The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets (19 page)

After midnight more food
emerged, and, ravenous as wolves, Charlotte, Harry and I sat down to a Parisian
breakfast. As the night became the morning, Harry became more agitated about
Marina and George. He stubbed the end of his cigarette out on Charlotte’s
plate.

‘She
could at least have spared me the indignity of watching her marrying someone so
fat!’ he groaned. ‘Look at him! That’s his tenth vol-au-vent!’

‘And
you’re
counting?’
said Charlotte, looking disgusted.

I
thought of my Uncle Luke whose trousers always looked too tight and who could
never resist a Mars bar. ‘What does it matter that he’s fat?’ I demanded. ‘You
shouldn’t judge people like that, Harry. He can’t help his weight.’ I regretted
these words as soon as they were out of my mouth, but something had to make
room for the two omelettes.

‘Don’t
be such an idiot,’ snapped Harry. ‘He’s fat because he never stops eating. If
he were as in love with Marina as he should be, he wouldn’t be able to eat a
thing in her presence.

‘And
you’re speaking from experience?’ I asked.

‘Unfortunately.
I am.

‘Did
she eat in front of you?’ Charlotte asked curiously. Harry glared at her.

‘All
the bloody time,’ he snapped. ‘She’s American. They’re like that.’

‘Marina’s
been shooting me sinister looks for the last half an hour,’ I said hopefully. ‘Do
you think she’s feeling the first stirrings of loathing and jealousy.

‘Probably
not. I imagine she’s thinking how unfortunate the back of your dress looks
since you sat down on that ashtray.’

‘You
shouldn’t have left it on the chair!’

‘You
should have
looked
before you sat down like any normal person!’

‘Normal
person! Aren’t you the boy who kept a loaf of bread in a cage?’

‘Don’t
bring Julian into this!’

‘Why
should you care if my dress is ruined anyway?’

‘It isn’t
ruined. Any good dry cleaner will get ash out of satin,’ said Charlotte
soothingly.

What
she had said earlier about a good party playing host to every conceivable
emotion was true. I had gone from wishing that my dance with Harry could go on
for ever to wanting to walk out of the room and leave him to go to hell.

‘She
mustn’t see you rowing,’ went on Charlotte warningly. ‘Why not? I thought that
all lovers ever did was row,’ said Harry. His fists were tight clenched, and he
must ‘have nearly bitten through his bottom lip with the tension of being in
the same room as Marina and George.

‘Do you
want to leave?’ I asked suddenly. Charlotte raised her eyes questioningly at
Harry.

‘Nothing
left to stay for now the omelettes have happened,’ he said. He looked shattered
all of a sudden and my heart went out to him. We left the Picture Gallery and
made our way out of the house, back through the saloon and down the stairs. I
glanced over my shoulder before we left the building. It was how Dorset House
should be, I thought, and how silly anyone was to think otherwise. It was a
house
made
for parties. What was the point in living somewhere with a
staircase that beautiful, that romantic, if one didn’t fill it with princesses
and politicians and butterflies? An older sort of woman with a handsome face
and a gawp-worthy string of pearls round her neck was standing at the bottom of
the stairs waiting for her coat. She smiled when she saw me.

‘Did
you enjoy the party?’ she asked me, shrugging her fur over her shoulders.

‘It was
the best party ever,’ I said truthfully.

‘They’re
terribly generous, the Americans,’ she said.

‘Aren’t
they?’ I agreed. And more generous than even they knew, I thought, waving her
goodbye with a giggle. Charlotte and I had pinched a cocktail glass each as a
souvenir.

I don’t recall our taxi
ride home with any clarity at all. I know that Harry ranted on about Patrick
Reece and said very little about Marina, but also’ that he paid the driver at
the other end. I remember falling into my bed and being aware of the fact that
the room was spinning, and waking up the next morning at eight o’clock with a
pounding sensation throughout my body, cursing Marina for her lies about
good-quality alcohol reducing the chances of an agonising headache. I had heard
about these headaches before but had never had’ one myself. A hangover seemed
to me to be thoroughly exotic and grown up. What would Mama say? I washed and
dressed and drank three glasses of water from the basin next to my bed and felt
a little better. I could hear Aunt Clare’s voice issuing orders in the kitchen.
I peered at myself in the mirror. Pale as a ghost and puffy-eyed.

