Delia was looking forward to flying to France. Tom and Joe were both little angels on the drive out of London, because they had never been in a private jet, and she had promised they could take turns to sit in front, next to the pilot, if they really, really behaved themselves. She arrived at the Manor House with plenty of time to spare, and thought fondly of Mrs. Bates’ cucumber sandwiches, made from Mrs. Bates’ own rye bread, with the crusts cut off, and neatly rounded corners, just like the Queen’s, and perhaps just a small slice of pound cake. She would have tea, and it would refresh her.
She parked neatly on the gravel in front of the house, and waited for a moment. Usually Anne came out to greet her, sweeping the boys up into her arms in grandmotherly affection. But the house was silent, closed in on itself. Then she gasped and jumped out of the Chrysler as the front door opened. Anne stood on the doorstep, smiling weakly, but she looked as though she had been crying.
Delia ran to her, folding her in her arms. ‘Mummy, what’s the matter?’
Anne began to sob. ‘A woman rang me, and said your father has had a teenage girl in the flat all week.’
Delia frowned. ‘At Canary Wharf?’
Anne nodded weakly. It was all she could do.
Delia was dumbfounded. She stood holding her mother for a moment, lost and bewildered. Then suddenly discipline kicked in, and she was brisk. There are times when a daughter must take charge, and this was one. ‘Take the boys inside with you, and I’ll ask Mrs. Bates to make us some tea. I’ll be with you immediately.’ She patted her mother’s shoulder, as though comforting a child. ‘Sit down and relax. I’ll join you, just as soon as I get things organised. You can tell me all about it then.’
She continued in a whirl of energy as she extracted her boys. ‘Joe, Granny’s not feeling well, and I need you to cheer her up.’ She pushed at her seven-year-old, her manner imperative. Joe took his grandmother by the hand, proud to be on a mission, and Delia unstrapped Tom. ‘You’ve got to be a good boy, Tom, I don’t want any tantrums.’
Tom looked up at her cheekily. ‘Will I sit beside the pilot if I’m good?’
Delia scowled. ‘I’ll throw you out of the window if you’re not.’
Her five-year-old nodded, pretending mock terror. Then he was suddenly practical. ‘I’ll go with granny, and give her a hug.’
Delia smiled as he ran off. Sometimes the boys were little demons, and sometimes pure angels. She realised that Anthony had come out of the house, and eyed him curiously.
‘Your mother took a phone call, Miss Cordelia.’ Anthony was one of the few people in the world always to call her by her full name.
Delia had grown up in a house run by Anthony and his wife, and she knew him very well. ‘Did you give her a pick-me-up?’
He nodded. ‘I thought she needed something.’
Delia felt like hugging him. ‘Anthony, you’re a brick.’
They were both silent for a moment. Both had their own thoughts, their own questions. But one was a daughter, and one was a butler.
‘Do you have time for tea, Miss?’
‘With cucumber sandwiches?’
‘I’ll talk to Mrs. Bates.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘You should have time, I’ve packed your mother’s car. I’ll transfer everything from your car to hers whilst you’re both having tea.’
Delia turned back towards the Chrysler. ‘Will you find everything?’ She suddenly had a fear that things might be mislaid, or left behind. She hoped that she had packed simply everything.
‘I think I have unloaded your car before, Miss Cordelia.’
It was a rebuke, and Delia lowered her eyes demurely. ‘I’ll be with my mother.’
She found Anne in the drawingroom, with Tom trying valiantly to amuse her. He was making funny faces, and doing his best to imitate a comedian he had seen on television. But Anne seemed lost in a daze.
Delia sat down beside her, and took her hand. ‘Tell me what happened.’
‘I answered the phone.’ Anne spoke jerkily, without looking at her daughter. ‘It was a woman, she didn’t say her name. She said she had been your father’s mistress, but he had taken a teenage girl in her place.’
‘What, when he went to London?’
Anne shook her head weakly. ‘She didn’t say.’
Delia was silent, a myriad thoughts racing through her mind. Now all her worst suspicions were fulfilled. She had never really connected her father with women. He was her father: always, or almost always, good-tempered, and invariably fun to be with. She had seen him flirt, from time to time, but the flirting had never been serious, had never offered invitations. She always judged that he was playing games, and that he counted on coming home to his castle. She knew older men sometimes chased trophies. But teenage girls rarely possessed the class to rank as trophies, counting more as playthings.
