A Winter's Child (56 page)

‘Hello, Pol – this is Natasha. I'd say we met in Russia at the Bolshoi Ballet if I thought you'd believe me but, failing that, I suppose the City Varieties will do.'

How could he bring a girl of this type to her mother's house? How could he hurt her so deliberately?

‘It's no worse than what you did to me last night,' he hissed in her ear as Natasha, for just a moment, was called away. ‘You castrated me. Now I'm doing the same to you.'

She didn't know what he meant. Only that she was losing him and she couldn't bear it.

‘I promised you – today.'

‘I don't trust you.'

‘Give me another chance.'

He hesitated, made her wait. It seemed a long time.

‘All right. Only one.' She told him how to find her bedroom and at what time.

‘Be there, Polly.'

‘Yes – I will.' She was feverish again.

‘Polly, come and join the treasure hunt.' Toby's voice was familiar and kind, so kind, so fond of her – calling her a ‘good girl', his ‘princess' – that she swallowed hard and turned away.

‘Polly, you're not eating. Are you ill?' Claire sounded friendly, amused. Perhaps Claire would understand. But before she could blurt out anything of significance, ask her, tell her, beg advice, Miriam had intervened.

‘Polly, do go and talk to those two dear old ladies over there – I forget their names. Nobody has been near them for ages. Claire is to help me with the treasure hunt parcels. Come, dear.'

‘Polly.' What now? ‘Have you seen Roy?' It was Sally Templeton. Poor girl. How desperate she must be.

‘No, I haven't seen him.'

‘Polly.' It was Edith Timms. ‘I do believe you're neglecting me.' She could never wish to do that. But Roger was with his mother, looking good-natured as he always did, and plain: and Edith would be sure to notice the flush in her cheeks.

‘I'm just on an errand for mother,' she called out and ran into the house and across the hall.

‘Dear God,' said Benedict. ‘Is there to be no privacy today?' Dear God indeed. What was Benedict doing here? But after a moment of pure unease when he
might
have been making up his mind to question her, he suddenly lost interest and walked away.

Only the stairs remained, and the bedroom corridor. No one saw her. And then, reaching her door, she halted, stood awkwardly for a moment hanging about the passage like a stranger and then made a dash for the bathroom. But it had to be done. She had made up her mind to it. The only question to be answered was whether or not she loved him. She did. And if he required this kind of proof then yes – it was understandable, natural, modern. He had been a soldier, after all, was still a soldier-of-fortune at heart, and if she wanted to be a soldier's wife she would have to be more daring, broaden her outlook a little. It was not as if she doubted his intention to marry her afterwards. It had not occurred to her even to question that. It was just – just –? Yes. She would have preferred it to be truly afterwards – after that lavish white satin wedding – rather than before. She wanted to float down the aisle to him like an angel, bringing him the gift of her purity, as her mother had taught her, not already deflowered and damaged – why did she persist in thinking of it like that? – as he wanted. But then – if he wanted it. And she knew full well that her mother was not only old-fashioned but dishonest. How could she trust Miriam's judgement? She knew, violently, that she could not. Could she even judge her mother's motives or understand them? No. And only look at what Miriam's values had done to Eunice and to Nola. Such a fate was not to be hers. She was a ‘new'woman, a modern woman. Like Claire, perhaps. Would Claire do this? Would Sally Templeton? Yes – of Sally at least she was certain – and that settled it.

She closed the bathroom door behind her and walked slowly down the corridor, going to the man she loved as if to the scaffold. And she was feverish again. Oh Lord – there was her hand turning the door handle. She saw it. In half an hour – did it take so long? – she would be a different person. For better or for worse – but that was the wedding ceremony. What was this? At least nothing would ever be quite the same again.

She pushed open the door, fixing her smile in case he had arrived before her, and saw him, lean and hard and beautiful, stretched out on her bed with a girl who could have been anyone – her eyes refused to tell her – but was probably the sultry, unknown Natasha. ‘Hello, Polly – where's the champagne?'

She ran. She could think of nothing else to do. There was no feeling, no tears. Nothing. Not yet. She ran downstairs, across the hall, outside, her eyes focusing at last on something which turned out to be the amiable, awkward bulk of Roger Timms.

