A Desirable Husband (14 page)

Finola laughed. ‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever get a television, Gerard would
not
approve, and I can’t see – oh dear, I suppose Richard will want us to get one, he told me Billy Barnes’ mother has bought one and Billy stays up to watch it till nine o’clock.’

‘Mrs James says old Mr Barnes pinched it, she is the most awful old gossip.’

Some paces behind them Eleanor, who stood between Gerard and Nanny, was chanting: ‘Re-member, remember, the Fifth of November, Gunpowder, Treason, and Plot. I don’t see no reason, Why Gunpowder Treason, Should ever be forgot.’ Nanny was full of praise.

Richard had come into the sitting-room that afternoon and made his first shameful scene in front of his parents. He had been oblivious of Winston and Jenny – to whom Katie was now recounting some of the problems involved in the W.I. members’ selling baked potatoes in the cricket pavilion. Finola looked at their headscarfed shapes, and
heard their voices: Katie, like Miranda Pagett, had the knack of making almost any subject interesting, if she chose.

Richard had been white with emotion, thought Finola, just because Nanny had told him that she would be taking him and his sister to the bonfire.

‘I won’t go! I won’t go, I’ll go
alone
!’ he had shouted at Gerard and Finola. ‘You won’t buy me a p-pony, you won’t ever let me do
anything
.’

Winston had not left the room when he began to talk like this, and Finola had supposed this was because they had all wished to imply that the problem was not serious.

She and Gerard, very much distressed, had thought at first that Richard must already be ashamed of his father’s position in the village. When they heard once more that he wanted a pony although none of his village-friends had one (as well as a watch and an airgun to boast of), they realised that he was afraid of seeming babyish. They had sat in silence, on different armchairs, while he cried and told them how important it was. Gerard, who was rather less surprised and annoyed than Finola, had spoken with cold kindness about how he might be right, but he must control himself; then Finola had got up and taken her son outside.

She remembered sitting down in the grey hall, and holding his hand. She had been surprised by his not withdrawing it. Finola had not tried to show that she was cross with him, because she was afraid to do that, and unused to doing it. She had told him briefly that he of all children had no need to work himself up, and he must remember it: that Nanny wanted to see the fireworks herself, and to look after Eleanor, and would have no intention of holding his hand. Then Richard had told her that Nanny said she would see to it that he did not go near the fire, because he might burn his fingers.

Finola had not thought before that Nanny, so good with young children, had serious faults, and she had asked Richard whether he was still fond of her. He could not answer.

‘I don’t think I was wrong to let Richard go off with his friends from school,’ she said abruptly to Winston, who joined her, making a remark about the likelihood of rain. ‘Do you? When I was his age I was going about London on my own, running errands and things, it never occurred to Alice I might be run over, once she’d told me about how to cross the road.’

‘So was I,’ said Winston.

‘Oh, yes, of course.’ She hesitated.

There was a bang as the first firework exploded, and a few shouts and claps from the children as the red and green stars shot into the blackness, and then went out. Winston smiled upwards.

‘Of course, it must have been very much the same for you,’ said Finola. ‘It isn’t that I want to cosset my children too much!’ she continued. ‘It’s that – oh, I suppose all parents want to give their children whatever they didn’t have themselves, security and comfort and so on.’

‘That was what you missed yourself?’

‘I thought so,’ said Finola. ‘I was a very silly child – nervous and delicate, you know, but I used to long to be quite different, a sort of jolly-hockey-sticks schoolgirl. I’m beginning to think both of mine may end up frightfully hearty, I’ve never seen Richard read anything for pleasure except awful comics he gets at school. And Eleanor’s already rather tomboyish, she can be terribly noisy. I don’t
mind,
it’s …’

The fireworks were being quickly exploded, one after the other, and Finola, distracted by the sparks and the banging, wondered why she was excusing herself in this way to Winston, who seemed quietly interested and amused, as he had been by her other indiscretions about Constance. She wanted suddenly to tell him that he was too reserved and detached a person to be very attractive, he was only intriguing. She did not think, now, that he would ever try to touch her.

Finola noticed, as she turned her head a little to the right, that Gerard was very near her. She was sure that he was
trying to listen. He was also nodding and shifting his feet, as the old lady who kept the post office told him about her grandson’s new job. Gerard was holding an electric torch, swinging its beam along the sparse pale lawn.

Finola continued, breathing quickly: ‘I do want them to be happy more than anything else in the world, which I suppose isn’t a very original thing to say. Even though I
have
left them largely to Nanny till now – I couldn’t trust myself, you see.’

