A Desirable Husband (5 page)

Constance finished describing Hugh’s health, and rang off after agreeing to meet Sir William for luncheon in London next week, all things permitting. She turned round and considered reproving Gerard, who was inclined to be vague, for coming into the room just then. In the end she did not, but she thought of her husband dying as she looked at him.

Finola was rather glad when, after Gerard had been two days at Combe Chalcot, Darcy rang up from Cambridge and asked if he might come and impose on her at Egerton Gardens. She told him he was supposed to be going down to Dorset, but he said he had cancelled that as there was no emergency, and he wanted to visit the British Museum. Finola was feeling tired, because she thought so much about what was happening at Combe Chalcot while Gerard was there without her. She knew that Darcy would occupy her mind.

It was possible to say indiscreet things to Darcy, because he never remembered them afterwards. ‘You know, I sometimes feel when he’s not actually with me, I haven’t got a husband at all. I expected to be so busy and – and grown up, when I was married.’ She looked across him at her evening-lit drawing room, messy with books. ‘Sometimes I think we don’t exist.’ Silly, she thought.

‘I know, I used to feel just the same about Isabel. Which was no wonder. These cakes are delicious.’

‘Yes, aren’t they. I think Carlotta gets things on the black market, in fact I know she does, but I never dare to ask. Gerard would be terribly upset if he realised.’ Finola enjoyed this domestic pause, ‘I’m so –’

‘Gerard is so tremendously upright.’

‘Don’t sneer at him, Darcy.’

‘My dear, you know I’m devoted to him. I never expected him to get married, you know,’ he said, leaning back in his chair. ‘He ought to have been me, this is the
thing. He should have stayed at Cambridge, and become a don. I can just see him, living in College and getting older and churchier, and no wife to bring his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.’ He sighed.

‘Are you going to live in College now, Darcy?’ said Finola coldly.

‘Oh, my dear, no no no. I simply couldn’t bear it all the time.’ Darcy had a rather feminine way of expressing himself, and he made this appear a sexual tease. ‘I’m keeping the house – I might have the children with me sometimes, when they’re older you know.’

‘You’re a very heartless man.’

‘Finola, how can you? They’re so exhausting at the moment.’ He had two boys and a girl, who were eight, seven and two. The last family drama had been over the third child, because she was a mistake, and probably not Darcy’s.

‘Well, never mind,’ said Finola, thinking of her own children. ‘I’m going to Mary Farrar’s cocktail party tonight – would you like to come instead of Gerard?’

‘Oh my dear, I don’t know – yes, I think so.’

‘Well, don’t say you’ve got a headache at the last minute. I’ll ring Mary now and tell her you’re coming.’

Finola went out, and enjoyed being very sorry for Darcy of whom it was impossible, she thought, not to be fond. Later he made her feel very much his sister when he encouraged her to tick him off for despair over Isabel, who used for years to come regularly to his charming house in Trumpington Street, exactly like a mistress, but without the inconvenience.

*

The cocktail party was in Cheyne Walk, and Finola was acquainted with about a third of those present. Darcy knew only the hostess, and was bored, so he pretended to be taking notes for a tragic novel which he had intended to write for years. The french windows were open. Mrs Farrar tried to persuade her guests to go out into the windy garden, where there were eleven budding tulips, but
most stayed by the empty fireplace, smoking cigarettes.

Finola and Darcy had just finished listening to a civil servant who was helping to organise the Festival of Britain, when their hostess came up and said: ‘Finola – Darcy – so glad you could come – let me introduce you. Darling, this is Mrs Parnell, and
Mr
Parnell – this is Madame de Saint-Gaël. Who has
flown
from Paris today, can you imagine it?’

‘The world has changed, Mary. It’s positively commonplace to fly. How do you do? How do you do?’

Madame de Saint-Gaël was a woman of forty, with thick brown hair in a French pleat, an aquiline nose, long hazel eyes and a heavy, well-shaped, crooked mouth.

‘But you’re Miranda,’ said Finola, and blushed.

‘Yes, but I don’t think –’ She frowned, and looked rather amused.

‘I’m Finola Molloy,’ said Finola, straightening her shoulders. ‘You might not recognise me, it’s twenty years after all.’

‘Finola – good God! Of course you are – I beg your pardon. And now you’re –’

‘I’m called Parnell, now.’ Miranda looked at Darcy, and smiled. ‘This isn’t my husband, it’s my brother-in-law.’

