A Desirable Husband (19 page)

Gerard was surprised. ‘Well, Sarah would think it rather odd.’

‘She wouldn’t know.’

‘They always know.’

‘All right then.’ Finola went out shyly.

He swore he would say ‘I love you’, when they were in the dark. Or perhaps: ‘You belong to me.’ He blushed to think of saying this. He could perhaps say: ‘I won’t let you lead me by the nose, darling, and let you do what you like with me, ever again. This is the last time.’ Something like that. Gerard folded up his spectacles and looked at his watch.

They did not, in the end, make love that night but, the night after, Gerard was coarsely passionate with her as he had never been before. He made her cry, and then he soothed her and assured her that, very soon, they would both enjoy it; it was just that they were out of practice. Gerard wondered how long it would take him to speak the loving words which, though they were in his heart, were so very difficult to voice, and always had been. ‘I love you’ was impossible to a cautious man: Finola would simply have to try and understand that he did love her, even so.

*

Alone in the big drawing-room with her chosen samples,
Miranda was enjoying herself as she compared the Cedar House with her own Château de Vauxvilliers in the valley of the Loire, and wondered whether she really did prefer French interiors to English. She supposed so, for with her designs she tried to introduce a little light French formality into English houses; but she did not care to work in France, which puzzled many people. All the same, the rooms in England never seemed to her large enough, and the furniture was invariably squat: Miranda had forgotten, since her last visit to Katie, that only the hall and the drawing-room at the Cedar House could be thought good rooms. She had a great prejudice against little rooms which were not ante-chambers or boudoirs, and she rather liked to be teased about her very grand tastes.

Miranda decided that when she had finished, and had replaced the predominant Adam-green-and-coral-with-white by something more original, the Cedar House would give just the impression of propriety, intelligence, discretion and contentment produced by Gerard and Finola Parnell. Gerard and Finola colluded in producing this impression in public: it was very important to them, because they thought there was no truth in it at all.

The house, Miranda thought, was at present just a little too heavy and too nineteen-thirties, too much a place for practical, confident people. She hated over-decoration, the obvious touch of the professional, but she thought the present examples of comfortable unconcern at the Cedar House would not do for Gerard and Finola. Miranda intended to point out gently that, for instance, the elephant’s foot umbrella-stand would look better in the loft.

Constance had re-done the house just at the time when Victoriana were most despised, when patterned wallpapers and carpets were assumed always to be hideous, but Miranda thought that a few Victorian touches would suit the present owners of the house. She would like to see a couple of beaded footstools in this drawing-room, and a good Alma-Tadema now on the landing in place of the very dull, but eighteenth-century, painting of racehorses in front
of the Manor. Gerard had not approved of this idea, but Miranda had told Darcy on the telephone that, all the same, she was now passionately in love with Gerard: he was so handsome, so dominant, and so unattainable. She lit a cigarette, and smiled as she remembered Darcy’s taking her seriously.

The night before, in bed, Finola had told Gerard that Darcy and Miranda knew each other well, and he had assumed at once that they were lovers. He had listened in the dark to her tangled explanations of her interest in the affair, which was owing to Miranda’s being almost like a third half-sister, who had competed with her for Alice’s attention. Gerard had accepted this, and agreed with her that it was very interesting.

It seemed to him that, though he was not yet making Finola happy, he would do so, and he was already attaching her completely to himself and to Combe Chalcot. They would never go back now to the shy and courteous love which they had shared at Egerton Gardens. Gerard never forgot Winston, though Finola hardly thought of him now with her conscious mind. He, Gerard, was coming to be a great believer in the power of sex, and though it might have been an effort for a man of his age, he found now that he was able to make love to Finola almost every night.

He knew that his wife enjoyed these struggles upstairs as much as he did, enjoyed them in a shamefaced way which made it difficult to think in the daytime about anything but bed. She liked being stretched and hurt, so long as she was comforted immediately after – it was an emotional pleasure to them both, not a simple sexual one such as they had known before. They did want to return to a proper, warm love, but it was impossible, and they had discovered they both preferred pain to cold insipidity. They were shocked by this, and they never talked about it.

