Sensible Life (25 page)

“What are you talking about?” exclaimed Milly. “Joyce, please!”

“You only want me to marry Nigel because he’s got money, makes money and is inheriting a house; all you think of is class and security.”

“Not all that again,” said Cosmo.

“Give me back the ring then,” said Nigel. “I’ll give it to Flora. Flora will marry me like a shot, won’t you, Flora?”

“No, I won’t,” said Flora.

“Flora’s too young for you,” shouted Cosmo. “Anyway, she belongs to Blanco and me.”

“You keep out of this,” shrieked Mabs. “Flora is too good for you, she’ll go far.”

“I wouldn’t doubt that,” said Angus under his breath.

“She’s much too good, just look at her, lovely, demure, virgin—” Tashie was not to be left out.

“I’d hardly say—” began Henry.

“Who asked you to say anything,” snarled Nigel. “This is between my fiancée and myself.”

“I’m not your fiancée—I’ve broken—”

“Mabs, darling, please—” said Milly.

“Shall I ask cook to delay the duck, madam?” asked the butler at Milly’s elbow.

“Yes, no, no.”

Angus stood up. “Shut up and get out, all of you. I will not have this behaviour at my dinner table.”

“You often do,” said Joyce pertly.

(That’s interesting, thought Felicity.)

“Out,”
said Angus.

“I don’t know what all this is in aid of. Do you want to break
our
engagement, Tashie?” Henry tried to lower the temperature. “Be a la mode?” he asked conversationally.

“This is not a joke.” Tashie’s voice rose several decibels. “Henry, you
mustn’t joke
.”

“Will you get out?” Angus roared. “I mean it. All of you. Not you, Miss Green.”

“Felicity. Do call me Felicity.”

“All right, Felicity, you stay and don’t you go, Flora, you haven’t done anything. And you, Henry, stay to keep me company.”

“Sir,” said Henry, looking unhappily at Tashie.

“Stay,” said Angus. Henry stayed.

Mabs, Tashie, Cosmo and Hubert pushed back their chairs and trooped out. Nigel gulped the last of his wine and followed them.

“Perhaps we could get on with our dinner,” said Angus, “while your daughter comes to her senses.”

“Our daughter,” said Milly, exasperated, then, “What’s it like to have your first proposal?” she asked Flora.

Flora put her napkin on the table and left the room. Henry got up and followed her.

“Was that necessary?” Angus glared at his wife.

“She started it,” said Milly, meeting his eye.

“Duck, Miss?” said the butler, proffering the entrée dish.

A
NGUS, MILLY, TASHIE, HENRY
and Joyce came out to watch Gage stow suitcases in the boot of Felicity’s car. Mabs, Nigel, Cosmo and Hubert were noticeable by their absence. The family dogs grouped languidly around the front door, mouths slightly agape, benevolent tails wagging.

“Please say goodbye to the others for me,” said Felicity, in the role of departing guest. “I am so sorry to miss them.”

Milly stood beside her husband, legs slightly apart, like a boxer preparing to parry a blow. She held the dog Bootsie against her chest. “Of course I will,” she said. “I apologize for their lack of manners. They must still be snoring. It takes something they think really important to rouse them in the mornings.” Milly let her eye pass over Flora waiting quietly near Tashie and Joyce.

Sensing the maggot jealousy Felicity turned to Angus. “I meant to explain, General Leigh. Those ideas about roads; none have been built yet. Hitler wrote this book,
Mein Kampf.
It’s all in that—”

“I don’t read German.” Angus’ eyes rested appraisingly on Flora.

“It is bound to be translated.” Felicity wished the butler would make haste with the luggage; he had earlier loftily refused her proffered tip. “It would be worth your while,” she said, wishing she had the nerve to add, “you old fool.” (Somebody might have told her not to tip the servants, that it was against house rules.)

“Isn’t it time someone taught that child the facts of life?” Angus spoke thoughtfully.

“I assumed, after last night’s exhibition, that she knew them,” Milly answered. “Or were you about to volunteer?” she gritted between her teeth. She had dressed, Felicity noted, in tweeds, as though in response to an unwelcome breeze, yet the day was warm. “When Miss Green has gone,” she said to the butler, “see that somebody wakes Mr. Cosmo and his friend.”

The butler raised a shoulder and gave a half-nod towards Tashie and Joyce, who stood attentively smiling.

