The Undoing of Daisy Edwards (A Time for Scandal) (6 page)

He never stayed overnight, not once, but he called me every morning. We talked on the telephone. Not about anything. We talked about what we’d done. We talked about what we wanted to do. Words I can’t write, we said to each other. And we traced our desire with our own hands, on the other end of the telephone line. Do the operators listen? I didn’t think about it at the time. Afterwards, I didn’t care.

He came to see me in the theatre every night. Sometimes he watched the play; sometimes he arrived at the last curtain. We never went out in company, though we did go together to Southampton to see Grace off on the
Berengeria
. She told me to take care of Dominic. She gave me one of those
significant
looks when she said that. I pretended not to understand. I pretended there was no reason for any sort of look.

Dominic

It was the week before Christmas when I took Daisy to Harrington House. I woke up one morning and knew it was time—though it wasn’t as if I’d been conscious of thinking about it that much before. I thought I’d been doing what we said, just taking each day as it came. Only it turned out that all of those days, all of that time with Daisy, added up to something more than I’d planned or expected. But not more than I wanted.

What I wanted was a whole lot more. That’s what I was thinking when I drove her through the gates to the estate. Not that I told her so. I didn’t tell her anything, because—well, obviously because I was scared. I didn’t know, you see, if she felt the same. No idea. No plans to ask, either. Not at that point.

‘I didn’t think it would be so grand,’ she said as we pulled up in front of the house. ‘It looks like a castle. How old is it? How many bedrooms?’

‘About two hundred.’ I was struggling with the locks on the front door. ‘And about thirty.’

She stared, wide-eyed, as we entered the marbled hall. ‘Two staircases,’ she said. ‘It’s a bit creepy. I bet Miss Havisham and her wedding feast are here somewhere.’

I could see what she meant. Our footsteps echoed as we wandered around the place. There were cobwebs everywhere. It felt sad. Forlorn. The war had left its mark here, as everywhere else. Iron bedsteads stood stacked in the bedrooms. The patients had left their names on the plasterwork. ‘The dining room,’ I told Daisy when she asked where the operating theatre had been, pointing out the grapes and wine flagons on the cornicing, which was too high for anyone to bother damaging it.

‘Where are all the furnishings?’ she asked.

‘In the attic. The valuables are stored in vaults.’ I was distracted. Bringing her here, I realised it wasn’t so much about clearing up the past as about recognising there just might be a future. I can’t tell you how terrified that made me, looking beyond tomorrow. But it wasn’t just terror. I wanted it. I really wanted it.

‘So everything is still here. You could put it all back together,’ Daisy said.

I was so busy with my thoughts, I didn’t notice that she’d started to do that thing she did when I first knew her—withdraw into herself. Look out from that beautiful face as if she didn’t own it. I didn’t notice. ‘That’s what Jeremy would do if he were here,’ I said, gazing out the window at what was left of the rose garden, which wasn’t much. ‘He loved this place. He came into the title very young. Harrington was his life.’

‘But he left it all the same.’

‘There was never any doubt that he would sign up. I told you…’

‘Yes, you did. King and country.’

There was an edge to her tone that made me turn round then.

‘My sister would probably love this place. It’s perfect for one of those moving pictures where the heroine is captured by an evil brute.’

‘Poppy. I saw a poster for her latest the other day,’ I told her, trying to work out what was wrong. ‘I forgot to tell you. Daisy –’

‘She’s lovely, isn’t she?’

‘I think her sister is lovelier.’

‘No.’ She wrapped her arms around her chest. She wouldn’t meet my eye, but pretended an interest in a vulgar piece of verse someone had written on the wallpaper. ‘I have presence,’ she said. ‘Poppy’s the beauty.’

‘That, my love, we must disagree on.’

She turned at that, and her face looked stricken. ‘Don’t call me that.’

I could have retreated. I could have brushed it off, but I didn’t want to. ‘My love,’ I said again, and it felt so right, just saying it. ‘Daisy –’

‘No! I told you, I was perfectly clear about it. I told you it couldn’t—I couldn’t. I’ve done that. I won’t do it again. I can’t. I
told
you, Dominic.’

She pushed me violently away, and before I could stop her she was out of the door, running.

