The House of Vandekar (26 page)

It was a simple brisk ceremony. Fern had chosen pale green and carried a little posy of spring flowers. Brian Kiernan was ungainly in a cheap dark suit that didn't fit properly. He was very nervous. Even Alice had to admit that for once, as soon as the marriage was concluded, her daughter radiated happiness. The reception was a success. Hugo exerted himself to be pleasant, conceding to good manners what he didn't feel. Richard found himself amusing a little group of Fern's girlfriends from college. There was a lot of laughter, and when the bride and groom finally said goodbye, kissing Alice and Hugo, Richard announced that he was going off with some of the others to the pub to round off the evening. So she and Hugo faced each other alone, in the empty room with its flower arrangements, dirty champagne glasses and plates of staling cocktail snacks.

‘Well,' he said, ‘now that's over, what have you arranged for tonight? Do we go home or do we celebrate?'

There was a sudden sense of dreadful anticlimax. Alice found that she was close to tears. One more bitter or sarcastic word from him, and they would overflow.

‘I had booked for the three of us at the Savoy,' she said. ‘But Richard's gone off for the night I should think, and if you'd rather go home, I don't mind.'

He eased himself into a chair. After all the years since the war, he still suffered pain. ‘For God's sake, let's get this mess cleared up,' he said. ‘I don't know why they had to go out to a pub when they've turned this flat into the next best thing.'

Alice began collecting glasses. He looked up and said irritably, ‘What are you doing? Where the hell's Barron got to?' Fern had insisted that Hugo's manservant shouldn't appear. ‘We'll help ourselves,' she'd said. ‘It'll be so pretentious otherwise.'

‘I gave him the afternoon off,' Alice said. ‘Fern didn't want him here, I told you.'

‘So you did. How pompous of her. I expect it was Brian's idea. Leave it alone – Barron can clear it. Let's go, shall we?'

‘Go where?' Home?'

He hesitated. He looked suddenly tired and miserable. ‘I'm going to miss her,' he said. ‘It's going to be damned lonely without her. I don't feel like going down to Ashton tonight. Let's go to the Savoy. I haven't been there for ages.'

Alice swallowed. I love Richard so much, I must try and understand what losing Fern means to him.

‘She'll come back,' she said. ‘We'll make sure they see Ashton as a second home. You lose sons, Hugo, but not daughters. Cheer up, we'll have a lovely dinner and we might even drop into the Embassy Club for a nightcap. We're bound to see some chums there.'

‘I'm sorry,' he said as they drove towards the Embankment. ‘I'm sorry I've been so bloody disagreeable to you. It will be lonely without Fern but she'll come down and stay. You're right, Alice. As usual.'

5

‘Come on Diana – we'll be late!'

The girl examining her side view in the looking glass said, ‘I'm ready. I won't be a sec.'

It was an important dance, given by one of the new rich for their daughter. A dance in London at a grand hotel, with no expense spared to get mentioned in the newspapers. Diana had read about the thousands of pounds spent on flowers for the ballroom, the cost of the debutante's dress, the number of guests, the extravagant food and wines. She and her friends had been giggling over it that morning. The poor girl needed all the trimmings she could get, one of the cattier girls declared. She had a bottom as big as a double-decker bus. Diana thought that was too unkind. She was looking forward to the evening and dreading it at the same time. There would be the usual anxious post mortem from her mother the next morning, and the threat of her father's disappointment. She was having a season with the objective clearly defined for her. She was to find herself a husband and get married.

She knew how much they had spent on sending her to Switzerland, and that the cost of buying her dresses and giving a cocktail party to launch her was a strain on their resources. And she knew why they did it. The only way to stop a scandal was to get her married off. She wasn't vain; her time spent getting ready was as much anxiety as conceit. She was very very pretty, everyone said so. But she had to please. She had to dazzle the young men she met until one of them asked her to marry them. If she failed at the end of the season, her father would be angry. Sometimes she could hear voices echoing in her head. Especially since she had come back and was living at home with them.

