Prudence

Chapter Twelve

They were all in the drawing-room when we got back. Neither Rose nor Maggie were looking their best. Rose had obviously had too much to drink and no time to wash her hair. A three-day-old fringe separated on her forehead, showing up lines, making her look much older than usual. Maggie was sulking and wearing too much make-up. Jimmy Batten stood with his back to the fire, nursing a large gin and tonic and exuding urbanity. He looked less attractive than I remembered him. His camel-coloured casual clothes were a little too tight, and clashed with his now drink-flushed face. His sleek, dapper otter good looks went much better with a dark suit. Jack, just back from the office, already with several large whiskies under his belt, was gazing at Berenice with undisguised admiration. And well he might, because she was ravishing, straight out of the pages of Harpers, with a mane of black hair rippling down her back, a long lean figure, slitty dark eyes, a wide red mouth and a conker brown suntan. She was wearing a black satin shirt, grey suède Gauchos clinched by a black Hermes belt, and black cowboy boots which showed off her terrific legs. And she exuded so much glossy good health she made everyone else look like hospital cases. Goodness, I thought, J. Batten has done well for himself. The next moment she had swiftly crossed the room to us.

‘Ivan, sweetest,’ she purred, taking both his hands, ‘I know we should have warned you, but I got your letter, and you sounded so down I decided to come over myself instead of answering.’

Ace gave a slightly twisted smile, and kissed her smooth brown cheek.

‘You were always one for surprises. I thought you were in Florida.’

‘I got bored out of my mind with sunbathing. Then James phoned from New York, and persuaded me to come over.’

‘Hullo Ace,’ said Jimmy, grinning. ‘I was guarding her from hijackers, honest I was.’

Then he gave me a great hug.

‘Pru, my darling, I hear you’ve been terribly poorly. You do look a bit pulled down. Never mind, Berenice is the health freak round here. She’ll soon pump you full of mega-vitamins and have you right as rain.’

‘Hi, Prudence,’ said Berenice, flashing her great white teeth at me. ‘James hasn’t stopped talking about you since we met.’

She turned back to Ace.

‘How was Venezuela, darling? I read your piece on Sunday. It was terrific. Boy, can you empathize with the under-privileged! And I’ve got finished copies of Brave Nutritional World,’ she went on, picking up a book with a large photograph of herself on the front. ‘They’re already reprinting. My British publishers really zapped out when they heard I was coming. The BBC and Border have already been on, and I’m going to Granada in Manchester tomorrow.’

Ace laughed. ‘You’ve certainly been busy.’

‘Rose-Mary has been so gracious letting me use the phone,’ said Berenice, smiling at Rose. ‘You’re quite right about your family, Ivan. I recognized Margaret and Rose-Mary, and of course Jack, immediately without being introduced. We’ve been verbalizing non-stop since we arrived.’

For a second I caught Jack’s eye and started to giggle, then hastily turned it into a cough.

‘I’ll get you a drink,’ said Jack, who wanted an excuse to refill his own. ‘Sure you won’t change your mind, Berenice? She refuses to drink anything but tomato juice,’ he added to Ace.

Berenice smiled and said she didn’t need alcohol, she was ‘bombed out of her skull just meeting Ivan’s folks’. She didn’t seem quite so keen on the animals, giving Coleridge and Wordsworth vertical pats to keep them away whenever they approached her, and fussily brushing Antonia Fraser’s ginger fur off the sofa — and her shirt.

‘I don’t mean to sound pressing,’ said Jimmy Batten, as his glass was filled up, ‘but I for one ought to mop up some alcohol soon.’

‘I’ve booked a table at Dorothy’s at 9.30,’ said Jack.

Rose peered at her face in her powder compact, then calmly got a pair of pants out of her bag and cleaned the glass with them. Berenice determinedly didn’t look shocked.

‘You can count me out,’ said Rose, putting pants and mirror away and getting to her feet. ‘I’m going to wash my hair and go to bed early.’

‘I’m going to change,’ I said.

‘Are they staying the night?’ I said to Rose as we went upstairs.

‘Yes. Mrs Braddock’s made up a bed.’

‘Hadn’t they better have my room,’ I said, ‘It’s got a double bed.’

