Sue had nodded sympathetically, remarking that she’d never known anyone so snobbish.
Amy disagreed. To call Honoria a snob was like calling Alexander the Great a bit on the bossy side. The worshipful veneration she entertained for her position and that of her ancestors on the map of English history beggared belief. Amy thought she was a bit mad. Since her brother’s death Honoria had spent all her time fiercely tracing this blood line, fortifying every discovery with as much primary material as she—and now Amy—could discover.
Many cardboard boxes filled with rubber-banded index cards attested to a most assiduous ferreting out of information. A vast square of white card, weighted at each corner, was permanently unfurled on a large table where it was gradually being imprinted with the family tree. When this was complete Honoria planned to have the details transferred to the finest vellum, professionally calligraphed and illumined with gold leaf, whereupon it would be framed and hung in the main hall.
Amy had long tired of it all. She had wondered more than once how Honoria came by her obsession, for it certainly did not run in the family. Ralph (or Rafe as his sister still insisted on calling him) had been the least class conscious of men. He would talk to anyone and everyone in an easygoing and friendly manner. Unlike his sister he just liked people.
Honoria despised people. Especially the lower orders. ‘Unwholesome barbarians breeding like bacteria in their squalid little hutches’ was one of her less extreme descriptions. How her aristocratic spirit looked down on them! Barely civilised rabble.
Ralph had always laughed at this nonsense and could not understand why Amy didn’t do the same, but she found Honoria’s insistence on a ‘natural aristocracy of the blood’ far from funny. To Amy it seemed dehumanising, smacking of eugenics, born leaders and chilling attempts at social engineering.
‘Are you listening to me?’
‘Yes, Honoria.’
Amy sighed as she lied but was glad of the interruption. Every recollection of her husband could so easily tip her into a spiral of unhappy nostalgia. She tore open a plastic carrier and placed it over a tray of brown-bread cartwheels containing Primula cheese and asparagus tips. Honoria was still going on about the asparagus, even though the tin had been reduced to half price because it was badly dented. Amy had defended her purchase, saying everyone would be taking something special out of respect for the celebrity speaker.
‘Anyone would think he was a reincarnation of William Shakespeare,’ Honoria had grumbled, adding, ‘if there are any left make sure you bring them back.’
Amy finished arranging her second tray. Triangular sandwiches with the crusts cut off filled with cucumber and home-made mayonnaise. She would much rather have used shop-bought. Not only did it taste nicer but the consistency was much more satisfactory. This stuff either ran out in little puddles or seeped through the bread so it looked like mustard-coloured blotting paper. But Hellmann’s was deemed too costly.
‘People seem to be going mad,’ persisted Honoria. ‘Laura spoke of buying something from that ridiculously expensive pastry shop and Susan is baking a cake, no doubt full of the disgusting hamster food they all seem to thrive on.’
‘An iced carrot cake actually.’
‘He’s coming from the far side of High Wycombe.’ Honoria, already wearing an old Barbour, now rammed a tweed pork-pie hat over her short, straight, iron-grey hair. ‘Not the North Pole.’
‘Where are you going?’ asked Amy, meaning, as she always did, how long will you be?
‘Just to Laura’s.’
If Max Jennings was coming from the North Pole, thought Amy, shivering in spite of two jumpers, a cardigan, tights, leg warmers and ankle boots, he would certainly feel at home in Gresham House.
She went into the library, where Honoria, having finished work for the day, was letting the fire go out. Amy crouched over the smouldering grey-white remains and rubbed her frozen fingers. She wondered whether to go down to the cellar and kick the boiler. This was a voracious wood-burning contraption connected to iron skirting pipes which it was supposed to feed with hot water. There were two or three dials to be twiddled as an alternative to physical violence, but neither method was wholly satisfactory. The pipes never had more than the chill taken off. The water was never more than lukewarm.
Amy decided against it. By the time she had got down there and attacked the thing she could be in her room and writing. Never a day without a line had been Olivia Manning’s dictum and Amy tried her best to live by it.
