The Undoing of Daisy Edwards (A Time for Scandal) (5 page)

‘They had a little place in Montdidier in Picardy, the Renauds,’ Dominic said, when I asked him how he came to know them. ‘I ate there often, when I could. Montdidier was one of those towns on the front—right on the front, sometimes. After—they lost both their sons at Verdun—so after, they wanted a complete change. You’ve been, I assume? You know what it’s like there?’

‘Yes, I’ve been.’ I forced myself to remember the ruined towns and villages the train had taken me and all those other grieving widows through. ‘Rubble and dust and too many women in black,’ I said. ‘Then too many white crosses. Far too many.’ I took a sip of my wine then. ‘It’s supposed to help, that pilgrimage. I think it did help his mother and father, but I found it—he wasn’t there, you see. Anthony. My husband. All that effort gone into making those cemeteries pretty. All those stones carved with names. It felt like an apology. Too late.’ I reached for my wine-glass again, but my hands were shaking too much. That surprised me, as much as what I’d said. ‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’ Dominic shook his head and took my hand between his. My fingers were cold. His were warm. It was—it was nice. Another warning I should have heeded. It was very nice. ‘I’ve never been back,’ he said. ‘Not even to see—you know, don’t you. Grace will have told you about Jeremy.’

‘Your brother.’

He nodded. ‘When we got the letter, the one that tells you where the grave is, it was about six months after the Armistice. That was when my mother told us she was getting married again. An American. She wanted Grace to go and live with her in New York. She tore the letter up. If she didn’t see the grave, then Jeremy wasn’t dead. I think that was it. No, I know it was. But I wonder now—about Grace, I mean. We never talk about it, but if you thought it would help, I could take her.’

‘But she’s been,’ I said, surprised into telling him what his sister had obviously kept secret. ‘Last year,’ I added, because it was too late to pretend ignorance, and he looked so shocked. ‘March, I think.’

He let go my hand, and I missed that more than I should—his holding it. He topped up his wine, but then simply swirled it around the glass, staring down at it, frowning deeply. ‘April,’ he said eventually. ‘That’s when she was first arrested. A bit too much of a coincidence, don’t you think?’

‘I think…’ I hesitated, but it wasn’t betraying Grace because she’d never really confided in me. She’d never had to. ‘I was at the bar in the Café de Paris the night Grace and I met. Alone. “Isn’t it funny,” she said to me, “that when a man drinks alone at the bar, it’s a sign that he wants to be just that, alone. But when a woman drinks at the bar, men always think she’s looking for company.” She sat down next to me and she ordered us both another martini. “You don’t give a damn,” she said to me, “because you’ve got nothing left to lose. And I don’t give a damn because if that damned war taught us anything it’s that life is way, way too short to care.”’

I had been turning my wine-glass round and round in circles, but remembering Grace that night, remembering myself, I was suddenly angry. ‘She was wrong,’ I said, pushing the glass away. ‘It’s not that I have nothing to lose. I have my sister. I have my acting. I do have a life, even if I don’t quite feel alive, some of the time—I have a life. She was right about the fact that it’s too short, though. Too short to wish away, which is what I’ve been doing.’

‘You’re not the only one.’ Dominic caught my hand again. His grip was tight, but I liked it. I couldn’t ignore a grip that tight. ‘Is that what Grace is doing, too, wishing it away?’

‘I don’t think so. I think she’s—Dominic, don’t you think she might just be trying to get your attention?’

‘Don’t be so…’ He sighed heavily, than swore. ‘I don’t know. They hate us, I think. The ones who were too young. They think they’ve missed out on something, some of them. The others, they think we’ve destroyed it all. They don’t realise we meant it for the best.’

‘King and country,’ I said bitterly. ‘Anthony said—he believed, I think he really did believe, that it would be an honourable death.’

‘We all did. It’s how we were raised. It’s one of those things you’re brought up to believe in and you never question because it’s never tested. And then when it was tested, it was too late. Grace is right. We did destroy it all.’

His voice made my own bitter tone sound warm in comparison. ‘You didn’t declare war, Dominic. You were not one of the generals responsible for all that slaughter.’

‘I led my men into our fair share of slaughter. I believed in it, Daisy. At first. All of it. Just as your husband did. Only I lived to regret it, and he did not.’

‘You can’t possibly feel guilty about not being killed,’ I said, realising even as I spoke that he did feel exactly that.

