Secrets of the Heart

12

She is… young.

Twice before, during her ‘career’, Kitty had experienced an encounter such as she knew, instinctively, this one to be, and had observed the form. Take defeat gracefully. Negotiate the pay-off and move on.

This time it was different. Love for Julian made it different. Confronted by this fair, dreaming girl, she knew that her options had been violently narrowed down. Run? Run back to the cool white embrace of her bedroom, shut the door tight and lick her wounds? No. Whatever her fears, a grain of sense stuck in Kitty’s brain.

‘I’m Kitty.’ She held out her hand.

‘I thought you might be.’ The girl took it.

Her touch felt assured and practised, and she seemed not at all fazed. Perhaps Kitty had got it wrong. ‘Julian mentioned me?’ There was the faintest relaxation of Kitty’s features.

‘Yes. He showed me where you lived. I’m Agnes Campion.’

‘And I know about you. The girl with the house and the irises. The girl with the letters.’

She seemed surprised. ‘You know about them?’

‘Julian told me. He knows it’s the sort of thing I’m interested in.’ Tiny pause. ‘He tells me most things.’

‘Of course.’ Agnes absorbed the message.

Kitty enunciated each word very clearly. ‘I should have been visiting my mother but she cancelled. You know what mothers are.’

Agnes’s unease deepened. ‘Mine died when I was twelve but I can imagine.’

For a second, Kitty’s veneer cracked. ‘I’m sorry.’

A flash of sympathy darted between the two. Loneliness, I understand. Almost immediately, the hostile expression snapped back into place on the older woman’s face. ‘Shall we go in?’

Julian was stirring the contents of saucepans. ‘I hope you like spaghetti with clam sauce.’ He looked round at the door, and a frown came and went like lightning. ‘Good God, Kitty! I thought you were with your mother.’

Interposing herself between Julian and Agnes, Kitty raised her face for a kiss. This is mine, she was saying. Thou shalt not steal. In the electric light, Kitty’s beauty was impressive: this was the setting that suited her looks and she knew it. Creamy, serene, with reddened lips and highly tended porcelain skin. She had dressed casually in silk and cashmere, her hair was beautifully cut and her nails manicured. Not a woman of extreme style or of fashion, but one whose every item of clothing proclaimed self-conscious femininity.

‘Mother did her usual nonsense and muddled up arrangements.’ Kitty checked her watch. ‘Is Agnes staying the night?’

‘No.’ Agnes stepped in quickly. ‘Julian drove me over and I was planning to catch the late train. In fact, I think I should be going. Isn’t there one about now?’

‘I’m afraid there isn’t a late train on Saturdays,’ said Kitty, ‘only weekdays.’

Agnes was hot with embarrassment. It was not fair to pay Kitty back in this fashion. ‘I think I should try to get home. It’s not that far.’

But, for reasons of her own, Kitty cut off the retreat. ‘Face and rout the enemy,’ had been the instructions that her great-grandfather, the famous General Mabey, had given to his men up on the Khyber Pass. It wasn’t bad advice. She assumed the smile of the hostess who has successfully backed a guest into a corner. ‘Why don’t you stay? There’s plenty of room. We can put you on a train early in the morning, if you wish. Then you can enjoy dinner… and we can all have wine.’

There, she had taken charge. Kitty the orchestrator. We are all very adult and mature and we can deal with this. ‘Come,’ she said quickly. ‘That’s decided.’ She marshalled Agnes upstairs. ‘You can borrow anything you want. I keep quite a few things here.’ She pushed open a bed-room door and said, in a low voice, ‘I’ll be staying too.’

The message conveyed, Kitty ushered Agnes into an immaculate room and extracted towels and a flannel from the cupboard. ‘I’ll get you a jumper. You must be chilly.’ She ran her eye over Agnes’s jeans and crumpled shirt. ‘Would you like anything else?’

Agnes shook her head. ‘You’re very kind.’

