by Anne Weale
‘Why can’t he stay the night with us? Did you suggest it?’
‘Naturally, but he wasn’t to be persuaded. I think he feels that to stay more than a few hours would be to intrude on our privacy. We’ve been married less than a month, you know, and might reasonably be expected still to be very wrapped up in each other,’ he added, on a sardonic note.
‘Yes, but not to the exclusion of our families. Which reminds me, surely we ought to visit your father, Cal?’
‘Yes, we will, before long. But English families are not, on the whole, as close-knit as Spanish ones. My father sees little of me, and won’t be offended if we postpone our visit for a week or two yet.’
It seemed a cold-blooded attitude to Antonia, and she wondered if he would be equally offhand with his sons. Yet she seemed to remember him listing attentive fatherhood as one of his contributions to their marriage.
Anyway, although Cal’s attitude to his relations might be lukewarm, hers was not, and that night she could hardly sleep for excitement at the thought of this unexpected reunion with her favourite uncle.
His first words, after they had embraced each other, were, ‘Are you happy in England, Antonia? Is your husband making you happy?’
‘I like England very much, Tio. London’s a wonderful city. You have no idea how much there is to do and to see here. One could spend a year of one’s life going to all the different museums, and the houses where famous people lived. As for the shops, they’re irresistible. Have you ever seen Harrods’ food halls? Or the beautiful fabrics at Liberty’s, and the shops for the men along Jermyn Street?’
She had hoped a loquacious enthusiasm for London and all its delights would deflect her uncle from enquiring too closely into her marital happiness and, for the moment, it did.
‘You forget I spent several years in London as a young man. But that was more than twenty-five years ago, and it’s changed a great deal since then, as have all the big cities. They were not so noisy in those days.’
Throughout lunch Antonia managed to keep the conversation away from herself by enquiring about her aunts and cousins, and encouraging her uncle to reminisce about the time when he had lived in London.
After lunch they took a taxi to Regent Street where he had been commissioned to buy Liberty scarves and dress lengths for his sisters.
In the cab, he said, ‘And one or two presents for my niece I must buy. I have missed having someone to spoil, but no doubt Caleb enjoys that pleasure now.’ He paused, looking intently at her.
She avoided his eyes, but to turn away her face would have been too obvious.
‘You are not quite as blooming as I had hoped to find you,’ he went on. ‘But perhaps there is a good reason for that. Many women feel less than their best when first they become pregnant.’
She flushed. ‘I’m not pregnant, Tio. We—we don’t want to start a family for some time yet. After all, I’m still very young. There’s plenty of time. We want to have at least a year on our own before we think about babies.’
‘Are you learning to love him, my child?’
She flushed. ‘In time, Tio ... give it time. If I look a little wan today, it’s because I spent half the night looking forward to seeing you. I wish you were staying the night with us. Can’t you? Is it impossible?’
‘On this occasion—yes. Next time I hope to stay longer, particularly if by then you are established in a permanent home. The place you have rented sounds, from what you write, very comfortable, but no doubt you’ll be glad to have a place of your own. It was thoughtful of Caleb to provide you with Spanish domestic staff.’
‘Yes, no one could have done more to make me feel at home here. Of course being able to speak the language is a crucial factor. I should have felt rather lost had I no English,’ she replied.
‘You have changed already,’ he told her. ‘There was always a strong strain of your father in you, but now it’s even more pronounced.’
‘Is it? How strange. I don’t feel any different.’
He refused to allow her to go with him to the airport, and they said goodbye on the pavement outside the hotel before Don Joaquin climbed into the taxi which had been summoned for him.
Antonia left the parcels containing the presents he had insisted on buying for her at the hotel while she went to buy a book which had come out that day, and which she knew Cal wanted to read.
When she got home she decided to put it in his bedside table where he would find it when he went to bed that night. It was the first time she had entered the room in which her husband slept since the agent had shown them over the house, and she looked around her with some curiosity to see what extent Cal had imprinted his personality on the bedroom.
The first thing she noticed was its tidiness, but that might be because he had Marcos to valet him rather than because Cal himself had neat habits. Yet, thinking back to their curtailed honeymoon, she could not recall having had to put away anything belonging to him.
The only evidence that the room was in use was a black basalt bust of the Duke of Wellington and a stack of books at the bedside, most of them on abstruse subjects with titles such as Management Decision Support Systems and Monetarists and Keynesians: Their Contribution to Monetary Theory. But there was also a thriller and, to her astonishment, a thick volume of collected poems. She would not have suspected Cal of reading poetry.
The bust must have come from the service flat he had occupied before their marriage. He had mentioned that all his belongings would be put into store until they had a permanent home, so presumably the bust was a favourite object. She knew a certain amount about Wellington because of his role in Spain’s struggles against Napoleon, but she made a mental note to add him to her list of famous people to be studied.
The next day was one of the days which Cal spent with her and, as they were driving out of London, he said, ‘Thank you for the present which I found in my room last night.’
It was on the tip of her tongue to answer, ‘I shouldn’t describe it as a present. It was bought with your money’, but she changed her mind and said instead.
‘You’d said you wanted to read it. I hope it’s as good as the reviews made out.’
