The Colonel's Daughter

by Rose Tremain

  Henry then chose a bottle of fine claret and sat back, one hand on his stomach, the other holding his champagne glass. It’s not hard, he thought, to find ones little pleasures – just as long as one isn’t poor. He smiled at Lal.

  His work done for the evening, Larry took off his apron and hung it up. Only two tables had been occupied – not unusually for a Monday evening – and he hoped those few customers would leave early so that he could tidy up and go to bed. He sat down on one of his kitchen stools and took a gulp of the large whisky he had poured himself. But the whisky did nothing to lessen the pain Larry was feeling. The pain squatted there inside him, an undreamed-of but undeniable parasite.

  Even his hands which usually moved so lightly and quickly were slowed by the pain, so that he had kept his few customers waiting for their meal, waiting and growing impatient. I must go out, he thought wearily, and apologise. Not do my little round to hear any praise tonight, but just go out and apologise for the delay, for the gluey quality of the Madeira sauce, for cooking the veal too long . . .

  Larry sighed. He had said nothing to Myra or Moira. For three evenings he had kept going almost as if nothing had happened, so humbled and grieved by the turn his life had taken that he didn’t wish to find a word, not one, to express it, but rather held it in – held it so tightly inside him that no one could suspect how changed he was, how absolutely changed.

  If I can keep it in, he said to himself, then my body will assimilate it; it will become diluted and one day – perhaps? – it won’t be there any more. It will have passed through me – only the vaguest memory – and gone.

  ‘Bill for table four, Mr Partridge.’ Myra, carrying four empty wine glasses, came into the kitchen.

  Larry got off his stool and, taking his drink, shuffled over to the pine desk Edwin had provided for him at one end of the kitchen. He wrote out and added up the bill for a party of four – young people he had never seen before – and handed it to Myra.

  If they’re leaving now, Larry thought, then I don’t have to go, not to the strangers. I’ll wait till they’ve paid and gone and then I’ll go and have a word with the Barkworths.

  Larry liked Lal Barkworth. She looked at the world out of fierce brown eyes. Neither the eyes nor the body were still for long: only when something or someone managed to hold her elusive attention did she stop pacing and watching. Larry sensed that she tolerated him – as she seemed not to tolerate most people she met.

  But remembering her staring eyes, now he felt afraid of facing her – knowing that she of all people would see at once that something had happened, that his gestures were awkward, his mind slow.

  He refilled his whisky glass and sat motionless on the stool, waiting to hear the door close on the party of young people.

  When he heard them leave and Myra came back into the kitchen with their money on a saucer, Larry got off the stool and, without looking in the mirror Edwin had hung above his desk to see if his hair was tidy, wandered out into the dining room.

  Lal was sitting alone, smoking a cigarette. Forgetting for a moment that he had cooked two dinners, Larry wondered if she had come alone and had sat there all evening in silence. This sudden feeling of pity for her made him forget his pain just for an instant and smile at her. Lal smiled back.

  Larry noticed that her brown eyes seemed bereft of some of their sharpness, almost filmed over. So it’s all right then, he thought. She’s drunk quite a lot; she’s not seeing clearly, not into my mind – she won’t guess.

  ‘Hello, Larry dear.’

  ‘Mrs Barkworth.’ Larry held out a limp, hot hand and Lal touched it lightly.

  ‘I expect we’re keeping you up,’ she said.

  Larry looked round at the empty restaurant. ‘Monday night – no one at the feast! Washday doesn’t give one an appetite, I daresay.’

  ‘We had a good meal.’

  ‘Did you? Not one of my best, any of it. We all have our off nights, don’t we?’

  ‘Mine was very nice, Larry. I couldn’t eat it all, I’m afraid. I never seem to be able to, not when it’s something special. I used to eat well when I was young. Will you sit down Larry? Henry’s gone to the loo, he won’t be long.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I see. Well . . .’ Larry felt confused.

  He wanted to say: “I thought you’d come alone”, then realised that he’d cooked the veal for Henry Barkworth and here on the table of course were two wine glasses, two coffee cups.

  He sat, gulping his whisky. Over the rim of his glass he was aware of Lal watching him.

