Into Temptation (Spoils of Time 03) (37 page)

Barty tried to imagine her own pain if Jenna excluded her from her wedding and flinched.

Now, when was it? She had promised Jenna they could go: that the long-postponed visit to England would take place then.

‘And we can maybe spend Christmas in London, with Venetia, or Adele, or even in Scotland at Glennings, as Aunt Celia calls it. That’d be fun.’

‘But we’d take Charlie, wouldn’t we? And Cathy, we couldn’t not have Christmas with them.’

‘Of course,’ said Barty quickly. She had actually considered going without them; but it was, of course, out of the question. Still – she would like to know the date. So she could start planning. It was June already, the year would fly away with her if she wasn’t careful.

She looked through her own desk; no sign of Kit’s pre-invitation, announcing the date.

Charlie had been very intrigued by it; maybe he had it. She hesitated for a moment, unwilling to invade his privacy, go into his study. But – she wasn’t going to start prying into his things. Just see if the invitation was lying around.

Charlie’s study was in chaos; it made Jenna’s bedroom look quite tidy. Papers on the desk and on the filing cabinet, books piled on the windowsill, the floor, the shelves half empty, his photographs still piled higgledy-piggledy in a packing case. The photographs of his other life: of Meg, of Cathy as a baby, of his parents – they looked so sweet, his parents, smiling out of their leather frame, a middle-aged couple, clearly quite well-to-do, in front of the house in Summit, New Jersey, where they had lived.

She wondered sometimes what had happened to that house; Charlie had said it had to be sold to pay their care-home bills, but it was a very substantial house, something of it must have been left . . .

Stop it Barty, don’t go down that road.

Sally, Meg’s mother, now she didn’t look quite so nice. Although she clearly was, generous and very loyal to Charlie. But she had a bit of a hard face; not like Meg’s. Meg had been lovely, a golden smiling girl. Such a tragedy: such a terrible tragedy.

Suddenly she decided she would like to talk to Sally; she was surprised Charlie hadn’t proposed a visit so they could show her the wedding pictures. Maybe she would phone her and fix it; Charlie would have to go then. They would all go; it would be a generous and kind thing to do. Before they went to South Lodge for the summer.

No sign of the invitation. Well, she could ask Charlie. Or Izzie, she had had an invitation too. She wondered how Izzie would feel, seeing Kit marry. Of course it was so long ago, ten years, but still . . . it had nearly happened . . .

She thumbed through Charlie’s address book. She knew Sally’s name, of course, she had seen the letter Charlie had written to her about the wedding.

Sally Norton. Here it was all alone on the N page. Charlie really did have very few friends. He told her he had lost touch with them during the years he was caring for Cathy. She supposed it made sense.

Quickly, before she could lose courage, she dialled the number. A voice answered almost immediately. A sweet, pleasant voice. Rather as she had imagined Meg’s mother might sound.

‘Yes?’

‘Mrs Norton?’

‘No. No, I’m sorry, she doesn’t live here any more.’

‘Oh. Oh I see.’

Funny, Charlie hadn’t said.

‘Well – do you have a number for her please? Or maybe she’s – that is, is she in a care home?’

‘Oh I don’t think so. She didn’t seem in need of any care. Rather the reverse.’

‘Oh. I thought—’

‘We moved in here just about a year ago. She was fine then.’

A year ago! This wasn’t making any sense.

‘So – do you know where she moved to?’

‘We have an address for her. For mail. No telephone number, though.’

‘Well, perhaps you could give me her address. I’ll write to her.’

‘Of course. And when you do, tell her we’re very happy here in her little apartment.’

‘Apartment? I thought – oh, it doesn’t matter. Thank you.’

Sally was supposed to have had quite a big house. Not a little apartment. What was this, what was going on . . .

‘Now just a minute, my dear. Yes, here we are. Apartment 4, 1429 Avenue N, Sheepshead Bay—’

‘Sheepshead Bay!’

She was stunned. Sheepshead Bay wasn’t a place a well-to-do lady would live. It was very modest. And some of it quite rough, down in the south of Brooklyn, near to Coney Island. What was this? Why was she living there, why hadn’t Charlie told her she had moved?

