Virtue (2 page)

‘Here we are,’ he says, and the Burges start forward to take stock of the task in hand.

It’s not a particularly big coffin, for its occupant was famous for the frailty of her build. Simple but dignified, it is carved from the wood of a 600-year-old oak that had been felled the winter before her death, in one of the series of storms that are still talked about in the area and very nearly resulted in the disappearance of Ditchworth Old Town beneath the North Sea. The plaque, too, is simple but dignified, a plate of shiny brass, only slightly discoloured by the intervening years, on which only a name and two dates are to be discerned. ‘Godiva Fawcett’, it reads, ‘1950–1985’. There is nothing else, for nothing else is necessary to add: that simple name, those tragically short-lived dates, is enough to bring tears to most eyes.

Godiva has been dead fifteen years now, though those who mourned her then mourn her still. That glorious face is still now, the hands that danced crossed across her breast, those eyes, green like emeralds, green as Tara, green as the bottom of a Hollywood swimming pool, dropped closed in modesty, those lips, that braved the disapproval of society in support of the needy, pressed together in quietude. Godiva, so lovely, so missed, is to be moved today to her final resting place in the mausoleum built fifteen years ago for her followers to visit, though it was tacitly agreed that to leave the body within while public emotion was at its height was asking for trouble. As it is, the statue that graces the front of the building has had to be replaced three times after well-wishers armed with chisels took a few too many souvenirs. But the worst of the furore has died down now and the shrine gets only a hundred or so visitors each day, swelling to maybe a thousand on special anniversaries, and Gerald Belhaven feels that the time has come to risk moving his stepmother to where she is meant to be.

The three men stand for a moment, contemplating the casket. And then, at a nod from the Duke, the brothers step forward and grip the casket. Bend at the knees, as working men have always done without the aid of ergonomists to tell them how, lift. Apart from a small grunt that issues from Derek, who is at the front end and taking the weight of the head and shoulders, neither says a thing about their burden, which is surprisingly heavy. It would hardly be appropriate, and anyway, Burges know better than to voice comments on anything to do with The Family.

Gerald Belhaven stands back, arms crossed over the little paunch that has started showing under his checked lawn shirts since he turned forty. The Duchess calls it his ‘food baby’, and likes to make a show of patting it in public. Emotion is one of those things that the Belhavens were trained out of some time in the eighteenth century, and this playfulness is part of the reason that the current Duke is widely believed to have one of the most stable marriages in the aristocracy. Gerald’s mother was his father’s second Duchess, Godiva his third and last.

The gap between Thomas’ and Henrietta’s tombs is narrower than anyone had remembered, and the Burges have to tip the last Duchess on her side to get her through. Shoulders sloping, Derek Burge’s face turns suddenly puce, and a small hiss of air escapes from between his teeth. ‘Are you all right?’ asks the Duke, mildly concerned, for no one has ever heard a sound of pain from a Burge. Derek nods and mutters, ‘Ar’, between gritted teeth, and they’re through to where the plain sailing begins. ‘Want to put it down?’ enquires the Duke. Burge minor shakes his head, and the brothers plough forward.

Across the floor they plod, these three conspirators, landing heavy footfalls on the heads of Moresbys loved and Moresbys lost, Moresbys great and Moresbys fallen, Moresbys in heaven and Moresbys in hell. They reach the stairs. Though winter is over and the waterfall has dried up, the lichen is thick and new on the stone and slippery underfoot. Slowly, the Burges edge their way upward, Derek in front and George following in the rear to take the worst of the load. Derek, the strain of his weak shoulder showing on his face, gets halfway up before his brother reaches the bottom. And then disaster walks in.

Three steps up, George gets his right wellington halfway on the step, puts his whole weight down upon it. It grips, and he moves confidently forward, lifting the other foot to go one step higher. And as he does so, the balancing foot shoots backward with the speed of a fairground ride. One moment he is upright, the next he has tumbled face-down upon his load, and it has come crashing to the ground.

