Love Falls (36 page)

Lara must have slept because when she next looked up Lambert was crying. Long, silent tears were falling down his face, and his sleeve was wet where he'd attempted to mop them away.

‘Oh Dad.' Lara was appalled. She caught the eye of the woman opposite, who politely looked away. ‘Dad, I'm sorry.' She couldn't think what else to say. ‘Is it Caroline?'

‘She was my friend,' he said simply. ‘Right from the start. She was the only one who tried to help me.'

‘Yes,' Lara said.

‘And I let her down. Just like I let them all down.'

Lara put a hand on his arm. She could hardly bear to hear him say it. ‘But you were there. This summer . . . last night . . . I'm sure she appreciated . . .' but Lambert shook his head.

‘Caroline came to stay with us in Dorset,' he choked. ‘Just before the war. And she did everything to help me.'

‘To help with  . . .?'

‘My parents.' He looked at her strangely as if it was a puzzle to him that she didn't know. ‘They needed money to get into Britain. So we wrote to everybody. All the well-connected people Caroline knew. We spent all day and half the night on letters, sitting upstairs in Lady Holt's study. And when we'd gone through everyone's address books, we wrote to other people, people of whom Caroline had only heard. But the replies came back. “Sorry.” “It's impossible.” “Out of the question.” Then one man said he might be able to help. His own father was a haberdasher, although on rather a grander scale than mine. I wrote to my parents. Don't give up. I'll get the money. But the man withdrew his offer. His son, apparently, some idiot just out of public school, had run up the most appalling debts, gambling, and had crashed the family's new motor car, and the whole promise of his help was off.'

Lambert clenched one fist. He looked as if he might be about to smash it through the window. ‘We kept on writing  . . .'

‘But what about the Holts?' Lara interrupted.

‘They'd done enough,' Lambert said shortly. ‘They'd taken me.'

‘But how much could they have needed?' She thought of the lavish life they'd lived these last few weeks. ‘Couldn't someone have helped them? Just a measly train fare and somewhere to stay? Couldn't any of them have managed that?' It occurred to her, really for the first time, that they were her family too.

A slow tear rolled down Lambert's face. ‘The British government were asking for a sum of money to be pledged as surety against any refugee, any Jewish refugee entering the country. Ten thousand pounds. So that was twenty thousand, just for my parents, the equivalent, say of . . .' Lambert shook his head. ‘Half a million pounds today.'

‘Half a million pounds? What for?'

‘As a precaution, if they were ever to become a . . . how did they put it, “a drain on the public purse”. But the British Government didn't know my parents. They would never have asked for anything. Not for themselves.'

‘So . . . what hap . . .?' she attempted, and she thought of the photograph she'd seen that morning, the bright face of Lambert's sister, his mother's fierce eyes. So what happened to them all? What happened? But she lacked the courage to ask. Instead she sat beside him, her arm against his, their legs touching, her body shielding his, until eventually he turned his face to the window and slept.

The five backpacking women were all reading now. Thick paperbacks with the pages folded back. Lara ate another biscuit, took out her copy of
The Grapes of Wrath
, cried over its unrelenting pages, and when she ran out of tissues to mop her eyes with, she looked through her history books, making notes and underlining passages on the French Revolution, wondering what would happen to Kip and his family if the masses of indignant people ever rose up again. ‘Let them eat cake.' She could imagine Roland's drawl, and she closed her eyes and allowed herself an indulgent moment at the front of the crowd as she waited for his public execution. But would she be safe? If she was with Kip? She shook the thought away. Lady Lara Willoughby. She heard Ginny's teasing voice. But then again, she could save him, prove he wasn't really one of them. He's mine! she'd shout, for some reason in a bonnet and white apron. He's my brother. Stop! The guillotine would screech to a halt.

But then what if she was pregnant? She felt herself grow cold just at the thought of it. ‘If we had a baby . . .' She could feel Kip's hands on her, pushing her back against their kissing tree. ‘I wouldn't mind.' But he would mind when he saw it. A two-headed monster, their four blue identical eyes squinting out the truth. She'd have to push it around in a pram with a cloth draped over it so that people didn't stare.

