Dubious Legacy (24 page)

‘Yes,’ said Maisie, ‘he’s terribly upset.’

‘Still drunk,’ said Antonia. ‘I’m coming to fetch him. Don’t let him drive.’

‘She sounds rather cross,’ said Maisie, returning to the listening men.

Half an hour later, watching a tight-lipped Antonia drive her husband away, Peter said, ‘What do you suppose Matthew means by saying that Henry has no sense of morality? I don’t get it.’

Maisie said, ‘He hasn’t any more than his father had. Like father, like son.’

‘I don’t see the comparison,’ said Peter. ‘Henry’s father was an old do-gooder.’

‘Not in his youth,’ replied Maisie. ‘You can’t have heard the village on the subject.’

‘Gossip,’ said Peter. ‘Henry farms his land very well and keeps an eagle eye on things.’

Maisie snorted. ‘Didn’t keep much of an eye last night, did he? Letting Matthew spend the night with his wife.’

‘Don’t exaggerate, Maisie.’

‘No need to,’ said Maisie. ‘Would Antonia have bolted into the night, taking little Susie, if Matthew had come to bed in the normal way? Even I, stupid as I am, can grasp that he woke up in Margaret’s bed.’

‘On Margaret’s bed, he did say
on,
outside the bedclothes.’

‘All right, outside, a detail which would be lost on poor Antonia. What I’m asking is, what was Henry up to, allowing such behaviour?’

‘I expect he had gone to bed,’ said Peter. ‘But you can ask him when he comes to fetch his old crock.’

‘If that’s a dare,’ said Maisie, ‘I’m not taking you up on it.’

T
HE DOGS, PRESSING AGAINST
him, woke Henry with their shivering. He lay, shoulders propped against a bale, in the middle of a hayfield. The sun was not yet up to counter the full moon riding high; looking up, he could see stars. A sheep coughed in the next field and Lysander whimpered, flattening his chin on to Henry’s chest. He was cold except where the dogs pressed against his ribs; he sat up, caressed them. ‘Good dogs, keep still. Listen.’

A wren sang a few loud notes, fell silent, was joined by a robin chortling its aria in full. In the wood beyond the field a pheasant cackled in alarm as a vixen trotted home across the stubble. A jay shrieked. Hector and Lysander followed the vixen with their eyes, straining their necks, noses twitching. Henry said, ‘No,’ and they subsided on to quivering haunches.

He was lying in muffling mist. Spiders were weaving their traps in the stubble; he listened to the pre-dawn silence and then, as the chorus of birds got under way, he got to his feet, dusted himself down and resumed the walk he had begun the night before when he shed his town clothes, put on corduroys, sweaters and an old jacket and took the dogs across the fields to the lake to rid them of the stink of Guerlain and himself of thoughts of his wife, his lodgers, his life.

‘Run, dogs, run,’ he had cried to the dogs as they came splashing out of the dark lake and he had run with them as they circled crazily in the moonlight, crashed through the reeds, startling waterfowl, then rolled and twisted on the grass to dry before following him as he circled his land through the wood and over the hills until, tired, he had stopped in the hayfield and fallen asleep.

Now he walked towards the reddening sky; it was going to be a hot day. As he walked, the mist evaporated and one by one grasshoppers set up their dry chirrup. He forgot his irritation with Matthew. Pilar and Trask would have manoeuvred Margaret back to bed; it had been better to get out of the way. There was nothing he could have done. Anger with Margaret was futile; rather, he thought with wry amusement, he was these days inclined to be grateful to her. For so long he had wished himself free of her; now in some perverse way she represented freedom.

Thinking of this, he stood looking down a narrow valley at the foot of which lay a wood still in shadow. There as a boy he had hidden and dreamed of Calypso, gnawed by love, yearning with all the force of adolescence for the impossible, weeping with frustration, refusing to abandon hope.

Who would have imagined as she broke my brittle heart that she and Hector would become my dear friends? They love each other; it has lasted, Henry thought admiringly. That woman had sense.

Looking down the valley, he hesitated; should he go down? There was work to be done, hay to bring in, another field to cut. He turned back and his thoughts turned dispassionately to Barbara and Antonia, who had shown less sense than Calypso. Their families were no worse, no more boring than Calypso’s had been, and both lots had the advantage of money, whereas Calypso’s had been poor. Those girls could have waited, thought Henry; surely they could have done better for themselves? What a potential mess they are making, he thought. ‘Not that I,’ he said out loud to his dogs, ‘am not quite happy to aid and abet.’

