Spare Brides (7 page)

‘Yes, but sometimes it is fun to … oh, I don’t know … mix with other gals, I suppose. You know, the ones that aren’t like us.’ From the look on Sarah’s face, it was clear she had no idea what Lydia was on about; what possible attraction could there be in rubbing shoulders? ‘I like the smell of hot hair,’ Lydia added lamely.

The five-storey building offered a different restaurant on every floor, all of them huge and bustling. The establishment sometimes stayed open twenty-four hours a day, and various fashionable orchestras played on each floor almost continually. Lydia wondered whether the number of patrons that came through the doors indicated that she and Sarah were not alone in needing somewhere cheerful to take sanctuary; did all of Britain feel the same, or were the other tea-drinkers feeling fabulous? Certainly many looked blissful as they jumped up from their seats and danced to the sinewy jazz notes that jerked and jostled their way past the clinking of cups and saucers, and through the ribbons of cigarette smoke.

The women settled on the second floor because they didn’t want to eat more than a cake. They were led to their seats, and as they threaded through the chairs and chatter, the waitress said she’d fetch the trolley so that they could see today’s pastries.

She noticed his uniform first.

It was habit. For years she had noticed every uniform on the streets. At first there were just a few, worn by the overzealous or the desperate. Then there had been many, too many, the streets turned khaki as swathes and swathes of young men marched through, towards the stations and ports. Then there were too few again. The uniforms that did come home were shabby, tucked up to hide a lost bough, or trailing a sleeve, a ghost of a limb.

Now uniforms were few and far between again. Worn mostly by poor, damned men, begging for food or casual work, hoping to kick-start some common decency or at least guilt. But this one was worn by a man with ramrod posture, a man with an air of resilience and triumph. His strength and masculinity oozed out and engulfed the entire room; Lydia noticed that Sarah was watching him too. Every woman in the room was. Some were doing so carefully, from under their lashes or out of the corner of their eyes; others were brasher, and practically allowed their jaws to openly hit the table. Lydia stared. She was incapable of not doing so, even though somewhere, on some level, she realised it was unacceptable.

It was habit too to wait, to see if they could stand, if both arms were in place, if when they turned they might be scarred, burned beyond recognition. But this man turned and he was perfection. It was his absolute perfection that struck her. During the Great War they’d said they were fighting for the women and children, for the farms and the fields. Lydia had never quite believed this, even though she knew she ought. It was hard to swallow when so many women had been left broken-hearted, when so many children had lost a father. Now, suddenly, she understood why they had fought. They had fought for this man. Not men like him; this man alone, in all his perfection.

‘Are you all right, Lydia? Do you know him?’ Sarah asked.

‘Know who?’

‘The man you are staring at.’

‘No, certainly not.’

‘Gosh, what a shame. He’s divine. Beatrice would love an introduction.’ Sarah sat down, smiled at the waitress and began to look around the room, sizing up the other customers’ plates, trying to decide which cake seemed the most appetising.

Lydia had forgotten how to sit down. She’d simply forgotten, as she realised that her breasts were aching, actually aching with longing. She glanced at the man again and felt nothing other than a terrible confusion as she understood that what she was experiencing was extreme desire. In the instant she understood as much, she was ashamed to admit that she had never felt anything similar with Lawrence. Flustered, she dropped like a sandbag into her chair. She made an effort to behave as she should, as she usually did. She tugged on the fingers of her gloves and took them off, set them aside. She picked up the menu and tried to focus, but the words swam in front of her, morphing and misbehaving. Sarah commented that she might have a teacake or perhaps a macaroon, for a change. ‘I wonder what the Russian pastries are like, exactly.’

Lydia found it impossible to do anything other than smile weakly; although she had tried the Russian pastries only last week and had found them overly sweet and a little heavy, she simply couldn’t impart this wisdom. She began to play with the tablecloth, all the while strangely aware that he was in the room. Then she blurted, ‘Should we look at the leaflet?’ Somehow, illogically, the two things seemed related. The perfect man and the exotic sexual positions.

‘Not here, Lydia.’ Sarah coloured.

‘I need a cigarette.’ Lydia offered one to Sarah, who refused; although practically everyone smoked in public, Sarah and Bea were still resistant. Lydia inhaled deeply and tried to think about the menu.

‘Excuse me, is this yours?’

