“I hope you don’t mean that I’m a toy?”
Dosia nudged her and laughed. “Sort of, dear girl, sort of.”
“Anyway, Reggie is going to join us at Monte Carlo . . .” Mabel paused and glanced at Dosia.
“Fine by me. When will he be arriving there?”
“At the end of next week, the day before us.”
“And are you looking forward to seeing him again?” Dosia asked, looking sideways at her sister-in-law.
“Yes . . . yes, I suppose so.”
“You don’t sound terribly enthusiastic.”
Mabel folded the letter and put it back inside her bag. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I’m not sure now what I think about him. What I think about anything . . .”
“You don’t need to think. That’s what this trip was all about; it was about you not having to think about anything for once,” Dosia declared, and then sighed. “Oh my,” she said, stretching her suntanned bare legs out in front of her, “I’m going to miss this, miss you and me . . . and our adventure . . . miss Roma,” she added, raising her arms to the vista ahead of them.
“Yes, so will I.”
“And what about Giancarlo?” Dosia asked, referring to the Italian they had been introduced to during their first week and who had taken them out to dinner a number of times. “Will you miss him?”
Mabel laughed. “He’s ten years younger than me!”
“So? He’s keen. Very keen. If you really wanted to get even with Howard,” Dosia said, straightening herself and adjusting her dress, which really was too short, Mabel thought, “he’s surely a more appealing option than the dear old major. You’d be far better doing it with him.”
“Dosia! I do not wish to get even—as you call it—with Howard, and . . . and . . . I’m not quite sure what you mean by doing it. No!” Mabel quickly added, beginning to laugh again and raising her hands. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
“I might tell him,” said Dosia, after a moment.
“Tell who—what?”
“Tell Howard about you and Giancarlo.”
“But there’s nothing to tell.”
“He doesn’t need to know that, does he?”
Mabel smiled. She had not told Dosia everything, and certainly not about last night.
It had been after midnight when Dosia went up to her room, leaving Mabel and Giancarlo alone on the candlelit terrace with their nightcaps. Giancarlo had once again become amorous, grabbing hold of Mabel’s hand and kissing it quite ardently—as though it were a face with lips and not a hand—and whispering, Mia bella May-bella. And the wine and the heat, the sound of his voice—the way he said her name—and his dark eyes glancing up at her had made Mabel feel as weak as a newborn lamb. And she let him go on, kissing the back of her hand, then her palm, then taking a finger into his mouth, running his tongue over its tip so that she shivered and felt her edges begin to blur and blend with the sultry night.
Unlike before, she did not say, “Giancarlo, I’m a married woman.” Unlike before, she did not pull her hand away.
“Oh, Lordy,” said Dosia now, jumping to her feet. “We’re meant to be having lunch with Dolly Cartwright!”
Mrs. Cartwright—or Dolly, as she had become to them—was a widow and was traveling with a paid companion, an awkward and painfully shy young woman known only as Miss Hurst. Dolly had been at the D’Inghilterra for more than a month by the time Mabel and Dosia arrived there. She spoke a number of languages—seemingly fluently—and made it her business to know everyone at the hotel: staff, residents and diners. But she also knew a number of titled Italian and English expatriate residents in the city, and it had in fact been Dolly who’d introduced Mabel and Dosia to Giancarlo and who had taken them to various palazzo apartment musical soirees and cocktail parties.
When Dosia and Mabel arrived at the Piazza Navona, hot and breathless, Dolly was sitting at her usual table at her usual restaurant beneath a large parasol, with a carafe of wine in front of her.
“No Miss Hurst?” said Dosia, pulling her chair across the uneven flagstones.
“She’s gone to the Vatican. Again. Thinking of converting, I’ve no doubt,” Dolly added in a whisper. “It’s confession, you see, that pulls them that way. Yes, redemption,” she drawled.
Dosia glanced over at Mabel. Dolly had clearly had a glass of wine already.
“So what have you two been up to?” Dolly asked, refilling her own glass and theirs.
“Nothing much,” said Mabel. “Sitting in the Pincio gardens.”
