Therefore, since many people would prefer not to be seen at the Gamecock, it was considered good taste, good manners not to look. Yet as they walked into the bar a woman, emerging from shadow across the room, called out ‘Benedict – how very nice.’
Was it then?
She was tall, not young to Claire even though she knew better than to underrate the charm of mature women like this one who, accustomed to the command of large households and the spending of a husband’s income, were imperious, elegant, superbly dressed.
‘Edwina,’ he said, what a surprise.’ And he went over to greet her, holding her in a familiar embrace. Not passionate of course. Claire noted that. But Edwina Challoner who was thirty-nine and exceedingly well-married, did not expect passion from a man she had known for ten years, during which he had been her lover for several short, highly civilized periods, each one of them beginning most agreeably and ending entirely without rancour. If, indeed, they could be said to have ended, for on no occasion had either one of them felt deeply enough or found it in any way necessary to speak the dramatic words ‘We must part’. Other things had simply and quite naturally intervened. Social obligations. Business commitments. The claims of family and one’s other friends. She had spent last winter in Egypt, for instance, on account of her husband’s bronchitis and had certainly not expected a man like Benedict Swanfield to be available when she returned. She was, at present, rather heavily committed herself. Yet, just the same, she was rather more than surprised to see him in the company of a girl like Claire. A ‘flapper’ no less, in Edwina Challoner’s view, with her short hair, her legs crossed high as she sat down calmly on a bar stool showing her knees and lighting her own cigarette: thin as a stick, or slender as a reed, of course, should one wish to be charitable, a temptation to which Edwina Challoner, when it came to ‘flappers’, did not succumb. And although she did not want Benedict herself – not just now – the sight of this far too obviously modern girl, smoking her cigarette with the matter-of-fact enjoyment of a man, obscurely worried her. All Edwina Challoner’s affaires had been with men like Benedict Swanfield; wealthy, influential, hot-blooded, cold-hearted, discreet. All his affaires, she’d assumed, since several of them involved her own acquaintances, had been with women like herself. And, with the approach of her fortieth birthday, she could only view with alarm any indication that the tastes of one of her ‘circle’might be veering in this odd direction.
She put her mouth close to his ear, looking over his shoulder at Claire who was very deliberately not looking at her. ‘Darling,’ she murmured, ‘quite a poppet, of course. But really – one might almost call it corruption of our tiny tots.’
He laughed, his arm still casually around Edwina’s shoulders, a laugh which, had Claire been able to hear it, she would not have recognized.
‘My sister-in-law, darling.’
Edwina laughed too, leaning against him.
‘Benedict! You wicked creature. Your brother’s wife. How very – well – how Biblical.’
‘Among other things. You must meet her.’ And he spoke the words as if they – or some possibility they contained – had just occurred to him. ‘Yes, Edwina. It might – interest her – to see me in another light. It might even do her good. Come and meet her.’
‘Benedict dear,’ she said, knowing him as well as anybody, ‘what are you up to?’ And then, because whatever it was, it was hardly likely to hurt her, she brushed her cheek against his and smiled. ‘I’m just dying to, darling. But before I do you must meet my friend. You don’t know Lois Chiltern do you?’
‘I don’t think so.’ But his greeting for the woman who now held out a large, well-manicured hand to him, puzzled the by no means insensitive Edwina. Not warm precisely but oddly satisfied, rather as if this friend of hers, this beautifully plucked and painted but otherwise quite unremarkable Lois Chiltern might be the very thing he needed.
And so, when he returned to Claire a few moments later there were two women beside him, Edwina very dark, Lois very blonde, with nothing more than that – Claire at once decided – to tell them apart, the same long athletic limbs used to walking their dogs and riding to hounds, the same loud, toneless voices which they used to effect when opening their local flower show, the same diamonds on strong fingers, the same unshakeable self-confidence. They were groomed to the shining perfection of race-horses, had wonderful clothes, Edwina a dark mink, Lois a pale one, which they wore casually, arrogantly, around broad shoulders decorated with diamond brooches like military medals.
‘Shall we have lunch together?’ suggested Benedict.
