by Rosie Thomas
‘Will you achieve all that?’ Clio asked her.
‘Of course we will,’ Ruth said. ‘If you came to one of our clinics, you would see the strength that women have.’
Jake took her hand. ‘I know your strength,’ he said.
‘It’s the same as your sister’s. And your cousin Grace’s. Jake has told me about her,’ Ruth added to Clio.
‘Grace is married now. She’s going to have a baby soon,’ Clio said.
Julius said nothing, but his expression changed. He rarely spoke of Grace these days.
‘Married or single, old or young, rich or poor, Jewish or otherwise, it makes no difference,’ Ruth pronounced. ‘We have our strength and we must use it together.’
It’s a pretty idea, Clio thought, but how, together? Grace and I? Our mothers and ourselves? Ruth and the Euston women?
There were too many faces, all turned in different directions.
‘I would like to come and see one of your clinics,’ Clio said aloud.
‘We don’t encourage sightseers.’
‘You could find something useful for me to do.’ Clio felt that she was always begging for something useful to do, as if all her life up until now had equipped her for nothing.
‘Perhaps,’ Ruth agreed. She had finished her tea. She must have been very hungry, because there was very little left of all the food that Julius had laughed at. With Julius’s help Clio cleared the table, and when they had finished they found that Jake and Ruth had wandered away into his bedroom and closed the door.
‘Let’s go out, for a walk somewhere,’ Julius said.
Clio was glad to leave the flat. They walked down Gower Street, with the river of traffic, until they reached Bedford Square. The air was stale and motionless, and there was a veil of dirt suspended in it that needed rain to wash it away, but a breath of freshness still lingered under the trees in the square.
It was the beginning of August, the time when everyone Clio knew from her débutante days had left for the country, or for Scotland, or for the sea. Even Pilgrim had gone away, to paint in the south of France. That she was still unseasonably here, settled and about to start work, made Clio feel properly a Londoner. She looked affectionately at the homegoing office workers on the top decks of the buses, and the tide of summer dresses and business suits flowing towards the tube station. Max Erdmann had told her that he would be going on holiday himself in a few days’ time, leaving her in charge at the Fathom office. Now that he had accepted her imminent arrival there was no more talk of a week’s trial.
‘Give you a chance to prove yourself,’ Max had mumbled.
Clio was looking forward to the challenge.
They strolled under the trees, enjoying the shade. Julius was wearing a linen jacket and a panama hat, and he tipped the hat back on his head to look down at Clio.
‘What did you think?’ he asked.
‘I was impressed.’
‘Did you like her?’
‘Yes, I did. Didn’t you?’
After a moment, Julius answered, ‘She is the kind of woman who is liked better by women than by men.’
‘Except for Jake, obviously.’ Clio was thinking that Julius would not be drawn to her. No one could be less like Grace.
‘I think Jake has met his match this time,’ Julius observed.
‘He looks happy enough.’
‘Yes, he does.’ They stopped walking and faced each other. Julius put his arm around Clio’s waist. ‘You’ve still got me,’ he said.
Clio loved his knobbed shoulders and the elongated fingers of his bony hands. Julius had always been there, all her life, like the better half of herself. She kissed his warm, dry cheek. A woman passing by thought they were lovers and turned her head away, pursing her lips.
‘What about you, Julius?’ she asked gently.
‘Falling in love?’ He shook his head. ‘I play music. That’s good enough for me.’ Neither of them mentioned Grace. After a moment they walked on, with their arms linked.
After surveying the contents of her wardrobe for a long time, Grace lifted out a narrow grey crêpe dress on its padded hanger. It was November now, three months after Cressida’s birth, and she was thin enough again to wear her dressmaker’s clever copies of Mme Chanel’s chic tunics. Anthony was not yet rich enough to buy her the real thing, although she was determined that he soon would be.
