‘What do you mean? You did the same thing with Sally.’
He held up a finger. ‘First time. With a servant. I know there shouldn’t have been a first time. But still.’
‘And she’s had your baby.’
‘What do you want me to say?’ He got to his feet. ‘I’ll go and visit her, all right? I’ll buy a bunch of flowers and I’ll go off to that godforsaken farm and see her bloody baby.’
‘She thinks you’re in love with her. She thinks you’re going to divorce Clara and marry her.’
‘She’s deluded! I never told her that.’ He frowned. ‘I’m sure I never told her that. Look, what does it matter?’
‘It matters to her, apparently.’
‘Oh, God.’ He sank back down on to the bench, head in hands. ‘I don’t want to think about it. Why are you making me think about it?’
‘You can’t just forget about your responsibilities.’
‘Can’t I? Who says I can’t?’
‘I mean – even if you wanted to. The things we do always seem to find us again, in the end.’
Alec still had his head in his hands. ‘You have no idea what it’s like, being me,’ he growled. ‘So thanks for the advice, but no thanks.’
‘You’re right,’ I said, and my lungs constricted as anger tightened my breaths. ‘I don’t know what it’s like to be
you. Growing up with a silver spoon jammed so hard inside your mouth that you think having to work for a living is somehow demeaning.’
‘How dare you?’ snapped Alec. ‘How dare you?’
I pointed in the direction of the house, the other hand on my chest to calm it. ‘You have an army of people who spend their entire waking hours ensuring that your butter dish gets to the table at the correct temperature, and you have no idea how any of them actually live. Your daughter is going to grow up in poverty because you don’t want to take responsibility for her.’
‘Honestly, Robert, you wouldn’t know what it’s like to actually feel alive, would you?’
‘What are you talking about? I appreciate everything that I have, and you … in your little bubble of privilege, with a mother who thought you were a gift from Heaven and everything you’ve ever wanted handed to you on a plate –’
‘And I’ve lost it all!’ he shouted. ‘From Mother downwards.’
I took a step towards him. ‘You have everything,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘You still do, you just don’t appreciate any of it.’
And with that I walked out of the arbour and dived back into the gentle sway of the party, almost knocking a lantern with my head as I went. I stormed down the path, hardly knowing where I was going, until an arm caught mine and a voice said, ‘Come this way.’
I was wheeled about. I looked down. Clara was holding my arm, drunk and giggling. ‘We were talking about hoops,’ she said. ‘You know, racing them down the road,
and I remembered we had one in the summerhouse, and I’ve been told to go and fetch it. Only the thing is, you see, there are giant spiders in there and I’ll scream if I walk into a web, so you’ll come with me, won’t you, and defend me against the beasts. Are you all right, darling?’
I swallowed. My lungs were tight. My head felt swollen. ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘I’m absolutely fine.’
As we walked I calmed down a little. Clara waved and blew kisses at people as we passed. ‘Fabulous party!’ somebody called, and she simpered and said, ‘Thank you, thank you,’ as if she were a film star at a premiere.
The summerhouse was dim and cooled my head somewhat. We banged about in the dark, and I tore down spiderwebs. ‘It’s in here somewhere,’ murmured Clara, groping her way along. There was one small window, and through it I saw the shimmer of coloured lights and odd pieces of people passing by like flimsy butterflies.
‘Ah! Here it is.’
She stood in front of me. The hoop bounced between us. I bent and kissed her softly.
‘You smell delicious,’ I murmured. Damn Alec; how could he not give thanks every day that he was married to this woman? If only I’d met her first.
Clara giggled quietly. ‘Champagne always makes me feel naughty.’
I took the hoop from her hands and put it aside. ‘I thought you were always naughty.’
She glanced sideways at the ping-pong table. I followed her gaze to its dusty surface, and then my hands were racing over her body and under her dress, pulling at her silk underwear. With a small, giddy shriek she kicked off
the shiny, soft thing and it scudded into the dirt on the ground. I picked her up, carried her to the table and set her on it, but she turned round and whispered, ‘Like this.’
I took her from behind as she grasped the edge of the table for stability, and I held the soft warmth of her belly as I plunged into her again and again. Outside, a girl laughed and there was the tinkle of glass against glass, and although I was inside Clara I was thinking of Alec, and my victory for those few short minutes was complete.
