The Doll’s House (8 page)

‘That'll be two fifty please, sir. You visiting these parts?'

It made Harry smile. Nosey bastards, Suffolk people. But not too keen to talk about themselves.

He decided to play along for mischief's sake. ‘I'm going to Doll's House Manor. It's not far from here, is it?'

‘About ten mile, I'd say, sir. Just been sold to some foreigners, I hear. Nice place. You staying long?'

‘I hope so,' Harry smiled pleasantly at him and scooped up his change. ‘I'm the new manager. Good afternoon.'

He drove out on to the main Ipswich road; there wasn't much traffic. He turned down a side road. The air smelt sweet of fresh grass and hedgerows. The sign loomed up ahead of him. Doll's House Manor Hotel. It was Barrington Hall when the Lisle family lived there. The change of name signified its change of status. Because of the remarkable doll's house itself.

It was a long drive, with a fine avenue of beech trees leading up to the red-brick mansion. The sun shone and the colour glowed. Rose-red Tudor brickwork with the dark diapering on the façade. He'd come to the Lisle children's parties. So long ago.

He drove up to the sweep of gravel in front and stopped the car. On his first inspection the gardens had shown signs of creeping neglect, the woodwork needed painting, a crack inched up one of the main walls in the south wing. Times were hard and the hotel was losing money. The owners had been trying to sell it for over a year without success. The dramatic drop in price came at the right time for Harry Oakham. It was a bargain. The Colonel in his desert palace had made a good investment. Not that
he
cared about a financial return. The gardens were trim, the woodwork gleamed with fresh paint, signs of exterior neglect had been put right. He hadn't spared the money either. A house like that deserved to be treated properly. He liked the idea that he was supporting a vanishing social phenomenon with the Colonel's money. It amused him.

A young man in blue porter's livery came running down the steps and opened the car door for him. Harry got out.

‘Are you staying, sir?'

‘Yes. Bring in my bags, will you?'

He walked purposefully up the flight of stone steps into the reception hall. It was high and cool, with the faint mustiness of its age.

A pleasant girl sat behind a counter and looked up, smiling at him. Fresh flowers were banked in the hall. She got up and said, ‘Good afternoon, sir. Can I help you?'

‘I'm Mr Oakham. The manager's expecting me. Tell him I'm here and I'd like to see him in about fifteen minutes.'

She blushed. ‘Oh, yes, I'm so sorry. I'm new here. He did mention you were coming. You're in the Stuart suite, Mr Oakham. It's up the stairs and the first on your right. There is a lift if you'd rather.'

She was still pink in the face. He was the new owners' representative. Why hadn't the manager told her what he looked like …?

‘No thanks, I'll walk,' Oakham said.

‘Dave,' she turned to the boy. He'd stacked Oakham's luggage in the hall. ‘Take the gentleman up, will you? I'll ring through at once and say you're here, sir.'

‘Thank you,' Harry gave her a smile that made her feel better. He hadn't seen a girl blush for a long time. He liked it.

Harry Oakham walked up the broad staircase. He remembered it well from his childhood visits. He ran his hand over the smooth banister, the wood polished by centuries.

The boy was humping his luggage ahead of him.

It was there, on the top landing, walled in by glass. The doll's house. Built into the wall at the head of the stairs. He paused to look at it.

Large enough for a child to play in, to look out of the windows at whoever came up the stairs. It had been there for four hundred years, and nobody had thought to move it. It was quite a tourist attraction. He wondered what they said about it in the guidebook at reception. Protected by its glass from the pollution of the modern way of life, it would last as long as the house stood.

He hadn't been afraid of it, though the children he played with used to scamper past. He was not afraid of the doll's house, any more than he retreated from the menacing swans when they sailed up aggressively to challenge him on the river bank. He paused, his eyes a little narrowed, and touched the glass front with a finger. It was screwed tightly into the wall. His finger moved lightly, tracing the head of the screws sunk deep into the glass and down into the brick beyond it. The outside wall was invisible from the grounds; it was buried behind chimney breasts and pitched roofs. If the doll's house was more than a façade, it must go back some feet. A very thick wall must have been built to accommodate it. Tomorrow, he decided, I shall go up on the roof and take a look. Just to satisfy my curiosity. After all, they trained me not to take anything at its face value. For nearly thirty years I've lived with things that weren't what they seemed.