And then she'd lose him. He'd be disgusted, and she'd have to pretend to be disgusted too. But what he didn't know was that it was the one thing that bound them together. The reason why he thought she was his type. It was the thing that gave her a chance over all those other girls. Lulu, and all the unknown Lulus, and even Allegra, just waiting to grow up. But then what if it was Roland's? It made her flinch, the thought of it, but surely a baby couldn't be made from anything so brutal? She curled over on the seat, and although she tried to block it out with thoughts and prayers for being lucky, for having one more chance, the memory engulfed her – his iron heavy leg, the stink of his aftershave, the drool on her neck as he rammed her up against the wall.

The refugee camp at Purawala, when they finally arrived, had been a shock. The people there, Cathy had warned Lara, were displaced – had been forced out of their own country by the Chinese. She had letters, which she read to Lara, about the hardship of starting this new life, of the bravery of these people and how much help they needed to settle and make a new home.

Cathy read these letters aloud on the long train journey from Bangalore, she read them to warn Lara, but also to make her aware of how lucky they had been. Living in their little cottage in Scotland, where the toilet, however freezing in winter, was at least in a brick shed beside the house, and not, as one letter described it, in a snake-filled pit below a single slippery plank.

But once they arrived at the camp it was Cathy and not Lara who was tested. The Tibetans had already been helped. They had smart watches and Western clothes, they had tractors and a school house, and, to Lara’s disappointment, the children were no longer needed to bang pots from the roof of the one building to keep the parrots off the struggling corn. Cathy looked dejected. She and Lara had been living all these years in poverty, refusing any help from Lambert, trudging with no car, not even a bicycle, to the village’s one shop.

They’d eaten dhal and brown rice, meal after meal, baked hard brown chapattis on the griddle, drunk goat’s milk in their tea, and here was His Holiness, just back from a trip to America, with a paunch and a gold chain and some very flashy-looking socks under his robes.

‘I want to believe in everything,’ Cathy held Lara’s hand tightly in her own, ‘but I’m finding it so hard to understand what’s real.’

His Holiness stood for a while in silence, and then he looked up at the sky. ‘You see?’ He pointed. ‘There’s a dragon’s tail,’ and as they watched, the three of them, a single plume of purple streamed across the clouds.

‘I don’t . . .’ Cathy turned, tearful, but His Holiness was smiling so serenely that slowly and inexplicably Cathy felt her faith restored.

Lambert didn’t speak again until the next day when the train finally stopped at Calais. He had slept fitfully, refusing all offers of food, only stirring occasionally to adjust his swollen foot, and to lie down on a stretch of seats conveniently vacated by the paperback-reading Dutch. Lara had leapt up as soon as they got off and pulled down the blinds on to the corridor so that apart from a timid young man in glasses no one else dared enter their carriage. At the border with France a guard appeared and demanded to see their passports. Lara watched Lambert show his passport, saw him slip the photograph out, hold it against the flat of his thigh and then slide it back inside again. She’d never have noticed if she hadn’t known to look.

Lara had slept too, waking every few hours in the grip of an uneasy fear, and then, unable to remember what it was that was so horrible, she sat still until it flooded back. I’ll have to ask him, she realised. I’ll have to ask him, that’s all. And just then the train came to a stop.

‘Dad.’ She shook him lightly. ‘We’ve arrived,’ and finding his shirt soaked through with sweat, she opened his bag and took out his dressing gown. ‘Here.’ She helped him into it. ‘That’s better.’

‘Thank you.’ His teeth were chattering as he stepped down from the train. ‘Nearly there,’ and with his dressing gown unfastened, flying out around him like a cape, he stumbled towards the boat.

Lara had once heard Lambert say – she supposed it must have been to Caroline – that he refrained from asking people questions because he so dreaded anyone asking one of him. But the nearer they got to England the calmer Lambert became. His fever subsided and his eyes cleared. They sat together in the restaurant car of the boat while Lara ordered fish, mashed potatoes and peas.

