Daniel Martin (14 page)

However, a waiter in one of them told us of an isolated pensione down by the sea three miles away, and the two girls and I overruled Anthony’s doubts. The place had only one free room left, but it contained two double beds, and we dismissed the ancient taxi that had brought us. We had a long meal and more wine under a vine-trellis outside. It was very airless and afterwards, a little drunk, we idled along the beach beside the silent, listless sea. Then Nell and Jane decided they wanted to swim. So we undressed, pairing off by sex, not marriage. I saw the two girls wade in, then both turn and call to us. They stood hand-in-hand, like a pair of sea-nymphs, in the starlight. For a moment I wasn’t sure which was which, though Jane was an inch or two taller than Nell. I was thinking, He’s never seen Nell’s breasts and pubic hair before.

She said, ‘Oh they’re hopeless. They’re shy.’

They turned and went on wading in. The beach ran out very shallowly, for a long way. Anthony and I followed. The girls ahead of us stood with the water round their waists, then plunged forward, one of them with a small scream. Then they were swimming. A few seconds later Anthony and I plunged as well and swam out to join them. They had stopped where they could just stand, having discovered the sea was phosphorescent. Glaucous trails glimmered behind each movement. We made a circle, talking about the phenomenon, swirling our arms through the mild water. Then Jane reached out her hands to Anthony and myself and we made a ring as Nell in turn took our free hands. It was ridiculous, childish, as if we were about to do a round-dance or play Ringa, ringaroses. I think it was Nell who made us begin to circle gently. The depth we were in made any but very slow movement impossible. Four heads without bodies; touches beneath the water. I felt Jane’s bare foot, but I knew it was by accident. I could see Anthony smiling at me opposite.

Perhaps those beautiful tomb-walls somewhere inland behind the beach; perhaps the fact that the holiday was near its end; no, something deeper than that, a mysterious unison, and strangely un-carnal, in spite of our naked bodies. I have had very few religious moments in my life. The profound difference between Anthony and myself and our types of mankind is that I did for a few moments there feel unaccountably happy; yet I could see that for him, the supposedly religious man, this was no more than a faintly embarrassing midnight jape. Or I can put it like this: he saw me as the brother-in-law he liked, I saw him as the brother I loved. It was a moment that had both an infinity and an evanescence an intense closeness, yet no more durable than the tiny shimmering organisms in the water around us.

I tried repeatedly in later years to put those few moments into my work and always had to cut them out. It took me time to discover that even atheists need a sense of blasphemy. And loss. Like the vanished Etruscans, we should never be together like that again. Perhaps I knew that then, also.

One of the hostesses woke me, we were coming into London. I went and had a wash; set my watch forward once again. Barney was standing by my seat when I returned.

‘Dan, Margaret’s meeting me. Can we give you a lift into town?’

I should have liked to refuse, but it seemed churlish. At that time of night I wouldn’t have to ask them in for a drink. We got off the plane and through passport control together; and waited for our luggage together. He went to fetch a trolley from the far end of the hall. I felt unreal, in a bad dream, still not properly awake. He was grinning when he came back.

‘Either you have a marvellous daughter or I have a telepathic secretary.’

I looked back through the Customs counters. I couldn’t distinguish Caro’s among the scatter of distant faces, but Barney said, ‘She’s with Margaret. I think you have your own transport.’ A hand waved, and I waved back. I’d told her in the cable not to wait up for me, let alone fag out to Heathrow. The luggage began its slow-motion spill. None of it fell well for me; and I don’t mean the luggage.

Barney’s wife was still an unimpressive little woman, tired and faded under the set smile and the makeup. She had not aged well; but then she had always seemed to me anomalous, suburban to Barney’s urban. I vaguely remembered their house, in never-swinging Muswell Hill. Caro looked oddly apprehensive, no doubt at not having told me herself about the new job. She flashed one look at Barney, then I was hugging her. I held her severely away by the shoulders.

‘I thought I gave orders.’

‘My own boss now.’

I embraced her again; and heard Barney’s voice. ‘Not to worry, Caroline. I’ve given you a marvellous reference.’

‘Thank you, Mr Dillon.’

I took the little edge in her answer to be mocking: knowing he was sneaking home ahead of plan.

‘Dan, you remember Margaret?’

‘Of course.’

We shook hands, there was a brief four-way conversation about Barney’s coming home early, small worlds… nothings. We moved outside, I led the way with Margaret. I heard Caro ask Barney how some interview had gone, but didn’t catch his answer. When they came up beside us, he was asking her not to ring him the next day unless it was ‘desperate’.

‘And for God’s sake don’t tell anyone I’m back.’

‘Right.’

Renewed insistence from Barney that we had lunch one day soon: we saw them into their car, then I wheeled the trolley on down to where Caro had parked her Mini. I stood watching her while she unlocked it: she was wearing a long coat I hadn’t seen before. And a face. She held the door open while I manoeuvred the suitcases into the back.

‘I know why you’ve come. Mummy told me yesterday.’

‘Is she in Oxford?’