Gerard did not dislike Miranda, in spite of her being a worldly female and Darcy’s mistress, but he did not find her a temptation. Though she was so thin, she gave the impression of being a rather large woman; and her eyes were so
bold that he could not imagine wanting either to dominate or to comfort her – her mere looks made him feel too tired. Sometimes he realised that, if Finola had not given herself back to him for all her complicated reasons, he would have found Miranda very fascinating; and yet he would have hated her for being what she was. Little Finola had seen that: she had realised in her serious way that Miranda might have been a threat. Such a threat as Winston Lowell, the thought of whom Gerard made sure she could not bear. Gerard was, after all, a normal man.

Miranda was still thinking about how agreeable life could be, and how much she liked the sweet Parnells, when she heard their voices in the hall. ‘Darcy! What a surprise,’ Finola was saying.

‘A flying visit, darling – how pretty you look – I must see Miranda.’

Gerard’s footsteps could be heard, coming out of his study.

Miranda sat very upright. She had made no plan to see Darcy, though she was becoming very fond of him. She had asked him not to see her, when she had rung yesterday for a long and foolish chat, but now he had disobeyed her. He had come in search of her, which no man had ever done after a love affair of more than a year.

When Constance came to stay at Sedley Warren for the second time after his wife’s death, Sir William Warren realised that the whole neighbourhood expected him to marry her. He could not believe that Constance had such an idea in her head, for her forthright ways, the trousers she had sometimes worn in wartime, and her playfulness when she wrote to him had made him think her a little unconventional, as well as charmingly naïve. It would be shaming to point out to her that her agreeable visits were a little unseemly, for it was clear to him that Constance thought two people in their seventies could produce no scandal; she would stare and blush crossly if he told her that they could. William had respected Constance for forty years for her absolute acceptance of a plain moral code in which a woman’s adultery was inexcusable, the Church of England must be attended on Sundays because Christ died on the cross two thousand years ago, and heathens who disagreed were not to be thought of.

‘One does
try
to do one’s best by everybody,’ Constance was saying.

They were lunching in a small restaurant off Bond Street, which they had favoured for many years. William had come to London to see his daughter and son-in-law, and Constance, who had come down to do some shopping, was staying for two days at Brown’s Hotel. It seemed a little odd to both of them, to be meeting like this in London now they both were widowed. This was Constance’s first visit to London since her move to Oxfordshire, and she was not
enjoying it. It seemed to her that by coming to London, by visiting any place which was not Combe Chalcot or Sedley Warren, she was acknowledging that her present condition was normal, and permanent.

‘Of course one does, my dear.’ William was looking over the top of his menu at a couple who had just come into the restaurant. They looked fairly respectable, though their clothes were curiously old-fashioned, but William was thinking that before the war they would have been told by the waiters that all tables were reserved and there was a Lyons very close by.

Suddenly the woman looked up, and said: ‘Isn’t that – well, we must go and say hello. Come on, Anatole.’

‘Alice …’

Constance heard this, and swallowed. She and William were seated at a table laid for four: she always thought it seemed more proper not to have a discreet little table for two. ‘
Mrs
Molloy
,’ she said, as Alice, smiling, said, ‘Hullo, Mrs Parnell, and how are you?’

‘How
are
you, M. Brécu?’ said Constance. ‘I must introduce you both to Sir William Warren – Sir William, this is Mrs Molloy, my daughter-in-law’s mother, and M. Brécu, her
father
.’

William knew that Finola was not illegitimate, that she had been called by her mother’s name out of eccentricity, but Alice did not know that he was aware of this. She raised her eyebrows, and said, ‘That’s right. How d’you do?’

‘How do you do?’

Anatole shook hands with William and Constance. He was cross with his wife for deciding to annoy Constance by her friendliness in public, especially when he was tired, but he was of course interested. He and Alice had been told by Darcy that William Warren was Constance’s lover, and they were unwilling to disbelieve this, especially when they heard Constance address him as ‘Sir William’.

‘Enchanté,’ he said kindly to them both.

‘So what brings you to London, Mrs Parnell?’ said Alice, hovering.

‘Do at least sit down and have a glass of sherry with us, before luncheon!’ said Constance, moving her chair. She spoke most amiably, in front of William.

‘Thank you, we’d like that,’ said Alice.

Anatole moved round the table, to sit next to Constance, and Alice, as she took the chair beside William, smiled at him.

‘Mrs Parnell is very kindly helping me to choose a christening present for my new grandson,’ said William. ‘We’ve just paid a brief visit to Aspreys.’

‘Have you now?’ said Alice.

