Consider the Lily (14 page)

He set about spreading the information, discreetly, that his forthcoming marriage was the result of a bolt of lightning which had struck them both on holiday.

‘You realize this is suicide?’ Max Longborough telephoned from the Old Cataract Hotel in Assuan. ‘Who is the girl? Have you gone mad?’

‘No,’ said Kit, feeling that was precisely what had happened. ‘Back me up, old boy. Please.’

‘I’ll do one better and take you away. Come with me on the Petra trip. If the girl loves you she’ll wait.’

‘It’s arranged, I’m afraid, Max. I can’t back out. Nor should I.’

‘Chivalry died with King Arthur, my boy, and there is absolutely no need to martyr yourself for outdated notions of being a gentleman.’

‘No,’ said Kit.

‘You’re talking shackles for life, old son. Wouldn’t you prefer what I’m offering?’

‘I would, but it’s not possible.’

Max cursed all women in his tatterdemalion Arabic, and then asked, ‘Do you love her.
Bouleverse?’

‘Yes, of course I do,’ lied Kit.

‘Bollocks,’ said Max, and Kit imagined him at the other end of the line, smoking furiously and shrieking into the telephone. ‘You do nothing of the sort. I can tell.’

Monte Carlo

DEAREST KIT STOP I AM SORRY I AM SORRY STOP I MADE YOU DO THIS STOP WILL YOU FORGIVE ME FOR BEING SO STUPID STOP I DO UNDERSTAND ABOUT LUGGAGE LABELS AND TELEPHONE CALLS STOP REALLY I DO STOP I WAS BEING STUPID AND SELFISH STOP IF YOU PERSIST IN MARRYING SOMEONE ELSE PLEASE NOT MATTY STOP SHE DOES NOT LOVE YOU STOP PLEASE NOT ANYONE BUT ME STOP DAISY

I CANNOT BACK OUT NOW STOP KIT

DON'T UNDERSTAND STOP WILL TRY STOP HAVE YOU FORGIVEN ME STOP CANNOT BEAR IT OTHERWISE STOP DAISY

‘
Nice
work,’ said Susan Chudleigh icily when she arrived at Upper Brook Street. ‘Very smart girl.’

Dressed in blue silk with a scale pattern superimposed on it, she rested a hand on a hip.

‘Did Daisy come back with you?’ asked Matty.

‘I’ve sent her to Monte with Annabel for a little while. They can stay with the Beauchamps. Your telegram came as a great shock and she needed to get away. You will appreciate that, of course.’ The lid of the pink glass cigarette box rattled as Susan rooted around with a fingernail. ‘You
do
appreciate that, don’t you, Matilda?’

‘Of course.’

Susan’s gaze lingered on Matty’s Molyneux crêpe evening gown and her pencilled eyebrows crawled up her forehead. ‘Did you sleep with him, Matilda? Is that it? Surely it can’t just be the money.’ When Matty did not answer, Susan gave a supercilious smile. ‘Aha, so that’s it. Well, I never thought you capable of jumping over traces. I must say, I think it’s rather daring of you.’

‘Aunt Susan, it’s
nothing
like that. I couldn’t possibly do such a thing.’

‘No, well. Perhaps not.’ The suggestion that Susan approved faded from her voice. ‘I don’t suppose you would.’

That left her to cast around, and fail, to find the explanation as to why Kit Dysart – who could have had any heiress he chose – should plump for the plucked chicken that was her niece. Oh, well, she concluded, I suppose one heiress is much like another, certainly after twenty or so years of marriage, and perhaps Kit is not choosy.

Matty nerved herself to ask, ‘How is Daisy?’

Susan fiddled with the cocktail shaker on the drinks table. ‘In a dangerous mood, I would say.’ Ice clinked in the cocktail glass. ‘However, I will have to deal with that. More worry.’ She jabbed the cocktail stick into a maraschino cherry. ‘I think Daisy doesn’t feel you behaved well.’ Susan’s facade slipped. ‘Nor do I.’

‘No, I don’t suppose I did,’ agreed Matty, the exchange slashing the razor-thin reserves of her confidence into ribbons.

Clink,
went the ice in Susan’s glass. She turned to face Matty. ‘Why the hell, Matilda, did you have to go and do this to us? Why Kit Dysart – of all the men in London you could have bribed into marrying you? Is that your way of thanking us after all we have done? I think you are wicked, I really do.’

See, Matty addressed her dead parents, Emma having temporarily deserted her. If you hadn’t died, none of this would be happening.

Marcus was the only member of the Chudleigh family to express concern for Matty. ‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘Are you quite sure this is what you want?’

