31
One Day in May
WEDNESDAY 26TH MAY 2010
“Did you know that Coco Chanel gave this to Enyon’s mother in 1928? At the time she was carrying on with his cousin, the Duke of Westminster? Coco was a Nazi supporter—so was Bendor, I suspect, but that was hardly unusual in the British aristocracy. They still can’t abide Jews or Arabs. At least they’re even-handed in their anti-semantics.”
“Anti-Semitism,” Damian Derbish corrected her.
Clarissa ignored him and slipped on the Chanel tweed jacket. The red light of the camera blinked and she knew she was expected to perform.
“After the war we wouldn’t have dared throw anything away. For us, a coat had to last a lifetime.” She checked the small clock on the side table and looked at Damian. “Hold on to your hat; it’s about to start.”
Seconds later, the walls of the Mistresses’ Wing shook violently. Damian, carrying his video camera, got to his knees and crawled under the dining-room table, certain they were experiencing an earthquake.
“Man up, Derbish,” Clarissa called over the infernal noise, “it’ll only last a few minutes. They do it every morning at six o’clock. Part of their tactics to get me out of here.” She raised her right hand in a clenched fist. “One shall not be moved.”
To Damian’s relief, he got the shot, albeit from a bad angle. He could use subtitles over the din. Later, Clarissa could do a piece to camera explaining how the Sleets were trying to drive her away using a dawn chorus of drills, the severing of pipes and the blocking of drains. Nothing could be proven; it was all the accidental by-product of major restoration work. The Dowager Countess had been offered and had refused alternative accommodation: Trelawney was her home and she’d leave feet first.
The ratings for the series, The Last Stand of the Countess Trelawney, had been falling steadily. There were mutterings that it might not be recommissioned if the viewing figures fell below a million. Now in its sixth consecutive month, it was due to be moved from BBC Two to BBC Four. Damian had achieved the longed-for promotion and had swapped the Skoda for a BMW, but he was now living in his semi on the outskirts of Plymouth. He hoped the christening would provide a much-needed fillip.
The drilling stopped after ten minutes. Putting her fingers to her temples, Clarissa tried to massage the headache away.
“Some might call this a form of Chinese torture?” Damian suggested, holding the boom close to Clarissa’s mouth.
“The night after the family left, in February, the pipes burst and water poured down all the walls from the tanks in the roof to the basement. Some think places are inanimate objects, without feelings, but the house of Trelawney was lamenting the departure of the last Earl. Long after the fire brigade turned off the pipes, the water kept coming. Explain that!”
“I can’t.”
“That’s what I said.” Clarissa flipped open a small compact and powdered her nose. There was a grease spot on her white silk shirt and the collar had frayed. She carefully positioned a chiffon scarf to cover the stain.
“Were you surprised to hear about the pregnancy?” Damian asked.
Clarissa didn’t answer immediately. She’d learned from watching her rushes over and over again that pauses could either be eliminated through editing or used to powerful effect. Anticipating this question, she had thought of many responses and even more ways of delivering them. She also knew that, unless her utterances were reported in the press and social media, her television show would be cancelled. She had inhaled the oxygen of publicity and found it intoxicating; there could be no return to the thin air of anonymity. In the days when breeding meant something, those lamented long-lost days of deference, Clarissa had been used to being stared at, revered and admired. Now the upper classes had been replaced by the vaguely famous; A, B and even C listers were more highly valued than the crumbling aristocracy. Her types, once the acme of society, were now has-beens. As she prepared to speak, she squared her shoulders and stiffened her resolve. Bugger discretion, she thought, and, taking a deep breath, turned and faced the camera.
“I was absolutely horrified. The girl had prospects, real prospects.”
“You must be happy for her?” Damian asked, adjusting the focus to a close-up.
“Happy for her? Do you have children?” Clarissa sounded incredulous.
“Two: a girl and a boy. I love them both,” he said.
“Children are overrated.” Clarissa made sure that her delivery was precise and dismissive. She imagined this short clip being replayed on all social-media platforms.
“Why did you have them then?” Damian asked.
