Moonshine

‘Is it her house?’

‘Strictly speaking it’s Dickie’s. He’s her husband. It’s been in his family for a couple of generations.’

‘They seem to have prospered.’ I could not help comparing the grounds of Ladyfield with Cutham Hall, to the latter’s disadvantage.

The lights of the house appeared through the trees. The drive curved round in a circle to end before an early Georgian house of soft red brick. Ladyfield must have been built at roughly the same time as Cutham Hall but had escaped Victorian revision. The light was fading but I could see a well-proportioned façade with a pedimented portico, pilasters and a balustrade at roof level ornamented with urns. The half-glazed front door stood open.

‘Well?’ Burgo asked as we stood on the drive after Simon had driven the car away. ‘Like it?’

‘It’s enchanting!’

‘Let’s go in.’

The hall was painted a marvellous rich red, the perfect background for what seemed at a cursory glance to be good paintings. A cantilevered staircase curled round at the far end beneath a Venetian window. It was all quite grand but untidy. On the lovely, worn limestone floor a pair of gumboots stood beside a bowl containing pieces of meat. Beneath a side table was a dog basket from which trailed a filthy old blanket. A halter and a Newmarket rug were thrown over a chair. Burgo examined a pile of letters on the table. He picked up one and read it quickly, then threw it aside.

‘Nothing that can’t wait. Let’s get a drink. Then I’ll run up and change.’

We went into the drawing room. The walls were buff coloured and looked superb with the plasterwork, which was of a high quality and painted, in the correct manner, several shades of greyish-white. Burgo appeared at my side with a glass of something that fizzed.

‘What are you looking at so intently?’

‘Plasterwork’s a particular weakness of mine.’

‘Perhaps, after all, you are a strange woman.’

I stared at the painting above the fireplace. ‘Isn’t that a Turner?’

‘Is it?’

‘It’s an early one. Before he was bitten by cosmic mysticism. But you can see the hand of the master.’

‘You may be able to. I don’t know enough about it.’

‘Oh, I’m a novice myself when it comes to painting. That takes years and years of just looking.’

‘You beast!’ said a voice behind us. ‘I’ve been waiting and waiting for you. And then you choose just the moment I dash out to the stable to arrive.’

A girl, younger than me, I guessed, had come into the drawing room. She walked up to Burgo, threw her arms round his neck and pulled down his head so she could kiss him on the mouth. Burgo disengaged himself from her embrace and held her wrist in one hand while he pulled her ear with the other.

‘Roberta, this is Fleur,’ said Burgo. ‘My sister.’

‘Hello.’ Fleur gave me her hand. It was slightly sticky. ‘Sorry I wasn’t here to greet you. I’ve been drenching a colt. He’s got worms.’

Fleur was small and slender. Her hair was brown, her face soft and round like a child’s. Her eyes slanted up at the outer corners, like his, and had the same dark brilliance, but hers were vague and dreamy.

‘Where is everybody? I thought we’d be the last to arrive.’ Burgo poured a glass of champagne for his sister. She held the stem of the glass in a childish fist.

‘They’ve all come. Dickie took them out to see the Temple to Hygeia.’

‘Dickie’s in the process of repairing an old folly,’ Burgo said to me. ‘Dedicated to the goddess of health and cleanliness. I’m going to change.’

Before I could ask: Why cleanliness? he had gone. There were noises in the hall and then people in evening dress came into the drawing room. I felt a little shy, not only because they were all unknown to me but also because I was certain they must wonder what I was doing there. But my diffidence was as nothing to my hostess’s. She frowned, licked a finger and began to scrub at a mark on the skirt of her beaded dress.

‘You must be Roberta.’ A man with grizzled, receding hair shook my hand. He leaned upon a stick. ‘I’m Dickie. Charmed to see you. Any friend of Burgo’s … Can I give you a top-up?’ I accepted his offer of more champagne. ‘So nice of you to make up the numbers at the last minute,’ he continued. ‘It isn’t everyone one can ask; Homo sapiens is a sensitive, thin-skinned creature.’

‘Yes,’ I said. Then, feeling my reply to be inadequate, I added, ‘It certainly is!’

‘Glad you agree with me!’ The expression in his eyes above his half-moon spectacles was cordial. ‘I must quickly do the rounds with the booze. Fleur darling, look after Roberta. Catch up with you later.’

