‘What do we do now?’ asked Parker.
‘Find out who supplied Hilliers who supplied Stovolds. I’d like to bet …’
‘What?’
‘That it’ll be a paper firm with a good address and nobody there when you call.’
So it was. A company called Moth and Benny Exports, specializing in the buying-up of bankrupt stock, had supplied Hilliers; their address was in Leighton Buzzard, and when I sent Van Morris up to make a few enquiries he found nothing but an accommodation address and bank accounts that had been transferred elsewhere.
I know I should have told Shona at this stage, but our meetings were now very brief and the opportunity didn’t come up. As there were no more cases it seemed to me that this was a one-off affair: some crook had got hold of a consignment of our boxes either from a contact in the printing works which produced them or by some other nefarious means. Stovolds were to blame – or rather Mrs McNeill – for trying to get our stuff on the cheap (because the device upped her commission), and I sent an acid letter to her warning her that if anything like it happened again we’d cut off supplies. There the matter ended – or seemed to.
The winter went by, and things went on much the same. Some wag offered £40,000 for Wester Craig and said he wanted to turn it into a hotel. I told Macintyre to advise him to go and jump in Loch Broom.
Then Shona’s father was ill again and she had to go and see him. When she came home we had a drink together. Her father was losing strength but the doctor said he had such a tenacious hold on life that he might last for years yet.
All the aggro between us seemed by now to have worn off, and we talked in the old companionable way. We went back to her flat and she played Brubeck and Scott Joplin and we had a last drink together and then went to bed. I suppose I should have known better, but I thought it would be all right.
Later, around eleven, she said: ‘Are you sleeping with someone else?’
‘No, madame.’
‘It would not be surprising, as it is a year now since anything was right between us.’
‘Well, the answer’s still no.’
‘If you have found no one else, is it just that you are very tired of me?’
‘I’m not tired of you, Shona, These things come and go.’ Why so weasel-mouthed, why not come out with it?
‘And now between us they have gone, eh?’
‘I don’t know. Who knows?’
She got up, shrugged into her black silk Dior dressing-gown, stood erect beside me but not looking at me. ‘After all, who am I to complain? I went into this with my eyes wide open, well aware of the risks. We have had some splendid years. The danger always existed that I should become too fond of you. I have become too fond of you. You must know this well, for in these last years I have confessed it to you often enough –’
‘And do you think I’m still not fond of you?’
‘– It is not the same thing. I do not believe it to be the same thing. I am getting too old for you and it is becoming obvious. You want a fresh young girl. Perhaps, in spite of what you say, you have one such in view.’
‘No, madame.’
‘Don’t keep saying that … But I think in your heart you hanker for some new person, eh? Your mistress is a little passé: turn on the light and you may count the wrinkles.’
‘Shona,’ I said, ‘you’ve done a lot for me. I’ve learned quite a bit since this wagon started rolling – rubbing shoulders with you and –’
‘Shoulders is it, now?’
‘But things change. It’s not the way love affairs last – to put on an act, to claim a smash hit when the customers have gone away. OK, things have changed, but I’ve no wish to end anything. It’s just a different game we may have to play from now on.’
She stroked her straight nose with a long thin forefinger. ‘You want to marry – isn’t that it?’
‘I don’t want to do anything. I am trying to explain, to rationalize what may be going on between us. You say yourself –’
‘All right. All right,’ she interrupted. ‘This – this inevitable thing is happening. Do you wish to leave the firm?’
‘Why should I? Unless you’d rather.’
‘Naturally not. For years with my firm I stood on my own – John did not count in that way – but now, these last few years, you have stood close beside me. I depend on you for many things. The last thing I wish is that I should lose you in both ways.’
I said: ‘The tragic scene isn’t called for. You haven’t lost me in any way yet. Ten years from now we may still be tagging along together. By the way, I don’t consider my pension scheme is very generous.’
She laughed. ‘It will be brought up at the next board meeting. Seriously, David …’
‘Haven’t we been serious till now?’
‘Seriously, I have a deep, deep affection for you. My primitive nature says, fight for him, do not let him go, you cannot afford to let him go, he belongs to you as no one else ever has done; stick in your claws and hold fast! You know, one grows … barbaric in love.’
I waited, saying nothing.
She went on: ‘But my intellectual nature says there is no such thing as lasting love, as lasting fidelity; you have enjoyed what you have had and, by God, It has been good at times – especially in Barbados – be grateful that you have had what you have had and let him go.’
‘Both wrong,’ I said. ‘First, no claws would hold me if I wanted to go. Second, I don’t want to go anywhere. Unless right at this moment it’s somewhere to eat.’
‘We’re too late for the Dorchester,’ she said, looking at her watch.
Food at the Cellini went on until one-thirty and was very good, but I always fought shy of taking her there.
‘Got any eggs?’ I said. ‘I’ll make you an omelette fines herbes. You know I’m a kingpin at that.’
‘I brought some foie gras back from Paris,’ she said. ‘And there’s some Gewürztraminer in the cupboard. You will know if it will go.’
‘It will exactly go.’
