Reckless (12 page)

Her eyes shone with the passion of her dream, and at the same time she laughed, laughing at her own absurdity.

‘You must think I’m such a child! But really I’m not a child, you know? I’m eighteen.’

‘I don’t think you’re a child, Pamela. And I don’t see anything so unlikely about you having a great love affair. I think there’ll be many men who’ll prove all too eager to kneel at your feet.’

‘Oh, no! I don’t want them kneeling at my feet.’

But she looked at him curiously all the same. He had given away a little more than he intended.

‘So you do think someone might fall in love with me?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

She went on gazing into his eyes, and all at once he saw it: this girlish innocence was a pose. She was entirely aware of the effect she had on him.

‘You’re a very pretty girl,’ he said. ‘You could have any man you wanted. There. Does that answer your question?’

‘Any man I wanted?’ she said.

‘Now, let’s get going. I’m already late.’

She laid one hand on his shoulder.

‘Any man?’

‘No. Don’t do this.’

‘What am I not to do, Mr Jenks?’

Oh, God! She’s practising on me.

She wriggled again, as she had done before.

‘That itch!’ she said. ‘I’ve got an itch in the middle of my back, and I can’t reach it. Will you scratch it for me?’

He closed his eyes.

‘Please,’ he said.

‘It won’t take you a moment.’

He reached out his hand, round her slender wriggling body. She moved closer, so that he could feel the tickle of her hair on his cheek, and smell her sweet smell. His fingers felt over
her back, over the ridge of her spine, over the buckle of her brassiere.

‘There,’ she said. ‘Just there.’

He scratched her back, helplessly obedient. Then he withdrew his hand and started up the car once more and drove on down the road. She didn’t stop him this time, and didn’t speak.

When the car pulled into the yard of River Farm, Maurice Jenks was already so late for his changing-room duty that some other teacher would have had to cover for him. Pamela’s mother came out to see who had arrived.

‘Oh, it’s you, Pammy. You shouldn’t make Mr Jenks drive you. You can easily walk.’

‘He offered, Mum. It was very kind of him.’

She ran on into the house. Pamela’s mother went to thank the art teacher, who had not got out of his car.

‘Don’t let her impose on you, Mr Jenks. She can be such a little madam.’

The Magnificent Wreck gazed up at her with faintly bloodshot eyes.

‘She’s a sweet girl,’ he said. ‘It’s no trouble.’

*

Pamela was in the kitchen making herself a golden syrup sandwich.

‘Did you see William or Edward at school?’ said her mother.

‘Heavens, no,’ said Pamela. ‘They don’t come anywhere near the art room.’

‘Are these art lessons doing you any good at all?’

‘Not really,’ said Pamela. ‘He’s a darling, but he’s not teaching me much. I keep saying, Mum, I should go to art school in London. I can stay with Susie.’

‘I’m not having you stay with Susie.’

This was a long-running argument. Kitty Cornford thought her daughter was too pretty and too immature to be let loose in
London with a girl of her own age. Certainly not with giddy little Susie.

‘Well, I don’t know what I’m going to do then, other than go mad with boredom.’

Later that afternoon Simon Shuttleworth phoned and said why didn’t they meet up for a drink. Simon was one of those people who had always been there in her life, since she had started going to dances. For a time she had told her friends he was her boyfriend, at that stage when it seemed necessary to have a boyfriend. His great merit more recently was that he had a car.

‘I’ll be back for supper, Mum.’

‘Don’t be late, darling. You know Larry hates to wait.’

Simon showed up in his little red MG. He wore a tweed jacket and cavalry twill trousers the same colour as his hair. He was what was called a ‘suitable boy’, which made Pamela treat him badly, without quite knowing why. He was twenty-two years old, training to be a solicitor in the old established Lewes firm of Adams & Remers.

‘Where do you want to go?’ he asked her as he opened the car door for her.

‘Anywhere,’ she said.

‘How about the Cricketers?’

‘God, no. Let’s go to the Riverside.’

The Riverside was the most expensive hotel in the area, a former abbey turned into a luxury retreat. The drinks in the bar were stupid prices.

‘Great. The Riverside it is.’