‘It really is more than twenty years, isn’t it?’ said Miranda, looking from one to the other.

‘So embarrassing, meeting people after a long time,’ said Darcy. ‘Especially, ghastly thought, if one was at school with them. Were you at school together?’

Miranda, who had made Finola feel awkward when she was a girl, looked him up and down. She has changed really, thought Finola. She was thin now, as thin as Alice, yet between fifteen and twenty-one she had had the figure of a beautiful, old-fashioned nude. Her skin was fine and creamy, with the same eight freckles across the bridge of the nose, but it was powdered now, taut across the cheekbones and loose beneath the chin. In 1927, her hair had been shingled, and she had the sense not to try to be slender.

‘No, we weren’t at school together, were we Finola?’

‘I can tell you all about Miranda afterwards, Darcy,’ said
Finola, tilting her head and then sipping her White Lady.

Miranda laughed. ‘Finola, tell me everything. When did you get married?’

‘Nearly seven years ago. I left it very late.’

‘Tell me, are you related to some Parnells who live in Dorset? I’ve got a friend who lives near Chalcot St Anne, you see, and some neighbours of hers …’

‘The same,’ said Darcy. ‘We are the Dorsetshire Parnells, you know.’

Finola gave him a look. ‘Is Katie Van Leyden the one you know?’ she said to Miranda. ‘I suppose she must be.’

‘Yes, that’s her, fancy your guessing. Now she
was
at school with me, in Lausanne.’

‘It’s my parents-in-law who live practically next door to them.’

‘In that gorgeous house? Don’t tell me!’

‘Charming, isn’t it? A very good period,’ said Darcy, scratching in his pocket for some cigarettes, which he offered to Miranda after taking one himself.

‘May I have one, please, Darcy?’ said Finola when Miranda had lit hers.

‘Darling! Of course,’ he said, distracted. When she was at all on edge, Finola smoked without inhaling, and always left half the cigarette unfinished.

‘You didn’t used to smoke, Fin,’ said Miranda.

‘I do at parties, now.’

‘Do you live in London, Mr Parnell?’ said Miranda, addressing Darcy directly for the first time.

‘No, in Cambridge.’

‘Darcy is a
don
,’ said Finola, puffing at her cigarette, and wondering what Miranda would think of this.

‘No, really?’

‘Really. I work frightfully hard, too.’

‘Writing, I suppose?’

Finola looked at Miranda’s clothes, which she priced with envious pleasure at more than a hundred pounds. She wore dark grey, with an orange belt round her waist, a little hat and crinkled gloves. Finola smiled, remembering that ever
since she had come out Miranda had been particularly elegant, though once she had dressed like Alice.

The party was now at its most noisy, and the guests had no need to make a tight little crowd by the fireplace, for the whole room was full and people elbowed each other with excuses. Finola remained in her place, sipping and smoking, refusing to leave Darcy and Miranda to talk, for she wanted to talk with Miranda herself, and did not suppose she would be likely to see her again. She wanted to find out whether Miranda knew that Alice was still alive.

She started to listen properly again, and heard Miranda telling Darcy that she was about to start up a little decorating business, purely for amusement. She had bought a shop in Bruton Street and would be selling materials designed by herself. ‘Using my maiden name, so as not to embarrass my husband’s family. Miranda Pagett Designs, you see, sounds rather nice doesn’t it?’

‘I’m sure you’ll be very good at it,’ said Finola. ‘I remember you did up that room in the house where you had the ball for your twenty-first birthday.’

‘Yes, but this will be
professional,
and rather a nightmare I think. Finola, I shouldn’t be jabbering like this. Tell me, how’s Alice?’ Miranda looked straight into her face.

‘Still alive,’ said Finola, ‘and quite well. So’s Anatole.’

‘I am glad,’ said Miranda, lighting another cigarette. ‘I bought a painting of hers the other day.’

‘Oh!’ said Finola.

Miranda turned to Darcy, smiling again. ‘I used to live with Finola’s parents, you see,’ she said. ‘But lately we’ve been rather out of touch.’ Miranda had been living in France since she was twenty-two, but she had written to Alice for a few years after her marriage. She remembered Finola’s half-sisters. ‘How are Liza and Jenny, Fin?’