Clarissa hesitated. There were so many things she could say, so many ways to shock, but she decided to tell the truth. “That was the arrangement. I got the ring, the status, the house, and he got the heir. I can assure you that, after two, I shut up shop. Enyon wanted more, but nothing, nothing was going to persuade me to go through all that again.” Watching Damian’s face told her that it had been the right approach; the producer’s mouth hung open with astonishment. “Do you know Kitto wanted to know if I had breastfed him.” She laughed.
“What did you say?”
“None of his bloody business.”
Damian wanted to punch the air. Another series was in the bag. Quivering with excitement, he tried to keep the camera steady.
“The problem for the younger generation,” Clarissa continued, “is thinking they are entitled to happiness.” She snorted derisively. “Happiness! They should try living through a war; we were grateful to be alive. This generation starve themselves willingly, go to horror films and freeze off their fat, but have no idea what it’s like to be hungry or cold or frightened.” Taking a fluffy brush with a head the size of an apple, she dusted her nose and neckline with violet-scented talcum powder and took a last look in the mirror. Slowly she got to her feet, one hand on the table for support, the other on her achy back.
“Don’t you love your children even a little bit?” Damian asked.
“Why is everyone so hung up on love? It’s just a biological twitch to try and make things appear better. Ask Tuffy—she says we’re just animals with pretensions.”
“I want to make sure your audience fully understands what you are saying.”
Clarissa considered the hundreds of thousands of people who tuned in to watch her programme; maybe some of them had feelings for their children and she mustn’t risk outright alienation. “One is fond of one’s offspring—” she paused “—at times.”
“Shall we have another baby?” Kitto asked Jane at the breakfast table.
“Gross,” Arabella said, pushing away her cereal bowl.
“That’s disgusting,” Toby agreed.
“We’re not that old,” Kitto said.
“You are far too old.” Arabella ran her hands through her tangled hair. “Besides, the thought of you two having nookie is revolting.”
“Nookie? That doesn’t sound like a future scientist speaking,” Kitto teased his daughter. “Shouldn’t it be copulation or reproduction?”
“That’s enough.” Jane stood up and cleared the plates.
“Sit down, darling, for a while longer. It’s so rare to have Arabella and Toby here at the same time. If only half-term could last all the way to the summer holidays.”
Two days into half-term and Jane was already looking forward to her offspring returning to their respective establishments. “I’ve got to be at work in half an hour, as well as preparing for the naming ceremony and an invasion of your family.” She stacked the plates noisily on the sideboard.
“It’s not till the weekend. Relax, Mum,” Arabella said.
Jane bit her lip. It was easier to ignore than ignite.
The kitchen was similar to Trelawney’s except on a lilliputian scale. Jane had painted it the same electric pea green with a border of daisies and had found an old dresser in the local auction house. There was a Rayburn and a smaller pine table. The floors were also made of stone but, as this house was only two hundred years old, the hearth was less pitted and worn. Outside, the façade and garden were kept severe and clean by constant salt blasting. Nothing grew except for pockets of stonecrop or flatweed. Jane had tried to plant a climbing rose on the sheltered side of the house but the wind ripped it out. On stormy nights, the house heaved and shook in the violent winds. Kitto found it romantic; Jane wished she shared his enthusiasm.
“Does she know who the father is?” Arabella asked.
“Of course,” Jane replied, although she had no idea.
“Is he coming?”
“Not as far as we know.” Jane ran through the mental checklist of chores ahead. Instead of sitting around and gossiping, she wished one of them might lend a hand.
“It’ll be hard bringing a baby up on her own,” Kitto said. “Why don’t we offer them a bed here? With Arabella going to boarding school and Toby at agricultural college, there’ll be two empty rooms plus the spare.”
“You can’t give away my room to a strange baby,” Arabella said crossly. “I need somewhere to go in the holidays.”
“I don’t want to lose two homes that fast,” Toby added.
“We will not be offering your bedrooms to anyone,” Jane said firmly. Far from fearing the empty nest syndrome, Jane couldn’t wait for them to go. She had spent far too long being someone’s wife and mother.
“I was trying to be kind.” Kitto reached out for her hand. Jane sidestepped the gesture and started to wipe down the surfaces.
“Perhaps you could apply for the position of manny?” she suggested.
“What’s a manny?”