The perfection was talking to her. He was right by her side, just behind the cigarette. His nostrils flared as he took in her smoke. She felt queer that her breath was now inside him. Moved. Up close, he was more beautiful than she had believed possible. His skin was fine and hung on his sharp cheekbones; his dark hair was long and flopped over his right eye, as was fashionable, but even so, it could not hide his eyes. Green. Enormous. Sad. He held out her glove. Red, it lay like a gash in his hand.

‘Yes, it must have fallen off the table,’ she mumbled.

‘Well, luckily I was passing, so I could avert any real disaster.’ His tone was humorous; his enunciation was not quite middle class. He was trying to hide an accent; she couldn’t yet tell which one. She was frozen; he shook the glove a fraction, as if reminding her that he was offering it. She took it from him and their fingers touched; the jolt dashed through her body, then found a harbour below her stomach. She fought the mad urge to stand up and kiss him.

‘I like your eye make-up.’

‘Sorry?’

‘That smoky, smudgy look you’ve mastered. It’s very attractive.’

‘Oh.’

‘Well, good day, ladies.’ He nodded his head a fraction.

‘Goodbye,’ Lydia replied.

Both women watched the soldier leave the café; it was impossible to turn away.

‘Wasn’t he forward?’ commented Sarah.

‘Absolutely.’

‘Handsome enough to be forgiven, though,’ she added, with a playful smile.

‘Indeed.’ Lydia summoned a giggle. It was a little higher than her usual pitch, but she was determined to turn the event into a harmless, flirtatious moment. She couldn’t allow that it was more.

‘Gosh, Beatrice will be devastated to have missed that excitement,’ added Sarah. ‘I wonder who he is.’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Officer rank.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, a staff sergeant major. Didn’t you notice the insignia? A non-commissioned officer, but an officer all the same.’

‘Oh.’

‘Well someone must know him.’

‘I suppose.’

Sarah then confided, ‘Not that Beatrice would stand a chance. Not really. I’m certain a man like that has his pick of beauties and fortunes. And Beatrice …’ Sarah sighed, not cruel enough to finish the sentence. It was unnecessary anyhow: Lydia understood.

Lydia breathed in deeply. She tried to adjust her world, straighten it, because it was tilted, just a fraction, and she felt dazed and confused as a consequence. How strange he’d made her feel. Yes, he’d have his pick of women, and she was married. Happily so. She stretched and strained to regain a sense of reality.

‘Let’s take Bea a cake. She’ll like that.’

Sarah beamed, always impressed by her friend’s thoughtfulness. ‘What a lovely idea. Shall we take the macaroon?’

‘Yes. That’s perfect.’

Perfect.

I
T HAD BEEN
a long day. Endless and drab. The trees were beaten by the wind. The sky was tin grey. Her nieces and nephews had not provided the respite that Beatrice had hoped they might. They had not shattered the monotony with delighted squeals or warm, enthusiastic cuddles. Instead they had squabbled and behaved badly. The two older boys had refused to permit little Jimmy to join them riding; her nieces had been prepared to allow him to tag along, but he’d been ungracious about it and lashed out, insisting he didn’t want to be with the girls. He’d flung his wooden pull-along duck, which had caught Molly’s kneecap, causing her to howl. Bea suspected the reaction was disproportionate to the actual injury, but her tears had been loud and fearful enough to bring Nanny running from the nursery. Nanny had thrown Beatrice a furious glare, effectively communicating her condemnation of Beatrice’s inadequate mothering skills.

Why would she be any good at controlling the children? At mothering? She was not a mother. She probably never would be. Not a mother, not a wife. The thought was not a new one, but every time Bea encountered it, anguish and disappointment engulfed her like a wave.

As she wiped little Jimmy’s nose and tears – because having caused his sister to cry, he too was now crying, although it wasn’t clear whether he was bawling with frustration or shame – she wondered what Sarah and Lydia would be doing right that moment in London. She knew there was an appointment, but Sarah had not been prepared to share any details; she was eternally discreet. A shard of irritation spiked inside Bea’s gut. Why hadn’t Lydia invited her to accompany them? She could jolly well do with a jaunt into London. It would be such fun. Her soul was weary with the view from the house. The relentless browns and greens of the fields held no charm for her. The bare, spindly trees with their gnarled branches pointing like pensioners’ fingers into the melancholy sky were too familiar. She did not like to see the half-moon prints of her boot heels in the mud, tattooing her endless toing and froing into the earth. She felt tracked and trapped. Everything was despairingly well-known. She imagined her sister and her friend cosy in a café. Smoke and warmth oozing, so it was impossible to see clearly. The waitresses would be neat and efficient, able to call to mind the entire menu. Beatrice thought it must be jolly to be a waitress; to have a place to go, something to do, a uniform to wear. Not that she could ever consider it. Obviously not. Out of the question. What would people say?

