Got to get a grip, Dr. Holden told himself. Best not to think too hard about these things and shut the drawer.
He sat for a minute staring out the window of his office, past the circulation chart and the medical leaflets that some pharmaceutical rep had left the previous morning. Past the framed photograph of Merham’s respected doctor with his beautiful wife and children. Then, almost unaware of what he was doing, he opened the drawer again.
W
ITH A FLOURISH JOE GAVE THE BONNET OF THE DARK
blue Daimler a final gloss with a chamois, then stood back, unable to suppress the beam of satisfaction.
“See your face in that,” he said.
Lottie, seated silently on the backseat waiting for him to finish, tried to raise a smile and failed. She kept looking at the pale leather seats, conscious of the status of its next passengers in just a few hours. Don’t think, she told herself. Don’t think.
“She worried I’d be late, was she? Mrs. Holden, I mean?”
Lottie had volunteered, a means of escape from the mounting hysteria of the Holden household. “You know what she’s like.”
Joe shook his head, wiping at his hands with a clean cloth. “Bet Celia’s excited about going.”
Lottie nodded, trying to keep her face neutral.
“They moving straight on, are they? Where is it, down to London?”
“To start with.”
“Then some fancy country abroad, I reckon. Somewhere hot. Celia’ll love that. Can’t say I envy her, though, do you?”
She found that she could get through almost any conversation now; a month’s practice had left her with a face like a poker professional. Nothing revealed, nothing signified. She thought of Adeline’s mask, a benign outward appearance, disclosing nothing. Just a few more hours. Just a few more hours.
“What?”
She must have said it aloud. She did that occasionally. “Oh. Nothing.”
“How’s Freddie doing in that pageboy outfit? Mrs. H got him into it yet? I saw him at High Street on Saturday, and he told me he was going to cut off his own legs so that they couldn’t get him into those trousers.”
“He’s wearing them.”
“Bloody hell. Sorry, Lottie.”
She shook her head. “Mr. Holden’s offered him two shillings if he keeps them on till after the reception.”
“And Sylvia?”
“Thinks she’s royalty. Waiting for Queen Elizabeth to come and claim her as her missing sister.”
“She won’t change.”
Yes she will, thought Lottie. She will be happy and gay and carefree, and then some man will come along like a demolition ball and smash her whole life into impossible pieces. Like her father had presumably done to her mother. Like Dr. Holden had to Mrs. Holden. There was no lasting happiness to be had.
She thought of Adeline, whom she had seen yesterday for the first time since the Bancrofts had visited. Adeline, too, had been low, lacking her former vibrancy, had wandered around the pale, echoing rooms as if nothing within them were of any interest, as if she could no longer see the bold canvases, the bizarre sculptures, the piles of books. Julian had gone to Venice with Stephen. George had got a grant at Oxford to write some research document on economics. Lottie did not like to ask too much about Frances. And soon Adeline would herself be gone. She couldn’t bear England in the winter, she said repeatedly, as if convincing herself. She was headed over to the South of France, to a friend’s villa in Provence. She would sit and drink cheap wine and watch the world go by. It would be a wonderful holiday, she said. But the way she spoke made it sound neither wonderful nor like a holiday.
“You must come,” she said to Lottie, who was trying to look as if she didn’t care. “I will be all alone, Lottie. You must come and visit me.”
They had walked slowly out onto the terrace, to the mural, where she had reached out a hand and taken Lottie’s, very gently. This time Lottie did not flinch.
Lottie had been so deafened by the humming in her ears she’d hardly heard Adeline’s next words.
“Things will get better, dearest girl,” she said. “You must have faith.”
“I don’t believe in God.” She hadn’t meant it to sound so bitter.
“I am not talking about God. I simply believe that sometimes the fates have a future for us that we cannot imagine. And to enable them we just have to keep believing that good things will happen.”
Lottie’s rock-hard resolve had given a little then, and she had swallowed hard and determinedly looked away from Adeline’s intense stare. But that meant her eyes fell upon the mural and its two incriminatory figures, and then her face had crumpled in frustration and anger.
