Peach (43 page)

Harry was wrong too. The baby didn’t look like the Launcetons. He looked like his namesake and grandfather, Gilles de Courmont.

With Nanny in charge of the baby Peach had time on her hands. She prowled her big bedroom that still looked exactly the way it had when it was Harry’s mother’s room (before his father died and she moved into the London flat) and that Harry had refused to let her change. “Until Mother goes,” he’d said dramatically.

“But she’s gone,” Peach protested.

“Not gone.
Gone
,” Harry said. “She likes to know that everything is the same even though she’s not here.”

Peach thought it a bit unfair but respected his wishes. The idea of a little mews house in London where no Launceton had ever set foot became more and more tempting as the months went by and Harry seemed busier and busier. He was always dashing up to London on the ten fifteen train and he almost always called to say he was being kept late at meetings and would have to stay over. Peach had gone up once or twice with him and she’d bought quite a lot of nice English country-lady clothes, which she managed to make look very French with a beautiful scarf and enormous chunks of fake jewellery and an armful of clanking gold bracelets that drove Harry crazy with the noise. He took her to Wilton’s for lunch and they went to the theatre together and Peach enjoyed herself very much. It was time they had their own place in London so that she and Harry could be together much more and with Nanny in charge there was no need for her to be eternally at Launceton.

In her new little de Courmont town car Peach zapped around the estate agents, breezing into their quiet offices with all her old zest and self-assurance. She toured endless bijou-residences with mesmerised young estate agents until she found exactly what she wanted in a mews just off Belgrave Square.

Melinda came up to London with her and together they scoured the shops buying pretty things for the tiny white house on the cobblestone mews. Its front door was enamelled a glossy black and Peach bought a shiny brass doorknocker in the shape of a lion’s head. It reminded her of Grand-mère’s Sekhmet statue.

Harry never asked what she did when she went to London. In fact he rarely asked her anything about herself any more, not even if she were cold or if she would like more
wine with her lunch. He certainly never asked her if she were happy. But Peach knew he had a new book brewing in his head and that he was worried about a delay in the publication date of his last novel, so she didn’t intrude on his thoughts.

As soon as the house was finished, she planned to unveil her surprise for Harry. He had gone up to town on the usual train and she had driven up later, arranging to meet him at a quarter to seven at Claridges.

Making for Harrods she squeezed the car into a handy space in Hans Place and strolled through the Food Halls picking out smoked salmon and a game pie and salad. She chose some good French cheeses and the celery she knew Harry would like to go with it, and some enormous strawberries imported from Florida, whose sweet smell on this cold April morning made her think of sunshine and clear skies.

In a plaid skirt and a dark green sweater with a wicker basket over her arm, she felt at last that she belonged. She was Lady Launceton, aged twenty-three, mother of a three-month-old son, married to the world’s ideal man whom she still loved madly. And now that she had so cleverly bought them their own little home their relationship would regain its old lustre. Without Launceton Hall and its traditions stifling her she would be his old Peach again—the same one he had had to phone six times a day just to tell her he loved her, the one he needed by his side in order to write, the one he made love to with such passion.

Peach spent the afternoon in her new house arranging the table for an intimate dinner for two. She set it up before the fireplace and draped it in a long lace cloth. She put out the new Italian dishes and the Swedish crystal glasses. She set a small exquisitely arranged basket of flowers from Constance Spry in the centre and she put the bottle of white wine—a
Chassagne Montrachet chosen with the help of the nice man at Harrods—into the refrigerator to chill. She’d also bought a decent bottle of claret because it was Harry’s favourite, and a superb bottle of 1900 port as her housewarming present to him.

She took a bath and spent a lot of time doing her face, the way Lais used to, and then she put on the black velvet cocktail dress that had cost her a fortune in Bond Street. She swept up her mass of bronze hair on top of her head and clipped on the diamond earrings that Harry had given her when they were married. Fastening the sapphire and diamond clasp of the heirloom Launceton three-strand pearl choker carefully she thought it looked a bit overdone, but knew Harry would like to see her wearing it. Before she left she arranged the black lace nightdress on the bed in their pretty green and white bedroom and left an album of Albi-noni’s quiet pretty music on the record player.

Peach waited in Claridges’ bar, glancing eagerly at every new face. She had ordered a gin and tonic, a mixture she despised but which it seemed all the English drank, and it sat untouched, on the table in front of her.

“Lady Launceton?” asked the waiter.

Peach nodded in surprise.

“A telephone call for you, Madam.”

“I’m going to be late, Peach,” said Harry abruptly. “You’d better start back for Launceton without me.”

“No, no. It’s all right. I’ll wait …”

“No use waiting, I don’t know how long I’m going to be. I’m in the middle of discussions with my editor. They could go on all night. I’ll probably end up sleeping at the club.”

Peach replaced the receiver sadly. Her surprise was in ruins. Back at her table in the bar she sipped the gin and tonic and wondered what to do. All was not lost, she decided finally. She would stay alone in her pretty new house
and she’d call Harry at his club in the morning and surprise him. He’d come over for breakfast and she’d show him their little hideaway and he’d love it. And he’d love her too for being so clever.

“Sir Harry is not in at the moment, Madam,” the concierge at Harry’s club said discreetly when she telephoned the next morning. “Would you care to leave a message?”

“Oh. Has he gone out for breakfast?” asked Peach.

“I dare say, Madam.”

“Well, could you ask him to call Lady Launceton at Belgravia 2313 please.”

Somehow it didn’t seem like much fun brewing up coffee and warming croissants for one. She’d go for a walk and get some fresh air and then she’d call again. Dressing hurriedly in her old uniform of tight black trousers and big sweater she emerged into a cold blue spring morning.

