Clouds among the Stars

by Clayton, Victoria

  I had not been to 10 Horn-on-the-Green, Richmond, which was Rupert’s house, since the night of the party, six months before, when I had gone to beg for his assistance to repair the shattered Byng fortunes. I was able to appreciate its superior beauty now the house was empty of people. Situated in the middle of a row of terraced early Georgian houses and faced by an almost identical terrace on the other side of the canal, it was the only one that was double-fronted. They were all built of pinky-red bricks and the windows and doors were painted uniformly dove grey, which was tranquil and elegant. The canal was a glassy olive-coloured seam between green velvet banks and two rows of trees that were now frosted with delicate white blossom. Archie explained that the residents of the street had formed a preservation society to maintain its fidelity to the Age of Elegance. Nowadays a single red begonia in a window box was enough to bring down upon the transgressor the full weight of the Society’s opprobrium.

  Cars were allowed only in the mews behind so we carried our suitcases through the garden, an intricate parterre of box hedges and rills, punctuated by urns on pedestals. Dirk bounded over the borders, planted all in white and blue, and put to flight a flock of doves that had been sauntering around a trellis arbour.

  Rupert was admirably restrained, merely saying, ‘I expect they’ll get used to one another.’

  Inside the house we released Mark Antony from his basket. He prowled about, keeping low to the ground with his ears flattened, examining every inch of every room. For two days he was ruffled and upset, and kept up an unpleasant yowling as a protest at being kept indoors. After that we could stand it no longer and let him out through the front door. He strolled to the edge of the canal to look into the murky waters. His brass-coloured eyes lit with a rabid gleam on seeing the tiny brown fish that swam backwards and forwards. He crouched, front paw extended. From that moment on he was a stickleback junkie, rarely leaving his post except to feed and relieve himself.

  When Ophelia paid her first visit to Horn-on-the-Green, I took her upstairs to see my bedroom and she was perfectly silent for several minutes in homage to its style. The wallpaper was Chinese, hand-painted with birds and butterflies. The bed was a half-tester hung with ice-blue taffeta and all the furniture was satinwood.

  ‘Happy, Hat?’

  It was the first time she had asked me such an intimate question. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What about Ma and Pa?’

  ‘They both seem ecstatic.’

  ‘I meant, how do you feel about the divorce?’

  ‘Oh. Well. The good thing is that it no longer terrifies me. I thought it might destroy me and I find it hasn’t. I can go on working, looking after Cordelia, even forgetting about it for quite long periods. No one could live with Rupert and Archie and not find a great deal to be happy about. They’re both expert practitioners of the art of enjoying themselves. I’ve discovered it’s a skill and I intend to master it. I find I’m still me, and that whatever me is, there’s enough of it to sustain independent existence. That’s given me confidence. But, if I’m truthful, I’ll never be able to think of the divorce without sorrow. It’s changed the way I think about my childhood. I know it’s irrational but it’s as though a dark veil has been thrown over my memories of that time. I can still recall it and I know it was lovely but always now I see it with the end, like an angel of death, hovering in view. The death of the child in me, I suppose. Stupid, I know.’

  ‘You always were a hopeless romantic. I don’t believe for a moment that child’s gone. You look older but you’re a kid, really. Wait until you meet someone you can make your own life with. You won’t need to cling to the past then. You can grow up.’ I was too grateful that Ophelia had bothered to consider my life at all to resent the unflattering imputations. Perhaps she was right. ‘Where’s Cordelia?’

  ‘Rehearsals for the school play.’

  At breakfast the day after we moved in, Rupert had announced that he had arranged for Cordelia to attend the local comprehensive.

  ‘I refuse to go,’ said Cordelia at once.

  ‘Then you will go and live with Waldo and Fleur.’

  ‘I’d rather cut my throat.’

  ‘You’ll find a suitable implement in the kitchen. But don’t make a mess.’

  ‘You … you …’ I saw she did not quite dare to call him names, ‘mean thing!’ she concluded feebly.

  Rupert looked up from his paper. ‘If you want to live here with us you’ll go to school. You’re quite free to choose to live with your father or your mother or either of your sisters, if they’ll have you. And there’s Bron, of course.’

