Spare Brides (5 page)

L
YDIA AND LAWRENCE
stayed at the ball until one in the morning, a better show than Sarah and Beatrice, who had both left just after eleven, but pathetic in comparison to Ava, who would still be partying when the kitchen maids started to light the fires for the New Year’s Day breakfast of bacon and eggs.

‘Is Ava quite all right?’ Lawrence asked. He stood by as the butler held his wife’s mink wide, waiting for her to shrug her way into its softness.

‘She’s fabulous.’ They headed to their car and sat still while another two manservants placed large tartan blankets over their legs. The temperature had dropped below zero and the drive home would take an hour. Lydia was beginning to wish she’d agreed to stay for the weekend after all. She had been tempted, because it was so convenient, only she wasn’t keen on party aftermaths. The morning after always seemed so horribly real in comparison to the glamour of the night before; the men smelt and the women regretted. Everyone had a headache. It wasn’t pretty.

‘Who is taking care of her?’

Lydia smiled. ‘I think she rather takes care of herself.’

‘You know what I mean. Who is she with?’ Lawrence wasn’t reassured.

‘A whole gang, as usual. Freddie, Johnnie and Doug.’ There seemed to only ever be a handful of men at these parties, but however many or few attended, they were guaranteed to be found clustered around Ava.

‘Are they sober?’

‘Absolutely not. But they are game and they’d rather die than leave her side. I don’t think we need to worry. She’s not travelling home tonight. She’s staying for the hunt on Monday.’ Lydia was usually thrilled with her husband’s caring attitude towards her friends, but she wished he’d just give the driver the nod; it was late and she was tired. No, more than that: she was bone-sore weary, the way she so often was in company nowadays. She didn’t know how to explain her mood, even to herself, so she simply struggled to disguise it. Harder when it was deathly cold and her feet were blistering.

‘I really don’t know how they do it,’ commented Lawrence.

‘Do what?’

‘Stay up so late.’

Lydia decided not to mention the cocaine; her husband wouldn’t approve. The fact of the matter was that many had turned to alcohol or drugs since the Great War to numb pain or as a means of escape.

The combination of five glasses of champagne, the rattling windows and the rumbling of the wheels fought against the freezing air and won. Lydia was rapidly lulled to sleep, only waking as they pulled up at Dartford Hall. Grateful to have lost the icy hour inside the fusty car, she stumbled out into the pitch-black night. The butler and a footman had, as ever, been on the lookout, and as they spotted the car approach they came outside to assist, their breath and impatience just visible against the night’s blackness. Lydia shivered for them; they were only wearing waistcoats and jackets, as coats would have been improper.

‘Happy new year, Jenkins,’ she murmured sleepily.

‘Happy new year, my lady. Can I give Cook any instruction as to what time breakfast ought to be served tomorrow?’

‘Midday. I’m so tired. I need a glass of water.’

‘Dickenson is up, my lady. She’ll attend to everything.’

‘Excellent. Good night.’ Lydia nodded to the footman but didn’t wish him a happy new year; naturally she hoped he had one, but she couldn’t remember his name. The young staff came and went like April showers nowadays; she rarely got the chance to know them.

Lawrence followed his wife up the mahogany staircase. Two steps below her, his eyes were in line with her elegant, slim back, exposed by the daring dress that plunged to the waist, showing off her shoulder blades and the delicate bumps of her spinal cord. Impulsively he swept in and kissed her thin white skin. ‘You look beautiful tonight.’

She stopped to appreciate the compliment and the sensation of his warm lips on her back. His whiskers scratched and stirred something. A memory rather than an actuality. A memory of wanting him, rather than the definite feeling of wanting him. Sex had once been so delicious and hopeful; now it was simply familiar. She turned and saw that his face was shining with expectation. It was different for him, clearly. The difference hurt her too.

‘Are you really so very tired, my darling? It is a new year after all.’

That was true. She was too woozy to believe it might be properly satisfying, but she’d drunk an amount that meant it would be the uninhibited sort of sex that was always fun. She’d get into it once he started; she almost always did. Besides, he was her husband; she was his wife. It was her duty by law and tradition. She shouldn’t refuse him too often. Theirs was a rare marriage because it wasn’t made convenient by infidelity. Too many refusals might edge him along that dreaded path. ‘All right then, as long as you are quick,’ she replied. It was as generous an answer as she could muster.