‘Oh, Bill, Bill, please don't! She doesn't mean it, she doesn't understand!
'

‘Like bloody hell she doesn't, taking her knickers down and showing herself. I'm not having my daughter end up a tart! Get out of my way, Anne. She's going to learn a lesson this time …
'

‘She's only ten … Children play these games they don't mean anything.'

Voices rising and falling, her screams as she was beaten. Sobbing in the darkness, her buttocks on fire
.

‘You dirty little girl, I'll teach you not to do a dirty thing like that …'

‘Darling, don't cry. Daddy didn't mean to lose his temper – he was upset, seeing you do that. I've told you not to play with those boys – they're rough and nasty. Don't cry.
'

Her father was cruel and he hated her. Her mother had tried to protect her, tried to believe her when she lied. There were no more beatings now. Not for a long time. Not since she'd been taken away from her boarding school and sent to Switzerland. The music teacher had been sacked. They hadn't found out about the odd-job man at home.

There were no boys in Switzerland, no means of getting near any – it was that kind of school. But there were girls, so Diana made do with them instead. Fear had taught her to be cunning. She wasn't found out. She came home at eighteen, pretty and sweet-faced as an angel, with a terrible ache in her body that couldn't be satisfied. Marriage was the only solution, her parents decided. If she didn't disgrace herself before it came about. The medical reports from Switzerland were not encouraging. They felt as if there were a time bomb in their rented London flat, about to explode and destroy them in horrendous scandal.

‘Diana! Come
on
, can't you?'

‘Yes, sorry, June, coming now …' She grabbed her evening bag and a flimsy shawl to put over her shoulders and hurried out of the bedroom. She mustn't think like that. She mustn't remember the shame and the pain and the ecstasy that made it all worthwhile. There had been two men since she got home. Both safe enough. Both much older with wives. They wouldn't say anything. It was the young men she had to be careful with. She had heard other girls talked about – ‘She's a real little tart …' – and blushed with fear in case it was being said about her.

She was very popular. She had made friends with other girls. There was nothing spiteful or competitive about her. She was forgiven for her extreme good looks and her attraction for men because she was so genuinely nice.

One eligible young man had already proposed to her. She didn't dare tell her parents that she'd refused. He was pompous and ugly, and though she would have slept with him if he'd asked her, she shrank from the frightening commitment of marriage. He was rich, her parents' problems would have been over, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. There must be someone nicer. She believed in falling in love; her belief in romance had nothing to do with the compulsion to sexual encounter that had tortured her since she was old enough to understand what it meant.

Her body, quivering with outrageous desires, was only one part of her. Her heart hadn't been quickened by anyone yet. She believed and hoped that when love came it would appease body and soul.

They split up into little groups outside the house in Eaton Terrace. Two men were anxious to take Diana in their car. She smiled sweetly at both of them and said she didn't mind really who she went with, so her friend June made the decision.

‘It may be pretty boring,' June said as they drove through the late evening traffic to Park Lane, ‘all those thousands of people. I'd much rather have a small dance in the country. At least you might know someone.'

Diana murmured her agreement. She was pressed up close to the man on the outside of the back seat. She couldn't concentrate on anything else.

The ballroom was a splendid sight. It was fashionable to have a theme, and the chosen one was ‘Spring in Paris'. The room was massed with imported spring flowers and murals showing Parisian landmarks had been hung round the walls. ‘How original,' someone mocked. ‘Isn't that the Eiffel Tower?' Poor girl, Diana thought suddenly. I wonder if she knows how nasty people can be. They shouldn't come and stuff themselves and have a good time, and make fun of her party like that.

She looked around her, seeing faces she knew here and there in the crowd. Someone took her elbow. It was the young man who'd been pushing his thigh so hard against hers in the car. ‘Let's find ourselves a table,' he suggested. ‘Tom and June are over there, they've grabbed themselves a place. Come on.'