‘Yes, excellent. It kept me awake half the night.’ He took his eyes off the road for a moment to glance at her. ‘I hope you’re not a person who can’t go to sleep with a light in the room. I should be sorry to stop reading in bed—although there are better things to do there.’
Antonia quailed at the thought that he might be in one of his difficult moods when every second remark carried some disturbing allusion to the peculiarities of their marriage.
‘No, I like to read in bed myself, and if you were to go on reading after I’d finished, I don’t think your light would disturb me,’ she answered.
‘How do you know if you’ve never shared a room with anyone?’
‘But I have. When I’ve stayed with my cousins, I’ve shared a room with them many times.’
‘But never with a man?’
‘No.’
He said, at his most sardonic, ‘We’re not such an alien species, once you get used to us. “If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” ’
Ignoring his sarcastic tone, she said, ‘That reminds me, shouldn’t we ask your sister Laura to dinner one night? I thought she seemed very unhappy the day she came to see the house. Is there no possibility of a reconciliation with her husband?’
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ Cal said indifferently. ‘Ask her to a meal if you wish, but leave it at that. Let’s solve our own marital problems before we start concerning ourselves with anyone else’s troubles, shall we?’
Crushed by his blighting tone, Antonia fell silent until they reached their destination, about which Cal had said only that it was the largest inhabited castle in the world. When they arrived, she recognised it as Windsor Castle.
‘Next month the Queen will be stayin
g here for the race meeting at Ascot, a few miles away,’ said Cal, while they were looking round the State Apartments filled with historic treasures. ‘But these apartments are closed while the Royal Family is in residence.’
They saw also Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House, which appealed to her more than to him, and St George’s Chapel with its magnificent fan vaulting and the arms of the Knights of the Garter-above the choir stalls.
By then it was time to return to the car for the picnic basket. They lunched in a quiet spot by the Thames before crossing the river into the narrow streets of Eton where Cal pointed out some boys wearing the stiff collar of the famous College.
‘Shall we send our sons here?’ he asked her, with a quizzical gleam.
‘Could we? I thought only the sons of the aristocracy went to Eton?’
‘Once—yes. Not any longer. Money counts for more than blue blood nowadays.’
She was puzzled by his tone which, instead of holding a note of satisfaction, seemed to have a slight edge of contempt. Catching her puzzled glance, he said, ‘I’m on the board of governors of my old school, largely because they expect a generous contribution from me whenever they want to build a new lab or improve the sports facilities,’ he added cynically.
‘What was your school like?’ she asked.
‘In my day it was a fine school with a scholarly Head, and masters who were as much concerned with a boy’s character as with his performance in exams. I learnt more of lasting value from having tea with my housemaster and his wife than I ever did at my desk. But unfortunately the tone of the school has changed a great deal since then. Our old Head is dead, and the new man sets a poor example. You can’t smoke like a chimney yourself, and cane the boys for doing the same thing.’
‘Were you caned as a schoolboy?’ ‘
‘Many times,’ he said cheerfully. ‘It didn’t do me any harm, and I didn’t resent it because it was always deserved. But I’m damned if I’d bend over a chair to be thrashed for smoking by a man with an ash-tray full of dog-ends on his desk.’
‘Did you smoke in those days?’
‘Yes, and for some years afterwards, until it became very clear that smoking was a major health hazard. I enjoy life too much to want to curtail it. Did you ever try a cigarette?’
‘One, and I didn’t enjoy it.’
‘People seldom do enjoy the first one, but it doesn’t take long for the addiction to get a grip. I’m glad you don’t smoke. Apart from the dangers involved, it’s an impediment to other pleasures.’
‘You mean rock climbing and skin-diving and so on.’
‘Those, too, but I was thinking about making love. I don’t mind the taste of lipstick, but tobacco is not my favourite flavour.’
Embarrassed, she turned aside to look in the window of an antique shop, and gave a slight exclamation of pleasure at the sight of a giltwood bergere chair with cushions of pale green watered silk.
‘Do you like it?’ Cal asked over her shoulder.
‘Yes, it’s charming, but—’
Before she could finish, he had moved away to the shop’s door and was going inside.
Ten minutes later, when he had examined the chair thoroughly and the antique dealer was making out a bill stating that it was an unrestored Louis XVI bergere, Cal wrote a cheque for an amount which made Antonia, who had not seen the price ticket, gasp.
Having signed it, he straightened and smiled at her. ‘Our first piece of furniture ... for our bedroom, don’t you think?’
The slightest emphasis on the second ‘our’ was not lost on her.
That night, in bed, her thoughts went back to Laura’s visit, and to what her sister-in-law had told her about Cal and Diana Webster.
He had six months with her, Laura had said. Had she meant that Diana had lived with him? Or he with her? Or had they continued their separate lives, but made love whenever the opportunity presented itself?
His past has nothing to do with me. I have no right to be jealous, Antonia told herself. And indeed she was not jealous in the usual meaning of the term. She felt no hatred for Diana; only unease at discovering that she herself was Cal’s second choice of a wife, and that the woman who had been his first choice was not married to someone else, and had not been indifferent to him, but had turned him down in order to carry on her career.