‘Oh no sweetie, it’s not worth shifting your things just for one night. Jimmy’s going early tomorrow morning. He can have Linn’s room, and Berenice’ll be sleeping with Ace.’

I clutched the banisters for support.

‘I thought she was Jimmy’s girlfriend,’ I whispered.

‘Oh no, darling. She and Ace have been living together in New York for the past six months.’

‘Are you sure?’ I said.

‘Of course I am,’ said Rose rather acidly. ‘She’s spent all afternoon, when she wasn’t on the telephone, telling us what a “warm beautiful human being” Ace is. I hope she’s tough enough to cope with him.’

Once in my room, despair overwhelmed me. To be so unprepared. To have no idea I had fallen so totally in love, only to find it was hopeless. And to think I’d been presumptuous enough to imagine that a man in Ace’s class could possibly fancy someone as young and unsophisticated as me. It was ludicrous.

I didn’t cry. It’s funny, you don’t when something really cataclysmic happens. I sat on the bed trembling and dry eyed, clutching the kitten who purred noisily, and grooved the side of its face against my chin.

Desperately I cast around for some kind of comfort, but there was none. No lifebelts, no driftwood, no passing ships.

‘Oh no,’ I whispered. ‘No, no, no.’

There was a knock on the door. My heart leapt. Perhaps it was Ace come to say it was all some horrible mistake. But it was Lucasta in tears.

‘I can’t find my foxy,’ she sobbed. ‘I’ve looked for him everywhere.’

‘He’s in the hot cupboard,’ I said. ‘We put him there after he fell in the bath yesterday.’

‘Oh, so we did. Please don’t go away again. I’ve been left with Mrs Braddock all day. I wasn’t allowed in the drawing-room because Bare Knees is there. She said she just loved children; then she kept telling me to go away. Granny says she’s going to marry Ace. I hope she doesn’t. At twelve o’clock tonight, I can say tomorrow’s my birthday. You will stay for my party, won’t you?’

Would I? I was tempted to bolt straight back to London, but couldn’t bear to tear myself away quite yet.

‘Oh look,’ said Lucasta, running to the window.

Snow was beginning to fall. A glistening, crumbling drift had formed on the window ledge. Now a storm of big flakes swept giddily by.

‘Tomorrow we can make a snowman. Oh, I wish I had a sledge.’

I looked at myself in the mirror. My reflection stared back pale and hollow-eyed, with the exhausted gritted-teeth look of a candidate who’s just lost his seat. What the hell could I wear tonight? Ace had seen everything I’d brought. All my seductive clothes were in London, anyway, except for my green culotte dress, which was much too naked, and went too well with my little green face.

In the end I kept my jeans on, and put on a white slightly see-through shirt. Not that there’s much to see any more, I thought gloomily. Then I discovered I’d left my only decent eye-shadow behind in the pub at lunchtime. It seemed centuries ago, when I was happy.

Ace was waiting in the hall.

He’d changed into a suit and a pink shirt. Oh the beauty of those broad pinstriped shoulders, and long, long legs. I could smell his aftershave. I felt faint with longing.

‘Are you sure you’re up to going out?’ he said.

I could read the compassion in his eyes.

‘I’m fine,’ I snapped, absolutely terrified of betraying myself.

Dorothy’s restaurant was named after Dorothy Wordsworth. It had soft lighting, black beams, framed photostats of pages from Dorothy Wordsworth’s diary on the whitewashed walls, and forced daffodils on every table. It was pretty but a bit twee. Berenice, however, absolutely freaked out, standing in the doorway of the dining-room in her huge wolf coat, shrieking,

‘My God, I am not ready for this! I am simply not ready for this!’

‘Well if you’re not, I am,’ said Jimmy Batten briskly. ‘Come on, Pru. You go in first. I’ll sit next to you.’

Maggie sat on the other side, with Jack opposite me, and Berenice next to him, and then Ace. So at least I didn’t have to spend all dinner directly avoiding his eyes. Berenice made a great deal of palaver about removing her coat and entrusting it to the waiter, until everyone in the restaurant was staring at us.

‘Isn’t this place just darling?’ she went on, glancing round at the couples in the alcoves. ‘We must come here on our own one evening, Ivan darling.’

