“I think I’m probably the last to see it.” He was agitated, cast exasperated looks at the backs of the two children. “But she’s right, isn’t she?”
Lottie ceased to feel hot, could no longer feel the tremor in her hands. She breathed out, a long, shaking breath. Then she smiled, a slow, sweet smile, allowing herself for the first time the luxury of looking at him without fear of what he might see.
“Tell me she’s right, Lottie.” His voice, a whisper, sounded curiously apologetic.
Lottie passed Frederick a clean flannel. Tried to convey a world in the slightest of glances. “I saw it long before the picture,” she said.
T
here was, if Mrs. Holden said so herself, a definite glow to her cheeks that morning. She might even, she thought, leaning forward as she applied a little mascara (but not too much; it was the Sunday service), allow a suggestion that she looked just a little younger than usual. Her brow looked a bit less crumpled; there were perhaps fewer anxiety lines around the eyes. This rejuvenation was partly, it had to be said, due to the success of the Bancrofts’ visit. Despite that mortifying argument between the actress and her friend, Dee Dee (extraordinary names these Americans gave themselves) had thought it all highly amusing, as if it were some touristic attraction they had laid on especially for the Bancrofts’ visit. Guy Senior had professed himself more than pleased by those paintings he had bought from Mr. Armand. They should prove a nice little investment, he said after supper, as he packed them carefully into the car. He had decided he quite liked all that modern stuff. Privately, Mrs. Holden would have died rather than have any of those on her drawing room wall; they looked like something Mr. Beans had brought up. But Dee Dee had simply grinned at her in an “all girls together” kind of way and said, “Whatever keeps you happy, Guyhoney” . . . and then they had gone, with promises of more fruit and further visits before the wedding itself.
And there was Celia; she seemed somewhat less up and down than she had been of late. She was making a bit more of an effort with herself. Mrs. Holden had wondered (aloud) whether Celia had neglected Guy a little; perhaps got a bit carried away with the wedding and forgotten about the groom (she had suffered the tiniest pang of guilt that she might have been a contributing factor; one couldn’t help getting terribly involved in planning a wedding). But Guy had been more solicitous to her daughter, and Celia, in return, was patently doing her very best to look gorgeous and be flirtatious and interesting. Mrs. Holden, just to be on the safe side, had given Celia some women’s magazines that stressed the importance of remaining interesting to your husband. That and other things, which Mrs. Holden still felt rather uncomfortable discussing with her daughter.
Mrs. Holden felt better equipped than normal to dish out marital advice at the moment, as for the past few days Henry Holden had been quite uncharacteristically nice to his wife. He had come home from work on time two days running, had somehow managed not to be called out on any late-night visits. He had offered to take the whole family out to lunch at the Riviera, as an apology for not having been present for most of the Bancrofts’ visit. Most important, the previous night (here she felt herself pink slightly) he had even made a visit into her bed, the first time he’d done so since Celia returned from London, some six weeks previously. He wasn’t one of those romantic types, Henry. But it was lovely to get the attention.
Mrs. Holden glanced backward at the pair of single divans, their unruffled candlewick spreads casting discreet canopies over the night’s secrets. Dearest Henry. And now that horrid redheaded girl was gone.
Almost unconsciously she put down her lipstick and just lightly tapped the walnut veneer surface of her dressing table. Yes, things were going very nicely at the moment.
U
PSTAIRS
L
OTTIE LAY ON HER OWN SINGLE BED LISTENING
to Celia and the children downstairs gathering coats in preparation for the walk to church. In Freddie’s case this involved several exclamations and muttered threats, followed by loud protestations of innocence and an eventual slamming of doors. Finally, accompanied by the exasperated cries of his mother, the closing of the front door signified that, apart from Lottie, the house was finally empty.
She lay very still, listening to it stir, hearing the underlying noises more often drowned out by the shrieking of children: the tick of the clock in the hall, the gentle intestinal rumble and hiss of the hot-water system, the distant clunk of car doors shut outside. She lay feeling these noises seep into her overheated head and wished that she could enjoy this all-too-rare moment of solitude.
