A Winter's Child (32 page)

‘Good morning, Kit. You're looking well.'

Wonderfully well, in fact. So very much the rock to lean on that she felt an undeniable temptation, on this uneasy morning, to lean. Yet, just the same, she had made him no promises. There could be no obligation. He had no right even to enquire how she conducted herself, much less to feel hurt by it. She repeated that, loud and clear and several times over in her mind, furious with the rush of altogether unnecessary guilt, which made her smile brighter, her manner rather wanner than anyone could be entitled to expect on a dreary November morning. Where had
he
spent the night for that matter, she wondered? Judging by his geniality and his air of well-fed content it seemed unlikely that he had slept alone. A mature, probably wealthy woman, she rather imagined, or, on the other hand, some scatter-brained little chorus-girl from the Princes Theatre, according to his humour or his opportunity. But, nevertheless – right or no right, promises or not – she was slightly uncomfortable with him for the rest of the day.

The weekend's cherished guests departed, escorted tenderly to the door and then forgotten, their rooms cleaned and aired and refurbished for the ‘cherished guests', whoever they might be, who would occupy them tomorrow. The weekend's flowers were thrown out with the debris from the breakfast trays and replaced with the best Claire could find on a November Monday. Lunchtime was so quiet that Aristide Keller went home to preserve his artistic talents for evening, leaving Amandine to cater to the needs of Toby Hartwell and Nola's cousin, Arnold Crozier, whose weekends at the Crown had a habit, sometimes, of extending to Wednesday. The two men lunched at their favourite tables in opposite corners of the dining room, Toby alone and rather wistfully, still suffering the aftermath of a weekend at High Meadows, Arnold Crozier with a girl, very young and very blonde as all his girls seemed to be, a ‘flapper' with a short skirt, a cloche hat, a glazed expression, quietly sipping her champagne and fingering the new gold bracelet on her wrist while he, in his black beetle's whisper, lectured her on the exact number of millimetres per day a white wine should be turned when left to mature in its bottle.

‘Creepy old man,' said Polly Swanfield, appearing at Claire's elbow as Mr Crozier, giving his young lady a final word of advice about the new season's
Beaujolais,
climbed into his Rolls and was driven away. ‘He got me one night in the cocktail bar – you know how he sits lurking in his corner and then just
pounces
– Lord, what a scream – he just went on and on about some kind of a beetle that came over from America on a Californian vine, years and years ago, and ate up just about every vineyard in Europe. Isn't that just the kind of thing you'd expect Arnold Crozier to know? As if I cared. What mattered to me was keeping a straight face because all I could think of was that this beetle – phylloxera or something I think he called it – must have been his brother. And since he
is
Nola's cousin and owns half the hotel and half of Bradford and Leeds to go with it, I suppose mother wouldn't like me to laugh at him. Anyway, Claire, how about giving me a cup of tea? I've been rummaging through Taylor & Timms all morning and
I am dead.'

Installed in a corner of the empty lounge, few of Faxby's ladies sharing her enthusiasm for Monday morning shopping, Polly shrugged off her coat and shook the raindrops out of her hair, small parcels in the silver gilt, blue-ribboned wrappings which meant perfume, lace garters, embroidered Swiss handkerchiefs, anything she could find that was pretty and expensive, tumbling to the floor one after the other around her feet.

‘Tea and sandwiches,' she called out to the waiter, scarcely looking at him, certainly not seeing him, yet smiling at him nevertheless as if she thought him the only man left alive in a world of amorous women. ‘In fact – lots of sandwiches. Lovely roast beef with mustard and then a whole plateful of sticky buns.
You
know what I like, Peter' – the man's name was George – ‘and then a slice of Normandy apple flan. Oh yes,
of course,
with cream.'

‘Didn't you have lunch, Polly?'

‘Oh yes –' She looked puzzled as if she could scarcely remember it. ‘Ages ago – twelve o'clock and now it's half past three.' And she proceeded to eat not just with relish but as if the food before her might suddenly be snatched away, leaving her no option but to cram herself with its richness here and now, while she could.

