‘But of course, dearest, it’s charming.’ With a smile, she added. ‘How well you know my taste.’
‘Will you want to engage a maid for your stay?’
‘I think not. The hotel attendance will do me very nicely.’
She ordered tea and muffins to be sent up, and when at last she was alone with her son she hoped he would pick up the threads of their interrupted conversation on the boat. But instead Dick said briskly, ‘I expect you’re pretty fatigued, mama, so after tea I’ll leave you to have a rest. I suggest we dine quietly here in the hotel this evening. There’ll be plenty of time for you to see London — the new restaurants and theatres. You’ll love Romano’s and the Cafe Royal.’
‘I place myself in your hands,’ Marianna told him, warmed by the thought that he was putting himself out to please her.
When Dick had gone, she was surprised to realize that she did indeed feel quite tired and was glad of this chance to rest. But an hour upon the sofa before the fire put her entirely to rights. By the time a message came that her son awaited her downstairs in the foyer, Marianna was ready dressed in her new gown of black velvet, with jet jewellery and an aigrette in her hair. She was aware that she looked well in black, but Dick surprised and delighted her by his enthusiastic
‘Mama! How stunningly beautiful you look!’
‘I see that London has taught you the trick of paying a gallant compliment,’ she said, tapping his shoulder with her fan. ‘You look very fine yourself, young man, in that immaculate dress suit.’
He blushed. ‘Well, you know, a chap has to have decent clothes in London.’
At a lamplit table for two in the elegant
salle à manger,
Marianna questioned him about what work he did at the Penfold Line offices in Leadenhall Street.
‘Oh, I do a bit of this and that. What it really amounts to is that Ralph pays me a salary and I help out generally.’
‘Is he teaching you the business?’
‘Hardly. I just use my eyes and ears and pick up what I can.’
Knowing it to be unwise at this early stage, Marianna still could not prevent herself from asking, ‘What exactly is wrong, Dick? In your letter it seemed to me that you were unhappy.’
‘I told you, Ralph and I don’t see eye to eye about things.’
‘But I suspect there is something more than mere disagreement over the conduct of the firm. Something deeper.’
Dick’s dismissive shrug would have deceived no one.
‘What nonsense,’ he said, and rushed on, ‘Oh, jolly good, the orchestra is going to give us another tune.’
The moment for confidence, if it had ever existed this evening, was gone now. Marianna resigned herself to asking her son what he suggested she might do on the morrow.
‘I’m taking another day off in order to show you round London a bit, mama. There are so many new things that you won’t have seen before. I thought you’d enjoy a ride on an electric tram to the Elephant and Castle, and we can go on the twopenny tube if you would like that. And we must certainly fit in a drive for you in a motor car while you are here
.”
‘Heavens!’ she laughed. ‘I shall probably be frightened out of my wits.’
They had reached the dessert course when Dick said, as if carelessly, ‘Oh, by the way, you are invited to dine at Cadogan Place on Thursday evening.’
‘Then I had better accept with proper grace,’ she replied. ‘Please convey my thanks to Alicia and say that I look forward to seeing her again.’
After she had said goodnight to Dick, quite early, Marianna found herself thinking of Cedric Kendall — the one man in England, it appeared, whom she could count upon as a friend. She would dearly like to talk to him before she saw Ralph, to discover precisely what he had told her son. Would it be possible, she wondered, to make a telephone call to Hardwick Manor?
Inquiries at the reception desk next morning elicited the information, after a consulting of directories, that indeed Sir Cedric Kendall was a telephone subscriber. It took only fifteen minutes for the trunk connection to be made. In the small booth, Marianna lifted the receiver from its hook, held it to her ear and uttered the approved opening into the mouthpiece.
‘Hallo! Are you there? Hallo!’
She thought with a flutter of panic that she would never be able to understand the tinny voice that answered, but was thankful to find after the first few words that she could hear quite distinctly.
‘I was informed that you are Mrs
Marianna
Penfold. Can that really be so?’
‘Yes, this is Marianna. I am speaking from London. From the Savoy Hotel.’
‘I see. Dick did not mention that you were coming to England when I saw him recently, my dear.’
