The Tennis Party (15 page)

Caroline’s raucous laugh rang out through the room, and Cressida flinched. She couldn’t bear Caroline’s rowdy spirits at the best of times; least of all now, with the worry of that letter still in her mind, and still unshared. She hadn’t been able to find a suitable
moment to take it out and show it to Charles; first of all she’d felt too nervous to bring the subject up, and then Martina had appeared with the twins, wanting to know if they could use the Jacuzzi in their bathroom. Charles had suggested this, it transpired, and he spent the rest of the time before dinner romping in the bathroom with the twins, covering the floor in bubbles, and thoroughly over-exciting them.

In the end, Cressida had retreated to a bathroom that she’d found at the end of the corridor, which no-one else seemed to be using. She’d gone through her usual routine mechanically, using the same make-up that she’d been taught to apply at the Lucie Clayton grooming school fifteen years ago and had never digressed from since. She had brushed out her hair, sprayed on scent and smiled bravely at herself in the mirror. But now she felt cold inside her dress, and her smile stopped at her lips. Hadn’t she once read somewhere that babies learnt to smile as a defence mechanism? That was all her smile was tonight – a defence, to stop people looking too closely, or saying ‘Cheer up’, in that dreadfully hearty way.

Her mind kept veering between optimism and despair. Of course, the letter must be a mistake. As soon as she told Charles about it, he would reassure her, point out the error, put his arms round her and say fondly, ‘You really haven’t got a clue about money,
have you?’ It would be like the time she decided to pay some bills herself for once, and ended up paying them all twice. That had happened just after they’d been married, and Charles had been so amused. He actually seemed to like it when she made blunders and didn’t understand things. And just as she thought she’d got something sorted out in her mind, she would try to make an intelligent comment and he would burst out laughing at her. She was always one step behind. So, of course, this letter must be another mix-up. There would be something she hadn’t thought of, or didn’t know about, that would explain it all. They would both be laughing about it tomorrow.

So why did the thought of it make her feel sick, and anxiously swirl the drink round in her glass? She recalled the sum of money mentioned and shuddered. She was rich, of course she was. But was she that rich any more? Could she stand such a demand for money? She willed herself to remember what Mr Stanlake, her portfolio manager, had said at their last meeting. She could remember his thin-lipped smile; his clean, cool handshake; the view from his window and even the face of his well-groomed secretary who always brought them coffee. But what had been said? How much was left of her assets? She fingered the fabric of her dress. Perhaps she could find out what her financial situation was before telling Charles about the letter. It
would take time, but then, this house didn’t seem the right place to tell him. Especially not now. Not now that girl – woman, whatever she was – had arrived.

Right from the start, Charles had always been unwilling to talk about Ella, and Cressida certainly hadn’t wanted to rake up his past. She knew hardly anything about Ella, apart from the fact that Charles had lived with her for at least five years in that house in Seymour Road. In fact, before this afternoon, Cressida had never even known what Ella looked like. Somehow she’d been surprised when she saw her. She had imagined her slightly fatter, slightly less . . . she searched for a word in her mind . . . exotic looking.

She was jolted out of her thoughts by a sudden burst of laughter from Caroline and Annie. Caroline was brandishing a bottle of Malibu.

‘Annie, you haven’t lived if you haven’t tried this,’ she shrieked. ‘It’s great stuff!’ Annie’s cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright.

‘But I’ve still got some champagne,’ she protested, as Caroline began pouring it out.

‘So what?’ Caroline looked around wickedly and then put the bottle of Malibu to her lips.

‘I once did a promotion for Malibu,’ she said, wiping her mouth. ‘Or was it Pina Colada? We all wore grass skirts and loads of fake tan. Really orangey stuff. I got
it all over the sheets when I went to bed that night.’ She paused. ‘But then, if I remember rightly, they weren’t my sheets, so I didn’t give a shit.’ She broke into bubbling laughter again.

Patrick had gone to fetch more of his cricket memorabilia, and as he entered, his eyes swivelled distrustfully in the direction of Caroline’s laughter. Then they fell on Cressida, sitting alone on the sofa. She immediately flashed him a bright, rather desperate smile, and willed him to rejoin the men. She intuitively felt that Patrick was the sort of man who would realize that something was wrong and wheedle it all out of her with no effort at all. He looked at her half-empty glass and called to Caroline.

‘Sweetheart, some more champagne over here, I think.’ He smiled at Cressida, and she smiled back, even harder.

