Casting Off (52 page)

‘For her? How do you know?’

‘For
us
, my darling. Things have been hard for
us
.’

‘I suppose we made them worse than they need have been.’

‘I don’t know. I feel as you do. I couldn’t tell you about Miche until it was over for me. Or over enough.’ He touched her face, stroked her cheekbone with one finger. ‘Oh, the relief! To know you again! And you began it. You were the brave one.’ She wanted to catch his gaiety – his relief – but she could not. She was not finished, and now, what was left to tell him seemed the worst of all. She remembered the Duchy saying that one should not burden other people with the responsibility of one’s experience – or something of the kind. The whole business of Philip had happened to someone she scarcely recognized as herself. But then she had had the baby that had turned out to be Philip’s – and she had put Rupert through all the misery of her pregnancy, labour and subsequent loss, and through all of that he had attended to her, had never once claimed any of the grief or loss for himself. She had to put that right, whatever it cost.

‘What is it? What’s the matter?’

She felt herself blushing – with shame and fear – but she made herself look at him.

‘That first baby,’ she began, haltingly, trying to find the right words.

His expression changed, and for a moment it was as though he looked far into her and saw all that was there; then he took her hands again and said in a voice that was both gentle and casual, ‘It was rather a changeling, wasn’t it? I think we should both let it lie. Will you do that with me?’

Tears rushed to her eyes, and with the first spontaneous gesture since his return, she threw herself into his arms.

‘You stay put. I’ll get Mrs Greenacre to bring you some breakfast.’

‘I only want tea. I couldn’t face anything solid.’

‘Poor darling!’ he said heartily. ‘Perhaps you’d better give the doctor a ring.’ He had bathed and shaved and dressed, and was standing in the middle of the room, poised to go for his breakfast.

‘No need – it’s just gastric flu. You go down, darling, or you’ll be late.’

‘Right.’

When he had gone, Diana crept out of bed to go to the lavatory, where she had spent a good deal of the night. He had left the bathroom window open, and the gale had knocked the Bakelite tooth-mugs off the window ledge into the bath. She bent to pick them up and felt a wave of nausea. She shut the window. Grey clouds were scudding across the sky at an unearthly rate, and the garden was full of the tiny petals from the pink may trees. It looked as though it would rain again. She ran a basin of hot water and laved her face. She looked awful. Once, she would never have allowed Edward to see her like this, but now she supposed it was different – or very nearly different. The divorce was in hand, thank God, but she had been warned that it would take months. Villy was divorcing him for adultery: when she had questioned this, he had said that the lawyers had said that it was either that or desertion, which would take a great deal longer. Her face was not even romantically pale: it was more grey with a yellowish tinge, and her hair looked matted and dull. She cleaned her teeth and picked up Edward’s comb, but it was thick with his hair oil. She went back to the bedroom to find her own comb; by then she was shivering.

Mrs Greenacre duly arrived with a tray of tea and lit the gas fire. She also shut a window – Edward insisted on sleeping in a draught. Diana asked for her handbag and, when she was alone, found her dry rouge and dabbed a bit on her cheekbones. Edward would be sure to come and say goodbye to her before he left for the office.

‘You look better already, darling,’ he said, when he did so. ‘Better warn you – the Government’s latest decree is that we can’t have any fires from now until September.’

‘Oh, Lord! Turn it out, then.’

‘Nonsense! You’re ill. I’m not having you cold. Get better, sweetie. I’ll be back a bit later because I’m going to the doc.’

‘Oh, yes.’

He bent to kiss her and she smelt lavender water and hair oil – scents that used to excite her about him. ‘Look after yourself.’

‘I’m sorry I look so awful.’

‘You don’t look awful! You look beautiful. I love you – remember? – as always.’

‘I love you.’

He was gone. She heard him talking to Mrs Greenacre, and then the front door slam. As she drank some of the tea she reflected how often they said this to one another these days. It was a kind of ritual refrain, not so much a declaration as a staunching process; without it, everything might leak away. This thought frightened her: it seemed extraordinary, almost inconceivable, that something she had wanted for so long was not making her deliriously happy. It was more that
not
having it would be so terrifying that she could not contemplate it. She had thought that her discontent was due to uncertainty: first, that he would not ever leave Villy and live with her and then he had, and then that even if he lived with her, he would never press for a divorce, and then he had. But the feeling of – disappointment persisted, compounded now by the moral obligation to be desperately in love with someone who had done all that for her. And somewhere, buried, because she did not want it to be a certainty, she was afraid that he felt the same – had the same disappointment, felt the same necessity to reiterate his tremendous love for her to justify what he had done. So every day, often several times a day – or, rather, evening – this ritual of love was declared aloud between them, although she derived less and less comfort from it.

It was not even as though they lived a life of sweetness and light, artificial or no. There had been ructions . . . Now, because she was feeling rotten and there was nothing else she had the energy to do, she must lie and contemplate them.

There had been the awful half-term when Ian and Fergus had come to them. They were at the same boarding school, and spent most, if not all, of their holidays with their grandparents in Scotland. The moment they arrived at the house, she had sensed their hostility, not only to Edward but to her. With Ian, the eldest, nearly seventeen, it had taken the form of taciturnity, and the determination not to be impressed by anything. With Fergus, two years younger, it had been rather senseless boasting, accounts of how he had beaten people at games or exams, or simply by some clever remark. When Edward spoke to them, they barely answered. He had been good to them, had taken them all to
Nicholas Nickleby
and out to dinner afterwards. He asked them what else they would like to do, and they had said they would rather go off on their own. Which they did, for nearly the whole of Saturday, and were uncommunicative about where they had been. Jamie, who had got very excited about their visit, was also snubbed.

