CHAPTER SIXTEEN: FAMILY WEEKEND
Harry enjoyed his Saturday evening. Everything went well: Anne and Delia went off to put the boys to bed, and James listened with the respect expected of a son-in-law as he sat with Harry on the terrace in the Manor House drawingroom, listening to his father-in-law discussing dinner plans with Anthony.
‘Mrs. Bates has made haddock mousse to start, and I will then be serving chicken in a white sauce, sir, with Camargue rice and asparagus. I thought you might like to drink the ’95 Chablis, it’s keeping well.’
Harry wondered for a moment whether Anthony sketched just the merest hint of a wink as he spoke. He knew his butler liked to sample what he proposed serving, it seemed only appropriate. Sometimes Anthony sampled generously, and swayed a little in his serving. But he was a good butler, and Harry preferred the thought of him sampling to the thought of having to find a new man.
‘What about dessert?’ Harry liked his desserts sweet, with cheeses to follow: Anne drove regularly to the big Auchan superstore outside Dunkirk to refresh their supplies.
‘Coffee meringues, sir.’
Harry licked his lips. ‘Sounds good.’
‘Would you care for something while you are waiting, sir?’
Harry kept a good stock of fortified wines and spirits, but preferred Dutch genever for himself, whilst Anne was partial to Southern Comfort. Somebody also managed to look pretty well after his sweeter sherries, and Harry wondered whether Mrs. Bates drank them whilst cooking. He knew she used a lot of wine for her sauces.
Anne and Delia both pretended mock offence as they came down from putting Delia’s two boys to bed to find the two men with glasses at their elbows.
‘Men are always so selfish.’ Delia reached for Harry’s glass, but he whisked it quickly out of her reach.
He beamed at her. ‘Women like putting children to bed.’
‘Next time you can do it.’
Anne broke in. ‘Stop squabbling.’ She badly needed a drink herself, and also felt rather peckish. She liked Mrs. Bates’ haddock mousses, even though they were rather fattening. She looked around for Anthony, but he was already waiting with glasses in hand. She smiled at him. Anthony ran the Chapman’s home with smooth precision.
They ate contentedly, staying in the diningroom after they had finished, speaking little in their fulness and satisfaction. It was an evening for being sociable, and they were free from agendas, because Delia knew that she had gained her father’s support, and Anne knew that things must be going well if her daughter could count money on the table. Then they played a few hands of canasta, to help their digestions, but soon they were yawning.
‘I must go to bed.’ Anne stretched herself with all the feigned tiredness of a woman whose mind was wholly on other things. Delia echoed her mother. She could sense an imperative rising within her, though she felt that it was not really right for her mother to be the same way. Sex was a young thing, and should by rights peter out in middle age, along with fertility. But perhaps her mother was lonely after a week on her own. Delia understood loneliness well, with a husband often out golfing.
Harry and James eyed each other a little uncertainly. Men like to drive and control. But both felt they were being driven. They followed their wives like sheep being taken to some festival.
Anne led Harry up the Manor House stairs, turning to embrace him as she reached their bedroom door. She ran her hands up along his shoulders and across the back of his neck. ‘It’s been a long time.’ She kissed him as though intent on drawing out his masculinity. But her passion was mechanical, with none of the spontaneous desire that fired his encounters with Doreen.
‘I expect you’ve forgotten how it should be, seeing that it’s been so long.’ She turned away to start undressing, and this was also mechanical, because Doreen liked to undress Harry as she built his need. Anne lay back on their marital bed, looking up at him expectantly, because she was waiting for her man to do his thing. But it was not very romantic. Harry obliged, becauses sex was sex, after all, but he imagined Doreen in Anne’s place, and now he was having sex with Doreen as he drove into his wife, and in the moment of his culmination his wife no longer had a place in his life, because he had a new woman. He continued, forcing himself to drive on, now rocking on Anne’s haunches rather than thrusting, because he knew that she would pull away from under him once she sensed that he had delivered his orgasm, clasping his arms under her neck and pressing his mouth down on her own mouth, open and panting, and they were both bathed in sweat, and wife and mistress intermingled in his mind as his need drove him on, with a certainty that he had yet more to deliver, and he moved in a trance of power, with an imperative within him demanding that he continue, and forced himself on until he was totally and wholly spent, and then he had to stop for breath.
Anne lay silent for a moment. Then she drew in a long breath and let it out again slowly, before rolling away from under him, and staring at him as though staring at a stranger. ‘I don’t think you’ve forgotten.’
