A Desirable Husband (15 page)

*

Half an hour later, Gerard looked into the drawing-room, where the children were playing musical chairs, and blinked across at his wife, who was running the gramophone.

‘Daddy!’ said Eleanor, who was less shy with her father than Richard sometimes was, and was rather bored with the game.

‘Are you enjoying your party?’ he said in a low voice, clearing his throat.

‘It’s all
right
.’ She looked back for a moment at the other children.

‘I’m glad.’ He put his hand on her head for a moment.

‘Eleanor, darling,’ called Finola, ‘I’m going to start the music again, and I can’t if you won’t sit down!’

When she had placed the needle on the bouncing record, she went over to Gerard, who was looking at the children with a worried smile.

‘Something wrong, Gerard?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Gerard, who had wanted to see the party for a moment or two. ‘I don’t know if you heard the telephone?’

‘No,’ said Finola.

Gerard looked at his hands as she looked at him. ‘Well, it was William Warren ringing, asking for Mother of course. It seems his wife’s died – died only this morning.’

‘Goodness,’ said Finola. ‘Oh, poor Lady Warren. Is Constance all right?’

‘Yes – yes, but apparently she’s had quite a shock. She says Warren never told her his wife actually had cancer.’

Finola paused. ‘She’s always been in and out of nursing homes.’

‘Yes, I think Mother thought she was very much a creaking gate.’ His lips twitched, and then he looked solemn.

Finola remembered that this was a children’s party, and closed her mouth before she could ask Gerard whether there was any chance of Constance’s marrying Sir William now. ‘I suppose your mother will want to go up to Sedley Warren,’ she said coolly, and returned to the gramophone. Gerard wondered why he had bothered to tell her: he had thought she would be interested. He left the room.

Finola played and stopped the gramophone five more times, rather too quickly to make it fun for the children. She was thinking again of how she had never had a party when she was a child, and of what a silly sort of dutiful party this was, and of all the grown-up parties Constance must have given in this house. Her mind returned with a start of mild, blushing interest to Gerard’s little bit of news, and she wondered if Sir William had ever visited Constance’s present house, which she and Gerard had seen only in a photograph. ‘I do wish,’ she murmured, pleased with her low words as she gazed at the gramophone, ‘this house didn’t still
smell
of her.’

Finola raised her face, as she suddenly thought that, if Gerard would only consent, she would ask the adulterous Miranda to do up at least a part of the house. She would
properly renew her knowledge of her, and then she would be able to talk it all over with Anatole, and to take more interest in Darcy instead of in Gerard and Winston Lowell.

The music stopped and the needle grazed the centre of the record. Finola watched it: she had allowed the music to play for rather a long time, when there was only one chair left.

‘I’ve
won
!’ called Eleanor, who was very quick and strong and ready to scramble. ‘I’m the winner.’

For a moment, Finola thought this unsuitable: if Eleanor was not able to make herself give way to others, she ought at least not to boast of it.

Finola’s taxi drew up outside a narrow house in Bruton Street. She was impressed by its discretion: through the large window, she could just see Miranda’s quiet showroom, but there was no display behind the glass, and
Miranda
Pagett
Designs
was written only on a small plaque by the door. Finola looked up the front of the building to the second floor, where she supposed was Miranda’s office. She had wanted to come in March, but had had to wait until May, because Miranda had been in France.

Miranda was in the showroom, talking with the manageress. Finola entered very quietly and quickly looked around before she was noticed. It might all be quite all right. Miranda’s materials were unusual, but the designs aimed at a fluid simplicity which could be mixed with expensive furniture of any period, and Finola thought that some of them were beautiful. She was fingering a pale grey chintz with a stylised pattern of port-wine red, and wondering at Miranda’s invention, when Miranda came up to her.

‘Finola! Have you just come in?’ They did not kiss.

‘No, I’ve been looking, I didn’t want to disturb you. How are you, Miranda?’