  ‘It isn’t the same!’ Larry blurted out.

  There was a moment’s silence; then Lal said: ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘Oh . . . you know . . .’ Larry couldn’t finish the sentence.

  To Lal’s amazement, he had begun to weep, making no effort to disguise or cover his crying, his face awash with tears.

  ‘Oh, Larry . . .’

  Larry took another drink from the whisky glass, then stammered: ‘I haven’t told anyone. I thought I could keep it . . . inside . . . I thought no one would need to know.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lal, quietly, ‘yes.’

  ‘But . . .’ Larry put a fist up to his eyes now. ‘I can’t. It just isn’t possible . . . when something like that . . .’

  ‘Is it something to do with Edward?’

  ‘Edwin. Edwin. That’s his name. Not Edward. He was never like an Edward. Only like himself, like Edwin. And we were so happy. We were just as happy – happier – than some people married. I thought we were. I thought I knew. And I never would have left him, never in my life, so how could he . . .?’

  Larry’s voice was choked with his sobbing. Facing him across the table, Lal’s body felt freezing cold. She reached out a hand and laid it on his arm. She was glad of the warmth of his arm under her cold hand. ‘If . . .’ she began.

  Larry looked up. ‘What?’

  ‘If . . . he had just gone for a while perhaps, for a kind of holiday, a break from routine, well then —’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But why then, Larry? Why should he leave you?’

  Larry pulled out a purple handkerchief and wiped his eyes. ‘He . . .’ Larry stopped, sucked at the whisky. ‘It was on Saturday. I had thought . . . because of the sunny day, we would have lunch out on the patio. I made us the lunch. Edwin was out. I didn’t know where because he didn’t tell me. So I made this nice lunch for us and waited for him.

  ‘But when he came back he said he didn’t want any lunch and I said: “Edwin, I made this for you and I opened a bottle of hock and thought we could sit out in the sunshine . . .’

  ‘He got into one of his rages. He wanted to get into a rage. He wanted me to do something silly like sulking over the meal so that he could rage at me and leave there and then. He tried to make me the excuse. He said he couldn’t bear it the way I always spoiled him and did things for him and then sulked if he didn’t like them, but I said: “Edwin, okay, I do that; I do that because I want you to like things and be happy with me, but that isn’t enough! You couldn’t leave, not for that.”

  ‘So then he had to admit – he had to admit that wasn’t it. He was drunk – got himself drunk on vodkas so that he could tell me. It’s someone called Dean, nineteen or something, no more than a kid. Edwin’s been sleeping with him. Whenever he goes out, that’s where he’s gone, to sleep with him. He says he can’t be . . . He says he’s obsessed with him . . . He says he can’t be without him.’

  Larry stopped talking. His sobs were only shudders now. Lal kneaded his arm. ‘Oh, Larry . . .’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he blurted. ‘I’m sorry to burden you.’

  ‘No, Larry, I’m the one who’s sorry, so sad, because I knew you had this – this precious kind of love. You see, I can’t do any more for anyone now, but I was once very strong because I loved. I was so strong! I’m too old now. I just turn away. That’s all I can do, isn’t it, when everything’s so ugly – just turn away. But you, Larry, you must fight to get him back
, to get your love back. Life is so hideous without love, Larry; it makes you want to die.’

  ‘Evening, Larry!’

  Henry, jovially wined and full, staggered to the table. ‘How’s tricks, then?’ he said.

  *

  Lal lay still. The meal lay in her stomach like a stone. Henry lay next to her, sweating a little as he snored.

  As quietly as she could, not wanting to wake Henry, Lal got out of bed and crept to the bathroom. She made up one of her indigestion powders and sat on the edge of the bath, watching the powder dissolve.

  When she had drunk it down, she belched and a little of the pain left her stomach, as if the stone had been blanketed by snow.

  ‘There won’t be another fifty, thank God,’ she whispered, staring at her empty glass; but even though she smiled at this thought, she found that a tear had slid down her cheek on to her lip. Lal sighed. ‘Oh, well,’ she whispered, ‘at least for once I’m not weeping for myself. I’m weeping for Larry.’

