Of course they didn’t have much in common, that had emerged quite quickly. He was really rather an intellectual, she had discovered, he had read almost everything, he adored music and particularly the opera, and he was intensely interested in and knowledgeable about modern painting. He had tried to interest her in that, but he didn’t seem to understand that it wasn’t her thing, and besides, ever since they had been married she had been pregnant or absorbed in nursery matters. It was hardly practicable to expect her to start rushing about going to art exhibitions; and she found the artists he brought home from time to time immensely tedious, all talking in terms she simply couldn’t understand about things she couldn’t begin to appreciate.
She wasn’t even sure about having sex with him any more; her pregnancy protected her for the most part from his sexual attentions, which she missed; she had enjoyed the whole thing very much in the early days, he was not only skilful and tireless in bed, but tender and imaginative as well, and she could still, when she allowed it, find herself taken to intense heights of pleasure. But such occasions now were rare; the spectre of a mistress, or mistresses, lay between them on the pillow, humiliating her and dulling her responses; increasingly, she liked to sleep alone.
His frequent declarations that he was about to join his father in the family merchant bank continued to prove invalid; he spent perhaps one day a week there, and one further lunch hour with prospective or existing clients, but it clearly bored him. The art gallery, on the other hand, took more of his attention, and indeed recently he had discovered more than one new talent which he then devoted some time and money towards developing; but he was happier still on the golf course or at the races – neither of which attracted her in the least – or at his stable yard. The result was that he had a great deal of time of his own in which to pursue any other interests he might develop; and if the rumours and Venetia’s instincts were to be believed, most of those took the form of pretty and amusing women.
It was not a happy state of affairs; but she could not quite establish in her own mind – particularly given the fact of her pregnancy – what she wanted to do about it, swinging between a desire to maintain the status quo of a highly luxurious lifestyle, considerable social standing, a secure home for her children and a longing to escape from the mesh of disappointment and humiliation that her marriage had become.
If she hadn’t had Henry – and Adele of course – she quite often thought she would go mad.
Abbie had a new job; ‘so much better than teaching all those snooty little girls, with their curls and their nursemaids and their closed-in, mean minds,’ she said to Barty, and Barty, who had suffered considerably from the mean minds of snooty little girls, agreed with her. It was not one of the august girls’ establishments of which she had dreamed, but an elementary school in Brixton.
‘It’ll be awfully different. I asked what were the biggest problems, meaning things like, you know, none of them ever having seen a book or been read to, and the headmistress said nits and fleas and spotting the difference between a bruise acquired in the playground and one from a father’s belt.’
Barty was silent; one of her earliest memories was of watching her father’s belt swinging at her brothers, and of her mother lashing out at her with the heavy wooden tongs she used to pull the washing out of the boiler. That had not happened often and Sylvia had been driven to it by her own desperation, but it had directly led, she knew, to her being taken home to the dubious safety of Cheyne Walk and the Lyttons.
‘On the other hand, it’s a wonderful neighbourhood, really close and – well, affectionate. The children may have nits and be sewn into their underwear for the winter, but they grow up in this kind of huge family that’s the street. And they’re so sharp and clever and some of them at least do seem to want to learn; I’m so excited about it, Barty, I really am.’
Barty told Celia about it, knowing she would be genuinely interested; she promptly offered a large box of children’s books for the school, ‘and tell your friend if she wants more she has only to ask’.
Abbie was surprised, but ‘I keep telling you,’ said Barty, still half surprised at herself in her defence of Celia, ‘she is a very kind and generous person.’
‘Well, all right. I’ll believe you. I must write to her and thank her.’
‘You should come and thank her in person,’ said Barty, ‘she’d like that. The only thing is, you’d find yourself agreeing to write a book about your experience of teaching in the slums or some such before you knew it.’
Abbie looked at her thoughtfully; then she said, ‘Well, that mightn’t be such a bad thing, either. And I’d like to meet her actually, see if she’s really as wonderful as you keep saying.’
Barty laughed. ‘Wonderful in bits,’ she said, ‘not all of her. She’s been in a foul mood lately, always quarrelling with poor Sebastian because his book’s late. Of course it is, he’s got Pandora to worry about. Now there’s someone you’d like, when she’s had her baby I shall take you to meet her. She is absolutely glorious, so gentle and so – so sharp at the same time. Mind you, she needs to be, living with Sebastian, he’s not exactly easy.’
‘I wonder if any of my children have heard of the Meridian books,’ said Abbie.
‘Well, if they have, I’m sure Sebastian would send some. Probably come down and do one of his talks. Children love them, I’ve been to a few. He brings the books absolutely alive, he reads and sort of acts out bits, so that when he’s talking about the flying fish or the underwater horses, or the king-children there they are, in front of you.’
‘It sounds wonderful,’ said Abbie, ‘do you really think he would come?’
‘I know he would,’ said Barty, ‘if I asked him. Not till the baby’s born, though. Worrying about that is consuming him at the moment.’
‘I’m not surprised. I can’t imagine how anyone can live through that, can you?’ said Abbie with a shudder. ‘Having a baby, I mean.’
