The New Countess (20 page)
Authors: Fay Weldon
She did.
‘You can’t open them,’ he said. She tried and couldn’t. They were stuck fast.
‘How strange,’ she said. ‘I can’t open my eyes.’
‘Yes you can now,’ said the nice caressing voice. ‘Open your eyes.’ This time it was easy and she could see the clock. This way, that way.
‘What a suggestible little thing you are,’ he said. ‘It’s so very warm in here, don’t you find? Perhaps you should take off some more clothes.’
‘More clothes?’ she asked. She didn’t seem to have many left on. ‘Can I have some more of the smoke?’
‘It isn’t smoke,’ he said, ‘it’s a vapour. You have to be a bit careful of it, you can come to like it too much.’
‘More,’ she said. Her other self, the good wife and mother, kept waving at her from the other side of her being; a little stick insect, gesticulating. Isobel was there too, mouthing away, trying to remind her of something she ought to pay attention to. But here and now was so nice, and the sofa so soft, and Anthony was there on top of her, with no clothes on that she could see, all bare torso and muscle. Perhaps it was really Arthur? She wouldn’t mind if it was, but how could one tell? And everything was so familiar and so inexorable. Inexorable was a nice word.
‘Nice stuff, I know,’ Anthony said. ‘It makes a girl peaceful and pleased, and always very obliging. And a man can go on and on,’ he said, ‘and not be too fussy about where he goes.’
It was the wrong thing to say. It was so rude. ‘Not too fussy’ – what did he mean? Because she was a married woman? Because she was over thirty? She was a peeress of the Realm. She had a tiara. She had been married in St Martin-in-the-Fields. She had two little boys, one of whom needed new shoes. She had a husband whom she loved. He would be really upset and unhappy if he knew where she was. She was waiting for him to rescue her. She sat up abruptly and pushed Anthony off. He fell on the floor and the tray overtipped and he hurt his shoulder. His thing, which had been urgent and questing, turned flabby and weak. What had she been doing? She felt sick and dizzy and very irritable.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘I think I have made some mistake. I am going to bed now.’
She looked for some clothes so as not to have to walk naked to the stairs, but before she could find them Rosina and Diana came in, pink and rosy from a brisk walk home from the theatre on All Hallows’ Eve.
‘Oh, goodness me,’ said Rosina. ‘I told Diana we should come back and rescue you, but I see we’re too late.’
‘Oh Redbreast,’ said Diana. ‘It was a perfectly good play. It was very embarrassing when you walked out like that. And what
are
you doing with Minnie? I thought you were over all that.’
‘I am,’ said Anthony. ‘Forget it. Everyone forget about it. I’m just a little drunk. Slate wiped clean, all right?’
‘Slate wiped clean!’ they all said. Minnie ran for the stairs.
‘Silly Minnie. High time she came back,’ his Lordship was saying to Isobel the very next day. He had got used to having Minnie around. He had been right about her; she had made fine breeding stock – glossy-haired, bright-eyed, cool-nosed and spirited – interested in affairs of State while others yawned, and an asset to the household, if rather quiet in company. Minnie deserved respect and consideration. She had given the family what promised to be a worthy heir and another son to spare. True, she had bolted, as any spirited creature will. She’d left her young behind, which was a great pity; now she just needed to be brought back promptly to the stable. Say what his wife might, children needed their mother, needed that more than good feeding and a proper education.
He had lost his own mother when he was small and even thinking about it still made him sad.
‘Leave her to come back in her own time,’ said Isobel. ‘She’ll come to her senses soon enough. She’s not much of a mother, or she would not have left them in the first place, no matter how badly Arthur behaved. If he did, of course, though I think it was mostly in her own imagination. And Arthur says not. But she is still enough of a mother to come back.’
He thought Isobel was looking exceptionally young and pretty and elegant, her pale skin slightly flushed and her eyes bright. She clearly enjoyed being a grandmother. Carmen was of the more luscious, fleshy kind: far nearer the animal than the spiritual; her skin a browny colour, her cheeks permanently red, her affections easy and her taste execrable; but her eyes were kind. No matter whom she married – as such creatures often did – she would never make a Countess, or even a Mrs Keppel. He remembered Flora, from a more distant past, and wondered if she had married: he remembered how the discovery of his liaison with her had upset Isobel, and reminded himself to be very, very careful indeed. Carmen would have to go, though probably not until after the New Year. One could keep such matters secret for a few months – after that, in his experience, they would probably surface. The King certainly knew that, so no longer bothered to hide his passing loves. But Isobel was not like the Queen Consort: she was not of a complacent turn of mind. Neither, it seemed, was Minnie.