Her novel, Rompers, was safely locked away in a shagreen hat box on top of the wardrobe. She had described it to the group, not untruthfully, as a family saga, but just what type of families they were and what sort of thing they got up to remained a secret between herself and Sue. Although the sexual shenanigans were pretty decorous compared to some bestsellers and although she had, so far, been unable to bring herself to use the ‘f’ word, which seemed to look so dreadful written down, there was still enough hot stuff sizzling in the rich and glamorous stew to give Honoria serious pause for thought. A process which might well lead to the conclusion that the loose-moraled person producing such unsavoury rubbish was not worthy to reside beneath the Lyddiard roof. And then, thought Amy, where would I go? A woman of forty, completely unskilled and without a penny to her name.
This was not Ralph’s fault even though, in the eyes of the world, he had not been a success. A sailor when Amy met him, she often thought it was a mistake that he left the service. But he was worried about abandoning her for long periods and she, of course, had missed him dreadfully. He had no special gifts and talents and, while not unintelligent, never really discovered what he was cut out for. With a legacy from his parents—Honoria got the house and a small annuity—he opened a second-hand bookshop. This failed, as did other idealistic ventures—growing olives in the Evvia, picture framing in Devizes. Finally, having almost exhausted the money, they bought a tiny cottage in Andalusia with an acre of stony soil and struggled towards some sort of self-sufficiency. It was during this period that Ralph became aware of the first signs of the cancer that was to cost him his life.
Stop it! Stop it! Amy shouted the words, forcefully vanquishing her beloved husband, the tiny ill-equipped Spanish hospital, Honoria’s enraged descent and the dreadful flight home. If she was going to write herself out of her present miserable existence she would not do it by endlessly picking over the past.
She took down the hat box, removed the manuscript and re-read the last three pages to get in the mood. She was not entirely dissatisfied. The prose seemed to her quite robust and she had been careful to keep out even the slightest hint of irony. But how would it come across, Amy now asked herself, under the hard commercial eye of a tough fiction editor?
At least this time round (for Rompers was her third attempt) she had got the social class and settings right. At first, when Sue pointed out that the quickest way to make pots of money was to write within a genre which she called ‘cuddling and buying things’, Amy had quite misunderstood. Her heroine, Daphne, a dental receptionist, had been shyly approached by a divinity student while selecting a cauliflower in Tesco’s. Now, stylishly renamed, she was wheeling and dealing in Hong Kong.
Amy chewed on her Biro. When she was just thinking above writing it seemed so easy. All sorts of jolly phrases leapt to mind. Pacy, beautifully shaped, packing a punch. But when the time came to deface the dreaded blank page they never seemed to belong in what she was working on.
Likewise individual scenes. Great fun to write; difficult to fit in to the grand overall scheme. Amy had wondered about missing this step out entirely. Why should not readers buy all the bits—perhaps in a prettily decorated box—and assemble them to their own designs in their own homes? After all, people did it with furniture. It could be a new trend. And publishers were supposed to be always on the lookout for originality.
Amy looked at her watch and gasped. Half an hour since Honoria had left. All that time wasted in sad recollection instead of wo
rking towards a better future. She seized her pen.
‘Damn, damn and damn again!’ cried Araminta saltily as she picked up Burgoyne’s latest fax with trembling lips.
Honoria cycled alongside the Green in solitary and deluded splendour, pursing her mouth savagely as she spotted a single Coca-Cola tin lying meekly on its side beneath the village notice board.
Powerfully present on the parish council, Honoria had so far fought successfully against the placing of a litter bin on, or even anywhere near, the beautifully maintained verdant oval. But if this sort of loathsome despoliation was to be the result she may well have to think again.
Without doubt the article in question had been thrown down by someone from the municipal dwellings. Although these hideous breeze-block buildings were placed, quite rightly in Honoria’s opinion, on the very edge of the village proper, the social pariahs housed within seemed to think they could go wherever they liked, shouting, playing music, revving their disgusting motor bicycles. In the summer they even swarmed all over the Green to watch the cricket, bringing pushchairs and picnics and hideous tartan rugs. If Honoria had her way the dozen or so council houses would be contained behind high wire fences and patrolled by armed guards.
