The Merciless Ladies (25 page)

‘I'm happier now it's really under way', he said.

He was at his best that night, lively and young-looking, and even witty. The influence of club life over a matter of eight or nine years, and the companionship of clever, successful and amiable men, had encouraged him to relax his guard, to join in their conversation, to be one of them, and had encouraged his personality to flower.

It wasn't until after dinner that I met him in the passage, thinking it was time I left, and saw a change had come over his face. He put the long envelope in my hand.

‘A lesson to teach us to read what we're given. Olive's had her secret little joke after all.'

I took the writ and read it and saw what he meant. The formal, artificial evidence which Paul had been at pains to provide had not been made use of. The corespondent cited was the Hon. Mrs Brian Marnsett.

If this tale of my relationship with Paul Stafford were to have proper shape and design it would now be necessary to go through the next year month by month and event by event. I don't want to. I want to tell things just as they come to my memory. Shape and design are poor bedfellows if they bring back what is better forgotten.

First let me explain what puzzled us greatly at the time but which I learned later, explicitly, from Olive. She said that after the break-up of their marriage she had heard that Paul was associating with Diana again, and purely for her own satisfaction had paid to have him watched. ‘After all, it was his money.' She had had no real intention of using the evidence for she had then had no intention of divorcing him. She was saving the information to confront him with if the occasion arose. But later, when he came and asked for a divorce, and Peter Sharble asked her to marry him, the chance to use this evidence was too glorious to miss.

It put Paul in an impossible position. Through the stilted phraseology of a solicitor's letter it became plain that Diana Marnsett wanted to defend the suit. He could only refuse. It would be ludicrous to become involved in the defence of Diana's good name, having recently forfeited almost a thousand pounds for having defamed it. But much more importantly, if he defended and won he would still be tied to Olive.

He went to see Olive, but Olive had discreetly disappeared on a cruise.

Although she now wanted her freedom too, he was fearful that she might change her mind – or that Peter Sharble (poor fellow) might change his. Paul's need of Holly grew no less with delay. Diana would have to fend for herself.

The cause lists were full. Waiting was tedious and a nervous strain. Then a second blow fell that we might perhaps have anticipated. Colonel Marnsett sued his wife for divorce and cited Paul. What was more, he claimed damages. Olive was getting full value for her money.

Paul must have felt he would never be free of the shackles of the law courts and solicitors' offices and writs.

This year I eventually yielded to pressure from the north and agreed to operate from Cross Street, Manchester, for an experimental period. ‘ CP.' was obviously determined to keep an avuncular eye on me. In one of my articles I had misused a gerund, and it wouldn't do.

And Holly stayed on at Oxford, working occasionally for her first, which inevitably she got. Paul and I spent two Sundays with her in June. These are the islands on which remembrance dwells with pleasure. We took a canoe up the Cherwell, paddled it to a shady spot high up the river and picnicked and talked and bathed and talked again, and nothing was further from us than Chancery Lane and vindictive women and the stale old legal language which dries up, as it records, the quicksilver of human passion. Every detail of those two days remains in my memory. They will live as long as I do.

I was not at either of the divorce hearings, but I gather the first ran its predestined course. The second was complicated by Colonel Marnsett's claim for damages. After commenting unfavourably on the claim, since it had become distasteful to the modem Englishman to assess the loss of a wife in hard cash, Mr Justice Buckley said that, nevertheless, since it had been put forward, he was legally bound to make an award. He assessed the damage sustained by Colonel Marnsett at one thousand pounds. Judgement would be entered accordingly.

While this was going on Paul's and Olive's solicitors were battling with each other as to the amount of maintenance Paul should be bound to pay her when the divorce was made absolute. Since Olive was likely to marry within the year, this was largely a matter of form, but the legal argument went on just the same. Paul said this was because both firms of solicitors were anxious to refurnish their dingy offices out of the proceeds. He was becoming more and more inclined to nod his head wearily at any suggestion put forward. It was an expensive tendency, but he was making enough money to feel that a few hundred pounds one way or the other weren't worth the worry and delay. Anything to have done with it.

Yet with all the delays and disappointment eventually a day for Paul and Holly's wedding really could be fixed, and, having been fixed, really did arrive. The date, as everyone knows, was 12 April 1928.

As was to be expected, their wedding conformed to no conventional standards. No one was present but immediate relatives. The vicar of the parish in which Newton was situated had agreed, rather against his principles but out of friendship for the Lynns, to marry them in church, and he did this with a great deal of dramatic vigour as if to cover up his own heart-searchings. He was a little man with an ovoid bald head, dark glasses to assist his near-blindness, and bird-like movements.