‘I’m quite well. And you?’

‘Oh, we’re both fine – I’m glad I was able to look round, this material’s awfully good, and that one, too.’

‘Glad you think so,’ said Miranda. ‘That’s actually one of my own.’

‘Aren’t they all?’

‘No, I’ve got a couple of other people who design for me.
I haven’t enough ideas to stock an entire shop’. She paused. ‘Let’s go upstairs, I
never
talk about business down here.’ They had to talk about money and schemes, and so Finola followed Miranda up the narrow stair.

In the office, Finola thought Miranda looked ill, in spite of her being so handsome. Her skin was rather yellow under its powder, there were bags beneath her eyes, and she had become so thin that even her Parisian dress could not make her seem to have a merely youthful figure.

‘Sweet of you to have bothered to write,’ said Miranda, twisting on her finger an old, very large ruby which Finola could tell must be worth quite two thousand pounds. ‘Why didn’t you just drop in? Do you really want me to re-do your whole house, don’t you just want to buy some material?’

‘I can’t afford to re-do the whole house,’ said Finola, frowning in a way which Miranda had always thought made her very
jolie-laide
. She coloured up slightly, though a part of her had expected Miranda to be blunt, to ask questions. ‘It’s just a few rooms, I’m sure I told you. And we won’t be getting any new furniture, or anything like that, of course.’ She hesitated, and smiled slightly. ‘I like your things, and you know you used to say how I had no taste, when we were children – girls.’

‘I was too rotten to you, when we were children,’ said Miranda, reaching for a masculine-looking blotter full of papers. ‘I’m sure you do have taste – that’s a very pretty skirt you’re wearing.’

‘I’m glad you like it!’ said Finola, crossing her legs. ‘But if you don’t charge absolutely ridiculous prices, I’d still like you to help me with the house, Miranda. I want to make it
better
than it is, I can’t afford mistakes, and I know quite well I’m not good at things like that.’

Miranda was doodling. ‘Don’t you like it as it is? I thought your mother-in-law did it rather well. She may be an awful bogus old woman, but …’

‘Yes, I know it’s very nice,’ said Finola, ‘but it’s all rather boring, and anyway I want a change.’

‘Well,’ said Miranda, ‘I’d be delighted to do it. I know roughly what it’s like of course, so I can bring some things down, and I can stay with Katie for a couple of days.’

‘If you like, but you’d be very welcome to stay with us. I mean, please do come and stay. Oh, and the thing is, it’s just the materials and the
advice
I want – I can get people to make up curtains and paint the walls and so on.’

‘Advice?’ said Miranda.

‘About what to choose.’

‘Yes, of course. What I have heard described as “a comprehensive interior decorating service”.’

‘I’m sure that means workmen as well,’ said Finola, who refused to be annoyed. She felt now that full redecoration was after all a very simple business, too simple to warrant seeing Miranda.

‘Yes, it does actually. I beg your pardon. No, Finola, I’d love to come and stay with you, and if you buy everything from me I won’t charge you a penny for my advice – even if you don’t take it. Is that all right?’ She was smiling: one corner of her crooked mouth was pulled up, the other turned down. ‘I do usually charge, you see.’

‘Well, you’re a business woman, I suppose! How expensive
are
your things, Miranda?’

‘That depends on what things.’

‘Yes, of course, but roughly?’

‘Materials I suppose from about fifteen shillings to eight or nine guineas a yard,’ said Miranda.

‘Nine guineas a yard!’

‘Don’t worry, we’ll manage. Just let me look at my diary, have you got yours?’

They examined their diaries and succeeded, after murmuring about parties, and even more boring engagements, and seeing Darcy, in fixing a date for Miranda to come down to Combe Chalcot. Then Miranda pushed back her chair and stared out at the houses opposite.

‘How funny it seems, having you in here, Fin,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you came, I thought you didn’t like me – not at all.’