“I don’t believe in fate. I don’t believe in anything. How can the fates be looking out for us when they . . . when they deliberately twist things so horribly? It’s rubbish, Adeline. Fanciful rubbish. Things aren’t made to happen—people, events, they just collide, accidentally, messily. And then history rushes on and leaves the rest of us to struggle out of the mess.”
Adeline was very still then. She lifted her head fractionally and, raising a hand slowly, stroked the side of Lottie’s hair.
She paused, as if wondering whether to speak. “If he is meant for you, he will return to you.”
Lottie pulled back, shrugged a little. “You sound like Mrs. Holden and her ruddy apple peel.”
“You just have to be true to your feelings.”
“And what if my feelings are the least important part in all this?”
Adeline was frowning, confused. “Your feelings are never the least important part, Lottie.”
“Oh, I’ve got to go. I’ve got to go.” Lottie, biting back tears, grabbed at her coat and, ignoring the woman standing behind her, walked briskly through the house and up the drive.
The following day, when she had rather regretted her outburst, she received a letter. In it Adeline made no mention of Lottie’s temper but instead enclosed an address where she could be reached in France. She asked Lottie to stay in touch and told her that the only real sin was in trying to be something one was not. “There is a comfort in knowing you were true to yourself, Lottie. Believe me.” She signed it, peculiarly, “a friend.”
Lottie felt the letter in her pocket as she sat watching Joe dress the front of the Daimler with white ribbons. She didn’t know why she was carrying it around still; perhaps just having an ally gave her some sense of comfort; without Adeline there was no one she could talk to any longer. Joe she listened to as one did a fly buzzing around a room, with indifference, occasional mild irritation. Celia had been pleasant enough, but the two girls had neither sought out nor prolonged any contact with each other.
And then there was Guy, whose bemused, unhappy face haunted her, whose hands, skin, scented breath invaded her dreams. She could not bear to be near him, had not spoken to him since their meeting in the beach hut several weeks earlier. It was not because she was angry with him, although there was an anger there; it was because, if he spoke to her, pleaded with her, she knew it would weaken her resolve. And if he still wanted to be with her, even after all this, she knew she could no longer love him in the same way. How could she love a man prepared to leave Celia in that condition?
He hadn’t known when Celia told her, but he must know now. He had stopped following her around, stopped leaving notes in places he knew she would find them, little scribbled pieces of wretchedness shouting
TALK TO ME
!! in blunt pencil. It had been easy for her to stay close to Mrs. Holden, to ensure they were never alone. He hadn’t understood at first. He must understand now; Celia had said she was going to tell, and he no longer even looked at Lottie at all, but turned a little away from her in any gathering, his face closed and joyless, so that neither of them could directly witness the other’s misery.
She tried not to think of what might have been. For, painful as it would have been, she could have forced that cruelty on Celia while Celia still had the chance of finding someone else. How could she leave her to disgrace now? How could she bring disgrace on the very family that had saved her from it? And then other days she felt furious with him; she could not believe that Guy could have shared that closeness, felt those things with Celia. They were the only two people in the world to have felt like that, the only two to have glimpsed those secrets. They fitted like gloves; he was the one who had said it. Now, perversely, she felt betrayed.
“Why?” he’d whispered at her when they’d been briefly alone in the kitchen. “What have I
done?
”
“It’s not my place to tell you,” she’d said, pulling away from him and quaking internally at the fury and exasperation on his face. But she had to be cold. It was the only way she could get through it. The only way she could get through any of it.
“I’ll give you a ride back up, then, shall I? Lottie? Lottie?”
Joe was peering through the window at her, one hand resting on the roof. He looked animated, cheerful, at ease for once in his environment. “You’d best get out at the top of your road, though. Mrs. Holden will probably want the car turning up empty.”
Lottie nodded, forced a smile, then closed her eyes, listening to the solid clunk of the car door closing and the well-lubricated hum of the engine as Joe turned the ignition.
Just a few more hours, she told herself, clutching the letter a little tighter in her hand.
Just a few more hours.
