A Desirable Husband (11 page)

As they walked out into the garden through the east door, Anatole said: ‘Fin, I’ve been worried about you. Are you quite happy?’

‘Oh, you mustn’t worry, I’m fine! But you must come down often, Anatole. Gerard’s awfully fond of you both. So you will come often, won’t you?’

He took her arm and patted it. ‘Yes, I will. We both will, if that’s what you want.’

When Miranda entered Darcy’s house on Trumpington Street, she was surprised to find it chaotic. She knew that he had money, and that his former wife, like his mother and herself, had been a competent woman of taste.

Isabel’s decoration of the house she found too modern and too cold, but elegant. It was spoiled by the mess, which lacked any unworldly charm: the dust and the piles of magazines, and discarded clothes. There were dead flowers and dirty ashtrays in the sitting-room, and the sofa looked as though five people had sat on it a month before, and no one had touched it since. She wondered what his bedroom looked like, but he did not take her upstairs directly.

‘Darcy, don’t you have a daily woman or something?’ Miranda was a little tired by the delays of her journey by train, and the chatter they had both made coming from the station.

‘No. We did have a char
and
a cook who came in every day, but I’m afraid since Isabel left neither of them cares to carry on working for me.’

‘Do you cook for yourself?’ she said, thinking that Isabel must have paid all the bills.

‘When I don’t eat in college.’

‘Dear me. You do need the love of a good woman, don’t you?’

‘I know. It’s a pity you’re married.’ They smiled a little and looked away. This was the first visit Miranda had ever made to Cambridge; they had met before in London or, the one time, at Combe Chalcot Manor. ‘I rather thought you’d
like a little touch of squalor. A contrast to your glamorous existence,’ said Darcy.

‘Why?’

‘I thought it might remind you of your bohemian youth.’

Miranda had spoken to Darcy with teasing affection of the two years she had spent with Finola’s parents, and of the little Finola Molloy.

‘Oh, no. I don’t know that I really want to be reminded. And besides, that wasn’t like this, that house was lived in.’

Darcy had never seen the house in Bramham Gardens, but he thought he could imagine, and said so.

A soft white light of fine September lay in a streak across the dirty carpet, and illuminated Miranda.

‘Well,’ said Darcy, after a moment’s studying her profile, and feeling that they could not make love after all, ‘what are we going to do now, Miranda?’

She turned, with one hand on the fat pleat of her hair. ‘You’re going to take me in a punt, darling, because I’ve never been in a punt even at Oxford, it was always pouring for some reason when I went up to see people when I was young.’ Darcy’s mouth opened, and she carried on, smiling. ‘And then you’re going to show me King’s Chapel, and the Mathematical Bridge, and anything else one ought to see, and –’

He responded: ‘Darling, absolutely not! No, do have pity, Miranda. I absolutely draw the line at King’s Chapel.’

‘It’s not term time. There won’t be any undergraduates.’

‘You never know who may be up. I can’t be seen alone in a punt with a fascinating young creature at my age, really I can’t. Everyone would think I was trying to show off and you were really my niece or something frightful. No, Miranda, I’ll show you my rooms in college, that’ll be quite enough.’

‘Your flattery is really very crude, Darcy,’ she said, holding out her hand. She liked being four years his elder.

He took her by the arm and pushed up her chin and kissed her, to make everything seem even more suddenly delightful.

*

Miranda ran her fingers through the water of the Cam as Darcy, who punted quite well but without great pleasure, pushed them under a tree. The water there was olive-brown and dusty and looked warmer than it was.

‘We’re going to have a rest,’ he said. ‘And darling I am
not
taking you to Grantchester.’

‘Is-there-honey-still-for-tea?’ said Miranda, who was lying back on one uncomfortable cushion with a pleased look on her face. ‘No, I suppose there’ll be too many tourists.’

A rowing boat splashed past them, full of young men in college scarves making a noise. Miranda observed, before Darcy could say anything acid about quoting such a commonplace, that she had always been glad in many ways that she had never tried to go to university.

‘You decided to devote your life to Fashion instead, didn’t you?’ said Darcy in a serious voice.

‘
Chic
, not fashion,’ said Miranda, opening her eyes.

‘The pursuit of elegance, tolerance and wit.’

She closed her eyes again: she did not want to talk.

