Before leaving, Megan had got Tabby washed and dressed and then handed her over to the confused Doris, who, last time she’d checked, wasn’t a nanny or a nursemaid. Bettina took Tabby into her arms – poor Tabby! Already missing her daddy and ‘uncle’, and now she’d have to do without the lovely, laughing woman she’d known since she was a couple of weeks old. But why resign? Did it really have to come to that? People were so precious about their principles. God. She wanted to die. Wildflowers were wilting in the vase on the windowsill – oh. Oh. That was just bloody perfect.
‘No mint for the mint sauce,’ said Doris, almost through the door. ‘The delivery boy must have mucked up the order. But that’s none of my business, I suppose.’
Venetia was living in Lucille’s house now – ‘on a temporary basis, of course’. She’d been able to keep most of the monies made from selling the holiday home in Carmarthenshire and this supplied her with a modest annual income – enough even to keep on Henry, much to Bettina’s profound displeasure. Venetia was comfortable in Longworth, but complained that it was improper for two women of their standing to live together ‘like college girls’. Everyone besides the two women could see it sliding into permanence.
They arrived at Davenport in two cars. ‘Look who it is,’ said Bettina, watching from the window. Tabby was clamped, legs hooked, to her side. Bettina tapped the glass with her finger. ‘Look, darling, it’s Granny Venetia and Granny Lucille, come to see you.’
‘Why?’
‘To save the day.’
The chauffeur opened the car doors and Venetia and Lucille spilled out in a blur of fur and gold. Henry came out of the second car and went around to the boot to attend to the luggage. Lucille’s maid pushed open the passenger side, looking put out – obviously she’d expected Henry to open the door for her.
‘Where’s that little dewdrop of mine?’ said Venetia, coming with arms spread open, her fox stole swinging pendulum-like in front of her large bust.
Tabby clung on tighter, her knee digging into Bettina’s huge stomach.
‘What?’ said Lucille. ‘No cuddles and kisses for your grannies?’
‘She’s shy,’ said Bettina. ‘She’s had a difficult few days.’
‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Venetia.
‘I never liked Margaret,’ said Lucille. ‘False as all hell.’
‘Megan,’ corrected Bettina. ‘And you’re early. Your rooms aren’t quite ready.’
Henry planted two huge suitcases on the gravel next to Lucille’s feet. ‘Mrs Dawes,’ he said to Bettina, dipping his head respectfully. False as all hell.
‘How long were you planning to stay?’ she asked her mother.
‘A week or so, until you’ve found a new nanny. Where’s your footman?’
‘We don’t have a footman, Mother, I’ve told you this before.’
‘You don’t have a footman?’ asked Lucille. ‘If I’d known I’d have brought Dennis! Oh, poor Henry’s going to have to do the work of—’
‘You mean to tell me you’re in the habit of welcoming guests yourself?’ said Venetia.
‘Yes. It’s really rather simple,’ said Bettina. ‘One reaches out and turns a door handle and enacts a pulling motion. I can write you step-by-step instructions if you wish to learn the manoeuvre.’
‘What happened to that French chap?’
‘He was a house guest.’
‘What kind of house guest answers the front door?’
‘The bohemian kind,’ said Lucille, grimacing.
‘Is money tight, darling? Because—’
‘It’s not about money, it’s about independence.’ Bettina shot a look over at Henry, who was struggling to pull another suitcase out of the car boot. ‘And privacy.’
Lucille clasped her hand to her breast and laughed, her powdered wattle quivering. It was the way Monty had laughed when she came out with something charmingly idealistic.
Tabby pulled her face out from the crook of Bettina’s neck and peered shyly at her grandmothers.
‘What do you think about all this, Tabby?’ said Lucille.
Tabby returned her grinning face to the safety of her mother’s flesh.
‘We’ve got lots of lovely things planned,’ said Lucille. She poked Tabby’s back. ‘We’re going to be the best of friends.’
‘Where shall I have Henry put our things?’ said Venetia.
‘In the guest rooms,’ Bettina replied, and Venetia called Henry over and gave him instructions; his eyes flickered as he came to realise he’d be doing all this hauling and moving by himself – just a flickering, a tiny tick-tock of the irises. Henry had impeccable poise. He was able to maintain it even while standing, startlingly erect, outside the bedrooms of young girls.
‘Come to think of it,’ said Bettina, ‘have him put it all in Megan’s old room for now. Don’t want to interrupt the cleaner, do we?’