Grace lifted her white arms and let the folds of fluid crêpe drop over her head. Then she sat down at her dressing table and brushed her hair. She had just had it bobbed, and was still aware of the strange sensation of lightness around her bare neck and shoulders. She powdered her face with white powder and blackened her eyes with kohl. Then she leant forward to the glass and with careful concentration drew in her mouth with bright red lipstick.
Grace liked the ritual of dressing more now that it was a private affair between herself and her wardrobe and cosmetics. Her clothes and underclothes and her hair were much simpler than they had been, although her maquillage had become more elaborate. She did not need or want a lady’s maid, even if she could have afforded to employ one. To run the house in South Audley Street she had only a cook-housekeeper and a housemaid, a nurse for the baby, a charwoman and an odd-job man for the heavy work, and Anthony’s valet-driver who doubled as a butler when they entertained. Even with this fraction of her mother’s indoor staff she was regarded with envy by most of her young married friends. They telephoned each other with invitations for cocktails mixed by the husbands, or for pot-luck suppers, or for parties where the rugs were pushed back ready for dancing at any time of the day or night.
It was all supposed to be informal and impromptu and the greatest fun. Great fun was a phrase they used a lot. ‘It was great fun, darling,’ they told one another, all the new young married couples.
Grace picked up a crystal bottle and puffed a cloud of scent around her head. Then she snapped a heavy silver bracelet like a cuff on to each wrist and turned to look back over her own shoulder into the glass. Her back was bare almost to the waist, and the lines of her uncorseted body showed clearly under the grey crêpe. Her cropped hair made her neck look like a long, fragile stalk. She was glad to be thin again. She had hated the swollen balloon shape of her pregnancy.
Behind her own satisfying reflection she saw the door open as her husband came into her bedroom.
‘Darling, you’re home.’
He came to her, dropping a kiss on to her shoulder and then holding her close to him.
‘I’m home, thank God. I’ve had enough of the City for today. The pound’s down below three dollars fifty.’
‘Poor old baby. How boring.’
Anthony breathed in her scent with a luxurious sigh, and then let his hands fall to his sides. He knew that Grace was not interested in the minutiae of his business. He didn’t expect it, and he didn’t love her any the less for it.
‘How about you, my darling? Have you had a busy day?’
Grace made a pretty face. ‘Frantic.’ She had shopped and had lunch with a girlfriend, and then spent an hour arranging the flowers in the drawing room. She felt jittery with unused energy rather than tired, but frantic was what one always admitted to, on the telephone or kissing cheeks at parties.
‘How’s Cressida today?’
It was Anthony’s invariable question. He was deeply devoted to his baby daughter.
‘Utterly perfect. Nurse will bring her downstairs when you’re dressed.’
Anthony took off his jacket and removed the gold links from his shirt cuffs. ‘Who is it this evening?’
‘Family, darling. Mine. Jake and his girl, and Julius and Clio. Just some cocktails and a little supper. Does that suit?’
‘Of course it does.’ Anthony was always pleased to see Grace’s cousins. Clio especially. ‘Do I have time for a bath?’
‘The very quickest one. I’ll bring you a drink, shall I?’
Anthony walked through the adjoining dressing room and into his bedroom where his valet had lai
d out his evening clothes. He strolled into his bathroom, whistling, and ran his own bath. He could hear the jazz music that Grace had put on the gramophone downstairs. Steam silvered the mirrors and clouded the tortoiseshell backs of his brushes. When Grace came in with a Sidecar the frosted glass dripped cold tears of condensation. He wanted her to perch on the side of the bath and talk to him, but she laughed at the suggestion.
‘And let your steam make my hair as lank as pondweed? Do hurry up and come downstairs.’
He watched her sinuous bare back recede and then lay in the seductive warmth. He tipped his glass and drank, relishing the jolt of alcohol in his empty stomach. He was thinking that he was happy; happy rather than content, because contentment implied a lack of ambition, and Anthony was very ambitious. He intended to make a great deal of money, and then to take over as senior partner in the stockbrokers Brock & Cowper when his father retired to play golf in the country. After that, when he was securely established, he aimed to be adopted for a safe Conservative seat. Then, once elected, he would campaign for economic reform; there would be plenty of opportunities for young men when the Conservatives were returned to power.