‘No,’ said Barty, ‘I really, really can’t. We’ll have to though, won’t we, one day?’
‘As far off a day as possible,’ said Abbie, ‘in fact I’m thinking of adopting my children.’
‘If you want any more you’ll have to adopt them,’ said Sebastian, appearing in the doorway with a tray of the egg and watercress sandwiches that were Pandora’s current passion. ‘I couldn’t go through this again.’
‘You couldn’t!’ said Pandora. ‘Sebastian, I—’
‘Only teasing you. I love making you cross. Anyway, one child is quite enough. I was an only child, absolutely loved it.’
‘I expect you did. No competition. Anyway, imagine there being two of you, like Venetia and Adele—’
He looked at her in horror. ‘Do you know, I hadn’t thought of that. That the beast might be twins. It would explain the large size, wouldn’t it? Dear God, how would you—’
‘Sebastian,’ said Pandora, ‘the baby is not twins. Of course the doctor thought of it and he’s as sure as he can be. He’s listened endlessly for another heartbeat and there isn’t one—’
‘It might not always be possible. Celia would know, I might ask her—’
‘Celia did know,’ said Pandora, ‘quite early on. She told me.’
‘She told you? When?’
‘Last time she came to see me. She said not too tactfully how enormous I was, that was her very word, and asked if this baby might be twins, and then told me all about having Venetia and Adele.’
‘You didn’t tell me.’
‘I prefer not to talk to you about Celia,’ said Pandora coolly, ‘as you very well know.’
Sebastian said nothing, just leaned down and gave her a kiss.
‘I love you so unbelievably much,’ he said. ‘It never ceases to astonish me, how much I love you, and how lucky I am to have found you. I don’t deserve such happiness.’
‘Probably not,’ said Pandora, ‘now it’s time for my eight o’clock cushions. My back hurts.’
‘Badly?’
‘It had better be,’ said Sebastian gloomily.
Absurd really, LM thought, to feel such passion. For a boy: a boy of just sixteen. To be reduced to this foolish indulgent admiration, just at the sight of him or the sound of his voice. Gordon teased her about it endlessly; thankfully good-naturedly as well. So many husbands would have been jealous: just to have to share her with another man’s child, never mind one she loved so uncritically. Thankfully, Jay hadn’t been spoilt by the adoration; aware of it, she had fought it right through his upbringing, had been stricter with him than most mothers, certainly most mothers in her situation. So many war widows centred their whole lives around their sons, clinging to them, jealous of their friendships even, unable to discipline them or criticise them in any way.
Gordon had helped her so much in it all; he genuinely loved Jay and they had, from the beginning, shared so many interests, wildlife, particularly birds, photography – and of course the Hornby trains. If anyone had told LM that when Jay was sixteen he and Gordon would still spend hours at a time in that room with the wretched railway layout, changing point systems, shunting trucks into sidings, racing through tunnels, putting up signals, she would not have believed it. It was all so – so childish; it irritated her almost beyond endurance. The weekends in the Highlands of Scotland, spotting the condors or the eagles, the endless plans – and the saving fund – to go to Africa big game hunting, the hours in the darkroom developing their photographs, all those things pleased her, seemed to her entirely suitable, fitting outlets for their intelligence and energies. But for two grown men – and Jay, already almost six foot tall, could be said to fit that description – to consider playing trains not only amusing but important – well, words, most unusually, failed LM. She refused to go into the room, a fact that they took full advantage of, finding it somewhere not only to play at being small boys, but, in Gordon’s case, to smoke, which LM forbade and, in Jay’s, to read the slightly racy pin-up magazines he had recently discovered and which she would also have forbidden had she known about them.
‘Hallo, Mother,’ he called to her now, giving her his heart-turning grin, waving as he jumped off the train. He was home on his half-term exeat from Winchester; he looked, she thought, more mature, was infinitely more handsome than any of the other boys. He ran over and gave her a brief kiss; he no longer had to reach up to do so, they were about the same height. LM’s rather daunting six-foot stature had been of immense value to her in her life as a professional woman, giving her authority in a room-full or meeting-full of men; as a mother, it always seemed a little inappropriate. Gordon, who was six-foot-seven himself, often remarked that if they had had children of their own they would have been giants.
Every time she saw Jay these days she thought he looked more like Jago, with the same Celtic looks, the dark curly hair, the deep-blue eyes, the square jaw, and he had Jago’s physique in many ways. Jago had not been so tall, shorter than LM indeed, but he had had broad shoulders and large hands and feet. And every time that Jay came home, she thought how proud Jago would have been of him, how disbelieving that a son of his could have been so academically brilliant, and yet so easily, so naturally mannered, so absolutely without affectation or conceit. She had done a good job: so had Gordon. Much of the credit must go to him. A woman could only do so much for a son; he needed a father. And from the time Jay had been six, Gordon had been there injecting his own gentle charm and humour and sense of fair-play into the complex mix. Jago would have liked Gordon; she often thought that as well. They could not have been more different, but they would have been able to be friends.
‘How are you?’ Jay said, linking his arm through hers. ‘You look very smart.’
‘Jay! Don’t be absurd. When did I ever look smart? Every other mother on this platform is smarter-looking than I am.’
