“Yes, I see what you mean,” Lady Anne had replied. “It
is
unnatural. She must have worked very hard to become what she is.”
Now, at this moment of crisis, Greta remained just as calm as her employer would have expected. Only a slight shudder indicated her awareness of the boy’s presence. Thomas, however, stood rooted to the spot and his cheeks flushed crimson. His eyes were fixed on the reflection of Greta’s full breasts in the mirror, with the rose-red nipples clearly visible as the buttons on the front of the yellow dress remained undone right down to the waist.
Greta looked evenly at the boy’s reflection in the mirror but did nothing to hide herself.
“You’re looking at my breasts, Thomas.” There was a purring note in Greta’s voice that the boy had not heard before.
“No, no. I’m not.”
“All right. You’re not.” Greta laughed, pulling the front of the dress together. “My mistake.”
“You’re wearing my mother’s dress. The one she said was like spring daffodils. And you’re in her room. Why are you in her room?”
“Well, Thomas. If you sit down a moment, I’ll try to explain it to you.”
Greta picked up two of the dresses from the bed, and gestured for the boy to sit in the space that she had cleared, but he didn’t move from the doorway.
“You shouldn’t be in here. You don’t belong in here.”
“No, I don’t. You’re quite right. But Thomas, try to understand. I don’t have beautiful clothes like your mother does. I can’t afford them like she can. And I didn’t think it would do any harm if I tried them on just to see what I looked like. It doesn’t hurt anyone, does it?”
“It’s not right. They belong to my mother.”
“Yes, they do. But I wasn’t going to steal them. I wouldn’t be trying them on in here if I was going to do that, now, would I?”
“She wouldn’t want you to have them on. She wouldn’t want you in here. I know she wouldn’t.”
“All right, perhaps she wouldn’t,” said Greta, changing tack. “Perhaps she would be upset if she knew. And then she might get one of those horrible migraines. No one wants that, do they, Thomas?”
Thomas did not reply. His lower lip trembled, and he looked like he was going to cry. Greta pressed home her advantage.
“Wouldn’t it be better if we didn’t tell her? Then no one would get hurt. What do you say? It can be our secret. Just you and me.”
Greta put out her right hand toward the boy, thus allowing the yellow dress to fall open again, exposing her breasts.
Thomas took a step backward, but Greta reached over and took his hand, pulling him toward her.
In the years that followed, Thomas always recalled this moment as one of the most significant of his childhood. It was a turning point of sorts. An end and a beginning. Certainly his memory chose to preserve the scene in extraordinary detail. Closing his eyes as an adult, he could recall his mother’s room with the sea breeze coming in through the half-drawn curtains; the sun shining on the rich mahogany chest with its top drawer open; the mass of clashing colors on the bed where Greta had laid out his mother’s clothes; the bright red sleeve of a gown that his mother had worn at Christmas cutting across the white of her pillow like a wound. And closer to him was his father’s personal assistant: raven hair and green cat’s eyes, yellow dress and full, exposed breasts with red nipples, which gave him a sense of urgency he’d never felt before. He was repelled and attracted all at the same time. And the mirror had been between them. They had seen each other in the mirror before she turned and began saying things. Things about his mother that he didn’t want to hear.
She took his hand, and he felt sure that she was going to place it on her breast. The breast that he could now see again so full and close. And he knew that that would make a secret between them that he could never break.
Thomas dragged his eyes away from Greta and focused on the first thing he saw. It was the white flannel on the edge of the sink in the corner of the room, the one his mother used to cover her eyes when she had her migraines.
Thomas wrenched his hand away from Greta, and the force of his action took him out into the hall.
“No,” he said, and all his being was concentrated in the one word.
Greta flinched, but whether from the hurt to her hand or the force of his response, Thomas didn’t know. The shudder was certainly gone from her face as soon as it had appeared, and she laughed softly.
“I was only shaking your hand, Thomas. You certainly have got an active imagination. Your father’s right about that.”