She let him guide her. He squeezed her elbow and she liked that too. He was rather nice. Big brown eyes, quite tall … She forgot that he'd been very dull at dinner, with nothing much to talk about except his job in a London estate agency. They joined Tom and June, and then immediately Diana was taken off to dance. She danced for most of the evening. If I make an excuse and go home early, she thought, I might telephone John and suggest we go somewhere. I can say I went to a nightclub … John's wife was away in France.

Someone bumped into her back and she was bounced against her partner. She went scarlet and gasped as the impact produced an orgasm. ‘I'm sorry,' she heard a voice say. She managed to get her breath back.

Her partner thought she must have been trodden on. ‘Watch where you're going, can't you?'

Diana looked round and saw Richard Vandekar. He was dancing rather boisterously with a dark girl. ‘I am sorry,' he repeated.

‘That's all right,' Diana said. She smiled. ‘Hello, Richard. Nice to see you after all this time.'

He smiled back. ‘Nice to see you too,' he said. ‘Come and have a dance after this. Where are you?'

Diana said, ‘June Fitzroy's table, over there. I'd love to.'

Her partner scowled. ‘Clumsy lout,' he muttered, and tried to draw her close again.

Diana resisted. ‘Let's sit down – I'm dying of thirst,' she said.

He scowled again as they left the dance floor.

He won't come, she thought. I remember making such a fool of myself trying to play tennis the last time I saw him. He was marvellous, hitting the balls like someone at Wimbledon. I looked such an idiot. He won't come. But he did.

Diana didn't telephone her middle-aged lover that night. She didn't sit at breakfast with her mother and invent a pack of lies to explain why she didn't get home until five in the morning. She stayed at the ball with Richard Vandekar until it was daylight outside and the last stragglers were leaving. She had never been so happy before in her life. He had spent the rest of the evening with her. He was taking her out to dinner, he had talked of theatre tickets for the Friday and of going down to Windsor for lunch on Sunday. She was in love.

Anne Brayley couldn't hide her anxiety. Sometimes, looking at Diana, she couldn't believe what had happened in the past. She was a sweet-natured, gentle girl, liked by the old as well as the younger generation. Anne's friends were always saying how charming and pretty she was. Was it possible that one of Bill's old friends had been caught fondling her when she was only thirteen and, when challenged, retorted that she had tried to seduce him?

Anne couldn't forget that day. Her husband had broken down. Diana had fled to her room in terror and locked herself in. Her father didn't go near her. He couldn't trust himself. Together he and her mother faced the dreadful truth. Their daughter was a nymphomaniac. Punishing her wouldn't help – he admitted that at last, after years of brutal treatment. Weeping with rage and shame, he told his wife if something wasn't done, he'd lay hands on her and kill her.

Anne had persuaded him to go to London and let her deal with Diana. There was a visit to a specialist. The poor, white-faced girl was questioned and examined. She lied and lied, convinced that a confession would bring a terrible retribution from her father. The doctor seemed nice and kindly, even sympathetic, but she couldn't trust him not to tell. She was given some tablets to calm her nerves. They made her feel dull and sleepy, and the devil in her body dozed. But it couldn't go on. The verdict was a special school in Switzerland, and a safe distance from her father. She would get regular medical treatment, and it was always possible that her impulses could be brought under control. Personally the doctor didn't think so, but he had to give the unhappy mother some hope. He had seen many cases of uncontrollable sexual hyperactivity, but seldom one more pathetic than that frightened child.

She looks so happy this morning, Anne thought. Often she caught a glimpse of the furtive look that meant Diana was lying. But not now. The dance was a success; she bubbled with enthusiasm about it. ‘Did you meet anyone nice?' Anne asked.

She had asked the question so often, and been answered with a sly smile and an eager response. ‘Oh yes, Mummy, they were all nice, I had a lovely time.'

‘Guess what? I met Richard Vandekar again! We had such a lot of fun. He's taking me out to the theatre and then down to Windsor on Sunday. He's terribly good-looking too.'

‘Diana.'

‘Yes, Mummy?'

‘You will be careful, won't you. Don't do anything silly with him, will you?'

Diana's big eyes opened wide. ‘Oh, you know I wouldn't! That's all over, you know it is! You mustn't think things like that any more.'