There was a plaque by the side of the glass front. He read it and smiled. It hadn't been there when he was a boy and he lingered on that landing taunting the others with cowardice.

This doll's house was built for the Lisle children in 1598. It is a unique example and reputedly made by a carpenter on the estate.

He quickened his step, seeing the young porter waiting for him at the top of the stairs.

‘This way, sir, through the door here.'

It was held open for him, and Oakham passed into a wide corridor. All the rooms had been given names with an historical association. The Stuart suite was the most expensive; the bedroom was reputed to have been slept in by James I when he visited the house in 1610. Not much of a recommendation, he thought, remembering his history master's neat description of the first Stuart king: an unsavoury sovereign. It had made all the boys laugh.

He tipped the boy and closed the door on him. He looked round. There were flowers on the table, fresh fruit in a ribboned basket. Lavish curtains and a handsome antique bed.

Not much like the seedy doss-houses and safe flats where he'd spent so many dangerous days and nights when he was active.

In the last few years when he left his desk to travel, it was second-class accommodation with a tight expense account. Some stingy bastard scrutinized the items and queried them down to the last glass of beer. The office was mean to its servants, and their meanness to him was going to cost his former masters dear.

He knew the manager would be coming up to welcome him. He and his assistant were a pleasant, efficient couple and had run a first-class hotel. They'd be eager to please him. They had no reason to suspect that he had come down to sack them both. It was time to bring the dolls into the doll's house.

3

Rosamund Bennet's marriage broke up on the Fourth of July. There was a private party at the American Ambassador's residence in Regent's Park. Rosa had met him and his wife several times and thought them a charming couple. They formed the same opinion of her. She arrived early, hoping not to get home too late. It was a lavish party, in the splendid neo-Georgian mansion given by the Woolworth heiress, Barbara Hutton, for the US Ambassador's home in London. A band of US Marines played in the large reception room.

Her name was announced and she shook hands with her hosts.

‘Nice to see you, Rosa,' the Ambassador welcomed her. His wife said something complimentary about her dress and moved to the next guest.

It was more of a personal invitation than the big official party in Grosvenor Square. Rosa was surrounded by familiar faces; she was caught up very quickly by people glad to see her. She was elegant and charming, rather a rarity in the Foreign Office female complement.

‘Hi there, Rosa! I was looking out for you – how are you?'

A hand grasped her lightly by the elbow.

‘Hello, Dick.'

Dick Lucas was a regular on the diplomatic circuit. He was a US Naval attaché, a popular and attractive bachelor in his mid-thirties.

Whenever possible he monopolized Rosa. The message was clear enough; she chose to disregard it. But she liked him. He was amusing and his persistence was flattering. He always took her refusals in good part. He tried plying her with champagne, making her laugh with bits of gossip.

‘No,' Rosa resisted. ‘No more for me, Dick. I've got to drive.'

‘OK. I'd offer to take you out to dinner, only I know you'll say no.'

She laughed. ‘Then why do you keep asking?'

‘Because one day I might get lucky.'

She always came alone. He had been surprised to learn she was married when he asked about her.

The husband was an investment banker. Nobody showed much interest in him. Rosamund Bennet was very bright and destined for big things in the Foreign Office. She was Sir Hugh Chapman's protégé.

Dick Lucas had always admired Rosa Bennet. She had style and class. He watched her edging her way out through the crush of people. She was a very attractive woman, but she was a loner. She was dedicated to her career. Too bad, he decided and went in search of a dinner companion. The party was full of pretty women who wouldn't turn down his invitation.

Rosa hurried out of the residence into the grounds. US Marines were calling for official cars. She found her own car and drove out into Regent's Park.

