He was drunk, or at least had consumed enough to make him drunk, a condition which he carried off with a flourish, his eyes a little glazed but his speech precise, his bearing steady, only his humour inclined to swing, at such times, with stunning rapidity from sweetness to malice. A wild and wicked man? Undoubtedly. And far more than Polly could hope to handle.
‘I have a damsel in distress on my premises,’ he told her, leaning in the doorway, his eyes and then an enquiring fingertip moving to the open neck of her kimono.
‘Really?’ she said quite pleasantly, pushing his hand away.
‘Really. Not that it seems to be bothering her. But do come and remove her.’
‘Why?’
‘A number of reasons. She turned up-oh God knows-hours ago, with some man she wanted to show to you. She showed him to me instead.’
‘And don’t you like him?’
‘It’s not that. I have a little matter on hand of my own, you see, and although I’m not exclusive I do need to be private – you know what I mean? And, of course, she is in danger of losing her virginity on my studio floor. Thought I’d better mention it.’
‘She’s nineteen, Euan. What were you in danger of losing at that age?’
‘Claire – tut tut – my goodness. Only mv life. The other is a fate worse than death, didn’t they tell you that at school? But there again, if she doesn’t mind, and you don’t mind … You have lovely bones, Claire. Why don’t we leave them to get on with it? I’ll come into your room and discuss bones – and skin textures – shall I? Please, Claire?’
He slid both hands around her waist and smiling, she used no more than the pressure of two fingertips on his chest to push him away.
‘All right. Then save me, at least, from the brat Polly.’ She walked briskly across the hall and into the studio, smaller than usual without her shoes but tall in authority, intending – since she had not wished to do it at all – to get the matter over and done with as soon as she could.
Polly, spangled, tousled, adorable, lay on the floor on a heap of cushions, displaying bare dimpled arms and shoulders, long legs and silver stockings and silver lace garters which the handsome, anonymous young man beside her was trying clumsily to remove, greatly to the disgust – it seemed – of Euan’s girl who sat prim and straight-backed at the table, her expression conveying that despite her cheap shoes, her secondhand evening gown and her board school education, she would never behave in this wanton manner.
‘Good evening,’ said Claire, in the tones of an army matron to the considerably befuddled young man, ‘I’m Mrs Swanfield. And you, I think, should get up and go home.’
They were drunk and taken by surprise. She was not. The boy was young and soft and did not want to cause any trouble that his father might get to hear of. Both she and Euan knew how to be menacing and hard. He went off, sullen, humiliated, wishing he had never set foot in Mannheim Crescent, vowing never to do so again. Polly laughed and then she cried, accused Claire of conspiring to ruin her life with her mother and Benedict and everybody – and aimed a blow at her.
‘I’ll stay here with Euan.’
‘Oh no you won’t.’
She lay down on the floor again.
‘Move me.’
Euan’s girl continued to sit primly at the table, taking no notice.
‘Oh come and lie down with me, Euan.’
She rolled over on the cushions, amorous as a kitten, wanton and entrancing, arousing if not his sensuality then certainly far more of his curiosity than would have been good for her had they been alone. ‘Some other time,’ said Euan, glancing at Claire and his silent, disapproving girl who, quite suddenly, got to her feet and left the room without a word, letting the door fall shut with a final-sounding slam behind her.
‘Polly,’ he said, ‘you have condemned me to a night of solitude and frustration.’
‘It will do you good,’ said Claire, returing to her own room and scrambling into her clothes.
‘I want to dance,’ decided Polly and, with a lovely, childlike abandon, she danced out into the hall and through the outside door which Euan held open for her, performing a wild tarantella in the garden until she was sick, rather neatly – remembering even in extremis not to spoil her dress – under the bushes by the gate.
‘I want to die,’ was her next decision.
‘Die in the car,’ suggested Euan sweetly.
‘I want my father,’ she said, swaying towards him, suddenly fragile, vulnerable, a little girl for whom the world had never been the same since Aaron Swanfield left it.