Kitty knew that Agnes knew that kindness was not the point and, to her surprise, discovered there was some enjoyment to be had from this encounter. With the realization came enlightenment – I can see her off - and the tiniest flexing of her muscles. Quick, before her courage left her. With all the permutations of sexual arrangements, there remained an element of the primitive. Do battle to the death. Kitty trod confidently downstairs in her high-heeled shoes but on the last tread her heel slipped and she was forced to grab the newel post.

Glass of wine in hand, Julian was waiting in the kitchen for her. He was not in the least abashed. ‘What’s this about your mother?’ He looked hard at Kitty. Reading her as easily as a book. ‘What are you playing at, Kitty?’

‘Shouldn’t the question be addressed to you?’ she riposted furiously.

He handed her a glass of wine. ‘No, I don’t think so. I’ve told you about Agnes, and I’ve told you that I have met her on several occasions. I told you I had invited her to sail.’ He was unsmiling and very angry. ‘At the very least you should have phoned.’

Kitty helped herself to more wine. ‘Why on earth did you bring her here? To our house.’

He looked down at his glass. ‘My house.’ But when Kitty gasped under her breath, he softened. ‘Kitty. I’m sorry. That was unforgivable.’

The bravado had gone. She wanted to cry out that this arrangement of theirs might sound so cool and modern and sophisticated. And, yes, they had always agreed to tell each other the truth. But, now it came to the test, a river of hot and desperate feeling was drowning Kitty. She had read – where? – in one of the newspapers she combed for opinions, an article that inveighed against the impermanence of relationships and how people couldn’t cope with no religion, no structures and too much freedom.

‘Why can’t you accept me properly? Why can’t I live with you… acknowledged?’

He put down his glass on the table, and checked the clam sauce on the stove. In the spare room above the kitchen, they could hear Agnes moving about, turning on a tap, opening a window. Julian looked as sad and bewildered as Kitty felt. ‘Kitty, we go round and round. Perhaps we should both reconsider?’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Perhaps I’m the one who’s changed. But I hope I have never misled you.’

‘Oh, stop it.’

Yes, he had been honest. She could never accuse him of not being so. Right from the beginning, when she had fallen for his predatory, energetic charm, he had been open, uncommitted, and the first to admit that he did not think fidelity was for him. But she had learned that honesty could not possibly cope with real, intense feelings. Honesty was only a fig-leaf.

‘Come here.’ Julian mastered his irritation. He put his arm around her shoulders. ‘I’m sorry about this.’

All traces of her mini-rebellion seeped away, leaving her drained. With an effort, Kitty pulled herself together. ‘You’re right. Let’s forget it. There are other things to worry about.’

‘Good girl.’ He slid his hands around her waist, reacquainting himself with her fragile frame. ‘Dinner?’

She turned and ran her hand up the features she loved so well and which she was never quite clever or astute enough to read. ‘Sure.’

Over the spaghetti they discussed the Hidden Lives programme, a safe enough subject, and speculated as to Mary’s identity. Kitty suspected that she might have been a domestic or a Jewish refugee, someone at any rate who was undervalued in the social scale of the time, and when Agnes reported that Bel was working on several ideas, including the SOE theory, Kitty asked abruptly, ‘Why does the explanation have to be so dramatic? What about real life? Plenty of ordinary people in the war fell in love with the wrong people and had to say goodbye because they had to go and pick cabbages or look after their parents.’

How on earth had Agnes got herself into this situation? Kitty’s ambush had been masterly. Agnes was aware that Julian had been watching her, quietly, covertly, while she was being forced to watch Kitty smile, offer food, pat her hair. Kitty sat on her seat with possession, wielded her knife and fork as the owner. She turned to her lover with a smile that said, ‘I know your secrets.’ It was all designed for Agnes’s benefit and Agnes understood.

With an effort, she refocused on what Kitty was saying.

‘Hasn’t it occurred to you,’ continued Kitty, ‘that she might – she might have been pregnant?’