Gerard overheard all this and as soon as he could, he joined his wife and Winston, though he did not say very much when he was at last beside them. They continued talking. Winston glanced at him and Finola did not, once she was sure he was there. Like Finola, Gerard noticed Winston’s rather remote sympathy, and believed he must be a good confidant, because he seemed attached to no one and nothing, incapable of gossip, or of dismissing what was unfamiliar as incomprehensible rubbish. Gerard felt that he himself could even have told him about his fears of modernity, of displacement, and about the conspicuous behaviour of some very rich cousins of his, of which Hugh used to say: ‘It’s just encouraging socialists, this selling things off and gadding about.’ Gerard thought his own and Hugh’s discretion and conscience far more likely to encourage socialists. He fully accepted this.

Finola did not wish to exclude her husband, as she talked without looking at him of her rather isolated and muddled girlhood, about which she had never told Gerard very much: only that she had felt somewhat frustrated, waiting for him, at school and later, before the war, when she was working as a jeweller and living in a little flat in her parents’ house.

‘When I was about fourteen I used to weep for hours about nothing, really, just working myself up because I almost enjoyed it,’ she said. ‘Oh dear, I remember it so well. I used to say something over and over, something like …’ – her voice became prettily strangled, but not too loud – ‘“He staid not for scaur, and he stopped not for stone, he
swam the Eske river where ford there was none – blah, blah, for a laggard in love and a dastard in war was to wed the fair Ellen of young Lochinvar” – until I thought I really
was
fair Ellen and at any minute I would be borne off, on a pillion! Oh dear.’

‘Goodness,’ said Winston, ‘you don’t still?’

‘She is a
matron
now,’ said Gerard in the same tone.

‘Oh, really!’ Beneath her hurried pleasure in talking as she had not before, and being indulged so unexpectedly by both men, Finola was still rather cross: she felt as though she had itching powder in her brain, and would be perfectly comfortable if it were not for that.

Other people were enjoying themselves more than they had expected. The bonfire was now flaring, its thick smoke lit by the flames; and the children gathered round it presented an uncivilised appearance. Richard was still among them and so, although her parents did not know it, was Eleanor, who had strayed and was being sought by Nanny. The spasmodic light and noise on the cricket pitch were such that Finola was reminded oddly of a very uncomfortable, night-time bedroom on a busy London street, and her legs ached at the thought.

It was not long before the Parnells left the bonfire and returned home for dinner, over which Gerard broached the subject of prospective revolution.

Constance’s cottage near Headington was two storeys high, built of heavy Oxford stone and ornamented with a trellised veranda in the Picturesque manner of the 1820s. Everyone said that it must be ideal. There were eight rooms, none of which was very comfortable, and the kitchen was inconvenient; but Constance said she did not mind this, because she had chosen the house for its very pretty garden, which she intended lavishly to alter. She also liked it because she had several friends in the neighbourhood, and there was a certain pleasure, which she could not always acknowledge, in returning to the country where she had spent her childhood: her father had been Warden of an Oxford College. She often said she was glad that she had not gone to Bath.

Early in March, 1953, Constance went to stay at Combe Chalcot for the first time since her move the previous April. She took several days to prepare for her visit, for in the past year she had allowed herself to grow unused to making practical arrangements. She said, all the same, that she longed for a change of some sort, for occupation and for friends. She had not accepted any of her friends’ invitations to stay, because she felt too unhappy, at once restless and lethargic. Constance had not even gone to Sedley Warren since moving, and this rather worried William, to whom she wrote every second day. She told him in her letters that she was trying very hard not to hate Gerard and his wife in a poisonous, unchristian and unreasonable way, because she knew how dangerous that was, and she said that when she was in Dorset she intended to be very very good.

The journey to Dorset was difficult. Constance knew that if she had submitted to Gerard’s wish that she travel by train, her leaving the house for a few days would have been very much easier. She would have had only to pack, with her daily woman’s assistance, and to allow Mrs Daly to drive her into Oxford to the station. She felt, in spite of this, that now her arthritis was not too bad, she ought really to make proper use of the little black Morris she had bought as a suitable car for a widow, and this made a good deal of trouble. She thought that the car ought to be serviced before she drove it such a distance, and while it was being serviced Mrs Daly was put to inconvenience because no shopping could be done; and Constance herself found she had not bought all she needed for Combe Chalcot, not even a birthday present for Eleanor. Eleanor would be four on Thursday, and Constance would see exactly how her daughter-in-law organised a children’s party.

The drive to Dorset exhausted Constance, who would have thought nothing of it three years before when she and Hugh had often driven, although they employed a part-time chauffeur. She did feel very independent as she parked in the gateway under the cedar tree and looked at the house with its bare shivering creepers, and the dying crocuses at the sides of the lawn. It was this independence she knew she wanted. She was beginning to think she had been a bad wife and mother.

*

‘Constance!’ said Finola, running into the hall, where Sarah was asking after Constance’s health. ‘Did you have a good journey?’

They brushed cheeks, and parted.

