A Desirable Husband (7 page)

‘So now,’ wrote Constance, after biting her pen for a moment with a grim look on her face, ‘I am a poor little widow-woman, and really I am too old to cope alone with life, not to mention my unfortunate children! I am
seventy-one,
does that seem possible to you and Mary?’ Mary was Sir William’s wife. ‘Hugh, you know, was really quite young, not even seventy-seven till January, and he always enjoyed such
splendid
health apart from this heart trouble latterly. “It is so dreadful when one’s friends begin to drop off their perches,” as Lavinia Fitzroy said to me only the other day. Who would have thought it would be Hugh’s turn next! But one mustn’t be maudlin, or hark back to the past.

‘If only he had paid attention to Dr Dovey’s advice! But he lived, you know, for his horses (not for me or the children, poor dear old man) and he simply wouldn’t give up even a day’s hunting last season, and he so enjoyed his pheasants. Perhaps he was really rather wise, to live to the full to the
end
.’ Constance stopped, read through the passage which had taken some time compose, and then continued quickly:

‘What
am
I to do now, William? If Gerard and his wife were at all
suited
to this life, naturally I should move into a nice cottage on the estate as soon as possible. But as things are, I can’t think it would be quite suitable. You know I have always had rather an admiration for Bath and as my arthritis really allows me to ride only occasionally, I shouldn’t miss the country too much, I suppose. But it does seem rather awful.

‘You and I have always been such dear friends. It would be embarrassing to have me if I was
prostrated
with
grief,
and I hope I would never be so selfish as to come if I
were,
but could you and dear Mary, do you think, provide a little rest for poor Constance, at Sedley Warren? Just for a week or two, when I
must
go away from here? You see, I should like to have what they call a
transition
phase,
with my friends, before I really am a lonely widow, too awful.’

Constance finished the letter after giving a generous and forbearing description of Gerard’s and Finola’s behaviour, and telling Sir William her plans for Hugh’s funeral and memorial service. She had the letter taken away to the afternoon post, though she knew it would look a little odd for her to be concerned with the posting of letters: and she decided not to put her point of view to Darcy until the funeral was over.

*

The day of the funeral was wet, cold and sober. Constance, Gerard, Finola and Darcy followed the coffin in Hugh’s pre-war Daimler to the church of Chalcot St Anne, where they listened quietly to the service and saw the coffin lowered before going home for lunch. Some people in the
village said that it was a mean sort of send-off for the poor old man, and not at all what they would want for themselves. Finola, who was upset by her first funeral, thought how nice it would be when she herself lay there under wet grass and yew trees, and red-hipped dog-roses with leaves turning yellow.

The day after the funeral, Gerard spoke to Constance with great sympathy before going back to London. He said nothing of importance, and when he had finished, and was standing in silence looking at the fire and thinking of what else to say, she remarked: ‘Gerard, I do want you to understand one thing. I am not going to move from this house.’

Gerard was in his study in London, looking through
Punch,
which he took in order to keep in touch with frivolous things, even though they bored him. He was supposed at the moment to be writing difficult business letters.

He closed the magazine when his eyes fell upon a political cartoon of a knight and a castle, entitled ‘Childe Winston to the Dark Tower Came’. Gerard could not think that a change of government could or ought to improve his prospects. He would have liked to vote Labour in the coming election as he had in the last, for people who made life so difficult must be right; but he believed that, now Combe Chalcot was his, this could be only hypocrisy.

He heard Finola’s voice on the stairs, addressing Richard, and he decided suddenly that he would go with his family to Kensington Gardens, which he had never done before.

*

It was a clear cold day, and a slight smell of bonfires made the park extremely like the country. A sharp wind was blowing down the path by the side of Longwater. Finola, who was a little worried about the long, upstanding feather in her beret, knew that their party presented a rather eccentric appearance. She liked it: Gerard, who was walking two paces behind her and carrying little Eleanor, did not look embarrassed although he was being noticed by odd passersby. He was never aware of strangers. His daughter, who had been complaining about the tightness of her buttoned leggings and the hardness of the path, was now awed into dignity by her father’s picking her up.

‘Anatole used to carry me everywhere,’ said Finola, briskly walking. ‘He let me sleep in his room when I had nightmares, too.’ Finola smiled a little.

‘Alice didn’t do that sort of thing, I take it?’ said Gerard, who knew this very well.

‘No,’ said Finola. ‘I’m sure I told you she had a sort of nervous breakdown, I’m afraid I don’t know why. Eleanor, you must not chew your mittens.’

‘When’s
Nanny
coming?’ said Eleanor.

‘I hope you don’t miss her too much.’ She paused. ‘You’re having a
temporary
nanny from tomorrow, I ought to have explained that before. It’s only for two weeks.
Then
Nanny will be back,’ said Finola, enunciating clearly as she spoke to her daughter. Nanny had gone away to look after her mother, and for three days, Finola had had the children to herself. Gerard thought his wife was looking rather strained.

