The Decision (97 page)

Four unhappy days and a lot of thinking later, and having shed many tears and seen in many sleepless dawns, Scarlett made up her mind and rang Mrs Frost and asked her if she could come and see her. Her voice dripping with charm, Mrs Frost invited her along that very afternoon. Scarlett said that afternoon was not convenient, but the following one would do very well; after a brief struggle, Mrs Frost gave in.

She wore this time not a discreet dress, but a suit in blazing red, the skirt distinctly shorter than she normally wore, and the heels her highest pair; she carried a large bouquet of roses. She rang on the doorbell, stalked past Dorothy with a brief nod, and went into the drawing room where Mrs Frost sat in her wheelchair, looking more than usually stern. They glared at one another for a moment, then Scarlett said, ‘I brought you some flowers. I know you may not be entirely pleased—’

‘Not in the least.’

‘But my mother brought me up not to arrive empty-handed. She isn’t very intellectual either, but she has very good manners.’

‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ said Mrs Frost.

‘Anyway, I have come to continue the conversation I had to terminate the other day. I apologise for that.’

Mrs Frost nodded; her eyes were bright with either apprehension or anticipation, Scarlett couldn’t be sure which.

‘I think we should get straight to the point, not waste time on social niceties.’

‘I agree.’

‘Yes. Now as I recall, you were asking me what we talked about when we were alone together.’

‘I did indeed.’

‘Right. Well, here is your answer. We talk about him and we talk about me. We talk about what I do and we talk about what he does. We talk about what we’re going to have for dinner and who is going to cook it. Now all those things seem to me pretty important, just as important, I would propose, as the things you think we should be talking about. Which I presume are literature and art and the meaning of life. Actually we have got onto the meaning of life.’

‘Really. And what do you think it is?’

‘We’re not sure yet,’ said Scarlett firmly, ‘it’s an interesting ongoing discussion that we have. All the time.’

‘Huh.’ It was impressive, what she managed to put into that sound.

‘And you see, there are plenty of people in his life who are his intellectual equals, but he’s still fallen in love with me. I’m what he wants. With all my shortcomings. I think you have to face that.’

‘What about his friends, eh? How can you communicate with them?’

‘Actually,’ said Scarlett, ‘he doesn’t have many as far as I know. He’s too shy. He really is very shy indeed, isn’t he? I wonder why and whether anything could have been done to help him when he was a small boy. I do think it possibly could, but it clearly wasn’t. I expect you were too busy. Still, he’s got me now, and maybe I can help.’

‘I doubt it very much,’ said Mrs Frost.

‘Well, we shall see. Anyway, back to his friends. The ones I’ve met are very nice to me. They quite often want to talk about my company. It seems to interest them a lot.’

‘Extraordinary. And your friends, does Mark have conversations with them?’

‘He hasn’t met many of them. I haven’t told anyone about us yet, not my family, not anyone really.’

‘“Nor” dear, “nor”. Not “not”.’

‘That is really rather rude,’ said Scarlett, hanging onto her temper with a great effort. ‘Extremely rude in fact. I don’t know why you think that just because you write poetry it’s all right to insult me. It’s quite beyond my limited intellectual capacity.’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Frost, surprising her, ‘yes, I can see it was rude. I apologise. I still think, if you’re proceeding with this marriage, you’re making an appalling mistake.’

‘Obviously I’ve given it very careful consideration, since our last conversation,’ said Scarlett, ‘and equally obviously of course you have a point. I am not Mark’s intellectual equal and I never will be. I do accept that.’

‘Oh, you do?’ said Mrs Frost. ‘That’s progress of sorts, I suppose.’

‘Not really, because, do you know, I’d worked it out anyway. I’d be pretty dumb if I hadn’t, actually. But I sort of think it doesn’t matter. Because I’m good at things he isn’t good at, and I think between us it’ll work pretty well.’

‘Well, it’s a view,’ said Mrs Frost.