Finola looked towards the office door, clutching her bag rather as though she were being interviewed for a job. ‘Do you want me to like you?’ she said rather stiffly.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Miranda. ‘You are part of a very good time in my life, after all. I feel I can’t really get in touch with Alice – don’t ask me why, I’m sure you think I should, even if Alice – well, but it would be good to see you sometimes, now.’ She broke the end of her pencil, pressing it on the blotter. Her face was neither tense nor unhappy.

‘It’s kind of you to say so,’ said Finola. ‘I suppose I am
suspicious
of you, after all we’re very different, Miranda.’

‘Yes, of course. Oh well.’

‘The thing is,’ said Finola, looking down, ‘I think you’ve only just met Gerard, and you see he doesn’t know that you know Darcy. I do, because Darcy and I are quite friendly and he doesn’t think I’d be shocked, you know he likes to boast a bit – I’m sorry – but you see Gerard is very religious and he has frightfully strong ideas about things, and he might not like it if – if you showed you were a very cynical sort of person.’

Miranda did not look away from her face while she was talking. ‘I won’t say anything to offend him, Fin dear, I promise.’

‘I
am
glad. I’m sure it’ll all be all right.’ Finola got up to go. ‘I’ll see you on the tenth, then, we’ll talk about everything then, shall we?’

‘Yes, let’s. I’ll see you out, Fin, one can’t neglect a valuable customer.’

On the way down, Finola made her laugh by telling her that, for a hundred pounds, the Van Leydens had sold their peers’ robes and coronets to a young couple who wished to attend the Coronation. ‘Katie says that as they’re fairly new, they might have been able to get more for them, but she let the moth get into them you see, in the dressing-up box, and she didn’t find out until she’d sold them.’

‘Katie is very sweet in some ways,’ said Miranda. She thought Katie’s existence without money, in the country, must be quite terrible. She herself enjoyed being a
Marquise, but she did not think that Katie’s title, dubiously acquired by her father-in-law just after the Great War, could be much of a compensation.

‘She never stands any nonsense, though,’ said Finola.

Miranda went back upstairs to her austere little office, which led from a charming drawing-room, and there she gazed at the telephone.

She knew very well that her successful life was not in the least hollow, but she thought that in conversation with Finola she had implied that it was. She had friends who were truly attached to her. Even her husband, who was ten years her senior and who had always been complaisant and unfaithful, was sincerely fond of her. She preferred Henri de Saint-Gaël to other men she had known, though only because after twenty-two years he was to some extent predictable, and did not require constant entertaining; but in spite of this, she had a natural fear of being thought to be a woman in love with her husband. Darcy Parnell was the only person to have advanced this theory to her face, and he was soon convinced that it was not true.

It was more agreeable, Miranda considered, to think in a foolish and romantic way of a heartless worldly existence, than to give herself the intellectual discipline her glinting mind had always lacked. The lack was the cause, she supposed, of her irritated boredom and sentimental thoughts, but it was true that in a headstrong, unkind way, she had been quite happy at Bramham Gardens with Alice Molloy. Really, she had been happier in Paris than she had been there. Miranda thought that if she had never shared a bed with Alice when she was a girl, she might have been able to be friends with her now. Darcy did not know of her affair with Alice, and she supposed he would be most fascinated to hear about it, but it embarrassed her now to think of those days.

Miranda knew that she should break her habit of sleeping with men whom she rather despised, which she had adopted for its ease and safety in 1935, but she found it very difficult. ‘One does so like to feel superior,’ she said to the
telephone. She picked up the receiver and asked the operator for Darcy’s Cambridge number: she meant to tell him about Finola’s visit, and talk with him about her virtue, and sweetness, and tough little will.

*

When Finola left Miranda, she took a bus to Pimlico, where Winston Lowell lived. It was nearly six when she found his house, in a slightly dilapidated street, and she was very nervous, partly because she was late. She had never visited him at his flat before, but it was quite her fault that she was here now, for she had told him she would like to see it: As she pressed the labelled bell, she whispered: ‘I
did
want to see, but just that. God, he can’t think I want him to – oh,
goodness,
I’m tired – You shouldn’t have tried to see them both in one day.’

