The Mistress of Alderley

by Robert Barnard

  It was as they were leaving the theater with a sense of two hours pleasantly spent that Caroline saw Lauren Spender and Lauren saw her. Lauren was the current partner of Rick Radshaw, her first husband.

  “Darling! How come I didn’t spot you at interval?”

  “I didn’t spot you either, Lauren. Perhaps we weren’t looking.”

  “Darling, what are you doing at the moment?”

  “Being a kept woman. You know how it is, Lauren.”

  “Oh, catty! Actually, I’m opening in Loot next week. So I won’t be able to come to Forza. But Rick will be there, to support his talented offspring. We’re in a cottage in the Dales. Heaven! Bye, darling.”

  “Don’t ‘darling’ me, you bitch,” muttered Caroline as she got into the car.

  “Do I gather that is the dreadful Rick’s wife, partner, or appendage?” asked Marius as they drove off.

  “Partner.”

  “Why the bitchiness?”

  “I’ve always loathed her. Everything is false about her except her spleen.”

  “Sounds like she and Rick are well matched.”

  “Ideally. But what does that say about me, who married him and let him father my first child?”

  “That you were hardly more than a child yourself at the time.”

  “I’ve known toddlers who had more sense and better judgment. And now I’ll have to be nice, specially nice, to him at the first night—as if he has had anything to do with Olivia’s success.”

  “Well, he is the parent with the singing voice, you said this morning.”

  “Oh, I give him that. But that’s exactly like saying a parent has given its child brown eyes or fair hair or flat feet. Not something you can accept credit or blame for.”

  “Certainly not something you’re going to give him any credit for,” commented Marius. Caroline laughed.

  “You bring out the best in me. I can hardly forgive you for that. Let’s forget about Rick.”

  And for the rest of the trip back to Alderley they laughed, were catty about the night’s supporting actors, and forgot all about Sheila, and Rick, and Pete. Marius, of course, probably never thought about Pete.

  Chapter 4

  Newcomers

  “I’ve found out how that Pete Whatisname found out about you and where we live,” announced Alexander at breakfast on Tuesday.

  “Oh? How?”

  “The rector’s daughter is at Leeds Metropolitan University.”

  “Oh really? I thought she was at the older one.”

  “They leave it vague,” said Alexander, with his habitual pleasure in finding out things. “They say ‘Gina will be going back to Leeds next week’—that sort of thing. I don’t think she makes any secret of it herself, but she’s hardly been around all summer.”

  “I can’t see why anyone should make a secret of it,” said Caroline.

  “Don’t you? It doesn’t have the prestige of Leeds University. Just a harmless little bit of snobbery on the rector’s part. Added to which, these new universities that used to be polytechnics are where people go who want to do wacky things like sports studies or the social history of sanitary engineering.”

  “I bow to your superior knowledge,” said Caroline. “I suppose it’s possible. But have you any evidence that they know each other?”

  “No. But it’s obvious.”

  “Hmmm. Well, a course in logic might be a good idea for you, whatever you do as your main subject.”

  “It may not stick out a mile, Mum,” said Stella, “but you’ve got to admit it’s fairly likely.”

  After breakfast, washing up, and a rather perfunctory tidying of things, Caroline walked to the village shop, half a mile away.

  She was not surprised to see Jack walking in the opposite direction from the Dower House. They quite often did meet up in the shop, because Jack had come to know her habits—though he was sensible enough not to contrive it too often so that it was obvious that their meetings were no longer accidental. They greeted each other, walked the remaining short distance, then bought far more than they wanted as a way of placating Mr. Patel (who had no intention of closing down, but put out the rumors periodically for commercial reasons). Then they repaired together to the White Hart for coffee and biscuits.

  “Has the rector’s wife been in touch?” Jack asked.

  “Just a phone call. Said she wanted to talk to me about these new events and attractions she’s planning. I felt like saying, ‘There’s months to go!’”

  “Oh, things have to be prepared, to mature slowly. But it’s good they’re involving you.”

  “Say it how you mean it, Jack: it’s good that I’m being accepted, that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Jack let fly, and as usual took no notice of sound or smell.

  “Well, something like that.”

  “It’s rather touching your caring so much—more than I do.”

  “I see shifting the fete as a sort of symbol. And you’ll be much better as the host than I or Meta ever were.”

  Caroline smiled a worldly-wise smile.

  “I suppose it comes from playing lady-of-the-manor roles in highly forgettable drawing-room comedies. Not that Alderley is a manor, quite. Still, it’s a lovely old house and the largest one I’ve ever lived in!”

  “You should have seen the real manor,” said Jack with a sigh. “People don’t realize how much I miss it. You could get away from people there. Still, no point in regrets. If you can’t keep it up, and no one has a use for it, then it has to go. Yes, Alderley’s a nice house.”

  “I always feel it should have alder trees in the garden. Maybe it once did.”

  Jack shot her a glance.

  “Oh no. It was always called Hallam’s Croft until the nineteen hundreds, after the man who had built it forty or more years before. His children didn’t want it, and it was bought by another man who’d made his fortune in cotton, and he named it after his three children.”

  “His children?”