  Current Account

  ‘Bronze? I’m not as rich as I was.’

  The Princesse de Villemorin crossed her still estimable legs and glared at the sunset now faded to a luminous mauve that almost matched her high-heeled sandals.

  ‘People seem to think I’m immune from inflation. But no one is immune. Take just the servants. I’m paying them fifty per cent more than I was five years ago. So you see . . .’

  The princess turned and reached out a caressing hand. Discreet turquoise bangles gently clinked as the hand came to rest on Guy’s naked shoulder. The hand journeyed upwards, fingering the warm back of the neck, then tugging at the roots of hair so marvellously blond she privately compared it to the gold spun from flax in a fairytale she had long forgotten.

  ‘Please don’t be cross, darling.’

  ‘I need the bronze, Penelope.’

  ‘I know you do, but have you any idea what bronze in that kind of quantity costs now?’

  ‘You can afford it.’

  ‘Couldn’t you work in lead or metal or something? You hear of terribly successful sculptors making things out of old prams these days and showing them at the Tate.’

  ‘Not me.’

  ‘You don’t hear of anyone – except perhaps Henry Moore – working in bronze.’

  ‘Bronze is the only substance I can relate to.’

  ‘Substance? You make it sound like putty.’

  The princess’s hand tumbled as Guy rose and walked to the edge of the terrace. Beneath him, the garden lay in shadow, puffing its exotic breath at the encroaching dusk. He was aware, as he sighed, of Penelope on her chair, her body in its floating dress, her eyes watching, possessing, her thought: without my money he can’t work. Anger welled up, familiar yet absurd. One day, I will leave her.

  ‘Of course,’ came her silky voice, ‘you can have the bronze. Guy? Listen to me, darling. You can have the bronze. I’ll ring my stockbroker in the morning and arrange the money. It’s only that sometimes . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I wish you’d be more grateful.’

  Guy was silent, smelling the white flowers shaped like stars that climbed the terrace wall. His mind charged to her morning ceremonial, she exquisitely in place on her satin sheets, her body massaged and tremulous with its invitation, her eyes lidded with silver, sparkler-fizzing for the first touch of him. And the weight she demanded, the strength that had to clutch and devour so that her face lay buried in his neck, his dragon-panting fanning her hair, his sweat sucking his belly to hers, her deep and buried sigh of triumph as she used him up.

  I wish you’d be more grateful.

  *

  She is fifty-five. She is twenty-three years older than me. She could have borne me.

  The thought followed Guy from her bed to his studio. On entering the high room, he’d perch on a stool and will the thought to settle in the plaster dust, become obliterated in his work. Because here – only here – was he safe from her. This was Bluebeard’s room, the one the Princesse de Villemorin couldn’t enter. Once it had been a laundry. Far into the twentieth century, women had slapped and pummelled the soiled linen of the châtelaine on stones worn to glimmering. Now it held the quiet of his inspiration. Nothing moved in it but Guy and the straining forms imprisoned first in clay, then finally in bronze.

  As the sculptor worked, he chose to forget, if he could, the presence of the Princesse de Villemorin embarked upon the journey of each sumptuous day, little chiselled heels clacking over sunlight on her polished floors, voice dealing faultless instructions to the sallow-faced people she called les domestiques, pointed fingers rearranging a bowl of roses, fluttering from the roses to the rosewood bureau to gather the telephone, to pick up a gold pen and begin to notate in ruled columns, ankles crossed now, the body at peace with its arithmetic. I wish you’d be more grateful . . .

  She disturbs me. In every sense of this word, she is a disturbing woman. If she was French, she would disturb me less; it’s the Englishness staring out of her French name – the Princesse Penelope de Villemorin – that gives her away to me and makes me loathe where (I have vowed to my art) I must try to love. Yet she says she belongs to France now. When she snoozes in the afternoons, she has nightmares of the old prince her husband and the line of noble cousins, nephews (yet not children) dangling from his limbs to weigh him down with magisterial expectations and with a voice bleeting sorrow for the gravest of his failures, his bitter marriage. Mon dieu, mon dieu, an English divorcee and a Protestant, snickered the ancient trussed-up de Villemorin aunts. What a blow for the famille! What a muddying of the line! ‘I was married to him for eight years,’ said Penelope, ‘and that family taught me nothing except how to hate them.’