Lottie had been ill for almost a week; she could time it exactly, to the day after the Great Admission, or the Last Day She Had Seen Him (these both being of such momentousness that they required capital letters). The night after Guy had revealed his own feelings for her, she had lain awake through the small hours, burning and feverish, her limbs twitching and restless. At first she had thought that her delirious, chaotic thoughts were due to her own terrible guilt. But in the morning, examining her throat, Dr. Holden had put it less biblically down to a virus and prescribed a week’s bed rest and as many fluids as she could manage.
Celia, while sympathetic, had moved out and into Sylvia’s room immediately (“Sorry, Lots, but there’s no way I’m getting ill with the whole wedding thing to sort out”), and Lottie had been left alone, with only Virginia’s regular (and, it had to be said, rather bad-tempered) trays of soup and juice and Freddie’s occasional checks “to see if she was dead yet.”
At times Lottie had wished she
were
dead. She’d heard herself murmuring at night, terrified in her delirium that she would give herself away. She could not bear the fact that, with her having finally echoed her own feelings, Guy was now as effectively banished from her as if she’d been Rapunzel in a tower with a new haircut. For while normally they might find a dozen reasons to bump into each other around the house or out walking the dog, there was no earthly reason that a young man—a young man engaged to the young lady of the house—should be seen to enter her bedroom.
After two days, unable to bear his absence any longer, she had made herself go downstairs for water, just to catch a glimpse of him. But she had almost collapsed in the corridor, and Mrs. Holden and Virginia, with much grunting and scolding, had carried her back up, one of her pale arms slung weakly over each of their shoulders. She had only a split second in which to catch his eye but knew from even that brief look that there was an understanding between them, and that had fueled her faith for another long day and night.
She had felt his presence; he’d brought South African grapes for her, their sweet, taut skins bursting with flavor. He’d sent up Spanish lemons to add to boiled water and honey to help her throat, bruised, fleshy figs to persuade her to eat. Mrs. Holden had remarked in admiring tones the generosity of his family (and no doubt kept a few for herself).
But it was not enough. And like someone dying of thirst and offered a thimbleful of water, Lottie soon decided that these small tastes of him had made things worse. For now she tortured herself, imagining him, in her absence, rediscovering the many fragrant charms of Celia. How could he not, when Celia spent her whole time thinking up ways of winning him over? “What do you think of this dress, Lots?” she would say, parading a new frock up and down the bedroom. “Think it makes my bust look bigger?” And Lottie would smile weakly and excuse herself on the grounds that she thought she might need some sleep.
The door downstairs opened again. Lottie lay awake listening to the sound of footsteps ascending the stairs.
Mrs. Holden stood at the door.
“Lottie dear, I forgot to tell you—I’ve left some sandwiches for you in the fridge, as we’ll probably go straight from church to the hotel for lunch. You’ve got egg and cress, and a couple of ham, and there’s a jug of lemon barley. Henry says you should try to drink it all today; you’re still not drinking enough.”
Lottie nodded slowly and mustered a grateful smile.
Mrs. Holden pulled on her gloves, looking past Lottie at the bed, as if considering something. Then, unsolicited, she walked briskly over and pulled the blankets across, folding them tightly under the mattress. That done, she reached up and felt Lottie’s head.
“You’re still a little warm,” she said, shaking her head. “You poor old thing. You’ve really had a rough time of it this week, haven’t you?”
Lottie had not often heard that softness in her voice. When Mrs. Holden, having smoothed back Lottie’s unwashed hair, squeezed her hand, Lottie found herself squeezing it back in return.
“Will you be all right by yourself?”
“Fine, thank you,” croaked Lottie. “Think I’ll probably sleep.”
“Good idea.” Mrs. Holden turned to leave the room, smoothing her own hair as she did so. “I imagine we’ll be back by around two. We’ll eat early because of the children. Goodness knows how Freddie is going to behave himself seated at a nice restaurant. I should imagine I’ll be hanging my head in shame before the dessert trolley makes it around.” She paused, checked inside her handbag. “There’s two aspirin on the side. Now, don’t forget what Henry said, dear. Keep your fluids up.”
Lottie nodded, already feeling the pull of sleep.
The door closed with a gentle click.