  Cordelia left the table and marched upstairs to her room, banging the dining-room door.

  ‘I’m awfully sorry –’ I began.

  Rupert looked up briefly. ‘Let’s not make a drama of it.’ He returned his eyes to the paper.

  That evening Cordelia tried a different tactic. She waited until Rupert had washed and changed and poured himself a drink. We were sitting in the drawing room, looking out at the garden through the French windows. A pair of goldfinches sipped from the edge of the fountain. The setting sun shone on the surface of the water, transforming it into a shining gold disk.

  ‘It’s very kind of you to worry about my education, Rupert,’ said Cordelia.

  Rupert smiled, caressing the stem of his glass with long fingers. ‘I don’t know that I’d call it kind. Practical, rather. You’ll be at a disadvantage next September, if you miss two-thirds of the year, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right, though I could do some reading at home and the girls’ll probably be pretty dim. Actually, I met Drusilla Papworth the other day – she was in my class at St Frideswide’s – and she told me that our old headmistress, the one Harriet got stroppy with, has left. So I could probably go back there.’

  ‘Sister Imelda?’ I was astonished. It was impossible to imagine the place without her.

  ‘Drusilla said she had a nervous breakdown soon after I got expelled.’

  ‘I don’t suppose the two things were connected,’ said Rupert.

  But I was not so sure. I remembered with a painful sense of guilt my cruel taunt about her relationship with Sister Justinia.

  ‘St Frideswide’s is too far away.’ Rupert picked up a book as though to end the conversation. ‘Anyway, it’s all fixed.’

  ‘But I’d rather not go to a state school.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, I never have. None of us have.’

  ‘It’ll be good for you to have to fit in.’

  ‘How unfair! Harriet’s never had to fit in.’ Cordelia was indignant.

  ‘Then she’s missed out on a valuable experience. What makes you different from other children that you have to have special treatment?’

  ‘I bet you’ve never been to a state school!’

  ‘No. And it took me a long time to realise that public school had made me arrogant. These distortions of reality are a disadvantage.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call Harriet arrogant.’

  ‘No. Harriet has an in-built corrective to assumptions of superiority. She has an innate respect for truth.’ I was delighted by this unexpected praise. ‘And,’ Rupert continued, ‘a lack of self-conceit that amounts to what psychiatrists call an inferiority complex.’

  This was not so good.

  ‘Well, I don’t know why I should have to make up for you being arrogant,’ said Cordelia resentfully. ‘I’m not conceited.’

  Rupert smiled enigmatically. ‘I appreciate the effort you’re making to be reasonable, Cordelia, but I assure you nothing will make me change my mind. If you want to live here with us you’ll start at the Arthur Brocklebuck Comprehensive tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Tomorrow!’ Cordelia began to cry. ‘Oh no! Please, Rupert, no! I couldn’t bear it. Let me have a week or two to get used to the idea. It’s too cruel!’ She clasped her hands together and dropped on her knees before him, huge tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘I’ve got to get used to being the pro
duct of a broken home,’ she wailed. ‘I’ll do anything to please you. I’ll bring you tea in bed and embroider you a pair of slippers. I’ll do all the washing-up. I’ll scrub the bath. I’ll even wash your socks –’

  ‘Now look, Cordelia.’ Rupert spoke firmly ‘These touching offers of self-sacrifice are unnecessary. I’m not a despotic paterfamilias who has to be propitiated. Besides, we have an excellent daily help and she’d be very annoyed to be interfered with. All I ask is that you stop play-acting. Save it for the stage. There’s nothing wrong with feeling things strongly but don’t pretend what you don’t feel.’

  Cordelia stopped crying. She got to her feet and stood, head erect, mouth quivering, a picture of wounded innocence. ‘One day, Rupert Wolvespurges, you’ll be very, very sorry you’ve been so beastly to me. You’re the most acrominious man I’ve ever met!’

  Rupert was merciful enough to wait until she was upstairs, out of earshot, before giving way to laughter.

