Old Sins (29 page)

‘Oh, in a while,’ said Eliza. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll introduce myself. I just want to have a quick word with Mary Lipscombe first. Nice to see you, John. Come and have a drink one night, you and Jenny. I’ll give her a ring. I have some friends coming to stay in a few weeks from the States, you’d like them.’

‘That would be lovely,’ said Wetheringham. ‘Julian not back yet, then?’

‘Heavens no. He’s becoming more American than the Americans. Can’t keep away.’

Wetheringham looked at her sharply. She looked wonderful, he thought, but very thin. ‘Come and have a meal with us one night, then,’ he said. ‘Jenny would like it. I’ll get her to ring you.’

‘Wonderful. Bye, John.’

She wandered across the room in search of Mary Lipscombe, failed to find her and saw Peter Thetford’s narrow back, encased in its too-blue suit, directly in front of her. She tapped it.

‘Mr Thetford. At last. I’ve been longing to meet you. I’m Eliza Morell, a friend of Hugh Gaitskell. How do you do?’

Thetford turned to look at her, excused himself from his companion and said abruptly, ‘Do you always interrupt conversations whenever it suits you, Mrs Morell?’ His voice was extraordinary, it was deep and scratched, and sounded somehow injured, as if it had been dragged across hot gravel; his accent was strong, and northern, but strangely musical. It was a sexy voice, it was bigger than he was.

‘If I want to talk to someone enough, yes. Sorry. Rude of me. Bad habit. But you didn’t look frightfully engrossed.’

‘I was, actually.’

‘Then you must continue. I expect I can find someone else to interrupt.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘don’t go. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude either.’

‘Well,’ she said lightly, ‘we’re quits. Now then, why haven’t I seen you at one of these lovely parties before?’

‘I don’t go to many parties,’ he said, ‘I’m a very busy man.’

‘Oh, people always say that when they want an excuse, but I can tell you most of the busiest men I know spend a lot of time at parties. It’s how they meet other people, you see. Contacts. That sort of thing.’

‘I don’t really set a lot of store by contacts.’

‘Well, that’s extremely silly of you. Contacts make the world go round.’

‘Not mine.’

‘That’s what you think. But they do.’ She smiled at him radiantly. ‘Haven’t you got a drink? Let me find you one. Champagne?’

Sipping the champagne, studying her further, his sexual hackles as always rising when confronted by the smell of real money, Thetford wondered a trifle contemptuously why she was bothering. She must know he wasn’t important, he wasn’t rich, he certainly wasn’t known for his wit and charm; nothing that had taken place in his life thus far had suggested he carried an aura of sexual irresistibility about with him; and yet, here she was, a beautiful and patently rich and socially important woman, making a most visible and strenuous effort to amuse and interest him.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Eliza briskly, looking very directly into his dark blue eyes.

‘I don’t think you do.’

‘Oh, yes I do. You’re wondering why a rich bitch like me should be taking so much interest in a yet-to-make-it person like you. Aren’t I right?’

‘Yes,’ he said, slightly disconcerted. ‘Yes, you’re right.’

‘Well, I’m not sure either,’ she said, and laughed. ‘But I was looking at you across the room, and I thought you looked interesting. And I see I was right.’

‘In what way am I interesting?’

‘Well, you don’t try very hard to be charming.’

‘That’s true. I find deliberately charming people very tiresome.’

‘So I see.’

‘How does that make me interesting?’

‘Well, you see, I spend most of my time with very deliberately charming people.’

‘So I am a novelty?’

‘Yes.’

‘In other ways too, no doubt.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, despite your fraternization with the Labour Party, I
don’t suppose you spend much of your time socializing with the working classes.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I should be a nice bit of social experimentation for you then.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ she said, ‘don’t be so touchy.’

‘I’m afraid I find it very difficult not to be. I’ve spent my life working my way out of the disadvantages of being working class, of being a social experiment if you like, and it hasn’t been very easy. Or pleasant even.’

‘Well,’ she said, draining her glass, ‘I daresay not. But that really isn’t my fault. Don’t get cross with me about it. I just thought we could have a nice conversation. I was obviously wrong. Good evening, Mr Thetford.’

She turned away; he put his hand out and gently touched her arm.

‘Don’t go. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. I get a bit carried away sometimes. It’s being in politics. It’s bad for the manners.’