‘Then, dear Polly,’ said Euan, backing hastily out of her reach, ‘you have certainly come to the wrong address.’
She began to cry painfully now, huge sobs which hurt and frightened her.
‘I want my daddy.’ It was the absolute truth. He would never have allowed her to get lost like this, to feel so dizzy and so astray, so sick in her stomach and sick at heart. She knew, suddenly and absolutely through the haze of alcohol which she had not really enjoyed – had consumed in such quantities only to impress the Charlesworth boy who meant nothing to her now – that she, did not trust her mother, that she was terrified of Benedict, that even Eunice, who used to be kind to her had not wanted her company at the theatre that night, had been glad when she had made a fuss and decided not to go. Who loved her then? No one since Aaron. Or not in the way she wanted. Since her father died she had never felt safe.
‘I want my father,’ she wailed.
‘For God’s ‘sake – get her into the car,’ said Euan, torn between irritation and amusement, irritation getting the upper hand.
‘Into the back,’ said Claire, ‘in case she’s sick again, since I suppose I’m driving.’
‘I do believe so. But I will start the engine for you. There – just don’t stall it going up the hill. I’d come with you – in fact I realize I ought to come with you – but there it is. Better not. I expect you’ll be all right.’
‘Thanks Euan – for having so much faith in me.’
He laughed, saluted, and went inside.
The car was unfamiliar and heavy, the road dark and narrow. Through the glass partition separating passenger from driver she was aware that Polly had started to shiver and probably, although the glass obscured the sound as in a goldfish bowl, to cry again.
She had made no plan. It was simply necessary to get Polly safely home – to get rid of her in effect – and, concentrating on the car, knowing that there was far more likelihood than she would ever have admitted to Euan of stalling this venerable but sluggish engine, she did not at first pay too much attention to the car behind her, gaining on her from nowhere, a flash of headlamps in her mirror, an impression of power and speed greater than her own, a huge motor which ought to have overtaken her, but did not. And she remained unaware of the exact moment when she realized it was Benedict.
She saw through the glass that Polly appeared to be unconscious, or perhaps only asleep. The lodge gates of High Meadows were approaching and since the road led nowhere else she turned into them, parked the car as close as she could to the front door of the house, and stood on the gravel drive, waiting.
That he would be furious, scornful, abrasive, she was quite certain. That he would blame her for the whole episode and take the course he was always taking with Eunice and with Polly herself, of reducing her allowance, was not impossible. What he might do to Polly she could not imagine. But what alternative had she but to face him and tell him, not the whole truth perhaps, but enough to give an accurate picture of what had occurred?
But as he got out of the Daimler and came towards her, what she actually said was, ‘We thought you were in London.’
‘Yes. So it seems. I came back this morning. What happened?’
‘Oh,’ and she had not intended her voice to sound so flippant, ‘Polly got drunk. She turned up at my flat and I brought her home.’
‘You make it sound an everyday occurrence.’
‘I don’t mean to. I
t isn’t. I’m sorry.’
Was he angry? She had no idea. Stepping forward he glanced through the window at Polly and as he turned back to Claire again she realized that although she was looking at him she couid not really see him, could make no assessment of his reaction because her own was too powerful to permit her to judge. Was she really so afraid of him? Blinking hard to clear her vision she admitted that it did rather seem that way.
‘May I ask,’ he said, ‘what you intended to do with her? Get her upstairs with the help of the servants perhaps and ask them to say nothing to her mother? Was that it?’
‘Yes. Something like that.’
Very faintly, almost imperceptibly, he smiled.
‘Then please do so. And, by the way, I suppose there is no need to remind you not to lay her flat? Good. I thought not. Come and see me in the study afterwards.’
The chauffeur, Parker, carried her upstairs, flanked by a pair of maids who clucked and cooed with sympathy, eyes gleaming at having such a good story to tell, although only in the servants’ hall and not – they promised Claire – to her mother. She saw Parker from the room, stood back while Polly was undressed by skilled, impersonal fingers, supervised the arrangement of her pillows, instructed the girls to sit with her until she was sleeping naturally, and then went slowly downstairs feeling puzzled, distinctly uneasy as to just what might happen next.