Charlotte
was eating breakfast and reading the paper in the dining room, showing no signs
at all of the suffering that I was experiencing.

‘Get
yourself a bowl of porridge,’ she ordered as I entered the room. She had pulled
her hair off her face into a low ponytail and was wearing the thick white
jersey she had favoured when she had come to stay at Magna. Despite so little
sleep, her bright-eyed spark was indestructible, her back straight, her long
fingers steady.

‘Oh, I’m
not sure I could manage it,’ I said, sitting down and pouring myself a cup of
tea.

‘Don’t
be silly. I always have porridge after parties. It’s the only sensible thing to
eat, isn’t it, Aunt?’

Aunt
Clare swept into the room carrying a pile of papers. ‘What’s that?’ she said
vaguely. ‘Charlotte, we’ve a huge amount of work to do today. I expect you
ready at the typewriter in twenty minutes. Oh, hello, Penelope dear. I trust
you slept well?’

‘Very,
thank you.’

Charlotte
spooned porridge into a bowl for me and oozed a spoonful of golden syrup on top.

‘There’s
more if you want it,’ she said and went back to reading the paper.

It
was
good porridge, thick and made with real cream and not all lumpy and watery
like Mary’s. Aunt Clare asked only one question about the party. but Charlotte
told me later that this was because she agreed with Oscar Wilde that only dull
people are brilliant at breakfast.

‘Was
Tania Hamilton wearing peach? She always wears peach!’ was all she managed and
when we replied simultaneously in the negative, she merely rolled her eyes and
went back to eating toast. I found myself consuming two bowls of porridge and
then felt so stuffed and hot that I decided I must leave Kensington Court at
once, if only to get some fresh air into my lungs.

Charlotte
stood on the doorstep and said goodbye to me.

‘Harry’s
still asleep?’ I asked her for the sake of something to say.

‘Oh,
gracious, no. I don’t think he’s back yet.’

‘Back?’

‘He
disappeared off to some jazz bar in Notting Hill after you went to bed,’ said
Charlotte. ‘Just grabbed his box of tricks and off he went. He makes most of
his money doing late night shows. Or early morning shows, as the case may be.’

‘Goodness,’
I said. ‘What stamina.’

As I
turned to go, Charlotte pressed a magazine with Johnnie Ray on the front into
my hands.

‘Something
to read on the train,’ she said. ‘I expect you’ve already seen it, but it talks
about London and how much he loves performing here.’

I
stared down at Johnnie’s perfect face on the cover of the
Melody Maker.

‘We
have to see him when he comes to London,’ said Charlotte. ‘I don’t care who we
have to mug to get tickets.’

With
Charlotte, one never knew whether she was joking or not.

Back at Magna, I found
Mama flicking through the
Tatler
and sipping weak tea. Like Aunt Clare,
she asked few questions about the party, but in Mama’s case I felt that it was
less to do with protocol and more to do with resentment that it had been I not
she who had seen Dorset House again. Deep down, Mama would have done anything
to see inside the place under its new American ownership, even if only to
despair over the new paintings. I longed to throw remarks around about the
generosity of the Americans, and Marina’s hot pink dress, and Louis Armstrong
and omelettes and cocktails and Patrick Reece and Mark Rothko, but I knew better
than to try to push things onto Mama that she, essentially. feared. Instead, I
tried to plough through an essay on the difference between Egypt and’ Rome in
Act One of
Antony and Cleopatra,
and in the afternoon helped Mary with
the dusting, which is an awesome task in a house like Magna. At supper, I could
bear it no longer, and decided that, at the very least, I would bring up the
subject of Charlotte and Harry and see what that provoked from Mama. What was
the point, I thought in despair as I powdered blusher over my death-pale
cheekbones, in having a mother at all if I couldn’t talk to her about anything
that interested me? It felt dead, like living with a shadow, sometimes. Living
with another ghost.

