Lettice & Victoria (14 page)

Chapter 5

T
hey divided their time between The Old Keep and the
stables
– the ‘colleagues’ regularly exchanging roles. Harold was besotted with all three of the cast but resentful of the attention commanded by Maudie as she travelled between the domains.

One morning, when Lettice was busy in her
denne
–
developing
photographs of a dead celebrity – with the words ‘Let us now praise famous men’ in her best italic handwriting impressed into the picture, Harold, who had spent the night at The Old Keep, wandered over to the stables in search of the company of Archie and Victoria. Nobody was in and doors were locked. No sign, either, of the Daimler that Archie still drove each day although the stables were in walking distance of The Keep.

That morning at breakfast with Victoria, Archie had said, ‘Since Maudie is now five and at school all day, let us take an outing together. We could, of course, ask Harold to join us but, well, it would not do to leave Lettice, who is after all my wife, alone with her memories.’

They decided to visit a Bournemouth museum, ‘have a bite’ somewhere near and get back in time for Maudie’s return from school. Victoria rejoiced. These outings with Archie made the whole confusing scheme of the double marriages worthwhile – harrowing though many of the aspects were.

Harold, wearing a rank suit (he owned no country clothes), walked very slowly towards the stables. His hair was long and greasy. He had a severe block about washing it and it fell in damp coils. He believed that his mother had hurt his head when he was small – scrubbing and kneading with a vicious wrist. He had for many years taken an obsessive interest in birds and insects but had always been petrified of women. Until his experiences (few now) with Victoria he had held a fantasy that if he were to touch the breast of a woman it would burst, releasing swarms of wasps, bees and bright bubbles. His mother disliked him and his father was futile in her
presence
. Victoria had unlocked a dangerous passion in him but her interest had waned, and Harold had soon realised that the arrangement had been agreed to solely through her desire to be near Archie.

Archie, it appeared, worshipped them both although his dislike of Lettice seemed to have increased.

It occurred to Harold that he might murder Victoria. If she were gone, then he, Archie and Maudie could move in with Lettice. Lettice was an admirable grandmother – had even taught herself advanced calligraphy so as to be able to
transcribe
her favourite poems for Maudie.

But the stables were tightly closed. Every door locked. Jack
and Belinda’s house, across the way, showed no sign of
habitation
. He prowled around the place, looking in at windows and testing doors. After picking up a brick, he hurled it at a glass pane above the back door, shattering it. A shard hit his right hand and he extracted one of Archie’s spotted
handkerchiefs
from his pocket to wrap around the wound. Somehow he manoeuvred his body into the building where he snooped into every room reading letters and sifting through Victoria’s clothes.

Archie and Victoria returned, having fetched a boisterous Maudie from school gates, to find a shattered glass pane and a few drops of blood by the back door.

‘Can it be that some hispid hippy has made an attack on
private
property?’

‘No. No. No. It was me.’ Harold advanced clasping Archie’s handkerchief to his left wrist. Blood oozed from it.

Violent rappings at the front door. Maudie ran to greet her grandmother who stood in veiled splendour clasping a bunch of exquisitely dried flowers. Maudie seized the bunch and asked, ‘Actually, were they expensive?’

Lettice threw up her lace-gloved hands, ‘Sainted aunts! What can your dear mother have been teaching you? Our financial position has always been hateful but money plays no part where beauty is concerned. Remember this, Maudie darling.’

Maudie took the flowers to her bedroom and pulled them apart, petal by petal.

Harold wondered if he would, after all, be able to strangle
Victoria now that his wrist was damaged. He knew that he would need two hands for such a job.

After two more years of ups and downs Harold drowned himself in a stagnant pond beyond the garden of The Old Keep.

‘The balance of that wonderful mind was undoubtedly
disturbed
,’ Archie repeated over and over again.

Lettice, forgetting which of the two men she had married, lamented, ‘Twice widowed. Sainted aunts.’

Archie was never cheerful after the suicide of his beloved ‘colleague’ and Lettice died, clasping her lute, not long afterwards.

The three Bobbies, and Roland and Lettice’s daughters, Alice and Joanna, all moved into The Old Keep – running it as a community centre for artists, which so enraged Archie that he took all his belongings to Victoria at the stables and never ventured again in the direction of The Old Keep.
Occasionally
he caught sight of a passing community member, usually a long-haired male, whereupon he would snort and utter the words, ‘One thing you never see nowadays is the back of a young man’s neck.’ Victoria got sick to death of hearing it.

Victoria looked after Archie and Maudie as best she could and was happy to have started painting again. Archie’s drinking habits had become chronic and life was often tricky and
frustrating
. However, through Jack and Belinda, she met a merry middle-aged garden designer, a cousin of Belinda, who fell in love with her and, eventually, provided her with a life less
confusing
than it had been hitherto.

When Archie died of pneumonia combined with alcohol
poisoning, Victoria married the garden designer who proved himself to be an excellent stepfather to Maudie who was on her way to becoming a great beauty.

The End

SUSANNA JOHNSTON
is a former features writer for
Tatler
. Her books include
The Picnic Papers
(Hutchinson),
Five Rehearsals
(Chatto),
Collecting: The Passionate Pastime
(Viking),
Parties: A Literary Companion
(Macmillan) and
Muriel Pulls It Off, Muriel’s Reign
and
Late Youth: An Anthology Celebrating the Joys of Being Over 60,
all published to great acclaim by Arcadia. Susanna is married, with four daughters and ten grandchildren, and lives in Oxfordshire with her architect husband.