Dubious Legacy (25 page)

‘He loves you a lot,’ said Calypso. ‘It’s noticeable.’

‘I know, I know, and I love him. I don’t want to be married to anyone else. I’ve never thought of leaving him, he is jolly good to me, he is a wonderful father, he hardly ever gets drunk—not since he woke in Margaret’s bed and got such a fright he practically signed the pledge. But I don’t suppose you knew about that.’

Calypso smiled. ‘The Jonathans—’

‘Oh, of course. Yes. I ended up on their doorstep after crashing in on yours. By the way, I never apologized, I—’

‘Oh, do shut up about it,’ said Calypso.

Antonia said, ‘I’m sorry. Of course I will. I had not realized I was being a bore.’

‘Time you did.’

‘Oh dear, how diminishing, how—’ Antonia was abashed.

‘Not to worry,’ said Calypso more kindly, as she watched Hamish. He was making a good job of the coppicing. It should have been done in the winter, would have been done in the winter if Hector had been alive, but it was not too late and Hamish was being patient with the little girls, more patient than she felt with Antonia, who was speaking again.

‘I decided that day, when I made love with Henry,’ Antonia carried on, ‘that I would hang on to Matthew for dear life, keep him on the hop so to speak. I mean, he would not know I was keeping him on the hop, yet it would be for his benefit as well as mine.’

‘Ah.’ Calypso thought of Antonia’s great-aunt and the lateral inheritance of genes.

‘So, as I said just now, Henry saved my marriage.’

In spite of herself, Calypso said, ‘Why did you not go with all this to your friend Barbara?’

‘Well,’ said Antonia, drawing out the word, ‘I know we tell each other everything, or did at that time certainly, but somehow I couldn’t. She had fallen tremendously in love with James; they’d been married some time. And I thought, in fact I knew, that all was not well. Then suddenly, bingo, it clicked, I have never known why. They had gone to Paris on the spur of the moment, had a super, super time and presently there she was, pregnant with Hilaria and bloody smug about it. That child over there is a true love child, in every sense.’

Calypso said, ‘Isn’t that nice.’

‘So you see,’ Antonia went on, ‘with Barbara in such an exalted state, I couldn’t tell her I had tricked Matthew; there was the risk she might have thought I had erred. Actually, having Hilaria rather altered Barbara; she grew more towards James, less towards me. Nor could I tell her that from time to time Henry and I did it again.’

Calypso said, ‘No.’

‘Somebody once said Henry is flawed,’ said Antonia thoughtfully.

‘Hector.’

‘So it was Hector? He was right. Henry must be flawed. D’you know he says he feels safe, married to Margaret? That she represents his freedom?’

Calypso said, ‘It figures.’

‘Free, married to that incubus, that albatross!’

‘Well—’

‘He told Barbara that he uses call-girls—Oh gosh, I’ve just thought; d’you think that woman Angela, whose bed we used, was a call-girl?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Calypso. ‘Would it matter?’

Antonia did not answer this but said, ‘Poor Henry. What a disappointing life.’

Calypso said, ‘Disappointed people make poor company.’ She was growing tired of Antonia.

‘Oh,’ cried Antonia, flushing, ‘I see what you mean. That’s the last thing Henry is. You must think me very stupid.’

Calypso said, ‘A little.’

Antonia said, ‘Thanks. I’m getting better.’

‘In what way?’ (They come over here and I quite like it, but they always stay too long.)

‘I’m better with Matthew, for one thing. When he wants to—er—well, if you must know, bugger me, I know he is remembering my brother Richard. He was in love with him at school. I can understand.’

(High time she left.) ‘I have met him,’ said Calypso. ‘Fat man in the Board of Trade.’

‘He was thin once.’ Antonia laughed. ‘And he was a very pretty boy.’

Calypso laughed, too. Then, because she feared a further torrent of indiscretions, she said, ‘I think it’s time you took your brood home.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Antonia. ‘Yes. I hope we haven’t outstayed our—’

‘Here they come,’ said Calypso. Hamish had obviously had enough of adoring little girls, yet he looked amiable as he came towards them. ‘Why,’ said Calypso, getting to her feet, ‘did they call that poor child Hilaria?’

Antonia said, ‘James has a rich aunt. Easy.’

‘So Barbara kept one foot on the ground.’

‘Barbara thought Hilaria was the goddess of pleasure.’ Antonia chuckled. ‘She was not undeceived until after the christening.’

‘They are lovely children.’ Calypso mellowed at the prospect of her guests’ departure. ‘Henry seems very fond of them,’ she said.

