After Clare (2 page)

But she could not bear to remember just now. She turned away, and with her foot on the first of the steps to the terrace, paused.

And there was the old house, the Vavasours' ancestral home.
Her
house now, its long lattice windows touched to gold by the late afternoon sun, warm and hospitable despite the tenacious cloak of Boston ivy which clung to its rosy bricks, frowned over the window lintels and threatened to engulf it entirely.

Leysmorton was very old. An ancient manor house, lowish and crooked, full of secret twists and turns, odd flights of steps, dim corners and small, extra windows here and there throwing light in unexpected places, its charm lay in the tranquillity the years had settled on it rather than any architectural felicities.

Her throat constricted with emotion. ‘Hugh . . . do you think, perhaps . . .?'

‘You would like to go in alone?'

Bless him for his understanding. ‘If you wouldn't mind.'

‘Of course not. I'll see you at dinner, then. Shall I send the motor?'

He had already met her train at the station with the Daimler and brought her to the gates of Leysmorton, and when she had said she would like to walk up through the gardens, had sent the chauffeur round to the front of the house with her bags.

‘No, no, there's no need for that. Thank you, Hugh, I'll walk over with Dirk.'

His home, Steadings, where they were all to dine tonight, was only a few minutes' walk away, if you took the path which generations of impatient Vavasours and Markhams had trampled out in order to avoid taking the marginally longer way round by the road, until eventually it had become the accepted route between the two houses.

‘I must see you alone,' he said suddenly. ‘Properly alone, I mean, with time to talk.'

‘Hugh—'

‘We haven't been alone,' he reminded her, unnecessarily, ‘since Paris.'

‘My dear, would it be wise?'

‘Wise?' Shaken out of his composure, he laughed shortly. ‘Wise? That's one thing we no longer need to be, not now.'

Their eyes held, and with sudden surrender, she reached up – she had to rise on tiptoe – and kissed him very gently. ‘We will then, Hugh, we will. But not just yet, it's too early to make decisions. Give me time to get my bearings.'

‘I can wait. I've learned how to, Lord knows.'

He watched her go. She had broken her journey in London on the way here and evidently done some expensive shopping. The young Emily he had known – eager, impressionable, loving, with a carnation flush to her cheeks and large, soft eyes that could still light up with mischief – had become a poised and elegant woman. The plump prettiness of her youth had gone, to be replaced by something more interesting. Her features had fined down and she had gained dignity and presence, despite the ragamuffin, vagabond existence he considered her life to have been.

From behind, the neat figure in cream silk poplin and matching straw hat could pass for the young woman he had once loved to the point where he had thought it might not be possible to carry on, after she had left him. But they had both gone on, survived for another, unbelievable, four – no, nearer five – decades. Unbelievable? Where Emily was concerned, nothing was unbelievable to Hugh, even this wholly unexpected return. There had always been an element of unpredictability about her, which was one of the things he had loved her for, and still did, despite the pain it had brought. But she had steadfastly coped with Paddy Fitzallan for more than half a lifetime – and that said all that needed to be said, as far as Hugh was concerned.

Halfway up the steps, he saw her falter and stop. Having no wish for her to turn round and see him still standing there, he moved away. She was here at last, he thought, as he walked back towards the trees that hid Steadings from view, feeling twenty years younger. She was here.

Emily mounted the last few steps. It was only an upstairs curtain that had twitched, although for a heart-lurching moment she had almost imagined it was Clare at the window. But whoever had moved that curtain, it wasn't Clare.

She stood for another moment, uncharacteristically hesitant, before the solid, venerable door that was grainy and weathered to a silvery grey, this door to the garden side of the house which had rarely ever been closed. Then, even as she hesitated, it opened and there was Dirk.

‘Welcome home, Cousin Emily.'

‘What makes you think I've changed my mind?' Poppy asked. ‘Naturally I shall go – and so will you, of course, Val.'

Valentine shoved his hands into his pockets and raised an eyebrow. ‘There's no of course about it. Dee Markham isn't
my
best friend, Sis.'