‘I’m really too old to be driving such
long
distances alone,’ said Constance, smiling. ‘I’m rather dreading driving back, already.’

‘I’m not surprised! Sarah, please will you ask Signora Goldoni to make to some tea for us – tea with a bit of brandy, Constance?’

‘That will be delicious,’ said Constance rather faintly.

‘We’ll have it in your sitting-room, it’s warm in there. I’m so sorry Gerard isn’t back yet, he’s gone up to Dale Wood. They’re digging a new drain or something.’ She led her mother-in-law down the passage, thinking of things to say.

‘Oh,’ said Constance.

‘Yes, and cutting down most of those alders in the middle, Gerard’s going to plant ash.’

‘I suppose he’s been learning all about woods, forestry?’ Hugh had preferred animals to woods.

‘Yes, he has, he loves trees you know.’

‘I hope the pheasants won’t be disturbed.’

‘Oh no, I don’t think so. I suppose he told you he’s going to let the shooting,’ she added.

‘Let the shooting, you say?’

They were now in the sitting-room, settling themselves into chairs. Finola, believing that she should not have said this and Gerard would be displeased, but that she could cope with that, said: ‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘Very sensible of him!’ said Constance. Hugh had always said that Gerard was a very bad shot, the worst in the county.

Finola’s tense expression gave way to pleasure, then puzzlement.

‘I see you haven’t changed very much in here,’ said Constance, looking round at the grey and coral room. She had taken away the very pretty china which used to stand on the mantelpiece, but Finola seemed to have added nothing at all of her own.

‘No,’ said Finola. ‘No, not yet. I haven’t got round to that sort of thing, there’s so much to learn – lots to do! And it is so pretty as it is.’

She still did not feel there was a lot to do, for she felt it would be almost rude to compete with Katie Van Leyden, who did all the correct things in the way of local charities, and committees, and walking hound puppies (even though she could not afford to hunt regularly, as Gerard and Finola could have done had they been the right sort) and visiting
people in the village in just the right way. As she glanced quickly at her mother-in-law, Finola remembered that, according to Katie, Constance had never been as popular with the village as she had been in the county. ‘Only gave up
literally
going round with a covered basket just before the war. And you can imagine her inspecting things and all that, too rude.’ Finola had not thought of this possibility before Katie told her, though when she had been told, she did not doubt it.

Constance looked at her, and though she did not show it, she was surprised to learn that such a person as Finola could be busy. ‘Of course one does learn it’s not a life of leisure,’ she said. Constance was sure that Finola’s disposition made any boredom she might happen to feel not a quarter so bad as her own.

‘Yes, one does. I saw how busy
you
were, during the war.’

They shifted. Finola had spent the first two years of her marriage at Combe Chalcot, living with Constance and Hugh, waiting for the war to end and for her baby to be born. Finola had never allowed herself to believe that Gerard might be killed, and she had felt a little guilty ever since for having acknowledged no serious fear. It might have happened so easily, and she shivered to think of it now.

In 1944, suddenly removed from the Wrens, from towns and queues and bombings, she had thought simply of the perfection of Gerard; and of the meals which divided each day at the Cedar House. She had thought of the food with wonder, and inarticulate gratitude, for Constance had managed to produce excellent dinners with game from the estate and vegetables from the garden, and the help of Mrs Daly who had written recipes for the Ministry of Food. Constance had been very kind to Finola at that time, and had taken far more interest in her pregnancy (which had rather embarrassed Hugh) than Finola had herself. She had supposed it was the growing baby which had made her so sleepy and unsuitably serene.

Finola, firmly stroking one of the dogs as she thought
about this, considered that age was improving Constance’s looks. Last year she had looked a stout white-haired sixty and now she looked over seventy, her proper age. She was a good deal thinner than she had been, and so her resemblance to Gerard was no longer obscured by flesh, and it was more obvious than ever that she had once been a beauty. Finola wondered now at the physical revulsion she had imagined she felt for her mother-in-law, who had never had anything wrong with her, after all, but self-willed obstinacy and a moderate plumpness.

‘Yes, I
was
busy,’ said Constance, smiling a little as she played with the pearls round her neck. ‘Such a pity, one feels now – one was always far too bossy, really, to be awfully popular. With the tenants especially. Of course one always wants to have one’s time over again.’

Finola dropped Trumpy’s ear, and stared. She thought herself responsible for a change in Constance’s character so pleasant, so intelligent, that it would be positively embarrassing. Gerard would be sure to say that good had come out of evil, and his mother had never deserved their dislike.

She heard his voice in the hall, followed by his footsteps, and when he came in she watched him kiss his mother’s broad patient forehead. Then he turned to Finola and asked her something about Eleanor’s party, and when she had replied she left them, though she had not finished her tea. She went up to the nursery to talk to Nanny about sweet coupons for jelly beans, and emergency pos, and paper for pass-the-parcel, knowing that she ought really to wait for Richard. He would soon be home from school, and he would want to show how old he was by slouching into the sitting-room in clothes ready for the jumble sale, with his catapult and chewing gum in his hand. Though Constance was old-fashioned about the presentation of children, she would probably be most indulgent today.