“Ah,” Dolly sighed. “I do adore that place. Particularly at sunset, when all of Rome turns pink and the starlings swoop and soar . . . The first time Clifford and I came here—on our honeymoon—we used to go there almost every evening. Rome was a different place in those days . . . And of course it wasn’t that long after the risorgimento,” she added, rolling the R.
Dolly went on to talk about that time, that trip, her tiny blue eyes fixed on the fountain ahead of her and filled with love and nostalgia. She and her late husband had been married for more than fifty years and had never spent longer than a few nights apart from each other, she said. “I could never have been one of those women who abandon their husbands in London to live in the country. I could never have done that. And it would have been the death of our marriage,” she proclaimed, feigning a little laugh. “But it seems to be the fashion back at home—doesn’t it?—to leave one’s husband to toil and labor, while wives play tennis and throw bridge parties. It’s no wonder divorce is on the up.”
“But it’s no excuse for infidelity,” said Dosia, glancing at Mabel.
Dolly took a sip of her wine. “No, but it’s a valid excuse for loneliness, which can of course lead to infidelity. People today seem to consider marriage a disposable thing, something one can throw away when it becomes a nuisance or difficult . . . but it’s a lifelong commitment—till death us do part— and sometimes it requires sacrifice, compromise and effort,” she said, becoming more impassioned. “And, like anything else where there has perhaps been some struggle or effort, the satisfaction, fulfillment and sense of accomplishment are richer, the love stronger. Oh yes. I loved Clifford more deeply and steadfastly at the end of his life than I did when we first met and fell in love. Love is indeed like wine,” she said, picking up her glass once more. “It simply improves with age.”
Later that day, after Dosia led Dolly back in the direction of the hotel, Mabel sat alone by the Pantheon, and staring up at the continental sky, she pondered Dolly Cartwright’s words and remembered Howard’s early protestations. For she had been the one to insist on being in the country; she had been the one who had decided to live away from her husband, at Eden Hall; and then, lonely, embittered by his absence, she had felt abandoned.
Howard was no good on his own and never had been; he craved company and adored female company, and for the best part of twenty-five years Mabel had known this. Feminine attention put him at ease, and he had always preferred the female sex to his own, claiming that he found women easier, more forgiving and funnier. He wasn’t so much a ladies’ man as a man who preferred ladies. But though he admired spirit and wit and intelligence, Mabel knew he liked women to be a little vulnerable as well, to wear pretty frocks and have pretty names, and to hanker for a man to take care of them. He was, quite simply, old-fashioned, and slightly lost in a world where maidens no longer wished to be rescued.
Dolly was right, Mabel thought as she dawdled her way back through the narrow streets: The world was becoming a more difficult place for men, men like Howard, encouraged from the start to have a voice, opinions, brought up to be decision makers, protectors and providers; men who assumed that all women wanted to be looked after; men who took it for granted that this was enough.
Mabel paused. The warm air was filled with the scents of lemon and basil, cardamom and bay, and horses and bo
dies, and sometimes, the noxious reek rising from the ancient sewers. Like all of life, she thought: a cocktail of sublime sweetness and grim reality. Moving on, emerging from the shadows into the brilliant sunshine of the Piazza Colonna, the sound of a woman’s voice and “O Mio Babbino Caro” crackled from the open window of a trattoria and there was Miss Hurst, standing on the steps leading up to a church doorway, eating ice cream, with a swarthy-looking Italian man by her side. And as Mabel turned away and walked on, she smiled. Dolly Cartwright may have been right about many things, she concluded, but she had yet to fathom her Miss Hurst.
Pausing to look in familiar shopwindows, staring at souvenirs she had no desire to buy, Mabel thought of Howard. That afternoon, and more than ever before, she had felt her husband’s absence, and yet in that absence was his presence, too. It was the queerest thing, but the longer she had been apart from him, the nearer she felt to him. Now she wished he were with her, wished he were waiting for her at the hotel so that she could take him to the Pincio hill to sit with her and watch the sun set over the Eternal City. She wanted to share this place with him, wanted him to see it, too.