‘She isn't mine at the moment, either, ducky, if it comes to that, but the invitation includes you. She couldn't
not
invite either of us, really, since we're almost family, and it's going to be such a
splash.'

He thought ‘almost family' was stretching it a bit. The Drummonds and the Markhams were cousins at least twice, if not three times removed, but the wedding invitation, embossed gold on thick cream card, certainly held both their names. It stood prominent amongst the other announcements on the mantelpiece – notices of exhibitions by unknown artists in obscure galleries, a gaudy postcard from Antibes, an invitation to the opening of a new nightclub of the sort that Poppy considered it smart to frequent – all propped against the pewter vase that held a single, vibrant purple iris.

He watched her as she took a comb from the brocade vanity bag on her wrist and turned her head sideways to examine her hair in the mirror over the mantel, though her smooth, square-cut black bob with the ends curving towards her face needed no attention. Val moved to stand behind her, a little to one side so that he could see her face in the mirror as he spoke, and saw his own as well. The same sweep of the eyebrows, the Drummond chin, but there the resemblance ended. He was an untidy, windswept young man with stormy grey eyes, he forgot to get his hair cut, and he wore a corduroy jacket that Poppy deplored.

It was she who spoke first, the jacket no doubt reminding her. ‘You'll have to wear proper togs for the wedding.'

He laughed shortly. ‘Apart from my demob suit, what do you suggest? The one bought when I left school? Since when my measurements have altered considerably.' Which was true enough. Although he was not tall, his shoulders were broad, and in the last few years he had become muscular and athletic.

She began to apply more lipstick to her already vivid mouth, as poppy-red as her name, startling against her white skin and black hair. She was dressed for the evening in a narrow, waistless number in sea-green and silver, her skirt short enough to show several inches of leg above the ankle, silver shoes with a double strap and a three-inch Louis heel, shiny nude stockings and a silver slave bangle set with glassy green stones high on her bare, rounded upper arm, others circling the opposite wrist. It was a get-up altogether too studied and sharp, too contrived, Val considered, remembering the warm, spontaneous little sister she had been not so long ago.

‘Well?' She turned and he let his hand fall from her shoulder. He threw himself down on the sofa and put his feet on the canary-yellow lacquered coffee table.

‘Weddings are not my forte. Especially big ones, like this.'

‘Not so very big. It's only a country wedding, after all.'

‘Big enough.'

‘Archie Elphinstone's going to be best man. He'll give us a lift down there, and as for a morning suit . . .' Calculation sharpened her features as she thought about ways one might be obtained for him at this last minute. She had not told him that she had already sent an acceptance for both of them.

He chose not to answer, but lifted his eyebrows and squinted at the invitation again:
Diana Margaret (Dee) Markham, daughter of Mr & Mrs Gerald Markham . . . to Hamish Erskine, son of Sir Trumpington and Lady Erskine of Kinmoray, Scotland . . . St Phillip's church, Netherley, Hertfordshire . . . June seventeenth . . .

‘I wouldn't have thought Gerald could afford such a do. The Markhams must be as hard up as all the rest of us nowadays.'

‘Maybe, but he can't let it be seen that he isn't up to providing the necessary for his daughter's wedding to old Trump's son either, darling. Besides, Hugh will be doing most of the paying, I dare say. He's very fond of his granddaughters.' She laughed in the tinkling way she had adopted lately, then said, with stubborn intent, ‘I really
want
to go, Val.'

Green was not a colour she should wear; her eyes, grey like his but paler and cool, had taken on a greenish cast from the dress. They narrowed like a cat's as she watched him.

‘One of life's hard-earned lessons, my dear, is that we don't always get what we want.'

‘I don't know about that. I generally manage it, don't I?'

It wasn't always as true as she might like to think but, courageous and daring, she'd always had a knack of manoeuvring things her way. Yet how happy was she when she'd achieved her aim? Like all her friends, Poppy projected a relentless brightness and glitter – but happiness?