‘Liza’s still married, she’s very well,’ said Finola. She blinked, and was obliged to shout as a large man behind her laughed aloud. ‘Jenny was killed in Spain. Didn’t you know?’ This had happened too long ago for either of them to be grieved or even awkward now.

*

Darcy went on that evening to see a professor of Imperial College whom he rather despised, and Finola returned to Egerton Gardens where Carlotta, her cook, had left her some soup and potato salad. She took this upstairs on a tray, because Carlotta never liked her to be in the kitchen.

When she was alone she thought about Gerard, who ought to telephone her tonight. Finola considered that she had better not ring Combe Chalcot herself, and then she reminded herself that it was ridiculous to hesitate to ring her husband, or to wait, watching, for his telephone call. She did not ring or leave the telephone, and sat smoking half-cigarettes, wondering whether things would have been different if she had not been a virgin at the time of her marriage. Usually she thought that Gerard had been a reward for her chastity.

She cried a little, thinking of how unhappy she had been before she married, and of Gerard in Dorset now. When she was young Finola had had no men of whom she had been able to think as proper suitors and admirers. She had wriggled and shuddered when men had tried to kiss her (as sometimes they had), yet she had wished there had been more than three occasions. She had thought for years about one man, called Charles, who had never shown interest in her; and the conviction that she was a superfluous woman had been terrible at twenty-three. It had been less bad at twenty-seven, when she had had no hope.

She had met Gerard in Portsmouth in November, 1943, when she had been a year in the Wrens. He had reminded her at first of Willoughby in
Sense
and
Sensibility –
though he was older even than Colonel Brandon – because he had helped her to walk one day when she had twisted her ankle on board ship. He had not quite carried her, as Willoughby had carried Marianne, and she had thought that she was very much too old to be deceived by him as Marianne at seventeen had been.

Finola had discovered at a party two days later that he came from the sort of family about which she had always had romantic ideas. She was not ashamed of liking this
because she liked and loved him even more for things which were not obvious, for his never trying to kiss her, till after they were engaged. She had never been able to tell him how intensely she adored him, and thought he would vanish if she did not look at him constantly, although she knew it was her duty not to be possessive.

‘I didn’t
deserve
it, God,’ she said to the telephone. It rang, and she jumped.

Gerard spoke, and told her in his low, preoccupied, fond voice about Hugh’s being so much better, and Amelia’s expecting puppies; and he said he would be back tomorrow. Finola said she was glad, then slowly put down the receiver, and contemplated it.

Darcy came in just as she had finished on the telephone. ‘Ghastly evening – now darling, you must tell me all about the fascinating Madame de Saint-Gaël.’

‘Darcy, I just
knew
you were going to say that,’ said Finola, turning round a moment later. She knew that, if she had not met Miranda Pagett at the cocktail party, she would not have wasted time in thinking how lonely she had been ten years before, and of Gerard’s exotic punctilio about which no one else would ever know. Miranda would think Gerard frightfully amusing.

‘Do you hate her, Finola? Did she shine you down when you were a pretty young thing?’

‘When I knew Miranda I was much too young to be shone down by anybody,’ said Finola, who had gone to Miranda’s twenty-first birthday ball when she was only fourteen, and looked a little older, and had been rather pretty. ‘She’s at least six years older than I am. And you needn’t say she doesn’t look it,’ she added, smiling a little.

‘Certainly not, darling! Now do tell.’

‘Oh, it was a very big drama,’ said Finola, who was suddenly quite cheerful. ‘Will you get me a drink, please, Darcy, whisky and water?’

He went to pour two weak drinks, and then sat down opposite her. Finola took a crude and enjoyable mouthful of whisky. ‘She ran away from school you see, when she was
fourteen or fifteen, and Alice found her in Kensington Gardens. Really she did, it doesn’t sound real, does it? Anyway, she brought her back and then Miranda lived with us for two whole years, her family never knew about it, and then her brother found her quite by accident, when they’d been thinking she was dead for ages, of course.’

‘My dear, how ghastly!’

‘I know,’ said Finola, bending down to adjust the seams of her nylons. ‘She wouldn’t get in touch with them, and Alice, you know what she is, wouldn’t make her – Alice was very fond of her. Of course, when she was found she had to go back to her family.’ It did not sound, she thought, at all like a very big drama. ‘I always thought it was wrong of her to run away like that,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t think of it really from her parents’ point of view then, it was just that I used to absolutely long to go to boarding school, you see.’

‘Oh, Finola!’