Damn, I'm going to be so late again, she worried as she turned into the Marylebone Road. The traffic moved like sludge. It inched forward a few yards and then halted again. It took twenty minutes to go down Baker Street, and Park Lane was another frustrating crawl. It would be nine o'clock before she reached Fulham Road.

James would be furious. There'd be another row. She felt sick with the anticipation of it. Things had got so much worse between them in the last two months, after she'd missed their anniversary. He had reproached her bitterly when she got back from the course at Branksome.

She couldn't tell him why she had so much work to do, why she was in the office on a Saturday, why their arrangements had to be tailored to the greater demands on her time. She couldn't tell him what she was really doing. Once or twice she had been tempted, hoping that if he knew the training involved in her transfer to Intelligence, he would understand. Support her for a change. But she didn't risk it. He was jealous, and nothing was proof against that. Sitting in the line of traffic, Rosa felt they'd reached a crisis point. Brussels would be the catalyst. She hadn't dared to tell him that she would be going there in two weeks' time. But she couldn't delay any longer. She'd gone to the Embassy party, meaning to leave early, and get home in good time. James was busier now the economic situation had improved, she'd planned to be there and have everything word-perfect by the time he came in. Meeting Dick Lucas had combined with the congealing traffic to make her late. Very late, on this of all evenings.

At last she got to the intersection and turned right down the pretty street with its smart Victorian villas where they lived.

The drawing-room lights were on. James was home. She paused in the stationary car and checked herself in the driving mirror. She looked tense and anxious. It made her angry suddenly. Why had he changed into a jealous, carping man who saw her career as an affront to his own self-esteem?

She got out, locked the car and went into the house. James was sitting in front of the television with a drink in his hand. He turned round and looked at her as the door opened.

She said quickly, ‘I'm sorry I'm so late, I left the party early, but the bloody traffic was a nightmare. I'll get dinner started.'

‘Never mind about dinner. I'm not hungry anyway. Get yourself a drink and sit down, Rosa. I want to talk to you.'

She knew that hostile look. Maybe she imagined it was colder than usual.

‘Please, not another lecture. I can't stand it. I'm not going to row.'

‘I'm not going to row either,' he answered. ‘We do nothing else, and I'm as sick of it as you are. It doesn't change anything. I snarl at you, and you end up crying and I feel a shit. It's time we stopped, Rosa. I'll get you a drink. Sit down. Glass of wine?'

He wasn't being sarcastic; he wasn't going to shout at her, or lose his temper. He was coldly angry, but it was different.

‘I don't want anything,' she said. ‘What is it, James? Is something wrong?'

‘I'd say so,' he answered. ‘Wrong with us. It's not working, is it?'

‘No,' she agreed. She felt miserable. ‘No, it isn't. But I don't know what to do. All I want is for us to be happy like we used to be.'

‘If you really wanted that,' he spoke calmly, ‘you'd chuck your bloody career and settle down to being a wife for a change. We'd start a family. We'd live a normal married life.'

‘I told you I didn't want children just yet,' she protested. ‘I was honest with you from the start. You said you didn't mind.'

‘I didn't expect it to go on and on. Year after year. All I know is, I'm not important to you, Rosa. Your job, the people you work with, but not me. I tried to go along with it; I went to those fucking Foreign Office parties where nobody even bothered to talk to me because I was just the husband. Not one of the gang. Most evenings I come home to an empty house. Last year you went off in the middle of our holiday because you'd been called back, some crisis or other. I've listened to all the excuses and tried to fool myself it would get better. Just once you'd put me and our marriage first. You never have.'

He tilted the drink, making the ice cubes clink.

‘That's not true,' Rosa tried to say. ‘You've made it so difficult for me – I feel I'm being torn in two! You want me to give up my job. Would you give up the Bank if I asked you?'

‘We'd hardly live on your salary,' he brushed it aside. ‘So don't talk balls.'

He finished his drink, put the glass down and said, ‘I've met someone else. I want a divorce.'

She stared at him. He wouldn't look at her. She pushed the hair back from her forehead.