‘Eleanor told you that?’ For the first time Paul seemed to have caught on that it went deeper than a grope with the chauffeur. But then Roy felt scared. The way Paul was still staring; waiting for an answer. And now Roy realized he couldn’t tell him she’d told him direct. Paul would be sure to think she would’ve asked him to keep it quiet.

  ‘Picked up the phone when she was on to her old woman,’ he said lightly. ‘Extensions all over the ’ouse. Shoulda put the bleeder straight down …’ He looked straight at Paul. ‘Yer know how it is … human nature to be curious.’

  Still those blue eyes probing him. ‘I know how it is,’ murmured Paul. He took off the hat and drummed his fingers on the crown. ‘So where to? Keep on going, will you, and too bad who gets hurt?’

  ‘Got no choice. Like if I had five minutes left on earth, I’d stay with her till the last second.’

  Paul walked briskly to the door, and tossed away the hat. ‘That’s a pity, Roy. A big big pity.’

  21

  The rain drummed down harder on the roof of the car. As Paul left the park and changed down for the bend, which opened the finest prospect of the house and formal gardens, he saw the battlements and gables mistily through a curtain of falling water. The two weeks Eleanor had asked for at Castle Delvaux were almost over now, and he was returning to his own – a day earlier than agreed, in order to make sure of seeing her.

  Four days earlier he had received an overwrought letter from his near neighbour, Veronica Markham, in which she hadn’t openly said Eleanor was having a nervous breakdown, but had heavily implied it. Nor was Paul left in much doubt that Veronica thought him to blame. Elly had apparently turned up for dinner at the Markham’s wearing a purple wig and ‘in the miniest of minis made of what looked like hundreds of bits of broken glass’. Not only that – she had thrown ‘an amazingly embarrassing luncheon party where guests had been offered “reefers” with their coffee and bullied into dancing in the Tuscan Gallery to a juke-box’. ‘The ubiquitous Rory’ had been there as ‘Elly’s only house guest’. ‘Everyone drank lashings of some of the oldest and rarest Tokay, Jack Parnham had ever tasted, eighteen-sixty something! Absolutely thrown away, he said, on anyone who didn’t really understand wine, and quite priceless.’

  Parked outside the gatehouse, Paul saw a Mini-Cooper ‘S’ tricked out with swirling multi-coloured floral patterns. Whatever attempts he had made to come to terms with the county, Eleanor had plainly been doing her damnedest to destroy. Spotting Martin, the head gardener, crossing the Azalea Walk, Paul ran down the terrace steps. Had Lady Carnforth been showing any interest in the gardens since her return? The old man said yes, she’d been round everywhere with him, including the peach and orchid houses. Paul had noticed that Martin was wearing a fluorescent badge bearing the words: ‘I DIG GARDENS’. The gardener laughed when Paul looked more closely. Her Ladyship had given him another saying, ‘FLOWER POWER’, but he preferred the one he had on. Not knowing whether to feel amused or angry, Paul returned to the house. However she’d been behaving, Eleanor seemed to have kept the devotion of the staff.

  As Paul left the ante-room outside the Marble Hall and approached the great staircase, a strange-looking person came tripping to greet him (as incongruous against a backdrop of Jacobean oak as a nudist at a Guildhall Banquet). Forewarned, Paul knew it was Eleanor, but still gaped. Wearing a clinging red woollen garment, half-skirt half-jersey, her closely-cut hair and heavily outlined eyes made her resemble an exquisitely made modern doll – one incredibly that mimicked the way his wife had once held herself and moved.

  Eleanor seemed not at all put out to see him a day before expected. She’d been having such fun; though she was afraid she hadn’t got anywhere near the standards he had set. As for her clothes … how right he’d been about the silliness of being stuffy about the wilder Fab-Street gear.

  During dinner she treated him to a bravura performance: shrugs of ennui and resignation one moment, then playful little stabs intended to startle and shock. What were new sensations for if not to be savoured? She’d been going to some extraordinary parties with Roy in town. ‘My latest thing is to say I’m a German fashion designer, separated from my husband Count Ernst von Badfunken. I’m getting frightfully good at the accent. The last one was a Chocolate Party. I went as Turkish Delight … foam rubber looks marvellous painted pink.’