She was slightly less amused when she consulted the menu, which took up the whole table, and discovered there were no vegetarian dishes.

‘I forgot you were all on this carnivore trip over here,’ she said. ‘Can you have a word with the waiter, Ivan? They might have some egg plant lasagne or some lentils.’

‘They’re not into all that macrobiotic crap over here,’ said Ace. ‘This is England.’

‘Oh well,’ said Berenice, looking martyred, ‘I’ll just settle for veggies and sour cream this evening.’

‘I’d like an enormous steak, very rare, and chips,’ Jack said to the waiter. ‘And tell the wine waiter to step on it.’

‘We’re not into gourmet tripping any more in the States,’ said Berenice. ‘I just ask people to drop around and take pot luck.’

‘And then dump another quart of water in the lentil soup,’ said Jimmy Batten, spreading butter thickly on a roll.

Berenice looked at him in disapproval. ‘You don’t realize what white flour does to you, James. It amazes me the garbage you British eat. Ivan was living on hamburgers when I met him. No wonder he nearly had an ulcer.’

‘When’s your new book coming out?’ said Jack.

‘In January. It’s being translated into fifteen languages.’

‘It ought to be translated into English first,’ said Ace.

‘Oh starp, sweetest, starp,’ said Berenice, laughing. ‘He’s so vile about my literary style. Being an academic, I’m afraid I’m used to writing for an optimum intellectual readership. You know I can’t believe I’m in Ivan’s home town at last.’

‘We can’t quite believe you’re here either,’ said Jack. ‘We’re going to need at least four bottles, Ace.’

‘Such a relief going into a restaurant where I’m not known,’ said Berenice. ‘In the States I can’t cross the street without being mobbed.’

She’s utterly poisonous, I thought.

‘Cheer up, darling,’ whispered Jimmy Batten in my ear. ‘How’s Pendle?’

‘He’s coming up on Saturday to collect me,’ I said.

‘Not going very well?’

I shook my head.

‘Thought as much.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Still after Maggie? Poor old you. I should have warned you when we met in London. Maggie looks terrible too. I’ve never seen such a deterioration in anyone. She used to be so pretty.’

The dinner seemed to go on for ever. I had to force myself to get any food down, taking frequent gulps of wine. Ace was talking to Jimmy Batten about delinquency in New York. Berenice was going on and on about Jack’s unimaginative life style. ‘You ought to cut out that nine to five shit,’ she said, waving a cauliflower floweret in the air, ‘and get in touch with the universe.’

‘I can’t really cut it out,’ protested Jack. ‘I’ve got two households to support.’

Now Berenice was rabbiting on about her last husband. ‘I wanted an open living relationship based on trust and growth, and all he wanted was his jockey shorts ironed. I mean we weren’t coming from the same place at all.’

‘And Ace doesn’t expect you to do his ironing?’ said Jack. Suddenly I felt his ankle rubbing up and down against mine.

‘Oh, starp. Don’t make comparisons,’ said Berenice, putting one of her lovely sunburned hands on Jack’s arm. ‘Ivan is just terrific. He gives off this incredible togetherness, it’s beautiful. We have these terrifically productive dialogues, sitting around for hours rapping.’

‘Surprised you don’t find him too forceful,’ said Jack.

‘Well he’s a Leo of course,’ admitted Berenice. ‘They’re very big on macho tripping, but he’s trying to overcome it.’

For a second I met Ace’s eye, found myself blushing and looked away.

‘I was a big star, of course, when I met Ivan,’ Berenice went on. ‘But my life was empty. I needed a whole, loving, caring environment, where I could be totally committed. You’ve no idea the creases he’s taken out of my mind.’

‘So Ace is the one who’s doing the ironing,’ said Jack, gravely.

Berenice didn’t flicker. She was not to be deflected. She was in such full flood she didn’t even notice when Jack rolled a tonic bottle across the table towards me. Inside on a bit of paper he’d written ‘Help’.

I took it out, and wrote ‘I love you’ on the back, and rolled it back again. It was a comfort that he thought her as silly as I did. But she was certainly mad for Ace. She’d reached the stage now when she couldn’t bear not to touch him. Her free hand strayed now to his hair, now to the nape of his neck, now to his thigh.

