Lettice & Victoria (13 page)

Chapter 2

B
efore going to sleep, Harold, stronger than Archie now, leant across the narrow bed and hit the other on the eye.

The next day, a large area of Archie’s face showed bruising. In parts the skin had broken. He made weak attempts at concealment, applying a number of small sticky plasters. At breakfast a horrified Victoria ordered him to sit. She peeled off the plasters as Archie shrank.

‘Of course this is very good of you,’ he said, voice high-pitched.

With incredible pliancy she ran to a chemist shop where she bought a tube of cosmetic cream.

When the treatment was finished he looked passable, albeit mottled, and Victoria returned to the stables.

Perdita called, unexpectedly, on Archie that afternoon. She needed his advice and a signature. He signed with a flourish as she saw his face and sniffed.

Later she rang the college bursar with whom she had always
managed to stay on close terms. ‘It must be more passionate than we guessed. The widow has given him a black eye, and that’s not all. He’s allowed her to camouflage the wounds with reeking face cream. We must investigate.’

Robert Stratton, the socially ubiquitous painter, rang Victoria.

‘It’s far too long since we met and I’ve been hearing the
terrible
tale of Archie Thorne’s black eye.’

‘Heavens! Poor Archie.’

‘I’m glad it was that way round. You might have been killed if he’d given you one.’

‘Given me what?’

‘A black eye. You must be stronger than you look.’

‘What can you be saying?’

‘Everybody knows. The town crier has informed the cabinet.’

Victoria suggested that they meet. ‘I promise not to cause you any bodily harm.’

Archie rang Victoria. ‘This is simply to say how much I appreciated your invaluable assistance. The damage went undetected, thanks to your skills.’

‘Not entirely, I hear. In parliament today I was held
responsible
for abrasions.’

‘Once again, I hope you don’t expect me to understand one word of what you say.’

Robert Stratton planned to give a party. Perdita rang him. ‘I hope to God the widow won’t be there.’

‘Why?’

‘I can’t stand fisticuffs.’

‘Has anyone asked you to?’

‘Not yet but I can always smell an imbroglio.’

She rang Archie and put the same point. He answered, ‘
Victoria
is certain to be there. Indeed, both Harold and I hope to see her.’

‘We’d better get Robert to put “knuckle-dusters” on the card.’

‘You know the invitations have already been dispatched.’

‘It’s terribly tiresome not knowing anything about her
background
. I can usually tell unless people are arty or foreign. I believe her mother was Norwegian or some such nationality.’

‘Will you be going yourself in view of all this nonsense?’

‘Willy-nilly,’ Perdita stopped to smoke and to cough.

Robert, on hearing further whispers of unrest, called the party off.

After pressing a button, Perdita dialled. ‘Long to know why you’ve funked it. Is it something to do with the widow? Has she hidden her mite under a bushel or something? Perhaps it would be better if she did.’

Robert, strict, told her, ‘As you know, I’m very fond of
Victoria
but I’m also very bored of hearing about her. Sorry about the party. I’ve been called away. Say what you like.’

‘How about Tit Widow?’

Nobody wanted to join in. That was the greatest hurdle to be climbed.

Left to herself she had one more try and wrote:

‘Oh hell. I seem to have lost my touch. Perhaps I’d better give up smoking.’

She dropped her pen, drained of poison, and walked about a bit.

Her old nurse said, ‘Think of your first wedding and how the whole village was given a half-holiday.’

Chapter 3

I
t was Archie’s fault that Perdita and Lettice met.

He had added Lettice’s name to Perdita’s appeal. Lettice, parsimonious to a point of absurdity, could not be expected to contribute but would enjoy the attention and the giving of reasons for refusal to do so.

She decided to write him a note – heart-rending and quaint.

‘Dearest Archie.’ There she stopped for a moment to consult a dictionary. ‘You know, all too well, of our indigence. What a yoke it is to struggle under. Roland, bless him, has never known of the sacrifices we have made to his art. I feel that one of our sacrifices has to be my contribution to these appeals that you so nobly support.’

Archie asked Harold to finish reading her letter in case any part of it might need a reply.