‘Careful!’ cries the Duke, as though such advice will somehow save the day. For two seconds, two long, teetering seconds, the whole shebang rests in the powerful hands of Derek Burge. His eyes pop, tendons stand out in his neck, the corners of his mouth pull down to reveal the dentures beneath. Fingers vainly strain to dig into unyielding wood, arms try to clamp themselves round their load, knees buckle to allow a gentle landing for this end of the box, but in the end it’s all too much to bear. With a roar of despair, he concedes defeat, the fingers unclamp and the coffin crashes to the steps. Clatters, bump-bump-bump, all the way down into the crypt, carrying the slipshod George before it, and comes to rest with a sickening crack, half-on and half-off the staircase. George is pinned into the drain and the Duke, dropping his torch in his horror, plunges them all into total darkness.

Silence for a moment, broken only by the tick-tick-tick of settling wood, then George groans and begins to extricate himself from beneath the load. Derek stands halfway up the stairs, hand clamped to his torn shoulder muscle, and peers into the gloom. ‘Is everyone all right?’ cries the peer and, scrabbling about, finds the torch to illuminate the scene once again.

George is out from underneath, literally if not metaphorically, and sits against the last resting place of Richard, eighth Baron Moresby, rubbing the back of his head where it has caught an almighty crack when he went down. Derek starts down the steps, stops when the torchlight falls upon the scene below him. His mouth, whose gulps for air have made him look like a landed monkfish, drops open, the skin hanging slackly around his jaw suddenly revealing the fact that Moresbys have not, over the millennium, been entirely averse to a spot of
droit de seigneur
. He looks, at this moment, almost exactly like his employer, who is frozen, gape-mouthed and fish-eyed, on the far side of the accident.

‘Oh, your Grace,’ says Derek Burge. ‘Her Grace, Your Grace. Her Grace.’

The coffin, after fifteen years in these damp surroundings, has split open on impact, and its contents are on display. But they are not as you would expect. Instead of the sludge of decay, the air is scented with attar of roses: a perfume that everyone who knew and loved her associated with the Duchess throughout her prominence. And there she lies, framed in her plushy satin bed: Godiva Fawcett, later Godiva Moresby, fourteenth Duchess of Belhaven, mourned the land over. Godiva, whose ice-white skin and perfect features hid a heart that beat for the poor, for the lost, for all those who suffered. Godiva, whose death sparked worldwide lamentation, pilgrimage, promises of improvement, expressions of love. Godiva, whose life was carpeted in thorns and whose death was carpeted in flowers.

Head pillowed by the softest of silk, she lies with her eyes open and bright as her last moments on earth. Roses touch those lifeless cheeks, still full and rounded over the narrow, tilting jawline. Her white-blonde hair curls and shines as though newly washed. And that rosebud mouth still smiles, still pouting, unchanged in its fullness and promise by the fact that the soul has fled. There she lies, Godiva the Good, flawless hands crossed over a bosom so full and so perfectly rounded that it is hard to believe that it will not, even now, heave and shudder as she draws a breath.

‘My God,’ says Gerald Belhaven. ‘My God.’

George has raised his head to see, and sits back against the eighth Baron, face shining with astonishment. And he opens his mouth, and utters the longest speech that has ever been known to pass those heedful lips.

‘It’s a fucking miracle, that’s what it is,’ he says. ‘A fucking miracle.’

Once we’re in the taxi and he’s tickling my earlobe with the edge of his finger, the nagging feeling of discomfort gets worse. At some point, this guy’s going to want me to call him by his name, and I can’t for the life of me remember what it is. Brad? Troy? Jake? Something monosyllabic, I remember that, and one of those close-to-made-up names they have on Australian soap operas. Roo? Cal? Butch? Or maybe I’m inventing this, because he said he was once in an Australian soap opera, which isn’t that surprising, because if you divide the population of Australia by the number of soap operas they turn out, everyone in the country is likely to pop up washing cars and saying ‘G’day’ over any given fifteen-year period.

Jam? Bug? Park? Sim? I know I should know, but you know how your memory develops holes, usually just when you’re about to make a really important point, or when you’re trying to say ‘thank you’ in Turkish, or when the plod want to know where you were on the night of the 17th, and, though I have a clear picture, when I close my eyes, of Lindsey shouting ‘Anna, this is …’ over the top of several heads and a flower arrangement, after that it all goes blank.

Biff? Barf? Lung? The thing is, I know that this is a problem. Because however much men like to think of themselves as roaming wolves, however much they joke about not knowing what, or who, they were up to last night, the fact is that they get as upset as women do by the idea that someone doesn’t actually know their name. They turn all droopy and sit on the edge of the bed with a sheet draped over their groins needing to be comforted. And it’s worse when they’ve made it perfectly plain that they’ve mastered your name within seconds.