‘Don’t you?’ he said, after a moment’s silence.

‘I didn’t fight.’

‘You’re alive, though by your own admission you feel dead. Why is that, do you think?’

I didn’t like the way he was looking at me. Too late, I realised how far we’d strayed into exactly the kind of conversation we’d understood we wouldn’t have. The kind of conversation I’d never had, and I was willing to bet Dominic hadn’t, either. Was it then that I realised that I had wandered far beyond my own boundaries? ‘I’ve been there,’ I said, tugging my hand free from his and pushing back my chair. ‘I’ve loved and I’ve lost and I have no intentions of ever going through that again.’

He was on his feet too, taking my coat from Madame Renaud and helping me into it. ‘You’re scared, Daisy,’ he said softly. ‘I recognised it the moment I saw you. But it’s not just that you’re scared. It’s not just that you don’t want to have your heart broken again. That’s not the only reason you’ve got more armour-plating than a tank. You’re alive, Daisy, and he’s not. You can’t bring him back, but you can make sure you don’t enjoy what he hasn’t got. Sounds like guilt to me.’

‘And I bet it sounds familiar, too!’ I whipped round to face him then. ‘Is that why you won’t use your title, Lord Harrington?’ I threw at him. It was a low blow, and I was betraying Grace’s confidence, which I’d told myself I wouldn’t do, but I was hurt and angry and furious because he was right.

‘I don’t use my title because it’s not mine,’ Dominic said, his face set, obviously as angry as me, though a lot more in control.

‘It is yours. Just as that great big country estate is yours. Closing it up and pretending it doesn’t exist won’t bring your brother back, but what it will do is allow your mother to keep on pretending he’s not dead.’

‘Is that what Grace says?’ Finally, I bit my tongue. ‘She does,’ Dominic continued, ushering me out of the restaurant. ‘Did she also tell you that my mother can’t bear to look at me? That one of the reasons she put an ocean between us is because every time she sees me she wishes I was Jeremy?’

We were back out in the street. ‘Dominic, I’m sure that’s not true.’

‘It’s late,’ he said, hailing a passing hackney cab and opening the door for me.

I could have kicked myself. He was so determined not to let me see he was hurt, I knew it must be bad. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said pathetically.

He shrugged. ‘Don’t be. You were right. We’re not ordinary people. Dinner was my mistake.’

He closed the door and gave my address to the driver. He didn’t come with me. I couldn’t ask him to. I watched him as we drove away. He didn’t move. Just stood there on the kerb staring. I didn’t sleep.

Dominic

I didn’t think she’d come. Two weeks since that night at the Renaud’s restaurant, and there had been no communication of any sort between us. A lot of thinking on my part. A lot of talking between myself and Grace. My sister sailed for New York in a couple of weeks. I told her that I didn’t have any sway with the police there. She laughed and said she’d just have to try a lot harder not to get arrested. Things were—better between us. Not good, but better. She made me promise to sort out Harrington House. She also made me promise to see Daisy. The first I wasn’t so sure about. The second I needed no persuading.

Still, I didn’t think she’d come. I knew she hadn’t seen Grace. I also knew from Grace that she’d been keeping away from the Café de Paris and all the other places where she used to prop up the bar. She could have been drinking her martinis at home, but when she walked into my office at the airfield, she didn’t look as if she’d touched a martini in a while.

Black. She was wearing black. Long coat, lying open. Underneath it she had on one of those dresses that looked as if she’d been stitched into it. Demure. Long sleeves. High neck. But that just drew attention to the body beneath. And that body made mine tense with anticipation.

She closed the door behind her, behind my fascinated secretary and equally fascinated accounts clerk, and shimmied over to my desk. ‘I didn’t think I’d hear from you again.’

‘I’ve been busy.’ I pulled out a chair for her. ‘Thanks to you, I’ve been busy.’ I told her about Grace.

‘New York,’ she said. ‘That’s a big new city to get into trouble in.’

I laughed. ‘My sister’s words, almost exactly.’

‘You think the change of scene will do her good?’

‘The war isn’t there, in New York. Not in your face. And our mother
is
there. Grace seems set on—on opening her eyes, is how she put it.’

Daisy raised her brows. ‘Did you think about going there yourself?’

‘Yes.’ I was sitting opposite her, with my desk between us. She had that bland actress face on, determined not to give anything away. ‘I thought about it,’ I said. ‘I thought about all you said to me that night, too, though, and it seemed to me you were right.’

