A Winter's Child (21 page)

‘The training,' said Kit.
‘Any
training should be so bloody hard that the job itself should seem easy. If they ever get that far.'

Not everyone did. Before a single guest had set foot in the hotel an under-chef had been chased from the kitchen by Aristide Keller who, in his incoherent fury, had failed to clarify whether he suspected the terrified young man to have had designs on his recipes or his wife. And there was, of course, the dangerous restlessness among the female staff caused by the arrival of the jazz musicians and of MacAllister, with his rakish charm and his silver shakers, behind the cocktail bar. But what, she asked herself, could possibly happen in an hotel kitchen or bedroom or stillroom which, after her service in France, could seriously unnerve her?

‘Come and work for me properly,' Kit asked her again, choosing his moment and she knew that her reluctance had nothing at all to do with the hotel.

‘Heavens – I have nothing to offer.'

‘Yes, Claire. You do.' And his voice was firm now, ready to persuade and then, if necessary, to push her not very far, perhaps, just one step at a time, but definitely, pleasantly, with immense anticipation, in the direction he wished her to go. ‘You have a deft hand with the oil on troubled waters.'

‘I dare say. But that hardly seems to equip me for a career.'

‘Don't be so sure. The cocktail bar is bound to cause trouble you know.'

‘Oh yes. So Edward – my mother's husband – tells me.'

‘He's right. Young ladies getting a drop too much, gin and vermouth, and more than they know how to handle of Mac-Allister's blarney. I can see it all.'

‘So can I. Jealous scenes. Hysterics in the powder room …'

‘Exactly. And
I
can't follow a young lady into the powder room, Claire, and tell her she'll feel better tomorrow. And then there's Mr Clarence.'

‘Is there really? Do I know him?'

‘I hope not. You shouldn't. He's the personable young fellow I've just hired to stand at the front desk.
Very
picturesque. I reckon he could charm the birds off the trees, which is what I hired him for. But on a bad day – and there's no doubt he'll have bad days – he just might book two complete strangers into the same bed. I feel I could rely on you to get them out again without too much embarrassment, I'm not inventing work, Claire, or anything else you might suspect me of. I need you.'

‘Yes.'

‘Now what does that mean?'

And she had known exactly what it was in his voice and his face and in her own rapidly, perhaps treacherously stirring senses which had made her blush.

She had promised to think the matter over. Today she had brought him her answer.

‘Have you come to turn me down?'

‘No.'

She had not precisely intended to accept either – yet, oddly enough, it was a relief to find that she
had
accepted, his enthusiasm sweeping her far over the threshold of her uncertainty to the point of acknowledging that this, after all, was what she wanted. And, having qualified her thought humorously, ruefully, with the reminder that, for the moment it was all she could get, she sealed their bargain with a cheerful handshake, accepted a glass of champagne – the same vintage, she noticed with approval, that he'd offered the Croziers – and smiled.

‘You won't regret it, Claire.'

He would make it his business to be sure of that, and when she finally returned to Mannheim Crescent her head was too light to care whether or not she had done the right thing. It was not ideal, of course. But what could ever be that? And the word ‘ideal'itself, which she had been brought up to revere-as-noble, tended these days, having seen what idealism led to, only to repel her. She was no longer concerned, as she had once been as Paul and probably Euan had once been – with taking up some significant work of serving and saving humanity. She was no longer certain that humanity could or indeed ought to be saved from its own nearsighted greeds, its puerile urge to destroy itself. And, that being so, since destruction seemed inevitable and would be no great loss – it often seemed to her – in any case, she might just as well serve champagne and dry the tears of debutantes and chambermaids alike at the Crown Hotel. Either that, or go on drifting like Euan.

And because she did not want to think too deeply about Euan, knowing all too well what she would be likely to find, she diverted herself with the idea that her employment at the Crown – and
paid
employment too – would at least make her less easily available to the Swanfields.

She was to dine at High Meadows that evening and, suddenly buoyant with resolution, the prospect no longer oppressed her. She had been weak with Miriam and Polly and Nola, had succumbed far too often to attacks of good nature and bouts of conscience. Now she must learn not only to evade but to refuse. And what did refusal consist of, after all, that was more difficult than saying no?