‘Alice and I have been to see her pictures hung for her new exhibition,’ said Anatole, wondering when they would eat. ‘It is just round the corner, the gallery, that is.’

‘Really?’ said Constance. ‘We must try and see if we can’t go to that.’

‘You’re an artist, of course, Mrs Molloy? I remember your – your charming daughter telling me so, the other day.’

‘I’m a painter,’ said Alice.

There was silence, while Sir William quietly asked the waiter for four glasses of sherry.

‘And have you seen anything of Gerard and Fin very lately?’ said Alice to Constance when he was gone.

‘I
have
seen Gerard,’ said Constance. ‘Finola I haven’t actually seen lately. She’s so busy nowadays, of course!’

Alice smiled: she knew that Constance had not been invited to Combe Chalcot since March, and that she would never invite Finola to Headington.

‘Oh yes, and she’s not been at all well lately,’ said Alice cheerfully. ‘It was an awful thing, you know, this old friend of ours tried to have his way with her, you wouldn’t believe it, would you? She was very upset by him thinking she would be a girl like that, because of course she’s not a bit like me, you know, and she hasn’t the strength of mind about these things that someone like you would have, Mrs Parnell, and it seems someone told Gerard …’ Alice had been very angry with Winston Lowell, who had thought to
amuse her by telling her all about Finola’s virtue.

Anatole leant forward and said to William: ‘Alice and I happened to pass what I think is your house, sir, on the way to see my daughter in Yorkshire. Isn’t it called Sedley Warren? We thought it very beautiful, I remember.’

William blinked. ‘I’m glad you admired it, M. Brécu.’

‘My daughter’s house is even larger than yours, though not so beautiful,’ continued Anatole as he listened to Constance and his wife. ‘It is very expensive to run nowadays, of course.’

‘Of course,’ said William. ‘A young friend of mine – this is Sebastian Pagett, Constance – had to sell his place to a school, I believe, just the other day. Rather sad to think of all these places – er – declining and falling.’

‘Lynmore can hardly be called an
old
place,’ said Constance, smiling at William and thinking his manners were marvellous. ‘And really, I told Sebastian last time I saw him he’s not
young
, whatever he may think.’

Alice, still thinking of the letter Constance had written to Gerard (about which Winston had told her, and Finola had told Anatole), looked up at the word Lynmore. ‘Why, I used to know a girl called Miranda Pagett, who lived in a place called Lynmore, Lynmore Hall. You don’t say it’s been sold to an institution now?’

‘I’m afraid so, yes.’

‘Miranda always used to say it was the ugliest house in England,’ said Alice.

‘Yes, not very attractive I’m afraid. I believe your friend’s – uh – ancestor, great-grandfather perhaps? – pulled down a rather charming old house in order to build it. Of course, people saw things rather differently in the eighties – I daresay most people thought the original house very dull. As we know, their idea of beauty was not ours.’

‘No, it wasn’t, was it?’ said Constance. ‘I so well remember –’ she paused. ‘Do you know, talking of this sort of thing, I’m sure Gerard told me it was some
firm
called Miranda Pagett that Finola was getting to do up the house? Frightfully old-hat she must have found all my chintzes and
so on – I suppose she’ll be putting in some modern furniture, you know, chromium and plar-stic,’ said Constance, smiling.

‘Fin wouldn’t do that,’ said Alice. ‘Is it Miranda Pagett, indeed? I
did
know she had a decorator’s business now, though she still lives in France, doesn’t she?’

Anatole looked at her. Miranda’s name was still not mentioned in front of Alice. It was assumed she knew nothing about her now, and that if she did know, she would want to see the girl she had loved so much in the twenties for her strong beauty and arrogant rebellion.

Alice did not like her family’s thinking that the balance of her mind was not perfect, and she opened her mouth to make some other remark, but then she thought better of it. She enjoyed feeling much as she had at fifteen, when staying in Dorset with her easily-shocked clergyman uncle; but she realised that if she said much more now, they would all be convinced that she was indeed a little mad, and very naughty too.

‘I think, Alice, that we should go and order our lunch,’ said Anatole. ‘We have trespassed on Mrs Parnell and Sir William.’

Alice pushed her chair back and got to her feet. ‘Yes, but it’s been nice seeing you after all this time,’ she said, and gave a friendly little bow. ‘I’m sorry if you thought I was rude to you, Mrs Parnell,’ she added, ‘but I did think you’d be glad to know that Fin’s not as bad as you seem to think her sometimes. It was very nice meeting you, Sir William, I’ve heard so much about you.’