She put her thoughts into words, and her mother nodded dumbly. Delia cast further. ‘Do you want to call France off?’
Anne looked up, her eyes bloodshot and puffy. ‘I can’t do that. It’s all arranged.’
‘But will you be able to cope with father?’ Delia used a formal word, to show solidarity and sympathy.
‘I’ll cope.’ Anne’s voice held a hard edge, and a bitterness that Delia had never heard before. She suddenly wondered whether her mother might be thinking of throwing her father out, and it was a thought of desolation. Parents form a unit, two united in one, and that is how they should be. She thought of her father castling himself up in London, with a girl very possibly much younger than herself, and the thought excluded both her, and all her plans for moving.
‘Do you want me to tell him to get rid of her?’
Anne bit her lip. She knew what her daughter was thinking, because they both thought the same way. They were too much alike. She welcomed the idea of a confrontation, because her mind was a maelstrom of seething anger, but she also feared losing. Harry was not a man to be driven into a corner, because cornering might force him to choose, and he might opt for children, for the chance of a son. The thought twisted a knife in her. She wanted victory, not defeat. She might choose to keep him, on her own terms, or divorce him and move to France, but the choice must be of her making.
‘Do you think he’d listen?’
‘I’ll make him listen.’ Delia suddenly understood her duty. She must excise this invader wholly and totally, and bring her father to his senses. ‘Leave him to me. I’ll play on his conscience.’
Anne looked up. Anthony stood a few steps away, holding a tray. She smiled at him brightly. ‘I think we’re ready.’
She reached out to take her daughter’s hand as he began to lay the table between them, squeezing it hard. She knew her daughter’s mind, but she did not resent a focus that others might have deemed egocentric. Delia wanted her parents to stay together, and money for a new house. She did not want a rival. It was enough to mobilise her wholehearted support, and she could ask for no more. She watched as Delia began to pour tea.
‘You’re a treasure, darling.’
‘Hungry as well, mother.’ Delia knew what she had to do, and she had already built her plan into a programme. Now she wanted cucumber sandwiches, before Anthony drove them to White Waltham.
Harry was also looking forward to flying with Levon to France. The week had coasted down towards a successful close, and Anne and Levon had made all the arrangements between them. Levon wanted his pilot to pick Anne and Delia and her two boys up at White Waltham airfield in mid afternoon, and then loop round London to the City airport in Dockland to collect Delia’s husband, Shosanah, Levon and himself, before flying straight down to Nice. He expected everything to go like clockwork, and for the weekend to run wholly smoothly, providing Shosanah played ball. Of course he would have to leave Doreen on her own again for a couple of days, but their separation would teach her the benefits of their being together. They were growing into a comfortable arrangement, matching four nights out on the town, wining and dining, and staying up quite late, with three nights of domestic bliss. They could both do with a break, to charge up their batteries.
He smiled wryly to himself as he began to power down at work. Well, he would recharge his batteries if Shosanah played ball.
Levon called his wife his pet tiger. ‘Claws like a big one,’ he liked to tell Harry. ‘Think of me as ringmaster, facing her down. The man with the willpower.’ Harry wondered at times whether Levon might not end up as catmeat, because Shosanah backed off for no man. But Levon needed Hymie Berger’s backing, and he would be totally supportive, whatever came.
He left Dreamstone just before lunch, to make sure he had an hour with Doreen. No point in recharging batteries unless they ran down a little.
Doreen told him afterwards, when they were dressed again, that she planned to watch videos whilst he was away, but he eyed her doubtfully. ‘You’ll want to get out and about.’ It was as much statement as question.
‘No.’ She smiled up at him, folding her arms around his neck. ‘I’ll rest for a couple of days.’ However something about her manner suggested that she did not really see herself as a girl staying at home watching the telly. Harry felt a little uneasy at the thought, and wondered whether he had done the right thing by kitting her out smartly, but realised there was not much he could do. He would just have to trust her.
He caught a cab to City airport an hour before Levon’s Learjet was due to leave. Levon was already waiting, sitting at a table in the open-plan bar with Shosanah and a small dark woman. He beamed. But somehow he looked a little strained, as though squiring two women at the same time presented something of a burden.
Shosanah beckoned expansively as she saw Harry approaching. ‘Hey, baby. Come here and say hello to me.’
Harry noticed a massive gold bracelet on her wrist. It looked like a lot of money.
She waved it ostentatiously. ‘Look what Levon gave me. Ain’t he a prince?’