  The next morning Cordelia, mute with resentment, walked with me to the unprepossessing brick-and-glass edifice that was the Arthur Brocklebuck Comprehensive. We had been asked to come early, before school began, so she could be given books and a desk and a tour of the school. The empty building smelled of linoleum and lavatory cleaner. Miss Savage, the deputy headmistress, was hirsute, with big hips. She looked tired and bad-tempered. I was dismissed peremptorily, as though I was a particularly badly behaved and time-wasting pupil. Cordelia had looked at me with eyes that spoke of perfidy. But when, filled with trepidation, I went to meet her at the end of the first day I had been astonished to see her walking down the road towards me swinging her satchel, a skip in her step and a smile on her lips.

  ‘How was it?’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Nice girls?’

  ‘All right, I suppose.’

  She seemed hardly to be listening. I tried again.

  ‘How were the teachers?’

  ‘The usual pathetic collection. Sad, really. The drama teacher is all right.’

  ‘Oh good. You’ll like the chance to do some acting.’

  ‘Mm.’

  This did not seem enough to account for the gleam of satisfaction in her eye, not unlike that in Mark Antony’s after a particularly enjoyable day of stickleback surveillance. ‘Did you have someone to talk to during break?’

  ‘Oh, yes. When I could get a word in edgeways. They were so keen to tell me about themselves. Those that weren’t silently worshipping.’

  ‘Worshipping? You mean they’ve found out about Pa?’

  Cordelia looked disdainful. ‘Certainly not. You know I never name-drop.’ I knew no such thing. ‘It was me they were worshipping. Jason said I was the most luscious bird he’d ever seen.’

  Foolishly, it had not occurred to me that there would be boys. Ma having favoured a convent education on the grounds that Roman Catholicism had a certain artistic caché, we had no experience of co-educational schools. ‘Ah. Is Jason in your class?’

  Cordelia looked at me with pitying patience. ‘You don’t think I want to go out with twelve-year-olds, you idiot? Jason’s the head boy.’

  ‘You mean he’s eighteen?’

  ‘Actually, I didn’t ask to see his passport,’ Cordelia drawled sarcastically. ‘But he shaves and his voice has broken.’

  I decided friendly curiosity was the best approach. ‘Is he good-looking?’

  ‘Not bad. But not a patch on Zak.’ She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. ‘He’s Captain of Games and all the girls are in love with him. He’s taking me to the cinema on Saturday.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ I asked Rupert that evening after answering the telephone to four eager adolescent male voices, asking to speak to Cordelia.

  We were sitting in the arbour, drinking Chablis and eating delicious walnut sablés, made by Archie. The sunshine was warm. The doves were cooing round our feet, hoping for crumbs. Dirk lifted his lip when they came too near but forbore to chase them, he and I having had strong words on the subject.

  ‘Do? I suppose I had better have another line put in.’

  ‘I mean about all these boys running after Cordelia.’

  ‘There’s nothing to be done about that. It’s been going on for several hundred thousand years apparently.’

  ‘But she’s only twelve!’

  ‘It’ll be invaluable experience. You can’t teach people things by shutting them up. Make sure she knows about pregnancy and diseases. You can tell her about the inexorable drive of testosterone in the young male, and the difference between lust and love.’

  Archie sighed. ‘I wish someone would teach me what the difference is. If it’s possible for a twelve-year-old to know, I must really be lacking in discernment. I keep thinking I’ve got the hang of it but time and again I’m proved wrong.’

  I looked sternly at my sablé, embarrassed. It seemed then that Rupert and Archie had an ‘open’ relationship. Of course I knew that, by repute anyway, male homosexuals were promiscuous. But I could not imagine Rupert enjoying a brief, bawdy fling. Or perhaps I did not want to. Naturally it was not to be supposed that either of them sought sexual satisfaction in public lavatories. Perhaps they met handsome young men at parties and brought them back to Horn-on-the-Green. There had certainly been nothing like that since Cordelia and I had been living there but it had only been two days. Perhaps our presence was a tiresome impediment to their usual manner of conducting themselves.

