The Decision

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘They’re not Summercourt,’ said Eliza.

  ‘No, and not as costly either. I could buy one of them and a cottage for your mother, and still be quids in. Ivor Lewis says I should appeal against that part of the settlement, and I’d be sure to win. Emmie would be fine, what she cares about is Mouse and her weekends with us. She’s got a lot of common sense, Emmie has, and she likes her comfort, she won’t go mooning about because she’s lost Great-great-grandpa’s legacy.’

  He did appeal and won the right to sell; it would go under the hammer in the autumn.

  Eliza told herself that set against losing Emmie, it really wasn’t very important. It still hurt though; she could hardly bear even to contemplate its loss from her life.

  But, for now, for today, it was theirs; the lovely heart of the family, and at its very best, beautifully on show, preening itself, asking to be admired. Which it would be, of course … She slithered off the fence and walked back towards it, determined on only positive thoughts.

  ‘How do you feel?’ Mark looked at Scarlett as she lay in the bath, her vast stomach protruding out of the Miss Dior bubbles.

  ‘Wonderful. Like a whale.’

  ‘A wonderful whale. But otherwise?’

  ‘Oh – fine. Yes. No twinges, if that’s what you mean. And before you ask, yes, I do want to go to the gymkhana.’

  ‘Dear love, it’s a long way. It could shake things up. Get you going.’

  ‘Well – good. I need to be got going.’

  ‘I know, but so far from London, away from the hospital? Is that a good idea?’

  ‘Mark, first babies take at least, at the very least, twelve hours to be born. More like twenty-four. Or even thirty-six. Stop fussing. If it starts, we can just head back. It’ll be good, it’ll use up some of the time.’

  ‘I know, but dear love, you must remember how important it is you’re in hospital. Near all the medical aid.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Double doses of gas and air and pethidine and chloroform if I can get it.. But I still think it would be better to go than sit here waiting for contractions to start. Anyway, the baby’s bound to be late, first ones always are.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Well, if you’re sure. I’d love to go. But I won’t mind if you change your mind.’

  Mark was uneasy about Scarlett’s insistence on the opposite of natural childbirth. It would have been more than his life was worth to tell her so; and a great deal more to tell her that his mother had frequently told him how she had given birth to him without any pain relief whatsoever apart from self-hypnosis and infusions of raspberry-leaf tea.

  He understood Scarlett’s fear of childbirth and sympathised; looking at her vast stomach and thinking of the baby’s exit from it, he felt quite fearful himself. He was very grateful moreover that she was as keen for him not to be present at the birth as she was on medical intervention; the thought of seeing this person he loved so much in terrible pain distressed him horribly. Mark was a gentle soul; he planned to spend the time Scarlett was in labour reading, listening to music and getting drunk by the telephone. He hoped for a son; but he would be almost as happy with a daughter, and besides, he very much intended for there to be others. He had a rather unrealistic view of fatherhood; he had been an only child and hated it, and he longed for a large family. The fact that it would bring noise and mess into his life had somehow escaped him; he imagined them all sitting sweetly together in the shade of the garden in Trisos in the summer, or by the big fireplace in the Bloomsbury house in the winter, their heads bent over books, with Mozart or Bach playing in the background.

  He was deeply relieved that the rift between Scarlett and Matt was healing; it had upset him horribly. It had taken a while, but Matt loved Scarlett far too much to bear any lasting ill-will towards her, even in a situation as charged as this one: although what would have happened if he had lost Emmie did not, in Mark’s view, bear thinking about.

  How long ago now it seemed, their own marriage, his and Scarlett’s, standing in the little church on Trisos, making their vows before a rather bewildered Greek priest, with only Larissa and Demetrios and the two Aris and of course Persephone to witness it, listening to Persephone’s lovely voice reading her epithalamium, and afterwards coming out into the glorious gold and blue day, and looking at Scarlett in all her beauty, in a white flowing dress, with white flowers and ribbons woven into her hair, and thinking what an astonishing and absolutely surprising thing love was.

  ‘Mummy, Gail’s here.’

  ‘Oh – good.’