‘We all think it’s good for him, with none of his own, to have a share in ours,’ said Antonia.

Calypso drew in her breath.

‘One wonders,’ said Antonia, ‘what Henry’s life would have been like if he had not got himself lumbered with Margaret.’

Irritated, Calypso snapped, ‘Should it not suffice that he has been a remarkably good friend and kindness itself to your children? Henry,’ she said, ‘knows how to behave.’

Snubbed, Antonia said, ‘Of course, he is wonderful to them, wonderful to the children.’

(The silly bitch has reservations.) ‘And you never made it to the four-poster?’ Calypso waved her goodbye.

Slipping her arm through her son’s, Calypso said, ‘Let’s go in. I need a drink. Antonia has been telling me about a healing experience.’

‘And was it interesting?’ Hamish asked.

‘Only in so far as I suspect she was trying to tell me something else.’

F
ROM VISITING MARGARET ONE
winter afternoon, the Jonathans came down the stairs loose-limbed with laughter. In the hall they leaned against one another and gave way to an explosion of giggles more suitable to adolescents than the middle-aged. They had viewed Margaret’s new decor; it had been a shock.

Gone were the gold walls and carpet; in their place red-striped wallpaper, red ceiling, carpet and furnishings. Hell, they told each other, an inferno made acute by bounced reflections from the mirrors. And they were to blame, they told one another ruefully; had they not persuaded Margaret to leave her bed and trip up to London? It was they who had taken her to Apsley House, where she had been entranced by striped wallpaper, permissible for the victor of Waterloo but anathema in a house like Cotteshaw.

If they had not worked so hard to ease Margaret from her bed, this would never have happened, they wailed. Getting her out of bed had caused a U-turn. Now she had a taste for shopping, there would be no stopping her. It would be all right if Henry cut off the money, but Henry was a pig-headed fool who felt responsible for his wife; he should make her spend her own. ‘He feels responsible,’ the Jonathans complained. ‘What about us? It’s awful to laugh,’ they said. ‘Awful!’ And they went to find Pilar in the drawing room.

‘So you see it?’ she said.

‘Oh, Pilar!’

‘Ebro got discount for the wallpaper,’ she said.

‘But it’s terrible,’ they said. ‘Terrible.’

‘Is change,’ said Pilar robustly. ‘Is Republican Flag, is colour for bulls.’

‘Gruesome,’ they said.

‘And red dress, see the red dress?’ she asked. ‘Is all red now.’

‘No!’

‘Red with tight waist.’ Pilar pressed her hands to her middle. ‘Is contrast,’ she said, laughing and nodding towards the window, from which Barbara and Antonia were visible, pacing ponderous in advanced pregnancy, silhouetted against the winter sky.

‘Don’t tell us Margaret is jealous,’ the Jonathans exclaimed.

‘Of the attention. She mock their shape.’

‘They do indeed look comical,’ said the older man, ‘like huge bells. It’s hard to imagine what it must be like for girls.’

‘Some men is always so.’ Pilar glanced to where his waist had once been. ‘And not only for a few months,’ she said cruelly.

‘Come on,’ said John. ‘We must be on our way. Crumpets for tea.’

‘Perhaps I should go easy on the crumpets.’

‘Wait until Lent,’ said his lover.

‘There go the Jonathans,’ said Barbara, waving. ‘Aren’t they touching? Their union is so stable, it’s positively enviable.’

‘Not what one would expect from the children of Henry’s father’s randy and irresponsible friends, is it?’ said Antonia.

‘You have been listening to village gossip,’ said Barbara. ‘Mrs. Watson at the post.’

‘One of their mothers was French; the stabilizing gene must come from her,’ said Antonia, and added wistfully, ‘They never seem bored.’

‘Are you,’ Barbara glanced sharply at her friend, ‘bored?’

‘Since you ask, yes,’ said Antonia flatly.

‘Oh,’ Barbara paced slowly. ‘Oh.’

‘There are times when I can’t think what to talk about at meals,’ said Antonia.

‘Oh,’ said Barbara again. ‘Oh. What about Matthew? Doesn’t he talk?’

‘I don’t always listen,’ said Antonia. ‘But it’s all right, I can manage.’

‘Hidden resources?’ quizzed her friend.

‘You could say that.’

‘Oh?’

‘And it will be better when he gets into Parliament. He will be out most evenings.’

Barbara said, ‘Oh,’ yet again.

‘Oh, oh, oh.’ Antonia mocked her. ‘Do you never find James tedious?’

‘Never,’ said Barbara, ‘but then James and I are very much in love.’

