Consider the Lily (43 page)

‘Not bad,’ said Daisy, powdering her shoulders and arms.

Matty sat down on the pretty French
bateau lit
and crossed her legs. A high-heeled sandal dangled from her foot and Daisy focused on the perfectly applied squares of nail varnish on Matty’s toes. How civilized they were, and how she detested them with an uncivilized passion.

‘Who’s coming? Well, it’s a sort of celebration of Kit being back, the house being finished, and you and Aunt Susan being here, of course—’

The cosy domesticity of Matty’s plans was suddenly too much for Daisy, and she cut Matty off. ‘Excuse me. Ivy, could you pass me the jewellery case in the corner there.’

Matty took the hint and stood up. Matty was learning, thought Daisy, and it occurred to her that her cousin – the moulting cuckoo – was, had been, more formidable than she had allowed herself to imagine.

Matty’s hair was growing and tonight she had pulled it back from her face with a pair of enamelled combs. The style suited her, and forced the observer to take account of the soft brown eyes so often hidden by her hats.

‘Since it’s so hot, cocktails are on the terrace,’ she said.

Daisy was left staring at the contents of the top tray in her jewellery case. A diamond brooch shaped like a bee. A pair of diamond clips, not very good. An emerald pendant on a gold chain. She picked up the bee, which caught in the light slanting through the window, and heard Ivy’s indrawn breath at the glitter. Daisy pinned it onto her bodice. Beneath the exquisite, powdered surface, grains of sand rubbed and buffeted, and hurt.

Kit ripped off a ruined collar and reached for another. He hated them. Starch was unnecessary and it was the middle of a heatwave.

What was it Prince Abdullah used to say? Calmness was achieved through inner discipline. Through the contemplation of a chosen object of beauty – like the rose, my friend, or the lily. Look at them, hold them in the mind, and examine their perfection cell by cell, then all things will fall into place.

Take a look at yourself, rather, Kit addressed the shaving mirror. What do you see? The face and eyes of a man who is not satisfied and knows he should be. The face of an adulterer.

Last night, Max had telephoned and said, Come to Iraq. Kit had said no, there were family commitments. Max had been adamant. There’s plenty of time, I don’t plan to go until next spring, he argued. And it won’t be for long, a couple of months. Surely your wife won’t mind. Give her a chance to do her own fluttering.

Matty would mind, but probably would not say anything for that was not Matty’s way. Don’t ask her, said Max unfeelingly. Marriage, Kit felt obliged to point out to his bachelor friend, did not work like that. He was not entirely joking. I’ll expect you, said Max, and cut off the call.

Kit tackled the collar again, successfully this time. Did Matty suspect anything, he asked himself, and keep silent because that was her way? Guilt had a strange way of dressing things up.

Sometimes he caught his wife looking at him and immediately concluded: she knows.

She knows.

What? That each moment of loving Daisy intensified every sense in his body. Brought him wonder, tenderness and awe. Passion and profound joy. That Daisy had given him the sharpest pain, the sharpest happiness, and an understanding that the human spirit was divided into compartments, each separate from the other.

The knowledge that he had given these things to her.

Oh, Daisy. He sought to absorb her, all of her, into himself, down to the tiny crease of flesh under her arm.

Kit pulled on his jacket and went in search of his wife.

A White Lady in one hand, Geoffrey Handal turned to Archie Ritchie, a fellow hunter. ‘Gold chip, did you say?’ he articulated into Archie’s ear, meaning Matty.

‘Absolutely.’

Handal was about to say something when Daisy made a late entrance onto the terrace. ‘Good God,’ he said instead. ‘Who is she?’

‘Daisy Chudleigh. Mrs Dysart’s cousin. And that chap’s sister.’ Archie held out his glass for a second head-slugging dose of cocktail and indicated Marcus. ‘From London.’ Archie nursed his refill and observed Kit stand up from the stone balustrade and Harry Goddard, who was sitting beside Susan Chudleigh, leap to his feet. ‘And all that means,’ he added.

‘Daisy darling.’ Harry barely knew Daisy, but he surged forward and kissed her. Laughing, Daisy kissed him back, and then Kit’s hand rested briefly on her forearm as he made the introductions.

A whiff of lavender and thyme drifted up from the parterre below the terrace where Matty had placed pots of both, mixed with the exotic evening smell of
Nicotiana.
During the day, heat had settled down over the valley as it had for days now. Up by Whitebridge House the stream was reduced to a trickle, and at Long Copse the leaf mulch under the trees was dry and powdery. Desperate for their evening drink, swallows dipped and swooped over stubbled fields at Itchel. A milky white light tipped with red stretched across the low horizon as the sun slid below the tree line.