There was a great deal to be done.
But he was happy now, in this isolated moment. There was nothing he wished to change. He had a momentary sense that his life was like an oriental rug, the largest expanse of it still tightly rolled but a small strip unfurled, so that the beginning of the intricate pattern was revealed. He had Grace, best of all he had Grace, but he also had Cressida. Anthony still counted it as a miracle that everything had come to him so quickly and easily. At one minute there had seemed no hope that Grace would ever agree to marry him, and then all at once she had accepted him and there had been the mercifully simple wedding.
‘If you love me, just marry me,’ Grace had said. ‘I can’t bear all the fuss and trousseaux and dressing up like a doll.’
He had been dazed, but he was also so happy that he would have agreed to anything. His wife-to-be was capricious, Anthony knew that. He loved her no less for it.
Then, almost as soon as they were married, Grace was pregnant. The baby’s prematurity had been an anxiety, but Cressida was born quickly and easily and she was a robust little creature. Anthony adored his daughter.
Soon, he thought, as he relaxed in the hot water, there would be more children – sons – and the continuation of their comfortable family life. They had their pretty house, admirably arranged by Grace, and they had amusing friends and more invitations than they could respond to.
Anthony finished his drink. If Grace did not seem especially happy it was because happiness was unfashionable. It was necessary to be frantic, or excited, or languid, or dismissive. Not plainly, sturdily happy. He did not mind being unfashionable himself. Grace had more than enough style for the two of them. He loved her very much, and all the variety of her quicksilver moods.
Downstairs, in her first-floor drawing room, Grace was standing at one of the windows with her cocktail glass and a cigarette in her hand. Looking down into the wintry street she saw a car drive up, and a group of people scrambling out of it. She recognized Clio, in a little hat and a short fur cape over a pleated skirt. The man with her was Julius, looking serious and formal in evening clothes. Grace’s red lips curved with affection at the sight of him.
But there were more people. There was a short man in a greasy-looking overcoat. With an effort of memory, Grace placed him as Max Erdmann, Clio’s boss at the little literary magazine, whatever its name was. And then two others, one in a man’s dinner suit although she was plainly a woman with a mass of reddish hair, and the other tall and muffled in an opera cloak, his face hidden by a black hat.
Grace leant forward, stiff with dismay, until her forehead touched the cold glass. There was no mistake. It was Jeannie and Pilgrim.
She tried to tell herself that Clio must have offered them a lift, that they would set off now in some different direction, but the thought had hardly formed before they crossed the pavement in front of the house in a phalanx, with only Clio hanging back a little. Grace lost sight of them beneath her, and at once the doorbell sounded. The butler would come up the stairs from the basement and let them in, then show them upstairs to the drawing room.
Grace looked wildly around. There was nowhere to go, of course, and Anthony would be down in a moment. She would have to brazen it out, whatever it was that Clio was plotting.
A second later they were in the room, all five of them. Pilgrim and Jeannie and Max brought a distinct smell of the saloon bar. Clio came across the rug to Grace with both hands outstretched to take hers.
‘Max brought Jeannie and Pilgrim into the office just as I was leaving. They both said they would so much like to see you and your house, and everything …’ her voice trailed away, betraying her helplessness. Grace took hold of her cold hands for a moment, and then let go. Not Clio’s plot, then.
‘Lady Grace.’ It was Erdmann’s voice. ‘They would admit no denial.’
And you? Grace thought. I don’t recall inviting you, either. But she only said, silkily, ‘Pilgrim and Jeannie are old friends of mine. I couldn’t be more thrilled to have them drop in like this. Thank you for bringing everyone, Clio darling.’
Pilgrim enveloped her in his cloak, and, like some made-up old stage-door roué, Jeannie mouthed exaggerated kisses at her. Grace guessed that they must have been doing some steady drinking. She felt sympathy for Clio, even in the midst of her anxiety about what might happen next.