  “Yes. Alice, Derek, and Leyton, the last named after a maternal uncle the family had expectations from. He put the names together. Nothing to do with trees.”

  “Oh.”

  Caroline felt distinctly deflated, as if her beloved house had been devalued. It was like people calling their semis Philmar or Valjon. She shook herself for being silly, but she felt the house deserved better.

  “What happened to the three children?” she asked.

  “Derek—it was rather an uncommon name then—was killed in the Battle of the Somme. Leyton was killed three weeks before Armistice Day, and he’d never got the legacy from his maternal uncle that everyone hoped for. If he had, Alice would have been quite well off. As it was, she and her husband struggled with the house for years and years, but finally had to sell it in the fifties. It had various owners—the last one was Alfred Beck, who was your predecessor. It was too big for him after his wife died. He rattled around in it. He’s much happier in his bungalow in Hornsea. He made his money in Whitby, out of fishing, and he always missed the sea.”

  Jack seemed about to say something more, then decided against it.

  “Marius was lucky to find Alderley, anyway,” said Caroline to fill in the silence. “Or rather, I was lucky he found it.”

  “On the contrary, we are lucky you came to live among us,” said Jack, with his usual gallantry.

  “I wonder if the situation would be acceptable in any village around the country,” mused Caroline, “or is Marsham exceptionally tolerant? It would be quite unacceptable in parts of Scotland, I would guess. And Wales too, don’t you think? But in most parts attitudes have changed enormously. Think—not so very long ago I would have been discreetly housed in a flat in Maida Vale.”

  “I don’t really know London,” said Jack. “Is Maida Vale so dreadful?”

  “Not at all. But if I’m to be the acknowledged mistress of someone, I do very much prefer being it at Alderley, rather than shut away in a thirties flat in a thirties suburb of London.”<
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  Jack looked at her.

  “Marriage is better, you know. Particularly for a woman.”

  “Marriage is worse for this woman! I should know, if anyone knows. I’ve learned by experience.”

  They smiled and went on to talk about village matters.

  Marius usually phoned Caroline midweek. When she heard the ring early on Wednesday evening she knew it was him, and settled comfortably in an armchair before picking it up.

  “What have you been doing?” he asked, after the preliminaries.

  “Coffee with Jack, gardening, listening to Mrs. Hogbin on the evils of drugs, though she doesn’t know her cannabis from her crack, reading silly magazines, settling a quarrel between Stella and Alexander. All very much as usual.”

  “Are you getting bored?”

  “Bored? You must be joking. I feel I’m acting a part in an idyll. I get intense pleasure just thinking what to give you for dinner on Friday.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t? You mean you won’t be down for the weekend?”

  “I love the sound of the disappointment in your voice. You sound absolutely crushed. I’ll be down—in fact, probably earlier than usual. We’ll go out to eat.”

  “But we usually do something like that on Saturday.”

  “Not this weekend. I’ve something to tell you.”

  “Well, tell me now.”

  “It’s not the sort of thing that should be told on the phone.”

  “Anything can be told on the phone, Marius. Come on! You’ve not got the idea you’re being bugged, have you?”

  “No, of course I haven’t.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “No. Book a table for Friday, at some place where we can be pretty sure of getting a bit of privacy—Sheffield, Leeds, Doncaster, York—anywhere.”

  “That rules out several of our favorite places. La Grillade has several little poky areas, though. But tell me now. Is it nice news?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Then why on earth go out to a nice meal to break it to me?”

  “It’s really, when I think about it, not nice or nasty. But it’s unexpected and—well—interesting. So book that table.”

  And he rang off. Caroline, feeling dissatisfied and gripped by curiosity, got up, poured herself a drink, and began pacing the living room.

  Her first thought was to wonder whether Pete Bagshaw had made contact with his father. That might qualify as a happening that was neither nice nor nasty. There was an ambiguity about the boy that nagged in Caroline’s mind. She had been adept enough at suggesting a character’s ambiguity on stage (Stella Kowalski and Rebecca West sprang to mind), but she now found she didn’t feel easy in real life with a person whose characteristics seemed shifting, two-sided, ungraspable. The boy had seemed to like her yet resent her. Or had that latter emotion been supplied by herself, by her guilt? Here she was at Alderley, and there he was, growing up in Armley with a wage-slave mother, obsessed with rising out of his environment, getting a well-paid job.

  But the question of Pete Bagshaw raised pressingly the question: If he was Marius’s, why had his father done so little for him over the first twenty years of his life? It would surely be natural for Pete to feel some resentment.

  And yet, assuming he was Marius’s child, it could be seen from the father’s point of view too. Twenty-odd years ago, as far as she could guess, the chain of supermarkets owned by Marius in the south and west of the country were no more than a link of two or three, though his ambition for something much greater was certainly there. If Marius had had a child by someone of his own background and class, he would have been expected to pay maintenance appropriate to his then financial position. Why should his meteoric rise in fortunes lead to a massive increase in the sum to be paid “Mrs.” Bagshaw for maintenance? Would that even be kind to the mother and boy, granted that a sudden access of funds, which they would be unused to handling, could have disastrous consequences? A sudden thought struck Caroline: Pete looked only a year or two older than Guy. Perhaps conceived at about the time of Marius’s marriage to Sheila. It was a disconcerting thought.