Megan had slept in the attic, up three flights of stairs.
Looking after a small child all day long – and Bettina was loath to admit this, fearing that it pointed to some kind of deficiency within her – was the most boring task she’d ever undertaken. Tabby made her play games of the imagination which made no sense and went on forever. Pregnant mermaids who go to the shop to buy sweeties but then the shop turns into a hospital and the mermaid isn’t pregnant any more and actually, she’s not even a mermaid any more, and by the way, the hospital is a tree, and – God, it went on and on. Bettina would lie on her side, smoking and feigning interest and wishing she could return to her books, which had beginnings, middles, endings, and logic. Bart was much better at this stuff. He took delight in Tabby’s meandering imagination and knew how to make it fun for himself, putting on different accents, which of course he excelled at.
Now Tabby followed her grandmothers around constantly and Bettina spent a few peaceful days in the garden, working on the third chapter of her novel – unnamed as yet – in fits and starts. More than once – at least five times, actually – she caught movement at the corner of her eye and looked up to see Henry watching her from various windows of the house. Same old Henry, disgusting as ever. She considered talking to her mother about it, but really there wasn’t any point. Venetia felt – had always felt – that Henry was a loyal, hardworking servant that she couldn’t do without, so much so that she’d fought to bring him along to Longworth, where Lucille had agreed to demote her own butler, not having any fondness for him (‘Napoleon complex and don’t get me started on his fingernails’), and it had caused all sorts of resentments and conflict between the staff already there. All this for Henry. Any accusations from Bettina had always been met with incredulity, as if Bettina were imagining things. Better to ignore the bastard.
She introduced a new character – a pale-faced young man with sadistic tendencies. John. She’d probably end up bumping him off. Fire, perhaps. Yes – fire. And maybe John could have a horrid sinister butler, and he could die in the fire too. Might as well make it fun for herself.
Lucille had been out all day – in the morning she’d gone to visit a friend who might know of a good nanny wanting employment, and now, new nanny procured, she was at the travelling circus with Tabby. Bettina was in the sitting room, trying to give Ulysses another go. Venetia came in holding a book under her arm. She set it down on the drinks cabinet and poured herself a glass of port. She stood with her back to Bettina, slowly sipping her drink. She had the look of someone enjoying the sunset from a balcony.
‘Betts, put your book down,’ she said, turning around finally. ‘I want to talk to you.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Something was left under the mattress of your old bed. Do you remember what?’
Bettina shook her head.
Venetia picked up the book she’d come in with. ‘What about now?’
She squinted. ‘Is that mine?’
A dark nod. ‘Henry found it when we were moving everything to Lucille’s. He left it in one of my cases and it’s been there all this time. And lucky me – I just found it.’
It was a green leather-bound book – one of her diaries. She snatched it from her mother. ‘If you’ve read this …’
‘Of course I read it! I didn’t know what it was.’
Bettina opened the first page. ‘1 January 1922’ in black ink. She scanned the pages. ‘Well, I don’t know why you look so aggrieved,’ she said, ‘unless you’ve no patience for girlish histrionics.’
‘Skip to the end.’
She flicked to the last entry – 9April 1928. A sudden change of handwriting style – the letters broader, more hurried. Dear Father, you were wrong.
I liked to fuck women.
I just adore fucking women.
‘Oh my God.’ She sat down heavily on the sofa.
They were silent for a long, long time, smoking their cigarettes and glugging their drinks, the space between them an undetonated bomb. Birdsong and the chop-chop of the rotary lawnmower drifted in through the open windows.
‘I was distraught with grief,’ said Bettina. ‘I wasn’t in my right mind.’
Venetia snorted. ‘How could you say such things about your father? How could you even think them?’ She took the book out of Bettina’s hands and opened it to the right page. ‘“You squandering whoremaster, you abysmal punchline to a dubious joke, you posthumous failure … blah blah blah … you are sorely hated, Father.”’ She looked up from the page, her eyes moist. ‘How could you? He would have died for you. How could you?’
‘Easily. He ruined your life.’
Venetia slammed the book shut and threw it across the room with such explosive fury that Bettina instinctively covered her stomach with her hands. She’d never seen her mother so angry.
‘He made mistakes! I’ve also made mistakes. You’ve made mistakes. It breaks my heart to—’
‘How are you not mad about the other thing? Why is this the—’
‘I am mad about the other thing! But I already knew about the other thing. You don’t think I forgot about that incident, do you? With that fat girl?’