‘Lovely idea,’ in chorus. And Claire, sliding down from her bar stool, displaying her legs – all she had to display – instead of diamonds smothered her disappointment with a smile.
Did she lose him then? Or was that the first moment of suspicion and unease, a warning that this sense of alienation, of being totally among strangers, would not only continue but increase.
In the dining room they out-manoeuvred her, or thought they had, although she knew that if Benedict had wanted to sit beside her he would quite simply have done so. But instead he allowed Edwina to take his arm and lead him to the table, Lois close behind, and sat down between them not even glancing at Claire as she sat in the remaining chair, placed somewhat awkwardly for conversation. Not that she could have taken any part in it, in any case, since it was a deliberate – entirely deliberate, she felt – recital of the dinner parties and bridge parties, the amorous in-fighting, the marital deceptions of a series of men and women Claire did not know and did not care to know, which lasted through the soup, the turbot, the roast duck, terminating with the pears in red wine when Benedict, turning quietly but very definitely towards Lois, made some remark or other in a low tone to which she replied with an excited chuckle, a satisfied intake of breath. And thereafter, through the cheese, the coffee and brandy, he talked to Lois, her blonde head close to his, her pale fur still thrown negligently around her shoulders, her large, light blue eyes watching his mouth and not listening to a word since she knew, from long experience, what he was really asking and had already decided on her answer.
Claire knew it too. Yet, in that critical, hostile company she could not afford to feel anything about it. At all costs she must remain smiling and calm, must let nothing show. Yes. He was hurting her, punishing her, and in a quite masterly fashion, with a kind of deadly brilliance which took the breath from her body like a foul, physical blow. And the only defence she could think of was to pretend not to notice, to go on smiling until her cheeks ached, to go on producing some trite little remark every time Edwina took pity on her and asked for one.
‘Do you play bridge, dear?’
‘Oh no. I couldn’t sit still long enough.’
‘What a pity. Benedict plays superbly.’
What game was he playing now? Edwina felt inclined to ask herself that question too, wondering just what there might be in beautiful, brainless Lois to arouse the desire – and so obvious too – of a discerning man like Benedict, who was not in the habit of behaving so amorously; not in public, at any rate. And the answer came to her quite suddenly, as she was making up her mind between Roquefort and Brie. Nothing. It was not Lois at all. How could it be? There had been a dozen women like Lois in his life, white marble statues with wide blue eyes and not a great deal behind them, and watching as he went through the motions of losing his head over this one, she did not believe it.
‘Do you ride, dear?’ she asked Claire, quite kindly.
‘A little – when I was at school.’
And watching him too, feeling with every humiliated inch of her own body the raw sensuality that was brewing, thickening, over-heating between him and this woman who seemed half-naked already in spirit, she went on smiling.
After all, in a dreadfully twisted and perverted fashion, he was giving her exactly what she had asked for. She had wanted to see him in different surroundings, to discover another facet of his nature. Very badly she had wanted
that. But this calculated charmer, this out-and-out sensualist, this sophisticated, cold-blooded man who slept with these horsy women not in affection but as an exercise in sexual expertise, was a man she did not like. Did he know that? Fervently she hoped so.
The meal eventually would be over. That much was certain and she thanked God for it. It ended. They stood up to leave, Claire feeling small and shabby, wondering why she had ever imagined that her youth alone could really compete with all this well-groomed hauteur any more than her plain wool coat against Lois’s mink.
‘I must start giving my bridge dinners again,’ said Edwina. ‘I shall rely on you, Benedict. You’ll just have to get into the habit of hopping over the Pennines again, as you used to. Charles will be so pleased.’
And kissing him with a calm, deliberate relish, she took Claire’s arm and walked her briskly away, allowing Benedict all the time he needed to make his arrangements with Lois.
She got into the car and waited while he assisted them, one on each arm, across the frozen yard to their car, Lois looking undeniably magnificent wrapped like an empress in her pastel furs, what looked like several yards of blonde hair bound intricately around her head, a heavy, probably quite glorious bosom which Polly would have declared old-fashioned but which few men of Benedict’s temperament would be likely to despise. Very far from that. And closing her eyes she began, with the strength and the cruelty of desperation, to shut off her sources of tenderness, pride, affection, caring, loving, suffering – particularly that one and the one before it – numbing them, squeezing them into a state of precarious non-being until – as soon as possible – she could be alone with them.