A
VA THOUGHT THAT
men had their uses – they were excellent at fetching her drinks and mink stoles when she needed them, buying meals and paying for clothes and all that – but she probably wouldn’t go so far as to say she’d ever met a
really
useful one. She would not even award her father that distinction; Ava had found she was not the sort of girl who simply adored her father, hero-worshipped him, just because of the intrinsic intimacy of their relationship. In fact, she found that the closer she was to a man, the more harshly she judged him. She could not ignore the faults that other women seemed to glide past. She saw the flaws and fears of men; she smelt out their inefficiency or arrogance, their wildness or weakness. Not that Sir Peter Pondson-Callow suffered from any of these specifically; he was not wild or weak or inefficient, and his arrogance at his abilities was countered by a deep sense of needing to be approved of. He was, however, a coldly ambitious man, and his ambition, left unchecked, could bubble into something more insidious, like greed or even cruelty. Ava had no problem with his avarice. He had made a lot of money – a
lot
– and she had benefited from his business acumen and ruthlessness; it would be churlish to despise him for that – foolish. Yet still she couldn’t quite adore him, couldn’t believe he was ideal just because he was her father. Unfortunately, he was not one hundred per cent appropriate; he wasn’t quite
quite
. Not quite dignified enough, not quite calm enough, a little too commercial in the drawing room and a little too friendly with shop girls, who he liked to impress by paying for everything with filthy wads of cash. Simply put, he was not a purebred, which annulled his chances of being properly useful to Ava, no matter how rich he might be.

Her father had married her mother for money, and her mother, a plain girl, had married Pondson-Callow for his looks. They appreciated one another in much the way a farmer and a loyal sheepdog might: they accepted that their alliance was mutually beneficial, a fair deal. Undoubtedly, her mother had backed the right horse; her father had done a marvellous job at turning her respectable dowry into a small fortune. Before Ava was born he’d been awarded a knighthood for his industry; his efforts during the war had further increased their wealth fortyfold. He was indisputably a success. Her father seemed content with his side of the transaction too. As far as Ava was aware, he’d never complained that there was only one live child; a girl at that. He had no doubt calculated that as his title wasn’t one that could be passed on, and his daughter was ravishing, forever appearing in the society pages, he could be sanguine. A boy might have been lost in the carnage in any case. Besides, all his friends’ wives were plain-looking now. They were at the age when everything sank south and beauty no longer counted; when they had counted, Lady Pondson-Callow had allowed Sir Peter to freely pursue pretty faces, shapely legs and full breasts outside their marriage and had never so much as raised an eyebrow.

Ava had been brought up to believe that affairs were the only genuine excitement the rich experienced during the Edwardian period. Restricted as they were by protracted and inflexible formality and an intricate, if hypocritical, code of etiquette and values, sexual intrigue added impetus to an otherwise leisurely but dull life. The aristocracy protected their high social positions by adhering to a phoney social code where husbands, and sometimes even wives, took lovers. The majority were willing to ignore extramarital affairs so long as an outward appearance of domestic bliss endured. It was an extremely functional, although entirely depressing, modus operandi. Ava understood that the rules had been manufactured to warrant that family life was not ruined by sexual feats and adventures. Public exposure, which led to unharnessed gossip, resulted in names being cut from guest lists; the indiscreet were summarily and promptly made socially extinct.

Ava had often thought that if ever she was to settle on a man, he would have to be a thoroughly admirable one. By this she did not mean admirable in that hopelessly sloppy way Sarah or Beatrice might define the term. She was not looking for a knight in shining armour who would flatter and fawn, arrive at her door laden with acres of land and the neurosis of inheriting a title he couldn’t carry; for one thing, those sorts of men invariably had such weak chins. Ava’s definition of an admirable man was one who would (needless to say) be obscenely rich, because even though she had her own enormous wealth, she didn’t want to be one of those women who was known for buying a title; he would challenge her, amuse her, perhaps even attempt to control her (no doubt he’d fail, but it would be exciting to see him try). Finally he would be horribly good-looking, completely breathtaking, the sort of man whose fidelity couldn’t be taken for granted. It was a meeting of equals that she longed for.