‘Polly – I was looking for you. Benedict told me you'd gone upstairs.'

He looked plain, and safe. She needed that.

‘I don't feel well, Roger.'

‘Here-steady on.'

He put his arms around her and she collapsed against his chest, an embrace which looked sufficiently amorous for his mother and hers, both spotting it together, to converge upon them, laughing coyly, a little excitedly as women do at the distant tinkle of wedding bells.

‘Roger, dear boy, is this seemly?' enquired Mrs Timms.

‘Polly, dear – such a public show of affection. Or are you simply hiding your blushes?' cooed Miriam.

‘Could it be,' Roger's mother wanted to know, ‘that they have something to tell us. I do hope, my son, that your intentions are honourable.'

‘Come on, mother,' muttered Roger, turning a hot scarlet,

‘you know I want to marry Polly.'

‘And does Polly want to marry you?'

‘Of course she does,' said Miriam. Polly did not deny it.

‘Congratulations,' bawled Eunice who had been told by her mother exactly what to do.

‘A wedding – a wedding,' chanted Sally Templeton's spinster aunts, having grown accustomed to the fact that it was never Sally's.

‘May I be one of the first to kiss the bride?' beamed Edward Lyall who had also been warned by Miriam to keep his eyes open.

‘Marriage is regarded as a sexual refuge by most men,' said Nola who had just arrived, very obviously quoting from a book, ‘whereas it irrevocably diminishes most women. I read that somewhere, just the other day.'

‘I didn't think she'd go quite so far as that,' said Roy Kington who had heard the commotion from Polly's window.

‘Be happy, Polly,' said Toby who was looking pale and far from happy himself.

‘A September wedding,' called out Miriam clapping her hands as ecstatically as if she were herself to be the bride. ‘How does that suit you, Polly? Can you wait so long?'

Polly made no reply.

‘I won't stay the night,' said Claire. ‘In fact I don't think I'll stay much longer.'

‘No,' said Benedict. ‘I understand. Shall I take you back now?'

The engagement was duly announced through the proper channels, The Faxby Echo, The Yorkshire Post, The Times; a special journey was made to purchase a large diamond ring in Leeds. What the happy couple needed now was the sanction of an engagement party and Polly's, somewhat surprisingly, was to be held at the Crown; a concession, Miriam called it, to her daughter's modern notions although the truth was that she no longer cared – now that they had served her purpose – to fill High Meadows with her daughter's modern friends.

Miriam had begun to value not her privacy since she still did not like to be lonely but her tranquillity, the unblemished pile on her probably irreplaceable carpets, the delicacy of her Waterford crystal and her nerves. Therefore, since they thought it smart and modern, Polly's rowdy friends with their outrageously exposed knees and their terrible haircuts, their negro dances-and their fatal-to-upholstery cigarettes might just as well make their noise and do their damage at the Crown.

‘Certainly madam – with the greatest of pleasure,' Kit Hardie: had told her on the telephone, even putting himself to the trouble – which he would have done for no one else and slightly despised himself for doing now – of going to High Meadows for her instructions. An intimate dinner for twenty-five, no, perhaps to be on the safe side one had better say thirty. And then afterwards dancing for the ‘dear young things'and somewhere just to sit and chat, rather comfortably of course, for those who were merely young at heart. A colourful summer menu, lots of strawberries and pyramids of cream whipped up with white wine – you know, Hardie dear, like we used to do in the old days – or a strawberry trifle perhaps with macaroons and ratafia biscuits and a gorgeously rich custard –
rich,
Hardie! – flavoured with brandy. Yes, she would rather like that. And as to the rest – oh, something fishy in cream and wine and mushrooms. That seemed straightforward enough. Or a crab páté would do. Both? Why not. Then chicken, she supposed, if one could think of something original to do with it since chicken, although terribly safe – as, alas, it was – could also be terribly boring.

‘Leave it to me, madam.'

‘Very well, Hardie.'

A celebration cake, of course. Very large. Very ornamental. Something people would
talk
about afterwards. ‘You do see what I mean, Hardie – a cake really has to cause conversation, otherwise who remembers?'

