1954
‘I just don’t know how you can be so cruel. It’s not my fault. If it’s anyone’s it’s yours. Although how we can be talking about it in terms of such a negative emotion, I don’t know.’
‘Is that so? Alice, we have two babies already; the house stinks of nappies, you’re exhausted and are about to become more so. We have no time together, no chance to talk about anything except how many so-called clever things Kit has done and whether Lucy is gaining weight. And then you expect me to give three cheers because all of the above is about to increase by one hundred per cent. Well, I can’t. I’ll support you to the best of my ability—’
‘That’s very good of you.’
‘—but you’re rubbing salt into the wound by demanding I should be pleased about it.’
‘You – you bastard!’ Alice experienced a wave of such hatred, such resentment of Tom, she felt physically faint. ‘How dare you talk to me like that? Anyone listening would think I’d gone out and got pregnant by my lover. I can tell you, right this minute, I wish I had a lover to get pregnant with.’
‘Oh, don’t be so ridiculous.’
‘I’m not being ridiculous. Tom, this is your baby. You might not remember the night of its conception. You came home late, drunk, and practically forced me to have sex with you –’
‘I have never forced you to have sex with me. That’s a filthy thing to say.’
Alice promptly felt violently remorseful. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I love our sex life. It’s gorgeous. I’m sorry, Tom –’
He said nothing, just nodded rather remotely; but she knew he had accepted the apology.
‘What I meant was, Lucy was only a few months old, I was still sore and exhausted and it was the last thing I wanted, but I thought I owed it to you.’ This wasn’t quite true, but she wanted to hurt him.
‘Oh, spare me. Of course some of the blame is down to you. Why couldn’t you have got your bloody contraception sorted?’
‘I – I don’t know,’ said Alice, suddenly miserably guilty. The fact was she hated the whole awful business of the cap, messy, fiddly, and at that stage it hurt just putting it in. But Tom was right; that was her responsibility. He trusted her. On the other hand, she had been trying to please him, to cheer him up as he struggled to do his bit as a father. And he was very good, he did help. She felt very contrite suddenly.
‘I’ m – I’m sorry, Tom,’ she said. ‘You’re right. I should have used it. It won’t happen again.’
‘Too bloody right it won’t,’ he said, killing the contrition at a stroke. Down the corridor Lucy began to wail; he looked at Alice with cold dislike and said, ‘I’m going to the pub. It’s quiet down there by comparison.’
Alice sat feeding Lucy and crying at the same time, her tears falling on the small, downy head.
Diana was staying at Claridge’s, while she looked for a flat.
She’d decided the Bellingers had done enough for her, and although Wendelien had once been such fun, motherhood had claimed her and she talked endlessly about the children, even asked Diana if she would ask one of the photographers she worked with to take some pictures of them. Diana tried to imagine John French’s reaction to such a request and shuddered.
She had been working for him for two days, modelling knitwear. Knitting had shaken off its rather dowdy wartime image, and been reborn as something luxurious and highly fashionable. The ‘chunky knit’ had been invented, with its big bold shape and thick wool. Vogue’s instruction was to ‘buy two sizes larger than usual, and fill in a V-neck with scarves, or rows of pearls’. French didn’t entirely approve of them, although he did admit they were rather fun. He was happier with the other new trend, of tight polo necks tucked into skirt or trousers, although he said they could look ‘just slightly tarty’, adding carefully to Diana, ‘But never on you, darling.’
She could have gone back to Yorkshire that afternoon, but Jamie was away at school and the atmosphere in the house was poisonous. It was all very depressing. The divorce process was under way. She had taken Tom’s advice on a solicitor and was relieved and privately surprised by his choice, half fearing some left-wing personage of rather modest social standing. Hugh Harding was the reverse: public school, middle-aged, extremely courteous, with a Lincoln’s Inn practice and huge experience; he assured her, in response to her anxious questioning about Jamie, that Tom was quite right and it would be extremely unlikely that she would not get custody of Jamie, not least because Johnathan was admitting adultery.
