Privileged Children (20 page)

‘Oh yes, if I’d been a little taller, just a little of course, I could have been a lounge lizard,’ he laughed. ‘If you play the piano in a night club you tend to learn how a dance goes,’ he added and shook his head.

‘My love,’ said Alice.

He smiled and said, ‘Do you mind if I don’t stretch up to your shoulder but put my hand on your elbow instead?’

They danced in silence for a while, holding each other quite tightly as Anatole guided them around the other couples.

‘We’ve been married fourteen years,’ said Alice, ‘and we’ve never danced together before.’

‘Good heavens,’ said Anatole. ‘I have heard a sentimental remark from the lips of Alice Molloy!’ They both laughed and held each other even more closely, as they had not done amongst their own friends for ten years.

Someone tapped on Alice’s shoulder as she was looking down into Anatole’s face.

‘You make an awfully pretty couple,’ said Miranda, ‘but I loathe dancing myself. Won’t you come upstairs and meet a few of my friends?’

‘We haven’t met any of your friends before,’ said Anatole.

‘I know,’ said Miranda, raising her eyebrows, ‘that’s why I want you to come now.’

‘Let’s go,’ said Alice, and after a moment Anatole followed Alice and Miranda.

Miranda and her friends were occupying a small sitting room on the second floor.

‘Sweet of Aunt Helena to give us her retreat,’ she remarked as they went upstairs. ‘I decorated it for her, you know. I mean I didn’t just choose the stuff, I was pasting paper and all that. I was paid one and six an hour,’ she said. ‘I’ve tasted real life.’ She gave her old twisted smile.

‘I’ve heard that a lot of Bright Young Things are taking jobs nowadays,’ said Anatole.

‘Oh yes,’ said Miranda. ‘Running restaurants for one’s friends, and being a mannequin, and that sort of thing. Such fun. No real reason why it should assuage one’s conscience about the unemployed, but it seems to.’

The room was decorated in silver-grey and cream, and filled with delicate, painted, late-eighteenth-century furniture. There were dark colours and bright colours in the rugs which covered the plain polished floorboards.

‘It’s beautiful,’ said Alice.

‘Let me introduce Alice Molloy and Anatole Brécu,’ said Miranda to her interested friends, as Alice and Anatole stood just inside the doorway. ‘The truth about my disappearance,’ she continued as she guided her exhibits to the sofa, ‘is that I ran away from school deliberately and lived with these two for two years.’

One or two people’s faces fell. It had been rumoured that Miranda, who was famous for her amorous disposition, had been a white slave, a child prostitute, and had rather enjoyed it.

‘So why have you decided to spill the beans at last, old thing?’ said Tuffy, whose face had fallen.

‘Because I’m twenty-one, and able to introduce them to you.’

‘I still don’t see why you wouldn’t tell us before.’

‘Darling, it’s not very exciting information, is it? Not nearly as exciting as the enigma of my disappearance. And my respected father naturally wished my association with the bohemian world to remain a secret. I’m celebrating my twenty-first birthday by breaking trust and telling you.’

‘Can I gossip?’ said Tuffy.

‘Not yet,’ said Miranda.

‘You’re an artist, aren’t you, Miss Molloy?’ said a young man called Toto Howard.

‘I paint,’ muttered Alice. She hated being addressed as ‘Miss Molloy’ now that Mr Tuskin was dead.

‘Yes,’ said Toto, ‘you paint rather erotic pictures of young girls, don’t you?’

‘I hope so,’ said Alice. She blushed under his sophisticated gaze, though she was not embarrassed.

Anatole picked up her hand and squeezed it, as he usually
did when she was getting irritated.

‘Yes, Toto darling, I had a lesbian love affair with Alice when I was her model,’ said Miranda, smiling. She watched him blush.

‘I’ve read
The
Well
of
Loneliness
,’ said a girl with a round, kind face. ‘I thought it was awfully good.’

Alice looked at her. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s a brave book to talk about something which people refuse to see exists. There isn’t even a law against lesbianism.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Toto brightly, ‘because none of Queen Victoria’s ministers could bring themselves to explain it to her!’

Anatole laughed. ‘I hadn’t heard that story,’ he said.

‘Oh yes,’ said Toto, ‘it’s quite true.’

‘Alice,’ said Miranda quietly, ‘you don’t look happy. Shall I fetch Augustus to make you laugh?’

‘I’m all right,’ said Alice. ‘I was just thinking that your life must be very dull, really.’

‘You knew that before,’ said Miranda.

‘I used to
believe
it,’ said Alice, ‘not
know
it.’