‘You are holding the children as hostages, then?’ his Lordship asked.
‘My dear,’ said his wife, ‘of course I am not, but put it how you wish. So far as I am concerned the longer Minnie stays away the better. She has such strange ideas about bringing up children. With any luck she will wander back to Chicago, keep her mother company and leave us alone.’
‘But then Arthur will have no wife.’
‘Arthur has no need of a wife,’ said Isobel. ‘He has his company, his toys, his automobiles. The boy takes after his grandfather. Silas had his coal business and any number of sons. He abandoned them, made do with the occasional company of my mother, and was perfectly happy. So was I.’
‘Your father was not a landowner,’ said his Lordship. ‘I can only hope that when I am gone Arthur remembers that he is.’
‘Of course he will,’ said Isobel. ‘He has been not just born but reared to the title. I have made sure of that, my dear. But in the meanwhile I have other things to think about. The King and his entourage will be here on Friday the fifteenth of December, only four weeks to the day.’
Isobel was punishing him, he was sure of that, for sins long past and forgotten by him. Men forgot easily: women did not. The excessive time, energy, money and emotion now being spent on Dilberne Court was no doubt her revenge for his past misdemeanours. Every new sin, such as inviting the King to stay without asking her first, brought to mind all the others. Women all did this kind of thing, but did not know they were doing it. He supposed she would have to be indulged. But it was becoming noticeably expensive.
She seemed surprisingly casual about Minnie’s delinquency. It was all very well for Silas to have abandoned his sons but Silas was not a peer of the Realm. He had no social responsibilities other than to God, King, Country and his family. Arthur was a Viscount with a duty to an estate. What went on between Arthur and Minnie was neither here nor there: she was his wife and that was that. Arthur must get her back.
Billy O’Brien’s business had, thank God, survived the last fall in livestock prices, which as Baum had predicted were rising again. Minnie would have her inheritance. Besides, he was fond of the girl. When she smiled, she meant it. When she looked unhappy, that’s what she was. She was rather like Carmen in this particular respect. His son, in Robert’s opinion, was out of his bloody mind to have upset his wife, and then not gone after her at once to bring her back. Arthur, when it came to women, was deaf and blind to their needs. He seemed not to grasp that women, especially American women, took matters of romantic infidelity to heart. What to a man was over and done with and forgotten in an hour was to a woman a matter of untold significance. Infidelity in a man was of no importance, in a woman it certainly was. The law recognized that an energetic husband would always require interludes outside the marriage bed – men needed fulfilment or their health suffered. If a woman did the same it was reason to divorce her. Her very soul would be involved, her loyalty, and thus the paternity of her children forever doubted.
King Edward could do as he wanted, because his paramours didn’t really count in the greater scheme of things. Bertie liked keeping the company of intelligent women but obviously he would never leave the Queen, any more than he, Dilberne, would leave Isobel. Carmen was from a hot continent where passion ruled, not reason. In temperate Britain, as one educated the people so one extended the franchise. It was a great experiment. He himself was in favour of giving educated women the vote: the best of them were sensible enough. He gave up worrying about Arthur, prudently changed the subject, and asked Isobel what she thought of women’s suffrage.
‘Why do you ask?’ she enquired. ‘I hope you do not want simply to pick a quarrel. You are in a very strange mood. I know you are in favour and I am not. Your lot talked out the franchise bill and I am not at all sorry. Women have the municipal vote and should be happy with that; all they do anyway is vote as their husbands do, as has been proved time and time again. And if Rosina wants the parliamentary vote,’ she went on, ‘it is surely a very good reason for us to be against it. She is a born contrarian. She would vote against her own interests, her own class, just for the sake of it, the better to annoy. She prefers revolution to order, socialism to freedom.’
‘So do many men,’ said his Lordship, mildly. It was sadly true, he could see, as so many argued, that even clever women were inclined by their natures to use emotion and matters related to family in argument rather than reason.
‘The only thing that does attract me to female suffrage,’ she said, ‘is that your friend the King is so against it.’
