Max drove on. He needed time to rebuild the dignity he now perceived as more important at his stage of life than he had bargained on. If he was to survive, Max had to think of himself, and Prue must make allowances, as he had done for her.
With difficulty he located a parking place for Winchester was crowded with shoppers (and garish with Christmas lights), and retrieved the gun.
‘It’s a beauty,’ said the assistant, running his hand over the butt. ‘Capable of doing big business. I see you take great care of it.’
‘Yes, I do,’ said Max. ‘I do.’
It lay beside him in the car and, from time to time, he glanced down at the age-cracked leather case. He never used this gun on his shooting days. It had belonged to his father.
When people asked Max about the incident - and there were not many around to remember it now - he shrugged the question aside. At the time it had been newspaper fodder, and caused his family acute embarrassment.
What it was exactly that tipped his father over the edge Max had never been sure. Drink? The drip, drip of disappointment and frustration? A wish to make the day different from all the others stacked up on each other like old newspapers, and clumped into years.
Anyway, one morning in late spring, William had got up, eaten a hearty breakfast and then turned a gun on Max’s mother whom he threatened to kill.
Of course, he did not. Instead, he had blown a small hole in Antonia’s foot and a large one in the kitchen floor.
So much for the grand Wagnerian finale crescendoing to a terrible howling end with wind and storm that William craved. Instead it had been a muddled, not terribly bloody, incident in a suburban kitchen, the Tristram with a whisky-mottled face and the Iseult in flowered print overall. Between them the spoilt promise of the years.
Extraordinarily, prison life contented William and, on visiting days, he enquired with more interest after Max’s affairs - exams, games - than he had ever shown previously. When he emerged, considerably less ruddy and stout than when he went in, he went to live in a remote cottage on the Ardnamurchan peninsula where he chopped wood and planted trees (having become something of a tree expert in prison) until he dropped dead of a heart attack. Max stayed with him often and they spent companionable evenings in the pub drinking the local malt and walking the hills above the glen.
Once the initial shock (and discomfort) had diminished, Antonia also flourished and spent the remainder of her life happily in Croydon with a spinster cousin. Accommodations, however bizarre, having been made with the general messiness of life, everyone, it appeared, was a great deal more content.
But Max never liked the gun.
‘It’s the Christmas season, all right,’ said Max, forty-five years later, edging through the kitchen door at Hallet’s Gate. ‘The men are all demanding whisky. Either that, or the party is awful.’
The kitchen at Hallet’s Gate was unrecognizable under a sea of glasses, bottles and remains of the not-very-imaginative snacks, which Prue, in an uncharacteristic spirit of grudge and groan, had put together early that morning.
‘Tough,’ she said, wrestling with a tray of ice-cubes. ‘I only bought one bottle. Make them drink the sherry. It’s a good one and they should think themselves lucky.’
‘Hallo,’ said Kate brightly from the doorway. ‘I haven’t really talked to you yet.’
In honour of the occasion, Kate had progressed from Lycra leggings into a pleated wool skirt. She looked wholesome, straightforward and keen-eyed. The ice-cubes ejected out of the tray and shot over the sink. Prue made a grab for them.
‘Take these, will you, Kate? I’m just coming.’
Kate was not in any hurry and lingered by the sink.
‘Molly is having a go at Richard over the church cleaning rota,’ she reported. ‘Richard ain’t too pleased.’
Prue had a distinct impression that Kate had levelled her radar at both her and Max with the aim of gathering as much information as possible.
‘Will you see to the refills?’ Prue turned to Max, and stopped herself adding her habitual ‘darling’. She whipped open the oven and extracted prawn vol-au-vents. They looked overdone.
‘Earn your keep,’ she said to Kate. ‘Open those packets of Kettle Chips, and dismantle the radar.’
Kate’s eyebrows suggested outrage and innocence, and that she had no idea what Prue meant.
Prue flipped the oven gloves over her shoulder. ‘If you must know, Max and I are going through a bit of a bad patch, in fact a bloody one, and I don’t know how it’s going to end. Somehow, the Valour party went ahead and I’ve got to get through it.’ She smiled in a way that was new to Kate. ‘Is that a good enough update for you?’