‘Dinner, Uncle Ambrose,’ said Matty, and waited for her uncle to take her in.

Thirty guests sat down to eat at the rectangular table, polished to mirror brightness. The walls were painted buttery cream, and set off the gilding on the plasterwork. Candles had been placed on the sideboard and at the centre of the table and wall lights cast a pale yellow glow across the curtains.

‘Very, very advanced,’ said Tufty Bostock as he saw Susan into her chair.

‘Yes,’ replied Susan tightly, comparing it to what she now perceived as her dull dining room at Number 5 Upper Brook Street. Truly, if consulted, she would have had no idea that Matilda had it in her to decorate a laundry basket, let alone a country house, and she suppressed an urge to say something cutting to a wilting youth lucklessly assigned to her left hand.

Matty had Archie Ritchie on one side, and Harry Goddard, the scamp, on the other. Daisy sat between Geoffrey Handal and Harry – Matty had played fair with the seating. Kit, however, had Susan on one side, and Archie’s mother on the other. Flora sat beside Marcus who was making a flourish of unfolding her napkin and bringing her up to date on the latest movements of his regiment.

Matty looked round. Cracks no longer spidered the ceiling. Mould had been banished. Pictures hung in the right places and experts had restored their resonance. Somehow (an effort of will?) Matty had brought this about with a sentence uttered on the Calais-Dover ferry.

I think you should marry me.

She unfolded her napkin. The candlelight burnt into the corner of one eye and suddenly she was reminded of a stage set, ringed by darkness.

‘Mrs Dysart?’ Archie enquired, alarmed by Matty’s eyes which had grown dark and tense. His heart sank for he did not relish the plod of a neurotically inclined female for several courses.

Matty turned to him. ‘Mr Ritchie,’ she said, sending a puff of rose scent in his direction, ‘I must have been daydreaming. Forgive me.’ She checked that the soup was being served and then, ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘I hear your record is unmatched out hunting.’

Archie relaxed, but before he could answer Tufty Bostock’s loud voice rose over the conversation. ‘“Threadbare Thirties”? Did you read that in the newspaper?’

‘Bolsheviks,’ said Archie to Susan. ‘I always said Ramsay MacDonald was a Bolshevik.’

‘Come on, sir,’ said Kit with a smile. ‘The Bolsheviks are quite different from pleasant Mr MacDonald. I should warn you Labour’s base is solid and growing.’

‘Don’t be too sure, my boy.’ Tufty gave discreet encouragement to the hired wine waiter. ‘The red peril will end with another war.’

‘Good God, we haven’t recovered from the last one,’ said Susan. ‘Only last week we took a party to see
All Quiet on the Western Front
at the cinema. Very trying, I thought.’

‘I haven’t seen it,’ said Kit.

Daisy quoted at Harry, not quite accurately. ‘“Weary, burnt out, rootless, we shall be superfluous even to ourselves.” That’s how the soldier saw himself when he came home. But I’m sure that does not apply to any of us here.’ She gave one of her irresistible smiles and the men’s gazes fastened on her. ‘You were all heroes.’

Kit imagined his father lying upstairs listening to the hum of their conversation. Had he seen himself as superfluous?

An echo sounded in Matty’s memory. Of what, and of whom? Of Edwin, she remembered, Hesther’s brother, who wrote such passionate...
feeling
letters. He had said something like: ‘The war will make a gap between us. When I return we will be on different sides.’

‘People do drone on about the war,’ Marcus muttered to Flora. ‘It’s unhealthy, all this looking back.’

For the first time in weeks, Flora laughed. ‘You’re right, Marcus,’ she said.

At her end of the table Matty asked Archie, ‘Have you heard about a series of paintings in the memorial chapel at a village called Burghclere? By an artist called Spencer. He’s painting the war as he saw it.’

‘No,’ said Archie, his fears taking a new turn.

‘I thought I might visit them one day. I hear they’re remarkable,’ said Matty.

Across the sweet peas, Kit met Daisy’s troubled eyes. I am at one end of the tunnel, she seemed to say. And I want to join you at the other. Hold on, said his. I can’t help you, but hold on.