‘It certainly is. And we are going to get married because we want to get married. And moreover, we want you to be there. Well, I don’t, to be honest. But Mark does. He adores you. And he’s very good to you, I think.’

‘Yes, that’s true. But I can’t give it my blessing. You can marry him if you like, but it will be against my wishes and without my presence.’

‘And what good will that do you?’ said Scarlett, increasingly surprised at herself and reflecting that however much David Berenson had sapped her self-confidence, it didn’t extend to her relationship with Mark. ‘None at all. Mark’s not going to not marry me. And don’t correct my grammar, please. He’ll just marry me feeling unhappy, wishing you were there. And he’ll find it hard to forgive you. He has this vision, of us being married on Trisos, with you reading the epithalamium, you see I can say it and I know what it is, and I am trying to become better educated. So if you don’t do that, and you don’t come, not only will I know you’re mean and vindictive, but more importantly he will too. Which is not what you want, I imagine. If you do come and you do write it, only I will know. Well, actually I’ll know you’re not. And he can continue to think you’re a saint. Which I also know you’re not. So – your choice, Mrs Frost. Over to you.’

There was a long silence; then Mrs Frost suddenly put her hands together and clapped them sharply, several times.

‘Very good,’ she said, ‘very good indeed. Well, you may be uneducated, but you’re certainly not stupid. You may go now. I’m tired and I’m giving a poetry recital tonight at the Festival Hall. I’ll think about what you said.’

Scarlett left, hoping devoutly her confidence in herself was not misplaced.

Two days later, Mark walked into Scarlett’s office beaming happily, holding a large white envelope. It contained a sheet of white parchment paper, covered in perfect cursive writing. ‘The epithalamium,’ he said, ‘it’s beautiful. And my mother tells me she thinks she can arrange to come to Trisos for our wedding after all. She is a wonderfully brave and generous woman.’

‘She is indeed,’ said Scarlett. ‘I must send her some chocolates.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’

Emmie felt if she kept saying it, they might change their minds. She was so terribly afraid the whole thing was her fault, because she’d been so naughty; and a lot of the time she was so frightened she could hardly breathe.

It had been so horrible, that night, when they’d talked to her and told her what they were going to do: live in two houses, one each, with her living in one or the other.

‘But why?’ she kept saying, trying not to cry. ‘Why not the same house like now, it’s nice now, why do we have to change it?’

And they’d gone on and on about how they didn’t get on very well any more – ‘yes, you do,’ she said, beginning to cry, ‘yes you do,’ but no, her mother said, they were arguing a lot, a bit like Emmie and her friends argued, and that made them miserable, and they thought it would be better if they lived in different houses.

‘It wouldn’t be better,’ she said, trying now not to cry, because very often they got cross with her if she cried when she wanted something and told her to stop being a baby, ‘it wouldn’t be better, it would be better if you stopped arguing and lived in the same house. That’s what you tell me when I do it, with Alice and Hattie and people, to stop arguing and make up friends and I do.’

‘It’s not quite the same thing, Emmie,’ her father said and she told him that yes it was, it was exactly the same thing, you could stop arguing if you really tried; and then her mother said they had really tried, and she said no they hadn’t, and anyway, she hadn’t seen them arguing and she didn’t believe them.

‘Please,’ she said, starting to cry again and this time not being able to stop, ‘please try again. I don’t want to live with just one of you, I don’t, I don’t, I want to live with both of you.’

‘But Emmie, you will live with both of us,’ her mother said, ‘just one at a time. Like – like the weekends. That’s all right, isn’t it, at the weekends?’

‘No, not really it isn’t all right. I always want both of you, and it’s not the same. Please, Mummy, please, Daddy—’ and she had faced them both, and she was crying so hard now she couldn’t even see them properly, ‘please try again, please, please.’

And then her father said, very quietly, ‘I’m sorry, Emmie, but we can’t,’ and her mother said, ‘You heard what Daddy said,’ and she was angry then, and shouted at them, and told them she hated them both and didn’t want to live with either of them, and ran out of the room and up the stairs to her playroom and grabbed Mouse Two, the soft cuddly horse she took to bed every night, and went into her room and got into bed with her shoes on, and pulled the bedclothes right over her head and shouted at them over and over again to go away and that they were horrible.

