The Four of Us (48 page)

‘Why not? I think it's time we stopped pussyfooting around the subject of you and Francis and me and Francis, because, to tell the truth, Geraldine, I never thought that what I did was so very terrible.'

As Artemis gasped and Geraldine's face drained of blood, she continued relentlessly, ‘If you're totally honest with yourself, you were only marrying Francis because you wanted Cedar Court—'

‘I was marrying Francis because he was the only person I ever wanted to marry!' Geraldine pushed her chair away from the table with such force water spilled from the vase of marigolds that she'd placed in the centre of it. She stood up, trembling violently. ‘Thanks to you, Kiki, I've never married, never had children …'

‘No.' Kiki's voice was still perfectly level and conversational. ‘If you've never married and had children, Geraldine, it's because you've never really wanted to marry and have children. You've liked the way you've lived. You've liked being answerable to no one but yourself. You've enjoyed doing what you liked, when you liked.

You could hardly have run an upmarket Parisian call-girl ring if you'd been married with children, could you? And I doubt that anyone involved in providing sex for money actually enjoys sex or yearns for a long-term monogamous relationship. I know that you loved Francis, Geraldine, but I don't think you ever analysed in quite what way.'

‘And you did, I suppose?' Geraldine's knuckles, as she gripped the back of her chair, shone white.

‘Analyse Francis and your relationship? Yes, I did. You were cousins who were more like brother and sister. Only your mutual family home – which you loved passionately and which he saw as a liability – was destined to be his only. The only way it could ever be yours – and be passed on to a child of yours – was if the two of you married. And so you used sex to get what you wanted and Francis, who knew with what passion you'd care for Cedar Court, enabling him not to have to, happily went along with it. When I ran off with Francis, I behaved badly – as did he – but I didn't ruin one of the world's great love stories, and perhaps if you could face that truth honestly, the two of us could be friends again.'

There was a silence.

Primmie and Artemis exchanged glances, mutually terrified that the shit was now truly going to hit the fan.

Geraldine's hands squeezed the back of the chair even more tightly. At last she said, her voice raw, ‘I'd like to know what you think, Primmie. Are you in general agreement with Kiki?'

Compassionately, Primmie's eyes held hers. ‘Yes, Geraldine. I am. I think that when you were a child you fantasized about Cedar Court being your actual home, not just the family home that your mother had been born in. We all have childhood fantasies of one kind or another and, because they're usually impossible to bring to fruition, we outgrow them. You saw a way of making yours come true – and as you and Francis were so close, it was easy for you to slip from being cousins who were best friends into being lovers who would marry. If it hadn't been for Cedar Court, I don't think either of you would ever have thought of marrying each other.'

‘And you, Artemis?' Geraldine's voice was as brittle as glass. ‘What do you think?'

Artemis looked towards Primmie for help, realized that, as Geraldine had asked her specifically, any such help would be inappropriate and said reluctantly, ‘I'm not a very good person to ask, Geraldine, because I don't know much about men. If I'd known more, years ago, I would have known that Rupert wasn't marrying the real me – the me who's pretty crap at just about everything but running a home – and that when he found out I wasn't the successful, soignée model he had me down as being our marriage was bound to keep running into trouble.'

‘I'm not asking about Rupert and you, Artemis. I'm asking about Francis and me.'

‘And that's what I'm coming to, Geraldine. Just as we were never perfectly matched and able to give to each other what the other lacked, so I never thought that you and Francis were perfectly matched. You were strong and he … wasn't. I liked him, though,' she added hurriedly. ‘I always liked him. It's just that I always thought it must be a bit tedious for you, always getting him out of scrapes.'

For one terrible, tense moment, Geraldine simply stared at her and it was then that Primmie realized that Geraldine was ill – probably desperately ill. Instead of her face looking merely finely chiselled, it looked gaunt, and she was more than racehorse thin. Looking at her, Primmie doubted if she weighed much more than eight stone.