“A male nanny.”
“That would be funny. I can just imagine Dad forgetting to feed the baby because he had a new idea for a poem.”
“Leaving it in the supermarket because he went off into one of his daydreams.”
The children laughed at their father’s increasingly long roster of eccentricities. Jane wished she was more patient with Kitto. Coming back from work at the end of a long day, she’d often have to go out again to try and track him down on the cliffs or tucked away on a distant beach where he’d forgotten the time or the way home. Like a child, he refused to wear jumpers or coats, and, when it was cold, it took hours in front of a burning fire to stop his teeth from chattering. They shared a bedroom at the cottage; there weren’t enough spares to allow the luxury of separate quarters. She loved her husband, but her feelings were more maternal than matrimonial.
Jane’s studio now employed seven people. Orders for her hand-printed wallpaper had grown substantially in the last six months, with commissions coming from America and the Far East. She had taken the press from the attic at Trelawney, dismantling it one part at a time, and reassembled it in a disused garage in the nearby town. Blaze encouraged her to outsource her designs to a factory capable of mass-producing wallpaper, but Jane refused; part of the integrity of her work was seeing the process through from start to finish. Her aim was not to get rich (although her family sorely needed the money); she was an artisan for whom the making was as important as the product. To speed up the process and reduce the administrative burden, her young assistants helped fulfill the orders and prepare the press. Bright colours had returned to her practice and her designs were full of joy and movement. Those who looked closely might see the same animals and trees appearing in each composition. No one stopped to ask if they were representations of real people. Jane was glad; the designs were still her private biography, her way of making sense of the world.
Arabella unfurled her legs and, propping her toes up on the table, started painting her nails.
“That stuff stinks,” Toby complained.
“Not as much as you.” Arabella smiled mischievously at her brother. “You are such a square. It must be Mr. Fogg’s daughter.”
“Very funny.”
“Does she have you in the crypt?”
“Arabella, that’s enough,” said Jane.
“Fucking weird that your father-in-law is christening the baby.”
“He’s not a vicar, he’s a preacher. And it’s a naming ceremony, not a christening,” Toby explained again.
“Why?” Arabella asked, putting the last touches to her nails, each one a different, gaudy colour.
“Something to do with respect for the child’s father,” Jane said, wishing she understood.
“He’s abandoned her, why should she care?” Arabella danced around the kitchen to air-dry the polish. Now nearly seventeen, she had lost any vestiges of teenage awkwardness and become a radiant beauty. Clouds of auburn hair framed a porcelain-white face. Her eyes were a shade brighter than the usual Trelawney hazel and her lashes were heavily fringed. She had her father’s deep-red bow-shaped mouth and her Aunt Blaze’s long legs.
Toby pushed his chair back.
“I’m going for a walk. Dad, do you want to come?”
“Yes. Jane, why don’t you take the morning off work and come too?” Kitto asked.
“I’ve got seven orders for Japan to make and ship out. Then I want to start cooking the food for the weekend.”
“It’ll go off by then.” Unsatisfied with one of her toenails, Arabella wiped the polish off and started again.
“Where’s Great-Uncle Tony going to sleep?” Toby asked.
“He’s found a B&B up the road,” Kitto said. “He’s being very mysterious, refusing to come to lunch on Sunday.”
“I need to go to Tuffy’s; will you drop me?” Arabella asked.
Jane nodded, swallowing feelings of irritation. “Be quick.” At Trelawney there had always been a place to hide. Their new house was so small that you could hear a cough two rooms away.
“What can I do to help?” Kitto asked.
“You could make supper?” Jane suggested.
“Is there anything to cook? What would you like? Do I need to go to the shop?” Kitto asked.
Jane was about to explain, but realised it would be quicker to do it herself.
“You two go for a walk. I’ll pick up some food on my way home.” Putting on her coat, she checked her face in the mirror and gestured to Arabella to hurry up.
“Mum, my shirt’s not clean. I need it for tonight.” Toby pulled a favourite T-shirt out of the laundry basket.
“You’re all old enough to do your own washing.” Jane walked out of the house, shutting the door firmly.
“Mum, wait!” Grabbing her shoes in one hand and her satchel in the other, Arabella, barefoot, rushed after her mother.
