The Far Pavilions (33 page)

‘Then don't get drunk,’ snapped Ash, exasperated. ‘And for God's sake, George, stop feeling so damn' sorry for yourself. You don't have to go to pieces just because you've been found out telling a pack of silly taradiddles about your grandmother. Who the hell cares what your grandmother was or wasn't? You are still you, aren't you? It's sheer poppycock to pretend that people only liked you because they thought your grandmother was a Greek or an Italian or whatever it was. And if you imagine for one minute that Belinda or anyone else is going to spread around any stories about her, you must be mad. You know what it is, George? – you've exaggerated the whole thing out of all proportion, and been so busy being sorry for yourself that you haven't even stopped for a minute to think about it sensibly.’

‘You didn't hear what Belinda s-said to me,’ gulped George. ‘If you'd heard her -’

‘I daresay she was damned angry with you for telling her a lot of fatuous lies, and only wanted to punish you for that. Try and use your head for half a second and stop behaving like a hysterical rabbit. If Belinda is what I believe her to be she'll keep quiet about it for your sake, and if she's what you like to think she is, she'll keep it even quieter for her own – and that goes for her mother and Mrs Gidney too, for I don't suppose either of them will care to advertise the fact that they've been a pair of gullible old tabbies.’

‘I never thought of that,’ admitted George, cheering up slightly. ‘Yes, I suppose…’ His shoulders slumped again. ‘But then no one spoke to me at the Club this morning except Mrs Viccary. The rest just looked at me and whispered and sniggered and -’

‘Oh, stow it, George,’ interrupted Ash angrily. ‘You turn up at the Club on a Saturday morning as drunk as an owl and are surprised because people notice it. For the love of God, stop dramatizing yourself and try to keep a sense of proportion.’

He reached for his hat as a clatter of hooves and the jangle of a bell announced the arrival of a tonga, and George said wistfully: ‘I'd hoped you'd stay on a b-bit and – and advise me. It's been awful just sitting here alone and thinking; and if I could just talk about it –’

‘You've talked about it for over an hour,’ observed Ash tartly. ‘And if you really want my advice, you'll forget all about this and shut up about your great-aunts or grandmothers or whoever they were, and just go on behaving as though nothing had happened, instead of making a public exhibition of yourself and inviting comment. No one else is ever going to hear about it if only you'll keep your head and shut your mouth.’

‘You – you really think so?’ stammered George. ‘Perhaps you're right. Perhaps it won't ever get out. I d-don't think I could bear it if it did. If it does… Ash, honestly now, w-what would you do, if you were me?’

‘Shoot myself,’ said Ash unkindly. ‘Goodbye George.’

He leapt down the verandah steps and was driven back to the Club where he collected his horse and rode over to the Harlowes' bungalow; and for once luck seemed to be with him, for Belinda's parents were still out, while she herself had returned and was resting. The bearer, roused from his afternoon nap, was loath to disturb her, but when Ash threatened to walk in on her himself he hurried away and tapped on her door, telling her that a Sahib had called to see her and would not go away until he had done so. But when Belinda entered the drawing-room some five minutes later it was instantly and painfully clear that she had expected to see someone entirely different. She ran gaily into the room and then stopped dead, the smile wiped from her pretty face and her eyes widening in apprehension and anger.

‘
Ashton
! What are you doing here?’

Something in her voice and expression daunted Ash and he said uncertainly, stammering a little, as George too had stammered: ‘I – had to see you, darling. Your m-mother wrote to me. She said you were… you were engaged to be married. It isn't true is it?’

Belinda did not answer the question. She said instead: ‘You shouldn't have come here. You know quite well you should not. Please go, Ashton. Papa will only be angry if he comes back and finds you here. Abdul should never have let you in. Now
do
go.’

‘Is it true?’ repeated Ash, ignoring the appeal.

Belinda stamped her foot: ‘I asked you to go, Ashton. You've no right to come forcing your way in here and cross-questioning me when you know I'm alone and –’ She shrank away as Ash came towards her, but he walked past her without touching her, and closing the door, locked it and put the key into his pocket and went back to stand between her and the french windows, blocking her retreat.