‘May I give you a drink?’ asked Benedict.
She wrinkled her nose fastidiously, her nostrils remembering Polly’s odours of whisky and perfume and vomit.
‘No thank you. Not right away.’
‘Then I’ll take you home.’
‘Oh – will you? I mean – I suppose – Parker could do it.’
‘I suppose he could. Nevertheless …’
The Bentley had been driven away, the Daimler was waiting and she got in beside him, allowing him to negotiate the drive and the gateway before saying what could be said in Polly’s defence.
‘She may not have had so very much to drink, you know.’
‘I dare say. But it is unwise, to say the least, for a woman to be drunk in public. One could hardly let it pass.’
‘She became very upset. She was crying, quite dreadfully, for her father.’
‘Yes? There would seem to be very little I can do about that.’
The car drew smoothly into Mannheim Crescent and suddenly, her social expertise deserting her, she had no idea what to do with him, whether to thank him or wait for him to thank her, whether to offer him coffee or simply walk away.
He came around the car and opened the door for her so that as she got out they were standing side by side, hemmed in between the car and the gate, shrouded by its thick hedge and tall overhanging trees. The street was deserted, the houses dark, the moon just a trail of grey vapour in a heavy sky.
‘Thank you, Benedict.’
‘Thank you, Claire.’
‘Good night.’
‘Good night.’
His hand was on the gate but he did not open it.
‘Would you like – well, coffee perhaps?’
‘No. Not coffee.’
‘Then – some brandy?’
She thought he hesitated, briefly, and then shook his head.
‘I think not.’
‘Well then –?’
The gate remained between them, his hand still upon it, effectively, if in a most highly civilized manner, blocking her path, detaining her without laying a hand upon her as other men might have done. What could he want from her? With any other man she would have known.
‘Claire, perhaps I ought to mention …’
‘Yes?’
And looking swiftly upwards, what she saw in his face was a glint of humour, faint and fleeting perhaps, not kind, not charitable, spiked at its edges, no doubt, with probes that were as sharp as needles. But humour, nonetheless.
‘I had dinner at the Great Northern Hotel tonight with a group of businessmen and their wives – an annual occasion.’
‘Oh – did you?’
‘Unexpectedly, too, since I got back from London a day early.’
‘Oh – oh, yes?’
‘My own wife could not join me because she had a previous engagement. A pressing one I might add. With you, Claire.’
She closed her eyes.
‘I forget just where. But that hardly matters, does it?’
Her eyelids, slightly against her will, opened and she found, once again, that all she could see of him was a dense, overwhelming mass of shadow.
‘Benedict-’
‘Don’t trouble. She needed a quick excuse and she will have had no time to come and warn you. When she comes tomorrow there is absolutely no reason to disillusion her. So – wherever it is she decided you have been together this evening you may confirm it to me – should I happen to ask. Is that understood?’
Mesmerized, her head jerking forward like an obedient puppet on a chain, she nodded, her mouth opening to produce one hoarsely whispered word, ‘Polly?’
But, of course, as she ought to have known, he had thought of that.
‘Polly did not see me. And she wouldn’t dream of mentioning tonight’s little escapade to Nola. I shall manage to lecture her on the evils of drink and debauchery without mentioning your name, never fear. I shouldn’t worry about any of this you know. There’s really no need.’
‘No.’
He opened the gate.
‘Good night then.’ She walked through it, reached the door and then, fumbling with the lock, unable to turn it, dropped her keys with what seemed a mighty clatter on the path.
‘Oh damnation!’
The dense shadow that had this powerful, complicated man at its centre moved swiftly beside her, engulfed her, retrieved her keys and deftly unlocking the awkward, heavy door, held it open.
‘Good night, Claire. Remember – don’t worry.’