‘No they’re not,’ he said solemnly, ‘fashionable maybe, but I like your clothes, you know I do. They’re so – sensible. Some of these women look quite – embarrassing. Look at that one—’
LM looked: at a women dressed rather as Celia would undoubtedly have been on such an occasion, in a slinky-slim dress, elaborately trimmed straw hat, long rope of pearls, and thought her clothes in all their dateless severity might indeed be sensible but that it could be quite soon now that Jay would be gazing at such women in fascination and admiration, possibly even be attracted to them.
‘Well, I’m glad you think so,’ she said, ‘now come along, I have my car outside—’
‘No Barty?’ he said, sounding wistful. He adored Barty.
‘No, but she’s coming to supper tonight. And so is Kit, I knew you’d like that. And Barty’s asked if she might bring her friend Abbie with her. Do you remember her? She’s a teacher.’
‘Oh yes, that’d be really nice,’ said Jay, ‘I like Abbie. I was afraid you meant for a moment she was bringing a man.’
‘Jay,’ said LM severely, ‘Barty is bound to have boyfriends sooner or later. You can’t keep her all to yourself for ever.’
‘I don’t see why not,’ he said with the quick self-mocking smile that was so exactly like his father’s, ‘she did save my life after all. Well, she and Sebastian. That seems to me grounds for keeping her to myself completely for ever.’
‘Sebastian—’
‘Yes, my darling?’
He looked up from his book, smiled at her. It was eight o’clock, he had just closed the French windows, brought Pandora her tray of sandwiches.
‘Sebastian – now please, please don’t start fussing.’
‘I won’t. I swear. Do you need another pillow?’
‘No. No, thank you. I thought I did, just for a moment, sorry. Go back to your book.’
‘All right. Tell me if you change your mind.’
‘I will.’ She shifted in the bed; it had gone already, the niggling pain. Obviously cramp of some kind. She kept getting cramp in her legs now; it would wake her from her increasingly fitful, precious sleep, an agony of spasm. And then her stomach being so huge, she couldn’t get at the particular leg to massage it. The pain had been a bit like that, only milder. Much milder. She picked up her book again; one that Celia had sent, one she was publishing in her new crime series. Pandora found herself increasingly addicted to such stories; sufficient to hold her attention, but not in the least demanding.
It always amused her, how commercial a publisher Celia was. Meeting her, talking to her, seeing her at a dinner table, you would imagine all her books would be seriously intellectual, on a par with her own beloved Biographica list, brilliantly and beautifully written biographies, most notably by the eternally prolific Lady Annabel Muirhead. But she had an ear that was brilliantly tuned to public taste; it had seen her through the difficult publishing years of the war, the unashamedly popular and populist Letters series indeed had gone a large way towards saving Lyttons from financial disaster. And now there was a current fascination with crime fiction; all part, Celia said, of the need for escapism, escape from the Depression that was also sending people to the cinema in their hundreds of thousands, to lose themselves in the new glamorous, glittering musicals coming out of Hollywood . . . Pandora was rather guiltily aware that she should have been reading Vile Bodies, the new Evelyn Waugh book that Sebastian had very sweetly bought her, but somehow it wasn’t as – well, as enjoyable as Death After Dinner. She would read it when the baby had been born, when – damn. Another spasm. She moved, flexed her legs, shifted. It gradually eased. It was very mild really. She returned her attention to Death After Dinner . . .
‘What do you mean, she saved your life?’ said Abbie, amused. ‘Yes, please, Mrs Robinson, more of everything. I’m starving and this pie is so good.’
She smiled at LM, at all of them; Gordon was clearly very taken with her. She was wearing a white shirt and black jacket and trousers; with her Christopher Robin haircut she looked slightly androgynous and very attractive. They all like her, t
hought Barty, and she likes them. It made her feel very happy.
‘Isn’t it delicious?’ said Jay. ‘She’s such a good cook, my mother.’
‘Did you make this yourself, LM?’ asked Barty. ‘I thought you hated cooking.’
‘I enjoy cooking greatly,’ said LM, ‘it’s just that I have never had time to develop it as a skill. Except when Jay and I were living down in Ashingham after the war. But on Saturday nights, and especially if Jay is home, I make this pie.’
‘And Cook sulks,’ said Gordon, ‘because my wife turns her out of the kitchen while she does the interesting part, and then leaves all the mess for her to clear up.’
‘Sounds like Aunt Celia at the office,’ said Barty, then blushed as they all looked at her and laughed. ‘Sorry. Shouldn’t have said that. Oh dear. You’d better not give me any more wine, Gordon.’
‘On the contrary,’ said Gordon Robinson, filling her glass to the brim, ‘I think I should. I enjoy hearing your tongue so amusingly loosened.’
‘Come on, Barty,’ said Abbie, ‘tell about the life saving.’
‘I will,’ said Jay, ‘you see, I was in hospital, after Gordon ran me over with his motor—’
‘Ran you over!’ said Abbie, looking at the gentle Gordon Robinson in amazement.
‘’Fraid so,’ he said.
Something Dangerous Page 18