‘Lovely view, isn’t it?’ she said, gesturing out of the window. Her eyes fell on the fields and she strove for something further to say. ‘Lovely colours,’ she added eventually. Patrick nodded.

‘We do get a superb sunset here,’ he said. ‘I’ve taken some marvellous photographs. I’ll show you later.’

‘That would be lovely,’ said Cressida feebly. There was a silence, in which Patrick’s eyes seemed to penetrate hers. Her lips trembled; she looked down, and was aware of a pink tinge spreading over her cheeks.

‘Cressida,’ began Patrick, and moved a step closer. Cressida stared fixedly at her knees, unsure why she was blushing.

Then, to her relief, the door opened, and Don and Valerie came in.

‘Hello!’ hooted Valerie. ‘Are we late?’

‘No, no,’ said Patrick genially. He moved to kiss Valerie’s cheek, and she ducked awkwardly towards him, so that they collided with some force. As his head rose, Patrick’s eye met Cressida’s with the briefest of flickers, and she found herself grinning down into her champagne glass, feeling ridiculously warmed. When she looked up, she saw Patrick shaking Don’s hand with a perfectly straight face and Valerie waving at her as though they were separated by several miles.

‘Ooh! I do love your dress,’ said Valerie. ‘It’s just like mine!’

This, Cressida realized, gazing at Valerie in slight horror, was not far from the truth. Both of them were in simple, tailored, navy-blue dresses. If Cressida’s was in exquisitely cut linen and Valerie’s in ill-fitting polyester, Valerie certainly couldn’t tell the difference.

‘I do love the classic look,’ exclaimed Valerie complacently, sitting down beside Cressida. Her white hand shot out and fingered the fabric of Cressida’s dress; Cressida suddenly and irrationally felt sick.

‘Yours is lovely,’ Valerie said. ‘Where did you get it?’

‘London,’ murmured Cressida.

‘Me too,’ said Valerie. ‘In the sales. Actually, it’s not quite the right size, but it was such a bargain!’

‘Drink, Valerie?’ said Patrick genially. ‘Champagne?’

‘Ooh, lovely!’ said Valerie. She settled back next to Cressida. Her legs, dead white apart from a strip of pink sunburn down the front of each, were covered in the minute red dots of skin which has been recently shaved and a plaster was flapping at the heel of her navy-blue patent-leather shoe.

Cressida glanced surreptitiously over at Caroline, who was now opening another bottle of champagne. She was a vision of yellow, with her buttercup dress, golden skin and bright blond hair, shining under the spotlights of the bar. She had too much make-up on, in Cressida’s opinion, and was being her usual vulgar outrageous self, but at least she looked vivacious with it. And Annie, in her richly patterned Indian sarong dress, looked flushed, happy and animated. She had caught the sun on her cheeks, and had twisted her hair up into a knot. Cressida had never seen her look so attractive.

Looking down at her navy-blue lap, and at Valerie’s, Cressida suddenly felt as if she were back at school
– and she and Valerie were the misfits of the form. Her dress – beautiful and expensive though it was – seemed both dowdy and over-smart at the same time. And she was the only woman in the room wearing tights, she noticed. She took a miserable sip of champagne. Everything about her seemed wrong. Yet she had worn exactly the same outfit a few weeks ago – to drinks with the Marchants – and felt entirely at ease.

Patrick had made his way over to the bar. Caroline was sitting alone on a bar stool, sipping a huge cocktail with her eyes closed.

‘Sweetness,’ he said, ‘people are waiting for drinks.’

‘Here you are.’ Caroline eyed him balefully and gave him the open bottle. ‘You can take this round.’ Patrick gave her an annoyed look.

‘I meant’, he said, ‘you could go round and talk to a few people.’

‘I’m talking to Annie,’ said Caroline obstinately. ‘She’s just gone to the loo. She’ll be back in a moment.’

‘Well, you can’t talk to her all evening,’ said Patrick, in an attempt at jocularity. ‘We do have other friends.’

‘Friends!’ mocked Caroline. She swivelled round on the bar stool and raised contemptuous blue eyes to Patrick’s. ‘Are you Annie’s friend? Are you Stephen’s friend? Well, if you are, Christ help your enemies.’

Patrick shifted uncomfortably. ‘I hardly think this is the place,’ he whispered.

‘Exactly,’ replied Caroline in a grudgingly low voice. ‘Neither is it the place to rip off people who trust you. Like they do. Like they did, perhaps I should say.’ Patrick peered at her with mounting anxiety.

