A Passionate Man (6 page)

Mikey's eyes bulged.

‘Me, too,' said Imogen.

‘You're a
girl
—'

‘Marina,' Sir Andrew said serenely to Liza, ‘is an art historian.'

‘Andrew,' Marina said with equal composure, ‘I am nothing of the sort. I did a six-month course on the decorative arts in New York and I spent a summer at I Tatti. I'm no art historian.'

Liza stood up.

‘Would you excuse me a moment? I must just peer into the oven—'

‘I shall come and peer with you,' Marina said.

‘You can't.' Liza was genuinely horrified. ‘Not wearing that—'

Marina rose. ‘I most certainly can. I want to see every inch of this delightful house.'

Followed by Mikey, they left the drawing room.

‘I wanted to take you all
out
to lunch,' Marina said. ‘I didn't want you going to all this trouble. But Andrew was adamant. I feel I should just have been more adamant still.'

Liza opened the kitchen door and a rich waft of roasting meat came out to meet them.

‘It's so nice of you, but really, I don't mind. I'm quite used to it and my sister Clare is coming. She's divorced and she gets a bit depressed, living on her own. Now, stay right over there while I open the oven door. Mikey, guard Mrs de Breton. I'm so worried about her beautiful suit.'

Mikey herded Marina against the kitchen dresser and spread his arms wide to defend her from the menace of flying fat.

She said, laughing, ‘Oh, this is just adorable. I love the whole thing.'

Liza put the roasting tin on the table and began to baste the meat.

‘You did all that?' Marina said.

‘Oh yes. I quite like cooking—'

‘So do I,' Mikey said.

‘Mikey is a whizz at pancakes.'

‘If I was very nice to you, Mikey, would you someday make me pancakes?'

Mikey nodded vehemently.

‘And you have an elder brother?'

‘He's at boarding school,' Mikey said, dropping his arms but not moving away. ‘He cries there.'

Marina looked at Liza.

‘He cries?'

Liza said unhappily, ‘It was so kind of Andrew to send him. And I'm sure he'll be fine. But he's taking a bit of time to settle down.'

‘It was Andrew's idea?'

‘It was a kind one. It was to get Thomas used to the idea of being away at public school.'

‘And what,' Marina said, taking a slow sip of sherry, ‘do you think?'

Liza put the lamb back in the oven.

‘I didn't want him to go,' she said with her back to Marina.

‘And did you say that?'

‘Sort of—'

‘My dear Liza. This isn't fair of me at all. It's none of my business. But I'd have felt just as you feel. Mikey, would you know where there was more ice for my drink?'

When he had sped off, Marina said, ‘Would you like me to speak to Andrew?'

Liza was startled. She thought of Thomas's letter which she had intended to produce in front of Marina. It now seemed a shabby little scheme, and in her shame she said, too abruptly, ‘Oh no—'

Marina went over to the sink and looked through the window at the leaf-strewn lawn and the half-bare beeches and the pale autumn pastureland rising to the pale autumn sky.

‘What a lot you achieve,' she said to Liza, over her shoulder.

No-one had ever said anything of this kind to Liza.

‘Do I?'

Marina turned round.

‘Husband, house, children, garden, teaching, cooking. I'm bowled over—'

Mikey came back with an ice tray.

‘Clare's come. Imo's being stupid and jumping on the sofa.'

‘Isn't Daddy stopping her?'

‘He's talking to Grandpa.'

Liza ran back to the drawing room. Imogen had fallen off the sofa and was crying in Clare's arms. Over by the bay window, which overlooked the lane, Archie and his father were deep in conversation.

Liza took Imogen from her sister and put her firmly on the floor.

‘Looks like you had a lovely welcome—'

Clare was taller and thinner than Liza, with large anxious eyes and hair drawn back into a black velvet bow on the nape of her neck.

‘They're talking about cot deaths.'

‘How cheerful. How are you?'

Clare made a balancing movement with her hand.

‘So-so.'

‘Clare,' Liza said, ‘this is Marina de Breton.'