Kate looked like the woman who, having determined to learn the worst, decides to stick to the Noddy version of life from now on. ‘Oh, Prue,’ she said with distress and some distaste. ‘I’m sorry.’
Too late, Prue realized that Kate would rather not have known about her marital problems, and felt some sympathy with this ostrich position. Oh, well, she thought. What did I expect?
The drawing room had been denuded the day before of most of its furniture, and echoed slightly. The party had reached the halfway point between the stiff beginning and the we-must-go-home-the-joint-is-overcooking stage and the atmosphere had worked up into a fug of cigarette smoke and bodies meeting central heating. Prue’s arrangement of red ribbon and fir cones (not her best) sat below a water-colour of a Highland scene. As she came into the room, Violet was pointing out the painting to a guest, a woman dressed in an outfit that shrieked Emporio Armani.
Molly pounced on Prue. Molly was not dressed in Emporio Armani. As a concession to the Valour party, she had unearthed a shirtwaister dress of the type Doris Day favoured in the fifties, plus sensible lace-up shoes.
‘Where’s Jane?’ Molly cast a beady eye around the room.
She made Prue feel uncomfortable. ‘She’s over with Judy. The two of them decided the party was boring news,’ she said.
She was glad when Richard, the vicar, bore down on them both, cherishing his empty glass rather obviously. Prue grabbed a bottle and filled it for him. God knew, Richard had little enough luxury in his life.
‘Now you two are together,’ he said gratefully, ‘we can discuss the cleaning rota.’
Every sense aware that Jamie was standing only a couple of feet away, Prue refilled Molly’s glass. Molly launched into a tirade and Prue knew that if she had any shreds of grace left, if her love for Jamie was to mean anything, she must concentrate.
‘. . . dusting,’ said Richard.
If the pew-polishing rota was the vehicle by which the collective life in Dainton was conducted, so be it.
‘. . . dusting,’ she repeated obediently, watching Jamie out of the corner of her eye.
Over by the window, Emmy held out a cross, crumpled-looking Edward to his mother.
‘Why on earth didn’t you change him? He’s smelly.’
‘Sorry, Violet.’
Edward was suffering from a slight stomach upset (he would, thought his mother grimly). Violet’s glossy head ducked in annoyance. She had taken to wearing lipstick of an even brighter scarlet, which suited her and which acted as a beacon, although that was not necessarily her intention, for if Violet craved attention, she did not wish to take it further than that. (She was merely copying the look of a very OK author interviewed in depth in Vanity Fair.) A couple of the older men at the party had brightened at Violet’s entrance, and hovered hopefully.
‘It’s better to journey than to arrive.’ Prue nudged Kate and indicated the hopefuls.
‘I particularly wanted to show Edward off,’ Violet whispered to Emmy at a level calculated not to be heard while her red lips smiled and glistened with - false - invitation. Bet you did, thought Emmy. ‘I can’t if he smells.’
Unaware of the exchange, Edward gazed out of the window at a couple walking their retriever who, as non-invitees, were pointedly not looking towards the window of Hallet’s Gate
. At the sight of the dog, his face creased in a sudden, devastating smile and he bounced up and down on Emmy’s shoulder.
‘I’ll change him,’ said Jamie, materializing out of the group which contained Mrs Patterson, known as the Praying Mantis because she had presided over the deathbeds of three husbands, who had followed each other with staggering rapidity.
Edward was handed over and his father bore him off. Violet frowned in the direction of her hopeful cavaliers who backed off hastily, picked up a handful of dirty glasses and made for the kitchen. Emmy was left with a damp stain on her T-shirt, clutching a muslin nappy. Uneasy in the company, yet fascinated and just a tinge envious at the affluence in the room, she twisted the nappy between her fingers, knew she could never belong and wondered if she could make a bolt for home.
‘Hallo,’ said Max, waving the sherry bottle in her face. ‘Would you like some?’
‘No, thank you, Mr Valour.’
‘Max,’ he said.
He smiled his gentle smile which made Emmy, whose life for the last two months had been a compound of fear and a churning stomach, feel almost witty and beautiful and normal.