She turned into the driveway of Laura’s cottage and dismounted by crossing one stout leg in front of the other and jumping down. She leaned her bicycle, a large old upright with a semi-circle of yellow oilskin laced over the back wheels and a fraying wicker basket, against the garage and tapped on the front door.
Honoria was there by invitation. At her own request Laura had been looking out for a stone figure to grace the Gresham garden’s clematis walk. She had rung the previous evening to say that a catalogue had arrived for a coming sale in Worcester containing pictures of some charming statuary. Perhaps Honoria would like to come and look at them? She suggested tea time the following afternoon, which was early closing at her shop.
Honoria rapped again, but no one came. She lifted the latch, which was very old, a highly polished brass heart with a lion’s paw handle, and the door opened. All was quiet but for the tock-tocking of Laura’s tall ebony grandfather clock. Honoria peered into the two tiny rooms opening off the hall then moved, silent on thick cherry-red carpet, towards the kitchen. As she approached she heard a most strange sound—a long, juddering, in-drawn breath as if someone was being severely shaken.
Honoria hesitated, not from nervousness but from an inbred aversion to tangling with any situation not proceeding along smoothly conventional lines. She also had a distaste verging on abhorrence for minding anyone’s business but her own.
She decided to open the door just a chink to see if she could discover precisely what was going on. Unfortunately the door creaked. Loudly. Laura, who was sitting at the table, her head resting on her arms, weeping, looked up. The two women stared at each other. It was impossible for Honoria to withdraw.
Laura must have been crying, surely, Honoria thought, for some hours. She was so used to seeing the other woman’s skilfully made-up face regarding the world with cool detachment that she hardly recognised her. Eyes so swollen as to be almost invisible, scarlet puffy cheeks, damp hair hanging any-old-how. And still in her dressing gown.
Rigid with mortified disapproval, Honoria struggled towards speech, for it was plainly impossible to say ‘excuse me’ and leave. That would have looked appallingly heartless and, although Honoria was appallingly heartless, she had no wish to bandy the fact between all and sundry. Really, she thought crossly, if people choose to behave in such a loose manner they might at least have the decency to do so behind locked doors.
‘My dear,’ she said, and the endearment sat as awkwardly in her mouth as an ill-fitting tooth, ‘what on earth is the matter?’
After a long pause Laura gave the reply people nearly always do in such circumstances. ‘Nothing.’
Strongly tempted to reply ‘Well, that’s all right then’ and leave, Honoria descended two glossy stone steps and drew a wheelback chair out over the blue slate tiles. She sat down, saying, ‘Is there anything I can do?’
Of all the bloody awful rotten luck. Laura cursed herself for forgetting to put the Yale back down after signing for a registered package. Of all the bloody awful rotten people to walk in. Laura had looked up only briefly, but once had been enough. Honoria’s prurient disengagement and passionate wish to be elsewhere were unmistakable.
‘No, honestly.’ She took a tissue from a nearly empty box, scrubbed her cheeks, blew her nose and dropped the soggy ball into a waste basket. ‘I get like this sometimes.’
‘Oh.’
‘I guess everyone does.’
Honoria stared in disbelief. She had been brought up under the strict understanding that a lady never displayed her emotions. Honoria had never cried, not even when her beloved Rafe had died and she had been split asunder with the pain of it. Not then or at the funeral or at any time afterwards.
‘Shall I make you some tea?’
‘Tea?’ God, she’d be here for the duration. Making it, letting it stand, pouring it out. Milk and sugar. Bloody biscuits. Go away, you horrible old woman. Just go away.
‘That’s very kind.’
Honoria filled the kettle and got milk, still in its carton, from the fridge. The teapot, a pretty piece of Rockingham covered with blue flowers was, to her relief, sitting on the side. She hated the idea of opening cupboards. Seeming to pry. Which meant doing without a milk jug. The silver-gilt caddie held Earl Grey bags.
‘Do you have bis—’
‘No.’ Laura had stopped crying but her face remained crumpled, this time with incipient crossness. ‘I eat them all so don’t keep them in the house.’
‘I see.’ Honoria was unsurprised at this further example of undisciplined dishevelment. ‘What a charming pot,’ she added, whilst waiting for the tea to brew. ‘You have such lovely things. I suppose it’s being in trade.’