Lettice wrote to Perdita.

‘Dear Mrs Chanter. Who are you, you might ask yourself on receipt of this. And a very fair question that would be! Lettice
Holliday. An old, dear friend of Archie Thorne. He sent me one of your appeals – such a good cause. I gather my poor
little
daughter-in-law had lunch with you recently. How good of you. I want to thank you somehow. How about a weekend? Soon! End of the month say? Would love it. Lettice Holliday.

‘PS: We are covered in a blanket of moss and ivy. Can you bear it? Until then I will be alone here with my husband Roland and my beloved spaniel Orpheus, who lies at my feet as I write. Don’t you adore the unquestioning loyalty of dumb animals? I called him Orpheus to remind me of my lute (specially made for me when I was small) and of the celestial poetry of the Bard himself. I think my favourite line in literature is “In sweet Musicke is such Art”.’

Perdita, who loathed dogs as did Archie, rang him. ‘I couldn’t face a weekend of moss and ivy in that dripping part of the world but I’ve asked her to lunch in London. Now, I suppose, she’ll go and accept and bore me rigid quoting Shakespeare. It’s all your fault for making me so curious.’

‘I refuse to be blamed for your curiosity.’

‘Oh, darling. Don’t be stuffy. It’s living in those lodgings that’s made you so gloomy. I shall call them “stuffy lodgings”.’

‘Very well but cancel lunch with Lettice. It was foolish and unnecessary of you to invite her.’

‘How’s Tit Widow?’

‘Who?’

‘Everybody calls her that.’

‘What a terribly feeble joke.’

‘You can blame Robert Stratton.’

‘I must go. I have to dine in hall.’

Perdita decided not to cancel the lunch and booked a table for two at a London restaurant where she was pretty certain to know some of the clientele. Most of the people she knew went there regularly.

She sang:

Lettice, in mauve, arrived first. Well rehearsed, she embarked immediately.

‘It’s wonderful to meet somebody on the same wavelength. There are so few kindred spirits in my part of the world.’

Thinking, ‘Christ! What a sight!’ Perdita dug deep into her bag.

‘It was sweet of you to have Victoria to lunch. How did she manage? I’ve had an agonising time introducing her to our clever friends. You and I have dozens in common, it turns out. Dear Archie’s been an angel.’

‘Archie? His heart is made of flint.’

Lettice, enraptured by the other’s worldliness, had a crack.

‘I must admit I can’t picture him with wings.’

God, thought Perdita, sipping whisky, something must
happen
. She twitched her brain as Lettice kept trying.

‘What about a halo? Do you think that one would become him?’

Four eyes met. Lettice’s teeth were enormous.

Robert Stratton and Victoria came in to the restaurant. Victoria had travelled from the country by train to meet the
painter, not realising that Lettice sat alone in her finery in another carriage. Perdita spied them at once.

‘Did I invite you both or is it divine coincidence? Sit down and have a glass of whisky while I see to a reshuffle.’

We are the cabinet, Victoria thought, rather wonderful.

She unbuttoned her coat and took it off. Perdita stared at her low-cut dress.

Muscles on Lettice’s face, up to then under control, began to run riot – came near to the corner of one eye, gathered and stayed taut for a second before rippling and carrying a tear.

Robert Stratton knew better than to interfere.

‘What a delightful party,’ Archie passed on his way to a table booked for two, further down the room.

‘But I won’t join you. I’m in rather a hurry.’ He sat and waited for Harold who, on sighting Victoria, had been sick and gone to the lavatory.

Lettice said, ‘If this was a novel we’d say it was overdone.’

Perdita whispered, ‘Silly, twitching mistress of the obvious remark,’ as she turned to Robert. She needed an extra man for a dinner party that night.

Lettice and Victoria caught the same train, free of kindred spirits, back to their part of the world.

That evening Harold wrote some letters.

To Victoria he said, ‘I love you very much.’

To Lettice, ‘Yours is the only home I have ever known. Why are you not my mother?’

To Perdita, ‘I’ll never know why I deserve the kindness you show me. Perhaps I am foolish to talk of deserving.’