Then she decided I needed bringing in and asked me what I thought of Northern Ireland, but my mouth was still full of dry, unswallowable chicken, so I just shook my head, and she said she thought people’s capacity for outrage in this country was amazingly dulled.

Then it was Maggie’s turn. She was wearing the shirt Ace had brought her from the States.

‘I’m so glad you’re wearing that shirt, Margaret. Ivan and I must have gone to a dozen shops to find the right colour.’ Then she turned to Ace, licking him on the ear. ‘And you’ve no idea the free gift I’ve got for you later darling,’ she said huskily.

I couldn’t bear any more. I could feel the sweat rising on my forehead, it was so hot.

‘Must go to the loo,’ I muttered, wriggling round the table, and scuttling across the restaurant.

When I came out I found Jimmy Batten.

‘I’ll take you home,’ he said.

‘Oh, please.’ I felt sick and giddy, very near to tears.

‘I’ll just go and tell everyone.’

‘Could you just get a waiter to tell them after we’ve gone?’

I couldn’t face Ace at the moment.

The snow was thickening as we drove home, settling in the arms of trees and on the tops of walls and gates. As we reached the end of the village, and started on the road up to the Mulhollands’ house we passed a large notice, saying: ‘Unfenced Road, beware of animals.’

‘It’s not the animals you have to beware of round here,’ I said bitterly.

‘It’s not Pendle any more, is it?’ said Jimmy Batten.

‘Oh God, is it that obvious?’

‘Only to me. I could never understand what a larky girl like you could see in Pendle. He’s like a synopsis. Ace is a whole book.’

‘Is it a very big thing, him and Berenice?’

‘’Tis for her. She talks a lot of crap about L.T.R. — Living Together Relationships as she calls them — but she’d do anything to get him up the aisle. I guess he’s the one who’s putting up the sandbags. He’s not ready to marry anyone yet.’

‘What’s so marvellous about her?’ I said dismally.

‘Superior muscle tone, darling. She’s a very ballsy lady. She’s terrific in the sack. She used to be a girlfriend of mine. I couldn’t cope with the neurotics, but maybe Ace can handle her.’

‘I see,’ I said listlessly.

‘Poor little Pru.’ Jimmy put out a hand and touched my cheek. ‘You haven’t had much luck with the Mulhollands, have you?’

After he’d seen me upstairs he said, ‘I’m leaving at crack of dawn tomorrow. I’ve got a case in Birmingham. Ring me when you get back to London. I’ll buy you dinner.’

I got into bed and read the same page over and over again. Then I got Pendle’s photograph out of my top drawer. It was tattered and creased from being hawked around in my bag for so long. It was as though I was looking at a total stranger. How could I have ever loved him? Beside Ace he seemed a complete shadow.

It was after midnight when I heard them coming home. The snow was six inches deep on the windowsill. There was a knock on my door. It was Ace. He came and sat down on the bed.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you felt bad? I’d have brought you home.’

‘You were otherwise engaged,’ I said bleakly.

He looked at me in silence, the tassels of the bedside lamp fretting a shadow across his left cheekbone.

‘You looked miserable all evening. I was watching you.’

‘I hope you learnt something,’ I snapped, shifting my legs irritably. Next moment Pendle’s photograph had fluttered down on to the floor. Ace picked it up and looked at it for a minute.

‘I see. Have you been talking to Jimmy?’

‘Yes,’ I said tonelessly. What did a thumping lie matter now? ‘Seeing him brought the whole Pendle thing back.’

‘You’ve had a long day. One doesn’t get over these things all at once, and they always seem worse when you’re tired.’

I felt my chin trembling. It was the onset of tears again. Ace put his hand out, but I flinched away. If he touched me, I knew I was lost.

‘Don’t. I can’t bear it.’

He sighed, took my book from me and switched off the bedroom lamp. ‘Try and get some sleep.’

I heard his bedroom door open and shut. My body seemed to burn as I tossed and turned. I must forget about him. I must stop imagining all the things he and Berenice would be doing in a minute. I wondered if he’d removed Elizabeth’s picture before he got to work. Large tears rolled out of the corners of my eyes. The night seemed to go on and on. One thing could be said in favour of falling in love with Ace, it was going to make dying a whole lot of fun.