Lid? Mig? Grog? Goddamn, I’ve got to take memory lessons. He’s one of those people who make sure they get your name fixed in their head in the first minute by repeating it over and over. ‘Hi, Anna,’ he said. ‘How ya doing, Anna? Who do you know here, then, Anna? Can I get you a drink, Anna?’ And of course, I was so fascinated by watching those white, even pearlies, the I-may-wear-factor-20-lotion-but-I’m-out-in-the-sun-all-day skin tone, the natty bleached-by-the-sea mop-top, and feeling myself overwhelmed by Thursday-night lust that I forgot to reciprocate. So now here I am barrelling down Kensington Gore, catching sight of the cab driver watching us in his rear-view mirror and thinking: Christ, Waters. Not even bothering to learn someone’s name is seriously slaggy. I mean, it’s a simple matter of etiquette, isn’t it? The rules of promiscuity: carry condoms, never go anywhere where you don’t know the address, be immaculately polite.

And he’s rather nice, actually, this strange Aussie – Gruff? Brig? Dim? Nice enough to deserve better than to have someone reduce him to the status of nameless boy-toy. I mean, I’m not
that
hard. Not so hard that I don’t know how I’d feel if someone turned round and called me Jane.

To my surprise, he hasn’t gone straight for the tits, but seems to be taking a lot of pleasure in running his hand over my stomach, caressing my hips. In the orange glow of the street lights, I can see that his eyelashes are long enough to brush the tops of his cheeks. Maybe he’s a habitual specs wearer, has taken them off in the hope of being more attractive. Only specs wearers have eyelashes like that. I used to have eyelashes about an inch long before I got the contacts, not that anyone ever got the opportunity to appreciate them.

The cab lurches – probably on purpose – as it rounds the corner at Knightsbridge, and Jib? Dick? Bob? falls briefly onto me with his full body weight, which is fine by me. Hand on my thigh for purchase, he says, ‘Oops’, flashes a complicit grin and leaves it there. I love men – well, most of them, anyway. I love their puppy-dog naughtiness, the way that, even when they must be 99 per cent sure why they’re in a cab being speeded across London by a woman they’ve only just picked up at a party, they still have to play these little hunt-and-chase games, convince themselves that they’ve somehow persuaded you against your better conscience. As we sit at the Sloane Street lights, Door? Bunk? Rod? runs a thumb over my thigh against the direction of the hairs – the weather turned warm enough, thank God, to ditch tights a month ago, and I’ve already gone a nice balcony gold right up to the knicker line – and I can’t resist a little shiver. It’s partly for real and partly for effect. If I can’t remember the guy’s name, I might as well make him feel that the oversight comes from an excess of passion.

It works. Fag? Hung? Lard? grins, wraps his arms round me and crushes me to his chest like an over-affectionate grizzly bear. ‘Shit, you’re great,’ he says. ‘I never thought my luck would be in tonight. My word.’

I think I’m probably the only person who would have expected their luck to be in at a talk to the Royal Geographical Society, but I like a challenge and it’s all too easy in bars and clubs and parties. But I seriously thought, when I saw the Atlas of Geographers gathered around the half-dozen bottles of Chilean Cab Sauv, domed heads hovering over beards as they fiddled with the toggles on their anoraks and got into almighty rages with each other, that I was going to luck out tonight. I mean, you could sleep with just anybody, but that’s not the point, is it? That’s where the line between bad and sad is drawn: bad girls sleep with anyone who looks like he might be good for a laugh; sad girls sleep with just anyone.

So thank God for Pad? Blip? Rug? It would have been a wasted night, otherwise. I get the cab to drop us off on the embankment, help him haul his backpack onto the pavement and lead him down the road to the gate. ‘Christ,’ he says. ‘Where are you taking me? You’re not some sort of psycho-killer, are you?’

I turn and look over my shoulder at him as I punch the keys on the gate-pad. ‘Could be. Why? Are you scared?’

Hilarious. For a second he shows all the signs of controlled panic: wide eyes rolling round, trying to look through the back of his head for an avenue of escape, chest pumping as he gets that creeping feeling that he might just have to run for it; hand gripping and loosening on the strap of the rucksack as he wonders if he’s going to have to ditch all his worldly belongings in the rush to get away.