The short drive in the MG was cold, noisy and uncomfortable. The hotel was agreeably pampering. They sat in a long room got up like the drawing room of a stately home, in deep chintz-covered armchairs, looking out over the river at twilight. Pamela had a gin and tonic and lit up a cigarette. The waiter brought a small dish of peanuts, which Simon ate one by one in
a steady stream, unaware that he was doing so. He talked about mutual friends in the area, about office life, about a house he and some others were planning to rent in France in August.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said, as if the idea had just come to him. ‘Why don’t you come too? Heaps of room.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Pamela. ‘I’m not sure of my plans for the summer.’

‘There’s a pool there, and a tennis court. You could drive down with me.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Oh, do say yes. It would be so great if you came. Roger and Jill are coming. And the Maynards.’

‘We’ll see,’ she replied.

‘So are you going to the Kinrosses on Saturday?’

‘Maybe.’

‘I must say, you seem very vague about your life, Pammy.’

‘I am vague,’ she said. ‘My life has yet to come into focus.’

The gin and tonic was doing its work. She was surrounded by a haze of smoke. She felt unfocused.

‘Lucky you,’ he said. ‘I have to focus like mad. But not for ever. I plan to make partner by thirty-five. Then it’s hello golf and long lunches.’

‘God, Simon, you sound middle-aged already.’

‘Once you start an actual job things have a way of getting serious. It’ll be the same for you.’

‘I may not do a job.’

‘But you’ll get married. You’ll have children.’

‘I may not.’

‘Of course you will.’ He smiled at her, and ate peanuts. ‘You’ll be a gorgeous wife and a gorgeous mother.’

‘Will I?’

She couldn’t see herself as a wife and mother at all. But if not that, what?

‘I may become an artist,’ she said. ‘Or a film star. Or a spy.’

‘You’d make a beautiful spy,’ he said. ‘I’d tell you all my secrets.’

‘You don’t have any secrets,’ she said.

‘That’s what you don’t know.’

‘Go on, then. Tell me a secret.’

He shook his head, and ate the last of the peanuts. For some reason this annoyed her more than it should.

‘There. You don’t have any secrets.’

‘Not from you.’

Everything he said was slightly loaded. It was all very tiring.

‘I can never be sure with you, Pammy,’ he said. ‘Either you’re much deeper than you appear, or much shallower.’

‘Oh, much shallower,’ she said. ‘I’m terribly shallow. I’m vague and shallow. I’m sort of a puddle, really.’

Even this appeared to enchant him.

‘You’re a mystery,’ he said. ‘I don’t know any other girl like you.’

She took out a fresh cigarette, and he leaned forward to light it.

‘That’s me,’ she said, exhaling a thin stream of smoke. ‘The mystery girl.’

‘A beautiful mystery.’

Someone must have told him that a girl can never have too many compliments. But you can’t dish out praise like payments on an instalment plan. Not everyone wants to be bought.

‘Better take me home, Simon.’

In the car he said, as she had known he would, ‘When can I see you again?’

‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘My plans are still up in the air.’

She had no plans at all. What she had up in the air was a lot of nothing. That was the problem. A lot of nothing, and this burning feeling that there had to be
more
.

She could see from Simon’s face as they parted that she had
disappointed him. But that was how it would always be with Simon: he would always want more than she was prepared to give.

‘I’ll call you,’ he said.

‘You do that.’

Once he had driven away, and those puzzled eyes had ceased leaning on her, she felt bad about the way she had treated him. He was a good friend, an old friend. He deserved better.

There’s something wrong with me.

It was a thought that was never very far away. Some crack in her nature made her dissatisfied, where a normal person would have been satisfied. Most of the girls she knew locally regarded Simon Shuttleworth as a major catch. This mysterious fault both disturbed and excited her. She had taken to calling it her devil. Her devil made her do things for no reason. Why had she told Mr Jenks to scratch her back? Why had she made Simon take her to the Riverside?

Her body burned with a terrible restlessness. At the same time she felt as if she were tied down by fine cords. The cords tugged at her, cut into her.

Am I a bad person?

She thought then of how she had told the art teacher about her great love affair. It was only a dream as yet, but she knew it would come true. And she knew something more. Her lover, when at last he stepped out of the shadows to claim her, would look deep into her heart and would see the devil in her, and he would still love her. He would love her even if she was bad. He would take her in his arms and say, ‘You’re wild and wicked and wonderful,’ and for that she would love him for ever. For ever and ever.

