The House of Vandekar (31 page)

‘I won't.' The moment of defiance was short-lived and pathetic. ‘I won't leave him. You can't make me.'

‘Oh yes I can,' Alice threatened. ‘Richard will listen to me. If I tell him to get rid of you, he'll do it. I'll tell him he's been killing himself for nothing. I'll tell him what you really are!'

‘He knows,' Diana said. For a moment Alice stared at her. The tears began to flow. She seemed to shrink into herself. ‘He knows about me. I can't help myself. I've tried and tried … My father used to thrash me when I was little. I was sent away …'

At last Alice managed to stem the torrent of confession. She felt so shaken she was trembling. ‘There must be something,' she said. ‘There must be a cure.'

The answer was a whisper. ‘There isn't. The Swiss doctors tried. They said if my father hadn't beaten me, it wouldn't have got so bad. I don't know. I wish I was dead. If I lose Dick and Nancy I'll kill myself.' It wasn't a threat. It was a statement. Alice bit back an angry retort. She wasn't blackmailing. She meant it.

I've lost, Alice thought. I can't have that on my conscience. And if it happened, it would destroy my son completely. She said at last, ‘I wish he'd told me. Maybe I could have helped. Stop crying, Diana. For Christ's sake, stop. I've got to think. I've got to try and think what's best for all of us.'

At last she said, ‘He loves you, that's the trouble.'

‘I love him.' It was a whisper. ‘I don't expect you to believe me, but it's true. Nobody else means anything. Let me stay with him. I beg of you, give me one more chance.'

‘One more chance to do what? Get into another dirty mess, like the last one?'

‘I won't,' Diana protested. She made a visible effort to calm herself. ‘I won't ever do that again. I just let it happen, because he wanted it and there wasn't anyone else. June was my best friend. I felt so terrible all the time, but once I'd started I didn't know how to stop.'

‘I need a drink,' Alice said.

Diana scrambled up. ‘I'll get you one. What would you like?'

‘Brandy,' Alice said. ‘You'd better have one too.'

‘I don't like spirits,' Diana said. She didn't drink, she hardly ever smoked. She was so abstemious compared to a lot of young women. Except in her appetite for men. Alice felt a spasm of real nausea. She of all women was supposed to understand. Was that ignorant brute of a father responsible? Or had he sought the age-old remedy for driving out a devil? It didn't matter now. She shuddered at the mental picture.

‘Here you are, Lady Alice,' Diana said. Alice looked up into the wretched face, blotched and swollen with tears, and felt overcome with helplessness. I never imagined I could pity her, she thought. I came here full of anger and contempt to drive her out. But I can't.

She took the glass and sipped the brandy. It was the second time in her life she'd drunk it. The first was when Hugo came back to Ashton.

‘If Richard doesn't stop drinking, he'll be dead before he's thirty-five,' she said. ‘If not before. The last specialist said so. If I make a pact with you, Diana, you'd better keep it.'

‘I will,' the voice was low. ‘I will.'

Alice said, ‘There's another cure we haven't tried. I didn't want to because it's so cruel. He'll suffer so much. Do you realize that?'

Diana hid her face in her hands. ‘Don't say that,' she begged. ‘I can't bear it.'

‘You won't have to, Richard will,' Alice answered. ‘If it works, you and he must go away. Right away for some time. If he stays sober, Diana, and you keep yourself under control, then I'll support you. But if he drinks again because of you, then you're out. And I will personally see to it. Do you understand me?'

‘Yes, I understand.'

‘No second chance. Never. Just this once.'

She didn't finish the brandy. It wasn't helping. It made her feel sick all over again.

‘What about Sir Hugo?' Diana found the courage to ask. ‘He doesn't want a scandal. It would hurt him politically.'

Alice's tone was cold. ‘I'm not concerned with that. I'm only thinking of my son. What's best for him. And Nancy.' Then, seeing the misery in front of her, she made herself say, ‘And for you too. Say nothing to him about this. I'll think what's to be done and let you know. Before this bloody divorce case comes to court.' She got up. ‘I'll see myself out. I'd do something about your face before he comes home. He might be sober enough to notice.'