When Mabel finally arrived back at the hotel, she found her room filled with red roses: dozens of them, scattered across every surface—in cups and glasses and vases. She looked about for a card, longing to see his name: a line, a message. Then the door opened and in came Dosia. “So look at this,” she said, her eyes wide as she glanced about Mabel’s heavily scented room. And then she handed Mabel the small card, signed “Giancarlo.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Three days before she was due to meet Ben, Daisy reached her decision. She could not marry him; she was not in love with him. And she still wasn’t sure if he loved her. It was his age, she decided, walking home from work. He had simply decided it was time for him to marry, to look for a wife, and because she’d been kind to him, because they’d developed something of a friendship last summer, he’d plumped for her. By the time Daisy reached the steps up to the front door of the building, she felt relieved, and she hoped Ben might be, too.
The flat in Sydney Street was spread over two floors, the first and second, and had three bedrooms, including the small box room Iris called the Archive Room and used to store clothes, a sitting room, dining room, kitchen and small bathroom—with an electric water heater that juddered loudly—on the half landing. It was a drafty place in winter, and the dusty windows—which made the world beyond appear fogbound even on the brightest day—rattled each time a bus passed by. But the furnishings had been added to by Mabel and accessorized by Iris, who had a passion for draping almost everything in vibrantly colored fringed silk shawls, and who preferred vases of ostrich and peacock feathers to fresh flowers.
Daisy closed the front door quietly so as not to disturb Mr. Beal, who lived on the ground floor and had complained more times than Daisy could remember about the “fucking slamming.” He had once appeared at the door of their flat, red in the face, almost foaming at the mouth, incoherent with rage and waving his walking stick about. He frightened Daisy in the same way all those other angry war veterans frightened her. They had a right to be angry, she thought, but not with her, and surely not about the slamming of a door; after all, it was hardly going to kill anyone. At other times, Mr. Beal was sweetness and light. Even the morning after his stick-brandishing tirade, when Daisy had met him on the doorstep as she left for work and he was bringing in his bottle of milk, he had smiled back at her and said good morning, just as though he had no memory of their last encounter.
When Daisy walked into the kitchen, Mrs. Wintrip was as usual standing at the sink, peeling potatoes with a burned-out cigarette between her thin lips. Daisy had never seen Mrs. Wintrip without her hairnet, beneath which were a multitude of rusting bobby pins and small curlers. She wondered if Mrs. Wintrip ever took off the hairnet and dispensed with the curlers, whether she ever pulled out those clips and allowed her hair to be, just be. Because it seemed a waste of time otherwise. But she liked Mrs. Wintrip and loved hearing about George, her husband—or rather, ex-husband, because though they still lived together they were in fact divorced, or so Mrs. Wintrip claimed.
Mrs. Wintrip was long known to the family. A cousin of Mrs. Jessop’s, she had been employed by Howard years before and reemployed by Mabel at the start of the year, when Daisy first moved to London. She came to Sydney Street each day to clean, cook, mend and do laundry. Like Mrs. Jessop, Nellie Wintrip had spent her life in service; unlike Mrs. Jessop, she had never been a cook and said herself, “I’ll make no bones about it: I’m no cook.” She had what Mabel described as a “remarkable way with words” and was, it seemed, devoted to the memory of a young Howard Forbes.
Today, like every other day when Daisy arrived back at the flat, Mrs. Wintrip boiled the kettle and made them both a cup of tea. She told Daisy she had made a lovely mutton stew for her supper and then asked if Miss Iris would be dining in. Daisy said she wasn’t sure.
“She’s a card, that sister of yours . . . blowing in, blowing out, never having time to eat . . . and all that dancing,” Mrs. Wintrip said, shaking her head. “It’ll all catch up with her, you mark my words,” she added, bending down to put the peelings into the bucket under the sink. Her mustard-colored dress rose at the back to reveal the frill of her long crimson bloomers. She wore a brown woolen cardigan darned at the elbows in blue, and pink carpet slippers. Her thick dark stockings pooled around her swollen ankles and misshapen feet.