‘It was a spur of the moment decision. I was wondering, Cedric, if we might meet whilst I am here.’
‘Of course. Delighted. Why don’t you come down to Sussex for a few days?’
‘Oh, I think not,’ she said sharply.
That was inept of her, but Cedric took it without offence. ‘I won’t press you, Marianna, but do believe me when I say that you would be very welcome. So you’d like to see me in London, eh?’
‘Well, I was rather hoping that you might have plans to come to town in the next day or two. I suppose, though, that...’
‘I can very easily make it my business to come and see you,’ he said.
‘But I couldn’t expect you to make the journey especially on my account.’
‘My pleasure, I assure you. What about tomorrow, can we meet for luncheon?’
‘That would be splendid.’
‘I would suggest taking you to my club, where I took Dick, but the “Rag” is so wretchedly stuffy about lady guests. Would Claridge’s suit you? Shall we say one o’clock?’
Marianna had carried Cedric Kendall in her mind as the young Guards’ officer whom she had first met at Highmount, handsome and dashing and fresh-faced. She was afraid she might not recognize him after all these years. It was a distinguished-looking, middle-aged man who awaited her in the hotel foyer, his hair greying at the temples; but she knew him instantly and hurried forward, smiling.
‘My dear Marianna,’ he murmured, bowing over her hand. ‘How good it is to see you, and how charming you look.’
‘You were always very kind, Cedric.’
He escorted her upon his arm to a quiet lounge and asked, when they were seated, ‘What will you take as an aperitif? They serve a good dry Madeira here, even if it isn’t one of your Dalby wines.’
‘I think perhaps I’ll be a Philistine,’ she said, ‘and try a fino sherry for a change. How is your family, Cedric?’
‘All well. The offspring are no longer children, of course.’
‘Let me see, Roland will be twenty and Julia nineteen?’
He was pleased that she remembered. ‘We shall be celebrating Roland’s coming-of-age in June. He’s at Sandhurst now, you know.’
‘Following his father in a military career?’
‘It’s a long-standing tradition in my family. And Julia has recently become engaged to a young man of whom Eunice and I approve wholeheartedly, so we count ourselves fortunate in our children.’
‘And Eunice herself?’
‘She leads a busy life. She instructed me to say that we very much hope you will make an opportunity to visit us before you return home.’ The grey eyes regarded her with candour. ‘Eunice sincerely means it, my dear.’
The arrival of the waiter saved Marianna the need to respond. As she sipped her sherry, Cedric startled her by saying in his clipped way, ‘You want to talk to me about your son, of course. Dick is a fine young man. You have managed very well, bringing him up on your own.’
‘Thank you, Cedric. He also speaks of you most warmly. I think that he found his recent conversation with you of considerable help.’
‘I was only too glad to be of service, and I hope I may be so again. I realized that the boy was sorely troubled in his mind, but he was unable to bring himself to take me fully into his confidence. Have you managed to discover what lies at the root of his present distress?’
‘Unfortunately not. I thought it unwise to press him too soon, but I am hoping the problem will emerge in due course. It was clear to me from his last letter that something was amiss, and this was what brought me hastening to England. You must have guessed, I think, that Dick and I did not part on the best of terms when he left Madeira, and I pray that this will be the opportunity for us to reach a reconciliation.’
There was a great deal of respect in the smile Cedric gave her. ‘You are a truly remarkable woman, Marianna. Who would ever imagine that behind your delightfully charming and feminine exterior there is concealed an astute brain and an inner core of self-sufficiency?’
‘Do you not mean hardness?’ she suggested ruefully.
‘Not at all! I shall never believe you to be a hard woman, my dear.’ His face tightened. ‘When I think of you as I saw you that very first time, how my blood boils! You looked so bewildered, so vulnerable, so very, very young — even for the age I knew you to be. But of course, that was precisely why —’
‘Why William Penfold had chosen to marry me,’ she finished for him. ‘You need not avoid saying it, Cedric, for we both of us know it to be the plain and simple truth.’
He inclined his head and paid her the compliment of being equally direct.
‘You were ideal for him — a lovely, innocent child, with no relatives to interfere beyond a father who was far off in Madeira. I suspect, though, that you proved to have less timidity and a lot more grit than my father-in-law had ever bargained for.’