Sir Clement, against all advice, had resurrected a professorial morning suit with a green tinge from among the accumulated lumber in his bedroom; but his recent paunch made the waistcoat too tight, and Lady Lynn had to slit it up the back.

Lady Lynn strode uncertainly about in a passion of vagueness, her long blue frock, relic of some garden party of thirty years ago, flapping about her heels like a cassock. Her sister was there, tall and bony as a Grenadier Guard, and an uncle – the one who had financed Leo – played the organ. That was the sum of Holly's relatives – Bertie being in Africa and Leo in Paris – and I, again, most reluctantly, his best man, was the only outsider. Paul had no other representative present. His father had been invited but was ill with jaundice.

Holly was in grey, neat and fresh and tall, though happily dwarfed by her two female relatives.

No sentimentality was encouraged. Everything was done with the utmost decency and despatch. One went to church and saw them married, properly married in the sight of God, thank God; that was over, good; hurry up and sign the register; now everyone had better come home – everyone being eight – for tea and sandwiches. You'll come, Vicar, of course? Good. A busy man, but able to spare an hour. We would just go nicely into two cars.

In the dining-room Sir Clement said, ‘Sit down, sit down, help yourself to the sandwiches'; and at once took his own advice. He had boiled himself an egg for breakfast, but since then his wife and sister-in-law had been too busy to see about any food for him.

‘No, no, sit down, Holly dear', said Lady Lynn; ‘you mustn't wait on yourself today of all days. Vera, we've forgotten the lump sugar; you'll find some in the three-pound mustard tin in the first cupboard, marked rice. Paul, you don't take sugar, do you? So sorry we haven't any whisky for you, but we don't usually drink it, and the wine merchant in Reading must have forgotten to deliver what I ordered. Plenty of soda water and lemonade and barley water. Holly … no, Clem: be a dear and fetch the soda water.'

‘My dear Lady Lynn', said Paul. ‘I'm as ardent a tea drinker as anyone here.'

‘Best way to drink tea', said Uncle Frederick, ‘is with no milk or sugar and a slice of lemon. When I had a duodenal ulcer …'

‘When you had a duodenal ulcer', said Aunt Vera, reappearing from the kitchen, ‘you wrote the best fugues of your life. I wonder what connection there is between inspiration and ill-health. What do you say, Mr Stafford?'

Paul said: ‘It's probably much easier to create masterpieces when underfed. I suppose that was the idea behind mortification of the flesh. The old monks knew how to achieve sanctity.'

‘I remember when I was student', began the Vicar in his pleasant chirping voice, ‘a friend of mine who—'

‘Sanctity', said Sir Clement, helping himself to another sandwich. ‘The odour of sanctity became known as that, being a familiar smell upon the breath of monks, you know, and was associated by ignorant people of those days with holiness and shaven heads. (I beg your pardon, Vicar, but yours is not
shaven
.) In actual fact, when the stomach has been empty for so many days – anybody's stomach – the digestive juices create a distinctive sourness which lends itself to the breath—'

‘Daddy', said Holly, ‘ suppose you concentrate a bit more on that sandwich and less on—'

‘What sandwich?' said Sir Clement.

‘This one', said Paul, passing the plate.

‘Don't eat them
all
, Clem', said Lady Lynn. ‘After all, it isn't
your
wedding day.'

‘So, of course', said the Vicar, ‘ I said to my friend, ‘‘You may be a student of theology, but I hesitate to imagine what sort of a student you would—'' '

‘Eat up, Bill', said Paul. ‘Meals at weddings are provided solely for the parents and the best man. Don't contradict me, it's an acknowledged fact.'

‘When I had a duodenal ulcer', said Uncle Frederick, ‘certain forms of meat were plain poison to me …'

‘A very interesting old church, Paul', Lady Lynn said. ‘Unfortunately it was restored by Sir Philip somebody or other in Victoria's reign. Most distressing. Those pitch-pine pews.'

‘… the operation', said Uncle Frederick. ‘ On the table for three hours. Of course they found more than they expected. Sir Giles Landsdowne, who performed the operation, described to me afterwards …'

‘Unfortunately', said the Vicar, ‘there is a good deal of beetle in that part which has not been restored. We opened a fund last year. If we may, I should like to put your generous donation to this, Mr Stafford. There is much that is worth saving. The Norman screen. I wonder if you noticed …?'