‘I am afraid,' Marina said, taking Clare's hand and smiling, ‘that they are talking about cot deaths because of me.'

Politely the sisters waited to be enlightened.

‘My late husband left a trust to be used for the promotion of humanity's understanding of itself. Mostly it goes on schemes for schools and colleges, and some educational scholarships. But I saw the last series of
Meeting Medicine
and just
knew
that's where Louis would have wanted his money put. And his youngest daughter lost a baby that way, so the only condition I made to Andrew was that at least one programme—'

Clare's eyes were immense with sympathy.

‘Your grandchild?'

Marina raised her eyebrows.

‘No, indeed. Louis de Breton changed wives like other men change their shirts. This daughter was a child of his second marriage. His funeral was bizarre. The front pews of the church were solid with his widows,
solid
. Children and grandchildren as far as the eye could see.' She winked at Liza. ‘I wore scarlet. And a hat as big as a wheel.'

They stared at her. Archie, turning from the window, caught them at it, gazing, silent, his wife, his sister-in-law and his second son. Only Imogen, doing unsuccessful headstands on the sofa cushions, was outside the spell.

‘Darling,' Archie said, ‘shall I carve?'

Sir Andrew was enormously happy. He looked about the dining-room table and felt a rich pleasure in everyone round it and everything on it. To him, each person, each dish, each glass and fork, seemed to have an extraordinary value and vitality, reflecting his own sudden and miraculous sense of not just being alive, which he was used to, but of living, down to each last nerve end, which he was not. He had been disconcerted, even embarrassed, by this uncharacteristic exuberance at first, had been afraid he was going to make a fool of himself, and, in the process, destroy the sober esteem in which, he knew perfectly well, the world held him. But his confidence had grown with the realization that he was not, as he had feared, a victim of elderly and absurd folly, but, rather, one of the chosen; a man – a little late in the day, perhaps – chosen to have his half-empty cup suddenly filled until it brimmed and spilled. All over his mind and body and heart, doors, long shut, some never even opened previously, were swinging wide. Looking down at his plate of lamb and vegetables, Sir Andrew was shaken with a shudder of unquestionable ecstasy at the recollection of being in bed with Marina de Breton.

‘Oh dear,' Liza said anxiously. ‘Are you cold? I'll get an electric fire. The radiator in here never works properly—'

‘I'm not cold in the least,' Sir Andrew said, turning upon her a radiant smile.

She said in amazement, ‘You look so happy!'

‘I am.'

She blushed. He did not. He continued, with great dignity, to look unabashed and radiant.

‘Liza,' he said teasingly, ‘have I shocked you?'

‘Not shocked—'

‘Your stiff old Scots pa-in-law shouldn't fling his cap over windmills, eh?'

‘Don't,' she said.

He was laughing gently. Suddenly furious with him for not having the decency to be self-conscious, she looked away and briefly caught Archie's eyes across the table. He raised one eyebrow.

‘More peath,' Imogen said, beside her mother. ‘Heapth and
heapth
more peath.'

‘Only when you have eaten everything else.'

‘This,' Marina said to Archie, ‘is some of the best lamb I have eaten in my life. And being Greek, I do know about lamb.'

‘Greek?'

‘Greek. I only put the accent on for customs officials and traffic wardens and inattentive shop assistants and anyone else tiresome. I left Athens when I was three. I had charming and unsatisfactory parents who thought New York was simply waiting for them with bated breath, which of course it was not. I do believe outrage and disappointment killed my mother. She was an early dope fiend, in the days when it was still chic. Ikons and cocaine and Fortuny evening dresses – the last word in dated debauchery. Poor Mamma.'

‘You are making it up,' Archie said.

‘My dear. It is far too outrageous for that.'

She gave him a quick glance. He was looking away from her, towards Clare on his other side.

‘Do you believe her?' Archie demanded.

Clare, whose susceptibility to male physical charms, even the familiar ones of her sister's husband, always threw her into confusion, said, ‘I – I think so.'