‘I had no idea that you’d grasped the situation so well,’ she said quietly. ‘It was very perceptive of you.’
‘Not as perceptive as you suppose. Even before I met you, I already knew enough about my future father-in-law to realize that I had to get Eunice away from his influence. He was neither a stern nor doting parent, but a most unhealthy mixture of the two. From the time his daughter left infancy behind he subjected her to an extreme form of possessive adoration. Eunice was pampered and petted in every way, bar one. Were she to show the slightest independence, give the smallest hint that she was escaping from his absolute dominance, he would be cruel and ruthless in his anger. When she and I fell in love at first sight — it was at a subscription ball in Winchester — her father was enraged. He tried everything in his power to poison her mind against me, but to no avail. He loathed me, that goes without saying, but still he could think of no convincing reason for refusing a match between us. I do not say this from conceit, but simply as a point of fact ... with my family background and my army career, I was eminently suitable as a husband for his daughter. So, reluctantly, he gave his consent to our betrothal—knowing, I suppose, that Eunice was already lost to him. In retaliation, however, he hit upon a way of punishing her — by taking a girl even younger than herself as her replacement. This, I am convinced, is the explanation of his marrying you, my dear Marianna. I am sorry to be so blunt.’
‘Eunice’s replacement, you call me,’ she murmured with an involuntary shudder. ‘But he could never have used any daughter as he used me.’
Cedric cast her a swift, testing look. ‘The man’s mind was diseased, you must have come to realize that only too well. Unhappily there are other men like him — pillars of respectability to the outside world, who stoop to the most unspeakable acts of depravity. In William Penfold’s case it was an appetite for despoiling young virgins — unripe fruit, as the nauseating euphemism has it — innocent young girls who could be petted and fondled, and then brutally deflowered.’
Marianna swallowed down the acid taste of disgust in her throat and whispered faintly, ‘I always suspected ... always knew in my heart that William had a hidden life, that he went elsewhere even after we were married — though I closed my mind to the thought.’
‘Alas, there are vice houses in London which cater for all manner of such vile practices — at a price!’
‘How ... how did you come to know these things about my husband, Cedric?’
He made a gesture of distaste with his hands. ‘Suspecting that his unhealthy attitude towards his daughter could only spring from a warped mind, I made some discreet inquiries about the man. What I learned filled me with horror. It determined me to marry Eunice with all speed and remove her completely from her father’s influence. That was why I requested an early posting to India. Believe me, my dear Marianna, I pitied William Penfold’s young bride beyond measure, but...’ He lifted his shoulders in helpless apology. ‘But what was I to do?’
‘I can understand,’ she said. ‘Naturally, your fiancée had to be your first concern. And I could see that you were deeply in love with Eunice, as she was with you. How I envied you both in your happiness!’ Marianna looked at him and smiled wistfully. ‘Do you know, Cedric, you were the only person who showed me any kindness or sympathy. Everyone else resented me, resented my very existence. To be quite honest, I was relieved when you took Eunice away, and her aunt with her... I was spared their hatred, which only added to my problems.’
Cedric ran a hand across his greying hair. “Try not to blame them too much for their treatment of you. Harriet Fielding, poor woman, was herself badly dealt with by William Penfold. Were you aware that at one time, very briefly just after his first wife died, she was his mistress?’
‘Yes, I did know that. I overheard the two of them arguing, the day I first arrived at Highmount. In a curious way I felt sorry for Harriet, even though she rejected every attempt I made to be friends with her.’
‘In India, she and I conversed together a great deal. During her final illness she seemed to have a need to talk about the past. Harriet had come to change her opinion of you, Marianna, and she expressed remorse for having shown you such bitterness.’
‘And Eunice?’
‘She does not know the full depths of her father’s moral depravity,’ said Cedric. ‘Although my wife and I are very close, I have felt it my duty to spare her the pain such knowledge would inevitably bring. However, she understands enough to regard you now in a very different light, as someone who has suffered grievously. What I said on the telephone is quite true, my dear. Eunice will make you very welcome if you consent to visit us in Sussex whilst you are here.’