Daisy

My love. My love
, he said. Can your heart really stop and then start again? Mine did. He hadn’t meant it, I tried to tell myself. He had, though. He’d been waiting for me to reply. Watching me. Seeing inside me, the way he always does. The way I’d got used to. Come to enjoy. Only now, I didn’t want it.

I ran. Opening doors at random, running up one set of stairs, then up again, along galleries, into dark, dusty corridors. At the top, the very top, were the attics with the furniture, ghostly and sheeted. I stood panting, crying, fists clenched. I was furious, thinking back over all the moments when I could have walked away. Right back to that morning when I woke up in his bed. If only I’d left then. Or after the first time. Or after the next time. If I hadn’t gone to the airfield after that letter he sent me. If he hadn’t listened to me. If I hadn’t listened to him.

You take a step along a path. You tell yourself it’s just a tiny step. You can always turn back. The view looks good from where you stand, so you take another step. The view looks even better, so you take another, and still you tell yourself you can go back any time. You don’t notice that you’ve stopped looking back. You pretend that the small things you pick up on the way don’t mean anything. You tell yourself that it’s the novelty of it that’s so appealing. You tell yourself that while it’s fun not to be walking the path alone, you’d be just as content to do so. You don’t notice how much each step changes you, because you don’t
want
to notice, because that would mean you’d have to do something about it, and you’re not ready to do that. To step off the path. To walk away. To break those insidious silky bonds that form, tie, pull you tighter together with each step.

Standing shivering in the milky light filtering through the attic windows, I knew it was too late, though I was terrified, far too terrified to admit it. If I had just kept to my routine of acting and martinis and solitude and surviving, this wouldn’t have happened. I felt as if I was standing on an abyss and I was furious at Dominic for putting me there, but I was much, much more furious with myself.

When he found me I was cowering on a chair, hugging my coat around me like a suit of armour. I must have looked awful. Tear-streaked, dust streaked, shaking. I didn’t care. If I could have hidden there in that attic, with all the other relics, until I turned to stone or dust myself, I would have. That way I wouldn’t have to think. Wouldn’t have to act. Wouldn’t have to jump. Or run.

When he tried to pull me to my feet, I cowered away from him like a frightened animal. The look on his face then. Not pity, but as if he’d struck me. I pushed him away and got to my feet. ‘I can manage on my own,’ I said.

‘I know.’ He picked me up, hugging me to his chest, ignoring my protests. ‘I know you can, Daisy,’ he said. ‘We both can. But don’t you think it would be nice not to have to?’

Dominic

I took her down to the kitchen, the smaller one, not the huge barn that used to be the servants’ hall. She was ashen, her eyes wide, shaking violently when I set her down in a chair, pulling it close to the range. There was coal and wood. It was funny how easily I got the fire to light; I’d been away so long.

Daisy said nothing, which was a relief, because I knew that if she spoke then she’d tell me it was over, and it couldn’t be over—although it would be different. That’s one thing I’d learned in the war. You can’t go back. There is only forwards, even when you know that forwards will take you into no man’s land.

The room began to heat. I put a kettle on the range to boil. Daisy raised her hands to the flames. She wasn’t crying now. Her face was set, like a mask. She was pressing her knees together under the mint-green silk of her dress. Trying not to shake. Same reason she pressed her lips so tightly together.

No going back, but there was a way forwards. I could see it. I just had to make her see it.
My love
, I’d called her. I hadn’t meant to, but once it was out, there it was, hanging between us. The truth we’d been avoiding. The thing we’d said wouldn’t happen.

‘I could have taken it back,’ I said, because the silence was becoming painful, and with every passing second Daisy was garnering her will to walk out and she wouldn’t come back. ‘I didn’t mean to say it. I could have pretended it didn’t mean anything more than one of those
darling
s that everyone says these days.’

‘You still can,’ she said, not looking at me, but there was anguish in her voice that squeezed at my heart and made me all the more certain.

‘Daisy, the problem with the truth is that once it’s been said, you can’t unsay it. And I don’t want to.’

‘Then it’s over.’

‘No!’