Laura blew her nose again, this time more loudly, putting the tissue in the pocket of her dressing gown. Actually when the drink came she was glad of it, for she had taken nothing since after dinner the previous evening.
What was it, she wondered, about the making and proffering of this, the English panacea? No matter how appalling the occasion—a devastating accident, incipient bankruptcy or news of bereavement—the shell-shocked survivors were offered a cup of tea. And after all, thought Laura, aren’t I newly bereaved? Deprived forever of the hope that once sprang eternal.
She sipped the fragrant, steaming liquid. The deceit of him. The deceit. Such rectitude. The lonely widower nursing his loss in pious and dignified silence. Refusing all comfort. His whole life a lie. Laura crashed her cup down into the saucer.
Honoria, sitting bolt upright and already gripping her handbag very firmly, now held it up before her in the manner of a shield. Anxious both to justify her presence and to get away she reminded Laura about the catalogue, concluding, ‘Of course it doesn’t matter now. I can come back again.’
‘Oh! Don’t do that.’ Laura sprang up with uncomplimentary speed. ‘I’m sure I know just where they are.’
She ran upstairs to her second bedroom, which doubled as an office, and started sorting through her in-tray. The catalogue wasn’t there. Or in the desk. Or in the Garden (Design) file. About to check her briefcase she remembered that she had been flipping through the thing the previous evening in the sitting room. And that was where she found it, in the magazine rack.
‘I’ve ticked the ones I thought might be suitable.’ Laura re-entered the kitchen. ‘There’s no hurry to bring it back. The sale isn’t for six weeks.’ She paused. ‘Honoria?’
Honoria jerked her head round suddenly as if she had been dreaming. She rose and took the catalogue without looking at Laura. Her lips, always of a censorious set, seemed even more rigidly clamped than usual. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes burned with a cold puritanical fire. Laura was glad when the front door closed behind her. And it wasn’t even as if anything would come of it. This was
n’t the first time such an idea had been mooted. Honoria was far too mean to spend five pounds, let alone five hundred.
It was when she was once more sitting at the table wondering whether to start crying again or make some fresh tea that she noticed the photograph. About half an hour before Honoria arrived Laura had removed it from its silver frame beside her bed and dropped it in the waste basket. Since then a certain amount of tear-soaked Kleenex had gone the same way but the picture was not quite concealed. Gerald’s face was still visible, smiling through the sog.
Had Honoria seen it? Seen it and filled in the missing links, crossing the ‘t’ in romantic and dotting the ‘i’ in despair. Laura raged at her own carelessness in forgetting the picture was in there. At Honoria for barging in. And at Gerald for being Gerald. Impelled by a mixture of anger and disgust she tipped the contents of the basket into the Raeburn and was immediately and bitterly sorry.
Rex was on the point of starting work. He had thoroughly masticated some bran and prunes, trotted his dog three times round the houses, taken fifty deep breaths in front of an open window and washed his hands. This last was of vital importance. Rex had seen a television interview once with a famous screenwriter during which the man had expressed great reverence for his hands, repeatedly referring to them as ‘the tools of his trade’. They were insured for huge amounts of money, ‘like the feet of Fred Astaire’, and the screenwriter washed them thoroughly each morning, using only the finest triple-milled honey and glycerine soap. After being carefully rinsed in spring water they would be patted dry with a virginally white, soft, fluffy towel kept pristine until that very moment beneath a sealed wrapper. Only then did the celebrated inkslinger even think of approaching his state-of-the-art computer.
Rex had been terribly impressed by the man’s faith in this ritual and straight away claimed it for his own. He knew the importance of routine. All the How To Succeed As A Writer manuals, of which he had practically every one extant, stressed it. Rex started work at eleven a.m. precisely. Not a minute later, not a minute earlier. There was a transistor on his desk to make sure he got it right. As the pips started he picked up his pen. By the time they finished he had written his first sentence. So vital was this procedure that if anything happened to disrupt it he never really recovered. He completed his two thousand words of course (writers write), but nevertheless felt peculiarly out of sync all day.
Death in Disguise Page 40
