1951
‘Mummy and Daddy have asked you to Sunday lunch. Could you possibly bear that? They really want to meet you. I know it’s not the sort of thing you’d most like, but –’
Mummy and Daddy. Sunday lunch. How that summed it all up. All Tom’s anxieties, all his misgivings. And how he resented them, because really Alice was so lovely, and he was so happy with her. Loneliness banished, despair gone, wounds healed; he felt whole once more. He had told Laura, of course, had gone to see her, begged her forgiveness, asked for her blessing. He had felt, as he knelt by the grave – what? Nothing. He had waited a long time, for some sense of peace, of rightness. It didn’t come and he had left, anxious, almost afraid. How could he do this? he wondered, as he sat on the train back to London. How could he turn his back on what they had had, their perfect, perfect life and love?
For what he felt for Alice was not the same. She irritated him sometimes, she argued with him over his ideals, told him he should move into the real world. She fussed too much over her appearance, as Laura never had. She had always made the most of herself and had disliked her too-short legs, her slightly heavy breasts, her unruly hair, but she could do nothing about them as she would say. To Tom she had been beautiful anyway. Alice, not sure of Tom’s admiration, was always fretting about her hair, her lovely fair curly hair: it was too long, it was too short, it looked silly up, untidy down. Then she would worry about her weight when she was already so slim, turning away things like cake and chocolates. ‘It’s so daft,’ he would say. ‘You’re perfect, eat all the chocolates you want,’ and she would laugh and say that if she did, then he would see the difference in no time. She had a certain fondness for the kind of books Laura would have scorned – romantic novels, historical rubbish by someone called Georgette Heyer – and he would often find her reading the women’s pages in the Daily Mirror, when he had brought a particularly brilliant political article to her notice. In spite of all this he was so extremely, wonderfully fond of her. He didn’t quite dare let the word ‘love’ out, for that surely would have been a final betrayal.
It was hardly a whirlwind romance, Alice reflected. It was some months now that they had been going out. They were both so busy, Tom with his politics – one election the year before, which his party, as she thought of the Labour Party, had won by a hair’s breadth, and another coming up in October. She, with her nursing, and its strict schedules and endless studying to be done most evenings.
Tom worked so hard for the party – she wished she cared about it, as Laura clearly had. It was so important to him, it really did govern his life. Her concerns were more personal and romantic (until of course it came to her nursing which she cared very passionately about). She feared she was far too frivolous altogether for Tom, and spent much of their time together making a huge effort to appear more serious.
‘I just feel so inadequate,’ Alice wailed to Jillie, ‘trying to match up to her, to the wonderful Laura. I absolutely hate her – isn’t that awful? I just feel she’s there all the time, cleverer than me, more beautiful, a better cook, a more worthy person altogether.’
‘Alice, she wasn’t. Not more worthy, not cleverer, certainly not more beautiful – I don’t know about her cooking, of course. Listen, don’t try to be her, because you can’t. Be you – you can see he loves you.’
‘He’s never said so. Never.’
‘Well – I’m sure he will. You’re happy when you’re together, aren’t you?’
‘Terribly happy. He’s so – so – sweet. So kind. So tender hearted. He says the dearest things to me. Like I’ve made him happy again when he never thought he would be. Like he keeps thinking about me, just being glad I’m there. Like he can’t believe how lucky it was he met me.’
‘Doesn’t sound as though he’s not sure about you to me. Alice, stop fretting. Just enjoy it. Do you love him?’
‘Oh, Jillie, I do absolutely love him, although of course he is quite – odd. I’ve never known anyone remotely like him before, he’s so serious and so intense, but I hate not being with him. He’s even distracting me from my work, makes it seem almost unimportant. I got ticked off by Sister yesterday, nothing’s ever done that, nothing and nobody, not even Philip.’
‘Good heavens,’ said Jillie, laughing, ‘that does sound serious. And talking of Philip, has Tom – I mean, do you –’
‘No,’ said Alice firmly, blushing. ‘Of course we’ve talked about it, and he absolutely understands how I feel and he says he would never force me to do anything I wasn’t happy with, but actually – well –’ She looked at Jillie slightly shamefaced. ‘Actually, I can imagine doing it with him. I love him that much. All the things that I always believed, like it’s wrong if you’re not married, or at least totally committed, I can feel myself changing my mind about. I mean, if he’d asked me to marry him I definitely would. Go to bed with him, I mean. I tell you what, I jolly well want to,’ she added, blushing again.
‘Well, you know what I think about it anyway.’
‘Yes, yes, I do. And I never thought I’d come to agree with you. So – while we’re on the subject –’ She looked very directly at Jillie. ‘Are you? With Ned?’