  Eliza went to greet Gail, who with Cal was dragging large baskets out of her old truck, filled with potatoes, woolly hats, scarves and gloves, and a lot of extremely muddy wellington boots.

  ‘What are the potatoes for?’ asked Emmie

  ‘They’re instead of apples,’ said the exquisite Cal, who was helping Gail to unload. ‘Too early for windfalls and your mum said we weren’t to buy them, too expensive, so we hit on the idea of potatoes. Just as good.’

  ‘What, to eat?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Gail, ‘you haven’t been listening to me, Emmie, it’s for the obstacle race, last heat when you have to get an apple out of a bucket with your teeth and then gallop round the ring. Your mum said she didn’t want you in that one, and I think she’s right, the big girls always do it and it gets a bit rough.’

  ‘I want to do it,’ said Emmie.

  ‘Emmie,’ said Eliza, ‘if I see you doing that, it’ll be last race not just for today, but the rest of the summer. You’ve got at least two more gymkhanas to go to, and I won’t take you if you’re naughty today. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes, it’s clear,’ said Emmie resignedly. Eliza looked at her sharply; she knew that tone. But Emmie’s face was innocently blank, her eyes wide, as she looked back at her mother. God, thought Eliza, what is she going to be like in five years’ time … Now, maybe she should grab this opportunity to have her bath and change; she didn’t want to actually smell when …

  ‘Mummy, it’s the saints’ ambulance.’

  ‘The – oh, St John’s. Good. I was hoping they’d be here in lots of time. I’ll go and tell them where to set up their tent. Gail, next to the entrance to the ring, do you think?’

  ‘Louise, this is Matt.’

  ‘Oh – hello.’

  ‘Look, I’m – I’m sorry about last night. Really. And – do you want to come today?’

  ‘Well – I’m not sure. Not if you’re going to be in a foul mood all the time. And yes, before you say so, of course it’s a difficult day for you, but if you could just keep at least looking cheerful, for Emmie’s sake, it’ll help a lot.’

  ‘I just don’t – don’t fancy seeing him there. Poncing around. In my house, he’s so fucking arrogant, I can’t stand him—’

  ‘I know, Matt, and I had gathered that, I think I’d have worked it out even if you’d never actually told me. He seems fine to me. Very nice.’

  ‘I know you do. Bloody smoothie. Smarmy as they come. You don’t usually like them like that, Louise, I don’t know what you see in him. He’s worse than Northcott and that’s saying something.’

  ‘If by worse you mean more charming and agreeable, I’m not sure I agree. I’ve always liked Jeremy. Quite a close-run thing actually, I’d say.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake.’

  ‘What about Mariella, is she coming?’

  ‘I suppose so. They’re engaged. She doesn’t like me either, but she’ll be there, in my house, dressed up in some ridiculous outfit, showing off—’

  ‘Oh, Matt. So – are you getting that place near Dorking?’

  ‘I think so. It’s relatively new, about ten years old, very good condition, plenty of room, but not a great barn like Summercourt. Save me a fortune.’

  ‘Has Emmie seen it?’

  ‘Not yet. I’m going to take her next weekend.’

  ‘And – how does she feel about losing Summercourt?’

  ‘I – don’t know.’

  �
��What, you haven’t told her?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Matt, that’s awful.’

  ‘I don’t see why. Long as she’s got Mouse, she won’t care.’

  ‘I think you might be wrong there,’ said Louise. ‘See you in an hour.’

  She rang off. A year after the custody case, things hadn’t changed a great deal between her and Matt. They met regularly for dinner, drinks, occasionally for lunch at the weekends he didn’t have Emmie. She still, she supposed – no, she knew – loved him. He didn’t seem to love her, or to have any tender feelings for her whatsoever. He’d certainly never indicated that he did; the nearest had been when he told her he enjoyed her company more than that of anyone else he knew. As he seemed to dislike most people it wasn’t much of a compliment.