‘God, dear God,’ said Barty aloud. She realised she was almost crying: without really knowing why.

It was unutterably wonderful being back in London: back with her friends, with her family, to have help with Cecilia, to be able to shop and chat and gossip and talk publishing, to spend time at Lyttons. Both Jay and Celia had been very welcoming, had asked for her opinion on various books – including
Black and White
(as it was still called), now at proof stage and which she thought was brilliant. The only awful thing was the thought of going back to Glasgow. Or to some other equally terrible prison in Birmingham. That would be better, she supposed. Much nearer London. But still – the same awful dreary monotony of a life. Sometimes she wondered if she still loved Keir at all; at others, when they had had a good evening, talking about the things they both cared about, politics, literature, their future, when they had made love, she knew she did.

She had been terrified of sex for ages, afraid of so many things connected with it, afraid of it hurting, of it not being the same, or of waking Cecilia, but suddenly one night she found herself hungry for it, and he had been so gentle, so careful, so patient that she had relaxed, warmed, flown with him, felt after so long the joy, the leaping, soaring, fierce pleasure – and she had suddenly realised that it was all worthwhile, that she did still want him, wanted to be married to him, to make it work.

‘If only, if only he’d just give a bit,’ she said to Celia one evening, when she had gone to dinner with her in Cheyne Walk, Lord Arden having been banished to his club, ‘just see things my way. But he won’t listen, it’s as if he’s deaf. And blind. And although I do love him, I’m just not sure I can go on like this for very much longer. It’s too much to ask. Or am I being very spoilt and selfish? Which is what he always says.’

Celia told her she was not.

‘Something will turn up, darling, I know it will. Life is quite good at resolving things, I’ve always found.’

‘Well it’s taking a very long time over it,’ said Elspeth fretfully.

Adele sat in the psychiatrist’s office and stared past him out of the window. She was hating this. She was still not sure it was a good idea. It was Venetia who had finally persuaded her, after finding her hysterical with grief the morning Lucas had left for France.

‘You can’t go on like this,’ she said, ‘now come on, you must get help, see someone. I’ll come with you.’

‘I don’t want you to come with me,’ said Adele.

But she did agree to go.

He was quite easy to talk to, actually; his name was Dr Cunningham, and he was young, rather vague-looking and very gentle. She started slowly, just telling him she couldn’t stop crying and she couldn’t sleep, in spite of the sleeping pills; but then when he asked if she knew why she was crying, she said it was because her husband had left her.

‘I can’t see that’s so surprising,’ she said, almost defiantly. ‘Anyone would cry.’

‘And do you know why he left you? Is there someone else?’

‘Of course not. He left me because—’

And then it did start to come out; along with a great many more tears. On and on she went, reluctantly at times, at others talking with great speed; trying to explain her terrible guilt, how she felt she had harmed everyone she loved, except perhaps Clio.

‘And I know I’m harming her too, her father’s left her.’

After an hour, he held up his hand.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs MacColl. I only have this one hour for you. And in any case, I don’t like my patients exhausting themselves. Now look, I want you to come and see me again, possibly on Thursday. We can talk some more then. And meanwhile I would like you to start taking these pills.’ He scribbled out a prescription. ‘They’re not too strong, they’ll just make you feel a bit more able to cope – although it will be a few days before they start taking effect. And I want you to change your sleeping pills, try these instead.’

She looked at the prescription; his writing was terrible.

‘Do all doctors write badly so that we can’t read what they’ve said?’

He smiled. ‘No. We just do. It’s in our genes maybe. The Triptizol is the anti-depressant. And Largactil is a sedative, to help you sleep. Don’t get them muddled up.’

‘I won’t,’ she said and went home feeling exhausted, but just slightly less despairing.

Next time she went, she started talking about Luc Lieberman; about their doomed relationship, about how much she had loved him.

‘Sometimes I think I’ve never loved anyone else, certainly not as much.’ She talked about how utterly desolate she had been, alone in Paris, with the German army about to invade, when she found he had gone back to his wife – and she talked about her terrible guilt at leaving Paris with the children without saying goodbye.