We ate hungrily and still companionably. There was still no conflict between us. She told me her father refused all her persuasions that he should come to England. He was determined to die in Paris. He said he couldn’t possibly allow it that there should be sea between him and Russia. John her husband was also ailing and was something of a drag on her conscience.
Towards the end of the meal, while we were still nibbling at the Brie and sipping the last of the wine, she said: ‘ Why don’t you marry Erica?’
Chapter Twenty
I
Among a large number of useless things I picked up – or was pushed into – at Loretto was a smattering of Latin, and I remember a tag which ran: ‘Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat.’ ‘ Whom God wishes to ruin, he first drives mad.’ It was used as a bit of a joke in the lower fifth.
Well, personally, I don’t believe God or anyone else was interested enough in me to plot my ruin, but probably I was a little mad already, so the job was done without His help. But what about Erica, I wondered? Was she demented too?
Of course it wasn’t quite as manic as all that. (Nobody gets the benefit of hindsight until it’s too late.) And of course I didn’t take the directive from my former mistress and hurry over to Knightsbridge with a formal proposal of marriage sealed with red tape. All I suppose Shona’s suggestion did was to nudge along something that had been in the back of my mind for quite a while.
I knew Erica well; I’d slept with her during the interregnum, and that part was all right; she had plenty of money and was free with it; and for her part she would be marrying a title. In back of that, as the Americans say, was a much subtler and maybe deeper reason for the whole thing. I still didn’t go big on personal relationships. (Shona had become an exception but I didn’t want any more.) I’d come to tolerate people better these last few years but still preferred them one step away. This, it may be thought, was a pretty lousy recipe for getting hooked up to anyone; and it was this maybe mor
e than anything else that had kept me from contemplating the holy state before. But Erica, I thought, was very much of the same cast of mind. In her nervous, tensed-up, vital way she was always hard to get near to; body and mind would tend to wriggle from under the affectionate approach; she didn’t like to be pinned down; she was independent; wanted her arms free of the bedclothes; a bit of a solitary. Yet she had feelings enough, had high spirits, and a what-the-hell, happy-go-lucky attitude to life that I thought would fit with my own.
I asked Shona once why she’d made the suggestion.
She shrugged. ‘I knew I had lost you anyhow.’
‘I’ll think that remark over.’
She gave me a quick glance. ‘Why?’
‘It sounds disingenuous.’
‘What a big word for such a simple statement.’
‘Well, hell, it’s not true, is it? You’ve told me you don’t want to chuck out your sales manager. Nor do I want to sponge on Erica. So we shall see a lot of each other still.’
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘but after working hours not at all.’ Her eyes were heavy on me, clear and warm and glistening like the eyes of a young woman. ‘I have lost you for a long time now, David. I do not know why it happened, but you have told me it was not some other woman … Is it – can it be – anything to do with your coming into the title?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Well, it happened about then.’
‘Nothing is to do with anything!’ I said, getting angry, which was unusual now.
‘Well then, peace be on us. I do not know why it happened and you do not know or forbear to tell me. So it has come about and I have to give you up. This I now do. Fully and freely – and regretfully.’
‘Fully and freely,’ I said, kissing her. Her lips were harder but warmer than Erica’s. ‘And regretfully.’
Even at the time it seemed a bit too good and too civilized to be true.
II
One thing Erica had said when I first dropped the idea in her lap: ‘Should we wait a year?’
‘For some reason?’
‘The Olympics. A year next July.’
‘I’m willing to come along and shout in Russian.’
‘I’m sure. You’ll have had plenty of practice in that. But it is not just the games themselves, it is the long preparation, even to be picked.’
‘I’ll train you.’
‘Be sensible, boy.’ She hopped about a little, squinting at me comically. ‘If I want this I really have to work – no half-measures. Have you any idea what that really means? Fencing at these levels, you’ve to build up a system of points over four years – since the last Olympics, in fact – and if you want to stand a chance you need a whole lot even to qualify. I’m doing all right at the moment, but at least twenty-five per cent of the points have to be scored in the last year, so there couldn’t be any slacking off just because of a mere marriage. I’ve got to be … mind-free.’
‘Is there anything else in your book against having a husband?’
‘Nothing at all.’
‘But you’d like to wait a year – more than a year?’
She hesitated, her eyes kindling. ‘Not for any other reason. Obviously.’
‘Then let’s risk it.’
Still, we took our time. I went to Reading to meet her parents. He was a big wavery clumsy man; she was small, and petite like Erica but never had been pretty. I asked Erica to excuse me from taking her to meet my mother. We decided to live in her flat in Knightsbridge, which was big enough for about four families. She had a two-seater drop-head Mercedes, so we decided to keep both cars. She seemed to enjoy my style of driving, but I was less easy with hers; she drove like a cat on a hot tin roof.