‘Dick?' He had been trying to read but his attention kept wandering away. Diana said again, ‘Dick … Dick, darling?'

He smiled at her. ‘Hello.'

‘Hello.' She reached across and pulled the rug closer over his knees. There was a cold wind even though the first-class deck was sheltered. Below them the seas swelled and rushed away in the wake of the great liner. ‘I don't want to interrupt you,' she said. ‘It's a good book, isn't it?'

‘I suppose so. I keep forgetting who's who, that's the trouble.'

It was the tranquillizers, she thought. They had slowed him down a lot. He'd got very thin too, after the last treatment. Aversion therapy, they called it. They fed you pills and drink, and the pills made you so terribly sick you wanted to die. But they wouldn't stop. It had sounded so dreadful that she spent days in tears imagining what he was going through. He had missed the divorce, that was one mercy. She would never forget the shame, the misery of those press reports. June had done her best to disgrace her. She appeared before the world as a woman without morals or conscience, cheating her best friend.

It had been a frightful ordeal, but because Tom Hubbard hadn't defended it didn't last too long. Diana had stayed at Ashton, where the press could be kept at bay. She hadn't wanted to go there. Not after that encounter with Alice. She didn't want to face her or Hugo. But Richard had collapsed again, and she didn't have the strength to resist their terms. She was to stay at Ashton, with Nancy, and when the case was over and Richard out of the nursing home, they would go on a six-month cruise.

Sentence was pronounced and passed and, alone as she was, Diana couldn't resist. She was so cowed, even Alice pitied her. The lovely house was like a prison. She clung to Nancy, more like a child herself than a mother.

At last Richard came home. A wreck, but a sober wreck. That hateful sister was there with her little twins, smirking and self-satisfied because Richard and she had fallen from grace. Only Brian was kind. Kind and sympathetic. They all dined in the huge formal room, with footmen serving them and a stilted flow of talk in which she didn't join. Only Brian made an effort to treat her normally. He chatted about the cruise she and Richard were planning. They were driven away from Ashton in Hugo's car. They embarked at Southampton, and the cruise began. They were alone, exiled for six months, until Hugo's promotion to the Cabinet was through and the scandal had been forgotten. Hugo had made sure the press knew about the trip. It stopped any speculation about divorce. And they were oddly happy. She didn't trouble Richard – he was too weak and frail. Within a few days she had found a young ship's officer and a fellow passenger travelling alone. The rest of the time she nursed Richard and kept him company.

‘I wish it wasn't so cold,' she said. She drew the rug over her legs. ‘We'll be getting near the sun soon. You'll feel better then.'

‘It's dull for you,' he said slowly. ‘Thank you for coming with me, Di.' He reached over and clasped her hand. ‘Thanks for sticking to me.'

‘I'm the one to say that,' she said, ‘After what happened. Anyone else would have thrown me out. You're not sorry I didn't leave, are you, Dick? If I'd been braver, I'd have done what Alice said. I'd have left you to make a new life for yourself. But I couldn't. I couldn't live without you and Nancy.'

‘Bloody fat chance of me making anything of myself,' he said. ‘Poor old Mum – she thinks everyone's as tough as she is. I never was. Never could be, that's the trouble. If you left me, Di, I'd drink myself to death in a month. I love you, you know.'

‘I know,' she said, and bowed her head. ‘And I love you. Whatever happens, that's the truth. That's real.'

‘I can't read this bloody book,' he said. ‘What's the time?'

‘Nearly four.' She had arranged to meet the young officer at 5.30. ‘It's time for your pill, isn't it?'

He shrugged. ‘I don't have to take it. I could lay off for a couple of days and then try a drink.'

‘But you won't, will you? Oh, please, please, Dick, promise me you'll go on taking them. You'll die, you know. Alice said so. You'll die if you start again!'

‘Don't worry,' he squeezed her hand. He had been so handsome, she thought sadly. Now he was haggard and sallow, with great pouches under his eyes. He looked forty. ‘Don't worry, I won't do anything silly. I'll stick to it. Maybe it'll work.'

‘I'm sure it will,' she insisted. ‘Come on, let's go to our cabin. It's getting miserable up here. You take your pill and the dopey one and have a snooze for a bit. There's a good film on after dinner.
Roman Holiday
. We saw it, do you remember?'