  He had adjusted to the custody settlement pretty well; it had, in fact, as Eliza often said, made less difference to his life than it had to hers. His pride had been hurt by Eliza winning care and control, and by Clifford Rogers’s very public rebuke, but from a practical point of view, little had changed; he was so often out, so often worked late, that the adjustment required during the week at least was minimal, and he and Eliza had grown used to alternate weekends with Emmie at Summercourt in the run-up to the case anyway. He remained hurt and angry with Eliza; but he would, Louise thought, always love her to an extent in his own difficult way. He had had the occasional fling with women since, more one-night stands than affairs, but there was certainly nothing to be jealous about. She wasn’t sure if that made his attitude to her – an impatient, platonic affection was the closest she could come to describing it – feel worse or better.

  In every other way, her life was pretty well perfect. Her hotels now numbered ten in construction or already constructed, and she owned three of them; the one just above Covent Garden was still by far her favourite. She described herself as fairly rich; her flat in Paulton Square was extremely luxurious, her twin wardrobes, filled with designer clothes, her latest car – a Porsche – parked outside, and she was in the process of buying a property in the new development of Port Grimaud in the South of France, on the northern tip of the Golfe de St Tropez. She had visited the place the previous autumn and fallen in love with it, with its Provençale-style houses, built in a series of exotic lagoons, each with a landing stage at the bottom of what passed for a garden.

  So she had everything she wanted except Matt; and she spent a lot of time persuading herself she didn’t really want him, and certainly not as a permanent fixture in her life; love him she might, but the thought of living with him was another thing altogether.

  She was told constantly by all her friends (none of whom knew of her feelings for Matt) that she had been unlucky, that Mr Right would eventually come along; she was sure he wouldn’t. The only thing that really annoyed her was people asking her if she wasn’t unhappy, or lonely or frustrated.

  ‘You wouldn’t be saying that to a man,’ she would say with varying degrees of irritation, ‘why me? I like being single; I have a great life.’

  To which they would all nod sagely and say when Mr Right did come along, she would realise what she had been missing; in her darker moments, when she was particularly cross with Matt, she would reflect that even if the unimaginable did happen and he declared some great and undying passion for her, she would have to sacrifice a great deal for it.

  Riffling through her wardrobe on that glorious July morning, looking for exactly the right thing to wear to a gymkhana – jeans, a white shirt, cowboy boots and one of Maddy Brown’s thick cotton cardigans in scarlet slung over her shoulders seemed pretty exact – she reflected that given last night’s altercation with Matt, when he had accused her of being incapable of grasping even half the implications of the developing oil crisis on the property business – she was a great deal better off on her own.

  It was just that – he was Matt. God damn him.

  ‘Mummy! Coral’s here and her mummy—’

  Eliza was halfway up the stairs to have her bath; she sighed and turned round again. She had to greet her best friend in the whole world, as Emmie had christened Heather, probably correctly.

  ‘Heather, hello, it’s so lovely to see you. Hello, Coral, hello, Bobby. Goodness, he’s grown up. How was the journey?’

  ‘Fine. Alan’s just parking down in the village.’

  ‘Look, come on in, let me get you a coffee or something. And Emmie, you take Coral off and look after her, mind.’

  ‘Can I give her a riding lesson?’

  ‘No, Emmie, you cannot, not today, and if I see either of you sitting on that pony even if he is tied up to the fence, the whole thing is cancelled. Come in, Heather. Oh, and hello, Alan, lovely to see you—’

  Alan appeared, red in the face, a rather thick tweed jacket buttoned round him, a cap clamped on his clearly perspiring head, his check shirt fastened to the neck and a tie with horses on it clipped to his shirt.

  ‘Nice place you’ve got here, Eliza. Very nice. Lovely day, too, you’re lucky, forecast was terrible, how those people keep their jobs I’ll never know.’

  ‘I agree. Look, come inside and have a coffee – or would you rather have a beer, Alan, there’s masses?’