‘No,’ said Jillie, and it was her turn to blush. ‘I’m not. I wish I was. But he’s never even asked me, and I can’t work out why. I mean, maybe he just doesn’t fancy me.’
‘Oh, don’t be silly. He’s crazy about you, anyone can see.’
‘Well, I don’t know that he is,’ said Jillie. ‘We seem to have totally hit the buffers. Sometimes I think he just sees me as a friend. It’s been going on an awfully long time, but then like you, we’re both fearsomely busy.’ She sighed. ‘Anyway, we’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you. I just think that, somehow, you’ve got to put Laura behind you. Not forget about her – you can’ t – but stop comparing yourself with her. She’s been dead for what –?’
‘Three years,’ said Alice. ‘And I’m sure Tom knows how many days. But actually, in his head, I think only about a week. Honestly, if she was alive and she’d left him, I could cope. But you can’t fight a perfect memory. And sometimes, I just know he’s thinking about her. Even when we’ve been kissing, or he’s lying on the bed holding me, he suddenly goes away, not really, but in his head, I can feel it, and I know he’s thinking about her.’
‘Well, Alice, I think you have to confront it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I think you have to talk to him about it. Tell him how you feel. Then it’s in the open, you can discuss it and if he obviously does – did – still feel more for her than he does for you, you’ll know where you are. Otherwise she is never, ever going to go away.’
‘It’s lovely to see you. You’re looking marvellous. Love the hair.’
‘Do you? I thought it might be a tad too short, but René does usually know best. You look pretty good yourself, Wendelien. Considering. How’s it going?’
‘The pregnancy? Better. It was ghastly at first, now the worst thing is feeling tired all the time.’
‘I should be getting some beauty sleep myself,’ said Diana. ‘Not that I’m short of it. Being pregnant sounds a bit like life in Yorkshire, supper and then early to bed. While Johnathan stays up, working,’ she added with a sigh. ‘Not that if he came to bed it would be exactly exciting.’
‘Oh, Diana. I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, it’s all right. It’s just boring boring boring. I should go mad without my second life. Here’s the barman. Let me treat you. Are you allowed cocktails?’
‘Just a little one. I’ll have a Buck’s Fizz. The orange juice part will be good for me. And – it isn’t difficult, getting away?’
‘Not in the least. He just looks at me in that weirdly vague way and says, “Fine, darling, whatever you want.” He did say that when Jamie starts school next year he won’t be able to come with me, but that’s all right, he doesn’t have to, and although Mummy will miss him, it’ll be easier in lots of ways.’
‘And who is this session for?’ asked Wendelien.
‘Oh – Vogue,’ said Diana carelessly, as if such a thing was utterly commonplace, ‘with John French. I’m thrilled, he makes one looks so marvellous, not a wrinkle or a droop to be seen – it’s all in his lighting, you see, it bleaches everything out. No one can work out quite how he does it, it’s a sort of magic. And he’s extraordinary to work with. He’s queer, of course, but so gentlemanly and he just loves women. The more ladylike the better.’
‘He must like you then,’ said Wendelien.
‘He does seem to. He says I have the bones. But I’m afraid I’m absolutely not his first choice. He works most of the time with people like Fiona Campbell-Walter and Barbara Goalen. You can’t take a bad picture of either of them. You can of me, I assure you. But he directs so brilliantly: terribly painstaking, spends hours just getting a foot or a hand or the angle of the head exactly, exactly so. Never touches the camera himself.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, he gets everything set up, lights and angles and everything, and spends hours working out the composition and the poses with one of his little boy assistants – standing in for the model, I mean. They look so sweet in their black jeans and T-shirts, posing as if they were in ball gowns, and then finally you get called in and he tells you where he wants you to stand and how, and then after about another half-hour fiddling, he summons one of the assistants, stands back, folds his arms, and says, “Now!” very peremptorily. The assistant presses the button or the Rolleiflex lead or whatever. He’ll do that a few times, and then you have to move a fraction, or he tells the fashion editor to tweak the dress an inch, and then, when it’s all exactly as he likes, he does it again. Fascinating. Tiring, though,’ she added.
‘And what sort of clothes tomorrow?’
‘Evening. Hartnell and Hardy Amies. I’ve been told to bring lots of costume jewellery; I haven’t got that much, but as it’s Vogue they usually supply quite a lot themselves. And evening shoes. Last time I got ticked off for only having two pairs of gloves. I must do a bit of a stock-up this time. Will you come with me? Or are you too tired? I’m staying on an extra day. Just for fun, really, and to do a bit of shopping. Mummy will love it and Johnathan just won’t notice.’
‘Are you sure about that?’ asked Wendelien. ‘It seems strange to me.’