Two days later, early on Friday morning, Tony checked his pocket for his train ticket and looked around the studio room for the last time. He had made his bed carefully, put away the single cup and the saucepan, and turned off the gas at the mains. The day before he’d taken the last of his clothes to the Distressed Gentlefolk shop in Pimlico. Most assumed that, as a member of the aristocracy and habitué of yachts and palaces, Tony lived in a similar style to his many friends and relations, but this room, eighteen by thirty-four feet, had been home for twenty-seven years; he wouldn’t miss one thing about it. The last thing he did was to wrap up his only remaining valuable possession, a sketch by Whistler, in brown paper, his christening present for little Perrin. Taking a last look around his former domain, Tony considered the negligible impression he’d left on the world; a sybaritic life capped by a nonentity’s death. He doubted anyone would bother to write, let alone read, his obituary. His greatest achievement was two mentions in friends’ biographies: one misspelt as Antonio Scott, the other amongst a litany of party-goers. His lovers were all dead and his conversational style, once feted, belonged to another era. If the point of humans was to procreate and extend their own race, he had failed in that too. Of his family, only Blaze would remember him with genuine fondness, silently invoking his name when she drank a Bloody Mary or saw another in a white linen suit. It was too late to mind, let alone do anything about it.
Closing the bedsit door, he posted the keys back through the letter box and went out through the front entrance into Earls Court. Walking down the side street, he thought back to the days when one had to step over prone bodies and navigate pools of vomit. Not so any more; even this part of London was semi-gentrified. The Australians had moved out to Muswell Hill, the drunks to Lambeth. The bankers would never get here; the houses weren’t grand enough and the constant rumble of the M4 and the Underground would prey on the nerves of their emaciated wives.
At the corner of Cromwell Road, Tony was nearly knocked off his feet by thundering juggernauts. He held on to a lamp post with one arm, clung to the brown-wrapped parcel with the other and waited for the kindly yellow light of a free taxi. When one pulled up, the driver hopped out to help him in.
“Thank you,” Tony said, holding the man’s arm.
“Shall I put your seatbelt on for you?” the cabbie asked.
“I can manage that, just.” Tony smiled at him.
“Where to, guv’nor?”
“Paddington Station, please.”
The taxi driver indicated right and soon they were heading towards the station.
“Going to see family?” the driver asked.
Tony’s heart sank. He couldn’t bear the chatty ones. Didn’t they understand that private transport was an opportunity for peace? He wanted to take a last contemplative look at the city which had been his home for sixty years.
“I’m going to a christening,” he said, not wanting to be rude.
“You must have seen a few of those?”
“More than I care to remember. I suppose it’s touching that people want to go on having children.” Tony looked at the taxi’s dashboard and saw three family photographs.
“I know what you mean. Our Sarah’s expecting her fourth and she hasn’t got a pot to piss in.” The cabbie shook his head. “We do what we can to help, but there are eight other grandchildren, all needing something. There’s too many people on the planet already.”
Tony didn’t reply, hoping that silence would stem his driver’s incessant chatter.
“So where you going to?” the cabbie asked.
“Cornwall, the county where I was born.”
“Never been there. Keep saying to my missus we should go.”
Tony smiled. “It’s lovely, if a bit wet.”
“Will you stay long?”
“For the rest of my life,” Tony replied.
“No luggage. Not even a holdall?”
“All taken care of,” Tony said. “Just this,” and he held up the parcel.
“You’re my kind of fellow. Whenever my missus goes anywhere, she has to take a huge suitcase. Even if it’s a day trip to see one of the children.”
Mercifully the traffic wasn’t too bad and the taxi bowled through the park. Though it was early in the morning, there were plenty of people out. Blossom clung to the trees and the grass was lush green.
“What’s the baby called?”
“Perrin.”
“Odd name.”
“It’s a traditional Cornish girl’s name.”
“So it is a girl! One never can tell these days and one shouldn’t presume. I’ve got granddaughters called Ray and Charlie. Bloody confusing, if you ask me.”