Slowly Geraldine's grip on the back of her chair eased. Unsteadily she sat back down. ‘OK,' she said in a tight voice. ‘Now I know what you all think. And you're probably right. Francis was weak. That's no revelation to me at all. And maybe I would have been marrying him for Cedar Court – which, ironically, I'm no longer obsessed by. But running off with your friend's husband-to-be on their wedding morning is still the lowest, shittiest, most despicable act possible. Especially when you then don't even marry him, but simply stay with him while you have a use for him and drop him like a hot brick when his usefulness comes to an end.'

Kiki opened her mouth to make an indignant reply.

Beneath the table, Primmie kicked her hard.

Given what had happened to Francis after his break-up from Kiki – or what was believed to have happened to him – she knew it would be fatal for them to start talking about it. It was subject matter for another day. For now, all that mattered was that some kind of rapprochement between Geraldine and Kiki was at last in sight.

Anxious for it to continue, and judging that the best way of helping it to do so was to shelve the subject by giving everyone something to do, she said, ‘We'll have coffee in the sitting room. Kiki, would you take in the tray I've set? Geraldine, could you reach the box of cubed brown sugar on the top shelf of the cupboard next to the Aga? I always have to stand on a chair to get to it.'

As they moved their chairs backwards, away from the table, the subject of Francis was temporarily dropped. Breathing a sigh of relief, Primmie followed Artemis into the sitting room.

‘Nice work,' Artemis said to her. ‘Will Kiki have a bruise on her leg in the morning?'

‘Very probably.'

They looked at each other, Destiny's unspoken name lying heavily between them.

Artemis stepped towards the television and picked up the silver-framed photograph that sat on top of it.

‘It was taken about ten years ago,' Primmie said, watching her as she looked at it, ‘when the children were still at school.'

Artemis put the photograph back down without saying anything.

‘Destiny's photograph is in the bedroom.'

Primmie's throat was so tight, it hurt. ‘By my bed.'

‘Rupert would never let me do that.' Artemis's eyes were again bright with tears. ‘He said it wasn't healthy having a photograph always present that would constantly remind us of what we had lost. I used to speak of Destiny to Orlando and Sholto, but Rupert used to get so angry at my doing so that I stopped. And when I longed to share my grief with you, he said that doing so would only prolong it.'

‘He was wrong.' Primmie's voice was quiet and steady and full of infinite pain.

‘I know.'

Simultaneously they stepped towards each other, holding each other close, sharing their long-carried grief at last.

From the doorway Kiki, the coffee tray in her hands, said, ‘What on earth is going on here?' She stepped into the room, Geraldine behind her. ‘Who was Destiny? A friend?'

No one spoke.

Geraldine cleared her throat. ‘I think,' she said, ‘that we need the bottle of Bell's.'

Kiki put the tray down on Primmie's glass-topped coffee table. ‘I'm always happy to see a bottle of whisky,' she said pragmatically. ‘But I'd like to know why you three suddenly need one. Who was this Destiny person? Someone's granny?'

Geraldine took the bottle of Bell's and four glasses out of the sideboard cupboard and put them on the table, next to the tray.

‘No,' she said, as Primmie and Artemis still didn't speak. ‘Destiny was Artemis's adopted daughter. She died in a drowning accident when she was five years old.'

Kiki blanched at her crassness. ‘Oh, gosh, Artemis. Forgive me. Primmie told me you'd lost a child and I just didn't put two and two together. I'm so sorry, Tem.' She looked from Artemis to Primmie. ‘And were you Destiny's godmother, Primmie?'

Geraldine shot Primmie a swift glance and began pouring generous amounts of whisky into each glass.

‘No.' Primmie took tight hold of Artemis's hand. ‘No, Kiki. It wasn't quite like that.'

Geraldine handed Kiki one of the glasses.

‘Artemis was Destiny's adoptive mother and I was her natural mother.'

Kiki's jaw dropped. Gobsmacked, she looked from Artemis to Primmie and back again. ‘I don't understand … are you saying that you had a baby, Primmie, and Artemis adopted it?'

Primmie nodded.

‘But why? I still don't understand.'