She felt no need of protection, no mad urge to barter her solitary, not always comfortable freedom for a secure place in that powerful, dangerously enticing family circle. She wished merely to remain the adult and separate woman she had been three months ago. And suddenly, checking her reflection in the looking-glass and being pleased not only with what she saw but with her own natural, healthy vanity, she felt a quick surge of delight, an almost mischievous glee as she remembered Benedict Swanfield's dry cool voice informing her that within a twelvemonth she would most likely be married again and knocking on his door with her begging bowl like the rest.

He had not, of course, used quite those words. But she had understood. He had seen in her the gold hunter, the husband hunter, the nuisance he appeared to see in every woman. And now the urge to prove him wrong, to fling her new-found employment, such as it was, at his feet like a mailed gauntlet became so pressing that it was a relief to hear the Swanfield car draw up outside her gate, an incredible although somewhat unnerving bonus to see not the usual impeccable chauffeur but Benedict himself at her door.

‘Benedict!' she cried out unnecessarily, sounding, to her intense dismay, as eager and excitable as Polly. ‘This
is
a surprise.'

‘I dare say. I had the car and it seemed less complicated for me to come myself rather than drive home and send Parker back again.'

‘Of course.' She knew he had found it irksome and unnecessary to make an explanation, that he was busy and bored and possibly rather tired and that she would do well, therefore, to spare him her girlish chatter. But she was not girlish, or at least had not felt so until she had opened her door to him and encountered his – what? – nothing positive, nothing to be grappled with, simply his lack of anything to encourage her in her good opinion of herself. But she had something to tell him. Clearly he did not care to listen. Nevertheless.

‘Then may I surprise you in another way? I have just accepted an offer.'

‘Have you really?'

‘Yes indeed – to go into the hotel business.' And, totally unbidden, she could hear Polly's light voice chanting ‘Benedict – I have cut my hair', could see the golden head tossing, preening, clamouring for his admiration, anger, praise or punishment, anything so long as it was the
notice
which he had denied.

‘Ah,' he said now, denying her his notice too, although – she reminded herself – she had not asked for it and did not care. ‘Hardie has given you something to do has he. Very decent of him.'

Hardie! And, behind his level, neutral tone, she heard, sharp and sardonic and very clear, the implication ‘my man, Hardie'. The Swanfield butler who had poured Benedict's wine, brought him his letters on a silver tray, handed him his hat and gloves and who now, like the good fellow he was, had provided ‘young Mrs Jeremy' with something to occupy her mind and keep her out of mischief until she settled down again. Very decent of him.

Remembering how Polly's triumphant, tousled head had drooped, she kept her own very high and, clenching back what she knew amounted to unreasonable fury – because
why,
of all things, should she wish to impress him? – she gave him her brightest smile.

‘He is paying me, Benedict.'

‘Is he really? That is decent.'

Was he amused? Certainly. But why? She swallowed hard, her elation ebbing as fast if not so visibly as Polly's had done, and then, feeling shallow, frivolous, naive, when she had planned to be businesslike, competent, calm – when she
knew
herself to be all these things – she smiled again.

‘I believe it makes me a woman of independent means,' she told him, her voice ringing false and facetious in her own ears, the giddy woman she had never been, making the giddy declaration she had never intended. And why, under the pressure of those blank, dark eyes, could she not now retract it? Why could she not prove herself to be a woman of sense, as she would have done easily and pleasantly with any other man, by admitting that although her salary from the Crown might pay her rent and keep a possibly none too robust wolf from her door, it would not be enough to free her from the financial pressures of the Swanfields. Independent means! Why on earth had she made such a stupid remark as that?

‘I think,' he said, ‘we'd better wait – don't you? – and see?'

The family was already assembled in the drawing room at High Meadows, arranged, everyone in their accustomed places and attitudes in Aaron Swanfield's charmed circle, Polly irritable and bored, Nola half-asleep, Eunice keeping a watchful, nervous eye on Toby to make sure no one else was neglecting him, Miriam alone thoroughly at ease, with her life and with herself.