Next day was even worse; she kept hoping they’d suddenly laugh and say ‘we were only pretending’ but they were both very serious and she saw her mother cry quite a lot as well.

She went to school, but it was very hard to think about anything else, and she didn’t even want to go out to play and suddenly in the middle of reading she was sick, in a great horrible puddle on her desk, and Miss Barnes took her out and helped her wash her face and rang home, and her mother came to fetch her and she drove her home, saying ‘I’m sorry Emmie’ to her, over and over again.

And then a few nights later, when she was in bed, she heard the worst thing of all, which was her parents shouting at each other and then her mother running downstairs and her father making an awful sort of choking noise and she realised he was crying and she couldn’t believe it because men didn’t cry, and she ran downstairs to find her mother and said ‘come, come quickly, Daddy’s crying,’ and her mother said of course he wasn’t crying and she said yes, he was and she pulled her mother upstairs and they stood outside one of the bedrooms and the noise went on inside, and her mother just looked at her and didn’t do anything, and Emmie tried to go in, but the door was locked, and she started to shout ‘Daddy, Daddy, let me in,’ and finally he opened it, and picked her up and said ‘Emmie, I’m sorry,’ and there were tears on his face and that was almost the most frightening thing of all, that a grown-up man could actually cry, and she said if he was sorry to stop arguing with Mummy and he said she didn’t understand and put her down again, and ran down the stairs and out of the house.

That was when she began to be afraid it was her fault; that they were arguing about her, because she was often so naughty, and she asked her mother if they would be able to stay in the same house if she was good all the time, and her mother gave her the same awful, sad look her father had and said, no, she was sorry, they wouldn’t.

That weekend, at Granny’s house, it had been all right for a bit and Granny had been so kind to her, and she rode Mouse a lot and felt much better and her mother seemed happier, too, and she thought maybe they’d changed their minds; but when she asked her grandmother if she knew about them living in different houses, she said yes, she did, and she was very sorry about it and then Emmie realised it must be true.

And when it was time to go home, she really couldn’t bear it any longer and she went up to the lavatory on the top floor and locked herself in and said she wouldn’t come out until her mother had promised to make friends with her father; but she didn’t, and they both, Granny and her mother, kept banging on the door telling her to open it, and she wouldn’t, but in the end, Mr Horrocks arrived, she could hear his voice outside, and there was a lot of banging and pushing and pulling and when the door finally came off, she was standing on the lavatory, screaming, staring at them, and her grandmother said, ‘Oh, Eliza, this is dreadful, what have you both done?’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Gilmour – Toby, but I need to see you very urgently. Philip’s out of town till Wednesday and this can’t wait, it really can’t … one of his assistants has offered to bring me down to your chambers … I want to stop this awful case, I want Matt to have Emmie …’

Toby Gilmour had, until that morning, felt fairly ambivalent towards Eliza Shaw. He had found her very attractive, from their first meeting; he had grown almost fond of her over the weeks, the long, hard emotional weeks, as the case was prepared and she grew paler and thinner and lurched from fear to confidence and back to fear again, and yet still somehow managed – almost always – to be charming, to thank him for everything, to invite his opinion; he had felt a rather unusual degree of sympathy as she recounted, with her own particular brand of courage, the sad and sorry details of the downfall of her marriage, with its horribly familiar procession from struggle to misunderstanding to disillusion to hurt pride and sense of injustice; and on to rejection and entrenchment and thus to reckless revenge; but she was at the same time hugely irritating, with her tendency to keep things to herself, her capacity for self-blame, and a general lack of grasp of the legal processes and the way he was trying to conduct the case. She was also not in any way the type of woman he usually admired; he liked them highly educated, crisply intellectual and in a career path that he recognised, not dizzy and flippant and, while clearly hugely intelligent, doing a job that was by any standards lightweight.