Julius had said nothing. He stood still, looking at Grace, as if trying to absorb her into himself. She went to him now and hugged him, and let herself feel reassured by his protection.
She managed to say, ‘Now, shall we all have a cocktail? Jeannie, Pilgrim, do you need any more to drink?’
If she had been hoping they would say no, she was disappointed.
‘Most certainly we do,’ Pilgrim boomed. Jeannie arranged herself on a sofa and patted the cushion next to her to indicate that Julius should sit down.
Anthony came in. He was much too well mannered to betray any surprise at the unexpected addition to the company. After shaking hands he went to the silver tray of bottles and glasses and busied himself with mixing drinks. When everyone was holding a fresh cocktail he told Grace, ‘I went along to see Cressida. Nurse says she will bring her down, just for five minutes.’ He was proud of his baby. He wanted everyone to admire her.
There was no time for Grace to forbid it on the grounds of the room being too smoky or there being too many people. The butler was showing Jake and Ruth into the drawing room, and behind Jake’s shoulder Grace could already see the nurse’s white starched headdress. The bundle of baby was in her arms.
Pilgrim was not so drunk as to be unaware of what was happening. Rather he was at the stage of intoxication where the action around him seemed slowed and artificially highlighted. He saw Grace standing in the middle of the room. Like a snapshot frozen out of the surrounding commotion, she was very still and there was fear in her eyes as she looked at him.
With a leap of drunken intuition, Pilgrim understood everything. He had lazily speculated, and it was mostly mischievous curiosity that had drawn him here this evening, but now he knew for sure.
He had fathered the baby that the nurse was tenderly putting into Anthony Brock’s arms.
Grace had found herself pregnant. That was the reason for her hasty marriage to her stockbroker admirer, that was the secret that frightened her, and that was why her cousins were staring at him like rabbits hypnotized by a snake. That was why the pliant Clio had been so unwilling to bring him to South Audley Street. Even Max and the little Jewess seemed to smell the threat in the air. Only Mr Brock and the nurse were oblivious to it. They were adjusting the baby’s dress, smiling down on her, making little reassuring murmurs.
Pilgrim stood up.
Watching him sweep across the room Grace thought that he looked like a great black bat. She found that her hands were shaking so
much that the contents of her glass slopped on her dress. Pilgrim stopped at Anthony’s shoulder and hung over Cressida. The nurse stepped respectfully backwards to stand against the wall with her hands folded over her apron.
Pilgrim saw a round, rosy face and a pair of unblinking eyes. A fringe of dark, spiky hair protruded under the frill of a bonnet, and a small fist had escaped from the swaddle of white blanket. A tiny whitish bubble swelled between the miniature lips.
It was a baby, that was all, a routine assemblage of limbs and powdered buttocks and oversized cranium. He felt nothing, no wish to touch it and no prompting of curiosity. What he did feel was admiration for Grace, and a touch of gratitude. She had rescued herself from disaster, without reference to him. She had conveyed herself here, to this elegant drawing room and the protection of a husband and eager father. Grace had done well, and he knew what he owed her.
He felt all the eyes fastened on him. He waited, furling his cloak, and then he unleashed his widest smile.
‘Why is the young of the human species so extravagantly ugly?’
The silence was broken by a clockwork chorus of protests and exclamations.
Jeannie left Julius and swayed across to examine the baby herself. ‘Pilgrim, you’re full of beer and wind. She’s a beautiful baby. Look at her darling little fingernails, will you?’
Pilgrim affected to take a closer look. ‘Mmm. Your chin, Brock, I think. But she’ll probably turn out to be a beauty when called upon.’
The conversation around them broke out in relieved bursts. Ruth went deliberately to the nurse and began to ask her about her training. Jeannie sidled back to Julius and Clio and Jake fell on each other as if they had not met for weeks. Pilgrim felt the talk like bubbles, buoying them all up. He wanted another drink, but he went to Grace who was still standing alone in the middle of the room.