A
LL BRIDES WERE BEAUTIFUL, THE SAYING WENT, BUT
Susan Holden was entirely sure that her Celia was the most beautiful that Merham had seen in a good while. With her three-layered veil and lined satin dress, tailored precisely around that size-eight figure, she knocked Miriam Ansty and Lucinda Perry’s efforts the previous year into a cocked hat. Even Mrs. Chilton—at the time a great admirer of Lucinda Perry’s rather daring violet-cream-colored going-away ensemble—conceded it. “She’s certainly easy on the eye, your Celia,” she had said after the ceremony, her clutch bag tucked under her bosom and her feathered hat tipped at a daring angle. “I’ll say that for her. She’s easy on the eyes.”
More than that, they looked a beautiful couple: Celia, her eyes glistening becomingly with tears as she held the arm of her handsome young husband, he looking stern and a little nervous, as they all did. If he hadn’t smiled as much as she would have liked, Mrs. Holden wasn’t entirely surprised; at her own wedding Henry hadn’t smiled properly until they were upstairs by themselves, and even then only after several glasses of champagne.
And Freddie and Sylvia had lasted the whole ceremony without fighting. Well, there was that surreptitious kick during “Immortal, Invisible,” but Sylvia’s dress had camouflaged the worst of that.
Mrs. Holden allowed herself her first sip of sherry, sitting carefully on the gilt-backed chair at the top table, looking down at all the tables below them, the great and the good, she liked to think, of their town. Considering how little time they’d had to plan the wedding, it had all gone rather well.
“You okay, Susan?” It was Guy Bancroft Senior, leaning over conspiratorially in his chair, a broad grin lighting up his face. “I meant to mention in my speech that the bride’s mother is looking particularly fetching this afternoon.”
Mrs. Holden pinked and bridled elegantly. It was that Autumn Berry lipstick. It had become rather a lucky one for her.
“Well, I think you and Mrs. Bancroft looked particularly elegant, too.”
It was certainly true in Dee Dee’s case; she was wearing a turquoise two-piece in silk shantung with little silk slingbacks in the exact matching shade. Mrs. Holden had been plucking up courage all afternoon to ask her whether she’d had them made specially.
“Ah. Yes . . . Dee Dee always scrubs up well.”
“Sorry?”
“Looks just as good in a pair of shorts and bare feet, though. A real outdoors girl, is my wife. My son takes after her. Or should I say, your
son-in-law
. . .” He laughed. “Guess all this is going to take some getting used to, huh?”
“Oh, we already think of you as part of the family.”
If only Henry would look a little happier. He was staring disconsolately out at the sea of friends, picking at his food and occasionally muttering something to his daughter. Far more than occasionally refilling his glass. Please don’t let Henry get too drunk, she prayed silently. Not in front of all these people. Not today.
“I had to congratulate Mr. Bancroft on his delightful puddings.” It was Deirdre Colquhoun, breathless and resplendent in an empire-cut coatdress made of pink damask (Freddie had insisted noisily that he knew the old sofa she’d got the fabric from; Susan Holden cast a quick look around to make sure he was nowhere near) and gesturing toward the collapsing displays of exotic fruit and cut-glass bowls of fruit salad. There were no hardened apples, morello cherries, or tinned pineapple to be found in these; there were instead sliced kumquats, paw-paw, and mango, dissected star fruit and opaque lychee, flesh of a color and texture unknown to the English guests. (They consequently gave many a wide berth, sticking to what they knew. Like plum. And orange. Real fruit, as Sarah Chilton surreptitiously muttered to Mrs. Ansty.)
“What a marvelous display you have put on,” Mrs. Colquhoun murmured admiringly.
“All fresh, all flown in by airplane yesterday morning.” Mr. Bancroft leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette beneficently. “I might add that they were cut and peeled by Honduran virgins.”
Mrs. Colquhoun went quite pink. “Goodness . . .”
“What are you saying, Guyhoney? I hope you’re not being a naughty boy!” Dee Dee leaned back on her own chair to see him, exposing a fair length of tanned thigh as she did.
“She never lets me get away with anything.” But Mr. Bancroft was smiling.
“You get away with far too much for your own good.”
“With you looking like that, sweetheart, can you blame me?” He blew her a noisy kiss.
“Well . . . anyway. The displays look wonderful.” Mrs. Colquhoun, a hand to her hair, began to make her way unsteadily back to her table.
Mrs. Holden turned to look at her husband. That was definitely his third cognac. She watched him swirl it joylessly around the balloon glass and swallow it with a kind of grim determination.