To Archie, ‘I will always be your boy but you must learn to be a more considerate father.’

To the daughter of a colleague, ‘Will you marry me, please, at once.’ He had only met her twice.

To his own mother, ‘You have never been of any use to me at any time.’

He delivered the one for Archie by hand and the others he posted, jerkily, into a private letter box belonging to the college after crediting stamps to an account held by Archie.

He waited until he saw the porter shuffle out with them, walk along the street and wedge them into the stately red box on the corner. Then he ran to his room where he lay, sobbing on his bed, until Archie came to comfort him. Archie rang each
member
of the letter club, and to each, apart from Harold’s mother, he said, ‘How shall I put it? Of course it’s not nothing to be loved by Harold. You know how sensitive he is. A sensitive genius. He means nothing but good when he writes like that. But of course
à qui vous le dites?
as my predecessor here used to say.’

He rang Harold’s mother and said that Harold was sorry for his words but that, of course, he was a genius.

‘I don’t know about genius.’ Mrs Fitch spoke in a flat, drab tone. ‘That’s for the world to decide. He may have told you that I never cared for him. You should meet Edmund. He’s the one that looks to his mother.’

Archie told Harold that his mother had forgiven him and that the others loved him deeply in different fashions although, perhaps, the daughter of his colleague needed time in which to think things over. ‘But don’t be discouraged.’

Harold said, ‘Archie. I will never desert you. Never.’ He smashed two ashtrays and a small table.

Victoria answered Harold’s letter of love.

‘I daresay you asked Archie to mediate. There was no need. I neither take your protestations of love very seriously nor do I ignore them. I hope that suits you. I like you very much although I’m awkward when I’m with you. Perhaps less than at first but your silences can be a bit creepy.’

Harold replied, ‘My dear girl. You are very good and I love you more than ever. I am not in love with you. That – being in love with a woman – is a prize to be denied me for ever. I
worship
you in all the ways I can.’

This correspondence was the only one of the bunch to flourish.

Chapter 4

H
arold visited Victoria, alone, at the stables and the prize, presumed unattainable, came within his reach although both their needs for Archie remained undiminished. As she thought of Archie and the power he held over her she understood that Harold constituted the only route to intimacy with him. The next best thing. She almost fell for him in a frantic fashion.

Archie sent Victoria a book. ‘You are very young,’ he wrote. ‘This is an interesting book and one which illustrates how many ways there are of loving. You must read it and let me know what you think.’

She read it and considered it a bad example of how to behave.

Harold came again to see her and appeared in her bedroom, crept into her bed and wept with delight; telling her again and again of his early terrors induced by women.

When he returned to Cambridge, he told Archie of his joy.

Archie rang Victoria to say, ‘You have made Harold terribly
happy. Aren’t you wonderful! I suppose you think I should be jealous. Not at all! It is so frightfully good for him.’

‘And for me? Please help me, too.’

‘You haul this unique and brilliant creature into your bed and expect me to be sorry for you?’

Later he rang back. ‘I was rather unsympathetic. I didn’t quite take your point. I’m terribly sorry.’

‘That’s kind. You are kind. I know you didn’t understand but I didn’t explain. I could get out of it now, perhaps, but it might be hard later on.’

The weirdness of the passion she had aroused in Harold nearly unhinged her.

‘
A qui vous le dites,
as my predecessor used to say.
A qui vous
le dites?
My child, how easy it is to say, “Don’t worry,” but that is my advice. Don’t worry and take things as they come.’

She kissed Maudie and decided to drift on. Possibly
damage
Harold. Assassinate herself. Wound Archie. Take it as it came. Archie was no help. That was for sure. Anxiety for him dissolved.

Perdita said, ‘I gather the widow has hauled Harold into her bed. Too macabre. Like interfering with an ostrich.’

Archie, proud of his boy having become a man, basked in lecherous content. His interest in Victoria increased and he wanted to see her alone. He tried to fathom out how to do it without driving Harold wild.

Harold had to go to a family funeral and Archie drove straight to the stables. He took supplies with him and together he and Victoria drank a great deal.