‘Perfectly, madam.'

‘Good. I will send you a sketch.' Champagne – naturally – in rivers. Wines and brandies and those terrible cocktails as seemed appropriate. And then a little supper at midnight for the dancers, of smoked salmon, lobster, something – not chicken again – in aspic, and those delicious little cheese savouries they had always served, before the war, at High Meadows. Did Hardie think his chef could manage that? Hardie thought so.

And flowers? She paused, looking doubtful, clearly uncertain as to whether or not flowers grew in hotel lobbies. Certainly. Would madam care for orchids, perhaps? Madam would not. ‘Natural flowers, Hardie dear, the kind one might expect to see in the drawing rooms of one's friends. And – oh dear, I really don't wish to be a nuisance, but
not
in those stiff, professional arrangements –
florist's
arrangements. Just naturally put together as any lady would do in her own home. Is that –
all right,
Hardie?'

‘Quite all right, madam.'

She had, of course, reminded him with a dozen little velvet-dawed touches of his former position in her household. But he had expected that, and stifling an impulse to give her the party free of charge as his personal gift to Polly, he returned to the Crown in great good humour. The evening of the fourth of June, the date Miriam had fixed upon, would be a landmark in his life as an hotelier, a show-piece for his skills which would give Faxby's e¥/lite far more to talk about than a cake. He was not precisely excited. Jubilant came nearer, brimful of confidence and ready not just to rise to the occasion but to surpass it. His food and wine would be superb, his service faultless, but Faxby had grown used to that. Extra details were required, extra attentions, an extra stretch of the imagination. Very well. She had expressed a desire for flowers which looked as if they had been arranged by a lady and he knew plenty of ladies, in these days of shrinking incomes and investments, who would be happy to earn a discreet pound or two. He hired three of them to transform such areas of the Crown as would be brought to Miriam's notice into a garden of her favourite shell-pink roses – Madame Pierre Oger, by name, he had not forgotten – alongside a profusion of the considerably more homely larkspur, love-in-a-mist, blue cornflowers and white daisies, sweet peas in all their tender colours. She had mentioned the cheese savouries once served at High Meadows quite mischievously, assuming their recipe to have departed with the morose little woman who had been her pre-war cook, long since retired and now quite possibly dead. But, at some inconvenience, Kit eventually discovered her as alive and melancholic as ever in a Humberside cottage where it cost all his charm and persistence and a five-pound note to obtain her recipe from her. The fish and the páté and the trifles presented no problem, but Miriam had complained of the tedious reliability of chicken. He called Aristide Keller to his office and convinced him that not only Miriam Swanfield but the world in general were ready and waiting now, all agog, for the creation of
Chicken Supréme Anstide, Poulet Keller,
whatever he chose to call it so long as it ensured that Miriam would never be bored by chicken again. She had spoken of a cake. Who better than Amandine Keller, pastry chef
extraordinaire,
to bake and decorate it? She had wrinkled her nose at the thought of cocktails. Had she ever tasted one? He doubted it. And he called another conference, with MacAllister this time, asking him not only to create a special cocktail for Polly, which was always done for brides and fiancees in any case, but also for Miriam, called a ‘gracious lady', he rather thought, in a wide-brimmed glass, a dash of well-spiced sweet Jamaica rum and apricot brandy, a dark colour to it, something purple, vaguely imperial. She wouldn't be able to resist a sip or two of that. She might even mellow sufficiently to be impressed. And if that happened it would not spoil his pleasure one little bit to know that he was charging her royally for it.

And then, two days before the great event, a bolt from the sky which, a moment before, had been a limpid, unruffled blue. ‘Where is my wife?' Amandine Keller's husband wanted to know.

Amandine Keller, pastry chef, was found in the stillroom, not busily icing Polly's cake as she ought to have been, but in compromising proximity with the fishmonger who supplied the best turbot and sole and shellfish to be had in Faxby, to the Crown.

‘I am going to kill you,' announced Aristide Keller,
chef de cuisine
to his wife who promptly threw a pastry fork at him which lodged in his temple, although without doing too much harm; and then, while first-aid was being administered by Claire, went off to pack her bags and take refuge in the fish-shop of her lover.