Later, Kitty showed Agnes upstairs and stood pointedly in front of Julian’s bedroom. ‘Goodnight, Agnes.’

In the double bed, she drew Julian close and, despite her exhaustion, coaxed him into responding to her yielding, pampered body. Then as she straddled him, she gave a great cry of possession and pleasure and Agnes heard it, as was intended.

Early the next morning, Kitty awoke with a start beside the sleeping Julian. Someone was moving around the house. Agnes, of course. Kitty manoeuvred out of bed and glided downstairs.

She discovered Agnes in Julian’s study where she had pulled back the curtains and was watching the sea. In the half-light, she seemed awkward, rumpled. Ill at ease. At Kitty’s entrance, she swung round and her hair – so shiny, so touchable, so youthful – swung with the movement of her body. ‘I’ve woken you, I’m sorry’

How dare she be in here? thought Kitty. Julian hated people invading his study. She closed the door and advanced into the room. ‘Are you feeling all right?’

‘I couldn’t sleep.’ True, there were smudges of fatigue under Agnes’s eyes. ‘I was going to make myself a cup of tea, I hope that was all right.’

Kitty knotted the dressing-gown around her tiny waist (achieved with such effort), her pearly pink nails catching the light. ‘I’ll make a pot.’

‘Please don’t. I’m sure you want to go back to bed.’

‘No trouble.’ Kitty spread out a hand in front of her and inspected those nails. It was a rude, off-hand gesture and she hoped Agnes took it as such. It was the action of an older woman who, conscious of the younger woman’s power and beauty, was fighting back. Then she felt shame seeping through her. How trivial, how pointless. Kitty summoned her training. ‘You’ve probably got a lot on your plate. Julian tells me you travel a lot.’

‘Yes, I do.’ Agnes pushed back her hair with a weary gesture, but she gave a polite smile. ‘It was good of you to have me to stay… considering.’

‘Considering… everything,’ said Kitty. ‘It was.’

‘But I shouldn’t have stayed.’

Kitty sensed that Agnes was curious about her. How did she live? she was wondering, with that knowing, professional attitude of hers. What did Kitty do? Surely, she would be thinking, this woman did not spend her days waiting for Julian? Agnes was not to know that Kitty also pondered these questions and concluded that the condition of waiting could be expressed as an art form, or a psychological state. Some people did things, others waited. Passivity. What was it exactly? Was it in fact, asked the articles, a form of aggression?

And this girl, Kitty crossed over to the window and looped back the curtain proprietorily, she is the kind who uses the freedoms I never could have imagined, which I was never permitted, with which to bully others into letting her have her own way. By being here, she is saying, I don’t owe anybody any fealty. I demand personal space. Sexual autonomy. I don’t care about anyone else. Otherwise she would not allow herself to be interested in Julian.

‘I’m afraid I don’t have anything for lunch, so we’ll put you on an early train.’

There. The message had been conveyed. Go away.

‘Yes, of course. I need to get back. If you can give me a lift. Or perhaps I could order a taxi.’ Kitty crossed the room and placed a small, determined hand on the door-knob. ‘Kitty,’ Agnes added, ‘I know that you and Julian have been together for a long time. I understand the need to preserve.’

In the moment between the first sentence of the exchange and the next, an old battle was fought. For possession, for supremacy. ‘The reigning queen in the hive fights off the young nubile pretenders,’ Jack had written, in one of the letters Kitty had read. ‘She will kill, if necessary’

How nice of Agnes to yield so publicly. Kitty smiled in triumph. ‘I’ll make the tea. Why don’t you come into the kitchen? Julian doesn’t like anyone in his study.’

In the kitchen, Kitty busied herself with pulling up the blinds and setting out the tea things. These are mine by right, she thought, carefully placing teaspoons in the saucers and filling the milk jug. I should be mistress of this house.

She looked up and out of the window, exhaustion registering in every muscle. Sometimes the effort of existence was almost too great.