  Quite often Paul laughed. At last he asked quietly how long she thought she could keep it up. He contrived to sound good-humoured; but when she told him his question implied comparisons with a past that wasn’t relevant, his mood turned black. Not the least of his problems was an itch of physical longing.

  Drinking coffee she offered him some ‘stunning Nepalese hash’ Roy had left. She seemed disappointed when he refused. ‘No point smoking on my own.’ Paul also turned down dancing in the Tuscan Gallery; he remembered how moved Elly had been on first seeing the famous Gobelin tapestries it housed. When he pressed her to say how long she thought their separation would last, Eleanor was more forthcoming. ‘When you stop treating the whole thing like a disarmament conference, I’ll think about it.’ He didn’t understand and told her so. ‘It’s just so negative,’ she complained. ‘You’re going to say, “Give up this, give up that,” and if I say yes, then you’ll agree to give up the same things; which is exactly the mistake I made with you … wanting marriage to be a dictatorship stamping out inequalities in pleasure.’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe, when you’re more generous, we’ll be able to work something out.’

  She was lying back on the ottoman in the Cedar Drawing Room, displaying more leg than Paul found comfortable to look at. He said sharply, ‘You mean Roy has you three days a week, I get the other three, and we toss for Sunday?’

  ‘That’s absolutely typical,’ she cried impatiently. ‘You’re saying, “Fair shares all round, because I say so.” Which takes no account of me being in love with Roy, or how you ignored everything I wanted until I got on with a life of my own. It’s no good thinking you can still slot me into your list of priorities; I’ve got my own now.’

  ‘Do you think they’re consistent with marriage?’ he asked dully.

  She clapped delightedly. ‘In the “inconsistent with marriage stakes” I’m an also-ran. In fact I’m so far behind, it’ll be months before I get near you.’

  Too agitated to think clearly, all he could do was feel his rancour thickening. ‘You forced me to get rid of Gemma, threatened Matthew, doing me more harm than …’

  ‘I know, I know,’ she exclaimed, jumping up and coming up to him. ‘I was a fool … I wanted too much from you.’

  ‘And now you want nothing at all?’

  She looked amazed. ‘I’m asking you to be generous and patient; far beyond what most husbands or wives would do for each other.’

  ‘You want to punish me,’ he murmured, ‘fine, wonderful. I take the tablets ten times a day, though they’re the most disgusting ones you could find; guaranteed to make me sick and sour and hateful …’ He stood up and faced her. ‘I’m not saying I won’t take them, but I must have some indication of how long for, and whether you’ll look twice at me when I’ve finished.’

  ‘But Paul,’ she insisted, ‘I like you, I want to look at you … but at the moment, not just you.’ She smiled sympathetically. ‘You’re really asking me when I’ll be ready to do that,’ a slight pause, ‘aren’t you?’

  Her dark eyes seemed to shine and concentrate all the light in the cavernous room. He felt like beating her, tearing her hair out.

  ‘Yes,’ he shouted, ‘yes, yes, yes.’

  After a long silence she sat down next to him and whispered, ‘I can see that it would be wrong to expect so much, and give you no sign at all.’

  The soft tone of her voice sent an unexpected quiver of desire through his whole body. Already he suspected that she would try to buy time for her affair by offering herself. But he was still shocked by the fierceness of her kiss when it came; the way she used her tongue; pressed hard against him; as if in vicious fury she were stripping the event of all poetry and tenderness. Aroused, and angry, he pushed her away. A sense of desolation descended on the room. She got up and walked away, shoulders hunched as if walking into a wind.

  ‘Elly,’ he sighed, ‘I wouldn’t mind a marriage so open that you could walk right through without noticing. It’s just him I can’t stomach.’

  ‘I’m afraid that can’t be helped,’ she replied in a low, firm voice.