‘She wasn’t fat.’
‘Your father adored you. Which was obvious to everyone apart from you. He does not deserve your vitriol. So he had a tart now and then, and he listened to bad financial advice. Grow up! I have known monsters, Bettina, real-life monsters – you have no idea. You’re young and stupid. Your father was better than most men.’
‘I was angry. I had a right to be angry – I thought he’d made you homeless.’
Venetia tossed back the last of her port, the glass knocking against her dentures. She closed her eyes and seemed to concentrate on her breathing. On calming down. She opened them and they weren’t angry any more – just sad. ‘I don’t miss the house, Bettina. I walk past it sometimes. A family from Wiltshire’s taken it over and I think, well, good luck with that! You know how much trouble we had with damp, and all those drunkards passing by on their way home from the Prince Albert. No, I don’t miss it. I’m probably supposed to pine for the home in which my children grew up – all those memories and whatnot. But it caused me nothing but pain, Bettina. Every time I walked past Jonathan’s bedroom … I miss your father more than I miss the house. I feel sometimes as though the marrow has been sucked from my bones.’
Her mother stared at the opposite wall with glassy eyes. ‘There’s a lot you don’t know. Parents only reveal what they want you to see. Just remember that he would have done anything for you. So he quarrelled with you? Pff. If he didn’t care about you, he wouldn’t have expended the energy.’
‘You say he made mistakes and you made mistakes—’
‘Don’t even try it,’ said Venetia.
‘Henry’s read it. You know that, don’t you? He read it and he planted it in your suitcase so you’d find it.’
Venetia shrugged.
‘For God’s sake, Mother! That man is a—’ Oh, why bother? It just made her sound like she had a childish fixation. And it did come across like that, didn’t it? Like she was a spoiled little cow with a grudge. The butler’s a meanie, boo-hoo! Fire him, Mummy, at once!
Bettina tore out the entry. She flicked open her lighter and held the flame to the corner of the papers. ‘I showed Father some of the poems in my journal once,’ she said, dropping it in the fire grate and watching it blacken. ‘He was not enthusiastic.’
‘Your father knew nothing about poetry, which is why he had no patience for it. You should have shown them to me. I’d have offered some shrewd advice.’
‘But I showed them to him.’
‘Yes, you did.’ Her mother nodded morosely – how old she looked. ‘Yes, you did.’
*
She was just going to tell her about the telegram she’d received, about Roger. Nothing more. If invited in, she’d decline with a show of reluctance. Oh, but I must dash, I’m so horribly busy. That sort of thing. But Jean wouldn’t invite her in. Jean probably hated her.
This was, of course, a terrible idea.
She paused at Jean’s gate, her hands wrapped around the black-painted metal rivets, and looked up and down the quiet avenue – cherry trees lined the pavements and the various hedges in front of the houses were clipped and boxy. Had Jean cried, she wondered (and how awful that she was only considering this now). Or had she raged? Probably both. Rage first, tears second. A few hours in the wardrobe and then out to that old lesbo pub to pick up an old flame. But it wouldn’t be the same and she’d feel empty. Yes. That’s probably how it had gone.
She rapped the door knocker, stepped back and waited. Jean would’ve closed up shop two hours ago – supposing there was a shop to close up; she was continuing to sell The Well of Loneliness, despite its banning. She had it smuggled over from France and hid it between the covers of The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette by Florence Hartley (which was frightfully ironic – hurrah, well done) and was very nervous about a police raid.
The door swung open. Jean was wearing a white shirt, long and untucked, and her hair was messy under a black beret. She crossed her arms, a cigarette sticking out from between her fingers.
‘What do you want?’
‘Nice to see you too.’
Jean glared at her.
‘I’ll get to the point then. I’ve some bad news, though it’s possible you’ve—’
‘Roger’s dead. I know.’
‘Oh.’
Jean raised her eyebrows. ‘Anything else?’
‘Um. I suppose I should ask how you’re keeping?’
‘None of your business is how I’m keeping.’
‘All right then. In that case—’ Movement to her right – a curtain swishing aside in the front bay window. A face peering out.
Megan’s.
Bettina took a big, gulping breath. It felt like she’d just been dunked in cold water – that feeling in the head, behind the eyes, of white noise and blank shock, of all existence, all consciousness being sucked out of the ears, then slammed back in. Jean was smiling. Such a nasty, gloating glee in her eyes. Such petty triumph.