So it was marriage at Caxton Hall – with the minimum cast – and off to Hungary for our honeymoon. This had a double target; Erica was taking part in a foil contest there, and Budapest was one of the few capital cities I hadn’t visited with Shona. The choice wasn’t a howling success, as she gained fewer points than she thought she was going to, and the weather, for the last week in April, was grim – chief memory is of damp snow railing across the Danube. And there had been an influenza epidemic raging, so that everyone’s larynx reminded you of hinges that needed oiling. Maybe it was the enervating effects of the flu bug, maybe it was the regime; but everything moved at a crawl; people were in shabby clothes, with unkempt buildings and unrepaired streets. No wonder all the cleverest Hungarians had emigrated.
Four days in Paris on the way home. Different hotel, different arrondissement; it all helped to break the Shona pattern; but one afternoon while Erica was visiting her fencing chums I went to see old Pantelevich. I knew I’d never be able to make him hear, but relied on the middle-aged niece to translate. He was in bed, troubled with his breathing and circulatory problems. He remembered me and we exchanged sentences at a high level of perceived noise decibels. The niece reminded me of Cousin Lucie. They’d both grown grey-faced caring for other people, but instead of a life of self-sacrifice making them benign and gentle it had turned them sour.
Back to London to begin a new life as Sir David and Lady Abden, 24 Knightsbridge House, SW3 and some other postal hieroglyphs. I hadn’t yet taken her north.
I stayed on as sales manager of a highly successful, still privately owned perfumery firm with branches now – or outlets – in most of the civilized world. About this time Shona fairly dived into a new round of publicity and benefit capers; I saw less of her as she went out more into the social world and left the day-to-day running of the business in my hands and Leo Longford’s. Of John Carreros there was no sign at all.
The fact that Erica was hitched to a husband with a fair knowledge of her amateur profession couldn’t, she thought, be wasted; so whenever we were at home and there was half an hour to be filled we’d have a sparring match. We had this enormous kitchen; God knows what it had been in the original house, but it was ideal for the job in hand. Usually we fenced with the épée, which is a heavier weapon than the foil – foil being the only class for women in the Olympics – but Erica said she preferred the épée. It’s a different technique too: with the foil you have a very restricted target; in épée the whole body is the target; it’s much nearer to old-fashioned duelling, rather like the stuff you see in corny historical films. Erica said it strengthened her arm and made her reactions quicker when she went back to the foil.
All this was extra to the hour she spent with her fencing master five nights out of seven, and all the other exercises she did: running in the park, heel-toeing to music to develop footwork and rhythm; and reaction training – that is, catching things rolling off shelves at unexpected angles, and the like.
Can’t say this regime altogether grabbed me, but I’d been duly warned and I went along with it. What she hadn’t told me was the amount of travelling she’d have on her plate, going all over Europe for these joustings. Sometimes I went with her but more often not. Fencing, it seemed to me, was OK for recreation, but at this level it became a bore. But I kept these opinions under careful wraps, and doing these practices with her certainly improved my own fencing, for what that was worth. With my extra reach she began to find me quite a hard nut to crack – or maybe I should say pin down. In our kitchen it was all distinctly haphazard, because although we always used the protective gear there was of course no mechanism for recording hits and we had to make do with yells and counter-yells. I thought once in a feverish moment she was going to suggest having electric wiring put in so that we should know the exact score.
Although she still fenced under her own name, there was one element of our wedlock that Erica certainly found OK. She took to being Lady Abden like a cat to cream, and when her other occupations allowed she threw large dinner parties and invited all the distinguished bodies she could scrape together. Caterers came in and did it all, so it was no work for her; but twice she gave extravagant parties in a private room at the Dorchester.
When I grumbled she said: ‘But we do get
something out of it, boy. It helps in all sorts of ways. Maybe we don’t need social advancement, but we get good conversation, friends in all walks of life, and fun. That’s the most important thing of all!’
A bit later I realized what she meant by ‘all sorts of ways’, when she was invited to give a half-page interview to The Times in which details of our marriage and her determination to carry on with her sport squared away most of the column inches.
Now and then she’d pull off a practical joke on one of her friends; and she seemed rather overfond of gays. There were always more men at her dinner parties than women, and while I didn’t mind a few I felt a few was enough. She said: ‘It simply doesn’t occur to me. You’re old-fashioned even to notice. I simply ask people who are witty and talkative and help to make the party go.’
I said: ‘What about Scotland? We ought to go sometime.’
‘Yes, well, I’d like to. I want to. But it can’t be next week because of – sorry, sorry – university fencing matches. And the week after that I have to be in Barcelona; and on the Saturday it’s Lady Brotherton’s dinner party … What about the – let’s see, it would be the second week in June?’
‘That’s our sales conference. Third week?’
‘Isn’t that Ascot? I really must go this year with my new and titled husband. Then there’s a week – I shall be in Vienna for part of it. After that comes Henley.’
‘Hallelujah, what a prospect!’
‘Can’t we leave it until late summer, when the social frenzy has died down?’
I went to the window. ‘It’s stopped raining. I think I’ll go for a walk. Coming?’
‘Not another little bout?’
‘Not another little bout.’
‘OK. If it’s not far.’ She stretched her long legs and smiled sweetly at me. ‘ Where, shall we go?’ ‘As far as the Prince Consort,’ I said.