He lit a cigarette and leaned his head back on the sofa, more comfortable than the lumpy one in his own seedy bedsit, to which he must presently repair. They each had their own place; there was no room for two in this tiny, one-bedroom flat, and their lifestyles were too dissimilar, anyway, for either of them to want to share. For the moment, however, Val was happy enough to loll back on her sofa, feet up, head back against the cushions.

Through half-closed eyes he noticed that where the palest of grey walls met the ceiling of the same shade, Poppy, who was clever and artistic, had recently stencilled a geometric border in mauve and purple, with the same motif repeated around the grey-tiled fireplace, the colours echoed in the curtains. The paintwork was smart navy blue and there were touches of canary yellow here and there. She and a woman called Xanthe Tripp ran a little interior decorating shop in Knightsbridge, to Val pretentiously and incomprehensibly named
XP et Cie
(X for Xanthe, P for Poppy and Cie for Company) – ‘so French, so chic!', said Mrs Tripp.

They were not, however, making much money. Their clients were mostly friends, or friends of friends, and paying bills was not high on the list of their priorities, especially when they came as high as Mrs Tripp's bills did. She was a divorcée in her forties with a racy lifestyle, and was consumed by the necessity to get enough money for its upkeep. Valentine had met Xanthe Tripp only once or twice and had no desire whatsoever to meet her again, and although Poppy seemed happy enough with the set-up for the time being, he gave it another six months at the most and was not unduly perturbed at the prospect of its demise. Poppy might be upset at the failure of yet another venture, but not unduly, he hoped. Where once it had all been ‘Xanthe this, Xanthe that', now when her name was mentioned it was sometimes followed by a slight pause or a frown.

Although at the moment he devoutly wished her way of life different, Val did not like the idea of Poppy being unhappy. They were alone in the world, poor as church mice, and he felt responsible for her. As for himself, he didn't see how anyone who had spent two years in that hellish show over the Channel could have a right to expect true happiness ever again. A company officer leading his men over the top, a young sprig straight out of school, by the skin of his teeth he had missed being killed, or even injured, not once but several times. He had gained a reputation for bravery, when he knew it was sheer luck – and plain fear of being seen to be in a funk. Luck had followed him most of his life – apart from the disaster that was their parents. Lucky Val Drummond: scraping through his exams, batting the winning innings at the inter public school cricket match in his last year; lucky to be the brother of Poppy Drummond, many of his acquaintances would no doubt say.

Lately, however, that luck seemed to have deserted him. He was recently down from Oxford, where he had gone straight from the trenches because he couldn't think what else to do in the sombre hiatus, the anticlimax after the last dark, adrenalin-fuelled years, when all the world had teetered on the edge of catastrophe. He had easily obtained one of the many places available – all those young hopefuls gone west – and in the same haphazard way had chosen to read English. He hadn't yet lost the wild air of the undergraduate, and was apt to wear a college scarf wound around his neck, even when it was not strictly necessary.

This train of thought brought him back to the wedding. Oh, God! Bad enough being seen as the poor relations, but there was another, even more cogent reason he did not feel inclined to go. Reading English had given Valentine literary aspirations, but no one, it seemed, wanted to publish, much less read, the kind of novel he had recently surprised even himself by producing: angry, declamatory, accusing. They said everyone had had enough of that kind of angst; amusement was what the world wanted now, this fast and light-hearted world determined to forget the recent past and its horrors in the hectic whirl of nightclubs, fast dancing, jazz music, cocktail drinking – and perhaps more – as Poppy and her friends did.

If he went to the wedding he would have the embarrassment of facing Gerald Markham, who in his professional capacity had just turned down his novel. Gerald, conscientious and well-intentioned Gerald, whose own war had been spent at the War Office, was once more running the Markham Press, while old Hugh, who had emerged out of retirement to fill the breach for the duration of his absence, had gracefully stepped back into it once more.

Poppy picked up her black figured-velvet wrap with its white swansdown collar. ‘You can stay here for a bit if you wish, Val, but I don't want you camping out on my sofa all night. For one thing, my landlord wouldn't like it.'

He swung his legs to the floor. ‘No fear, I'm off now. Where are you going?'