Harry smiled the smile of a victor. He had always been a very controlled man, and had never let himself be never carried away. But now he had come close to abandon in his passion. Sex with Doreen was a search for pleasure and excitement, layering caresses on each other to build responses in matching touches and caresses, building to reception and penetration and ecstasy. Sex with Anne was a marital duty. But now he had asserted his mastery.
He slept, and in his sleep he dreamed of Doreen’s body, young and fresh, and free from the muscular honing of a woman who knew how to keep in shape. He woke, some time in the early hours, and brushed Anne’s body accidentally. Doreen immediately woke on such encounters to embrace him. But Anne believed in enjoying her slumber and pushed him away. Harry lay for a moment, reflecting on the difference between girl and woman, lover and wife, and drifted back into sleeping.
He woke to find a small boy in pyjamas climbing over him.
‘Come on, grandpa. Time to get up.’
Harry turned blearily to look at his bedside alarm. It was not even seven.
‘Go away, Tom.’
‘You can come and play croquet now. Just the two of us.’
‘I’m asleep.’
‘No, you aren’t, grandpa. You’re talking to me.’
There is something about the logic of small boys that is always quite inescapable. Harry thought of how he had planned to spend his morning, lying for a while waking, before a light but leisurely breakfast, with the Sunday papers spread around him, perhaps reading some kind words about Dreamstone’s bid ahead of Levon’s arrival, whilst the boys played croquet out in the garden with their parents. But now he knew such leisure was wholly out of the question, because small boys expected grandfathers to behave in totally grandfatherly ways. He rubbed his eyes and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
‘Let me clean my teeth and shave first.’
Tom nodded masterfully. He knew he had the situation totally under control. ‘I’ll go and get dressed.’
Soap and hot water possess a magic power to awake and invigorate. Harry shaved, and showered, and began to feel quite brisk as he returned to his bedside. Anne still seemed to be sleeping, but he caught her watching him covertly as he pulled on a clean pair of chinos.
She smiled, her eyes half closed, stretching under their duvet like a cat. ‘Pity you can’t come back.’
Harry reached for a clean shirt. Tom was now setting a timetable.
‘I’ll get Delia to take them for a walk after lunch.’
‘Levon is coming.’
‘Oh, Christ, so he is.’ She sat up, her cotton nightdress falling open in front. ‘Maybe when he’s gone.’
‘I’ll be going back with him.’
‘Spoilsport.’ She pretended to look disappointed, but she was already in hostess mode, ticking her way down a mental checklist, preparing for the day ahead. Mrs. Bates was good about religious dietary prohibitions, so she need have no menu fears. Levon was partial to roast lamb, and she had a good one in the freezer. Nicely studded with slivers of garlic, perhaps, and festooned with strands of rosemary from the kitchen garden, with roast potatoes and fresh green peas, and a good claret to wash it down. Then perhaps pear helene, with pears simmered in their own syrup, covered in thick chocolate and served with petits fours. A simple family lunch, nothing very elaborate, and Levon was always good with the boys. They might then all go for a walk along the bridleway leading out of the village, and acknowledge respectful greetings from the villagers. Nobody in Tithing touched their forelocks any more, but money still counted. Cucumber sandwiches and some of Mrs. Bates’ pound cake for tea, and she could make up for missing George Harriman’s morning service by showing her face at Evensong.
Harry met Delia as he prepared to descend the stairs. He knew he would have to wait for his breakfast: Mrs. Bates always served punctually at nine on Saturdays and Sundays. But he imagined he might find some cold coffee in the kitchen to heat up.
‘I’m sorry, Dad.’ Delia had thrown a towelling dressing-gown over her nightdress, and her dark hair was tousled. She had the soft look of a woman who had spent an interesting night, wholly shielded from having to worry about children. The boys always slept soundly in the country, it was one of her reasons for wanting to move. ‘Did Tom wake you?’
‘I’ve got to play croquet.’ Harry pretended to snap his words. But he really felt rather flattered.
‘Oh, dear.’ She beamed maternally. ‘But he does love you so.’
Harry let himself be hugged. Delia plainly intended building on her good homehunting start. He sniffed. ‘He does love his croquet.’
He found coffee, and some chocolate biscuits in an airtight jar. Not ideal breakfast fare, but a man must eat as best he can. Tom sipped at a glass of milk, and ate half a biscuit, and then trotted off across the lawn to return with two mallets. Harry swallowed the rest of his coffee. Grandfathers have their duties.