Eliza looked at him. ‘Obviously. Let’s start again, then. Tell me about your politics.’

Beguiled by her beauty as much as her patently genuine desire to be with him, charmed and flattered out of his suspicion, he told her. He told her what he cared about and why; he told her of his dream of an equal beginning for everyone; he described a school to which every child would go, rich and poor, clever and stupid, each learning and gaining from the other; he told her of his own childhood, of his father, dying from lung disease at only fifty-six, of his mother’s tireless battle to see her children educated out of the mines. He told her of his passionate commitment to the National Health Service, of his fears that it would not continue to function, of his rage at the way consultants were still spending so much of their time with their private patients. He told her his dream was to be Minister of Education, to change the face of English schools; he talked and he talked and she listened in silence and they suddenly realized the room was emptying, and they were almost alone.

‘Oh, goodness,’ said Eliza, ‘it’s nearly eight o’clock. What are you doing now?’

‘Going back to my bedsit in Victoria, I suppose.’

‘Don’t you have a wife?’

‘I do. But she’s in Manchester.’

‘Why?’

‘We live there,’ he said sounding impatient. ‘She teaches at a school there.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘how would you like me to take you out to dinner?’

Thetford was so startled he dropped the remains of a smoked salmon sandwich he was holding.

‘Oh, what a ridiculous waste. Probably all you were going to get for supper anyway. Now look, you’ll just have to take me or leave me, but I’d much rather you took me. My husband’s in New York and I’ve got no one else to eat with tonight.’

‘Well, I really don’t think –’ said Thetford, fingering nervously at his tie.

‘Don’t think what? Oh, for heaven’s sake, I’m not going to march you off to the Ritz or seduce you in a private room at the Café Royal. We’ll go to a pub. And it won’t take long.’

‘Oh . . .’ The scratchy voice elongated the word. Then he looked at her and smiled, a sudden, heartbreakingly open smile. ‘Why not?’

‘My goodness,’ said Eliza, walking through the door ahead of him. ‘Don’t do that too often or I
shall
take you off to a private room.’

‘Do what?’

‘Smile.’

‘Ah.’

Margaret had often told him he had a very seductive smile. He had never really believed her.

It wasn’t quite a pub she took him to, it was Moony’s in the Strand, and they drank Guinness and ate oyster and steak pie and it took a very long time indeed. Peter, having exhausted his political platform for a while, told her about his own family: about Margaret, and her own educational ideologies and how she tried very hard to put them into practice against some opposition from her headmistress, who was very traditionalist, and tried to run her little primary school as if it was Eton or Winchester; about his two little boys, David and Hugh, who
were both already showing signs of being very clever indeed; about the new semi-detached house they had just bought and which his mother regarded as a palace; about his mother and what an anxiety she was, living on her own now, with arthritis and diabetes, but refusing to give in and be a burden on her children.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said suddenly, ‘I haven’t stopped talking for hours. I don’t often get such an opportunity to be listened to.’

‘I thought that was the whole point of politics,’ said Eliza, ‘having people listen to you all the time.’

‘No, no, not at all. The other politicians all talk at the same time, and never stop for a moment, and the public are always talking back at you, contradicting you. It’s permanent bedlam.’

‘But you like it?’

‘Yes,’ he said simply, ‘I love it.’

There was a pause. ‘What about you, then?’

‘Oh, dear,’ she said, ‘I was afraid you’d ask. Less said the better, I’m afraid.’

‘Come on. I can take it.’

‘Oh, well, you know, public school. Rich husband. No job. Vote Tory. Big house. Expensive clothes. Dreadful. Sorry.’

‘You’re intelligent, though,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t you like to have a job, for instance?’

‘Yes,’ she said shortly.

‘Sore subject?’

‘Very.’

‘Why do you vote Tory, for heaven’s sake?’ he said, partly because he wanted to know, because he simply could never understand anyone doing such a thing, and partly to get back on to safer ground.

‘Oh, it’s all that early conditioning. Some kind of divine force guides my hand to the right name on the ballot paper. I honestly would expect to be struck down in the polling booth if I voted Labour. Don’t tell Hugh, though. And I certainly don’t think much of the Conservatives. Although Macmillan’s a sweetie.’

‘Mmm,’ said Thetford, who did not think of Macmillan in quite that way himself, ‘how on earth did you get mixed up with people like Gaitskell?’