‘Caroline!’ he hissed. ‘You bloody better not have said anything to Annie.’

‘Or what?’ Caroline’s smile challenged him.

‘Hello, Patrick!’ Annie’s cheerful voice hailed them and Patrick smiled uneasily.

‘You’re looking lovely tonight,’ he said.

‘I’m feeling wonderful,’ said Annie cheerfully. ‘It’s been a really super day! I can’t tell you how much we’ve both enjoyed it. And the children have been in heaven.’ She turned to Caroline, smiling. ‘Nicola worships Georgina even more than she did before. She’s insisted on calling their bedroom the dormy. And I think Georgina’s going to do her lights-out, go-to-sleep, head-prefect bit for them later on.’

‘My God,’ said Caroline. ‘We really have raised a little Hitler.’ Patrick frowned, and opened his mouth to protest, but then changed his mind.

‘Dinner soon, do you think, sweetheart?’ he said.

‘We’re still waiting for Ella,’ pointed out Caroline. Patrick’s frown deepened.

‘Oh yes,’ he said shortly. ‘Well, I’ll go and take some more champagne round.’

‘I’m sure she won’t be long,’ said Annie soothingly.

Charles was ignoring Cressida’s pleading looks from the sofa. She was stuck next to the dreadful Valerie – and for that he couldn’t help feeling sorry for her – but there was something in him tonight that couldn’t bear to sit tamely down with his wife. He felt an unspecified anticipation; a slight exhilaration; a mood of gaiety and energy. It was probably, he thought to himself, the combination of outdoor exercise, sunlight and champagne. He didn’t allow himself to wonder why this mood had only overtaken him after the surprise appearance made by Ella. He was used, after four years of marriage, to swiftly diverting his thoughts whenever they turned in the direction of Ella; remembering only the bad times; most of the time blocking her memory completely from his mind.

Stephen seemed in good spirits too, he noticed; more sure of himself than he had been that morning. He and Don were still poring over old photographs, programmes, score sheets, cricket balls, even a couple of old cricket pads. Patrick’s collection of cricket memorabilia was clearly fascinating them. Charles found it boring. The cricket bat had been interesting to look at, both aesthetically and as an historical artefact
– but endless lists and photographs of bygone players were really not his thing. And yet he still hovered by them, studiously avoiding Cressida’s wan face. He was in far too good a mood to have to go and sit beside his miserable-looking wife.

Cressida’s spirits had plummeted even further. Her position on the sofa was uncomfortable and she could feel that her dress was rucked up; but to stand up and shake herself out would draw attention to herself – and at that moment, she didn’t feel as if she could bear anyone’s eyes on her. Her glass was warm from the clutch of her fingers; her stockinged legs were uncomfortably slippery against the leather of the sofa; and Valerie’s shrill voice was unending.

She had regaled Cressida for the last fifteen minutes with unsavoury pieces of gossip from the London office where she worked. She related each story in a detached, almost innocent voice, that displayed her complete ignorance of how these affairs might utterly destroy a marriage; ruin a relationship of trust; shatter a family. To Valerie, it was all fair game for entertainment.

‘And then you’ll never guess what,’ she was saying. ‘Michelle – that’s his secretary – went and called his wife by the wrong name. She nearly died!’ Valerie paused, and looked with bright eyes at Cressida, waiting, without much hope, for a response. Cressida was
evidently a disappointment as a gossip partner. ‘But that wasn’t when she guessed,’ she continued. ‘The wife, I mean. It was about two months later. And it was such a stupid mistake. She saw his expenses list – and one of them was for a double hotel room. He just didn’t think on his feet. I mean, he could have come up with a story or something, but he just told her everything. Next thing, he was off sick for a week.’

Cressida was beginning to feel sick herself. She had never heard such a sordid catalogue of misdemeanours. She felt like weeping for the wife’s sake. For all the wives’ sakes.

‘Are you OK?’ said Valerie, becoming aware of Cressida’s downturned face.

‘I’m fine,’ said Cressida shakily. ‘I’m just a bit tired.’

‘I know what, I’ll get you a drink of water,’ said Valerie, suddenly self-important, casting herself as Cressida’s aide. ‘I’ll get you a nice glass of Perrier, shall I?’

‘That would be lovely,’ said Cressida. ‘And perhaps I’ll go outside on the terrace.’

‘Get some fresh air, good idea,’ said Valerie. She placed her clammy hand on Cressida’s arm. ‘You probably had too much sun today.’ Cressida fought off the desire to retch.