Levon arrived on the dot of eleven, elegant in a navy blazer with gilt buttons and spotless white flannels, blue and green silk scarf knotted on his pale blue shirt, cream panama perched a little rakishly over his eyebrows. He was wearing dark glasses, which gave him the air of someone a little doubtful. He would have looked good with a submachinegun in a violin case, or a giant cigar. A chauffeur followed bearing an armful of carnations.
‘I have pistachios and fresh almonds in the car. My pilot brought them in from Izmir yesterday. Also loukoums.’ He took off his dark glasses to kiss Anne on both cheeks, very precisely, and then shook hands with Harry, a strict order of precedence, before kissing Delia and shaking hands with James. Anne was dressed in a crisp white linen that set off her tan. Delia had chosen a flowing dress in a flowery design. She considered it slimming. Harry and James were both dressed casually in chinos and open-necked shirts. But James looked a little ill-at-ease. He was tall, and a little ungainly, with doubtful eyes and nondescript hair. Essentially an office man, happiest behind a desk, or perhaps on a golf course.
Levon shook hands with both Delia’s boys, and stood back to admire them. ‘My, but you are both growing fast.’
Both boys eyed him hopefully. Levon always brought presents. But Tom was also practical, and never missed an opportunity. ‘Will you play croquet with us before lunch?’
Levon beamed. ‘We will all play croquet, after I have made presentations.’
He liked making presentations. Anne handed the carnations to Anthony, to take to the kitchen for arrangement by Mrs. Bates, who had a woman to help her when the Chapmans invited guests, and Harry accompanied Levon back to his car, followed by two excited small boys, and James Swanton, who felt it his duty.
The chauffeur began to unpack boxes wrapped in decorative paper from the boot of a big silver Mercedes. Levon generally stayed at the Savoy when in London, because he liked the central location, and always rented a large shiny car, with the same man to drive it. He said that he disliked driving on the left hand side of the road, and found it unsettling. Harry liked to point out that he never drove anywhere. He suspected that a need to focus cramped Levon’s style when he was on the move. Conversations shaped his existence. He lived on the telephone, and sometimes several telephones at the same time.
Joe and Tom were now hovering again, with their father attempting to keep them from starting to plunder the boxes. Levon smiled at them benevolently.
‘Come, we will open the presents all together. Everyone will have something.’
The boxes all bore small labels with names. Levon watched beaming as his chauffeur set them out on the wrought-iron terrace table, and then picked up the largest, turning to hold it out to Anne.
Anne’s eyes shone with the excitement of a small girl. Levon always brought magnificent gifts. She opened the box carefully, with the two boys hopping up and down excitedly, and drew out a delicately woven pashmina in pastel colours. She pressed the wool to her cheek, and crumpled it a little in her hand, but the pashmina did not crumple. Delia watched with open-mouthed envy.
Anne laid the pashmina gently on the table. ‘Levon, you’re a magician.’ She hugged him, and they kissed again, with the same formal precision. Delia pushed Tom back from attempting to touch the scarf.
‘No, it’s a magic scarf. It will bring you good fortune.’
Harry beamed with the smile of a grateful host.
‘Now, I have something for Delia.’ Levon picked up a second box and held it out to Delia. She pulled at the gift paper, tugging the box open, and drew out a second pashmina, identical to its companion.
He made a self-deprecating gesture with his hands. ‘I thought I should be fair. It was also so much easier for me.’
Delia was busy arranging her scarf around her shoulders. ‘It’s wonderful, really wonderful.’ She stepped forward to show her own gratitude, cheek lightly against cheek, and smiled quickly at her husband. James possessed a jealous streak, and could sometimes be tiresome about gifts.
Levon grinned at Harry. ‘For you, I have a sword. Well, a small sword, for the battle.’
Harry opened his box. A dagger lay inside, perhaps six or seven inches long, with a keen steel blade and a silver handle chased with an arabic inscription. Harry turned it over admiringly in his hands.
‘It says that you must strike hard, for your blow to be successful.’ Levon touched the handle delicately with his forefinger. ‘You will stand at the crest of success and survey a wide horizon.’
He winked at Harry, and now he really looked like a man with a pass to the underworld. ‘Fortune will smile on you.’
He took up another box, holding it out to James Swanton. The box also held a knife, a silver paperknife, with James’ name and the date, and Harry saw that it had rather a blunt, even dull, edge. He judged it a very suitable gift.
Delia’s two boys were now hopping up and down again. Levon held out two boxes, and they both yelped with excitement as they tore them open.