Because it was so warm, the guests were invited to take their coffee out onto the terrace. Some elected to stay away from the midges and remained in the drawing room, others sat outside in wicker chairs and balanced coffee cups on their knees. A few strolled over the lawn towards the river. The coffee was strong and bitter, the way Kit preferred it, and Mrs Dawes had produced excellent
petits fours.

Hot and still, the night layered mysteriously over the garden, in the way of Indian-summer nights. Light streamed out from the drawing room and cut into the darkness. From the garden filtered the aroma of tobacco, a murmur of conversation, the quick flurry of an animal, and an occasional splash from the river.

Daisy sat next to Kit. She picked up a marzipan apple, and Kit watched her bite into it. Her teeth were white against the red dye.

‘Daisy. Can we talk for five minutes?’

She leant back in the chair and her bracelets clinked. The light from the drawing room caught her face and, with a flash of self-hatred, he realized she was suffering. ‘Daisy?’

‘I’ll come.’

Once across the lawn, Kit tucked his hand under her elbow and drew her close. They walked in silence, the yew a dark crescent. Despite the heat, Daisy shivered.

‘The garden feels strange at night,’ she said. ‘I’m not so sure I like it.’

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘I can feel something is wrong.’

She shook her head. ‘Nothing. It’s just the garden.’

‘You’re lying, Daisy.’

‘I never tell lies.’

‘Yes, you do.’ The memory of crumpled sheets, an orange scarf, a rolling pot of ointment and the evidence that Daisy had been a virgin flashed through his mind like a film sequence.

‘Let’s go this way,’ said Daisy. She slipped past him and ran down the stone steps.

‘Daisy,’ he called as the white shimmer of her dress caught in the moonlight.

‘Here,’ she answered, from the opening in the yew circle.

They passed Marcus and Flora coming back from the river. Daisy waved at them. The heat made Kit sweat into his dinner jacket and he took it off.

‘Not that way,’ he called to Daisy as she reached the scrub. ‘Don’t go through there.’ His patent leather shoes slipped on the dry lawn. ‘This bit hasn’t been touched for years.’

But he was wrong. Daisy pointed at the path. ‘That’s been used recently. Look.’

‘No,’ he said and tried to grab her. ‘Don’t, please don’t go there, darling. No.’

But Daisy was not listening. She walked through the opening where the scrub had been used to conceal the path and along the birch avenue.

‘Come back,’ he called, but when he saw it was useless, he went after her.

Daisy’s high heels were much less suitable than Kit’s shoes, but she scrambled somehow over dry lumps of earth and arrived at the edge of the garden. Down she went, down the slope towards the stone woman eternally guarding her stone child.

‘Daisy, where on earth are you?’ Kit ran into the clearing and looked down. He stopped in his tracks.

‘My God,’ he said, as the moonlight revealed the roses, the clematises, the foxgloves and the flaring, dying trumpets of two late lilies. ‘My God.’

Daisy disengaged the hem of her dress from a trailing stem of catmint. ‘I thought you said no one came here.’

‘Matty!’ said Kit slowly, and stared at the restored garden. ‘This must be Matty’s work. I should have known. This is exactly the sort of thing she would do.’

He searched in his pocket for his cigarette case and Daisy, pitying his evident shock, laid a hand over his. Kit’s was unsteady and she waited a second or two before opening the case for him. ‘Tell me what’s wrong.’

‘Thank you.’ Kit inhaled and blew out smoke.

The smell made Daisy feel nauseous and she moved away. ‘Do you have a handkerchief, by any chance?’

He passed her one and she blew her nose hard and retched into its folds, but he was too preoccupied to notice. After a while, he threw away the cigarette.

‘Daisy. I’m sorry.’ He folded his arms around her body and she could feel him shaking. ‘None of us ever come here. I’ll explain one day.’

She was puzzled, but made no move to break free. ‘How long is it since you were here?’

He pulled her tighter and inhaled her smell. ‘Ages. Years.’

‘How long?’ He dropped his chin onto her shoulder and was silent. ‘How long, Kit?’

The answer dragged from him. ‘Since I was eleven.’

‘Why?’ she whispered and looked up at the flowers peacefully enshrouded in the darkness.

There was no answer except for a sharp, indrawn breath. Daisy reached out to touch the statue’s face. It was cold and grainy under her finger. She traced the roundness of the woman’s maternal haunch and her own needs resurfaced. She swivelled in his arms to face him. ‘Kit. I’ve got to talk to you.’

But he was looking over her shoulder at the statue, anguish and horror fighting in his face. Daisy felt her own tighten with disappointment.