‘I can’t.’ She pushed her chair back and got to her feet again, but then she stood there, frozen to the spot. ‘I can’t, Dominic. I won’t. I made it through the last time, I haven’t—I just can’t imagine getting through it again. I have my life. I have my career…’

‘Which is severely limited by the fact that you won’t play anything other than tragedy. Have you thought about that, Daisy?’

She winced. It was brutal, but it was true, and I was fighting for my life here. Not the way I fought in the trenches. I wouldn’t die without her. I’d proved I could go on. But I was fighting for the life I wanted. Just how fiercely I was prepared to fight made me realise then just how badly I wanted it.

‘I have my career,’ she said firmly, ‘and it might not be good enough for you, but it’s good enough for me. And I have my sister –’

‘A sister who you never see. Not even in her pictures. Another thing you need to think about.’ Brutal, like I said. The look she gave me, white fury and deep hurt. I wanted to sweep her into my arms and say that it was all right, the way they do in the films. Tell her that we could go on as we had. That having what we’d had would be more than enough. Then the credits would roll. But if I’d said those things, it wouldn’t be any more real than those movies.

I risked taking her hand, because I didn’t want her to run. It was freezing. It lay limp in my grasp. ‘Daisy, don’t you see. Just because you don’t see her doesn’t mean you will be hurt any less if something happens to her. More, because if something did, you’d spend the rest of your life regretting the time you could have spent together.’

‘No. You’re wrong. It’s not like that.’

But for the first time, there was doubt in her voice. Another point when I could have stopped. Left my point to sink in. Backed off. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. ‘I didn’t come here to show this place off. I came to show you that it was done. History. That I was ready to face the future.’

‘One day at a time. It’s what we’ve been doing, Dominic. We’ve been doing it so well.’

‘Dammit, Daisy, it’s not enough. Not for me. Not any more. I am so tired of being alone. I’m sick and tired of not raising my eyes beyond the horizon of the next twenty-four hours, of not expecting or planning or anticipating. Of not hoping. Of never taking more than a tiny piece of life at a time. Of not allowing myself to want more. I want more, Daisy. I want you.’

‘You have all of me there is, Dominic. I don’t have anything else.’

‘That’s not true, and you know it. You’re scared –’

‘I’m not scared. I’m absolutely terrified. I can’t. I won’t. I wouldn’t be able to—what happens when it ends? What will happen to me? What then? When you’ve had enough of me, if you leave me, if you die, and I’m alone again, with another life to take apart and rebuild. I can’t. I won’t take that chance. How can you ask it of me? Why couldn’t you just have been happy with what we had when it was so much more than we thought—that we believed—why couldn’t you just have let things be!’

Daisy

I was crying. Shrieking. My hands were claws, tearing at his coat sleeves, then fists, pounding against his chest. Sobs stuck in my throat like lumps of stone. My chest was heaving. I just kept thinking over and over, no, no, no. I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to think about this. I don’t want to have to try to deal with it.

He didn’t fight back. He let me howl and wail and lash out at him. I knew I was getting hysterical, and there was a part of me that just wanted to let myself go the whole way, because then I really wouldn’t have to think and he couldn’t ask me any more. But there was another bit of me, like the part of me that always knows when I’m on-stage that I’m acting, the part that can direct and analyse, that little voice inside me that watches me all the time. The part that’s mostly silent. But when it speaks…

That part was saying to me,
the lady protests too much
.
If it really didn’t matter
, that part of me was saying,
you wouldn’t be fighting so hard for it not to
. And another thing that part of me noticed was Dominic. Hanging grimly on, absolutely determined. Fighting in his own way.

I stopped. I stopped wailing and crying and let my hands fall limp to my sides. I stared up at him, and inside, it was like a sort of dawning horror. A whiter, colder terror. The kind that you can’t escape. ‘No,’ I said, but this time I was speaking to myself. The knowledge in me. ‘No.’

Dominic pulled me close. I didn’t resist this time, but I didn’t cling, either. ‘I can’t pretend it hasn’t happened,’ he said, ‘and I don’t think you can, either.’

‘Yes, yes, I can,’ I replied.

It was the way he stilled that made me realise what I’d said, how my words had betrayed me. His fingers tightened on my arms. I felt the sharp intake of his breath.
Now comes the fancy speech
, I thought. I wish it had.
That
I’d have been able to dismiss.