‘It’ll be revolting, I’m warning you,’ he smiled, but it was delicious. Salty and buttery and warm.

‘Did you know there was a funeral,’ Lara attempted, ‘for Caroline? All arranged?’

‘Oh,’ Lambert paused. ‘Yes. But I never go to funerals. It’s the living I’m concerned with. Not the dead.’

‘So how come  . . .’

‘In my life,’ he said drily. ‘Not in my work.’

‘But won’t you be sad . . .’ She couldn’t help herself. ‘If no one goes to
your
funeral? If no one cares?’ And hearing how ridiculous this sounded she added more quietly, ‘Not even for Caroline?’

‘No,’ Lambert said. ‘Not even for Caroline.’ But he looked surprised.

They fell silent and Lara toyed with her pudding, a jam sponge in custard, adrenalin washing through her, rising and dropping away, until she thought she might dissolve. I’m going to have to ask him, she thought, and the realisation cut through her like a knife.

‘Dad?’ she ventured as the waiter delivered coffee, and Lambert looked at her sideways.

‘Yes?’

They smiled at each other and quickly, before her courage failed, Lara leant towards him. ‘Dad, can I ask you something . . . It’s just . . . about Kip.’ She watched his face. ‘It’s just I had this idea. I mean I heard . . . I wanted to check. Is Andrew . . .’ She hesitated. ‘Andrew Willoughby. Is he . . . Kip’s real father?’

Lambert stared at her as if he wasn’t quite sure what he’d heard. Then he leant towards her too. ‘Why do you ask?’

Lara smiled but inside she was trembling. ‘No, it’s just . . .’ There was nothing much to lose now and anyway if necessary she could run and throw herself over the rails of the boat. ‘I remembered that you used to know his mother and then I heard Andrew Willoughby say something  . . .’

‘Andrew Willoughby? Don’t believe a word spoken by that shit. It’s typical of him to go round rubbishing the one woman who was loyal to him. The one woman who would never have an affair.’ He shook his head. ‘Poor lovely girl.’

‘Kip’s mother?’

‘Yes, I was terribly fond of her. Used to take her out regularly to try and cheer her up. Especially when she was pregnant with Kip – she was terrified, poor thing, that she was expecting another girl and that her marriage would be over. But in fact once Kip was born, once Willoughby had his son and heir, he pretty much ignored her. It destroyed her really – she became ill, had a sort of nervous breakdown.’ Lambert said nervous breakdown as if it was a little-known medical term. ‘I told her, nothing could have been worse than staying in that marriage. But being Catholic, of course, she’d never agree to a divorce.’

‘So it’s not you?’

‘Me?’ Lara had never seen him look so gentle. ‘No, it’s not me. But I can tell you who is mine.’

Lara stared at him. She felt a great gulf opening up inside her. ‘Who?’

He put a hand out and touched hers across the table. ‘You, of course.’

‘Oh. Me.’ And she began to laugh.

Lambert was almost cheerful on the train into Victoria Station and once there he commandeered a trolley and throwing their luggage on he hopped at great speed towards a kiosk where he bought one of every newspaper for sale.

‘Taxi,’ he shouted wildly, clutching the papers to him. ‘Taxi!’ And Lara saw her father reflected in the drivers’ faces – a man, unshaven, half dressed, limping, foreign – as each cab accelerated past.

‘Taxi,’ Lara tried instead, sticking out her arm, and almost immediately there was a screech of brakes.

Lambert’s flat was much as they had left it. Dark and private, even the steps of the stairs leading up to it muffled in quiet. Lara stayed and had a cup of tea, delaying the moment when the adventure would end, when she’d get the tube to Finsbury Park, walk through the tunnel of the station, hand in her ticket, step out into the real world. Occasionally her face dissolved into a smile. He likes me, she thought. Kip likes me for no reason at all. It was all she could do to control her grin. I just have to be lucky now, she told herself, and she kept her fingers crossed.