There was no time for Thomas to reply. At the bottom of the stairs the front door was closing behind Mrs. Martin.
“What are you doing up there, Thomas? I told you the presents were in the kitchen. Come on or we’ll be late.”
Greta and the boy exchanged one final look, and then he turned and was gone.
If that bloody old housekeeper hadn’t forgotten her sister’s stupid presents and sent the boy back for them, I might not be here today, Greta thought to herself as she allowed her husband and the chauffeur to escort her to the courthouse door.
Thomas had waited until the weekend was over to tell his mother. And Greta had never had to discuss the incident with Lady Anne. It was Sir Peter who raised the subject with his personal assistant midway through the following week, and he did so in an uncomfortable, almost apologetic way that made her feel slightly sick. She, of course, had had time to prepare her response.
All morning her employer had been coming in and out of her room on one pretext or other. The ground floor of the London house had been converted into offices the year before, and Greta worked in the front room. A printer and fax machine stood on an elegant oak sideboard, while Greta sat at a circular walnut table in the center of the room amid computer screens and telephone lines. Her employer circled the table, nervously clearing his throat.
“What is it, Peter? Something’s bothering you.”
“Yes, it is. It’s something I need to talk to you about, but it’s damned difficult to know how to go about it. It’s about Anne and that boy, Thomas. God, I wish I could understand him better.”
“What about Thomas?”
“Well, he’s told Anne something and she’s told me. And, well, it’s about you. She said I ought to talk to you about it.”
“It’s about your wife’s dresses, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s it. Thomas says you were trying them on. Last weekend when we were out. I told Anne that the boy’s made it up. Trying to cause trouble for everyone. He needs to be sent away to a good school. That’s what he needs. But Anne won’t have it.”
“I did try them on. I shouldn’t have done but I did.”
“You did?”
“Yes. Because they’re beautiful and I wanted to see what I looked like in them. I haven’t ever had clothes like that, Peter. I’m not a rich girl, you know that.”
“But couldn’t you have gone to a shop? A boutique or something?”
“I suppose so. I do sometimes. It’s just they never leave you alone. It’s like they know who’s got the money and who hasn’t.”
Sir Peter was defenseless against this turning of the tables. His dependence on Greta had increased with each month that had passed since she first came to work for him, and it was in his nature to be impressed by straightforwardness of all kinds. Greta’s feminine attractions also had a more powerful effect upon him than he cared to admit.
“Well, you shouldn’t have done it, but at least you’ve been honest enough to admit it, which is more than most people would have done. It’s my fault in a way. I probably don’t pay you enough.”
And so Greta succeeded in turning the disaster with the dresses to her own advantage. Sir Peter spent more time with her after the incident and began taking her out for working dinners when they were in London during the week. They would often be seen at the Ivy or Le Pont de la Tour with their heads close together in animated conversation. And not only that: Sir Peter raised his personal assistant’s salary by 50 percent, so that now she could afford designer dresses of her own to wear when she went out with her employer. As autumn faded into winter, Sir Peter commented to himself that Greta looked prettier every day. And there was nothing wrong in having a pretty P.A. He’d done nothing to be ashamed of.
Of course, the society tittle-tattles and gossip writers didn’t see it that way, and stories began to appear in the tabloids and magazines, although they never made the headlines or even the front pages. The height of the publicity was a black-and-white photograph on page 21 of the
Daily Mail
of the two of them leaving a restaurant together under a caption that read, “Minister Out on the Town.”
No word of all this reached the House of the Four Winds. Flyte might as well have been a thousand miles from London. Lady Anne didn’t read tabloids or magazines, and none of her friends had the bad taste to raise the subject of Sir Peter’s personal assistant in her presence. She visited London less and less often, preferring to concentrate on her garden and her son.
For his part Sir Peter no longer visited the House of the Four Winds every weekend as he had done in the past. He went there once or twice a month while Parliament was in session, and Greta continued to accompany him on these periodic visits, as his government duties made nonworking weekends an impossibility.