‘Benedict dear,’ said Edwina, detaining him a moment once Lois was in the car, ‘I am not deceived you know.’
‘Are you not?’
‘Definitely not. You were very brutal with that poor girl, you know.’
‘Yes, Edwina. I know.’
‘You won’t tell me why, of course?’
‘Darling – you must know me better than that.’
She smiled and slipped her arm through his, rather pleasurably aware of the two other women watching them through separate car windows, the suffering, oddly appealing girl who had been so publicly abandoned, and beautiful, bovine Lois who – Edwina felt sure of it – had been used.
‘All right then,’ she told him, ‘let me guess. I think one can take it that our little Claire will never want to see you again?’
He smiled. With some difficulty, she thought.
‘More than that, Edwina. She ought to consider herself well rid of me. Wouldn’t you?’
And realizing that he wanted to know she glanced at him keenly.
‘Good Heavens – Benedict! – can one believe it? I could see at once that she was fond of you and probably needed discouraging. Too young, of course, to take these things – well – as reasonably as we do.’
She paused a moment, frowning, working it out. ‘Well – what can that mean, Benedict? Unless it should be that you don’t want to lose her at all. One quite sees, in that case, that you’d have to break it off in such a way that it couldn’t be mended. No going back. Goodbye for ever. And the girl thinking you an absolute bastard into the bargain so she wouldn’t cry too long. My dear – it looks to me as if you care about that girl.’
‘Well – shall we say the danger existed. And one simply could not let it get out of hand, could one, Edwina my darling?’
She shook her head and taking her large, jewelled hand he gave it a companionable squeeze. ‘Ah well – let’s put it down to old age, shall we? I was forty yesterday. A difficult time of life, they say. And I really think my sister-in-law has suffered enough. She ought not to be involved for too long with a man like me. I thought I’d better see to it.’
Returning the pressure of his hand she kissed him lightly on the cheek, realizing that in their ten years of casual lovemaking she had never felt so close to him before.
‘Benedict – how devilish of you.’ Brave too, although she knew better than to tell him that. And generous. He had made the girl suffer now in the hope that, in the long term, she would suffer less. Noble, really. One would never have thought of it. It had taken a great deal out of him too. Really – how very tired he looked.
‘Do come to dinner, darling,’ she said. ‘Next Thursday, perhaps?’ She felt fairly certain that Lois would be over by then.
He was smiling as he drove out of the inn yard and up the narrow moorland roads which were already disappearing beneath the snow; the afternoon fading into a damp, misty grey.
‘Nice women, those two,’ he said.
‘Nice?’
‘Obviously you didn’t think so.’
‘Well – a little – elderly – weren’t they, Benedict. Passée, in fact, it rather seemed to me.’
He laughed, not pleasantly, but as if her remark had given him satisfaction.
‘My dear child – don’t underestimate the appeal of the older woman. And don’t believe all she has to offer is gratitude. Enthusiasm, perhaps. Certainly expertise, which counts for a great deal.’
‘I’ve never had much to do with older women, Benedict. So I’ll leave you to judge.’
‘Very wise.’
He allowed a mile or two to go by.
‘What time,’ he enquired politely, ‘would you like me to take you back to town?’
She smiled at him sweetly, as she had smiled at Edwina a little while before, her whole body ice-cold.
‘Oh,’ and she sounded very nonchalant ‘if we call at the farm to get my bag, you can take me now.’
The farmhouse was warm and very quiet. Her bag was ready, neatly packed by Mrs Mayhew, and she picked it up, her hands quite steady. She would not be coming here again. Whether he had decided that in advance or had simply taken the opportunity of Lois and Edwina as it came, she did not know. But the result was the same. It had happened sooner than she had wanted. It was happening in a manner which, she knew, when she relaxed her control, would give her pain: a manner which would remove every vestige of her pleasure in him, every shred of illusion. She probably would not like him very much after today. But, since it had to happen eventually, perhaps it would be easier to remember him with Lois, with Edwina, to remember him as they knew him, as she had seen him for the first time and – she hoped – the last time, today.