S
HE WASN’T ENTIRELY SURE WHETHER SHE’D BEEN
asleep for minutes or hours. But Lottie found that the tapping noise had somehow segued itself from dream into wakefulness and that, as she stared at the door, it was becoming more persistent. More insistent.
“Lottie?”
She must be delirious again. Like the time she’d become convinced that all the windowsills were populated by brown trout.
Lottie closed her eyes. Her head felt so hot.
“Can I come in?”
She opened them again. And he was there, glancing behind him as he entered, his blue shirt spattered with tiny spots of rain. Outside she heard the distant rumble of thunder. The room had dimmed, the daylight smudged and darkened by rain clouds, so that it could have been dusk. She pushed herself upright, her face bleary with sleep, uncertain whether she was still dreaming.
“I thought you had gone to the station.”
He had said he was going to pick up a crate of fruit. “A lie, all I could think of.”
The room kept darkening by degrees, so she could hardly see his face. Only his eyes shone out, staring at her with such a burning intensity that she could only think he must be ill, like herself.
She closed hers, briefly, to see if he would still be there when she opened them again.
“It’s too hard, Lottie. I feel . . . I feel like I’m going insane.”
The joy. The joy that he was. She laid her head back on her pillow, reached out an arm. It glowed white in the half-light.
“Lottie . . .”
“Come here.”
He sprang across the room, kneeling on the floor beside her, and laid his own head on her chest. She felt the weight of it on her damp nightdress, lifted a hand and allowed herself to touch his hair. It was softer than she’d expected, softer than Freddie’s.
“You’re filling up everything. I can’t see straight.”
He lifted his head so that she could see his eyes, amber, even in the dim light. She couldn’t think coherently; her mind was blurred, swimming. The weight of him held her down; she thought briefly that without it she might float upward and out the window, out into the dark, wet infinity.
“Oh, God, your clothes are soaked . . . you’re ill. You’re ill. Lottie, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—”
She reached up as he lifted himself away from her, pulled him back down. It didn’t occur to her to find excuses for her appearance: her damp, unwashed hair, the musty bouquet of illness; her senses, her sensibility had entirely lost themselves to need. She held his face between her hands, his lips so close that she could feel his breath. Paused for a fraction of a second, conscious even in her inexperienced state that there was something more precious in the waiting, in the wanting. And then, with a moan of something like anguish, he was upon her, as sweet and forbidden as fruit.
R
ICHARD
N
EWSOME WAS EATING BOILED SWEETS AGAIN
; she could see him, bold as brass, not even attempting to hide the rustling of the papers as he popped them in, one after another, as if he were sitting in the back row of a cinema. It was very disrespectful, and it was very definitely lax on behalf of his mother, who sat there beside him as if he were nothing to do with her. But then, as Sarah had often observed, all the Newsomes were like that, never ones to worry about form or decorum, as long as they were all right.
Mrs. Holden shot a particularly dark look at him during Psalm 109, but he paid no attention whatsoever. Just methodically unwrapped a purple one and, gazing at it with the unconcerned absorption of a cow chewing cud, popped it in.
It was very vexing being so distracted by the Newsome boy and his sweet wrappers, as she had particularly wanted to have a think about Lottie and what she was going to do with her after Celia’s wedding. It really was a difficult one; the girl must know she couldn’t stay with the Holdens indefinitely, that she would have to decide what she was going to do with her life. Mrs. Holden would have suggested enrolling her in a secretarial course, but Lottie had been adamant that she hadn’t wanted to return to London. She’d once suggested teaching—the girl was good with the children, after all—but Lottie had greeted it with a look of disgust, as if it had been suggested she go and earn her living on the streets. Ideally it would be nice to get her married off; Joe was very sweet on her, according to Celia, but she was such a contrary little thing. It didn’t surprise Mrs. Holden that they had fallen out lately.
And Henry was no help; the few times his wife had mentioned her concerns to him, he had got distinctly irritated and said the “poor girl had enough to worry about,” that she was no trouble, and that she would sort herself out with a job in her own time. Mrs. Holden couldn’t see quite what she had to worry about, as she hadn’t had to worry about where her food or clothing was coming from for the best part of ten years, but she didn’t like to argue with Henry (especially at the moment), so she let it go.