Richard was dawdling behind them, poking with a stick at the low iron hoops at the edge of the walk. ‘Do please stay with us, Richard,’ said Finola. He looked a little resentful at first, but then he decided to run ahead of them, towards Peter Pan’s statue. He was a sturdy little boy, and when he was older he would have the same heavy jaw as Darcy, and Gerard’s bright golden-brown eyes. Both the children had inherited thick black hair from Anatole, and people often remarked how extraordinary it was that the offspring of two blond parents should be so dark. Richard had thought at one time that he must be adopted, but he had been told that he certainly was not.

It was too early yet to see whether either of the children would be handsome, but Finola wanted them to be beautiful almost more than she wished them to be clever and good.

‘I wish we had sent him to school at the beginning of term,’ said Finola.

‘You know we agreed he could very well wait, Finola,’ said Gerard. ‘It was you who said it would unsettle him to change schools after only one term or so.’

‘I know, but … it does look, doesn’t it, as though it’ll be a good deal longer than
that
before we’ll be able to send him to Shaftesbury.’ Still walking ahead of her husband, she turned her head round to look at him.

‘At least he can read,’ said Gerard.

‘Don’t avoid the issue, Gerard,’ said Finola, stopping suddenly. ‘It’s quite obvious Constance has absolutely no intention of moving
ever
.’

‘She’s still very upset. It’s hardly more than a month since Father died.’

‘Gerard, you know it isn’t that.’

‘Granny’s a
greedy
pig!’ said Eleanor. Her parents were stunned, and then they laughed. ‘A greedy greedy
greedy
pig!’ she chanted.

‘Hush, darling!’ They were still laughing, and failing to set a good example. Eleanor had never heard her parents laugh with her before, or seen Gerard, who was always kind, overwhelmed with pleasure. She became silent.

Presently Finola said: ‘I had a letter from her this morning. I should have mentioned it sooner.’

He turned his head, frowning. ‘A letter? I hope –’

Finola took off her hat, pushed at her hair, and replaced it. She was choosing her words as carefully as though she were about to speak to one of the children. ‘You know of course that old Mr Venables died the other day.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘So the West Lodge is vacant. Constance wrote to me, to point out that it would be simply ideal for us. She says it would make a simply too perfect week-end cottage for people who are not really terribly interested in country life.’

‘What?’

‘Yes, darling. Of course, it’s right on the main road, and it only has four bedrooms if that, and it hasn’t got a garden, but what does that matter? We can always keep the children
off
the main road’. She was finding it difficult to keep over-emotion out of her voice.

‘Oh really, Finola.’

‘She was perfectly serious, Gerard. You know that.’

‘Darling …’

‘She also said – in a postscript, which I found particularly worrying, you know what people say about women’s postscripts – that Hugh always said that
she
was to have everything that came to the house after they were married. And she’s sure she can rely on you to carry out his dearest wishes.’

‘My grandmother’s things …?’

‘Yes, she specified “Lady Anne’s French clock”, and “Lady Anne’s William and Mary chairs”, and her Stubbs, and her Battersea enamel.’

‘I had no idea she was so fond of those things.’

‘Oh Gerard.’ He was silent, and she continued: ‘The
first
part of her letter was
so
cordial, darling, I’ve never seen anything like it. But then in the
postscript
she became
so
much more formal. She did actually call your father’s mother “Lady Anne” four times.’

‘My mother is rather …’

‘Tasteless. Oh dear, I should have showed you the letter, not told you.’

‘Dearest, try not to resent it.’

There was a pause.

‘Gerard, I do know she’ll move eventually, she’s got to, and she knows it too, but all this is so
beastly
!’ said Finola. ‘The longer it goes on the worse it’ll get.’

‘It’s not even two months since my father died. No one could expect her to have left already.’

‘But she could at least be
planning
it, Gerard! She’s – she’s testing you, she’s trying to see … oh, you
know
!’

‘I want to get down!’ said Eleanor. ‘Please, Papa.’

They were standing now by Peter Pan’s statue, watching Richard examine the rabbits and fairies with fierce concentration. Two nannies were chatting on a bench near-by, rocking their prams and talking about the cost of living. Gerard put Eleanor on her feet, and she waddled over towards her brother. Her parents put their hands in their pockets.

‘Finola, I don’t want you to bully me,’ said Gerard. She
opened her mouth, but said nothing. ‘I hope this will not displease you, but I must insist that you don’t work yourself up about my mother.’

‘I have never worked myself up about anything,’ said Finola quietly. ‘So please don’t be pompous, Gerard.’