The atmosphere in the house was strained, but Sir Peter refused to admit it. Lady Anne was aloof, taking long walks with her son or shutting herself up in her room when Greta was there. The incident with the clothing lay between them unresolved. Lady Anne was embarrassed, and Greta interpreted her silence as condemnation.
A conversation at the dinner table one evening the following January brought matters to a head. Greta sat equidistant between Sir Peter and his wife at the long dining room table. The central heating had overcompensated for the inclement weather, and the room was hot and stuffy. The three diners were struggling to make their way through a dessert of cherry pie and custard.
Lady Anne had been talking about a rich northern industrialist called Corbett who had bought himself a stretch of coastline on the other side of Flyte. He had made a fortune manufacturing paper clips and was now building himself a mansion overlooking the sea. More than one of the Robinsons’ neighbors had remarked in recent months on the similarity of this edifice to the House of the Four Winds, although it was clearly on a much larger scale.
“I expect they’ll be sending their butler round to take photographs of the garden soon. Watch out for men in morning coats with stepladders and telephoto lenses,” said Lady Anne.
“Oh, Anne, I’m sure it won’t come to that,” said Sir Peter. “You shouldn’t be so sensitive.” He had become increasingly impatient with his wife’s preoccupation with this subject during dinner.
“I’m not being sensitive. It’s the principle of the thing that’s distasteful. People should be what they are. They shouldn’t try to wear other people’s things.”
“Especially when they come from the north,” said Greta, suddenly joining in the conversation.
“No, wherever they come from.” Lady Anne suddenly stopped, realizing what she’d said. “Oh dear, I’m sorry. That wasn’t what I meant at all.”
“It’s not your fault. You’re a Lady and I’m not. People need to know their place. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”
“No. No, I’m not. I’m saying that people should be themselves and not try to be other people. That’s got nothing to do with knowing your place.”
“Well, if I’d stayed being myself, I’d probably have ended up working in a paper-clip factory,” said Greta in a rush.
“My dear, I don’t know why you’re getting so agitated. I wasn’t talking about you. I was talking about this man, Corbett. You shouldn’t be so quick to take offense.”
Greta said nothing but put her napkin up over her face. A series of visible shudders passed through her upper body, bearing witness to her distress.
Part of Lady Anne wanted to get up and put an arm around the girl. She was clearly upset, and it was rare for her to lose her self-control. But another, stronger part felt repelled. Greta seemed to cause nothing but trouble. It was Greta, after all, who had gone into her bedroom as a trespasser and put on her clothes like they were her own. It was Greta who had gotten Thomas so upset. Greta was the one who should be apologizing.
“Look, who’s the injured party here?” said Lady Anne, unconsciously transferring her attention to her husband, who was moving about uncomfortably in his seat at the other end of the table. “I didn’t go and try on
her
clothes, did I?”
“No, of course you didn’t. She’s got none for you to try on. That’s the whole bloody point, can’t you see that?”
“Yes, I do see that,” said Lady Anne, getting up from the table. “I see it only too well. I’m going to bed. I think I’ve got a headache coming on. This home isn’t London, you know, Peter. I’m not here to have political debates with you. Greta may be, but I’m not.”
Lady Anne closed the door before Sir Peter could reply. Greta’s face remained hidden by her napkin, but her shaking shoulders showed that she was in even greater distress than before. Sir Peter wound his own napkin into a ball and tried unsuccessfully to think of something to say to comfort her.
Eventually he got awkwardly to his feet and went over to stand behind Greta’s chair. He shifted his weight irresolutely from one foot to the other and then put out his hand tentatively so that it came to rest on her shoulder.
“Please, Greta. Don’t cry. She didn’t mean it. She just got upset, that’s all.”
A few strands of black hair had fallen across Greta’s face as she bent over the table, and Sir Peter pulled them gently back over her ear, stroking the side of her head as he did so.