I shuddered to a climax and lay, sweating and panting, inside her for a while. When I withdrew, I folded myself over her and kissed the back of her neck. ‘I love you,’ I murmured.
‘Be careful,’ she muttered. ‘My dress.’ She rearranged herself, found her underwear in its dusty heap, brushed off the dirt and pulled it on with a quick wrinkle of her nose.
‘That was lovely.’ She raised herself on tiptoe, and I kissed her. I pulled myself on to the ping-pong table and trapped her with my legs; I wished I could lie down on its musty surface and go to sleep with Clara in my arms.
‘Come away with me,’ I said suddenly.
She looked at me. ‘Robert …’
I rubbed a patch of dirt from her shoulder. ‘What am I going to do after the summer’s over?’
‘I told you,’ she said, as if speaking to a child. ‘I can’t leave him. How would we live?’
‘We’ll find a way – I love you –’
‘I’m not going to be your mistress,’ she snapped. ‘That life’s gone. I’m respectable now.’
‘He’ll divorce you,’ I said, ignoring what Alec had told
me only a few minutes ago. ‘He’ll do the honourable thing. And then we can be married. And I don’t care if you can’t have children. We can adopt. We can adopt five.’
Her eyes slid away from me, and she pushed my legs apart so she could leave. ‘It won’t work.’
‘Why not?’ I jumped down from the table. ‘Listen. In six years I’ll come into money.’
She picked up the hoop and walked to the door. ‘Not enough,’ she said shortly, easing open the door. ‘If you were going to be as rich as Bump Mason, I might think about it.’
‘You’re not serious, Clara?’ I followed her and put a hand on her back.
‘I told you I was a mercenary.’ She shrugged. ‘When my father-in-law dies, Alec’ll be able to buy back Castaway, or a house ten times the size.’
‘You mean … you’re going to stay with him – for that?’
‘Yes.’ She looked at me with a glittering gimlet eye. ‘For that.’
I bent towards her and put my face to her neck. ‘I don’t believe you,’ I whispered.
‘Well, that’s your problem, I’m afraid.’ She bounced the hoop between us. ‘We should get back, don’t you think?’
There was a noise beside us, a footfall, and I looked up. Dr Feathers was walking away from us rapidly, his arms pumping left and right.
‘Oh, Lord,’ I said. ‘What did he see?’
‘Two friends who’ve retrieved a hoop from the summerhouse,’ she said brightly. ‘Now come on. I’ll tell them we got waylaid chatting to people.’
I followed her back along the path, but I knew what he
would have seen. And I knew that I had to speak to Lizzie before her father did.
She was nowhere to be found. I saw Dr Feathers with his wife and family in a small huddle, and I hurried past them, my face burning. Eventually Harriet told me Lizzie had been seen leaving by the front door, and I raced down the hallway, emerging on to the covered portico.
She was across the road, leaning on the rail and watching the promenade below, her parasol folded into pleats.
‘Lizzie!’ I called, and walked over to join her.
‘There you are,’ she said, as if we had made an arrangement to meet and she had been waiting for me all this time. She pointed up towards where the cliffs overlooked the sea. ‘Shall we take a walk?’
‘Absolutely.’ In the evening gloom it was hard to make out her face. ‘Are you all right?’
She did not answer and, my heart pounding, we climbed up to the very top of the cliff and crossed over to where a tamped-down path led along the edge towards Shanker, three miles distant.
‘I feel it’s going to rain in a minute,’ she said. ‘My brain’s so tight I can hardly think.’
‘Maybe that’s the cocktails,’ I said, attempting a smile.
‘I’ve only drunk lemon water,’ she said shortly. We stopped now, at a small promontory, and looked over the darkening sea. Below, waves lapped against the rocks and, further along, the promenade started and lights twinkled back to the town.
I swallowed, and grasped the bull by the horns. ‘Have you spoken to your father?’
‘My father?’ She frowned. ‘Not since we arrived. Why?’
‘Oh.’ I sank into relief. Perhaps he would say nothing. Certainly, he would be unable to name the act itself to his daughter, of that I was sure.
Lizzie looked away from me towards the glooming sky. ‘I saw you, you know.’
My breath froze in my throat. I paused until I could be sure of eliminating my stutter, and then said calmly, ‘What on earth are you talking about, my dear?’
‘When you introduced me to the gang, those fearsome ladies and funny gentlemen. You didn’t know I was watching.’