He limped away. I watched him talking to his friends. He was affable, gave a pat on the arm here, a peck on the cheek there, his pinkish face suffused with pleasure. Fleur abandoned the scrubbing of her dress but kept her eyes on the carpet, her mouth unsmiling.

‘Do tell me about your colt.’ I had once been the proud possessor of a piebald with a large head and short legs and had been to enough gymkhanas and pony-club dances to be able to maintain a horsy conversation without making an idiot of myself.

Fleur’s beautiful eyes met mine with sudden enthusiasm. ‘He’s nearly three and absolute heaven. Bright chestnut with white socks and a blaze. I’ve called him Kumara. It’s the name of a Hindu god. He’s got the most perfect action …’

While Fleur talked, the words coming quickly in a way that was already familiar to me, I speculated about what seemed a striking mismatch. What attractions, apart from a genial manner, had a man like Dickie for a lovely girl at least twenty years younger? He had a wonderful house and appeared to be well heeled, but Fleur did not seem the mercenary type.

‘And I’ve already lunged him twice …’

There was something endearing about the grubby fingernails and a definite tidemark round the neck, half-hidden by the expensive dress.

‘I’ve had a good offer for Kumara but nothing would persuade me to part with him. I love him best in all the world – after Burgo, naturally. But you can’t equate people and animals, can you? I mean, Kumara looks to me for everything. I know that sounds rather sad and selfish, having to be important to something. But Burgo doesn’t need me. He doesn’t need anyone. That doesn’t stop me loving him but it makes it rather one-sided.’

I looked across the room at Dickie, who was roaring with laughter at something he had just been told. He threw back his head and leaned more heavily on his stick to balance himself.

‘Children need you, I suppose for the first few years, anyway,’ I said.

Fleur’s expression changed. Her fine brows drew together and she flushed. ‘Probably they do.’ She grew silent.

Obviously I had put my foot in it. I wondered what the trouble was? Perhaps Dickie was too much of an invalid to … I cast about for a change of subject. ‘What sort of dogs do you have?’

‘I’ve got three. Looby, a black Labrador, Lancelot who’s a red setter and King Henry. He’s a stray, a mixture of Alsatian and poodle, I think.’

Fleur told me the provenance of each dog, their likes and dislikes and particular charms. It ought to have been excruciatingly dull but actually I enjoyed Fleur’s artless confiding style. It was like being with an old friend with whom no pretence is necessary.

‘Darling, you haven’t said a word to Benedict and you know how hurt he gets if you neglect him.’ Dickie had his free hand on his wife’s bare arm, caressing it discreetly with his thumb. ‘Besides, I’m looking forward to talking to Roberta.’

‘I don’t think Benedict likes me at all. And I certainly don’t like him.’

‘Sweetie, he’s crazy about you. Do your duty, there’s a good girl.’

As she slouched off like a rebellious teenager Dickie gazed after her, love transforming his plain features into something pleasant to see. Then he turned back to me, smiling. ‘I was watching you two. Fleur really likes you. She’s no good at hiding her feelings, you know.’

‘She’s charming,’ I said, meaning to please but meaning it, too.

Dickie lifted his upper lip and grinned like a dog. ‘Isn’t she wonderful? The first time I set eyes on her was at a garden party. Burgo was the guest of honour. It was in aid of somebody starving somewhere. It was hot and stuffy and the people were awfully stuffy too. Fleur was standing alone in the shade of a weeping willow. She took off her hat and shook out her hair. There was a band playing. One of those musicals. Te-tum, te-tum, te-tum.’ Dickie hummed something unrecognizable. ‘She started to dance, with her eyes closed, as though she was imagining herself far away. I said to myself, that’s the girl I’m going to marry.’ Dickie’s face as he told me this story had become patchy with emotion. ‘But I had to wait four years before she’d have me. She was only eighteen then and naturally she had other things on her mind besides marriage. And I was already a silly old buffer. I’m fifty this year – nearly thirty years older.’

I tried to look surprised.

‘Yes, it’s not so much May and September, more like February and November.’

I put a note of polite contradiction into my laugh.