Yet, as she walked hurriedly, gratefully inside, leaving him behind her, two things loomed large in her stunned head to worry her. First – and perhaps foolishly – poor Nola, feeding her craving for excitement, and perhaps for much more than that, on deceiving this man who knew himself to be deceived and did not care. How cruel. And then, on the other side of the coin, how merciful. How tortuous. First Nola. And then herself, her own part in this sorry charade; the awful realization that Benedict, only the other night, had sat coolly at his dinner table and watched her lie to him.
Chapter Eight
The Crown Hotel opened its doors a week later to considerably less than universal applause, at least eighty per cent of Faxby, who could not afford its prices, greeting the event with complete indifference; the remainder divided between those who disapproved of new innovations, those who disapproved of everything, and a minority – small but persistent – who simply wished to reverse the bleak coin of the past few years and enjoy themselves.
There were no residents on that first evening apart from Nola’s cousin Arnold Crozier, wool merchant, property developer, bon viveur, a widower of few words and undistinguished appearance who had reminded Claire at once, and greatly to her discomfiture – since she had been warned to make herself very pleasant to him – of a benign and immensely shrewd black beetle. Yet the arrival of his Rolls had released the spring which set the hotel in motion, the doorman, a former sergeant of the Welsh Guards, descending the shallow marble steps with the air of a general to take charge of Mr Crozier’s car and luggage, followed by Kit Hardie himself, looking far better suited to the part of a millionaire than shrewd, shrivelled, sallow-complexioned, presumably lonely Arnold Crozier. They had walked into the lobby together, apparently deep in conversation, Kit Hardie saying exactly – and only – the things which, in his assessment, Mr Crozier would wish to hear. The receptionist, Mr Clarence, had exuded the charm for which Kit Hardie had engaged him. The housekeeper had accepted Mr Crozier’s compliments with an air of efficient yet somehow maternal dignity, giving the impression – as Kit Hardie had instructed her – that she genuinely
and deeply cared about the temperature of his bath, his supply of warm towels, the flask of iced water at his bedside, the positioning, to suit his exact convenience, of cushions and lamps. Young girls with bright fresh faces and handsome immaculate young men answered Mr Crozier’s bell throughout the duration of his stay, smiling, attentive, looking – as Kit Hardie had painstakingly taught them – as if nothing could delight them more than serving him tea, which he took every hour, replacing his ashtrays, which he filled as regularly, taking his telegrams to the post office, finding him a gardenia for his buttonhole, a copy of an Austrian newspaper, a manicurist who, it was noticed, stayed rather longer than anyone thought needful, a map of Northumbria, various railway timetables. Chef Keller, who admittedly had little else to do that evening, consulted him on the menu, serving in the otherwise deserted restaurant, a dinner of salmon trout on a bed of lobster mousse, chicken breasts poached in white wine with crayfish butter, and Mr Crozier’s favourite apple pancakes flamed in brandy. While the resident pianist, sloe-eyed, willowy, dandruff-free Miss Adela Adair, played soulfully and exclusively for Mr Crozier and his guests; his party consisting of his much-married brother, Bernard, whose wife would be expecting him home in Manchester no matter how late the hour; two stately yet accommodating ladies whose acquaintance with the Croziers did not appear to be recent; two more prosperous looking men of affairs, one bald, one hairy, and Nola.
They drank large quantities of champagne and three different clarets, Arnold Crozier being in the mood for claret that evening and declining, since he was paying the bill, all suggestions of ‘white with fish, red with meat’, even brushing aside the fears of Chef Keller that so robust a wine would swamp the delicate flavour of his salmon.
‘He who pays the piper,’ said Arnold Crozier in his dry little whisper, ‘calls the tune.’
‘Absolutely right, sir,’ murmured Kit Hardie, pouring the claret himself, making sure the glasses were no more than half full to leave space for the aroma to collect below their rim, beginning a pleasant discussion on the respective merits of Cháteaux Lafite and Latour while, at the same time, giving Claire a discreet signal to run down to the kitchen and pacify the chef.
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