‘The Runt’s got mumps rather badly. She’s gone back to Compton for a couple of days.’ The Runt was her ten-year-old half-brother, Andrew’s son and heir: they went in for a sort of Mitfordian family slang. I straightened and looked at her.

‘Surprised?’ She nodded, and looked down.

‘I feel very sorry for him, Caro. In spite of family history.’

‘I know, Daddy.’

Her daddy’s often had faint inverted commas around them; but these were stamped hard. She went round to the driving-door and unlocked that. I bent myself in beside her.

‘I was very close to him once.’

She looked through the windscreen. The Dillons’ car, ahead of us, moved off.

‘It just seems rather sad that something like this has to happen to bring you together again.’

‘Darling, if you came to tell me that your generation of the family thinks mine have behaved like cretins… I came because I love you. Right?’

I leant and kissed her cheek, and she switched on the engine.

‘I rang Aunt Jane this evening. When I got your cable.’

‘How did she sound?’

We moved off. She made a bad gear-change and grimaced.

‘In control. As always. We talked about me mostly.’

‘I’ll try and catch up with some sleep. Then I’ll go.’

‘Yes, I said I thought you would.’ She hesitated. ‘She’s very grateful.’

‘I was looking for an excuse. I’ve missed you out there.’

She said nothing for a moment, though she had a small smile.

‘Is she nice?’

It had to come, and I was glad she had brought it so quickly into the open.

‘Yes. And I still missed you.’

‘They say she’s very bright.’

I left a pause. ‘Did it shock you?’

‘Don’t be silly. I used to rather fancy you myself.’

‘Now I’m the one who’s shocked.’

‘I used to tell my best friends at school. How devastating you were.’

‘Like the H-bomb?’ She grinned. ‘Yes?’

‘When I was little and you took me on that grand ancestral tour in Devon. That was the first time I’d really thought about you and Mummy. I couldn’t think why she’d ever left such a nice man.’ She added, ‘Of course, that was before I really knew you.’

‘If you weren’t being so sweet…’

The grin lingered, but I sensed something troubled underneath, something that couldn’t be said, that had to be hidden under this teasing. She jockeyed to get past a late truck. We headed for the tunnel to the M4.

‘And how’s Richard?’

‘That’s all over, as a matter of fact.’

I gave her a quick look. She was a shade too set on her driving; but then she twitched her mouth and shrugged. I had once watched her show-jumping at a gymkhana, in her horsy phase. Whatever she lacked elsewhere, she took her fences straight and brave.

‘Since when?’

‘About a month ago. Since I last wrote.’

‘Someone else?’

‘Just…’ and again she shrugged.

‘Poor old Richard. I rather liked him.’

‘No you didn’t. You thought he was an Old Etonian nit.’

Contradicting me like that was not new. She had taken to it during the time I had set to work on her debutantisms; telling me she might be a fool, but she knew my true opinions from those I sometimes humoured her with.

She said, ‘And you were right.’

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

We came out of the tunnel. I had that dislocation of long journeys, where nothing, even familiar landscape, has reality; where most or you is still where you came from. The awful winter dankness of England.

‘It all happened down at Compton, really. We went for the weekend. I suppose seeing him being given the future son-in-law treatment was the last straw.’

‘Hardly his fault?’

‘He’s so fantastically square. Under the surface. Honestly he was horrid, he was lapping it all up. Sucking up like mad to Andrew. Pretending he was interested in milk-yield and shooting and God knows what else. I suddenly realized what a phony he is. Not only about all that.’

‘Then you’re right to chuck him out.’

The unfortunate Richard had been very much a male equivalent of Caro; not university material at all. His family owned a famous London publishing house, and he’d been learning the trade on the fine old English principle that since natural aptitude is clearly inherited, no practical demonstration of it need ever be required. He had picked up some vaguely leftwing views among the properly resentful underlings he would one day mismanage or perhaps he just needed to try out on me opinions that must have been unspeakable at home.

‘He was so beastly, you’ve no idea. He had the nerve to say Fleet Street was corrupting me. He told me one day I was getting sharp. “Rather vulgar, dear girl.” I threw a gin-bottle at him, I absolutely saw red. The bloody nerve of the man.’ She said, ‘And don’t grin.’

‘There is some of the flat left?’

‘This was at his place.’

‘Good. Never throw your own gin.’

She bit her lips. We climbed up on to the M4.

‘You knew from the start. You could have told me.’

‘With my track record in picking ideal partners ‘You must have learnt something.’

‘Too late.’

She digested that. ‘Are you going to marry her?’

‘Her name’s Jenny. And no. I’m not.’

‘I didn’t mean ‘I know you didn’t.’

Cross-purposes; they were always inherent between us. Something in her had changed. Perhaps it was no more than the normal effect of six months in a new world. I had an idea that she had had a bruising in Fleet Street; and bruising back had become her defence. The ‘rather vulgar’ I wouldn’t wear; but there did indeed seem a new sharpness, some sort of shift from innocence to aggression. The crack about fancying me would not have been possible six months previously; nor the implicit reprimand about older-generation stupidity.

‘And the job?’

‘Love it. Even the mad hours.’

‘And your new boss?’