Belinda opened her mouth to call the bearer and then closed it again, daunted by the prospect of embroiling one of the servants in such an embarrassing situation. An interview with Ashton, however distasteful, seemed the lesser of two evils – and as she would probably have to endure one sooner or later, she might as well get it over now. So she smiled at him and said coaxingly: ‘Please don't let's have a scene, Ashton. I know you must feel badly about it. That's why I asked Mama to write – because I couldn't bear to be the one to hurt you. But you must have realized by now that when we first met we were both much too young to know our own minds, and that we'd grow out of it, just like Papa said.’

‘Are you going to marry that man Podmore?’ asked Ash stonily.

‘If you mean Mr Podmore-Smyth, yes, I am. And you needn't use that tone of voice either, because –’

‘But my darling, you can't let yourself be bullied into this. Do you think I don't know that this is all your father's doing? You were in love with
me
– you were going to marry me – and now he's forcing you into this. Why don't you stand up for yourself? Oh Belinda, darling, can't you
see
?’

‘Yes, I can,’ said Belinda crossly. ‘I can see that you don't know anything about it, for if you must know, Papa was very much against it. And Mama too. But I'm not seventeen any longer: I shall be nineteen this year and quite old enough to know my own mind, so there was really nothing they could do about it, and in the end they had to agree, because Ambrose –’

‘Are you trying to pretend that you're in love with him?’ interrupted Ash harshly.

‘Of course I'm in love with him. You don't suppose that I'd marry him if I wasn't?’

‘You can't be. It isn't true. That fat, prosing, pompous old man who's the same age as your father…’

The blood rushed up into Belinda's face and quite suddenly Ash remembered what George had said about her losing her prettiness and looking ugly. She had lost it now and her voice was strident and furious:

‘He's not as old as my father! He's not. How
dare
you talk to me like that? You're jealous of him because he's a man of the world – because he's mature and interesting and successful. Someone I can rely on and look up to, and not a silly, callow boy who – She checked and bit her lip, and controlling herself with an effort said in a more reasonable voice: ‘I'm sorry, Ashton. But it makes me so angry when people say things like that. After all, you were just as angry when Papa thought you were too young. You said age had nothing to do with it, remember? and it's true. Ambrose understands me, and he's kind and generous and clever and everyone says that he's bound to be a Governor. He might even be Viceroy one day.’

‘And I gather he's rich as well.’

Belinda missed the sarcasm and accepting the comment at its face value said happily: ‘Yes, he is. He's given me such lovely presents. Look.’

She held out her left hand in unaffected pleasure and Ash saw with a pang that it was adorned with a band of enormous diamonds, any one of which was at least twice the size of the pearls in that pretty but unpretentious ring that he had bought for her in Delhi over a year and a half ago. It seemed much longer than that; five years at least. Too long for Belinda, who was going to marry a man old enough to be her father. A fat, rich, successful widower who could give her diamonds and make her Lady Podmore-Smyth – and present her with two ready-made step-children the same age as herself.

There appeared to be nothing left to say. The sight of those diamonds on Belinda's finger proved that all the arguments and pleas that he had meant to use would be a waste of time, and all he could do now was to wish her happiness and go. It was strange to think that he had planned to spend his whole life with her and that now he was probably seeing her for the last time. Outwardly she was as pink and white and pretty as ever, yet it was obvious that he had really never known what went on inside that golden head, but had fallen in love with someone who had existed largely in his imagination.

He said slowly: ‘I suppose I've been doing it too. Inventing stories to suit myself and make me feel more comfortable, just like George did.’

Belinda stiffened, and once again, and shockingly, her face was scarlet with anger and her voice high-pitched and shrewish: ‘Don't you speak to me about George. He's nothing but a low-bred, lying hypocrite. All those stories about a Greek grandmother -’

Something in Ash's face checked her and she broke off and gave a shrill laugh that was as ugly as her voice: ‘Oh, I forgot you wouldn't know about that. Well, I'll tell you. She was no more Greek than I am. She was a bazaar woman and if he thinks I'm going to keep my mouth shut, he's mistaken.’