It was Antonia’s turn to say, Oh, but she merely mouthed it. Barbara had not been the same since she had had a migraine and cured it by rushing off to Paris. ‘I have a theory,’ she said, fishing, ‘that you did not manage an orgasm until you had been married for some time.’

‘Is that what you think?’ asked Barbara sharply.

Antonia said, ‘Yes,’ standing firm. ‘It is.’

‘And what about you?’ asked Barbara. ‘I take it that if Matthew is so boring, he doesn’t provide orgasms to counter the tedium of his chat?’

‘Take it however you like,’ said Antonia good-naturedly, ‘but it doesn’t mean you have got it right.’ Bed is where there is no need for talk, she thought.

‘Before we married we used to tell each other everything,’ said Barbara plaintively.

‘We only thought we did,’ said her friend. ‘There are things one hardly knows oneself; time passes and we forget them.’

Barbara said, ‘Um,’ and considered her love for James. ‘I was not really in love with James when I married him,’ she said, ‘but now—’

‘I am glad for you,’ said Antonia. ‘And I shall love Matthew more when he is an MP.’

Barbara said, ‘That figures.’

‘Anyway,’ said Antonia, switching the subject, ‘it is going to be smashing for us having babies of the same age.’

The expectant mothers meandered on, each with her thoughts. Then, in an endeavour to recapture the intimacy they had once enjoyed, Barbara ventured, ‘Do you still suppose Matthew spent that night with Margaret?’

Antonia said, ‘I know he did. Who told you?’ she asked slyly. ‘The Grants?’

‘Not the Grants. Of course not.’

‘Who then?’

‘The Jonathans did, and Maisie and Peter did, and I dare say the people at the Post Office would have the details.’ (And Matthew too, in an effort to pre-empt reproach, but she would not tell Antonia this.) ‘But you cannot suppose anything happened,’ said Barbara. ‘Not with Margaret.’

‘I can’t not,’ said Antonia, who would have felt better if the so-called ‘something’ had occurred.

‘The idea’s absurd,’ said Barbara.

‘No more absurd than your James and that woman Valerie,’ snapped Antonia.

‘We had not met when he had his little fling with Valerie,’ said Barbara, unruffled, ‘but what did Matthew
tell
you?

‘He said he fell asleep.’

Barbara laughed. ‘I supposed he was pissed.’

‘He comes out of it so boringly,’ said Antonia, aggrieved.

‘Does any of it matter now?’ asked Barbara. ‘Look, the Jonathans are waving. Shall we go in? I begin to feel chilly.’

Antonia and Barbara waved and the Jonathans, who had reached the point where they would lose sight of the girls, waved again.

‘Those stately galleons look as though they had been squabbling,’ said the younger man.

‘What would they squabble about? They are engrossed in baby talk, my dear. I do see Margaret’s point, they are grotesque. I can’t think how James and Matthew bear it,’ said his lover.

‘They brought it on themselves,’ said the younger man. ‘I keep remembering James, when I asked him what they had seen in Paris that time, he said, Nothing much; they had concentrated on the restaurants, eaten oysters at every meal for a fortnight.’

‘Rash. Wasn’t he sorry? Oysters!’

‘The reverse, rather smug.’

‘Careful, here he comes. Hullo, James, how are you?’ the Jonathans addressed James.

‘Well, thanks,’ said James, who had already sighted the Jonathans and half-hoped to avoid them.

‘Alone and palely loitering,’ said the younger man. ‘Come in and share our crumpets, we have crumpets for tea.’

‘Walking briskly, thank you, and in the pink,’ said James. ‘Loitering is not my style.’

‘Spare us a few minutes all the same,’ said the Jonathans. ‘We have been to see Margaret’s frightful colour scheme. Do us a kindness and tell us your thoughts as you walked so briskly.’

Over my dead body, thought James; catch me confiding in these old poofs. ‘I was thinking about money,’ he said, and saw that he had successfully irritated them. ‘Did you say crumpets?’ He led the way into the Jonathans’ cottage. ‘So tell me about Margaret’s latest folly,’ he said. ‘I haven’t yet been invited to see it.’

‘I thought he’d never leave,’ said the older man an hour and a half later. ‘Sitting there expounding on stocks and shares.
And
he ate all the crumpets.’

‘An inadvertent good turn for your figure.’ His lover puffed out his moustache. ‘Could he really be thinking of money and look so happy?’

‘He is doing very well, and money makes Barbara happy. But don’t let’s be catty, you need not have described Margaret’s room in such detail or at such length.’

‘I thought I did it rather well!’

‘But no need to bore on with tiny minutiae; you were in danger of repeating yourself.’