Darcy made the punt rock as he sat down on its floor and looked at her, and thought of how she did not care that, when lying on her back, she displayed a neat double chin. Though her face was strong, the face of a handsome, well-kept woman of forty, its colouring and expression reminded Darcy of a miniature picture of a delicate young girl with fair hair dressed in the style of the eighties, which he had seen on a table at Sedley Warren. In a sentimental moment when there had been nothing much to say, he had mentioned this and she had laughed, enchanted. She had said that the portrait must have been that of her Aunt Sophie, whom all the family said had been on the point of marrying Sir Francis Warren when she ran away with a doctor. Miranda had told him that her aunt had had a reputation for being a most hardened flirt and careless of affection: ‘Very, very like me.’

Darcy edged his feet towards hers. He had not seen Miranda since May, when she had first agreed to sleep with him, for she had spent most of the summer in France. She
had not made time for him on her trips to London to visit her shop in Bruton Street, where Darcy had been four times, and bought nothing. She was a talented designer of materials and quite a busy woman, and he supposed she was frightened of falling in love with him. He believed that a horrible adventure in her youth had turned her from a proud and passionate girl into a woman who thought little of taking lovers; but she never told him anything at all.

Another punt passed them, beyond the hanging branches of their tree, and its occupants bothered to glance at them. Darcy thought he really was too old to lie down beside Miranda, let alone on top of her.

‘Shall we go back up-river?’ she said.

‘Is it up-river or down? I’ve
never
known,’ he replied, startled by her voice.

‘If we’d brought an oar,’ said Miranda, ‘I could row us.’

‘There’s an oar beside you. Bad luck.’

‘Oh, darling.’ She sat up, and blinked at the oar. ‘Come on, then.’

Miranda used the oar with vigour, swapping from side to side and splashing the floor of the punt. She seemed to be taking an amused interest in her second sight of Queens’, King’s and Trinity, Magdalene and John’s: she was thinking that very few undergraduates must enjoy this sort of thing. The sky was lowering, and it was growing colder, and she did not think Cambridge beautiful in comparison with Paris, though she liked being in a punt with Darcy and wondering about those who could manage to live there.

It was not yet Full Term, but as Darcy had said, several undergraduates were up. In Sidney Street, Miranda noticed a worried-looking girl, with hair curled like the new Queen’s and a very bad skin, hurrying along in a wet cotton dress with a pile of folders under her arm. She said, shouting as a car ran past: ‘Darcy, have you ever had an affair with an undergraduette?’

‘“Undergraduette”’ is journalese
and
out of date,’ he said. Miranda was wearing Darcy’s mackintosh, and he was very cold, and dripping.

‘I apologise. But do tell me.’

‘No, I have not.’ He had always waited until after the girl’s graduation, if his liking for her lasted so long. They marched down towards St. Andrew’s Street, and through the gate of Christ’s.

Darcy was a Fellow of Christ’s College, and there he had a fine room with tall windows, lined with the coloured and uneven spines of books. It was both comfortable and tidy, as Trumpington Street was not, and it was furnished with a mixture of good pieces from Combe Chalcot and battered college things. When she entered the room, Miranda could believe that Darcy really was an academic, and not an erudite joker. Nothing seemed to indicate that he might be unhappy: she would not let him see she was impressed, for she thought it would not be good for him.

*

Miranda lay back in her armchair and smiled at the handsome undergraduate of twenty-three who was making sure she was quite comfortable by lighting her cigarettes. He handed her a drink, and spilt a little of it on her frock, which she told him was quite all right.

She was not put out at being in a room with four men and no other women: she knew quite well that she could not be a nuisance, and she liked to listen; and sometimes to make a brief remark which turned charmed attention to herself, but not for too long. In Paris she was a famous hostess, and people said she ran what was almost a salon.

The handsome undergraduate, who had been the last to join the party and had not yet spoken directly to her, leant towards Miranda and said:
‘Vous
n’étiez
jamais
à
l’université
vous-même,
madame?’

‘You don’t
have
to talk French,’ she said. She cultivated the slightest French accent in England. ‘And no, I never was. I find all this quite fascinating, I only wish Darcy could have arranged for me to dine at High Table.’ He was to take her to a restaurant, before they returned to Trumpington Street, and it was now eight o’clock.

‘Oh, what a pity!’