Ash said haltingly, through stiff lips: ‘You can't. You don't mean it… You couldn't…’

Belinda laughed again, her eyes bright with anger and malice. ‘Oh, yes I could. And I have, too. Do you think I'm going to sit and wait until someone else finds out and starts telling everyone, and people begin laughing at me and Mama behind our backs, and sympathizing with us for being taken in? I'd rather die! I shall tell them myself; I shall tell them that I always suspected it and that I trapped him into admitting it, and -’

Her voice was shaking with resentment and wounded vanity, and Ash could only stare at her, appalled, while her pretty pink mouth went on and on manufacturing malice and pouring out spite as though she could not stop herself. Had he been older and wiser, and less badly hurt himself, he might have recognized it for what it was: a tantrum thrown by a spoilt child who has been courted and flattered and over-indulged to a point where good sense and youthful high-spirits have turned to conceit and vanity, and any opposition – any fancied slight – is magnified into an unforgivable injury.

Belinda was young and not very wise. She had been foolish enough to accept the compliments of her beaux at their face value, and after a heady year as a reigning belle had come to expect adulation, approval and envy as her due. She had, in fact, become insufferably set up in her own esteem, and having flaunted the handsome George as one of her conquests, she could not endure the thought of what several jealous young ladies would have to say when they discovered how she had been hoodwinked. How
dare
George lie to her and make a fool of her? – that, in effect, was her instinctive reaction to Mrs Gidney's disclosures. The pathos of George's lies and posturing, the personal tragedy that underlay it and the humiliation that he must now be suffering were aspects of the affair that she had not even thought of, for in the shock of discovery she could only think of how it might affect Miss Belinda Harlowe.

Ash was the first person apart from her Mama and George himself to whom she had been able to unburden herself of all the pent-up forces of resentment and wounded vanity that had been accumulating within her ever since she learned of George's duplicity, and she found it a great relief. But to Ash, listening to the angry spate of words, it was the final betrayal: the collapse of all that he had believed her to be – sweet, kind, innocent and good. The owner of this shrewish voice was none of those things. She was a worldly and grasping woman who was prepared to marry an old, fat man for the sake of money and position. A heartless snob who could judge a man and condemn him for the sins of his grandparents, and an evil-tongued virago who was not above ruining a man's reputation in order to save a few scratches on her own.

He had not spoken or made any attempt to interrupt the tirade, but his disgust must have shown plainly on his face, for Belinda's voice rose suddenly and her hand darted out with the swiftness of a cat's paw to slap his cheek with a violence that jerked his head back and made her palm tingle.

The action took them both by surprise, and for a frozen moment they stared at each other in mutual horror, too startled to speak. Then Ash said grandly: ‘Thank you,’ and Belinda burst into tears and whirling round, ran to the door, which was, of course, locked.

It was at this juncture that the crunch of wheels on gravel announced the inopportune return of Major and Mrs Harlowe, and the next ten minutes had been, to say the least of it, confused. By the time Ash had been able to get the key out of his pocket and unlock the door, Belinda was in hysterics, and her startled parents were greeted by the sight of a sobbing, screaming daughter bursting out of the drawing-room to rush wildly across the hall and into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her with a bang that reverberated through the bungalow.

Major Harlowe had been the first to recover himself, and what he had had to say on the subject of Ash's manners and general disposition had made unpleasant hearing. Mrs Harlowe had contributed nothing to the interview, having hurried away to comfort her afflicted daughter, and her husband's trenchant summing-up of Ash's character had been conducted against a background of muffled wails and agitated maternal appeals to know what that ‘horrid boy’ had been doing.

‘I intend to take this up with your Commanding Officer,’ announced Major Harlowe in conclusion, ‘and I am warning you that if I ever catch you so much as attempting to speak to my daughter again, I shall take great pleasure in giving you the thrashing you so richly deserve. Now get out.’

He had given Ash no opportunity to speak, and even if he had done so there was very little to be said that would not have exacerbated the situation still further; apart from an abject apology, which might possibly have been accepted, though it would not have changed anything. But Ash had no intention of apologizing. The boot, he considered, should be on the other foot, and he had confirmed the Major's opinion of him by looking that irate gentleman up and down in a manner that could hardly have been bettered by his Uncle Matthew, and leaving without so much as a word of explanation or regret.