Samuel had slept badly last night. She’d heard him cry out in his sleep, and then she’d heard Cecily run down the corridor, her slippers slapping on the floorboards indicating that she hadn’t taken the time to put them on properly in her haste to dash to her husband’s side. Beatrice knew better than to get up and offer help. Cecily always refused, and Samuel was frantic on these occasions, behaving as though he didn’t recognise his little sister. Instead she’d put her pillow over her head and tried to drown out his screams, tried not to think of their root cause. As a consequence, today Cecily and Samuel had slept late, or whether they slept or not, they’d stayed in their rooms, unprepared to face the day; she and Nanny were trying to muddle through. It was always the same: on the rare occasions that Sarah was away from the house, Samuel was invariably more fretful. Did Sarah have some sort of calming influence? Beatrice knew that if this was the case, she should by no means resent it, and yet she did. It must be lovely to be needed in that way. In any way. Last summer Beatrice had spent a whole week in Hove with their aunt and uncle, but her brother had not called out once. She knew, because it was the first thing she’d asked on her return.

Bea, Jimmy, the girls and Nanny all trailed back into the house, sulky and silent except for Jimmy’s helpless, tearful gasps that hadn’t quite subsided. The weighty wooden door banged behind them; the stillness of the house oppressed her. She felt the heavy air squeeze her lungs, hamper her breathing. Suddenly she couldn’t bear it. She knew she was not capable of smiling and chatting with her nieces and nephew. Momentarily she was out of resources and she needed to be alone. In her small room she could be who she was. Only there did she find any peace. Since the older nephews were now with the stable boy, Nanny could take the girls and Jimmy up to the nursery. They really weren’t Bea’s responsibility. Not absolutely. No one was.

Beatrice stumbled up the stairs and closed the door behind her. She leaned up against it and gulped the cold air of her room. There was no fire burning. She hadn’t expected one. The maid would not think to heat her room at two in the afternoon. For once she didn’t care about the chill. She felt apart, adrift, drowsy. She rejected the chair and did not pick up her novel; instead she climbed into bed and pulled the covers up over her head, hiding like a child. Depression seeped into every fibre and sinew of her body. She was deeply ashamed of what she was. A woman alone in the world without a man, so desperately available, so clearly superfluous. She felt coldly redundant and discarded; she felt it in the fabric of her tweed skirts, she smelt it in the air of her clean and functional bedroom, which would never be stained with the musky scent of lovemaking. She heard her lack of value in every word of her polite and regular conversations with her married friends as she asked after their husbands and their children, because of course she was duty-bound to enquire, to be relentlessly cheerful. But she was not cheerful. She was an aberration to the law of nature and the expectations of society. Not that one must allow self-pity; after all, she wasn’t alone. There were a million women like her. But the vast number did little to soothe; instead, the volume of disappointed and broken hearts seemed threatening, almost horrifying. She imagined them, these lonely women, piled up in a huge heap; a scrapheap. It would tower.

It was not enough. This loaned life, in which she borrowed clothes, homes and children – it was not enough. But what more was there? Where was her life?

L
YDIA MUCH PREFERRED
the London house, sitting gracefully on the south side of Eaton Square, to Dartford Hall, which spread out over a sizeable chunk of Hampshire. She delighted in people and shops and therefore adored having vast quantities of both on her doorstep, although she told everyone that her overwhelming attraction to London was that she couldn’t live without the galleries and theatres. It was fair to say she was fond of both, but largely her appreciation was for the splendid audiences that one found at such places, rather than the art itself; she liked to be shoulder to shoulder with others who were equally fashionable, excitable and impressionable. Besides, there was something about the symmetry, modernity and compact stoutness of the London home that appealed to her in a way that the sprawling, draughty country manor did not, and as she was not the one who had to worry about carrying coal up and down the four flights of stairs, she could see nothing inconvenient about it at all.