He said, ‘Remove that nasty brooch,’ and asked her to hold his head and kiss his eyes. ‘And now I’d like you to get into my bed.’

In bed, she said, ‘I thought something like this might have made you sick. Actually retch.’

‘No. I’m not going to be sick – at least I don’t think I am. I might be if you don’t kiss me at once. You know that I love you.’

‘You would be wrong if you didn’t.’

‘I wish I wasn’t so drunk.’

‘I’m not rapacious.’

‘Don’t use such long words. It’s terribly confusing.’

‘What about Harold?’

‘When you’re very close to somebody you can’t hide things. If I find myself telling him about it I shall let you know immediately.’

He asked her to stay with him. ‘Of course I prefer men but with women there are exceptions. I did once go to bed with a woman. She was the wife of a friend of mine. During the war.’

‘Was it nice?’

‘Not particularly but we have remained friends.’

‘That’s a relief.’

‘Aren’t you a goose.’

‘Probably.’

‘I think you are quite extraordinarily intelligent. Also you deserve a medal. Two medals. I wonder if they are ever awarded for certain services.’

‘Do you remember our first meeting?’

‘I think you were beside a log fire.’

‘I fell in love with you.’

‘I know. Quite right. Do you believe now that I love you?’ He pulled her on to him. ‘I want to grip you between my thighs and I want you to say if you believe I love you. This has
nothing
to do with Harold. For once he is forgotten. Now. Kiss me again and don’t go away. I am terribly old and shall have to go and pee. Stay here and be in my bed when I come back.’

When he returned he wanted to discuss his homosexuality.

‘There’s something utterly heavenly about queers.’ She spoke in high-pitched imitation of Lettice. He told her she had won.

‘And, of course, you are frightfully funny. Kiss me again and be quiet. The wonderful thing about this is how little either of us expected it. We didn’t have the faintest idea. It’s terribly exciting.’

‘I never wanted it. I promise I never even thought of it. I only wanted you to love me very much.’

‘And now you know that I do. Do you know?’ He was rough and he hurt her.

He asked her to tuck him up in bed and leave him.

Later, Harold told her that he always did the same for Archie.

She left him and her moment of advantage was over. It was a terrible wrench. She must return to Harold.

Between the three of them it was decided that Victoria marry Harold. She would have preferred to marry Archie.

Lettice held out her arms. ‘
Ma belle fille
once more. Harold has always been a son to me.’

Perdita rang Archie. ‘Rather bad luck on the widow –
pursuing
you and ending up as the penniless Mrs Finch.’

‘Quite the reverse. I have given them a great deal of money
on the understanding that they take me in as soon as I retire. I have decided to do so earlier than I originally planned. Next week, in fact. In time to join them on their honeymoon.’

‘God. What a weird scenario. Where will it take place? The nuptial?’

‘At The Old Keep. Lettice has invited us all for a fortnight. Victoria’s daughter is, after all, Lettice’s granddaughter.’

When, after two years, Roland died, it seemed only fair that Archie should marry Lettice.

Lettice whispered to him as the four sat together in her
denne,
‘I know it’s beastly to make conditions. How can I put it? I don’t want to hurt you. There is one side – shall I call it the intimate side – to marriage that I must deny you. That belongs to Roland. He had my heart and you shall have my soul. Can you forgive? I would fully understand if it puts you under a strain. I wouldn’t even mind if, just occasionally, in London. Not, please, one of the local lasses.’

Archie said, ‘My dear girl. You are about to marry a
crotchety
dotard. Will you change your name to Thorne? Do lettuces have thorns? Perhaps we should re-christen you Rose – rose or blackberry.’

Harold, bored by Archie’s incessant need to play with tired words, threw an ornamental gourd at him.

Victoria was sorry for Archie.

‘Poor Archie,’ she whispered, ‘you’ve drawn the short straw.’

‘And the last one,’ he whispered in reply. ‘Dearest child. Have you ever heard the expression “I can swallow a toad every day”? From now on I shall be called upon to do so.’

Still whispering, she entreated, ‘But promise you won’t kick Orpheus.’