‘What was the name of the man who spoiled so many churches about that time?' asked Lady Lynn. ‘ The fellow who would have built those Government offices in Whitehall pure Gothic if Lord Palmerston hadn't put his foot down and said Italian Renaissance or nothing.'

‘This cutting up fashion', said Sir Clement, swallowing tea, ‘seems to me greatly overdone. Where, of course, the trouble cannot be cured any other way—'

‘Mine could not', said Uncle Frederick.

‘I'm not asserting that it could. But in so many minor cases—'

‘Lord Palmerston spent a long life putting his foot down', said Paul.

‘I wonder why?' said Aunt Vera, who frequently used this opening gambit. ‘I wonder why the Victorian era produced so many great men? Now—'

‘Because it lasted so long, Auntie', said Holly gravely.

‘Not at all. You speak from ignorance, child. Darwin, Ruskin, Browning, Gordon …'

‘The cutting away of living tissues', said Sir Clement, ‘is a fundamentally artificial process which must create a profound and incalculable reaction on other parts of the body …'

‘The reaction in my case', said Uncle Frederick, ‘has been entirely beneficial. But I do not contend that in other instances …'

Surrounded by these amiable eccentrics, Paul might have exhibited some signs of boredom in view of the usual company he kept. Or as a compromise he might have talked and listened exclusively to Holly, letting the others chatter among themselves. Instead he joined in with them as one of the family without effort and with a genuineness and gentleness which one could not begin to doubt.

The meal over, they were soon ready for off. They were to spend their honeymoon in the Channel Isles, where they hoped to do some more sailing.

No sentimentality now. Especially none now. Kiss and goodbye.‘Goodbye, Daddy; look after yourself. Don't forget to take your bi-focals when you give that lecture on Saturday. Goodbye, Ma; bless you; I'll write. Goodbye, Bill; I don't know why you're left to the end.'

Her lips were on mine for some seconds. ‘Pistol's gone', I said. ‘The race is to the swift. Goodbye, my dear.'

They were in the big Chrysler Paul had recently bought. Paul's self-contained eyes met mine. These last months he had lost weight. The change suited him; he looked less worldly.

‘This is it', he said. ‘You've helped, Bill. I'll not forget.'

‘No point in looking back', I said. ‘Look ahead now.'

‘I'll do that', he said, and glanced at his wife. ‘This is it, Holly.'

She nodded distantly. ‘ Go on. Don't make me make a scene now.'

He touched my hand, which was on the door, then leaned forward and started up the engine. A few moments later the grey car had disappeared down the drive.

A selection from among the letters that lie on my desk, and one news cutting.

From Holly Stafford to William Grant at Via Caglioni 21, Trastevere, Rome.

Royal Avenue 1 May

Dearest Bill,

I'm writing to say how disappointed we were not being able to see you again before you left. We missed you by only two days: the weather in Guernsey was damp and windy so we didn't prolong our h/moon, there being so much to see in London.

I thought you'd
refused
the offer. I know it's short term and may lead to something better – what: do we know? – but you're back writing of a regime you don't
like
, and, from what you tell me, that can't be altogether without risk. Also, does it mean you've left the M. Guardian permanently?

I'm now comfortably settled in here and feeling quite good about it, though one cannot help noticing a few differences from Newton and Oxford. Still not got used to being called Mrs Stafford. Also I've never known before what it is not to be short of money!

The people we meet are very quaint and have quite a different standard of values from normal people like Daddy or Mother. Paul wants to become a recluse, but I refuse to be pampered and insist that it's good business to mix with a few people, even though he may at present feel sick of them. He's always refusing invitations.

I had a letter from Bertie yesterday. He seems very happy among the lepers. He enclosed photographs of people covered with sores and says in six months he'll send me some snaps of the same people after treatment. Leo remains in Paris. A pity you missed him on the way out. He's still disgruntled at the necessity of earning a living and thinks of marrying some rich widow in order that he could devote the rest of his life to composition.

Paul is at present very deep in a portrait of Mary, Countess of Doughmore. I hope it will not be like the one of Mrs Marnsett. Paul tells me you said that was a wicked portrait, and from the reproduction, I agree. I told him my sympathies were entirely with Mrs Marnsett.

Mummy has just bought a new cocker spaniel which she has christened Mussolini, because she says it is always barking up the wrong tree.

I go to Newton about once a fortnight, to see them both, Mother and Daddy I mean. I hope you are happy in Rome but won't accept an extension of stay. Now that I'm married and living in London I should like to see more of my third brother and best friend.

Ever yours, Holly