‘It’s fun working for him. Lots of variety. I seem to spend half my life on the telephone.’

‘Why didn’t you write and tell me?’

‘I was a tiny bit afraid you’d be… I know he gave you a terrible review once.’

‘He’s given me good ones as well. And no excuse.’

‘My dreadful English.’

I knew something was embarrassed in her, and tried to relieve it. ‘Never mind. Now I’m back.’

But evidently her mind was still running on my being offended by Barney.

‘Actually it’s half how I got the job. I had to do some typing for him, and he asked about the name.’ She added, ‘I couldn’t very well turn it down. It’s quite a promotion.’

‘Of course. I’m delighted for you.’

After a moment she said, ‘Mummy told me you’d never really liked him.’

‘That’s all from before the Flood.’

‘Did you talk on the plane?’

‘We had a chat. Old times. All that. About you.’

‘He rather envies you actually.’

‘I was given that line a bit.’

‘He means it. Envy’s the wrong word. He says he admires almost everything you’ve done.’

‘And nothing he’s done himself.’

‘He’s terribly insecure. Underneath.’ I said nothing. ‘They’re all the same, you can’t imagine what a bunch of self-pitiers they all are. We all get it. The secretaries. And the rivalries, you know, they’re so petty, if A gets half a column more than B, or C has a private lunch with his nibs or D gets a new by-line mug-shot. If they didn’t go to El Vino’s and backbite each other every day they’d go mad. Actually Bernard’s better than most of them. He can at least laugh about it.’

He had always used his proper first name in print; but I deduced that he would have preferred me to use it to his face now.

Caro said, ‘It’s absurdly like the village at home, really. All spying and gossip and everyone knowing everything about everyone else.’

I had to smile to myself: this newfound authority and objectivity. I had been careful in the past not to try to woo Caro with the glamorous or what is publicly considered glamorous side of my own life. Whatever narcissism I had had at Oxford, I had managed to ban from my life that particularly odious variety so peculiar to the movie world. My study at the flat has books on its wails, and still a mirror or two; but not those ultimate lying mirrors, the framed awards and gilt statuettes, the posters and cast stills; and I had similarly kept her away from famous names. I began to suspect it hadn’t really been necessary.

We talked then about family things, about Uncle Anthony, what Jane would do, their children. She became more the daughter I had left behind in the summer. We arrived home and I carried my suitcases up the stairs behind her. I felt fatally awake by then, the wretched time-lag was taking its usual toll. Jenny would be in her apartment five thousand sunlit miles away, having a shower perhaps after the day’s shooting, the evening still ahead; or she might have acted fast and already spoken with Mildred. I saw her gathering up her bits and pieces for the move to the Cabin; had a great desire to call California; and killed it. The weaning had to commence.

There were fresh flowers in the living-room, an unopened bottle of whisky, Malvern water and a glass by the fireplace. Caro played the dutiful daughter, switched on the electric fire, made sure I noticed all these signs of the welcome-home. I kissed her.

‘Now bed for you. You’re ten times nicer than I deserve.’

‘When do you want breakfast?’

‘When do you have to be in?’

‘It doesn’t matter. With Bernard officially away. As long as I’m there by midday.’

‘I probably shan’t sleep much. You wake me when you get up., ‘I’ve made the bed and everything.’

‘Bless you. And for fetching me. Now hop it.’

She went, and I poured myself a whisky, then stared round the room. There was a new cushion on one of the settees. But nothing else bar a pile of mail, which I wasn’t going to face till the morning, it seemed exactly as I had left it months before, and that disappointed me. I had hoped Caro would give herself a little more freedom, though I knew that for her ‘home’ must always mean Compton… Versailles to a cottage, no comparison.

I had stayed there only once, long before Nell became its chatelaine. Andrew had thrown a famous ball for his twenty-first birthday and all fashionable student Oxford had descended—cars, coaches… one group from the Bullingdon side of his life had even turned up in a coach-and-four, someone blowing a post-horn. Compton Nine-Acres (it had nearer nine thousand in fact, in those days) wasn’t perhaps a great house as country-houses go, but it was impressive enough: the gardens, the parkland, the seemingly endless rooms, all that spaciousness and graciousness. It was a very long way from any world I was familiar with. I suppose that even then that celebratory weekend was an anachronism, a tacit farewell to the old days, Andrew’s father’s terminal fling against the post-war socialist present. It must have been one of the last full-blown traditional occasions of its kind there wasn’t only the ball, there was a tenants’ and village party on the lawn the preceding afternoon. Tennis, cricket, croquet, riding; endless champagne and superb food for those days of rationing. Some scarlet-uniformed local band, their silver instruments under the shade of a huge beech; a pair of trousers being hauled up a flagpole; and Andrew drunk throughout. Even Anthony enjoyed it, though he hardly knew Andrew at college; we were there largely because of the girls, of course, not that Andrew then showed any particular interest in them. At Oxford his sex-life was a little of a mystery. One would see him about with girls, and he was reputed to frequent a Mayfair brothel; but one associated him much more with hunting, beagling and drinking. We half suspected he was slightly queer; and I remember Nell being certain he would be ‘hopeless’ in bed.