‘But I was so angry, you see, so hurt, I could only think of getting away.’

‘Of course.’

‘Even so – it was dreadful. He never saw his children again, never was able to say goodbye to them, never even kissed them after that last day. How could I have done that—’

‘You did what seemed best at the time.’

‘But – I robbed him of them. You don’t understand. And then he had to go into hiding, knowing he would never see them again. And when he was shot, trying to save that little girl – he must have thought of them then, probably his last thought – oh, God—’

She broke down then, wept for a long time; afterwards she felt eased by Cunningham’s refusal to judge or to probe; he just let her talk. But she was still no nearer to being able to forgive herself. Luc had cheated on her; but was the punishment she had meted out to him really justified? Walking away, without a backward glance, without waiting for explanation, for justification, even. Perhaps she had been cruel to him, less than loving, perhaps he had felt rejected, criticised: who could judge that?

On her next visit she described the journey through France with all the other refugees, the dreadful things she had seen, had subjected the children to.

On the fourth day, she told him about the captain of the boat.

She was feeling better anyway, the pills were beginning to take effect, she was certainly sleeping better. And her sessions with Dr Cunningham had assumed a confessional quality.

‘It was so awful, probably the worst thing of all. But – well, I needed to get us on that boat. We’d travelled right through France, arrived safely somehow, I’d got those two tiny children all that way against all possible odds – only to be told there was no room for me on the last boat to England.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘I slept with him,’ she said. Exactly as she had said it to Venetia so many years before. ‘I can’t describe how horrible I felt; how filthy, how ashamed. I thought I could never tell anyone ever; except my sister of course. And my mother. Well, one has to tell her everything. I’ve never even told Geordie. And afterwards I was so afraid that I would be pregnant, that I’d get some kind of venereal disease – oh, it was horrible. It’s what I dream about, and wake up to, at two in the morning. I can’t get away from it. And I never will.’

‘But if you hadn’t done that,’ he said, lighting a cigarette, offering her one, ‘is it right to say you would not have got home?’

‘Yes. Probably I wouldn’t.’

‘You’d have been trapped in France: a country occupied by the enemy.’

‘I know. I know all that. But it doesn’t help. Of course I felt I had to do it. But it disgusted me. And nearly twenty years later it still does. You can’t cure me of that, Dr Cunningham.’

‘Of course not. I wouldn’t try. Now – our time is up. Again. How are you feeling?’

‘Better,’ said Adele. ‘I think.’

She did feel better; that confession had been hard to make. And his calm acceptance of it was healing.

But still it was not the greatest crime; that had been leaving Luc, taking away his children, without any of them saying goodbye.

No one could heal the pain of that.

It really was quite ridiculous, Celia thought; some stupid telephonist at Keir’s school refusing to give him a message. She had told her how urgent it was; who she was, even what it was about.

‘Staff are not permitted to receive personal calls,’ she said, ‘or to make them, and that’s all there is to it. I will tell Mr Brown you’ve phoned, and he will get that message at the end of school.’

‘But—’ Celia stopped. There was clearly no point explaining that she needed to talk to Keir before the end of school, that she must know if she could bring the proofs of
Black and White
up to go through them with him – having been unable to contact his friend at the school in Brixton – that there were certain delicate points the lawyer had raised that could not be settled without his reading them in context. She would just have to go. She had his address, he was hardly likely to be out, she would just go to see him there, with the proofs, and get it settled. She could find somewhere to stay and come back in the morning.

She was rather given to such feverish activity nowadays. It helped her through her misery.

Lucas climbed out of the Davies’ swimming pool, and lay down on a chaise longue in the sun; his long lean body was already dark brown.

‘Lucas! Hallo. I thought you’d gone shopping with the others.’

It was Mrs Davies; smiling down at him. She was wearing a dark-blue swimming costume; she had a marvellous figure and was extremely fit, spent at least an hour every morning swimming up and down. She looked about twenty years younger than the rather bluff Mr Davies. Lucas liked her; and she clearly liked him. Her husband had not yet arrived, and she had made something of a pet of Lucas, putting him next to her at dinner each night, challenging him to a game of tennis early each morning before the sun got too hot.