Anatole took hold of her sleeve and directed her to their own table. ‘You are undoubtedly the worst woman in the world,’ he said when they were seated.

‘Ah, don’t say that, I’ve been enjoying myself.’

‘I did not enjoy myself,’ said Anatole firmly.

*

William had been thinking, before the appearance of Alice and Anatole, that he ought tentatively to propose to
Constance during lunch. He was sure she would refuse him, and he thought she might be rather shocked at his making her an offer of marriage barely six months after Mary’s death, but he believed that all the same, he ought to make the gesture. He even thought that if she did accept, it might be satisfactory to have Constance at Sedley Warren all the time; but when Alice and Anatole came to their table his thoughts were distracted, and he supposed when they left that he could reconsider the idea, and try again another day.

After lunch, when their taxi was stuck in grinding traffic in Piccadilly, Constance said: ‘Oh, William, how perfectly
ghastly
it was having that woman coming up to our table, and
shaming
me like that!’

‘My dear, you are not responsible for Mrs Molloy’s – uh – unusual qualities. I thought her husband rather charming, don’t you agree?’ All Constance had told him in the past had prevented his being very shocked by what Alice had implied at lunch. He knew that Constance had her faults.

Constance wiped her eyes, and closed them. ‘As far as she’s concerned,
and
my daughter-in-law, I’m simply a scheming, hateful old trout. I
know
I haven’t always behaved – well, I don’t like Finola, and I can’t say I do! When Hugh died I was so – oh, I do wish I’d been a better wife to him, in spite of his faults, now I’m so lonely, I’ve got nothing, and Gerard and Finola never think of anything but self, self, self …’

‘My dear, my dear,’ said William, patting her hand, and leaning over to close the glass between themselves and the driver.

Constance lowered her voice. ‘To be seen lunching with you by
her
! Can you imagine the sort of things she’ll make up? Really, William, one might as well have been discovered actually – oh, you remember the sort of house-parties people like Polly Jameson-Fraser used to give, what went on! All these years and
now
, what one used to call one’s reputation is absolutely worthless!’

‘Constance, you do rather exaggerate.’ William was
surprised, and he did not conceal it, but Constance ignored this, and hurried on.

‘I feel
smirched
,’ she said, as the taxi jerked forward.

William had a sudden picture of quite how impossible Constance must be, to those who did not know how to handle her. He smiled. ‘Well, my dear, I don’t suppose you will feel very much less smirched if I say – however, although I’m sure you won’t like it, after all these years, as you say …’ He became serious, and adjusted his tie. ‘Constance, it has occurred to me recently that we’re both alone now, and I think it’s time to say that, whatever our differences in the past were about – we are fond of each other – marriage between us strikes me as a distinct possibility. If you would contemplate –’

Constance let out her breath, and her hands shook. ‘William …’

‘Perhaps you would like time to consider it? I hate to think, my dear, that after all this time I’ve made you feel I have – uh – put you in an awkward situation.’

‘Yes, yes, of
course
I feel rather in an awkward situation, as you say, at the moment, but that’s really got nothing to do with it! Oh, my dear, this was the
last
thing I was expecting.’

‘I should be very glad,’ said William for the last time, still looking at Green Park, ‘if you would marry me.’ He turned to face her.

‘Darling,’ said Constance. ‘Yes, I really think I will. I couldn’t – my dear, won’t all our children be perfectly horrified!’

‘Yes,’ said William, ‘yes, I do suppose they will be. Of course, we can’t be actually married until Mary has been dead for at least a year, Constance.’

She touched his black armband, a quivering frown on her face as she did so. ‘My dear, of course not! Really we shouldn’t even have
mentioned
it yet.’

‘I think it would be best not to tell anyone – except possibly our – our various children – for some time yet.’

‘Oh, we must tell them.’ Tears of contentment ran down
her face, and William, though he was surprised by this, was glad he had proposed to her and that she had accepted in the end.

The traffic jam cleared and the taxi swung round Hyde Park Corner. Constance remarked on the autumn trees, and William added his own comment. William had not chosen to make it quite clear to his friends that he had never done much more than take Constance out to luncheon, and though it was possible Constance knew what they thought of her, his conscience was perfectly at ease. Only Mary had known for certain that she had never been his mistress, not even when he had been a young man in love.