‘Yes,' he said to please her. He had no memory of seeing any film. Or any stage play either. Very little memory of anything.

She helped him lie down and, bending, kissed him tenderly. ‘Have your snooze, darling, and I'll wake you.'

Then she slipped out, leaving him to sleep. The young officer was waiting for her in an empty cabin. He was used to having women during these long cruises. Too many of them were middle-aged, but they gave good presents at the end of the voyage. He'd had a lot of young ones too, but never a bedmate like the Hon. Mrs Richard Vandekar. If he wasn't careful she'd leave him for dead.

‘Well,' Fern said, ‘I wonder how long it'll last.'

‘What?' Brian asked her.

‘Richard, of course,' she said irritably.

Brian picked up his drink and swirled the ice around. He knew that look only too well. And that tone of voice with an edge to it. She was a very attractive woman, but the meanness of spirit was showing in her face. How long had he thought of her like that, he wondered. When he had fallen out of love and seen what sort of woman she really was.

‘He's been off the booze for a year,' he countered. ‘Why shouldn't it last?'

She shrugged. He had grown to hate that mannerism. ‘Maybe it will. I just don't think so. And don't tell me you think
she's
changed her spots!'

He put his glass down. He'd had a long day at his studio; he was tired and drained and in no mood to listen to Fern carping on her eternal jealous theme. She was never content. She had everything. They'd bought a fine house in Portman Square; money was pouring in. He had more commissions than he could cope with. Two major European exhibitions in the next two years and a one-man show in New York. He was a famous artist, fêted wherever he went. She had had her longed-for children, a boy and a girl. She was her father's darling even more obviously since her brother had been banished. She even hinted that she might inherit everything and couldn't understand why he reacted so angrily. He was attentive, faithful and generous. But he didn't love her any more. Perhaps she knew. He hoped not. Where he once pitied her, he found the harping on her unhappy childhood an egotistical bore. Sometimes he wondered just how exaggerated all those stories about Alice had been. She sniped at her brother and the unhappy Diana at every opportunity. He had heard her poisoning Hugo about her brother and his wife, and had been disgusted by the malice that struck at them when they were down. And he had watched her gloat over Alice's proud agony. Perhaps that was the catalyst. The moment he stopped loving her.

‘Why don't you stop it, Fern? Why don't you get on with your own life and let go? All you ever think about is putting the boot in to your mother and your brother. I'm sick of hearing it.'

She went quite white. It reminded him of his father-in-law, who paled like that when he was angry. White-livered, his mother used to call such people. Meaning dangerous, capable of anything in the grip of rage. His mother and father had come round after the twins were born. And he had insisted that the children were baptized Roman Catholics. Fern had resisted furiously. ‘Daddy will have a fit! You can't be serious …'

‘They're my children, not his,' was his answer. ‘And my parents have as much right as he does. The kids will be Catholics and that's the end of it. The day you go to church you'll be in a position to complain!'

Alice had remained neutral, and he was very grateful for that. He knew she shared Hugo's prejudice, but for different reasons. It wan't snobbery. It was a total disbelief in any organized religion.

Brian had won, and his Irish parents came to the christening and there was a surface reconciliation. They came for a visit now and then to see the little ones, but Fern managed to make them feel uncomfortable without doing anything specific. They were proud and they understood that she didn't expect to see them too often. It was as much as he could hope for, but there were times when he was staying at Ashton surrounded by Fern's family that he felt a deep resentment.

He saw her get up. She stared at him, and again it was Hugo, cold and supercilious in his anger.

‘I'm going upstairs to say goodnight to Ben and Phyllis,' she announced. ‘I know they're not my mother's favourite like that brat of Richard's, but then you don't even care about that! Shall I tell them you'll be coming up, or are you going to sit there, swilling down the gin?'

Brian looked up at her. ‘Why don't you fuck off?' he said.

At first she had cried when they quarrelled, and he was very soon contrite, begging her to make it up. He hadn't done that for a long time. She just said, ‘Charming!' and went out, banging the door. He gave a great sigh of boredom and frustration. And there was no reconciliation in bed that night. He was getting tired of that too.