There had been an accident further down the line and Sunday morning trains were not running. Julian rang Kitty and told her that he was driving Agnes home and he would not be late for lunch.

He had set out to make Cliff House a house of the elements: light, sun and water. Pockets of darkness and awkwardness had been eradicated by his ruthless hand, and with applications of white paint. He had decreed that decoration be kept to a minimum. He had wished to harness space and natural colours so that, weightless and airy, the house appeared to float above the sea.

Flagge House was different.

‘What do you think of my home?’ In giving him the tour, Agnes was demonstrating to him where her heart lay. Intent and preoccupied, she dragged back the curtains and shutters of the big window in the drawing room to reveal the interior. Julian absorbed the exquisite proportions of the room and pale honey parquet floor and conceded that it was beautiful.

‘Sometimes,’ said Agnes, ‘if I am quiet, I can hear the house sigh and breathe. It’s living, you know.’ She held up a finger and her eyes narrowed in concentration. ‘Listen.’

She was trying to convince him of her crusade and because he was more – much more – than half in love with her, he listened. Agnes struggled with the shutters. One by one, oblongs of light tumbled into the room like dominoes to reveal the raddled face of age. Water had stained the parquet and pushed its blocks above the surface. Above the central window, the lintel sagged.

‘It’s perfect,’ she said, ‘isn’t it?’ Love was so blind, he thought, touched in a raw, unexpected way.

Agnes conducted him through the house, luxuriating in each room – the document room, which she explained had been her uncle’s study and was now hers, the chilly arsenic-green dining room, the kitchen. She showed him the carved staircase, the window of thick lead-hazed glass through which the Campion women had watched their men ride off to battle, to Court or to discover more bits of the globe.

Almost, she succeeded in making him forget other contexts and other considerations. That was her witchery. Following in her wake, Julian was drawn deeper into the blindness.

She made him stand on the top step of the terrace and look over the meadow to the river. ‘We don’t have the right to destroy that.’

He pulled himself together sufficiently to say, ‘We have to survive. And survive with others with competing claims.’

‘Of course.’

They went back to his car, which was parked by the walled garden. ‘This was the scene of your trespass.’

‘Have you forgiven me?’

She touched her plait. ‘No.’

‘Quite right.’ He dug his hands into his pockets. ‘Agnes… I want to…’ But he could sense her retreat.

‘Did you know that walls can be read like documents?’ she said, in a conversational manner. ‘I’m planning a programme on it’

Julian cut her off and grasped her by the shoulders. Puzzled and lusting, he searched her face for a clue as to why he was baffled by his responses to Agnes. His was normally such a clear-cut world. In his ears rang Kitty’s cry of sexual possession and pleasure of the previous night.

‘We are not talking about the one thing we should be,’ he said angrily. ‘Look at me, Agnes.’

Her eyes were clouded with distress. ‘There is nothing to discuss, Julian. I’ve seen the situation. I know the situation. I’ve been involved with a married man.’

He felt her sadness. He felt Kitty’s sadness. He felt his own confusion, and a sense of impending disaster.

‘What you have with Kitty should not be broken,’ she was saying. ‘Some things have to go on. There is too much destruction everywhere.’

‘So, no more meetings?’

She searched his face. ‘No,’ she said, desperately. ‘Go away. Please go away and leave me in peace.’

He pulled her to him. She smelt as he remembered. Soft, clean, flowery, but this time with a just a hint of salt. As he pulled her closer, Julian felt that he was taking possession of centuries: of brick aged into rose, of wood fretted by time, of stone wearing a mantel of lichen.

Agnes pulled herself free as Maud rounded the corner in the drive, dressed in her church hat and full regalia of paste ring and a huge brooch brooding on her chest. She was on top form. ‘Has Agnes offered you any coffee before you go? No biscuits, I’m afraid, but that’s how we are. Frugality is very democratic, don’t you think? Here we all are in this historic house practising self-denial as merrily as Mrs Cadogan in her council flat.’