  ‘Oh – not beer, not before lunch, thanks. Might have a lager to wash down the picnic, which reminds me, Heather, I noticed you had forgotten the salt, so I don’t know if Eliza could lend us some—’

  One day, Eliza thought, she must get both herself and Heather drunk enough to ask her why she had married Alan …

  ‘Well,’ she said, having served them their coffee, ‘if you’ll excuse me, I must really go and have a bath and change, I’ve been on the go since six and—’

  ‘Mummy, Mummy, it’s Uncle Charles and a lady, Uncle Charles, hello, come and see everything, come and see—’

  ‘Take them round to Granny, darling, I’ll be out in a minute—’

  She risked a quick peek at Charles’s lady from the hall window; she was quite pretty, in a fresh-faced, very young way, holding his hand and looking up at him adoringly. Perfect. Just what he needed.

  ‘Eliza,’ called Sarah, running into the house, ‘darling, could you go and see the roundabout man, he’s having trouble with his generator, it won’t start or something …’

  ‘Darling, I’m off, as instructed,’ said Jeremy, kissing the top of Mariella’s head as she lay in the bath. ‘I’ll see you later. You sure you can find your way from here?’

  ‘Of course. I am not absolutely stupid—’

  ‘Darling, I know that, but you’ve only been there once before, and you know map-reading isn’t your forte—’

  ‘Jeremy, I shall be all right. Now go please, I have a great deal to do.’

  Jeremy went. He had learnt not to argue with Mariella unless it was in a very good cause.

  She was, he had discovered, in the difficult, heady months after Giovanni’s death, the opposite of malleable. However sweet her nature, however genuinely kind and generous her heart, the fact remained she had been extremely spoilt for all the years she had been married to Giovanni: petted, pampered, and over-praised, the subject of hundreds of adulatory articles, painted, photographed, quoted, exclaimed over; no one had crossed her, no one had disobeyed her – except Giovanni. He had kept her in check, had curbed her will, and indeed inflicted his own on her, brooking no argument, deaf to her tantrums, blind to her and her tears. And Giovanni was gone.

  In the first rush of her grief, and her remorse, and her loneliness, she was subdued, biddable, grateful for understanding, for kindness; as time passed, as she found herself free, untamed, immensely rich in her own right, she became impossible.

  Jeremy, confused and angered by the apparent monster he thought he had loved, struggling to be patient, to understand her, finally cracked one night in October, after a series of rows when she had demanded his presence at the villa, and then demanded he left again when he did not do things entirely to her liking; he told her it was all over between them.

&
nbsp; ‘I’m shocked by you,’ he had said, as he waited for the car to be brought round to the front door, to take him to the airport, ‘shocked and horrified. I did love you, I quite possibly still do, but your behaviour is intolerable—’

  ‘Don’t speak to me like that,’ she shouted, her great eyes blazing, her fists clenched at her sides, ‘and in front of the servants.’

  ‘You have spoken to me in the most abusive language I have ever heard, in front of your servants,’ said Jeremy, ‘and you won’t do it again, Mariella, I assure you. I am very sad to have to end our relationship, but I have to. I won’t be humiliated like this. I know you are very unhappy and grieving for Giovanni and I’m sorry—’

  ‘If you were sorry, you would not treat me like this,’ cried Mariella, ‘you are harsh and cruel, and you have no understanding of me—’

  ‘I have rather too much, I’m afraid,’ said Jeremy. ‘Now, there is the car. Goodbye, Mariella, I’m sorry it must end like this.’

  And he left without a glance at her.

  A week later, she turned up in London, pale and remorseful, promising to be ‘as you would want’; he forgave her, of course, and the entire scenario was repeated a few weeks later; and then again after Christmas. But that was the last time; they had had rows, to be sure – and Jeremy, whose charmed life had known little conflict, was surprised to find himself more than able to engage in them – but her behaviour and her attitude towards him became reasonable, and, as she put it, respectful.

  ‘Would you like me to make a curtsey to you, when I come into the room?’ she said one evening, as they ate dinner at his flat (she had revealed herself an excellent cook) and, ‘Very much, yes,’ he said, smiling at her, ‘not every time, perhaps, just once or twice a day, when my dinner is ready, or I am proposing to exercise my droit du seigneur.’

  ‘Oh, no, no, not then, that would be the last time I would do it, at such times I expect you to prostrate yourself before me … would you like to do that now, Gentleman Jeremy?’