They watched both children in silence; Eleanor was annoying Richard. Finola remembered hearing Constance say to a friend: ‘I’m afraid it’s awfully old-fashioned to say so nowadays, but as I remember my grandmother saying so often, when I was with her at Biarritz you know, blood
will
tell.
Both my grandchildren – Gerard’s children I mean – look like dear little Gascon peasants.’ Katie Van Leyden at the Manor always said that some of Constance’s remarks were unbelievable.

‘Eleanor, Richard –’ Finola called. ‘We must be going. It’ll be getting dark soon. Your father has a lot to do at home.’

They walked on towards the fountains at the top of the Longwater, and sat near the pavilion, thinking about getting a taxi in Bayswater Road and riding home with the children.

‘Darling, do you really want to live at Combe Chalcot?’ said Gerard.

‘Yes, yes I do, darling.’

He put his arm fondly round her.

*

The children were beginning to ask questions about moving to Combe Chalcot. Eleanor did not properly associate the name with the place she had visited, and she found it rather a frightening topic, but Richard thought only of having a pony when they were in Dorset. It did upset him even so to think that his grandfather had disappeared and would never be seen again, and that everybody took it very calmly.

Finola and Gerard dreaded this question of the pony, for they had always been agreed, though they had never said anything, that they would keep no horses at Combe Chalcot and that this would be a great economy. Hugh had
told them often how hard they would have to economise, and so it was only sensible to sell his horses one day, and pension off the old groom-cum-gardener who did the hardest work.

When she was a little girl, and had seen horses only at a distance in the London streets, Finola had wanted very much to learn to ride. Once, when she had been staying with Alice’s great-aunt Caitlin at King’s Merton in Oxfordshire, she had had an opportunity to do so. An old pony with big yellow teeth had been put out in Aunt Caitlin’s paddock for the summer, and the adults had borrowed some tack for him. Alice, who had not ridden for more than ten years, had tried to teach Finola. The pony had turned out to be very ill-tempered: Finola still remembered falling off its immensely broad and slippery back, and being dragged across the paddock with her foot in one stirrup, terrified of the hooves and unaware in her terror of the pain of being dragged. Alice, Anatole, Aunt Caitlin and Miranda Pagett had been present, and Finola had never ridden again.

She had been given a bath, and hot whisky for shock, and put to bed as soon as possible after the accident. Miranda, who hated horses, had said that any proper country person would say that she ought to have been put straight back on the pony. Finola, though she was angry with Miranda, had had doubts for a week about the country life she had always wanted.

Finola did not have grave doubts now, but she had worries, which would blow up in her head like balloons, to stay there for several days until they were deflated by the discovery that in comparison with some other problem they were easily solved. At Egerton Gardens she was constantly waiting to be overwhelmed by the troubles of inheritance, taxation and Dorsetshire society; she knew that, at some point, all her worries would explode. Nothing yet had ever exploded. Finola was quite determined to cope splendidly, as she had been determined in the Wrens; where, though she had hated everything, she had survived and been tolerated.

One trouble became more agreeable when, the day after their walk in Kensington Gardens, Gerard wrote a letter full of grave kindness and compromise to Constance, a letter which Finola thought must be irresistible. She decided to deal with the next problem about which she could do something immediately, and speak to her housekeeper, Carlotta.

Finola thought of ‘servants’ as people who could only have existed before the war but who still survived at Combe Chalcot. She blushed at the thought of referring to Carlotta, Nanny or Mrs Fiske, the daily, by that word, and she preferred them to the Cedar House staff who often made her nervous; but now she was obliged to suggest to her housekeeper that she would not care for life in the country. Carlotta was a very good cook, but she was Italian and something of a socialist, and she had taken the post with Finola only because she was not strong enough to work in a restaurant. She would not do for long at Combe Chalcot.

When Finola offered to find her another situation, and explained about Combe Chalcot, Carlotta was very upset, and then angry. She accused her employer of giving her the sack, and that without reason, and spoke of trade unions. She also said that she wanted to see the English countryside, and Finola was taken aback.

‘But I don’t think you’d be happy, really I don’t, Carlotta.’

‘I may not see, Miss Parnell? I may not try?’

Finola hesitated. She did not want to employ Mrs Daly, Constance’s rather fierce cook, and now that Carlotta was crying, she also felt that she could not face looking for another housekeeper, and getting used to her. She said in the end that she would be very grateful to Carlotta for coming, and begged her to wipe her eyes. Carlotta wiped her hands on her skirt and smiled, and said she would make sure that while she was at Combe Chalcot, everything went well.

Finola had told Gerard her intention of not asking Carlotta to come with them, and he had quite agreed with
her: but she thought he would understand. She would tell him that Nanny and Carlotta were both marvellous, but that they did regard their employers as slightly weak-minded children, and this was going to change.