‘Peter dear – may we have another pot of tea? Oh bless you, you've brought a mince-pie. How adorable. My first of the winter. Mother never serves them until Christmas Eve. Well yes – all right then – I'll have two.'

‘You'll get fat,' warned Claire, remembering Polly's anxiety, only six months ago, about the size of her bosom. But Polly, who had once bandaged her chest every night to flatten it, had clearly resolved the issue entirely to her own satisfaction.

‘Oh no I won't, because I don't sit still long enough. I don't walk, I run. I play tennis, I skate, and I dance – and dance. You've seen me.'

‘And you walk miles every day around Taylor & Timms.'

‘All right. So that way I can eat and drink what I like: And nobody gets fat on champagne. By the way Claire, do you happen to have come across Roy Kington yet?'

The question seemed artless, airy, a chance remark which simply could not matter less, although Claire, meeting the full impact of Polly's most dazzling smile, knew better than that. Roy Kington? Surely she had heard the name before? And recognizing Polly's careful nonchalance for what it was she hardly knew whether to feel glad or sorry for Roger Timms.

‘Yes, I suppose I know him. He hangs around with you doesn't he?'

‘My dear –' Polly sounded infinitely tolerant, just a shade condescending. ‘That's Rex, his younger brother. Roy is – well, you'll see –
older,
darling. About your age. He was in the war and then, instead of coming home, he volunteered to go and fight for the White Russians against the Bolsheviks. Not that I understand White Russians from any other colour – except that it seems to be the Bolsheviks who shot the Tsar and the Whites want to shoot them, which will hardly bring back the Tsar and those poor Grand Duchesses, I know… But anyway they shot Roy at Archangel or Murmansk or some such place, so he had to come back home. He looks like Rex but he's taller and thinner and altogether more –. Are you sure you don't know him?'

The question now was sharp, a little accusing, determined – if Claire was entertaining thoughts of getting Roy Kington for herself – to put a stop to it.

‘No. I don't know him.'

‘Well then –' She was not wholly convinced. ‘You will. And it seems only fair to warn you that at the moment he's heavily involved with Sally Templeton –
you
know – that insipid bean-pole with the red hair and the silver lame stockings. But that won't last, of course, as I happen to know, because – well, he and I had a talk about it the other night.'

‘You mean you're next in line. Poor Roger Timms.'

‘It has nothing to do with Roger.'

‘It has nothing to do with me either, Polly. You seem to be warning me off, I can't think why.'

‘Because you're always here aren't you for everybody to see.

And because – well, for Heaven's sake – you don't seem to realize what a gap there is in my generation.'

‘Of course I realize it.'

But Polly was too painfully entangled in these first anguished stirrings of jealousy, the turmoil of what might be first love, first heartache, to notice the coldness in Claire's voice.

‘All right, Claire. But it's not the same for you. You've been married. You were old enough, before the war, to have your pick and I wasn't. And it's different now. Oh yes – I don't do badly. I'm popular. There's no need,
ever,
for me to stay at home any evening of the week. I can have Roy's little brother Rex whenever I want him, positively eating out of my hand. He'd do anything for me. But he's seventeen, Claire, and I'm nearly twenty. Or I can have old codgers over thirty telling me their troubles. Or I can have Roger Timms. The rest of them – the ones who are really the right age for me – are either dead or wounded or nervous wrecks or have fiancees to come home to or they drink too much like Euan Ash, or else all they want to do is go off to the wilds of Africa and grow tobacco or some such thing, absolutely miles from anywhere, with no facilities and no fun. Or else they're so depressed there doesn't seem much point to their being alive at all. You know that, Claire.'

‘Yes, Polly.'

‘So when somebody like Roy Kington comes along, handsome and clever and wanting to get on in the world –
and
twenty-five years old – well, one can't be blamed for putting up a little fight. Can one?'

‘No, Polly. I'll keep my distance.'

She smiled. ‘I thought you'd understand. Fair's fair, after all. And you'll like him. Everybody does. The family are bound to. What do you think, Claire? Should I get mother to invite him to something or other now, or wait until Benedict gets back?'

‘Is Benedict away?'