‘So I will write to this firm in York, saying your husband has admitted adultery, and that you want a divorce. I will issue a petition for you in the London Divorce Registry, which is situated in Somerset House in the Strand. Not the jolliest place, I might say, or that section of it – corridors full of weeping women and their solicitors.’
‘I won’t be doing any weeping,’ said Diana firmly. ‘And I have an income of my own.’
‘Indeed, I can see that. You have a London address?’
‘I’m looking for a house to buy in Kensington.’
‘Excellent. After that there will be a lot of other tedious correspondence about the child, property, money, settlements and so on. Now, may I assume that you can offer the child a good home, and that you will be available to take care of him in the holidays? You say he is at prep school. In the case of any brief absences, there will be a nanny?’
‘Yes, of course. I imagine you are referring to my modelling career. I assure you I accept bookings at my own discretion. I would never be away if Jamie was staying with me. Oh, and my parents live on the Surrey– Hampshire borders. He is very fond of them and we can go there together to stay, and ride in the holidays and so on.’
‘That all sounds very satisfactory. Of course, your husband will be entirely responsible for financially supporting the child – school fees, the nanny and so on. Your personal settlement would be a matter for negotiation.’
‘I really don’t want any money from Johnathan,’ said Diana firmly.
‘Mrs Gunning, that would be an extremely unwise path to go down. Let your husband make his offer, and we will consider it. So – is everything clear? Am I to assume I should go ahead?’
She told him he was to assume that and left rather quickly, taking a cab to the Savoy – conveniently close to Lincoln’s Inn – where she ordered a large gin and tonic, and sat in a dark corner of the bar, determined not to cry. She was surprised to find how difficult it was. A deep sadness seized her. Things had gone horribly wrong, but there had been happiness, once. She had walked down the aisle with genuinely good intentions, had been deeply fond of Johnathan, if not actually in love with him. It was – well, it was horrible, all of it; and a future, less glossy, more lonely, lay stretching ahead of her. She wondered if she could ring Tom Knelston. She hadn’t seen him for weeks, and she could thank him for the solicitor. It would be a good excuse. She could cite her need for a friend.
Friendship, she thought, as she looked up his number; it was scarcely a description of her feelings for him. She had, she acknowledged to herself, a serious crush on Tom Knelston. She fancied him to death, and the extreme unlikelihood of a happy outcome for her made it all the more intense. He was so bloody good-looking for a start, with those extraordinary green eyes and dark, dark auburn hair, so exceptionally tall and well built, even given his war-wounded leg – and he had a surprising flair for choosing the clothes that suited him, though he could afford so few. It gave him style, and marked him out as an individualist.
But it was also that he was so sexy – and scarcely aware of it, which increased it a hundredfold. When Tom Knelston’s eyes bored into hers it was not to flirt, it was with a genuinely intense interest. When those eyes wandered over her, explored her cleavage, studied her legs, it was a fearlessly honest appreciation of what she possessed. When – or, far more likely, if – he made a move, advanced physically upon her, it would not be with diffidence, not a request; it would be a sure, steady confidence that she would want him as much as he wanted her.
She was put through quite quickly, always a good sign; and when she had made her request for ‘a chat with a friend’, he agreed almost at once.
‘Alice is –’ He stopped suddenly, and she wondered what on earth he had been going to say. But instead he said, ‘Terribly busy with the children, and then tonight she’s got Jillie Curtis coming round – I’ll be glad to be out of the house.’
Diana wasn’t sure this was a flattering reason for wanting to see her, but she didn’t dwell on it; he was coming, that was what mattered. He even agreed to meet her at Claridge’s; she took that as an encouraging sign. Recklessness often preceded a decision to take things further.
She took a cab back, ordered a half-bottle of champagne from room service, and drank it while lying in the bath. She was fairly drunk, she realised as she got dressed; she hadn’t eaten all day, and the champagne’s effect on her empty stomach was fairly immediate.
Two hours later, wearing one of the ubiquitous cocktail dresses, in bright red taffeta, tight waisted with an almost excessively low neckline, her hair swept up in a chignon, a cloud of Carven’s Ma Griffe perfume surrounding her, she walked into the cocktail bar where Tom was waiting for her.