‘Look at Anatole chatting up Tuffy,’ said Miranda. ‘He can talk to anyone, can’t he. I know that look on her face. He’ll be her grand passion for the next three months, poor darling.’

She was watching Anatole and Tuffy as she stood by Alice’s side. Slowly she turned her head round to look at Alice. She looked into her eyes only very briefly.

‘Why did you invite us?’ said Alice.

The side of Miranda’s mouth twitched. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I really am. I don’t know. Can’t you enjoy yourself?’ She started to tease. ‘Can’t you even enjoy making us feel guilty about the Unemployed?’

‘Darling, isn’t the point of giving a ball to make us forget about the Unemployed for a tiny while?’ called one. girl. Miranda smiled.

‘No,’ said Alice. ‘I never talk about all that any more. I’ve no right to talk about it, I’m not a worker. I’m as much a parasite as you, only I’m more hypocritical, that’s all.’

‘Let’s talk when I come to Bramham Gardens,’ said Miranda. ‘Do let’s.’

‘All right,’ said Alice, ‘and I’ll stay now if you like.’

‘Please.’

Miranda’s eyes were fixed on Alice’s mouth. Alice felt an old sensation as she looked up at Miranda’s dark eyes and her creamy skin. Then she noticed that under Miranda’s eyes there were mauve patches, covered over with expensive creamy foundation.

‘As this is my twenty-first birthday party,’ said Miranda, ‘I really ought to dance. Johnny?’

Johnny looked up at once.

Alice sat back on the graceful, uncomfortable sofa. For a short while she thought of nothing at all. Then she suddenly caught sight of Anatole in conversation with the pretty débutante: she noticed the light falling on his white hair and greenish-black, over-large tailcoat, and on Tuffy’s exquisite dress and careful waves of chestnut hair. Then there were the pools of light on the carpet, and gleams of light on the edges of the curtains and furniture, and the charming wealthy people dotted round about. Eagerly Alice planned a composition, a detailed watercolour centered round Anatole’s little figure and the illuminated carpet at his feet. She wondered whether or not she should include Miranda in this painting, and then she ceased to think of her work and laid her aching head on her hand.

‘I say, you don’t look well,’ said a young man suddenly.

‘Too much champagne, that’s all,’ smiled Alice.

‘Mind if I sit here?’ he said.

They talked.

An hour later Miranda, who disliked dancing, was still dancing and chatting cheerfully downstairs. Her tired eyes seemed brighter above her flushed cheeks. She paused only to be kind to little Finola, to introduce her to quite a handsome boy who in the end talked to Finola for five minutes before someone else claimed his attention.

Miranda saw that Liza was still seated by the wall. She was talking to a small, thin, very blond man in early middle age. Miranda laughed.

‘I should have introduced them earlier,’ she remarked to Finola as she passed her, pointing.

‘Who is he?’ said Finola.

‘A baronet,’ smiled Miranda, ‘a dreamy classical pedant. I can’t stand him.’

‘Liza looks happy.’

‘Exactly. Are you all right, darling?’ Miranda said as she drifted on to the dance floor with Henri de Saint-Gaël.

‘Fine,’ called Finola, ‘here’s Edward.’

She got Edward to dance with her.

Liza and Sir George Mackenzie got up bravely to join the dancing. They were still discussing lyric poetry. After they found that they were in agreement on the subject, they were silent for a while. Then Sir George, carefully looking at his feet, muttered: ‘I wonder, Miss Brécu, if you’d care to lunch with me on Tuesday or Wednesday?’

‘Yes, yes I’d like that. Tuesday.’

He looked into her face and smiled radiantly.

‘Good,’ he said, and straightened his expression again, and asked her what she thought of James Joyce.

Leaving Anatole to amuse Miranda’s friends upstairs, Alice went down to the ballroom. She danced with the young man who had spoken to her in the little sitting room.

It was now one o’clock in the morning. The ballroom was still crowded, but only the more energetic guests were now dancing. Most were sitting or standing round the edges of the room, or had moved on into the supper room or the drawing room.

Thomas Pagett was still in the smoking room. He had been drinking whisky steadily since half-past ten and had just lost forty pounds at cards. Shaking a little, he got up from the table and crossed the hall. After a brief visit to the portico he returned to the smoking room. He stood in the doorway. He heard the noise from the ballroom and looked through the open gilded doors into the throng. He saw his daughter’s dark green dress, and then another, short dress of the same colour. He frowned.

‘Got a good idea,’ he called to his friends in the smoking room. ‘Perfect time, what?’ He made his way to the ballroom.

‘Thomas,’ said his wife, who was standing just inside the room. ‘Thomas, you should sit down, dear.’