Levon winked. Neither of them introduced the small dark woman, and Harry recognised her as Shosanah’s maid.
He bent to rest his cheek briefly against Shosanah’s, before straightening up again. ‘Can I get you all something to drink?’
Shosanah prodded Levon playfully. ‘You think they got champagne in this place, baby?’
Levon looked doubtful. ‘We got champagne in the Learjet.’ He was not a mean man, but he knew how much airport bars charged for luxuries.
‘No, baby.’ Shosanah was determined, and Shosanah determined was Shosanah indomitable. ‘I want champagne, baby. Right here and now.’
Harry was quick to the bar. He wanted everything to go smoothly, throughout the weekend, and colossally expensive champagne seemed a small price to pay. He used his Dreamstone credit card. It seemed right for the bottle to go through the company books.
The barman brought the champagne himself, with an expression of the deepest respect, opening the bottle deftly before filling three glasses. Harry noticed that Levon and Shosanah did not include Shosanah’s maid in the celebration. They made small talk for a while, and then he looked up, to see Delia bearing down on them. He twitched, because she had a black look about her, as though there had been some kind of upset. He wondered whether she had been fighting with her husband.
She smiled politely as he introduces her to Shosanah, but it was plain that her mind was elsewhere. ‘Has James arrived yet?’
Levon shook his head. ‘We’re waiting on him. He’s the last guy.’ He paused. ‘You look troubled.’
Delia managed to force a smile. ‘We’ve had some bother.’
‘Nothing to get in the way?’
She frowned, as though assessing his words. ‘No, just some family stuff. But I think I need a word with my father.’ She stared at Harry hard, and it was a summons.
Levon persisted. ‘You’ve got Anne with you, and the boys?’
She nodded. ‘They’re in the plane.’ Suddenly she smiled. ‘The boys think it’s the most exciting thing that has ever happened to them. Your pilot let them sit beside him by turns, and pointed things out to them. It made them both feel terribly grown up.’
Levon got to his feet. ‘I’ll go get Shosanah’s baggage on board.’ He looked at the small dark woman. ‘You come with me, Louise.’
Shosanah looked up at him in alarm. ‘What about me, baby?’
He grinned. ‘You come and supervise. We’re gonna need a big white chief.’
Delia waited until they were gone, and then leaned forward over the table. Harry drained his champagne, and emptied the rest of the bottle into his glass. He had a feeling that trouble was brewing.
‘Mum knows about the girl in your flat.’
Harry stared at her. Suddenly he had a vision of his carefully crafted weekend collapsing into an abyss. ‘How?’
‘Some woman rang her, and said she had been your mistress. She told mum you had moved a teenage girl in to replace her.’
He looked down, avoiding Delia’s eyes.
‘So it’s true?’
He nodded. It seemed pointless to lie.
‘I see.’ Delia stared at him, and her eyes were stone hard, and her voice hewn from a block of ice. ‘I won’t ask you for gory details, but you’ve got to get rid of her.’
Harry returned her stare, and suddenly they both ice for ice. It was a battle of wills. He tried a counter-attack. ‘She loves me.’
Delia snorted disbelievingly. ‘Don’t be a fool, father.’ She was implacable. ‘What could a teenage girl possibly see in you, except money?’ She paused, marshalling her thoughts. She knew her father very well. ‘Have you bought her some pricey gear? Nice new things to make her look pretty?’
Harry avoided her eyes.
‘Did you take out anywhere? Smart restaurants? Perhaps to a nightclub?’
He nodded again. He knew that he was retreating, being driven into a corner.
Delia looked at her watch. ‘Soon it’ll be evening, and she’ll be tempted to put on a show. Did you give her any pocket money? Just a bob or two?’
He did not reply.
‘Answer me, father.’ Delia’s voice was a sword of ice, penetrating him to the core. ‘Did you?’
Harry nodded again.
She smiled coldly. ‘You’ve made a fool of yourself, father, and there’s no fool like an old fool.’ Her words were a judgment.
A figure loomed over them, and they both looked up. James, Delia’s husband, was looking down at them. ‘Sorry I’m late.’ He beamed a little facetiously. ‘I hope I’m not interrupting a family conference.’
Delia stood up to give him a wifely kiss. ‘No, darling. We’ve just had a little discussion. Father’s going to sort out a little problem.’ She glanced back at Harry. ‘Aren’t you, father?’
Harry sighed. He had been having such fun.