‘Guess what?’ she said. ‘We were fucking the whole time. Right under your nose.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Bettina. And actually, she didn’t.
‘Believe what you like,’ said Jean, airily. She went to close the door and Bettina sprang forward, wedging her foot in the gap.
‘Guess what?’ she said, pushing the gap wider.
‘What?’ said Jean.
But Bettina had nothing to say. No ammunition at all. And she so badly wanted to hurt her back.
She snapped back her foot and kicked her hard, in the kneecap. And ran away.
Bart arrived home late at night. Alone. He had a bandaged nose and a faded shiner – purple turning to yellow around the edges – and he smelled like booze and piss. Bettina wrapped her arms around him and they breathed out their secret miseries into the warmth of a neck, the ridge of a collarbone.
‘Where’s Etts?’ she said.
‘He’s not coming back.’
‘Why? Again? Why?’
He shook his head. One of his eyes was spectacularly bloodshot. ‘He left another fucking note, the coward. He wants to stay in America. He’s very sorry et cetera, et cetera.’ Bart’s voice was hoarse, his tone lifeless. ‘He wrote notes for you and Tabby, too. I haven’t read them. They’re probably very magnanimous, but I’ll clue you in on the subtext: I’m a piece of shit and he’s had enough.’
‘But that’s not—’
They heard the opening and closing of a door upstairs and then the pitter-patter of footsteps, child’s footsteps.
‘Daddy!’ said Tabby, seeing him from the top of the stairs and carefully descending, eyes on her feet, then on her father, as if checking he hadn’t gone anywhere, then back to her feet. She reached the bottom and he picked her up and held her. Bettina saw her hands interlaced behind his neck, the fidgeting thumb disturbing his grey-blond hair.
‘Où est Oncle Étienne? Daddy? He said he’d bring me a present, he promised.’
Bart and Bettina looked at each other, pained.
‘Daddy? Can I tell you a secret in your ear?’
‘Of course you can, sweetheart.’ The skin around his nose tightening.
She put her lips to his ear and whispered, loudly: ‘I think Uncle Étienne got me a ginormous teddy bear and it’s orange and it’s called Pierre.’
Bart was crying now, but silently, his face scrunched up and his mouth stretched open to show creamy dabs of saliva at the corners.
‘We’ll buy you a teddy bear,’ said Bettina. ‘The biggest in the world.’ She could feel tears rising in her own throat. This was horrible. Just … horrible.
‘Why are you crying, Daddy?’
‘He’s crying with happiness,’ said Bettina. ‘Aren’t you, darling? He’s very happy because Uncle Étienne found a wonderful new job in America, didn’t he? A very nice new job, doing, um, doing – oh now, let me think … doing painting! Yes, painting sets for all the new talking pictures, and he’s very happy to be doing what he loves, and so is Daddy, because when our friends are happy, that makes us happy. Isn’t that right, Daddy?’
Bart nodded, his mouth still anguish-stretched. ‘I’m so happy for him. We must all be happy for him.’
‘But I want him to make me my breakfast in the morning.’
Oh, Christ in heaven. What could be worse than this?
Dear Bettina,
I am crying as I write this because I will miss you very much. You are a sister to me – it is no exaggeration that I say this. I am sorry I could not see you in person to say goodbye, I did not know the course of events would lead me to stay in Los Angeles. I must keep this brief because I can see Bart will wake up soon. It is terrible that I am doing this, but I have not been my true self for a very long time and it diminishes my soul. Please forgive me my cowardice, I am like a worm wriggling into the deep earth and I am ashamed of myself. Know that I love you and wish you all the health and happiness, for you deserve it. My heart is breaking but I must do what is right.
Your loving soul brother,
Étienne
Dear Tabby,
You will know by now that I am staying to live in America. I want you to know something else: I will miss you more than anyone. You are the smartest, sweetest child in all of Britain and your smile, it dazzles even the sun. Because you are a girl, you will be valued throughout your life on your appearance, and luckily, your appearance is very pleasing, but know this: you are more than just your looks. You are a tiny conquering queen with a brain that is better than the brains of most boys. Be brave and be bold. Soon you will be a big sister. What a lucky child to have a big sister like you! I am sorry that I will miss you growing up – I am more sorry about this than anything else – but when I am settled here in LA I will write to you with my address and we can be pen friends and you can practise your French. But I will understand if you are upset with me and do not wish to write. Ma petite, tu me manques tellement que ça me brûle le coeur.
Oncle Étienne