Which I didn’t, Tony thought. He stared fixedly out of the window, hoping the man would stop talking. A group of horse riders went past: two little girls led by a gum-chewing battleaxe in a black fitted jacket. If the dreaded Clarissa had been there, she’d have wound down the window and told the woman that tweed was for hacking, black was for hunting. Tony sighed with relief—he’d only have to see her once more.
At Paddington the cab driver helped him out and Tony made his way to Platform 5 and the 9 a.m. train to Parr. He’d booked a single seat, facing forward. It didn’t take long to pass through suburbia and into the open countryside. Resting his face against the cool, grimy window, he watched the counties pass and the distances between towns grow as he sipped the free tea and ate the complimentary biscuits. He checked his wallet for the tenth time. The £20 note was still there. The following day, after the ceremony, he’d take a taxi to the cliffs above Lantic Bay. From there it would only be a short walk. His last steps to freedom. He felt no fear, no regrets or any excitement. He’d had enough of this life; better to end it on his terms while he was mobile and continent. Blaze and Jane had both offered to take him in, but after sixty years of independent living he was too old to try and adapt to new rhythms. He’d had a good life—not the one he expected or even wanted, but interesting enough. Recently he’d begun to feel tired. Every day was a battle against aching limbs. The simple act of putting on his socks took a whole hour. He couldn’t be bothered to read or go to his beloved National Gallery any more. Most of his friends had shuffled on. The best thing that had happened over the last year was exploring London’s museums with Ayesha. Unlike most of his family, she had the “eye.” On the whole, Trelawneys were heathens. He liked them well enough, but they were still heathens.
Ayesha lay on the deck of the Lady S, staring into Mustique’s azure waters. The boat was one of the best things about being married to Sleet, not least because the farther it went, the less she had to see of him. He had flown out for the weekend and she could hear him shouting into his phone, ordering his broker to buy this or sell that. In the first few months of their marriage, Ayesha had feigned interest in his professional life; now she checked the stock market only to see how much his net worth had increased. Thank goodness she had married a man with a talent for making money; he was going to need it. The bills for restoring Trelawney came in thick and fast: the latest estimate had increased from £25 to £32 million to fix and furnish. The roof would be £15 million and that was long before they addressed the six miles of plumbing, the twenty-seven miles of electrical rewiring or thought about underfloor heating. Ayesha was determined to make Trelawney the best possible version of itself.
Her thoughts turned to her mother’s story about being excommunicated by the family when they found out she was pregnant.
“How could they?” Ayesha had asked incredulously. “You were so young.”
“I was an ugly, inconvenient secret.” Vengeance had been her dying wish. Ayesha promised to fulfill her mother’s last request. She was surprised how easy it had been.
Sleet marched along the deck towards her. He was wearing swimming trunks covered with ducks and matching yellow Topsiders. His stomach and thighs wobbled in different directions.
“You look very Palm Beach, darling,” she said.
“Is that a compliment?” Sleet could never tell if his wife was teasing. He couldn’t, for that matter, understand her. If she spoke, it was careful, modulated and enigmatic. The fourth Lady Sleet might bankrupt him, but he’d never get bored of her.
Ayesha took out her iPhone and, scrolling through the photographs, showed Sleet a picture of a Lalique bracelet: a pansy made of diamonds and sapphires.
“I sent it to the baby as a present from us,” she said.
“I thought you weren’t speaking to the mother.”
“It’s not the child’s fault.”
“Did you fly the whole way to London just to choose it? The fuel for the jet would have cost more than the knick-knack.” Sleet was annoyed that his wife’s trip to London had happened when he was on the West Coast.
“I had other things to do,” Ayesha said mysteriously.
“Most husbands and wives share information.”
Ayesha didn’t answer. She stood up and put on her bikini top. Sleet had no idea that she and Mark had spent forty-eight blissful hours in London, taking a short break in their lovemaking to find a present for the baby. She wondered how her husband would react to the news if she won a place at Cambridge to read History of Art or if she told him that her beloved brother Sachan was arriving to live with them the following week.
“Where are you going?” Sleet asked.
“For a swim,” she said.
“I’ve only just got here,” he replied mournfully.
“And we’ve got three whole lovely days together.” Ayesha bent down to kiss her husband’s head. Three whole days, she thought. God help me.