  Oh but they taught you how to value money! That was the legacy of the marriage, the one you used against them after the prince left you. Poor old prince, with his exquisite nails. He wanted to tear your flesh with his nails for squandering all that he gave you, for wasting it all, wasting his love. Yet he put on a clean silk shirt, tied his paisley tie from Simpson’s of Piccadilly, clicked his heels at eight years of marriage and walked out without touching you or seeing you again. And you squawked like a macaw for the best lawyers. You scented a fortune and it hung like a whiff of tar in solicitors’ rooms, crouched just out of sight in the creases of solicitors’ smiles. You knew you should get half. But the family fought you. All with their filbert nails and perfected manners, they fought you like cockerels. So you settled for a lump sum. You stopped sniffing the tar smell of ‘half’. The lump sum was more than enough.

  Or so you thought then, when it was you alone, Penelope – no longer a princess, but still calling yourself one – and moved in alone to your pretty château ‘with it’s own historical laundry and stabling for five cars’. But the years picked at it. Your own tastes became richer: the aloneness of you sought compensation. And the menopausal Penelope mourned the dying out of beauty. You touched the crevices of your body and remembered the gaudy kisses of the young. One night, you started going to the town in your Mercedes, drinking a crème de menthe in one of the bars and driving home with a young man’s head in your lap. For a while, the young men were cheap. And then, in the same bar, in the same way, I met you.

  *

  The butler, Maurice, announced dinner.

  Penelope adjusted the thin heelstrap of a mauve shoe and stood up. ‘Come on, Guy darling. Stop pouting and put your shirt on. I’ve told you, we’ll arrange for the shipment of bronze. I was only teasing about the old prams.’

  She held out her arm, waiting for his hand to steer her inside to the candlelit dining room, but he was fussing with his shirt, his face turned away from her.

  ‘Hurry up, darling. I want to talk to you over dinner, about Lorna.’

  ‘What about Lorna?’

  ‘I’ve got a letter from her, full of all her dull goings on in Australia. But it seems she’s coming to Europe and wants to see me.’

  ‘Why does she want to see you?’

&nb
sp; ‘Money, I suppose. Why else do stubborn daughters creep back to mothers they affect to despise? But God knows, on a teacher’s salary, how she can afford the airfare.’

  Guy tucked his shirt inside the pale blue trousers the princess had bought for him in Paris. There were moments, and this was one of them, when Penelope de Villemorin felt impaled by her own yearnings. Sainte Marie, let him never leave me.

  ‘Come along, Guy. Anita has made a soufflé and it will spoil.’

  So they sat close to each other in the pretty dining room and were served. Guy noticed, in between forkfuls of the soufflé, that Penelope had begun to economise on her wines: the Pouilly-Montrachet he had learned to expect had been replaced by a cheap local Loire wine. He longed to ask her suddenly precisely how rich she was. Tell me precisely, he wanted to say, how much money and what assets you own. But certain questions breed for a lifetime and are never uttered. He would ask her instead about the gallery.

  ‘The gallery?’

  ‘Yes.’ Guy wondered why she sounded surprised.

  ‘Well, what can I tell you? You know it all already. Our policy is sound in my view. We search for young painters and help them on their way. We create fashions.’

  ‘And your stake was half?’ The word never lost its particular meaning for the princess.

  ‘I believe it’s an excellent investment – and a lovely excuse to go to Paris more often! Of course, one could wish that returns were higher. It seems not enough collectors are prepared to take the financial risks on new artists.’

  ‘Art isn’t a commodity, Penelope.’

  ‘Oh no! I didn’t mean to imply that. But as you yourself know, it’s a very costly business. Art would simply not exist without the rich.’

  ‘Of course it would exist!’

  ‘Well exist, yes, but no one could live by it. Anyway darling, let’s not argue. There’s no earthly reason we couldn’t give you an autumn show at the gallery.’