Yet
Mama, unpredictable as ever, was one step ahead of me. We sat down together for
supper (just the two of us as Inigo was back at school) and she waited until
Mary had served us our vegetable and barley soup before she came out with it.

‘Darling,
I think you should invite your new friends here for New Year’s Eve,’ she said
calmly. I gulped.

‘Charlotte
and Harry?’

‘Yes.
The girl and her cousin — the one who keeps the stack of pancakes in the rabbit
hutch or whatever it is he does. I’d like to meet them.’

‘It was
a loaf of bread,’ I said, ‘and I didn’t think that you liked having guests for
New Year?’

‘I don’t,
ordinarily.’ said Mama lightly. dipping her bread into her broth. ‘I feel that
these two merit a change of attitude. I thought they would get on rather well
with Uncle Luke and Aunt Loretta. Perhaps you would like to telephone them
after dinner and see if they’d like to come and stay?’

‘Oh,
Mama, I don’t want you to feel — to feel put out,’ I said. ‘There’s no need to—
‘Penelope, I’ve made up my mind. I’d
like
them to come and stay. Now let’s
not talk about it any further or you’ll start making me nervous.’ She took a
gulp of wine to emphasise the point.

‘Thank
you, Mama,’ I said quietly.

What
she was up to, I had no idea. I finished eating and raced to the hall to
telephone Charlotte, sliding over on the zebra skin and nearly falling over.

‘Steady.
darling!’ cried Mama irritatingly.

Aunt
Clare picked up the telephone.

‘Oh,
hello, Aunt Clare — I mean Mrs Delancy,’ I said breathlessly. ‘It’s Penelope
Wallace speaking.’

‘Good
evening, Penelope Wallace Speaking. How are you tonight?’ came Aunt Clare’s
amused voice.

‘Oh,
very well. Thank you again for your wonderful hospitality,’ I said quickly. ‘I
loved breakfast this morning, and I slept so well last night. We had the most
marvellously fun time at Dorset House.’

Away
from the breakfast table, Aunt Clare clearly felt she could probe a little
more. ‘And Harry?’ she asked in a low voice. ‘How was he? I hope he didn’t make
a fool of himself’

‘Oh,
not at all,’ I said. ‘There was just about the best jazz band I’ve ever heard
to distract him. Louis Armstrong was playing with them.’

‘I am
pleased that he asked you to the party,’ went on Aunt Clare, who obviously had
no interest in jazz. It was also clear to me that she had not been let in on
the part of Harry’s winning back Marina plan that involved me as bait. ‘You’re
so much prettier than Marina. So much better for Harry,’ she went on.

‘Oh, I
don’t know,’ I said uncomfortably. Heavens, the last thing I needed was Aunt
Clare thinking that Harry really
had
taken a shine to me!

‘I knew
the moment you walked into my study that you would be the one to sort him out,’
she went on.

‘Oh,
not at all. Mrs Delancy — I was wondering if I could talk to Charlotte,’ I
said, desperately steering her off the subject of Harry and me.

‘Oh,
darling, she’s not here. She’s out at the pictures with a friend from school.’

Who?
I wondered in annoyance.

‘Would
my son do instead?’ Aunt Clare added coquettishly. ‘I must catch Phoebe before
she goes. Here he is, dear.’

‘Horrors!’
I thought. Had Harry heard everything she had been saying? ‘Oh, um—’ It was too
late.

‘How
are you, sweetheart?’ Harry sounded amused and not remotely embarrassed.

‘Does
your mother think you’re falling in love with me?’ I hissed.

‘Probably.
It takes the heat off the truth somewhat.’

‘So you
can concentrate on winning Marina back without worrying that she thinks you’ve
lost your mind?’

‘Exactly.
She thinks you’re wonderful, which makes my life so much easier. Guess what she
said to me this afternoon? “So pleased you’ve come to your senses and realised
that Penelope’s so much better for you than the American.”‘ Harry laughed. He
sounded as though he was still drunk.