  He went to bed alone in the dressing room which he had occupied since Eleanor’s departure, but couldn’t sleep. The room was hung with embossed Cordova leather which gleamed dimly in rays of moonlight piercing the gap between the damask curtains. He drew them back, and sat in the embrasure of the window, gazing out at the silvery gardens. He had got nowhere with her, clearly. So should he therefore cut the knot, or let things ride? He could get on with new plans; there were other women in the world; in future there would be no need to restrain himself or consider her, whether separation were formalized or not. So why let anger force him to a settlement that would slash the estate’s income, and restrict his choices? Ignoring the pair of them had been the better way.

  So reason told him; but, back in bed, he dreamed that they were making love and took no notice when he shouted at them.

  At dawn he woke to find her slipping into bed beside him. She said not a word; nor did he. After a long silent kiss, she seduced him: gently, gracefully; with tenderness inspired by guilt, pity …? He didn’t try to guess; if it had appeased her conscience or technically meant he had ‘condoned’ her affair, he could not find it in him to feel resentment. He slept deeply for an hour afterwards, and on waking found her gone. Bright sunlight filled the room.

  He went down in his dressing gown and joined her for breakfast in the small room known as the Morning Parlour. Watching her, he suddenly felt that a deep shadow had lifted from him; no urge even to enquire when she would leave. Drinking coffee and eating toast, he felt well-disposed enough towards her to say that she could discount the vague threats he had made to Roy. He smiled. ‘The extraordinary thing is, in a way I put him up to it.’ She looked up sharply, as if suspecting some Machiavellian lie. ‘No, no,’ he laughed. ‘We’d watched the film together … had been drinking; I was feeling sorry for myself, and I said to him, a joke of course, that what’d really help me would be something to make you feel guilty …’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘I think I even said an affair …’ He broke off, surprised but elated to see how shocked she looked.

  ‘And what did he say?’ she asked shakily.

  Dizzily Paul recognized the opportunity he had been blind to. He stared at the scalloped butter dish and murmured, ‘He said something like, would I want him to have a go if you didn’t think him such a lout.’ Paul didn’t dare look at her to judge the effect of his words. ‘Then I made a silly remark … more or less to the effect that any change was an improvement when things were bad enough. Meant it as a joke; but he didn’t see that … said, with a funny sort of grin, what a sick thing to say.’ He paused. ‘That was just about the end of it. I felt angry to be misunderstood, and said, “Let’s drop it.”’ Paul took a sip of coffee and raised his eyes. She was sitting as if paralysed. ‘Oh, Elly,’ he said lightly, ‘you can’t seriously think he was ever that much under my thumb.’ He managed an easy laugh. ‘And even if he did get started with you for the wrong reasons, he certainly didn’t seem eager to stop when I suggested it.’

  Still no word from her. He could not resist offering consolation. ‘He’s dotty about you. Never stopped telling me.’

  She rose from the table, as if waking, and left the room. Out on the gravel sweep half-an-hour later, Paul remembered Lord Herrick leaving in a different car. As Eleanor got into her brightly painted mini, he told her what Roy had said about her father. ‘I’m sure he doesn’t mean to be indiscreet, but I think you should be careful when you use the phone at his place …’

  She let out the clutch with a violent jerk and hit the accelerator. One of the gravel chippings caught his cheek and stung sharply, but it made no difference to his mood. When everything had been going as if fate were her lapdog, a few remarks had redressed the balance; tilted it his way. Shadow boxing as he went, he danced through the gatehouse arch.

  22

  Roy Flannery lay behind closed blinds in the master bedroom of his country house, trying to preserve the relatively balanced mood he had achieved during the past twenty-four hours. But looking at the futurist abstract on the opposite wall, he still half expected it to turn into other things, like grinning faces or insects. Most days during the previous week he had dropped acid.

  His misery had started when Eleanor telephoned to cancel a date. No reason given – but she had sounded almost too broken up to speak. When he’d gone to the house, a maid had told him Lady Carnforth was away and wouldn’t be back till the end of the month. After that – the long bad trip he was still getting over, and towards the end of it the phone call he had almost given up hope of. Eleanor on the line, telling him she wanted to spend a few days at his place in the country. Incredible; pure magic.