‘Actually, I’ve been wanting to talk to you.’ He placed the bottle carefully on the window sill and paused. ‘I gather you’re going to have a baby.’
Emmy felt a blush the colour of peonies mount her face, but there was no point in denying it.
‘Have you decided what you will do?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘No. I mean, yes.’ She bit her lip and her peaky features were accentuated by her obvious agitation. ‘I’m going to have the baby.’ She paused. ‘That’s final.’ Her fingers clutched the nappy. ‘Mum can have me for a bit, I think. I can live off the social and then when the baby is older try and get a live-in nanny job with the baby. Some nannies get flats, you see.’
She made Max feel infinitely old. In his day, the social was somewhere you went for a good night out. He winced, too, for the trust that underlay Emmy’s sad little plan.
‘Don’t fret,’ he said suddenly, and his kindness made her want to cry. She looked up at him, and a strand of her hopeless hair lay against a cheek now so white that Max could swear no blood ever pulsed in it. As ever in situations like this (and Max had experience in dealing with pregnant women), his chivalry was stirred.
Acid was burning in Emmy’s stomach and she longed for something starchy to mop it up. ‘Mum’s got to talk to Dad first. She’s waiting for the right moment.’
‘I’ve had an idea.’ Max took Emmy completely by surprise. ‘And I’d like to make a suggestion.’
It took a couple of seconds for Emmy to absorb what he said. Then her eyes widened and hardened with suspicion. You dirty old man, she thought, deeply disappointed. I thought you were straight.
Max understood. He took a step back until a space was between them. ‘Don’t worry, Emmy. This is perfectly above board. No question about that. I’ll be in touch.’
Thoroughly bewildered, Emmy reckoned she could make a dash for it. Without a muted goodbye, she slid past Max and disappeared.
In the hall, she struggled into her inadequate jacket.
What will you do?
The answer was: I don’t know, so stop asking me, everyone. Alongside the nag of that question was the ache and mystery of her love for Angus which she tried so hard to pretend did not exist -unlike his baby inside her.
Lady Truscott polished off her third glass and swayed, just a little, as she accepted a fourth. Smiling, Prue circulated and did her best to draw in a shy bachelor who appeared inextricably welded to the wall and debated introducing him to the Praying Mantis.
Nappy-changing completed, Jamie was back in the room and talking to Major Hutton. His attention remained fixed on the Major — except for once when he raised his eyes and met Prue’s.
Prue moved in measured fashion around her guests offering vol-au-vents as if her heart was not beating to a wildly sexual rhythm, her conscience was as light as the flaky pastry and her home was not crumbling around her.
‘By the way,’ asked Jamie when she reached him with the plate. He leant over and took a vol-au-vent. ‘What did happen to Joan?’
Her eyes flew to his. ‘You really want to know?’
‘I wouldn’t be asking.’ Jamie grinned at Major Hutton as if to say: I’m humouring her.
After Joan was taken by the Burgundians, her former friends and allies abandoned her. The King, her King, did nothing, he for whom Joan had risked so much. Jean Jouvenal des Ursins, a contemporary observer, was brave enough to reproach the sovereign for his unwillingness to help. Apparently, Prue added, that sort of detachment which the King displayed to the woman who had saved him is considered a characteristic of the children of schizophrenics. Which historians believe he was.
‘Good Lord,’ said Major Hutton.
Poor Joan. Prue felt a flush creep into her cheeks. After capture, she grew so desperate and exhausted from constant questioning and prying that she threw herself from the tower at Beaurevoir, a leap of sixty to seventy feet. Astonishingly, she survived almost unscathed. She must have been very, very desperate, and she must have believed very hard.
Jamie prized the empty plate out of her hands. ‘I’ll get a refill.’
Prue gazed at Major Hutton. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘The story always upsets me.’
The last guest having been steered out of the door, the Becketts and the Valours sat down to eat bread, cheese and salami.
Max put down his knife with an expression, the careful, impassive, lawyer’s expression that Prue knew well.
‘I have some things I wish to discuss,’ he said, ‘and I might as well do it here.’
A hand grasped Prue’s heart and closed, and she was not sure if it indicated fear, or a curious exultation that the worst could be about to happen. Oh, Mum, Jane had said, hadn’t the Woman Taken in Adultery wanted to get into trouble?