‘It was before I was married. I couldn't provide Destiny with all the things Artemis could provide her with and, as Artemis and Rupert couldn't have children of their own, and as I couldn't have borne to have had her adopted by strangers, it seemed the obvious solution to both our problems.'

Kiki took a drink of her whisky to help her assimilate the unbelievable information that Primmie had had an illegitimate baby. If it had been anyone else, she wouldn't have batted an eyelid, but Primmie?

‘When was all this going on, Prim? After I'd moved off to America, obviously.'

Primmie moved towards the table, took a glass of whisky from it and took a deep swallow. ‘No,' she said, still nursing the glass. ‘No. I was pregnant with Destiny when we were all three being fitted for our bridesmaid's dresses for Geraldine's wedding.'

Kiki stared at her, totally perplexed. ‘But you couldn't have been, Primmie. That was just after I got back from my tour of Australia, and you were dating Simon. I remember that clearly because …' She was about to say ‘because we had lunch together and he said he was going to marry you and I bullied him out of it', but thought better of it.

Primmie didn't say anything, and neither did anyone else.

‘So I don't see how …' she began, and then stopped.

The silence was profound.

In dawning horror, Kiki looked from Primmie to Artemis to Geraldine, and back to Primmie again. ‘No,' she said, her voice strangled. ‘No. It isn't possible. You would have told me if you were having Simon's baby, Primmie. You would have told me. Wouldn't you?'

‘Yes,' Primmie said again, her voice full of remembered hurt. ‘But only after I'd told Simon. And I never got the opportunity to tell him. We were going to make our secret engagement public when you came back from Australia and when he'd been able to tell you of our plans face to face. Then he fell ill and went away to recuperate – though I'm not sure now that he really was ill at all. I think he wanted to be on his own in order to come to a decision to end our relationship. It was while he was away that I discovered I was carrying Destiny and we didn't see each other again until the morning of what should have been Geraldine's wedding day.' She lifted her shoulders in an eloquent shrug. ‘And when he said he no longer wanted to marry me, I decided not to tell him about the baby. If I had, he would have changed his mind, and I didn't want him marrying me out of a sense of honour or duty.'

‘Oh God!' Kiki looked as if she was about to pass out. ‘Oh Christ! Oh hell!' She drained her glass in a swallow. ‘You're telling me you had Simon's baby
and he never knew?'

Primmie nodded.

Kiki looked round her, as if for support. As she did so, Rags trotted into the room and sat by her side.

Dazedly Kiki looked back towards Primmie. ‘I can't believe this. I can't believe any of it. I had a half-sister – a half-sister who was your daughter – and you never told me?'

‘How could I? If I'd told you, then Simon would have had to know as well – and Simon knowing, when he didn't want to marry me, was a complication I simply couldn't face.'

‘But Simon
did
want to marry you!' the words were blurted out before she could stop them.

Still standing near the door, Geraldine folded her arms.

Primmie bit her lip.

Artemis, who had never shared Geraldine's suspicions as to just why Simon Lane had broken off his relationship with Primmie, merely looked bewildered.

Kiki looked like a woman on the brink of an abyss.

‘Come on, Kiki,' Geraldine said, pitilessly. ‘How do you know that at the time your father ended his engagement to Primmie, he was still in love with her and still wanted to marry her?'

‘Because … because …' She put her hand down to Rags and knotted her fingers in his fur. ‘Because we had lunch together when I came back from Australia and he told me then. I was … appalled. I couldn't even begin to imagine having Primmie as my stepmother. The thought seemed … indecent and I … and I …'

She couldn't go on.

‘And you begged him not to do it?' Geraldine finished for her.

‘I … Yes. Oh God, Primmie. I'm so sorry. So very, very sorry. If I'd known about the baby … If I'd been a bit older … If I'd had more sense …'

Her words tailed off into a silence no one attempted to break.

At last, in a haze of misery, she said, ‘It could all have been so different, couldn't it? And it's all down to me that it wasn't, isn't it? Her face was ashen, her flame-red hair only emphasizing its pallor.

Primmie dragged in a deep breath, feeling like a vertigo sufferer who, seeing the world tilt crazily, can only wait for the dizziness to pass.