Used to hostility or indifference, Matty was taken aback.

‘After all,’ said Marcus, eyeing the whisky decanter, ‘you’re in for a life sentence, and I don’t think you’re really cut out for the lady-of-the-manor bit. They’re a rum lot, too. The old man’s a touch potty, I think. Lost it in the war, they say.’

Images crystallized of dispensing tea and cakes at the annual fete, of hosting dinner parties and hunting teas. Of being looked at. Oh my God, thought Matty. What have I done?

Once launched, Marcus persisted. ‘Kit will want a good show, he’s that sort of fellow. I mean, we do know you better than most and speaking honestly...’

Something stirred in Matty which, because it was unfamiliar, she did not at first recognize as protest. ‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ she said.

‘Don’t what?’

‘You don’t know me at all, Marcus. You have no idea of what I’m like.’

Marcus gave in to the decanter and poured himself two fingers of malt. Over the glass he assessed his cousin. ‘I’m beginning to think that we don’t,’ he replied, his tone conveying several nuances, none of them flattering. Clearly, he felt that the conversation was swimming into deep emotional waters so he paddled for the shore. ‘Anyway, I should tell you I don’t approve. I think it a mad idea and,’ he got to his feet to emphasize the point, ‘very disloyal to Daisy. As her brother, I hold that against you.’

Later, spooning up consommé at a silent dinner table, Matty had a good idea of how Don Quixote must have felt when he tilted at his windmill.

At the end of October, Daisy returned from Monte Carlo, French-hatted, tanned, unapproachably dazzling. Almost immediately she went away again, to stay with Annabel in Yorkshire, and did not return until the week of the wedding. She said nothing to Matty at all.

Three-quarters of an hour before her wedding, Matty, acutely conscious of the marinade of expensive materials sheathing her body, descended the stairs at Number 5 Upper Brook Street. She was met by Daisy at the bottom, and it took considerable self-restraint not to turn on her heel and go straight back up.

The hall and drawing room were filled with floral arrangements by Constance Spry who, as a special favour to Susan, had arrived in person prior to the party the previous evening to tuck what looked suspiciously like a cabbage into an architecturally principled arrangement of white flowers. The effect was very chic. Beside it lay Matty’s bouquet, a stark, Japanese-inspired spiral of hot-house lilies.

Daisy’s glass was angled precariously and champagne puddled on the skirt of her tiered crêpe dress. Above it, her cleverly made-up face was beautiful, implacable – and drunk. ‘Congratulations, Matty. You’ve done it.’

Matty’s heart, already pounding, beat a tattoo of panic that the scene which, so far, had been avoided, was brewing. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she lied.

‘Spare me, Matty. We all know what this pantomime is about.’ Daisy grabbed the newel post for support. ‘You’ve won,’ she announced to her cousin, and up-ended the remains of the champagne into her mouth. ‘Put it this way... and I’m sorry to be crude. We both wanted the same man. My mistake was that I didn’t realize you were prowling around the same territory.’

‘Daisy. Don’t! Please.’

‘I’m told that surprise is the essence of attack, and I see now it is. Perhaps you should join the army, Matty?’ Daisy seemed struck by the idea and looked thoughtfully at her cousin. ‘Of course, I would be the first to admit that all is fair in love and war.’

‘You’re drunk.’ Matty picked up her train and prepared to edge around Daisy, who frowned and dropped her glass onto the parquet floor.

‘Hold on, Matty,’ she said, and her voice slid into an unnervingly sober cadence. ‘No insults. That’s my side of things.’

Matty tried again. ‘Daisy, why don’t you go and get some coffee? There isn’t long before the car arrives.’

‘So what if I’m tight? It’s not my wedding.’ She brushed at the champagne stain, and repeating slowly and with precision, ‘It’s not my wedding, is it?’ Then she snapped her fingers. ‘Don’t worry, no one will know. Except you.’

‘
Please, Daisy.’

‘“Please, Daisy.” Did you say please when you asked Kit to marry you? It’s a well-brought-up thing to do, you know. Saying “please” when you propose.’ Taking Matty off guard, Daisy leant forward and cupped her cousin’s chin. ‘Please, Matty, I’m going to say –
please
listen to me, I have something I wish to say to you, and I want to say it to your face.’

Thud, thud went a machine in Matty’s chest. It shook into life her nerve endings and sent messages to her brain: take flight; endure pain; taste joy; face whatever is coming.

Matty steadied. She put her hands behind her back and said quietly, ‘Do you want to say it in the hall where someone might overhear?’