‘Actually …’ He pulled a face. ‘I bribed her into marrying me. I said she could have Stargazer as a wedding present. A horse, you know.’ Dickie smiled, then looked solemn. ‘People might think that was an ignoble thing to do: an older man taking advantage of youth and all that; but I knew I could look after her, d’you see? Her parents were dead and she only had Burgo to take care of her. He did his best – there’s no better fellow – but he’s a busy chap. I was in the fortunate position of inheriting money. My family were in soap. “You’ll always love bath-night when you use Dreamlite,”’ he sang, revealing a glimpse of pink plastic dental plate.

I remembered the commercial, one of the first television advertisement campaigns, featuring a girl wearing a tiara, false eyelashes and a pout, sitting in a bath and patting blobs of foam on to her carefully made-up face while a footman in livery, wearing a blindfold, held her bathrobe. Dreamlite, packaged in crested glossy gold paper but extremely cheap, had convinced the nation that there was pleasure and status to be had from an affordable soap. Now I understood why the Temple was dedicated to Hygeia.

‘It was a clever piece of marketing.’

‘Wasn’t it! A simple message, easily understood. That was my father. He was a born businessman. He could have made a fortune selling dust for dining-room tables. It was the sorrow of his life that none of his children took after him. We’re all as thick as fog. Ah, there’s Mrs Harris to say that dinner’s ready.’

A middle-aged woman dressed in black, presumably his housekeeper, had opened the double doors that led into the hall and was standing to the side of them, unsmiling, her eyes fixed on nothing.

‘Come along, everyone,’ called Dickie. ‘Grub’s up.’

I was, on the whole, pleased to find that I had not been placed next to Burgo. It seemed to confirm that I had been asked only to make up the numbers. If I was at all disappointed it was because he would have been more interesting to talk to than the orthopaedic surgeon on my right, who was accustomed to cut ice in his professional life and who shamelessly monopolized every subject we discussed. But the delight of finding myself in a beautiful room filled with wonderful furniture and scented with roses and lilies more than made up for my neighbour’s shortcomings. On my left was a publisher. He dealt only with academic books so he was no use as far as Oliver was concerned. But he was intelligent and agreeable and we had fun talking to each other during our allotted courses. In fact we carried on talking to each other through the pudding and the cheese, though I was guiltily aware that the surgeon was waiting for me to turn back to him.

After that Fleur stood up and muttered something in an offhand way about coffee, which was the signal for the women to depart.

‘Come on!’ She grabbed my arm as soon as we were in the hall. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’ She led me to the kitchen quarters and opened the door of what appeared to be the boiler room. ‘Look!’ she said in a tone of deep feeling. ‘Did you ever see anything more glorious?’

A large black dog – I ought to have said bitch – lay almost hidden beneath a heap of squeaking, squirming puppies. I bent to put my hand among the wriggling bodies. The puppies nibbled my fingers with velvet mouths. I stroked their backs and tickled their fat little paws. I picked one up. ‘This is the first time I’ve held a puppy,’ I confessed, kissing its wrinkled brow.

‘You don’t mean that!’ Fleur’s eyes were full of sympathy. ‘You poor thing!’

‘My father was bitten by one as a child. He’s always hated all dogs since so we never had one.’

‘How dreadful for you! I’m not going to let Looby have another litter. It’s too difficult to find good homes.’ She gave a gasp of excitement. ‘Would you like a puppy?’

‘I’d adore it but I’m living with my parents at the moment so it’s quite impossible. But I’m flattered you think I could be trusted to look after it.’

‘I can tell that sort of thing straight away. I’m hopeless socially – well, I don’t need to tell you that. It’s only too obvious. I hate pretending I like people when I don’t. It seems to add insult to injury. To them, I mean. Often I don’t like people who are perfectly worthy and decent and all that but they make me feel uncomfortable when they pretend things.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Oh, that they aren’t bored, that they’re enjoying themselves, that they care about things just because they’re supposed to. You know. Like this evening. All those women with fluty voices, praising each other, praising me, laughing at things that aren’t amusing, making the effort to talk. Would it be so dreadful if we sat at the table in silence and thought our own thoughts?’

‘I think it would quickly become embarrassing. And sometimes my thoughts aren’t that interesting. Often I’d rather listen to someone else’s. But I agree it can be an appalling grind if you find someone unsympathetic.’

‘You had that foul surgeon, Bernard Matthias. He calls me “young lady” and I know he disapproves of me. He thinks I’m gauche and rude and he’s quite right. Burgo says I ought to grow up and play the game. He says it’s self-indulgent to insist on being strictly truthful all the time. But when I try to put on an act, I start to feel peculiar. I can feel my face twitching and I get panicky and hot.’