Henry felt at peace this lovely summer morning; he loved his land, enjoyed working it. The house and garden survived, thanks to the Jonathans and his lodger friends. He must not let things irritate him. Life might be a whole lot worse; freedom was precious.

Across the fields there came the sound of a tractor. Trask, coming into view, drove up to stop beside him, quell the engine.

‘You slept out,’ he shouted, as though the engine were still running. ‘You’ll be getting rheumatics.’ His long upper lip worked reproachfully. ‘Or perhaps you was walking back from the village?’

Henry said, ‘I’m fine. We should bring the hay in, cut the top field while this weather lasts, cart the bales this afternoon.’

Trask, still shouting, said, ‘You’re getting to be like your pa when he was young; rutting all night, then comes in all innocent and gives his orders on the farm. Have you had breakfast?’

Henry said, ‘No.’

Trask restarted the tractor. ‘I’ll get on with the hay,’ he yelled. ‘You’ll be wanting to watch them parasites.’

‘What parasites?’ Henry’s farmer mind switched to his sheep. ‘We are not dipping until next week,’ he shouted.

‘I’m meaning your lodgers,’ yelled Trask. ‘Matthew’s taken off with your precious car.’ He laughed, pleased with his bad news.

‘What the hell for?’ Henry was enraged. ‘Was he drunk?’

Trask let the tractor idle. ‘That, too,’ he said, ‘but Antonia’s hopped it with the baby; he’s looking for her. She took their car.’

Henry said, ‘Bugger him.’

‘’Twas he took Margaret up to bed.’ Trask roared the engine and drove off, laughing. Calamity is the spice of life for men like Trask, thought Henry resignedly; people like Trask live vicariously.

C
ROWDED BY HER PARCELS
, Antonia looked out from the bus at the people hurrying along the pavement. An autumn gale was playing tricks with their umbrellas. Departing, the French au pair had quoted, ‘
Il pleure dans mon cœur comme il pleut sur la ville.’
Had the girl been making fun of her? Literary au pairs were no good. Matthew had said, ‘Get yourself a German.’ How right, as always; Matthew was almost as irritating as her parents. Antonia bundled her parcels onto her lap so that a large woman in a heavy coat could crowd beside her. ‘Cadogan Street?’ the woman enquired, spreading her hips, squashing close. She had an A to Z map in her hand, impossible to spread in the crowded bus. ‘Stop after next,’ Antonia said, turning back to the window, then, ‘Oh. Hi. I must get off.’ Struggling free, clutching her parcels, she lurched down the bus, pushed past the conductor and leapt for the pavement, where she tripped and landed on her knees.

‘Stupid cunt,’ yelled the bus conductor as the bus diminished.

‘What did you do that for?’ Henry bent to retrieve her parcels. ‘Hurt yourself?’

‘Banged my knees. Saw you from the bus. Thanks.’ Antonia stood upright, a little shaken, holding two parcels while Henry held the rest.

Henry said, ‘Have you no umbrella?’ The rain darkened her hair, streamed down her face. ‘We are blocking the pavement,’ he said as people pushed past. ‘The bus was moving,’ he said crossly. ‘Whoops, I love seeing that happen,’ as ahead of them a freak wind snapped an umbrella inside out and back again. ‘You’ve torn your stockings,’ he said.

Antonia laughed.

Henry took her arm. ‘I’m staying near here. You can borrow a pair of Angela’s stockings. It’s just round the corner. Unless you want me to take you home? What about lunch?’

Antonia said: ‘No, no. Who is Angela?’

Henry said, ‘Friend I am staying with, she’s out. I have to make a phone call, come along.’

Antonia said, ‘Lunch would be lovely.’

Henry said, ‘Good,’ and led her round the corner to a block of flats.

In the lift Antonia said, ‘I hesitate to make free with a stranger’s stockings.’

Henry said, ‘She won’t mind,’ and opened a door with a latchkey. ‘You must not be squeamish,’ he said. ‘She’s a clean girl,’ he said, opening and shutting drawers in a bedroom. ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘Put them on while I telephone.’

Antonia took the stockings and, finding the bathroom, removed her own torn ones. Borrowing a sponge, she dabbed gingerly at her knees. In the next room Henry was telephoning, something to do with sheep; his conversation was brief.

Outside the bathroom he said, ‘What lunatic impulse propelled you from that bus?’

Drying her knees with a tissue, bending with her skirt rucked up, Antonia answered through gritted teeth, ‘I had a lecture this morning from my mother; the subject matter was caution versus impulse. When I saw you from the bus strolling in the rain, in your London suit, I obeyed an impulse long suppressed to ask you to make love to me.’