It seemed a long time before he came down. Finola had seen him alone four times since his coming down to Combe Chalcot in November. They had met in restaurants for lunch, and in January he had taken her to see
Maria
Marten
at the Arts Theatre. She felt she was conducting a real love affair, but one which must surely be guiltless, for she did not love Winston, and he had never even tried to touch her. She wanted only to talk, and to have something a little secret from her husband and her parents and everyone in Dorset. Finola supposed Gerard would still call her friendship with Winston adultery of the heart.

Winston pulled the door open, just as she was scratching at her gloves and thinking how foolish she had been to expect him to keep such a dreadful appointment. ‘I’m sorry I took so long, Finola,’ he said, touching her forehead with his lips. ‘My flat’s three flights up. Do come in.’

‘I shouldn’t have asked if I could come!’ said Finola. ‘You must be awfully busy.’

‘Not at all,’ said Winston. He was dressed in his civil-servant’s clothes, but he had loosened his collar and tie. He smiled at her, and closed the door behind her, so that the narrow hall was made dark.

Winston’s flat consisted of a good-sized but low-ceilinged
sitting-room, a small bedroom, and a tiny kitchen and bathroom. All the rooms were painted eau-de-Nil, and furnished with odd Victorian pieces which he said he had picked up here and there. The place had the usual half-finished look of a bachelor’s rooms, but it was comfortable, and the mess and the cat’s basket, neither of which she had expected, reminded Finola of Bramham Gardens. A typewriter stood on the table, and beside it was a cut-glass decanter full of sherry.

‘Sherry, Finola?’

‘No, thank you! I didn’t know you liked cats,’ she said, as the big tabby torn stretched in his basket, and spat at her.

‘Stop that, Tortoise,’ said Winston to the cat, who was now sharpening his nails on the leg of a Windsor chair. To Finola’s surprise, he obeyed him. ‘He’s very fierce sometimes,’ Winston explained, ‘but you mustn’t be afraid of him.’

‘Oh, mustn’t I?’ said Finola. She was looking round with her lips sucked in, thinking how cleverly Winston had managed on little money. ‘I like this,’ she said.

‘I think I’ll be moving soon,’ he said. ‘You see, I’ll be able to afford a better address, which is very important.’

‘Oh, will you keep on and on moving, until you’ve got a really grand house in – in Curzon Street or somewhere?’ said Finola, smiling. ‘When you’re Sir Winston Lowell, Permanent Under-Secretary of State?’

‘I don’t think I’ll ever get as far as that,’ said Winston. ‘Sit down, Finola.’

He watched her choose a hard chair and sit down on its edge. He fiddled with his cufflinks as he looked at her, and realised that he could not kiss her yet, she would run away: she was to him as good as a virgin, and Gerard Parnell did not deserve her. He thought he might at least tell her that, and listen to her shocked objections.

Winston guessed that Gerard and Finola did not sleep together: his fond view of Gerard, and certain things Finola had said, led him to think that. She was, of course, very shy and discreet, and he presumed that Gerard had not spoilt his
chastity since the birth of Eleanor. He found this admirable and fascinating.

‘When did I last see you?’ said Finola, pulling at her earrings.

‘When you came up in March, to buy linen at Harrods.’

‘Oh, yes, of course. Fancy remembering that,’ she said with a swift look at him.

‘Well, Finola, how are things at Combe Chalcot? How’s Gerard?’ Winston, leaning back in his chair, knitted the fingers of his stubby brown hands.

‘Oh, it’s all right, I think Gerard’s settling down,’ said Finola, and realised this was about time too. She watched the cat, and thought: he’s a friend now, after all, and you know he’ll never try and do anything to you, so you can talk to him, you won’t have another chance.