‘You’re not the only one.’ I put the puppy back into the basket. Its mother began to lick it painstakingly from nose to tail, removing my scent. ‘Sometimes I can’t play the game either. At the Conservative lunch today I hated absolutely everyone in the room. Apart from your brother, of course. They seemed to me quite unreasonably pleased with themselves. But I expect I was in the mood to find fault.’

Fleur looked at me thoughtfully. Then she said, solemnly, ‘Burgo was right. He said I’d like you. I was afraid you’d be grand and smart, but you aren’t. At least, you look wonderful but you aren’t at all grande dame.’

‘Why don’t you call me Bobbie?’ I suggested. ‘Nearly everyone does.’

Fleur considered. ‘I like that. I once had a monkey called Bobbie.’

‘Shouldn’t we go back to the drawing room? Won’t the other women be expecting you to give them coffee?’

‘Mrs Harris always does that. Once I spilled it on the carpet and she had to spend ages getting it out. I think she’s hoping I’ll break my neck riding Stargazer and then she’ll be able to console Dickie. She’s crazy about him and thinks he’s utterly wasted on me. She’s quite right.’

‘I’ve never seen a man so obviously in love with his wife.’ I was being truthful. I would not have dared to equivocate with someone so passionately sincere as Fleur.

‘Oh yes, he’s in love with me but that doesn’t mean to say I’m any good for him.’ Fleur began to fiddle with the loop of a doglead that was hanging nearby. ‘Often I think if I weren’t quite, quite heartless I’d run away. After a while he’d get over it and he’d meet someone else – not Mrs Harris, she’s much too boring – who’d be able to give him what he wanted.’

‘What does he want?’

‘What do men want?’ She shrugged. ‘A wife to run their house brilliantly, dazzle their friends, be nice to their mother? Luckily Dickie’s mother died ages ago. And laugh at their jokes. I do when I remember but Dickie’s jokes aren’t very funny. Someone to be around when they’re wanted and to disappear into the kitchen when not, although Mrs Harris would be furious if I ever tried to cook anything. And children, of course. Dickie would like children more than anything. Isn’t it odd?’

‘I can think of quite a few men who like children.’

‘But they don’t yearn for them as Dickie does. He adores looking after things. Sometimes I find him in here playing with the puppies and giving Looby extra biscuits though it isn’t good for her to get fat. He goes round the estate feeding everything: birds, squirrels, foxes, badgers. It nearly kills me because I know what it means. He wants a baby to kiss and buy pretty things for and teach how to ride a bicycle and all that.’ Fleur abandoned the lead and began to nibble a fingernail, a bar of pink across her pale cheeks. ‘Poor Dickie, I suppose I’m just the meanest, most selfish person alive but’ – she grimaced and shuddered – ‘I just can’t bear the idea—’

‘I knew I’d find you here.’ Dickie stood in the doorway. ‘Come along, you bad girls. All the men are panting for the sight of the pair of you. You’ve made a hit with Matthias, Roberta. He asked me all about you.’ Dickie winked at me. ‘I thought I’d better warn you. Sound as a bell of course, no better fellow, but he does lack a sense of humour.’

‘He’s a horrible man,’ said Fleur. ‘He keeps his dogs outside in kennels all winter and he hunts.’ It was clear there was no greater crime in Fleur’s eyes.

Dickie laughed indulgently as he shepherded us back to the drawing room. ‘He thinks of foxes as vermin, darling. It doesn’t occur to him that it might be cruel. People’s attitudes are mostly formed by their upbringing, you know.’

‘Only stupid people’s,’ hissed Fleur.

As we entered the room several people turned smiling faces towards us. Fleur put her arm through mine and led me to stand with our backs to the room before a large landscape.

‘Don’t let’s talk to them a second more than we can help. They’re only being polite for Dickie’s sake.’

‘What a wonderful painting!’ I was genuinely moved. ‘It’s a Claude, isn’t it?’

‘School of,’ said a voice in my ear. It was the surgeon. ‘Claude never painted pure landscape. He always put in figures from classical mythology. When we consider the different ways Claude and Poussin use reflected light …’

Fleur gave him a look of loathing and edged away but I was trapped for a quarter of an hour while he lectured me on Roman Renaissance art.