  I stole a glance at Rupert. He was looking at me through half-closed lids. He smiled and I had an uncomfortable idea that he had guessed what I was thinking. I felt myself flush to the roots of my hair.

  ‘That’s the telephone again,’ I said on hearing it ring. ‘I’ll go. I expect it’ll be for Cordelia.’ I was glad of the excuse to take my hot face indoors.

  ‘Hello?’ I said.

  ‘Who’s that?’ It was a female voice. Sharp, almost accusing.

  ‘Harriet.’

  ‘Harriet who?’

  ‘Harriet Byng.’

  There was a brief pause. ‘I want to speak to Rupert.’

  ‘I’ll get him. Who’s calling?’

  ‘Leah. If that’s any of your business.’

  I put the receiver on the little fruitwood writing desk that Archie said was called a bonheur du jour and went out into the garden. ‘It’s Leah.’

  Rupert groaned. ‘You didn’t say I was here?’

  ‘I implied it.’

  ‘Well, say I’ve gone out, will you?’

  I went back to the telephone. ‘He’s gone out, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. I’m coming round.’

  I heard the click of the receiver.

  ‘She didn’t believe me. She’s coming round,’ I repeated dutifully, on going back into the garden.

  Rupert swore under his breath. ‘I refuse, I absolutely refuse to have a scene. I’ve had an exhausting day. The lead French horn was drunk again and we had to find a replacement. Amelia, the heroine, has hardly stopped crying since she discovered last week that her lover – the baritone singing Renato – has been sleeping with the entire chorus. She’s been eating so much in compensation that Wardrobe have had to let out her costume to the last thread. Riccardo fell downstairs yesterday and now he limps and has a black eye. He’s supposed to be the tragic hero. He looks ridiculous.’

  ‘Oh dear, and you’ve had so much trouble over Cordelia’s school,’ I said, feeling thoroughly guilty.

  ‘Don’t you start,’ said Rupert, very unfairly. He looked his most saturnine.

  ‘We can refuse to let her in,’ suggested Archie. ‘There’s a gloomy-looking youth mooching about the canal, probably one of Cordelia’s aficionados. They can mooch together.’

  I wondered who Leah could be and what was the urgent business that demanded she present herself, uninvited, at Rupert’s door. Rupert picked up a book of Rochester’s poems and read them with a frowning face while finishing the Chablis.

  When Cordelia cam
e out to say that someone was knocking the front door down and should she answer it, Rupert said grumpily, ‘Let her in. We’ll get it over with.’ He looked at us with raised eyebrows. ‘If you wouldn’t mind taking yourselves off for a minute, I think I’ll be able to get rid of her more easily if she has no chance to sit down.’

  He put his glass on the table and went to stand by the fountain, arms folded, expression inimical. Archie and I almost stuck in the doorway as we rushed to remove ourselves from the scene, but not before I caught a glimpse of a tall girl with a haughty face and long blonde hair striding through the hall.

  ‘Who is she?’ I asked the minute Archie and I were alone down in the kitchen.

  ‘Leah Wyldbore-Pater. The most terrifying woman. Sculpts. Scalps more accurately. A praying mantis.’

  ‘You don’t like her very much?’

  ‘I told Rupert to have nothing to do with her. Better mate with Lilith, I said, than Miss Wyldbore-Pater. But who ever listens to good advice?’

  ‘You mean Rupert had an affair with her?’

  ‘Incredible, isn’t it? You’d think he’d know better. I could see she was trouble from the moment she came up to us at a party and pretended she’d met Rupert before. But then, to be fair, lust did not cloud my judgement. I must admit to making some bad mistakes myself when swept along by the current of desire.’

  It was incredible. But not for the reason Archie thought. There were bisexuals in the theatre as elsewhere, but to me they were an unknown quantity. As I thought of it, Rupert, or rather my idea of him, seemed to shimmer and shift, and the end result was something much more threatening. And potentially hurtful. There had been a bitter-sweet poignancy in thinking of him as a man ever beyond reach. Now, in theory, anyway, he wasn’t, and the abrupt realisation of various possibilities plunged me into a state of painful suspense and at the same time depressed me unutterably.