Joe held up a small silver machine. ‘Look, it’s the new Playcompact.’ He took a deep breath, his fingers already probing. Tom stood beside him with his own machine, equally intent. They were two small boys with exciting new toys, and croquet was quite forgotten.
Levon made the same small self-deprecating gesture. ‘People tell me they are very smart technology.’ He winked at Harry again. ‘We will be smart as well, when we have the Pentagon behind us.’
More boxes followed, packed with roasted pistachio nuts, and fresh almonds, and turkish delights in shades of pink green and amber. Anthony brought champagne and Anne thought again how lucky she was to have such a comfortable lifestyle. She had always been prosperous, it was the way she had grown up, and the way she had chosen. She was not a woman to live in a small house, or drive a small car, or go out to work. Such things were for others.
They trooped into the diningroom for lunch, and she noted with approval that Anthony has set out the Sevres and the crystal wine glasses. Levon always deserved the very best. But he also corralled the two boys into a small table of their own in the corner of the room. Small boys can be dangerous around valuable glass and china.
The meal went like a dream. Levon was back from a flying visit to the Middle East, exploring opportunities. Harry wondered whether he had also been playing politics. Lamb came and went in great rosy slices, and claret flowed free. Nobody mentioned Dreamstone’s takeover bid, because Levon and Harry were both superstitious. Neither cared to count unhatched chickens.
The pear helene was delectable, and Mrs. Bates’ petits fours straight from heaven. Anne breathed thanks again for her good fortune. It was not often that one could find a perfect houseman married to a perfect cook. Anthony and his wife could sample as much of the Manor House cellar as they pleased.
Then they drank coffee, with brandies for the men, Southern Comfort for Anne, and Benedictine for Delia, and they were ready to go walking.
There is something very pleasant about a fine English Sunday afternoon, when the sky above is a clear pale blue, lawns stretch away in perfectly aligned stripes of alternating shades of green, and flowerbeds mass in serried ranks of colour. Harry and Levon waited in front of the Manor House as Delia mobilised her boys, Tom to walk between Levon and Harry, Joe at the side of his father, herself and her mother to bring up the rear.
Then Harry stared. A young woman had come through the open gateway, and was walking towards them. She was perhaps in her early thirties, nothing particularly eye-catching to look at. But she moved with a kind of fluid grace that could only be sexy. He sensed Levon tensing at his side. He could hear Anne mutter something sharply behind him.
The young woman came closer. She seemed intent on some mission. Anne stepped in front of him.
‘It’s Julia.’
The newcomer stopped. She looked at Harry and Levon, and then lowered her eyes. Harry had a feeling that the girl had taken his dagger and made a sharp incision.
‘Mrs. Chapman?’ Now the young woman was looking at Anne. ‘I came to thank you.’
Anne spoke briskly. ‘We’re just going out for a walk.’
The young woman nodded. She did not seem bothered. ‘I thought I should come. I’m starting work for Wide Horizons tomorrow. I won’t have time after that.’
For a moment the group in front of the Manor House seemed frozen. Harry and Levon were staring at the girl, and Anne seemed a little flustered. Delia could tell that James was trying not to stare the girl away. Only the two boys showed no concern.
Finally Anne broke the silence. ‘It’s very good of you. I’m glad Barbara could help.’
Levon looked at her. ‘Barbara Hanson?’
Anne nodded. ‘Hilary Harriman, our vicar’s wife, asked me to help Julia find a job. She’s been ill.’ She wanted to add a great deal more, but judged additions impolitic.
Levon looked Julia up and down. He was very plainly taken. ‘Where will you be working?’
‘Martin Smith is finding me a place.’
‘The financial director?’
‘Barbara introduced us.’
He reached into the breast pocket of his blazer, and takes out a card. ‘My name was Levon. Harry and I are making a takeover bid for Wide Horizons. Call me tomorrow.’
Julia glanced at him appraisingly. It was a quick look, but perceptive. She was taking his measure. Harry scuffed his feet in the gravel of the Manor House drive. There were times when a man was not always master in his own house, and it was not a pleasant feeling. He could sense that Levon hoped to bed this young woman, and he felt that his hope boded an ill omen.
Julia took the card, and scanned it quickly, before tucking it into her shirt pocket. The man had a strange name, and looked like a foreigner, perhaps not a christian. She thought back to George Harriman, counselling her at Heatherwood Hospital. Perhaps George had been prescient. She smiled at Levon, with the smile she uses on men she intended collecting. Perhaps George had recognised her truth after all.