‘Oh, met the Foots at a party, and it went on from there. I’m very intrigued by people like them, and by Wedgwood Benn. I
think they’re wonderful, but they do seem to me to be slightly hypocritical, living in those big houses, and Tony’s got a huge estate in Suffolk, you know, I mean you have a right to be socialist, but I’m honestly not sure they do.’

‘What does your husband do?’ asked Thetford, anxious not to get drawn into that particular high-Tory by-way.

‘Oh, God, everything. Has a company that makes medicines. And cosmetics. And he’s just opened a store in New York. That’s why he’s there.’ She was silent.

‘Is he nice?’ asked Thetford. ‘Do you like him?’

He was as surprised by this inquiry as she was; Margaret often said his idea of a really personal question was whether someone would rather walk or drive to the polling booth; but Eliza’s candour was curiously relaxing, and besides, some curiously potent force was impelling him to explore her and her situation.

‘Well, he isn’t exactly nice,’ said Eliza. ‘But he is very interesting. And I do like him. I think. But I don’t see much of him. And I don’t think he likes me as much as he did. And I think he’s probably got someone else in New York anyway.’

‘Why?’

‘Don’t know. Nothing tangible. I just feel he’s not with me half the time.’

‘Well, he isn’t,’ he said, deliberately misunderstanding. ‘And what do you feel about that?’

‘About the someone else? Oh, I don’t know, really. I’m not devastated, if that’s what you mean. But it hurts. Of course it does. A lot of the other things he does hurt too.’

‘Like?’

‘Oh, too complex to explain. He’s a very complex man. Would you have an affair with someone who wasn’t your wife?’

He looked at her very intently. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t been tempted yet.’

‘Really?’ she said. ‘I’m surprised. Well, anyway,’ she added, breaking an oddly forceful silence, ‘I think I can live with it. Now what about some treacle pudding?’

They ate some treacle pudding and then they went out into the Strand and she hailed a taxi. ‘It’s been lovely,’ she said, ‘thank you for coming. Ring me.’

‘I don’t have your number.’

‘It’s in the book. Morell. Hanover Terrace, Regent’s Park. Not a very equal sort of an address, I’m afraid.’

When she got home, the phone was already ringing. It was Thetford.

‘I was just testing your phone.’

‘I see.’

‘You did say I should ring.’

‘I know. Where do you live, did you say?’

‘Oh, in Victoria. In a very dreary MP flatlet. I only go home weekends.’

‘Lots of lonely evenings?’

‘Lots.’

‘Come to dinner here next week. No, it won’t be a dinner party. Or a seduction. We’ll have a chaperone. Name of Rosamund.’

Thetford felt suddenly and sharply and with a sense of piercing anticipation that he was in entirely uncharted territory. He knew what it was. Not the house in Regent’s Park, nor even the tacky relaxed indulgence of Moony’s. The vision that was beckoning so deliciously and irresistibly at him was of the land of entirely pleasurable and irresponsible sexual opportunity.

Rosamund turned out to be not much of a chaperone. By the time they had finished the first course (smoked salmon ‘to make up for the bit I made you drop’) she was squirming about and throwing knives on to the floor. Eliza sighed, scooped her up and buzzed on the house intercom.

‘Nanny? I think really that Roz had better go to bed after all, she seems awfully tired. Call me when she’s ready and I’ll tuck her up.’ She disappeared briefly with the child, and came back smiling briskly.

‘That’s better. Goodness, they’re tiring, aren’t they? Don’t look so nervous. Nanny’s still here, and so are the Bristows, down in the garden flat. We’re not alone.’

‘Who are the Bristows?’

‘Oh.’ She looked at him slightly awkwardly and then laughed. ‘Oh, hell, better get it over with. Staff. Mrs B. sees to the house and most of the cooking; Mr B. looks after Julian mostly.’

‘In what way?’ asked Thetford, genuinely intrigued.

‘Oh, you know, his clothes, that sort of thing. And he sees to
running repairs on the house. And the cars. We don’t actually have a chauffeur as such, because Julian loves driving so much, but of course he can’t always.’

‘Of course not.’

‘So he sees to them all.’

‘How many have you got?’

‘Oh, gosh, I don’t know, three really, mine, and Julian’s latest toy, which is some rare American thing, and the Rolls for just going out, you know, and then Julian has about half a dozen antique ones down in the country. He collects them.’