*

Eleanor’s party took place three days later, and Gerard insisted on remaining in the house, though Finola knew the noise would disturb him. She did not want him to hear
howls from discontented children, and then to blame her for things going wrong. Eleanor was angry and unhappy because, the day before, she had been taken into Shaftesbury to have her hair cut and she hated the result as much as she hated the new smocked dress which had come from Hayfords’ just in time. Finola agreed with her daughter that the ear-length little-girl cut, ornamented with a bow, did not suit her coarse dark hair and vigorous little face, and she said so, but Eleanor seemed to think that, if they wished, Finola and Nanny could restore her shaggy pigtails.

‘Such fun!’ said Constance.

‘Nanny thinks so,’ said Finola. ‘If you ask me, we only do it for the wretched nannies, the children practically never enjoy themselves, I’ve noticed.’

‘Oh really, Finola!’

‘I’m afraid she may be right,’ said Gerard, and she turned for a moment. ‘Well, here’s a car, I’d better absent myself.’

‘You won’t be able to work in the study, with all the noise,’ said Finola.

‘I’ll be all right.’

Gerard left, and Finola and Constance walked out into the hall, each thinking of the mention she would make of this affair in her next letter, to Winston Lowell and to William Warren. In the hall, where the big table was laid for birthday tea with lots of coloured paper, Nanny and Eleanor were already waiting.

‘I hope you won’t find it as bad as you expect, Ellie,’ said Finola, picking up her daughter’s hand and squeezing it.

‘I don’t
want
to have a party.’

‘Oh, you never know, you might meet Mr Right,’ said Finola, imagining when the words had escaped her, that she was an old woman of fifty with a débutante daughter.

‘
Finola
,’ said Constance.

‘You are a funny one, Mrs Parnell!’ said Nanny.

Finola was smiling vaguely at one of the pictures, thinking she must tell Winston Lowell of her depressing vision.

‘What’s Mr Right?’ Eleanor asked her, as Sarah opened the door to the first guests: Nanny Foxe-Grayson, who carried a huge suitcase, and her three charges in travelling clothes. The Foxe-Graysons were very rich, very stiff, and very horsey, and though they were close friends of Constance’s, they were not the people whom Finola and Eleanor wanted to see first at the party. ‘What’s Mr Right, Mummy?’

‘I’ll tell you later, darling. Nanny, could you show Nanny Foxe-Grayson and Jennifer and Harriet and Johnnie,’ – she hoped she had remembered the names correctly, but it did not really matter – ‘up to the blue room, isn’t that where they can change?’

‘What
is
Mr Right?’

Eighteen children between the ages of seven and two came to the party, and there were also four mothers, three nannies in uniform, and two vacant-looking au-pair girls. All arrived so punctually that at first the hall was rather chaotic, and no one noticed for five minutes that Eleanor was sitting under the long table, feeding biscuits to the dog, Amelia. She felt so much better after she had done this that she behaved quite well for the rest of the party, and Finola told Nanny not to tick her off.

‘I wouldn’t dream of doing so, not in front of other children, Mrs Parnell. That’s very bad psychology, in my opinion.’

‘Is it, Nanny?’

‘I hope you don’t mind me saying so, I’m sure. This is ever so nice! Ellie
is
enjoying herself after all, isn’t she?’ Nanny turned. ‘Baby all right, Brigitte? Oh, she is gorgeous, isn’t she?’

The baby was dribbling in the au-pair’s arms. Finola reminded herself that she could scarcely blame Alice for refusing to nurse her as a baby: she herself had never been able to feel love for a child below five or six months in age.

Constance retired from the hall before the children had settled down, having realised that the mild disorder was not Finola’s fault but the fault of the times. Occasionally, when
Gerard was a very small boy, she had taken him with his nurse to children’s parties where every child was constantly attended to, and all wore their fancy dress correctly. Today only the Foxe-Grayson children in organdie presented a proper appearance, and ate the bread and butter: many of the others were in plain grey shorts or Liberty print, and they ate only nuts and sweets. One little girl, whose mother talked of progressive education, wore corduroy dungarees.

The noise was quite as bad as Finola had warned her husband it would be. She kept up conversation with the mothers, who were drinking tea and eating digestive biscuits in the corner, while the nannies supervised the table. She thought she would tell Winston that it was rather amusing, because she had never done it before, but that she thought there was a good deal to be said, after all, for her own parents’ haphazard methods. Well, as he said, I
am
a bohemian by birth, she thought, moving her lips as Carlotta brought in the birthday cake, which the children did not want.