She had heard Darcy make the most brisk and cheerfully appreciative remarks about an article which this undergraduate had submitted to the
Cambridge
Review,
and she had been almost annoyed by his speaking in a way so unfamiliar. He was now talking about College domestic arrangements with a second and equally good-looking undergraduate: listening to them was Winston Lowell, who had come up for the night, and whose face Miranda thought she recognised. This was not unusual; she went, she reflected, to so many parties.

‘So, is Darcy a good tutor –
supervisor
?’ she said to the boy on her right. She had taken in neither undergraduate’s name.

‘What can I
say
?’

‘I’m the best supervisor in the university, it’s why I’m tolerated,’ said Darcy. ‘Isn’t it, James? Oh, and if we’re going to talk more shop in spite of you, Miranda, I’ll tell you that I was more than shocked to see that you’ve been writing for
Scrutiny,
Lowell. So-called reviews.’

‘It’s an excellent institution,’ said Winston, whose hands were crossed behind his head. He had been thinking about Miranda, whom he knew Alice Molloy had loved. She had not told him that, he had guessed from her discretion. ‘What
would
you do without it?’

‘A journal edited by Leavis,’ said Darcy, speaking in a bored voice but enjoying himself under the affectionate gaze of the undergraduates, who had heard all this before, ‘could
only
be a rag of the lowest type.’ He added, looking at his fingernails: ‘The other day I was standing
just
behind Leavis on Trinity Bridge, beautifully placed you see and, oh, the temptation.’ Miranda reflected that Darcy was certainly strong enough to throw a man over a bridge: the wounded arm which had kept him in the Home Guard from the time of Dunkirk had healed entirely long ago.

‘So actually your dislike’s just personal?’ said James.

‘Nonsense,’ said Darcy.

Winston Lowell filled a pipe and lit it, and by this gesture Miranda was reminded of Anatole Brécu. She remembered
that she had met Winston at a party of Finola Parnell’s in April: her farewell party, given a week before Egerton Gardens was put up for sale.

‘Of course it may be
true
that you’ve only got to compare
Lady
Chatterley’s
Lover
with – with the tiger-skin woman’s
Three
Weeks
to see how awful it is, but was it wise to say so, in front of Leavis?’ said the other undergraduate.

Miranda smiled at the two bold young men.

‘What do you think, Madame de Saint-Gaël?’ said Winston suddenly.

‘I don’t know,’ said Miranda. ‘I don’t suppose he would
print
a remark like that. Would you, Darcy?’

‘There are limits,’ he agreed, looking at her.

The talk moved in and out of university shop. Darcy stood in front of his fireplace, drinking whisky, dressed in very old, elegant tweeds with a dirty handkerchief protruding from his sleeve. Miranda, who believed that men in general were incapable of sincere love for women, had an idea that Darcy had had a most upsetting affair with some person when he was very young. She did not intend to ask him about this, nor did she want to speak of her own affairs. She supposed that at dinner she might ask about his children, whose names she did not know, and who were living now with their maternal grandmother. It would not be politeness; she wanted to know, for she had always had strong views on children. Her own three sons were all far older than Darcy’s: two were at the Lycée in Paris, and the eldest was doing his military service. She was fond of them all, but she wished before each birth that the child would be a daughter, someone to whom she could talk about England, her childhood and the strange time at Bramham Gardens.

She had not had a love affair with an Englishman since 1938, and she had never thought to have one with an affected scholar whose body was both vigorous and clumsy. She was surprised by how much Darcy touched her, and how old he made her feel.

Just as she realised that she was the oldest person present,
as well as the only woman, the two undergraduates got up to go.

‘Such nice boys,’ said Darcy when the door closed behind them.

‘Yes, they were charming,’ said Miranda.

‘I’m afraid they work too hard, it’s always the same with the ones who’ve done their National Service.’

‘It was different, of course, before the war,’ said Winston. ‘By the way Parnell, I meant to ask you, how are your brother and sister-in-law?’

‘Oh, haven’t you heard from them?’ Darcy suspected that he admired Finola.

‘Well, I’ve had an invitation to stay with them,’ said Winston, who had spoken a few times with Gerard at the London Library, since it had been established that he was a close friend of Darcy’s, and since Finola had told Gerard how nice he had been about giving her tea at Bendicks’ when she was half-dead with Christmas shopping. Gerard felt that pleasant people were very scarce, and should be encouraged.