Ava had not met such a man. She doubted he even existed. If he once had, the chances were he was buried in mud in France, face down in an unmarked grave. She reasoned that as the man she wanted did not exist, she might as well have lots of fun with those who did.

She had a thing for ex-soldiers, which was convenient, because there was hardly any other sort of chap around, Kitchener’s propaganda had been so thorough and successful. There was something about their raw hedonism, their fragility, the fact that they were angry or damaged, that she found fascinatingly attractive, but they weren’t the sort that she’d want in her life in any sort of permanent way; that would become quite a drain.

They’d found their way to the library, a group who were unwilling to go to bed, the ones who were planning to roar through the twenties, hoping to drown out the echo of the artillery, although they said that the reason they were still up was that someone wanted to find a particular book of poetry to check up on the exact wording of a poem. There was a bet running between two posturing chaps: two pounds was at stake. The discussion had become rather heated. Ava wondered if they secretly missed the war and now just needed something to fight about, a theory that gained more weight once they were in the library and there was some fuss about the fire being low. Ought they to build it themselves or call a servant? The chaps who had been arguing about the quote forgot the poem and started to argue about the best way to build a fire. Ava draped herself on a chaise longue and gazed disinterestedly at the shelves of leather-bound volumes; through the haze of the champagne she’d consumed, the books struck her as self-important and remote. She couldn’t summon the energy to get up and find a collection of Donne to prove that the one with the moustache was right and the other was mistaken, something she was absolutely sure of. Her feet were icy; she wished the men would stop squabbling and simply call a maid to build the fire. One of the girls found a gramophone and some records. They rolled up the rug and four or five of the most game souls started to dance again.

Soon the music lost its flamboyant buoyancy and slower tunes were selected. Bodies melted into one another. Hands began to stray but weren’t curbed. The other girls were kissing fellows now, hungry, enthusiastic kisses. Ava watched, wondering from where they summoned up the unchecked desire. She’d never been so consumed by a man that she’d consider being indiscreet in public; desire was always on her terms and in private, and whilst she’d probably made love with many more men than any of the other women in the room, no one could be sure. Her reputation was enhanced by eager whispers and keyed-up conjecture, but not sullied by indisputable facts. Freddie sat on the floor by her feet. He caught her watching the couples and misinterpreted her look of incredulity as one of longing; he kissed her foot, opportunistically. She could feel the dampness of his lips even through her silk stocking. That was Freddie’s flaw. Wet kisses, somehow an embodiment of his general demeanour, which was one of soppy overeagerness.

Dougie passed Freddie a small packet; he took it gratefully. He’d been given opium as a painkiller, to help after he’d been shot in the calf. He’d become rather fond, but the doctors had made a fuss, said he was addicted and refused to give him any more. He’d gone half mad with pain. Then a charming chap from America had introduced them to cocaine, and what a gift. Ava didn’t indulge herself. She’d tried it once, like most things, because she couldn’t bear not knowing. Admittedly the high had been stupendous – she’d felt invincible, alert, supreme, masculine – but it hadn’t lasted long and the downer was more ghastly than anything she’d ever had to endure. She’d vomited violently, which was undignified. Then she’d felt anxious, something she’d never experienced before; she was usually assured in her actions and presence. She’d been convinced a maid was looking at her oddly and had had her dismissed. Terribly embarrassing, once she was through it all; she occasionally wondered where that maid had ended up. So now she simply watched as the boys pushed cold needles into their arms, enjoying their expressions melt as they anticipated the sweet relief that was to follow. She stood up and blew kisses to everyone; she always left the room before they started weeping and wailing, swearing and swiping.

Ava had been put in the South Wing, the one with the reputation as the most comfortable and close to the hostess’s private rooms. She knew it was a compliment; that or an elaborate exercise in gathering gossip. Either way she didn’t care; she had a room with an
en suite, and that was so important on these weekend jaunts to the countryside. So many of these enormous houses were hideously uncomfortable and old-fashioned. Ava absolutely preferred London, where everyone and everything was modern. When she arrived in her room, she was surprised to find Lord Harrington lying on her bed in his night clothes.