Catching sight of the lily bowl sitting serenely on an inlaid table by the fire she was not sure whether she wanted to snatch it up into her arms and protect it or smash it into pieces against the hearthstones.
‘Goodbye, Mrs Mayhew. Thank you.’
She got into the car. Very soon now it would be over. The sooner – for so many reasons – the better.
‘I suppose they are your standard types, are they, Benedict – Lois and Edwina?’
He smiled. And once again she felt that she had given him a cue.
‘I suppose they are. But I diversify, of course, from time to time – as you know. Everyone should.’
‘Oh – should they? I’ll remember that.’
‘Yes, do. But you haven’t found your type yet, Claire. One always goes back to it.’
‘And for you that’s Edwina, or Lois. Or both.’
‘Not both together, darling. They have their principles.’
He had never called her darling before. And inserted into that deliberately suggestive phrase it offended her. No, she didn’t like him. Not like this. And if this was the truth of him, which she had looked so hard to find, then he had used her very coolly, very finely, very cleverly indeed. She didn’t blame him. She blamed herself.
It was conveniently dark when they reached Mannheim Crescent and leaning across her he opened the door, an indication of haste, no time to spare in leave-taking.
‘Here we are, Claire.’
‘Yes.’
And, this being the moment when they usually made their arrangements to meet again, there was an awkward pause.
‘What shall we say then, Claire?’
/>
‘I don’t know. Anything you like.’
‘Perhaps it had better be lunch on Sunday at High Meadows – don’t you think so?’
‘Yes. I think so.’
She got out, and he drove away.
‘You’re back early,’ said Euan. ‘How did he like his lily bowl?’
‘Very much. It was a great success.’ She was friendly, very calm.
‘Thank God you’re back,’ said Kit, ‘Clarence’really does have the ‘flu.’ And look here, Claire, I’m sorry about yesterday – making you late and being a swine generally …’
‘That’s all right, Kit. I wasn’t late. And it wouldn’t have been that important anyway.’
She was cheerful, friendly, calm.
She saw no point in being otherwise. She would not allow herself to be otherwise until, returning the following evening from the Crown, she found waiting on her doorstep a stiff, florist’s arrangement of hothouse flowers, expensive, impersonal, even a little ostentatious, bearing a glossy white card with the printed name ‘Benedict Swanfield’and a scrawled message which might have said ‘In Memoriam’ but, actually read ‘Good luck. Many thanks.’
And, gathering up the innocent, overbred, overpriced blooms in savage hands she took them into the backyard and murdered them, shredding them one by one into the dustbin and then rammingon the lid, holding it down so that no particle of anything she had ever felt, or thought she had felt, about Benedict Swanfield could ever escape.
Thank God it was over. Thank God. She had been on the verge of falling in love with him. And now she could only regard it as a disease from which she had been cured just in time. A terrible disease. And what stung – what scorched – was what a gullible, romantic fool she had been.
Chapter Thirteen
Polly Swanfield set out, deliberately and exuberantly, on New Year’s Eve to create a sensation; to drink more champagne, eat more Russian Caviar or foie gras or anything else that was rare and expensive, to steal more kisses, arouse more desire in the loins of men and more jealousy in the breasts of women than anyone else in Faxby. Wearing a slip of orange satin covered in gold and silver butterflies with a transparent overskirt of gold-spangled orange tulle, her long bare arms jangling gold bracelets from wrist to elbow, a rope of gold beads swinging wildly around her neck, the stroke of midnight found her on the little postage stamp dance floor of the Crown Hotel, dancing alone with a circle of men around her, improvising her own tipsy ballet to a blare of smoky jazz, her eyes glazed with alcohol and an inner vision of her own glorious, still virgin body as it bent and swayed to each man in turn, her movements amorous and coy both together; ‘making an exhibition of herself’thought Miss Sally Templeton from the table where Roy Kington had once again abandoned her; ‘looking for trouble’thought Miss Adela Adair from her piano stool; ‘quite likely to find it’thought Claire from behind the bar where, the whole raucous night long, she had been assisting MacAllister with his cocktail shaker.
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