  A car drew up in the gathering darkness outside. Going to the window, Caroline thought she recognized the shape of the man seen from her bedroom window the Saturday before. She put down her sherry glass. Of course mothers should wait until their children decided to introduce their boy-or girlfriends, but…if she waited for Olivia to do that, she would never meet the long and varied list of men she was interested in or involved with.

  She went into the hall and opened the front door. Getting out of the car’s driver’s seat was a large young man with an Irish chin and a definite presence. There was no particular distinction to his face, but he seemed pleasant, thoughtful, and very taken with Olivia. Caroline liked men to be wholehearted, committed, but with Olivia that was likely to prove disheartening. Poor chap, she thought, for the umpteenth time about one of her daughter’s boyfriends.

  “Mrs. Fawley?” the young man said, swerving from Olivia’s door and coming over, hand outstretched. Caroline made a face.

  “Call me Caroline.”

  “I’m Colm Fitzgerald.”

  “I thought you might be. Everyone’s very excited about Forza, I hear. Are you coming to rehearse here?”

  “No, I’m just bringing Olivia home. She wanted a bit of peace and quiet and luxury. We’ve finished rehearsing for the day, and we’re not needed again till late tomorrow.”

  “Thanks for the lift, love,” said Olivia coolly, bending her head back and accepting, rather than reciprocating, a kiss. Caroline had been intending to ask the young man in, but Olivia said, “See you tomorrow,” and started toward the front door.

  Colm Fitzgerald, obediently but reluctantly, got back into his car. As she turned to wave, Olivia said, “You didn’t have to do that ‘Call me Caroline’ bit. I told you: he’s not a boyfriend.”

  “I see. Just a chauffeur,” said Caroline, with a touch of tartness. As she watched the young man drive off, she noted the drooping set of his shoulders, and wondered whether he had overheard Olivia’s words.

  “So to what do we owe this honor?” she asked.

  “It’s like Colm said: I just got fed to the back teeth with the rackety and bitchy world of opera. The rehearsal period is worst, of course. I just felt I had to get away from it all, them all, and be myself for a few hours in a peaceful atmosphere, with nobody shouting or emoting or calling attention to themselves.”

  “I see.”

  Being some kind of refuge was one degree better than being the laundress for a week’s wash, which she had been when Olivia was at music college, but Caroline was not altogether happy with the new role. It felt like conniving at the brutality with which her daughter treated her boyfriends.

  “Well, I thought he seemed a nice young man,” she said, “and I hope next time you will invite him in.”

  “He just wants to be the baggage I carry round with me if I become a star,” said Olivia contemptuously. “He should get real.”

  Olivia spent the next day in vocal exercises, a long rest, and some swanning round the garden. Colm arrived to fetch her back promptly at three, and Olivia kissed her mother at the front door.

  “Thanks, Mum.”

  “You use that young man, Olivia.”

  “Use, that ye be not used,” said her daughter. “He would if he could.”

  But he didn’t look at all like the type who would. All in all Caroline did not regard it as a satisfactory visit, and Alexander and Stella both made comments that included the words “prima donna.”

  Marius coming on Friday, early in the afternoon as he had promised, made everything right. He embraced her, and sat happily drinking coffee and eating some nibbly cakes she had made specially for him, deprived of the chance to cook him a special welcoming dinner. Then they went upstairs to bed and stayed there till it was time to drive to Leeds, braving some sardonic remarks from the children as they left. Caroline was so p
reoccupied with what Marius was about to reveal that she even forgot to ask her usual question, what Alex and Stella would do about an evening meal. Marius drove with his usual brisk flair and efficiency, and they were in Wellington Street by seven o’clock, and had had an aperitif, chosen their meal, and been seated in their little alcove by half past.

  “I told them when I booked that we would like to be as alone as possible,” Caroline said.

  “They probably took you for a teenager,” said Marius.

  “They know me, know my voice,” said Caroline. “I think they’ll try and keep the other tables vacant if they can. Now—”

  “Wait. Here comes my swordfish and your lamb.”

  She looked at him—at the lock of brown hair that occasionally fell over the warm brown eyes, at the high forehead and full cheeks, the red, almost feminine lips. The tiny surge of irritation she had felt vanished. She looked down at her plate and took up her knife and fork. And it was after five minutes of satisfying eating that Caroline again said: “Now.”

  Marius shifted in his chair.

  “This is going to come as a bit of a surprise to you. I know it did to me.”

  Caroline said nothing, just kept looking at him.

  “Sheila is pregnant.”

  Chapter 5

  Reactions

  There were all sorts of questions Caroline wanted to ask but felt it would be unwise to. In the end the question she did ask came out sounding slightly absurd.

  “How old is Sheila?”

  “Forty-three. Five years younger than me.”

  And seven years younger than me, Caroline thought. Marius had left his wife for an older woman. Somehow she felt that must have hurt more than if he had left her for a bimbo. Even if he hadn’t, strictly speaking, left her: he had merely supplemented her.