“If I was her mother,” Mrs. Wintrip went on, “I’d make sure she had a good meal inside of her before she went out for any dancing.” She turned to Daisy: “You know, my only regret in life—apart from George—is not having had kiddies. Not that I blame George. And that wasn’t why I divorced him. No, I divorced him because of his carrying on with that floozy Eileen Shannon at number twenty-six. Oh yes. I said, George, we’re divorced. Just like that, I did. Then I handed him the paper—you know, the degree nisi or whatever, what Bob had done for me.”
“Your lawyer?”
“My brother.”
“He works in law?”
“No, he works on the buses, dear. Usually the 134.”
“But how could Bob sort out your divorce?”
“Oh, he’s good like that. Can turn his hand to anything.”
“What did George do?”
“What could he do? It was served to him, fate a company. He couldn’t believe it. Was in shock. Just sat and stared at the thing. I said, she can have you now; you can go and live with her and her budgerigar at number twenty-six.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, that’s your brother’s signature. I said, yes, he’s the witness, and that’s her name there—next to the adulteress. Well, of course, once she could have him she didn’t want him.”
Mrs. Wintrip went silent for a while and stared into space; then she sighed and said, “It wasn’t that long after Stephen was born.”
“Stephen?”
“Yes, he was ever so bonnie and good as gold, too,” she added, unusually wistful. “Such a cold winter it was, you couldn’t get enough coal for love nor money, but of course there was always plenty of coal at Clanricarde Gardens. Mr. Forbes made sure—”
“Clanricarde? Stephen was at Clanricarde Gardens?”
“Yes, that’s where he was born. Born early and delivered by me!” she added triumphantly. Then, realizing something, she put her hand over her mouth.
“Stephen was at my father’s house,” Daisy said again, staring back at Mrs. Wintrip, confused.
“Oh, now, dear, you’ll have to forget I said that. That’s not for you to know.”
“Stephen was born at my father’s house and you delivered him . . .”
Mrs. Wintrip nodded.
“But he wasn’t your baby?”
Mrs. Wintrip shook her head. “I can’t say any more . . . shouldn’t have said.”
; “You can tell me . . . I’m an adult now, Mrs. Wintrip. I won’t say a thing to anyone; I promise,” said Daisy, genuflecting.
“I’ve said too much already.”
“But he lived with you,” Daisy persevered. “Stephen lived with you and George.”
“No, not George! He was with her, Eileen. And your father would’ve boxed his ears if he’d known the full extent of that carry-on. But because I was married, respectable, see, it was decided I should have Stephen until . . .” She stopped, shook her head again.
“Until? What was it you were about to say?”
Mrs. Wintrip stared back at her, awkward, shuffling, more reticent than ever. “I can’t say any more, dear. But everything turned out well in the end . . . Your father saw to that.” She picked up a cloth and began rubbing vigorously at the bench. Then she turned on the tap and said, “By the way, I’ve darned your stockings and sewed that button back on your blouse. I hung it up in your wardrobe with your brown serge skirt.”
Daisy nodded and murmured a thank-you. Then she rose to her feet and left the kitchen. The landing had shrunk and the sitting room looked different and swayed a little as Daisy sat down, then stood up, then sat down again.
Stephen had been born at Clanricarde Gardens. He was her father’s son . . . Howard’s illegitimate child. He had to be. It was the only way any of it made any sense . . . Stephen was the bastard child Howard had been so good to . . . The one she’d overheard Nancy and Mrs. Jessop speaking about.
“My brother,” she whispered, standing up again. “Stephen,” she gasped.
Daisy thought of them once more in the lobby of the coachman’s flat, when he’d been so close to kissing her. Thank God, thank God, thank God . . .
She sat down again, leaned forward, rested her head between her knees and tried to breathe. Slowly, she felt her heart regulate its beat and sat up. She breathed in deeply and glanced about the room. She heard Iris’s voice: Just as well you weren’t in love with him; saw Stephen’s face staring back at hers, his eyes on her lips: No!
The Snow Globe Page 19