When her stepfather came home that evening, Pamela tackled him on the subject of her future.

‘Why can’t I go to art school?’ she said. ‘You went to art school.’

‘But it was all a waste of time,’ Larry Cornford said. ‘I was never really good enough. Someone should have told me that from the beginning.’

‘But you liked it, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, I liked it. But that’s not the only reason for doing something.’

‘What other reasons are there?’

‘Well, I needed to earn a living, for a start.’

‘Yes, but you’re a man. I’ll get married.’

‘And anyway, this isn’t the time to start at art school. You start in the autumn.’

‘I could do a course.’

‘Oh, Pammy, darling. You know what it is you really want. You want to go to London and have fun.’

‘Is that wrong?’

‘No, not wrong. But it can lead to things going wrong.’ ‘You mean I’ll be seduced by some heartless man about town and have my life ruined for ever.’

‘Something like that.’

‘Larry, darling.’ She leaned her lovely head against his arm. ‘Doesn’t everyone have to be ruined, just a little bit?’

Larry sighed.

‘I’ll talk to Kitty.’

‘Mummy won’t want me to be ruined. She’ll want me to stay unruined till I’m long past anyone wanting to ruin me.’

‘I’ll talk to her.’

Larry had an idea for a compromise solution, which he put to Kitty.

‘Why don’t we ask Hugo if he’ll have her to stay? Harriet’s still not getting any better, and I know they have quite a time of it getting Emily to school and back. Pammy could stay with them and help them out in exchange for bed and board, and Hugo could keep a bit of an eye on her.’

Hugo and Larry’s wine business had flourished. Caulder & Avenell now had premises in St James.

‘Do you think Hugo would want that?’

‘To be honest, I think he finds Harriet’s illness quite a trial. Pammy would bring a bit of life into the house. And he’s certainly got enough room.’

‘What would she do all day?’

‘I’m sure I could sort something out for her at Camberwell. There’s a couple of people still there from my time.’

He went up to find Pamela in her room. She was lying on her bed, smoking, drawing circles in the air with her cigarette. He told her his plan. She jumped up and threw her arms round his neck and kissed him.

‘Thank you, thank you, thank you. Does Mummy really not mind?’

‘She feels better about it knowing Hugo will be keeping an eye on you.’

‘Has Hugo said yes?’

‘I haven’t asked him yet. But I don’t see why he shouldn’t. You will be good and sensible if we do this, won’t you, Pammy?’

‘I’ll be so good and sensible. I truly will.’ She unwrapped herself from him and tapped the ash from her cigarette into an overflowing ashtray. ‘You don’t think I’m a bad person, do you, Larry?’

‘Why on earth should you be a bad person?’

‘Sometimes I think I’ve got a devil in me.’

‘What form does this devil take?’ said Larry, smiling.

‘Oh, you know. It makes me do things I shouldn’t.’

‘Things you like doing?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Then I shouldn’t worry,’ said Larry. ‘But I do think you smoke too much.’

‘Darling,’ said Hugo Caulder to his wife Harriet, as she lay in her reclining chair in the darkened front room, ‘I do hope you’ll be feeling better by Thursday.’

‘Thursday?’ She was using her special voice, the low sweet voice that had so enchanted him when they fell in love. ‘I’ll do my best. I know it’s such a bore for you.’

‘It’s just that we have our buyers’ tasting on Thursday evening. And you know Emily has a dance class.’

Emily, seven years old, dutiful and silent, sat by her mother’s side reading
School Friend
. Mother and daughter were very close.

‘She may have to miss it,’ said Harriet. ‘Do you mind terribly, darling?’

She stroked her daughter’s long ash-blonde hair with gentle fingers.

‘You know I hate dance class,’ said Emily.

‘Yes, darling, but everyone has to learn to dance.’

There was no reproach in her voice. It was well understood in their little family that they preferred evenings at home to noisy parties.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve had a chance to do anything about supper,’ said Hugo.

‘Emily’s had a soft-boiled egg,’ said his wife. ‘I don’t want anything at all. You know how it is on my quiet days.’

Harriet’s ‘quiet days’ were times of silent suffering. She would lie in her chair, her head pulsing with pain, overwhelmed by an unexplained fatigue. Doctors had been consulted, but no physical cause discovered. It was suggested that she had never got over the stillbirth of her second child, six years ago now.