‘Been sitting down, Flora. Get out of my way.’ He
staggered across to a marble table which stood against the wall, and tried to stand on it, and found he could not. He walked forward a little.

‘Silence!’ he roared, and a surprised silence came. He smiled. ‘Friends, ladies and gentlemen,’ he boomed. ‘I have an announcement to make.’

Miranda left Henri de Saint-Gaël’s arms and pushed through the crowd towards her father. She tugged at him.

‘Father, please, we agreed not to for another fortnight!’ she hissed.

‘Nonsense, Miranda, why ever not?’ he said, and he looked quite puzzled. ‘Friends, ladies and gentlemen,’ he continued, raising his hands above his head. ‘I wish to announce the engagement of my daughter Miranda to the Marquis de Saint-Gaël!’

Liza married Sir George Mackenzie in 1933 and went to live with him in a vast, half-shut Victorian Gothic castle in the North Riding. Liza read and wrote novels which were never published, and her husband collected and classified fossils, as though they had been living in the 1830s, not the 1930s. Their way of life was little changed by the Second World War. Liza survived George and died in 1977, in their castle, which was pulled down a year later. She never had a television, never read the newspapers, and only once went to London after her marriage.

Jenny was killed by a Fascist conscript in the Spanish Civil War.

Finola joined the Wrens in the war, and met and married a naval officer called Gerard Parnell, who became a Conservative MP in 1951. She had five children, Richard, Isabella, Matilda, Ferdinand and Eleanor. All except Matilda were happy at boarding school, and Finola took Matilda away after two years. In her country cottage of twelve rooms in Gloucestershire, Finola, who had anglicised her names to Fenella Leonora just before she joined the Wrens, had none of Alice’s paintings save a conventional portrait of herself as a child. She also kept a period photograph of Diana Molloy, taken in 1902, on the wall in the downstairs lavatory.

Miranda married Henri de Saint-Gaël and left for France in 1932. She and Alice corresponded for two years, and then gradually the letters became less and less frequent until they stopped writing altogether, in about 1937. She had a
hôtel
in Paris and two châteaux, one on the Loire and one in
Languedoc. She entertained lavishly in her
hôtel,
and kept a literary salon. Like Mme de Staël, she received in bed. She also had many lovers. During the occupation of France by the Nazis she and her friends continued to discuss all aspects of Fascism, from Treitschke’s writings to the persecution of the Jews, with equal impartiality. Miranda also worked for the Resistance from 1943. She had three sons, whom she educated herself, setting them assignments and then marking them in bed. None of the boys was particularly bright. In 1950 she started working as a freelance designer for a London interior decorator. Three years later she set up her own shop — and later company — Miranda Pagett Designs Ltd, which she ran from Paris. She died in 1975, of lung cancer.

Alice and Anatole left Bramham Gardens in 1938 and went to live in a flat in Great Queen Street. They stayed with Liza during the war, and Alice this time worked as a nurse, for the children’s hospital from Leeds was lodged in the East Wing of the mansion.

Anatole lived to be ninety. At the end of his life he published some of the music which he had composed over the years. A piece was once played on the radio. After Alice died his chief interest was in his grandchildren. Matilda, Ferdinand and Liza’s daughter, ‘Little Jenny’, as the family called her long after she was grown up, especially adored him. Finola discovered some time after her marriage that Anatole could merge into any company and antagonise nobody. He stayed with the Parnells frequently after Alice died.

Alice was killed in an accident when she was sixty. She had been riding her motorbike without a crash helmet. In her forties and fifties Alice became a reactionary, as the links with her childhood and her mother’s world disappeared one by one: First Aunt Caitlin and Mr Tuskin, then Clementina, and at last Augustus. Sometimes she refused to take the Second World War seriously, claiming that the First had already destroyed civilisation. Sometimes she contemplated with drunken, stagnant horror the Nazi genocide and the twisted society which had resulted from the Russian Revolution, to which they had drunk a toast in Bramham Gardens in February and November 1917. Miranda in France chose to live in the age of Talleyrand, which was possible on fifty
thousand pounds a year. Alice was content to revert gradually to a time when the great issues of the day had been Free Trade and Home Rule, and when you could not split the atom. She had need of Aunt Caitlin’s legacy to do this, for otherwise she would have had to earn money by making her work conform to the public taste of the 1950s. After her death her paintings were, as they had been before it, objects of curiosity and a little excitement on the fringes of the artistic world, although in 1968 she was included in an
Observer
colour-supplement series on ‘Neglected Women Artists’, and that leader of aristocratic Parisian society, the brilliant Marquise de Saint-Gaël, had a fine collection of Alice Molloy’s best work in her
hôtel
in the Rue du Bac.