“I can’t thank you enough for putting me up.” Felicity abandoned
Mein Kampf
and, hoping to speed departure, began shaking hands and moving towards her car. “It’s been lovely to break my journey, goodbye,” she said. “Goodbye, goodbye,” she said to Tashie, Joyce and Henry. “I have so enjoyed meeting you.”

Flora extended her hand to Milly. “Thank you, Mrs. Leigh, for having me; it’s been a wonderful—”

“You must come again, my dear. I’ll write.” Milly pecked towards Flora’s cheek. In her arms Bootsie growled.

“I know you won’t,” Flora said quietly as she turned towards Angus. “Goodbye,” she said, “and thank you for your kindness.”

“Won’t you give an old man a kiss?” Angus put an arm round Flora, drew her to him and kissed her. “Tell you what, when I’m down in London I’ll invite you to lunch at my club. How would that be?”

Flora did not answer and was immediately surrounded by Tashie, Joyce and Henry who hugged and kissed her as she walked towards the car, crying: “Goodbye, safe journey, write to us, see you soon, don’t forget,” so that the attendant dogs, infected by their enthusiasm, began barking hysterically.

Flora did not look back as Felicity drove down the drive. She exposed only a slight profile under her school panama. In blouse and skirt, lisle stockings and clumpy shoes she looked a typical schoolgirl. Felicity wondered whether to break the silence enclosing them. “Mind the dog,” said Flora, looking out of the car window.

“What dog?” Felicity braked nervously.

“Bootsie, Mrs. Leigh’s treasure. She’s on your side now. She chases cars, does Bootsie.”

“Damn.” Felicity, who disliked dogs, accelerated past the scuttling animal.

“Missed her,” Flora sat back and crossed her legs. “Just.”

Two miles down the valley Cosmo and Hubert barred the way. Felicity stopped abruptly. They opened the car door and pulled Flora out and, holding her between them, kissed and caressed her, nuzzled her neck, stroked her hair, tipped the panama onto the road. Felicity watched, astonished. Flora freed herself, bent to retrieve her hat and scrambled back into the car, shutting the door. She was very pale. She waved a hand, indicating that Felicity should drive on.

Looking back in the mirror, Felicity Green saw Cosmo and Hubert watching until a bend in the road hid them from sight. Yet, rounding the bend, her novelist’s imagination registered Cosmo striking Hubert violently in the face. Beside her Flora, face hidden by the panama, sat in silence.

After a while Felicity let out her breath and said: “Well!”

Flora did not respond.

Felicity wished her passenger would say something, do something; weep, for instance? As the miles flew past she started to feel angry. “I did not notice Mabs and Nigel troubling to see you off,” she observed. “Or shall we find them, too, lying in wait to give me a coronary?” She spoke spitefully. Flora had been imposed on her; with the girl beside her she could not possibly compose her chapter.

“They are too busy,” Flora sounded jubilant, not weepy. She slapped her knees as an old man might, tipped up the brim of her hat and laughed a long chuckling laugh. “Nigel said to look in
The Times
in nine months’ time.” Her laughter escaped in little gusts and rushes. “They are all
right
,” she said, “all
right
!”

Felicity said, “Oh,” and “I see,” glancing sideways at Flora. She desperately wanted to ask what had happened after the row at dinner. The house had been strangely quiet. She had played three-handed bridge with Angus and Milly; it was still quiet when they had gone to bed. The young people had disappeared. Looking at the upturned brim of Flora’s panama she decided not to ask.

Then, puzzled as to why she would not ask—Flora was after all only a child—she was faced with the uneasy answer: the girl was not a child. There was no question of it in the way Cosmo and Hubert behaved, murmuring endearments, holding her intimately. Words she used sparingly or not at all in her novels filtered into her reluctant mind: lust, passion, loins? She felt a pang of retrospective sympathy for Milly, found herself flushing. The previous evening Flora had looked shockingly innocent in the black dress; now in the unbecoming school uniform she was sensual and desirable. The blow she had seen Cosmo deal Hubert was not imaginary. Felicity Green, who prided herself on her breadth of mind, was shocked.

“YOU ARE EARLY!” SAID
the receptionist.

“I don’t mind waiting.” Flora shuffled through a pile of magazines to find
The Tatler.
“If I am cluttering up your waiting-room, I’ll wait in the hall.”

The receptionist was new. Her predecessor would have known that she came early, that sometimes she lingered in the waiting-room after her appointment; that she came every holiday before the start of term.