She had prepared a large room for them on the top floor of the house and when she showed it to them, had said, ‘This is to be your room, so you can keep things in it for when you come.’

And Ian had answered, ‘There’s no need, Mum. We won’t be coming. We’d rather be in Scotland.’

When she had taken them to the station in the car with Edward and seen them off, she had cried. He had been very nice to her about that, said that she couldn’t help the fact that due to the war and everything of course it had been better for them to be in Scotland. But she’d lost them, and somewhere, because she felt so guilty about it, she had wanted to blame Edward.

Then, and far more recently, they had had an actual
row
about the nights he spent in Southampton. He went once a week, and two weeks ago, had rung to say he would have to spend an extra night there. Instantly, pictures of his wartime deception of Villy occurred to her. He had used to ring
her
up, or tell her he’d rung Villy up, with some story that he said had ‘made things perfectly all right’. Perhaps that was what he was doing now, with
her
, she had thought, and once she had thought it, she could not get it out of her mind. She knew, better than most, how susceptible he was; she also knew, better than anyone, that he was not going to bed with her with the same enthusiasm and frequency. So, surely it was obvious – or at least very likely – that he was going to bed with someone else. She tried ringing the hotel where he said he was staying, and they said he was out. When he came home she confronted him with this. ‘I was in the dining room!’ he exclaimed. ‘Silly buggers, why didn’t they look for me there – or page me or something? Why did you want to get hold of me anyway?’ he asked a moment later.

‘I wondered where you were.’

‘I told you where I was.’

‘Yes, but then I couldn’t get hold of you.’

‘Not
my
fault,’ he said. ‘I’ll speak to them about that next week.’

‘Where did you
think
I’d be?’ he then asked.

‘I didn’t
know
. Well, of course I thought you’d be at the hotel, or I wouldn’t have rung it.’

‘I meant when you didn’t get me there.’ His eyes had become quite hard, which she knew they did when he was beginning to get angry.

‘I had no idea, darling. I was worried.’ If only, at this point, she had said something like, ‘After all, I am rather attached to you’ or ‘I was really worried about your poor tum’ (his indigestion, though intermittent, was sometimes acute), things might have calmed down, but she didn’t. There had been a brief pause while Mrs Greenacre brought in the cheese and celery and then he had continued to press her: where did she
think
he might be?

‘I suppose I thought you might have gone off with some bright young thing . . .’

He was outraged, not in the least flattered, simply angry. His anger had all the exaggerated resentment that she had associated with people accused when they were innocent of something they habitually did. In the end, she apologized – abjectly, with tears in her eyes – and he forgave her. Afterwards, she reflected wearily, all she had done was put the idea into his head.

There had been brighter moments – or, rather, better times. Easter at Home Place, for instance. The Duchy was spending a few weeks there during the holidays, and she and Edward were invited down for a long weekend.

‘Who will be there?’ she had asked. She felt both nervous and excited at the prospect.

‘Rupe and Zoë, and my sister Rachel and poor old Flo – that’s the Duchy’s sister – and Archie Lestrange, an old friend of Rupe’s, well, of the whole family, really. And Teddy and Bernadine – I don’t think she’s been before, either, and she’ll be far more of a fish out of water than you’ll ever be, darling.’

‘It’s a lot of people to meet at once for the first time.’

‘You know Rupe and Zoë.’

‘Will Hugh be there?’

His face clouded. ‘No. He’s taken Wills off on some boating holiday with friends.’

And so, on a Friday evening, they drove down. It poured with rain until the last few miles when the sun came out suddenly, making all the fresh wet greens of trees and fields glisten, and bluebells were like wood-smoke on the ground in the woods. ‘It is the most lovely time of year,’ she said. She associated the country with being cold and lonely: now she was going with Edward to be received into his family. She had some minutes of pure happiness.

Edward smiled, and laid a hand on her knee. ‘This is rather different from those times when I used to drive you down to Isla’s cottage,’ he said, ‘isn’t it, sweetie? This is a bit of all right.’ He had stopped at Tonbridge and spent all their sweet coupons on expensive chocolates, two boxes. ‘Violet and rose creams for the Duchy,’ he said, ‘she does love them, and truffles for the rest of us.’

They were driving now down a hill with high banks each side of the road, and woods on their right. White gates appeared on the right and they went in.

The house, rambling and rather shabby, was larger than she had expected. A small man with bandy legs met them and carried their luggage.

‘Evening, Tonbridge. How’s Mrs Tonbridge?’

‘Keeping very nicely, sir, thank you. Good evening, madam.’

They followed him through the wicket gate to the front door.

In the large hall Edward led her straight to the Duchy, who was arranging daffodils on a long table. She was greeted kindly: Edward had said that his mother was nearly eighty, but she did not look it, and her eyes, the same colour as Edward’s, looked straight at and, Diana felt, through her with a direct simplicity that was unnerving. ‘I think Rachel has put you in Hugh’s room,’ she said. She had wondered whether they would be allowed to share a room, and was relieved as well as surprised.

They met Rachel on the stairs. Like her mother, she was dressed in blue but she was taller and extremely thin. Her hair was shingled in a very old-fashioned manner – nowadays one associated that kind of hair-do with lesbians, she thought.

‘Darling! You’ve cut your hair off! When did you do that?’

‘Oh, not very long ago. You know you’re in Hugh’s room, don’t you? We’ve put Teddy and Bernadine in your old one.’

She had gone faintly pink – the hidden allusion to Villy, Diana supposed.

‘I’m so glad you could come,’ Rachel was saying: her smile was warm, her gaze like her mother’s.