Once upon a time, Max would never have broached a subject publicly without first consulting Prue. If it could be said that her life was akin to the structure of a novel, Prue sensed she had reached the crisis or drama in the story where events cried out to be tied up.
She had wanted and taken Jamie: she had wanted him badly and allowed the flames of that desire to lick and burn her body, as Joan’s had been seared on the pyre. But, at the bottom of her only half-explored female soul, Prue expected to pay a price.
Prue, of course, was not alone in distrusting joy.
‘This may surprise you . . .’ Max did not seem agitated, ‘but I will be living in London for the next six months or so in the company flat.’
Prue helped herself from a bowl of fruit salad. ‘Max!’
‘I’m going to be heading up the Brussels and Madrid offices, plus working to set up the additional European offices, and I feel the commuting is too tiring. Prue’s staying here.’
Prue’s spoon assumed a life of its own, and clattered back into the bowl. Apparently, she had misunderstood the bargain that had been struck.
She thought of Joan’s Dauphin bowing out.
‘I’ll come home for some weekends, of course, if it’s possible.’
Imperceptibly Jamie relaxed but Violet’s mouth opened.
‘What on earth are you going on about, Dad? Leave Prue for six months?’ She gave Prue one of her examining-an-animal-behind-zoo-bars looks. ‘Do you mind, Prue?’
‘If that’s what your father wishes to do.’
Prue’s tone, and the rigidity of her body, alerted Violet that there was more to this announcement than lay on the surface. Violet’s eyelids closed over eyes that were suddenly suspicious, and hid the calculations she was making. Then she looked up and the obstinate look had settled into place. ‘Jamie,’ she ordered her husband, ‘tell Daddy this is a bad idea. Not only bad but unnecessary.’ Jamie hesitated, and she tutted impatiently. ‘For goodness sake, Daddy, you’ve been commuting all your life. What’s different?’
Max smiled at his daughter. ‘There’s no need to ge
t upset, my darling.’
‘You can’t,’ said Violet, and Prue could have sworn Violet was close to tears. ‘It isn’t good, and it isn’t done. If we all went galloping off into the sunset every time we fancied a change, which is what I suspect this is, everything would collapse.’
Violet had no idea that she had hit the target.
Full marks, Violet. For common sense and for a certain courage. Reluctantly, then with a rush of admiration, Prue thus conceded to her old adversary.
‘Darling,’ said her father, ‘you can’t organize everything, much as you’d like to.’
‘Think of Jane,’ responded his daughter, who, over the years, had not made a practice of it herself.
Taken aback by Violet’s late discovery of sisterly responsibilities, Prue picked up her spoon and chased a cherry-stone around her bowl. ‘I don’t think it’s as dramatic as all that.’ She assessed her husband. ‘Is it, darling? You do have a lot of work with the commission.’
‘The reason I’m discussing this with you,’ Max continued, ‘is that I will suggest to Emmy that after she leaves you she comes to me in the flat in London until she can sort herself out.’
With a noise that sounded suspiciously like a wail, Violet dropped her face into her hands. ‘You’ve gone mad, Daddy. What will people think? You’ll be accused of child molesting or something. Or they’ll think the baby’s yours.’
‘She needs a helping hand and I will need a housekeeper.’
‘For God’s sake . . .’ Violet raised her head and bunched up her napkin on which lipstick was imprinted in bloody rings. ‘You have a wife.’
Lipstick, thought Prue, searching through the housewifery manual kept in her head. How do you get it out? Paraffin? Petrol?
‘Pregnant women are no trouble,’ said Max, as if he had not heard. ‘They’re easy to look after. It’s what comes afterwards that’s the problem.’
For a couple of seconds, Prue was bewildered and thrown off the scent, and then she understood. Helen. In many ways, what had happened to Max, and to her, was the result of Helen and that story.
She, too, wanted to drop her head into her hands and wail. Instead, with a curious disappointment, she looked at her watch and said, ‘It’s time to pick Jane up from Kate’s otherwise we’ll be late for the carol service.’
Perfect Love Page 33