  He was still nervous, naturally. She had sounded more like herself, but still not right. With five days to go before her visit, he was determined to do everything he could to make her stay a success. On an earlier visit she’d complained because there were no books in the loos or bedrooms. What sort ought there to be? Oh, a random selection. Something about the county, some humorous writing, some crime novels; Trollope, Jane Austen, a decent biography … things for different moods. So he spent over a hundred quid on books. Since buying the house, he’d never got round to much more than fitted carpets throughout, a few abstracts, and some black leather chairs. Not a lot of colour had been her comment. So now he bought some Turkish rugs, and tables with beaten brass tops.

  In the dining room he made changes too, but trusted his own taste: no colours except white, black and silver. A glass table with steel legs, a fantastic chandelier, the only real antique in the place, Waterford eighteenth century, a silver horse on a marble plinth. For some time he’d liked huge pop art cartoons: zowie, zap, zoom; with star bursts for punches, and girls with pear-drop boobs. But the colours seemed too harsh, so he bought some of the original steel printing plates, which looked great running across the whole of one wall. Since they would be spending plenty of time eating, he hired a cordon bleu cook. What else? Flowers – mainly lilies, and loads of them. After that, nothing to do but wait.

  *

  Something seemed wrong from the moment she arrived. Six weeks since she’d visited, and since then he’d been here, there, and everywhere getting things done. But not a word from her; not even, ‘Why did you bother?’ And she’d never been thoughtless like that.

  Often in the past she’d seemed to get a kick out of dazzling him with sudden switches; so he kidded himself she was only acting distant. Not wanting her to know she’d hurt him, he took her in his arms, turning her face till he found her lips. She pulled away, but only for a second or two, before going dead on him; not quite dead though, because when he started kissing her properly she shuddered and kissed him back, as if she didn’t want to, but couldn’t help it. He got the feeling he was kissing two different people – one sulky and resentful, the other loving and eager.

  She’d arrived an hour before lunch, so there shouldn’t have been anything stopping them going straight to bed. Instead she drew him down beside her on one of the leather sofas, and stared at him in the same mixed-up way, before kissing him fiercely. He got a spooky feeling that, though she was enjoying herself, she wasn’t kissing a person at all – just lips and skin she couldn’t leave alone. When she started twisting his hair into odd shapes, he couldn’t stand it. She reminded him of a rich customer mucking around with a hat she couldn’t decide whether to buy.

  ‘Something’s happened, right?’ he blurted out, moving away.

  She nodded; then said slowly, ‘Why didn’t you tell me Paul suggested seducing me?’

  She was serious all right, but he couldn’t believe she didn’t know the answer. ‘I didn’t want to be that mean … telling you what a sick guy he is.’

  ‘Weren’t you sick too, Roy? Coming to see me at all?’

  And still he expected a smile; something to tell him she still trusted him. ‘Okay, I wanted to help him, but not how he wanted.’

  No anger; just disappointment. ‘Would you have come if he’d never encouraged it?’

  ‘It’s what happened after that matters,’ he replied, hearing raw panic in his voice.

  ‘You think the way things begin is unimportant?’ Her voice ice-calm.

  ‘In comparison with what we feel now … yes.’

  A long silence; her misery was horribly real. At last she whispered, ‘I did what you wanted me to.’ He stared at her in confusion. ‘Separate identities in marriage … you can’t have forgotten what you said. Sweet-talk him, don’t force decisions … give him enough hope to stop him saying, “Him or me”.’

  ‘I didn’t wanter lose yer,’ he choked. ‘But when I knew how yer felt I said, “Do it your way and I’m right there with yer.”’

  ‘But you still thought I’d twisted your arm …’ She broke off and gazed distractedly at the floor. Suddenly he understood what she’d been hinting.

  ‘So yer let him screw yer and it was a fuckin’ disaster … and now that’s my fault?’ He kicked over the glass table with its pile of new books bought for her. ‘Some chicks can fuck and it don’t mean more than a slash … okay, for others it’s gotta be a big emotional number every time. Lotsa wives can go back home after the real thing, and think about tomorrow’s shoppin’ while their old man’s on the job. You gotta know yerself. Like if it’s gonna be too nasty, yer face up to whatever else.’