In a second, I realized she knew nothing of the summerhouse, and my breath bobbed back into warmth. ‘Please enlighten me, Lizzie; I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I saw the way you were looking at her.’ She turned to me now, although I could not make out the expression on her face. ‘Mrs Bray. I saw the way you looked at her, and I realized I’ve been an utter fool.’
‘I think you are,’ I said lightly, ‘because you’re talking rot.’
‘You’re in love with her, Robert. I saw it as plain as day. You’re absolutely dotty over her, and I’ll tell you something. I may be a fool, but you’re a bigger one.’
‘Come on. She’s my cousin’s wife, for heaven’s sake.’
‘Exactly.’ She pressed her hands together over the bamboo handle of the parasol, digging it into the soft ground. ‘You can’t get in between a married couple; or, at least, not when they’re still in love.’
They’re not
, I wanted to say. ‘You’ve really got hold of the wrong end of the stick, honestly. Listen, how about
I come round tomorrow and we can chat about it then, when we’re not in complete darkness?’
‘I don’t want to chat,’ she said, with a sudden burst of spite, and turned on her heel, marching back down the hill.
‘Wait, Lizzie!’ I hurried after her.
‘All we do is chat,’ she shouted over her shoulder. ‘All I ever did with Freddie was chat, and look how that ended up. And, of course, I’m the idiot who fell for both of you.’
I caught up with her at the junction; she had stopped where the grassy path became the road of Gaunt’s Cliff. ‘Listen,’ I said, and unpeeled one of her hands from the bamboo handle. Her palm had indentations where she had dug her nails into the flesh. ‘You know you’re always thinking things like this. And you’re always wrong.’
‘That’s because somewhere, deep down, I knew you didn’t love me the way I love you.’ She glared at the windows of Castaway, brilliantly lit as if for a play. ‘At least Freddie had the decency to move to another country before he fell in love with someone else.’
‘Honestly, it’s not what you think,’ I insisted. ‘Listen, I’ll knock on your door tomorrow afternoon. Three o’clock.’
She paused, and said in a brittle voice, ‘You really don’t care whether you break my heart, do you?’
‘Please stop this, Lizzie.’
‘One of Father’s friends wants to marry me. He’s made it quite obvious on several occasions. He’s totally gaga over me, Robert. Quite doolally.’
‘I’m sure he is. But listen –’
‘He’s forty-five years old and he owns a perfectly decent
place with an acre of land. I’m sure I’ll be very happy.’ She withdrew her hand from mine and held her palm to the sky. ‘Oh dear. It’s started to rain.’
She crossed the road back towards the house, and as I followed her the Feathers emerged en masse, the doctor, at the front, wielding a crow-like umbrella. He eyed me coldly, before saying, ‘Come along, Lizzie, it’s time we were getting back.’
‘Bye, Robert!’ called Maddie as she was hustled along the path by her father. Lizzie joined her family group and was absorbed into their midst. As they walked up the steps of the house next door I shouted, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ but she did not turn round.
I sighed, but I knew that in the end Lizzie would be all right. I would go there tomorrow and break off the whole thing, but in a calm, planned-out sort of a way, saying that we were still too young for this sort of commitment and that I would be gone within a couple of weeks anyhow. She had always known something of the truth, as she had said, and besides which, our friendship had been a schoolkid-ish, innocent sort of affair; it was nothing the passage of time would not heal.
Then there was the problem of Clara’s obstinacy, but I would get round her one way or another. I had to. Buoyed by optimism, I hopped back inside the house to find a flurry of excitement as umbrellas were brought into service and handed out to the guests in the garden. Many people had already left; however, among those who remained the rain was causing a sort of high-pitched camaraderie, involving much celebration of ‘good old England’, and demands for more rum punch. I looked
round for Alec but could not find him, and then Clara announced, to whoops and cheers, that an evening buffet would be set up shortly in the dining room and everybody began to bundle inside the house.
I borrowed an umbrella and made my way back to the arbour. As I’d thought, Alec was still there, sound asleep on one of the benches, protected from the rain by the overhanging hawthorn bush.
‘Come on, old stick,’ I said, nudging him in the side. ‘You’re going to get drenched.’
He muttered and turned on to his side. ‘Robert,’ he mumbled.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry about our row. I’m really rather fond of you, old chap. And – well, I know under the circumstances this is silly, but I’d hate you to think badly of me.’