Did he love her, and does he still? Antonia wondered, lying on her back in the darkness. Does she still love him? If she loves him, how could she refuse him?
But how would I know how a dedicated career woman feels?
One morning when Rocío brought up Antonia’s breakfast tray there was a small parcel on it, and she was accompanied by Marcos carrying a vase filled with two dozen long-stemmed white roses.
‘But it’s not my Saint’s Day or my birthday. Why the flowers?’ exclaimed Antonia.
‘Because Senor Barnard is more romantic than you are, Dona Antonia. Today is the anniversary of your wedding. You have been married one month,’ explained Rocío, beaming. ‘And tonight you will have a celebration. The Senor has left instructions that today you must buy a new dress and meet him for tapas before he takes you to the theatre. Then you will come back here for a special anniversary supper. He has arranged every detail.’
Having placed the vase on the night-table Marcos withdrew, but Rocío lingered, obviously longing to see what was in the parcel.
When Antonia opened the round leather case inside the wrapping paper, both women drew in their breath at the sight of the diamond necklace which lay in a groove in the blue velvet lining. The design could not have been more simple: a narrow collar of rectangular stones made to encircle the base of a long slender neck. In the centre of this ring of white fire, made to be clipped on to the necklace or worn separately as a pin, was a flowing letter A in diamonds and emeralds.
Rocío darted to the dressing-table for Antonia’s hand mirror. ‘Try it on, senora. What a beautiful present! Oh, how he loves you!’
Antonia fastened the necklace round her throat and looked at it in the mirror which Rocío handed her. It fitted her perfectly, and the classic simplicity of it was far more to her taste than a more elaborate necklace which could be worn only with full evening dress. Without the initial attached to it, this necklace would be appropriate even with a simple silk shirt and short evening skirt.
Carefully she replaced it in its velvet bed and, when Rod had gone, she ate her breakfast and pondered Cal’s motive for giving it to her.
Rocío had said, ‘Como que Senor Barnard es mas romantico que Usted ... Oh, cuanto le ama!’
But Antonia knew that Cal was far too much of a realist to indulge in extravagant gestures merely to be romantic. There must be a more prosaic reason, and the only two she could think of were that the necklace was a conscience present because he was being unfaithful to her, or intended to weigh on her conscience; to make her feel guilty for keeping him out of her bed.
She looked at the vase of white roses. Were they intended to remind her of her virginity?
Later she found on the hall table an envelope with her name on it. Inside was a blank cheque drawn on Cal’s personal bank account so that the dress he wanted her to buy would not be a charge on the generous dress allowance he had arranged for her.
However, apart from her scruples about using his money while she gave him nothing in return, she had in her trousseau a dress which he had not seen, and which might have been designed to set off the diamond necklace.
‘Ay, que guapa! Qui preciosa!’ exclaimed Rocío, when she saw her employer dressed to go out that evening.
Antonia knew that she did look beautiful. But what girl would not in her circumstances? she thought. She had spent most of the afternoon having her hair done by John at Michaeljohn, and her nails manicured. Her dress was a simple tunic of black silk chiffon lined with black silk crepe-de-chine. Her tights were so sheer as to be invisible and in spite of her recent manicure, she had put on gloves to put them on. Her shoes were strips of black snakeskin from the b
est shoe shop in Valencia, with a small black snakeskin envelope to match them. Round her throat was the diamond necklace, in her ears were the diamond bees, on her left hand were diamonds and emeralds, and over her arm was the mink coat given her by her uncle, in case it grew cooler later.
At the moment it was a lovely summer evening and, as the taxi summoned by Marcos sped her to her rendezvous with Cal, she could not help feeling a degree of exhilaration because she was young, looking her best, and en route to a pleasant evening with a personable man. That the evening might not end as agreeably as it was beginning, she put firmly out of her mind.
Cal was waiting for her at a table for two in a corner of a leafy courtyard at the back of the fashionable bar where the taxi set her down. He appeared to have arrived early. There was an empty glass with a slice of lemon and the last of an ice cube in it on the table in front of him. When she joined him, a waiter whisked this away and brought champagne flutes and a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice.
‘Do you know everyone in the bar turned to look at you as you walked through?’ he said.
‘I expect they were dazzled by this.’ She put her hand up to touch the necklace. ‘It’s beautiful, Cal—but far too extravagant for the occasion.’
He said in a lowered voice, ‘When a man has a beautiful wife, he doesn’t need an occasion as an excuse to buy jewels for her. Her looks are reason enough. Diamonds are at their best on a young skin, but too often they’re seen on an old one. Those people were admiring you, not your jewellery.’
When he spoke to her in that tone, with his blue eyes narrowed and intent, she could feel his desire for her like a tangible heat.
‘Well, anyway, thank you ... and for the roses,’ she answered, rather breathlessly. ‘Rocío thinks you are muy romantic.’
He took up his glass of champagne, but before he drank his gaze travelled slowly over her, taking in the details. ‘I like the new hairstyle, and the dress. Here’s to another occasion ... three hundred months of marriage. Do you know how long we shall have been together by then?’
