drunk, poor Miss Tipple is deaf, Emilio’s English isn’t good enough to follow what’s being said and Georgia is entirely without a sense of humour. She’s engaged to Emilio but he’s always busy trying to seduce anything on legs, with perhaps the exception of Dirk. He – Emilio, I mean – has a laborious kind of charm that he lays on thickly like train oil but without much success as far as I can tell. I can’t help wondering why Georgia and Emilio ever got engaged because she, I’ve just realised, has her eye on Max Frensham. He is, of course, very attractive and quite well-known so perhaps it’s not surprising.
I had firm evidence on which to base the last assertion – about Georgia having her eye on Max, that is. In order to get my letter-writing done without distractions I had retreated to what I was already coming to think of as my workroom. Anyway, no one else seemed to use it. A narrow flight of stairs led from the drawing room to what was called the Little Parlour. It was hardly more than ten feet square, with painted green panelling and an arched window that looked on to the waterfall. It had in it a desk, an armchair, a table lamp and a bookcase. There was a charming little fireplace with Delft tiles of scenes from Noah’s Flood but, most important of all, it had an electric fire for instant, directable heat. Maggie said visitors always asked if it was a priest’s hole and sometimes, without actually telling a lie, she let them think it was but really it was too large and easily discoverable for that. Probably it had been a steward’s room or where the lady of the house did her accounts.
The Pyes had, in those days, been Catholics, which, according to Rupert, was the saving of the Pye Place as Catholics were not allowed to hold important positions, and so get rich and put up newer, more fashionable houses. In one wall of the Little Parlour was a wooden shutter, about twelve inches square, which you could open to get a view of the drawing room below. But unless someone knew of it, they wouldn’t be aware of you observing them. Rupert told me they were called squints. Probably generations of Lady Pyes had kept a vigilant eye on the household from here.
Just as I had finished describing Maggie’s cooking in my letter to Maria-Alba I heard someone come into the drawing room and chink the glasses on the drinks tray, which was brought in at seven fifteen on the dot and from which guests were supposed to help themselves. I only had to lean over the desk and look through the squint to get a bird’s-eye view of what was happening below. Georgia, done up to the nines in diamonds – something very glittery anyway, perhaps paste – and a strapless red dress, was pouring herself a gin and tonic. From my eyrie I could see a good deal of lacy underwear. She must have been fearfully cold. Though Maggie and Mrs Whale rushed round all day like Chinese jugglers, hurling logs and coal into every fireplace, the temperature was not suitable for more than bare wrists and perhaps a couple of inches of neck.
I watched her as she paced up and down, glugging her drink and turning ornaments upside down to examine the factory marks. There was something purposeful about her that engaged my attention. Then Max came in. He helped himself to whisky and came to stand beside her, right under my peephole so I could hear everything.
‘Marvellous old house, isn’t it?’ said Max.
‘It’s full of beastly draughts,’ said Georgia. ‘Anyway, I hate old places, they depress me. I’d rather be in the Caribbean any day. I’ve hardly any tan left from the summer,’ she added in regretful tones, practically knocking out his eye with her elbow as she showed him her arm.
‘I don’t much like very tanned skin. Except on farmers and fishermen. People ought to have something better to do than lie about on beaches. It makes me think they must be rather stupid.’
Gosh, that was telling her, I thought gleefully.
‘Oh, I agree with you. Deep tans are awfully common,’ said Georgia without a blush. ‘Minds are so much more interesting than appearances. Good looks are all very well but what I find more attractive than anything is a first-class brain. I like a man to be clever and – and mysterious.’
‘Mysterious?’ He laughed. ‘I shouldn’t think there are many of those.’
‘Of course I can read all women like a book.’ (A likely story, I thought, pun not intended.) ‘But occasionally I meet a man I can’t fathom.’
She gave him a pussycat smile and that is when I was certain she had designs on him.
Max shrugged. ‘I think men are pretty easy to understand. Once they identify a goal they generally pursue it single-mindedly, not necessarily to their own advantage. I usually find women much more unpredictable and interesting.’
‘Aren’t you horribly bored being cooped up here with a lot of ancient old fogies and children?’
Max smiled at her. ‘As long as there’s one person present to whom I’m strongly attracted and whose company I really enjoy, I can be happy almost anywhere.’
‘Oh?’ Her tone became arch. ‘And may I ask whose company you’re particularly enjoying at the moment?’
‘Aha!’ said Max in a teasing voice. ‘That would be telling!’
This seemed to have a galvanising effect on Georgia. She prowled up and down, head thrown back, nostrils flared, sucking hard on a cigarette and looking dramatic. I realised that the person she’d been reminding me of all along was Bette Davis. Probably the protuberant eyes.
Her pacing was disturbed by Freddie and Vere, who came in with Miss Tipple between them. Georgia looked furious at having her tête-à-tête with Max interrupted. When Emilio and the Mordakers followed almost immediately and then Annabel – in her bottle-green dress again, I was sad to see – Georgia turned her back to them all.
She moved very close to Max and looked up at him, her lips parted and the tip of her tongue showing, like a snake about to strike.
‘Tell me.’ Her voice had become strangely husky. ‘I must know who this interesting and unpredictable person is. Give me a clue. Is she a million miles away from where we’re standing?’
‘She’s very near.’
She put her hand on his arm. ‘Am I cold or warm?’
‘You’re very warm – burning, in fact.’
Georgia rolled her eyes and practically swallowed her cigarette. The lesson about eavesdropping was brought severely home to me. Naturally, the minute I realised Max was interested in someone else, he became a million times more desirable. The memory of that kiss on the doorstep filled me with miserable, uncomfortable rage. What a fool I had been! It seemed that any girl was fair game if she was stupid enough to believe his compliments. Besides
, Georgia really wasn’t someone one could remotely think of as unpredictable. Actually I couldn’t think of anyone less interesting. For the first time in my life I experienced sexual jealousy. It was a sickening feeling, a punishing combination of a strong desire for the other person and a profound disgust of oneself. Just as I was debating whether I ought to close the shutter and make myself get on with some work, or go downstairs and show Max by my cold and dignified behaviour that I was no longer his plaything, Sir Oswald came in and waddled over to Max and Georgia. He wanted to tell her the history of a particular piece of furniture and of course she had to go with him. You could practically hear the ripping sound as she tore herself from Max’s side. As she walked away Max turned round. He looked up, straight into my eyes. Smiling, he shook his head in reproof and blew me a kiss.
I shrank back out of sight, my heart thumping with excitement, gratification and shame at having been caught eavesdropping. Worse, I experienced an ignoble sensation of triumph. He had known I was there, listening. He had let Georgia think he was talking about her but he had intended every word for me. Hadn’t he? As soon as I identified my state to be one of dizzy euphoria on finding myself preferred to Georgia, I asked myself whether I had completely lost my head. Was this frenzy of feeling nothing more than base competition for the attention of the only attractive heterosexual man available? Did I feel any of those softer, less egoistic emotions that might have something to do with love? Then I had remembered Caroline. I buried my face in my hands and sighed. I was losing sight of everything that mattered. I almost hated Max then for making me weak and assailable, a silly romantic girl without clarity of mind and strength of purpose.
Anyway, I’ll finish by giving you a thumbnail sketch of the house, as I wrote my first letter before I had any idea what it looked like from the outside. It’s an amazingly building, stone walls and a stone tiled roof, quite large windows with small diamond-shaped panes, all set at different angles to let maximum light in, which Maggie says is called bombé glass. It’s very touching how much she loves the house.
Clouds among the Stars Page 35