‘About what?’

‘Jeremy’s dead. I’m alive. Sheer luck, but my luck. I should make the most of it, not pretend it hasn’t happened.’

‘Do you think you can?’

Her control slipped when she asked me that. She looked anxious. As if it was a question she’d asked herself. Which of course she had, I saw then. Which was why I forced myself not to shrug her off. ‘I don’t know.’

‘No,’ she replied with a quivering smile, getting to her feet and walking over to the window that overlooked the runway. ‘We have that in common.’

She gazed out of the window in silence, and I watched her perfect profile. She had on one of those hats that look like a bell. Black. Her hair curled out from under it onto her pale cheek. Her lips and her nails were scarlet. ‘I was angry with you,’ she said, speaking at the glass, ‘but mostly I was angry with myself. It seems such a waste.’

She whirled round suddenly, the tiny pleats of her dress rippling out to give me a tantalizing glimpse of her knees. ‘I expect I’d be a stout matron with a brood of children if Anthony had lived. He wouldn’t have wanted me to stay on the stage. I’d probably have been happy. I know he would have been. I’d have made sure of that. Even if—but I made my choice. I’d have stuck by it.’

Her hands were clenched into fists. ‘Did you love him?’ I asked.

‘Yes. I did then. I wanted to wait, though. We were both so young. If we met now, I doubt that I would, but if we met now, and he hadn’t died, and there hadn’t been a war, I doubt I’d be this,’ she said, holding her hands up, gesturing at herself. ‘Whatever this is. I don’t know. Do you know who you are, Dominic?’

‘I know I’m not what I was.’

‘Yes.’ She smiled briefly at that, and perched on the desk beside me. ‘I’ve had enough of the guilt. You see, you were right about that,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you wrote. I wanted to tell you that. To say thank you.’

‘Does that mean you feel better?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know. It means I want to.’ She picked up a pen, one of those promotional things that a sales rep from a tyre company had given me. ‘I don’t want to—you understand, if you want to—whatever you want, I can’t—it won’t—I can’t make promises. It can’t mean what it would have. Before.’ She dropped the pen and looked straight into my eyes. ‘You understand that, Dominic. I’m not the settling-down type, if that’s what you want.’

Another woman wouldn’t have dared be so blunt, but then I would never have sent a note like the one I’d sent to Daisy to any other woman. ‘What I want is you,’ I said finally. ‘Just you and me. And each day as it comes. Nothing more. I don’t think I’m capable of anything more any more than you are.’

She cupped my chin and leaned towards me, smiling that smile that made my toes curl in anticipation. ‘That sounds like a deal to me,’ she said. Then she kissed me. A slow, slow kiss, running her tongue along my bottom lip. ‘Now,’ she said, sliding from the desk and out of my reach way too early, ‘let’s start as we mean to go on. I want to do something I’ve never done.’

‘Right here?’ I said, laughing. ‘I warn you, there’s no lock on the door, and my secretary –’

‘Can walk in any time she likes,’ Daisy said. ‘We’re going flying.’

Chapter Six

Daisy

Being up in an aeroplane was terrifying, the kind of terrifying you never want to end. I screamed up there. I begged Dominic to take us back down to earth, and I didn’t mean it and he didn’t listen. Afterwards, we went back to my flat. No questions, no need to say anything. It was the only thing that could be done after that; the only thing we wanted.

We made love as though we were still flying. I’ve never felt so—just so. He did things to me that I couldn’t even have imagined, because how can you imagine what you don’t know can be done? He kissed my body as if he was afraid to leave any inch of skin untouched. He kissed me in ways that still make me blush thinking about it. In ways I don’t want to describe. There are terms. I know now, there are technical terms. But it wasn’t technical, what Dominic did to me. It was magical. Stupid word. But true all the same.

We drank lemonade afterwards. Not champagne. We didn’t need champagne. I didn’t want it. So we sat in my bed, completely naked, and drank lemonade and told silly stories and we laughed and what was strange was, we neither of us noticed that we were laughing until later.

There was ice in the lemonade. Cold ice. Warm skin. Hot mouths. Kissing, stroking, our skin scented with what we’d done. We lay together afterwards in my lovely big claw-footed bath, soaping ourselves in the oil-perfumed water. And though we were exhausted by then, we still couldn’t get enough.