‘Wendelien, honestly, I’m sure. He has absolutely no interest in what I do in London, and what’s more he doesn’t care. He wouldn’t even mind if I had a lover, I swear. God, I wish I did,’ she added, and Wendelien was quite shocked by the seriousness of her expression, the ache in her voice.
‘Well, I can’t quite believe that he really doesn’t care,’ Wendelien said. ‘And he must see the pictures in the magazines. It does sound a bit – odd.’
‘He is odd,’ said Diana dismissively.
God, it had been a mistake. A dreadful, shocking, obscene mistake: Johnathan felt so angry with himself. How had he made it? How had he been blind enough, deaf enough even? Everything she said now drove him to distraction. How could he not have seen it was witchcraft, that she had worked some spell, confusing him with her beauty, her charm? Why had he lacked the sheer common sense to see that she was using him to get what she wanted: the fashionable life in London, the chic house, the smart friends?
How had he thought she could possibly want what he wanted, care about what he cared about? He supposed she had tried at first; and he could see it was hard for her, the brutal weather, the harsh, forbidding landscape as it must have seemed to her – and yet so lovely when you got to know it, with its crags and waterfalls and great stretches of moorland with its ever-changing colours and vast, amazing skies.
It was so painfully obvious that she was never going to fit in. All the women he knew up here in Yorkshire had done their best, asked her to join things and to help with things and had in the early days asked them for meals. She had given a few and they had felt bound to reciprocate. She had so clearly not enjoyed their dinners, sitting looking bored while the talk ranged from farming to county shows and county politics. Of course, it wasn’t as charming as London gossip. But it all mattered to him, and he would have hoped she would make an effort on that account. His mother wasn’t easy, he could see that, but she had tried very hard at first to be welcoming and she had so much to cope with. Not once had Diana gone over to sit with his father or take him out for a drive, amuse him just for a few hours. That, more than anything, hurt and angered him.
As for sex, Johnathan literally couldn’t remember when they had last made love, and he was miserably aware that even there she found him a disappointment. He should have ended the whole thing immediately after the war, when he had known, could see as they sat there in that bloody restaurant in the Savoy how much she would hate it and how hopeless it would be. He could have done it there and then, cleanly, easily. He could have made her a generous settlement and they could both have begun again, for there had been no children. There he always stopped, thinking of Jamie, his beloved Jamie with the floppy dark hair and the wide brown eyes and the hero worship and the assumption that he was the source of every possible wisdom. Little Jamie, stomping round the farm after him, afraid of nothing, not the hugest shire horse, the most massive bull, the largest herd of cows – as long as Johnathan was with him, holding his small hand in his big one. He was his constant companion, sitting beside him on the tractor, following the plough with him, stomping through the muddiest field, watching, his eyes huge with wonder as the lambs were born.
He had bought him a pony for his fourth birthday, a sweetly sturdy Yorkshire Fell pony, darkest grey, the colour of the Yorkshire crags, with the black shaggy mane and long tail that were the breed’s trademark, steady as a rock but fast, or would be one day when it was asked of him. He loved to ride with Jamie when he had time, which was rarely; but Diana had usurped him there, for she had plenty of it to fill, and he never disliked her more than when watching her riding out of the yard, Jamie on the leading rein, heading for the moors, looking back and chatting and smiling at him.
He didn’t know what to do. He would have loved to have got rid of her but he couldn’t divorce her now. He had no grounds and besides, that could mean losing Jamie, or certainly risk losing him. The only way he could be sure of getting custody, or fairly sure, was if she could be convicted of adultery. That seemed, given her present mode of behaviour, a real possibility; but getting proof would entail sordid procedures like having her followed by a private detective, and the resulting court case would be squalid beyond belief. Maybe that didn’t matter; his mother would be delighted to be rid of Diana, she hated to be so much as in the same room as her, and it really would have no effect on their position in Yorkshire and the circle they moved in. And most people would be sympathetic, kind even; nobody liked Diana and although no one ever mentioned it, her increasingly frequent absences hardly spoke of a successful marriage.
But then he thought again – how would it affect Jamie? If nothing else, Diana was a good mother, surprisingly patient, loving and fun, endlessly inventive with games and treats, reading to him by the hour, playing the tedious make-believe games he loved. Did he really have the right to deprive Jamie of that?
All these things and more Johnathan pondered as he rode the tractor one long, lovely spring afternoon, when Yorkshire agreed to soften just a little and yield some blossom in the hedgerow here and an occasional cluster of daffodils in some hidden hollow there: and when he knew he would get home to an empty house after Diana had set off again to London.
Unbidden, the thought of Catherine came into his head.