She was not at all herself; it was as he thought, she was still upset. Not just about the King and Mrs Keppel descending upon them, but at Rosina’s betrayal. She had expected Rosina to return within days, begging for forgiveness and asking to be let back into the family home, but Rosina had not. Now Minnie had done the same. Isobel would rather break than bend. He had a sudden longing for Carmen’s company. It never occurred to Carmen to be spiteful or resentful, let alone wish or not wish for female suffrage. So he held his tongue, and refrained from saying that what worried the King was that women would tend to vote out of petty spite, or because they liked the looks of a candidate irrespective of his policies. Women bet on horses because of their colour. They were irrational, the King complained.
How strange that he and Isobel had bred such disparate children. Rosina, so ‘difficult’ yet full of concern for others; so long, as Isobel would have it, as they were not her nearest and dearest. Arthur so apparently amiable, yet so indifferent to the feelings of others. And Isobel, so ill at ease with both of her children, but seeing an opportunity to make a better go of things with her grandchildren.
Robert thought that as soon as he had seen to one or two important matters of State he would go in search of Arthur and give him some fatherly advice. In the meanwhile, to Hell with the female franchise; disunity in the party over Free Trade was splitting the government apart. The other Arthur – Balfour – was also in need of friendship and support. Balfour would probably stay on as leader of the party, but would lose the premiership to the amiable Campbell-Bannerman, mollifier to end all mollifiers. In this quality Robert felt himself out-ranked, and was therefore slightly put out.
Arthur was busy in his Gatehouse office when his father called by. It was a busy day; he and his two new secretaries were going through potential mileages per gallon for the Jehu IV. Thanks to Robert’s recent injection of funds, the Jehu IV was already on the drawing board: it was to be a heavy carriage to be used over land, not only for the transport of stock and goods, but for the convenience of the Guns – the ability to bring in an extra keeper and a dog or two at short notice would be much appreciated on any shoot, as would easy access to the duck pits and snipe marshes where horses found difficulty – and an extra ten minutes in bed on a frosty morning was always welcome.
Car transport meant no more worries about horses bolting and dogs barking, putting the golden plover and the wood pigeons to flight, and disturbing the nesting pheasants. So long as Arthur got the exhaust problem under control, so that the Jehu IVs moved quietly, the use of cars rather than horses would greatly improve the pleasure of the day. His father, in search of the finest shoot, was finally an enthusiastic convert to the automobile, though rather appalled by Arthur’s suggestion of night shoots – you could drive hares and rabbits for anything up to a quarter of a mile in the glare of oxyacetylene lights before securing your quarry and blasting off without so much as leaving the car. Or even get them with your tyres.
‘God forbid,’ said the Earl. ‘Then the poor creatures would be better fit for soup than a roast! Never!’
Now it seemed what Robert really wanted to talk about was Minnie, and made no bones about it. He was gratified to see that of Arthur’s two secretaries one was a young man, Oliver Hawkley, a grammar-school lad with a head for statistics, and the other an extremely plain married woman, Effie Firbank, who had worked for the Daimler firm in Coventry, pleasant and competent enough but flat-chested. He suspected Arthur had inherited his own tastes for the voluptuous, and Effie was anything but. The receptionist, Marion Barnes, had been a parlourmaid at Dilberne Court until she’d married one of Arthur’s engineers, and was already well trained in answering doors in a courteous yet distant way. There was no likelihood of trouble here. Perhaps Arthur had learned his lesson.
Arthur had indeed been thoroughly disconcerted by his encounter with Miss Braintree. She’d written an appreciative, even flattering piece in the
Mirror
, two whole columns and a photograph of him by Tom Grant which even Isobel acknowledged made him look most dashing; and though she viewed askance the phrase ‘The Motoring Viscount’, she had shown the article to her friends. A letter had come from Miss Braintree repeating her request to be his secretary so she could finish her novel, to which he had firmly replied, ‘No.’ A dozen or so other letters, all in an ill-educated hand, had come from female members of the public asking to meet, or work for, him; he had consulted Inspector Strachan about these and Strachan had advised him to ignore them. ‘Fans’, as he called them, could be dangerous – it was no accident, he said, that the term derived from the word fanatic. The King was in as much danger from those who loved him for his splendour as from those who hated him for his privilege and wealth.