After a minute pause Henry said, ‘Why not now, before lunch?’

Antonia pulled down her skirt.

Henry said, ‘There’s a nice bed.’

Antonia said, ‘Your friend Angela’s?’

Henry said, ‘If you are going to be scrupulous, we can do it on the floor; personally, I go for comfort.’

‘It was amazing,’ Antonia said some years later, ‘such a healing experience.’ She was moved, as she had been several times before, to apologize to Calypso for her drunken visit of years ago—quite a number of years, actually. Susie, visible in the distance helping Calypso’s son Hamish (who had left Oxford a year earlier), was twelve now and her sister Clio, nearly nine, was hindering, as was Hilaria, Barbara and James’s daughter. Hamish was coppicing hazels. Antonia had brought the little girls from Cotteshaw to picnic in the Grants’ wood; now she sat with Calypso on the terrace in front of the house. ‘They are all falling in love with Hamish,’ she had said and Calypso, lazing in a deck-chair, had answered, ‘As you girls were with Henry,’ deflecting Antonia’s apology, which she had guessed was impending. She had no wish to hear it since Hector was dead and could not enjoy it with her. Antonia answered unguardedly, for with Calypso one was apt to indulge in indiscretion, she being a notoriously safe depository of secrets, ‘And as some of us still are.’

Calypso tipped her hat against the sun.

‘Henry saved my marriage,’ Antonia persisted. ‘There’s no doubt about it.’

Calypso still said nothing.

‘I have never talked to anyone about him,’ Antonia pressed on.

So why talk now? Calypso asked herself and mischievously, since a reply was expected, murmured, ‘Your mother?’ Antonia’s mother, with her impeccable virtue, was a person she and Hector had always deplored.

‘It was my mother, long-suffering and moral, who was responsible for what happened,’ said Antonia and went on to relate her meeting with Henry and the lovemaking in the borrowed bed. ‘It was wonderful,’ she said, ‘an eye-opener. I had rather wanted to sleep with Henry when I first met him. Wondered what it would be like. He has the most wonderful four-poster at Cotteshaw. It was when Matthew and I were getting engaged. I wanted to marry Matthew, of course, I had decided I would. But I wondered about Henry in the way one does. Then, the night of the June dinner party, when Margaret went bananas and killed the cockatoo, I saw Henry in his bath and I knew I absolutely must try sometime.’

In spite of herself, Calypso murmured, ‘But when you did, there must have been something to set you off.’

‘There was,’ said Antonia, ‘a combination of frustrations. I had left Susie to spend the day with my mother—she loves to play the omnipotent granny—I had tried to get away but she got in her spiky oar, she always does, about my being selfish and not putting Matthew first, as she does Father. It came on top of Matthew boring on about wanting a son, which he did a lot of at that time. I was browned off and not wanting to get pregnant again—putting it off, feeling pretty bitchy. Then I saw Henry walking in the rain and jumped off the bus. Meeting Henry did me so much good,’ said Antonia earnestly. ‘I was taking life too seriously, you see, making a meal of it. Henry can be absolutely beastly, as we all know, but he can also be very kind; look at the way he treats Margaret and how good he is to Pilar. Then he has this streak of frivolity which is so engaging, such a tonic. Once,’ said Antonia laughing, ‘when I felt a guilty pang and suggested that what we were doing was immoral, he said, “And all the
more fun
for that.”’

Calypso said, ‘You had rather a racy great-aunt.’

‘Oh yes!’ said Antonia. ‘I think she would have approved of Henry, don’t you? Did you know her well?’

Calypso shook her head. ‘Before my day, pre-1914. I was born in 1920, after her heyday.’

Antonia blushed. ‘How idiotic of me, sorry.’ Then she said, ‘I have bottled this up for years.’

‘Couldn’t you go on bottling?’

Antonia said, ‘No, I can’t. It’s OK for Catholics like you; you can hiss through a grille in a confessional, get absolved and feel better. I have to tell someone or I shall start being nasty to Matthew. I’ve thought of converting, but Matthew would hit the roof. I can’t.’

Calypso laughed.

‘You don’t know how lucky you were, married to Hector,’ said Antonia. ‘Gosh, you were fortunate.’

‘I do know,’ said Calypso.

Antonia said, ‘I should not have said that. I just wondered whether you who have had lovely, lovely Hector can guess what it’s like to be married to Matthew.’

‘I am not totally devoid of imagination.’

‘No, of course not. Oh, Calypso, I can say it to you, it’s so disloyal but I can’t help it, Matthew can be—quite often is—boring. Not always, of course.’