Flora sat with her back to the window beyond which a melancholy sea ground shingle against the wall of the promenade. Opposite her an old gentleman sat reading
The Field.
“When you have finished with that,” Flora said, “might I have a look?”

“Have it now,” said the old man. “There is an excellent article on wild geese.”

“I am not so much interested in wild geese as in tame humans,” Flora murmured. “Please don’t hurry,” she said. “I’ll skip through this first.” She raised
The Tatler
for him to see.

“You can have
The Sketch
if you like,” said a grey-haired matron. “I can’t concentrate. I have an abscess.” She handed the magazine to Flora. The receptionist called her name and she hurried away. Flora laid
The Sketch
on her knee, ignoring a hungry look from a woman waiting with a fidgety child. The old man stopped reading
The Field
and took note of Flora. About seventeen, he surmised, still at school, vide the uniform, good legs, beautiful skin. Figure? Impossible to gauge under those garments. Nothing wrong with her teeth. He eased his denture with his tongue where it pressed on his gums. Lovely hair and eyes. Strange the way she flicked through the magazine. “I hope you find what you are looking for.” He was unable to control his curiosity.

“Sometimes I do, usually I don’t.” She looked up briefly.

Could those eyelashes be real?

The receptionist called his name; he got stiffly to his feet and handed Flora
The Field
which, thanking him, she laid on top of
The Sketch
in her lap. The woman with the child hissed, “Really!” It was possible Flora did not hear; she finished riffling through
The Tatler
and put it back on the centre table. The woman compressed her lips and resisted picking it up. Flora started on
The Sketch.

A year ago her finger, sliding on the pages of a similar magazine, had evoked the memory of cool skin on Cosmo’s inner arm and, her mind leaping, she remembered too the salty taste of Hubert’s eyelids when they kissed on that last night at Coppermalt.

Banished by Angus from the dinner table, they had run from the house across the lawn. At the haha she had taken off her shoes to tread barefoot on the soft grass, reaching the river between Cosmo and Hubert, where Mabs, a little apart, was clinched in bitter argument with Nigel. Then Henry, loping along with Tashie and Joyce, brought champagne. They had raided the cellar; Gage, the butler, had connived. Hubert had laughed and said, “He is a closet socialist.” Tracing her finger across the slippery page, Flora remembered that it was Joyce who suggested they should swim while the champagne cooled at the edge of the pool.

“I shall swim in my knickers and bra,” Joyce said. “I’ve done it with my Irish cousins, it’s perfectly decent.” She had taken off her dress and slip and hung them on the branch of a tree.

Tashie followed suit, and Mabs, whose argument had ground to a halt, undressed also, while the men divested themselves of dinner jackets, trousers and stiff shirts, hanging them among the dresses and slips in the moonlight until the tree became host to a band of ghostly dancers.

“And Flora? What about Flora?”

“Flora, you must swim.”

“Come on, Flora, try,” said Tashie.

“She can’t,” said Mabs. “She has nothing on underneath.”

“It’s dark,” said Joyce (which was partly true).

Then Hubert and Cosmo took the hem of the black dress and peeled it up over her head. “Now you look decent,” they said. “Positively respectable. Infinitely more decent than dressed.”

Joyce said, “If that’s how things are, I’ll keep my knickers dry,” and she hung her panties and bra on the tree and dived into the river, but not before it was noted that the hair of her head was no more orange than that between her legs. The others also draped their underclothes among the branches. Swimming naked in the peaty water, she had learned the feel of Cosmo’s skin and Hubert’s eyelids, cool in the water, cool as marble. Sitting in the dentist’s waiting-room, Flora remembered. It was later on the riverbank, drinking champagne, wrapped in Hubert’s dinner jacket, that Hubert leaned across her to speak to Cosmo: “This is becoming serious. I don’t want to fight, but I’ll take you on at any game you like—” and Cosmo, also leaning across her, “I thought you only gambled for money, not—” their faces practically touching. Then Hubert, fumbling in the pocket of his coat as though it hung on a hanger and not across Flora’s shoulders, found dice and said harshly, nastily, “Winner takes all.”

And she, alarmed, had leaned away from them, supporting herself on her hands while they stared at each other across her body. She said, “No. No. You must not,” her voice sharp with a sense of loss. She remembered in the dentist’s waiting-room her frisson of fear.