‘Dear Claire,' Miriam said, her sharp eyes fastening on the locket around Claire's neck with satisfaction, her soft hand overtly tenacious, but no more, no worse – Claire reminded herself-than the grip of any other self-centred matron, demanding far more than anyone should be entitled to receive. She had only, albeit kindly, to refuse.

‘Dear Claire,' mimicked Nola, brushing past her as they took their places at table. ‘Oh dear – dear Claire.'

And not even Claire's unruly conscience felt any sense of obligation to Nola. Nor to Polly who must be allowed to make her own mistakes. Nor to Eunice whose mistakes, in loving too unselfishly, too frantically, could not be rectified. Nor to good-natured, weak-willed Toby who had submitted without any apparent struggle to the burden of that love. Not to anyone. She had no reason to feel committed. No one could force her to become involved. Or so she imagined until Polly, laying down her fork with a clatter, finding the roast beef as excellent, perhaps, but as eternal and therefore as
tedious
as everything else, suddenly announced, her clear voice cutting through the monotonous hum of dinner-time chat, and then silencing it, ‘I think it was mean of you, Claire, sneaking off to Manchester yesterday with Nola, when you know I've been aching to go over there and do some real shopping for ages.'

Yesterday? Claire had spent the day with her mother at Upper Heaton, the evening in Mannheim Crescent being sketched by Euan Ash who, for reasons which had seemed clear to him after a tumbler or two of whisky, had given her a mermaid's tail. What had Nola been doing? The answer leapt out at her so visibly that it seemed to be dancing around Nola's head – and her own – like a treacherous, telltale flame, branding them equally as conspirators. And, without needing to look at him, she was sharply, acutely aware of Benedict Swanfield sitting aloof and separate, at the head of the table.

Damn Polly. Damn Nola. Damn them both, one for a giddy fool who ought, at nineteen, to know better and the other for – what was she? A lunatic, surely, to take such risks, to put herself and others in this atrocious position.

‘Manchester,' murmured Nola smoothly, propping her pointed chin on her hand, her eyes barely open, ‘is for grownups, Polly. And since we missed the last train home,
what
a disaster, my child, if you had been with us. Don't you think so, Claire?'

But the thought uppermost in Claire's mind was how exquisitely satisfying it would be to strangle Nola. Or, failing that, to find the courage – the cruelty – to lean forward and state crisply and clearly, ‘Don't implicate
me
in your shabby love affairs.'

‘Oh yes, absolutely,' she said.

‘I don't see why,' persisted Polly. ‘The Croziers would have been perfectly happy to put me up too wouldn't they? They must have at least a dozen spare bedrooms and heaps of interesting friends. It would have been
fun.'

It had not occurred to Polly that Nola had lied. And indeed, even Claire was not sure where the lie began or ended. Perhaps she really had missed the last train. Claire thought it likely, for otherwise she would have had her alibi more carefully prepared. But why? For God's sake, why had she not warned Claire in advance? A whispered word before dinner would have been alarming, annoying, but possible, advisable,
sane.

Claire was not, by nature, deceitful. But she had told lies regularly and fluently throughout most of her girlhood, from necessity, her life with Edward and Dorothy having thoroughly schooled her in the servile arts of falsehood, how to smile sweetly as her pulses raced with panic, how to speak smooth words – like Nola's – as her mouth turned dry, how to test the ground beneath her feet for the hidden pitfall, the sudden quagmire, the trap. She was, therefore, an experienced if unwilling ally who knew that in order to defend herself she must discover first and foremost and very fast who, if anyone, suspected her.

Miriam, her round blue eyes intent, it seemed, on the pattern of her plate, continued placidly to eat her carrot purée and her green peas. Polly had not and would not see beyond the purchases she had wished to make in Manchester, the wicked young man who
might
have been waiting for her at the Bernard Croziers. Eunice – seemed puzzled but not suspicious. Toby, who so often had occasion to cover his own tracks, became suddenly very busy with the sauceboat. Benedict? She could not look at Benedict.
Must
not. Yet, sickeningly, she could look at no one else, her eyes drawn to his dark, distant face by some compulsion, whether of her guilt or his will she was uncertain. And although his expression had nothing in it that she could name, she felt the whole of her skin turn cold, the whole of her mind fill with the nightmare conviction that he could see right inside her head.