She had not intended to ask that question, could have bitten her tongue now that she had. But Polly, her ears attuned solely to pick up vibrations concerning Roy Kington, heard nothing amiss.

‘He went off this morning, I don't know where, and you wouldn't expect him to tell
me,
would you. But Nola was looking very pleased with herself at breakfast which probably means he's not going to hurry back. So perhaps I'd better not wait. Claire?'

‘That's right. Don't wait.'

Polly got to her feet, gathering her parcels, already poised for action. ‘I won't. He's had dinner, once that I know of, at the Templetons – and tea half a dozen times. I'd best have a word with mother.'

‘Yes, Polly. I'd do that.'

‘Right.' She glanced at her watch, ‘Oh Lord – is that the time? I'll be off, Claire. Roger will be waiting.'

So he had gone away. It made absolutely no difference. She walked with Polly to the front entrance, down the immaculately scoured front steps to the Timms'Mercedes and watched smiling while young Mr Timms drove off, at Polly's urgent insistence, to High Meadows so that she might confer with her mother as to the best method of making herself Mrs Roy Kington.

She had a drink with Nola that evening in the bar, accompanied her, a night or so later, to a performance of Swan Lake at the Grand, without once hearing or mentioning Benedict's name. She dined the following Sunday at High Meadows, observing Miriam's ‘family Sunday'with less resentment now that she could so easily invent some crisis at the Crown to cut her visit short.

‘When is Benedict coming home?' asked Eunice tersely in the middle of the meal, evidently needing to know.

There was no answer.

But she saw him herself the next morning in the lobby of the hotel, or rather heard his voice and Kit Hardie's as she was coming downstairs, her arms full of Monday's wilting flowers.

‘Just ten bedrooms,' Kit was saying, in answer to Benedict's question. ‘And sixteen tables which gives me a maximum of sixty-four diners. Small, of course …'

‘Yes,' said Benedict, ‘but manageable. Would you care to show me round?'

‘Delighted, sir.'

Hastily she retreated, handed her burden of dead flowers to a far-from-gratified chambermaid and managed, throughout the morning, by accurately guessing the route Kit would take, to keep herself busy and out of sight. So he had come to the hotel. It made absolutely no difference. High time, in fact, that he
had
made up his mind to condescend – for what else was it? – and give Kit the accolade he deserved. She was glad he was here for Kit's sake. She insisted on that. Yet when Kit sent a waiter to tell her that he would like her to join him and his guest for lunch her immediate instinct was to lock herself in the bathroom if necessary and refuse. Yet, as she knew quite well, there was no way to do that. For if she could invent pressure of business to excuse herself to Miriam or to her mother, she could use no such ploy with Kit who knew exactly and to the minute how she filled her working day. There was nothing to do, therefore, but smile, run a comb through her hair, and walk, still smiling, into the dining room, the composed, efficient, resourceful woman who was pleased and even proud to be an employee of Major Hardie of the Crown.

‘Good morning, Benedict. How very nice.'

‘Good morning, Claire. How very nice of
you
to join us.' The atmosphere was deferential, almost caressing; Gerard, the head waiter, discreetly overseeing his minions who, trained to the precision and grace of a
Corps de Ballet,
deftly and almost lovingly served the ‘light luncheon'of lobster
mousseline,
chilled
vichyssoise,
chicken breasts in white wine and cream and truffles. Sitting between them, making her professional small-talk – very small indeed – she sensed both the immense satisfaction in Kit, the honest, cock-a-hoop triumph that he the son of ‘common'and in the case of his father, unknown parents should be entertaining in his own premises the son of Aaron Swanfield; and, once again, a deliberate exercise of charm in Benedict, the calculated art of pleasing for a purpose. And she was forced to concede his performance to be impressive.

‘Excellent,' he said with decision whenever comment was required. ‘Very well done. Now tell me –?' And the question would not only be pertinent but phrased in a skilful manner which enabled him to call Kit nothing at all, since ‘Hardie' would have been condescending and ‘Major', now that everybody's medals were losing their lustre, could so easily have been misconstrued.

‘What about these new Licensing Laws? Are you managing to find your way through them?'