He stood up, slightly dazed by her beauty, her sexiness, thinking how dangerous it was to be meeting her today of all days when he and Alice, poor, weary, white-faced Alice, were still facing one another across a chasm of reproach and resentment. But the thought of being with Diana was compelling. Her phone call and his acceptance of her invitation had opened the gates, albeit briefly, to some kind of nirvana, a paradise of style and chic, where no babies cried, no nappies needed his attention, where he was smiled at, kissed, welcomed. She almost certainly wouldn’t be able to understand his misery, or help him out of it. It was simply that she was so far removed, with her beauty and her glamour, and the absurd combination of naivety and sophistication that gave her her charm; it was such a relief from his own world. That, with its combination of professional failure and domestic struggle, seemed to hold nothing for him. An hour of her company promised relief, however temporary. It was a crazy, dangerous adventure, he feared, the whole thing, but one that, having been considered, was irresistible.
‘I wanted to thank you for Hugh Harding, but it’s you who seem depressed,’ Diana said, looking at him thoughtfully over the gin and tonic she had requested. Tom was downing rather fast a Bloody Mary, to which he had been quietly addicted ever since she had introduced him to it in the Salisbury. Since the only person he knew who could fund such a habit was Donald Herbert, he had only had half a dozen since. Herbert had been intrigued by this new addition to what he called Tom’s upmarket repertoire and enquired how it had come about. Tom refused to tell him, said rather vaguely that he had just come across it. Herbert gave him a sharp look and said, ‘I see Diana Southcott’s hand in this. Am I right?’ Then he looked at him very seriously. ‘Don’t let her get her long red talons into you, Tom, whatever you do. She’s lovely and very sexy, and quite clearly after you, for which I envy you.’
‘I’m sure she’s not,’ said Tom rather feebly, trying to crush the streak of pleasure he felt at the concept.
‘Of course she is. But at the stage you’re at in this game, you can’t afford a scandal. Later on, when you’re established, you can risk a bit, but now people will never forgive you. Your public, such as they are, are in love with you and Alice and your family, filled with youth and innocence; hold on to that, Tom, it’s very precious and not to be thrown away.’
Tom felt violently irritated. ‘There is no question of Diana getting her talons into me, as you put it,’ he said. ‘And anyway, I think I can be trusted to make such judgements myself.’
He sounded pompous and he knew it.
Herbert looked at him, his eyes unreadable; then he said, in a voice Tom had not heard before, a voice at once amused and sharp, ‘Don’t be too sure of that, Tom. You have a long road to travel yet, most of it unfamiliar to you, and if you are tired of my company, then let me assure you I can find other pilgrims on the same journey and leave you in peace. But think carefully before you decide on that. You’re in treacherous company, Tom, surrounded by potential enemies. You need to be with people you trust; trust is the most important thing in this business.’
Tom felt immediately panicked. He owed everything to Donald Herbert – he would have got nowhere at all without his help, nor much further without it now. ‘I’m sorry, Donald,’ he said quickly. ‘I’m behaving like a brat.’
‘Your absolute prerogative,’ said Donald. ‘I’m just advising you not to fly too near to the sun. Now drink your fancy drink and let’s discuss the possible dates of the next general election.’
This conversation came back to Tom sharply now, as the waiter approached with the drinks on a tray; he looked round the bar, thinking he had been foolish to come at the snap of Diana’s imperious fingers.
‘Darling,’ Diana said, pulling out her cigarette holder and filling it with one of the turquoise Balkan Sobranie ‘cocktail cigarettes’ that were her latest discovery, ‘are you depressed?’
Tom, thinking not for the first time how extraordinarily perceptive she was for one so self-obsessed, found himself going against all Donald Herbert’s advice, and said he was, just a little. Then she moved slightly nearer to him, engulfing him in Ma Griffe and suggesting very gently that she would be happy to hear why if that might be helpful. ‘That’s what our friends thing is all about, isn’t it?’ And Tom went against quite a lot more of the advice, and told her far, far more than he sensibly should have done.