‘I don’t mind in the least where I say it.’ Daisy gripped Matty’s chin until her eyes watered. ‘I want you to remember your wedding day as the day we were honest with each other.’

In Honiton lace and the Verral tiara, her mother’s earrings flashing, Matty’s face turned whiter than the creamy antique veil. She forced herself to return Daisy’s stare. Daisy looked searchingly at her, and then, abruptly, dropped her hand and stepped back. With a flash of guilt, Matty saw a kohl-tinted tear trail down Daisy’s face.

‘Champagne tears,’ said Daisy, wiping her nose with the back of her hand – even then managing to remain graceful and exciting. ‘Too stupid.’

Matty began to shake in earnest at the enormity of what she had brought about. At her instigation, three hundred starched and chiffoned guests sat waiting in St Margaret’s, Westminster. At the reception, enough food to service the Sun King’s court was beginning to curl at the edges. Florists had been plundered, seamstresses had sat up all night. Two families had been turned upside down.

Unexpectedly, Matty had played a
grande finesse.
As a result, a man who had no feeling for her was waiting to marry her and take her away through a pea-souper fog to a strange life, and her cousin’s exquisite face had turned into a
museau
of grief.

Heedless of creases, Matty clutched her arms around her chest and hugged herself so tightly it almost hurt. The slippery material of her dress folded over her fingers and she rubbed it with her thumbs. Fright was making her breathless.

Daisy surveyed the half-crouching figure, and a gleam of sense penetrated her. ‘Here,’ she said impatiently. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’ She pulled Matty’s arms down. ‘Stop it, Matty, and I’ll stop it too. Otherwise you’ll never get through.’

Matty tugged at her imprisoned hands. ‘Say it, Daisy. Whatever it was you were going to say.’

Daisy’s heels screeched faintly along the parquet floor as she steadied herself. ‘It’s not important anymore.’

‘Say it, Daisy.’

The command brought Daisy up short. Suddenly she pressed a hand to her mouth while she fought to bring herself under control. Her dress was wet from spilt champagne, and her mouth was dry. ‘I was going to say this in spite and anger, but now I just say it out of grief, Matty, and hope you remember it.’

‘What, Daisy? For God’s sake, tell me.’

Spreading out her fingers in a gesture of hopelessness, Daisy bent her head and said, ‘When he comes to you tonight, he will be thinking of me.’

There was a long, long pause.

‘Of course he will,’ said Matty. ‘Who else?’ Shocked into silence, Daisy lifted her head and stared at the diamond-frosted, satin-encased bride. ‘You don’t imagine,’ said Matty, ‘I would think anything else. I’m not stupid. But I think
you
should remember that Kit was in trouble.’

‘It was my temper, that hateful telegram, his father... all sorts of things.’ Daisy’s fist pummelled her anguish onto the newel post. ‘Why you, Matty? Couldn’t you have left it alone, however much you disliked me?’

The intimacies of hatred are as powerful and revealing as those of love. The cousins looked at each other and made their discoveries.

They could hear the family preparing to leave the drawing room. Matty lifted her veil and pulled it down over her face. Under its silken confines she paled into ghostliness. ‘Don’t you see?’ she said. ‘I was the only one who could help.’

‘My God,’ said Daisy, ‘I didn’t know you were so hard.’

Daisy finished vomiting. The bout had been prolonged and noisy, but it catapulted her into sobriety. The final glass of champagne had sunk into her cramping stomach, which signalled its rebellion. Daisy knew she had made a major mistake and fled upstairs.

There, she had stuck her finger down her throat to speed up the process.

Black letters spelt out ROYAL DOULTON from the depths of the lavatory bowl. Daisy stared so hard at them that they wavered in front of her watering eyes. After a bit, she hauled herself onto her elbows and rested her head between her hands while she waited for the world to stabilize.

‘You overdid it, my girl,’ she said aloud.

Being sick twenty-five minutes before Matty’s wedding was not the simple, cleansing action Daisy would have liked: it had not purged draggled pride, or exasperation at her own behaviour, or the hurt.

But, then, loss was a long business – a bereavement of expectation and hope, a ratification of loneliness. Loss meant that something unique had been given marching orders... for first, between her and Kit, there would have been passion, and then the strands of trust and affection to bind them together through the years.

Requiem for something that did not survive. She pictured a tombstone set in the bloody wreckage of her heart. With an effort, she dragged herself to her feet, sat on the edge of the bath and permitted herself to cry.

‘I love you,’ Kit had said in the gardens of the Villa Lafayette, inhaling the scent of her hair.