Peach walked through St James’s Park wishing she’d brought something to feed the ducks and watching the nannies out already with their babies in those enormous regal perambulators and she suddenly missed baby Wil like mad. She’d go back to the mews house and call Harry one more time and leave a message that she had returned home.

Waiting at the traffic light by the Ritz Hotel, she stared absently in front of her thinking about the baby. A porter in a brown uniform hurried from the hotel carrying two small overnight bags, followed by a man and a woman. The man held the woman’s arm protectively and she was smiling at him as they stepped into a taxi. It was a few seconds before Peach realised that the man was Harry and the woman he was with was Augusta and by then the taxi was lost in the flurry of traffic along Piccadilly.

Melinda was in a dilemma. Peach was her best friend and she didn’t want to hurt her but really Harry was such a
bastard she couldn’t let Peach go on thinking he was the Prince of Light.

“Maybe it wasn’t Harry,” said Peach, a ray of hope flickering across her miserable face.

Melinda sighed, and cut another wedge of chocolate cake. “Of course it was Harry,” she said. “He’s been seeing Augusta for months. Everyone knows about it.”

“They do?” asked Peach astonished. “I mean—
he has?
”

“You must have known what Harry was like when you met him,” Melinda went on. “After all he had an affair with you, didn’t he? Augusta was quite used to it—she always took it in her stride and came back to wait for him. But this time he married you. It must have been quite a shock for her, he’d always come dashing home before, his tail, between his legs. Metaphorically speaking,” she added, giggling.

“But
Augusta!
” cried Peach despairingly. “If only it were anyone but her!”

Melinda sighed. “It is,” she said. “I’m sorry, Peach, but you’d better know the worst. Since your marriage Harry has bedded half the women within a fifty-mile radius. Those he hasn’t are either too old or not attractive or have scruples.”

Peach didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as she thought about Harry’s infidelity. It certainly explained why he had no time for her in bed; she was surprised he could even manage a kiss! She looked at Melinda suspiciously. “What category are you?” she asked.

“The scruples,” cried Melinda indignantly. “Of course!”

Peach thought of her baby innocently asleep in his linoleum nursery at Launceton Hall while his father seduced half the women in the county, and she burst into tears.

“Oh Peach,” said Melinda tenderly. “You know Harry’s never chased after women. He doesn’t have to. It’s just that
they are always
there
—and he’s never been able to resist a pretty face.”

“What am I going to do, Melinda?” wailed Peach, frantically rocking backwards and forwards in Melinda’s rocking chair.
“Tell me what to do!
”

“Oh God, I wish we were thirty-five and women of the world,” sighed Melinda, “then we’d know what to do. You’d be
soignée
and brittle and not give a damn and probably just go off and have a nice comforting affair to get over it.”

“I don’t want an affair,” cried Peach. “I don’t want anything. I just want to go home.” Florida and her mother had never seemed further away. She thought of her grandmother. Leonie would know how to deal with this. Leonie always knew what to do.

Harry had phoned and left a message that he was delayed in town and by a stroke of luck Nanny was taking a day off to visit her sister in Bristol. Nanny looked at Peach’s blotchy face suspiciously but she said nothing and Peach listened quietly to her instructions about Master Wil’s schedule. She watched from the window as Nanny was driven off down the driveway by the gardener on her way to the station and then she dragged a suitcase from the cupboard and began loading Wil’s things into it. Her son lay in his cot sleeping peacefully as she clattered around dropping toys and wooden bricks in her nervous haste. She had packed her own case the night before and it was already stashed in the back of the de Courmont. Lugging Wil’s things down the stairs she hurried through the front door, crunching across the gravel to the garage. Peach wedged the case on the floor in the back, wishing she had a bigger car, and then she dashed back into the house, wrapped Wil in his blue blanket and put him in his carry cot. With her bag slung over her shoulder and Wil in his carry cot in one hand and a huge
bag of clean diapers and bottles and things in the other she thought she looked like a refugee. And wasn’t she? She was fleeing from Harry the way other women had fled from the enemy.

She took a last look at Launceton Hall before she drove off. It looked peaceful and serene beneath the fitful April sun and a line of fast-approaching grey clouds, just the way it had for centuries.

To her surprise Peach was enjoying herself. The English Channel was as calm as a pond and she strolled the decks of the ferry with Wil in her arms, warmly wrapped against the breeze, smiling and pointing out the gulls and Dover and the departing shoreline of England to him as though he could really understand what she was saying. And maybe he did, she thought. Who could tell with a baby? Just because he didn’t talk didn’t mean he didn’t
know
. She wondered if Wil would miss his father, but Harry had almost never held him and only ever saw him when he was clean and tidy after his bath. Harry had never given Wil his bottle or told him he loved him, the way she did. She would just have to love him more to make up for his lack of a father. Because she was quite sure she was never going back to Harry. Never.

Peach drove quickly through Calais and headed for Paris. She would stay the night at the Ile St Louis and take the train south the next day. It felt good to be back in France, speaking French again and not having to try to look and sound English so that she could belong in Harry’s world. Peach’s spirits rose as she drove, reading the road signs aloud in French just for the sound of it, and singing along with the songs on Radio Paris, stopping to buy a baguette and some cheese to eat while she gave Wil his bottle. She was home.

“It’s not fair, Grand-mère,” sobbed Peach. “It’s just not fair of Harry to do that to me. I trusted him. I
loved
him!”

“Loved?” queried Leonie.

Peach raised her tear-stained face to her grandmother. Leonie was holding Wil on her lap and the baby was tugging on her wonderful pearls, trying to get them into his mouth, only his aim wasn’t quite right and he kept putting them in his eye instead. “What do you mean?” she asked.