Marina burst out laughing.

‘That's adorable!'

Archie took Clare's hand.

‘Don't be bullied—'

‘You see,' Clare said, gathering courage from his grasp. ‘Liza and I had such an unutterably boring upbringing that we can never believe it when other people tell us how fascinating theirs was. I used to pray and pray to be kidnapped and then, lo and behold, Liza was. By Archie. So unfair.'

‘And did nobody kidnap you later?'

‘Oh yes,' Clare said, looking down. ‘Robin did. But having me wasn't as exciting as chasing me. So he went off to chase someone else.'

‘That's too bad,' Marina said. ‘I hope she made him perfectly miserable.'

‘She does. But he likes it. I suppose it's a sort of permanent chase.'

Marina turned to Archie.

‘And are you a chaser?'

‘No.'

‘With all these women patients Andrew tells me of, feigning illness like crazy for two seconds of your undivided attention?'

‘Even,' Archie said composedly, ‘with all of them.'

He stood up to carve second helpings. It looked to him as if Marina was going to throw him another challenge, so he said deliberately, ‘I like being married.'

‘You and your father,' Marina said, ‘are remarkable men.'

She turned to Mikey, diligently eating beside her.

‘And will you be a doctor, too?'

‘I'm going to be a cook.'

‘A cook?'

‘And live here always,' Mikey said.

‘You are a very unusual boy. Boys commonly can't wait to leave home. I have eleven stepgrandsons in America and they leave home all the time.'

Mikey thought about this. He thought about his bedroom and the picture of Superman over his bed and the torch he had under his pillow to flash signals on the ceiling with, after his light had been turned off. And he thought of Thomas.

‘If I leave, you see, I mightn't like it so much.'

‘So,' Marina said, ‘will you bring your wife back to live here, too?'

‘I don't want a wife. I want a dog.'

‘I'm not sure that's quite the same,' Clare said quickly.

Marina waved a hand.

‘He's on to something, you know. Louis de Breton's dogs had a much better time than his wives. Archie, if you were going to offer me more of that sensational lamb, I shall save you the trouble and say yes please. And I never have second helpings. Never in this world. Do I, Andrew?'

And she looked across the table at him and together, wrapped in some intimate and delightful joke, they began to laugh.

Much later, Liza said she and Clare would do the washing up, and why didn't Archie make a bonfire? Sir Andrew had driven Marina de Breton away with mysterious indications of pressing things to be done in London, and Archie had not uttered since their departure which inhibited Liza from saying all the things she was bursting with. When she suggested a bonfire, Archie just nodded and collected up his children and the spaniel and old newspapers and matches and went out into the dying afternoon. From the kitchen window, Liza watched him with a mixture of sympathy and exasperation. Clare, struck by the effortless glamour of his appearance in tall Wellington boots and an immense and dishevelled Aran jersey, felt his evident dejection to be almost tragic.

Archie himself was chiefly consumed with self-disgust. His own view of love was founded upon generosity, and, while he was well aware that clumsiness and pure maleness often prevented him from fine-tuning this outlook, his every basic instinct in love was bent upon giving. A colleague of his, whose wife had become entirely swallowed up by her Open University course in psychology, had said fretfully once to Archie, ‘In my view, the least she
owes
me is a decent dinner at night.' Archie had been both struck and shocked by this. Obligation did not come into his emotional scheme of things – responsibility, yes, contributions from both sides, certainly, but never a feeling of being beholden, of being in someone's debt. Looking at Imogen now, picking up spiky beech nut shells and putting them into a broken flowerpot, made him realize the extent of her dignity and, even at three, her separate valuable power to love without abasing herself or compromising herself. He, her father, wished to give her emotional space. He wanted her love, but he wanted it freely given. He wanted his father's love in the same way, and he had always had it. He had it now. His father had, today, been demonstrably affectionate. But he had also shown that he was full of another kind of love, full of it. Archie plunged his fork into a mound of garden rubbish and flung it to the top of the bonfire.