‘Don’t you think Elsheimer an important influence …’ I attempted to turn the monologue to dialogue but the surgeon brushed aside my contribution by speaking louder and more emphatically.

I found myself swallowing yawns, my throat aching with the effort. It was now half past ten. I had spent an arduous day washing and ironing eight sheets, the same number of pillowcases and forty-two napkins. My father insisted on clean, starched napkins at breakfast, lunch and dinner. I had introduced paper ones one lunchtime during my first week at home and he had become plethoric with rage. I had persuaded Oliver to do without but, for once, my mother had sided with my father.

I turned my head discreetly as the surgeon gave me the benefit of his accumulated wisdom and stole a glance at the other guests. Burgo and I had not exchanged a word all evening. Whenever I had happened to glance in his direction he had been surrounded by women. Now he stood near the drawing-room door, holding a coffee cup, staring into its depths. A woman talked energetically to him, having seen off the competition. She was wearing an expensive-looking dress of bold magenta Fortuny-pleated silk, which looked good with her short black hair. She flashed her eyes and laughed frequently and, as far as I could tell, maintained a constant, faceaching expression of spirited gaiety. Watching her covertly over the surgeon’s shoulder I saw Burgo strike a match to light her cigarette. She tossed him a look as smouldering as her cigarette end.

‘When you take into account the importance of the inspiration of ancient Attica …’ droned the surgeon.

I must have dropped into a waking doze for the next thing I heard was Burgo’s voice.

‘Sorry to deprive you of your audience, Matthias, but I promised Dickie I’d show Roberta the Temple of Hygeia,’ said Burgo.

‘Can’t it wait, Latimer?’ The surgeon looked huffy. ‘You’re interrupting a fascinating discussion. It isn’t often I find a young lady so well informed.’

Burgo looked at me. I put as much entreaty into my eyes as good manners permitted.

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘Dickie was insistent.’

Fleur would have been disgusted, had she seen the departing smile I bestowed on Mr Matthias. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, stroking the stomach of a small grey dog, ignoring a man who was squatting in front of her, trying to engage her attention. On our way out I glanced at the woman who had been talking so animatedly to Burgo. Her face was gloomy, her gaiety extinguished. She looked up and met my eye. There was something savage about the way she flung her cigarette into the fire.

SEVEN

‘Poor woman!’ Kit poured me another glass of wine as we waited for two cups of coffee at the inn near the border between Limerick and Clare. ‘After applying herself sedulously all evening to the work she must have been annoyed to see you pocket the sweepstake. So you fell in love with him because he neglected you. Or was it because you saw him as a man of power surrounded by adoring women?’

‘I wasn’t in love with him then. We were still strangers, virtually.’

‘But you were piqued by his indifference. You were in that state of pre-infatuation when the chosen one is supremely fascinating in all his, or her, words and deeds.’

‘Perhaps. It had nothing to do with the old saw that power is an aphrodisiac. If he’d been a Labour politician it might have been slightly better. But until I got to know Burgo I was convinced that all politicians’ souls had been traded in at an early age. And there isn’t a species of male I dislike more than the Conservative toff. As it turned out, perhaps unfortunately for me, Burgo wasn’t one of them. He loathes their craving for caste conformity. He’s a Conservative because he thinks Socialism’s hidebound by political theory and because he wants independence from the trade unions. The Labour Party has to wear its heart on its sleeve, however economically undesirable it might be to cripple industry in favour of handouts to the improvident. Burgo doesn’t care about image. He thinks there are good men and monsters on both sides and all that matters is being effective.’

‘In the light of what you say I’m glad I’ve never voted Tory. I shouldn’t like to be so comprehensively despised by my elected representative. But no doubt the Labour and Liberal MPs are equally contemptuous of the great unnumbered. But to hell with politics. What I want to know is what happened when you went into the garden alone on a beautiful summer’s night to view the Temple of Hygeia?’

‘You can’t really be interested. This is just therapy, isn’t it?’

Kit laughed. ‘Of course it’s good for you to talk. But I’m honestly intrigued. Though you’re trying to make it matter-of-fact your face and voice betray you.’

I smiled calmly but made a mental resolve that they should do so no longer. It was true that I was giving Kit an edited account of the beginning of my affair with Burgo but while I was talking I found I was reliving some of the sensations of a year ago, when all my ideas about myself, of the sort of person I was and what I was capable of doing and feeling, had been knocked for six.