In case something drastic happened to the dollar, Angus could never be far from a telephone until late evening, which was late-afternoon closing time for the American market. He never took Miranda to a nightclub because he was always at his desk by seven in the morning, for the Hong Kong closing prices.
Unlike other fledgling bankers Miranda knew, Angus wasn’t stuffy and didn’t shoot his shirt cuffs or keep tightening the knot of his tie. Although his suits fitted well around the shoulders, not even the best Savile Row tailor could produce a suit for Angus that didn’t look as if it had been made for somebody else: his craggy Scots frame looked ill at ease in anything other than a heavy jersey and kilt, or baggy trousers tucked into Wellington boots.
Because Angus was unexpectedly posted back to New York for nine months, Miranda had to wait over a year for her invitation to Scotland. As she had been forbidden by Elinor to go to New York “Look what happened to Annabel!”
, Miranda ran up enormous telephone bills, finished her beauty course, and edged in by a friend of Elinor’s started work behind Elizabeth Arden’s crimson-doored salon in Bond Street as a trainee beautician.
4ATURDAY, 6 AUGUST ig6o ””-Just before the shooting season started, Miranda took the overnight train to Inverness to join Angus, on holiday with his family at Maclayne. The sleeping-car attendant locked her into a single compartment, which contained a let-down bed and a piece of linen called a drugget, upon which to stand while she undressed. She had difficulty in -locating the sanitary arrangements, but eventually discovered a cracked white chamber pot concealed in a cupboard beneath the washbasin.
Maclayne Castle was a large, ugly, late-nineteenth century building with fairytale turrets. Along its long, dark corridors dashed what seemed like many children in well darned blue jerseys and tartan kilts; these clothes were also worn by the adults of the family and all their friends. Even in August, howling winds blew along the corridors, the longest of which was from kitchen to dining room: this had been deliberately planned, in order to prevent the odour of food from permeating the place. Unfortunately, it meant the meals were always lukewarm when served.
The castle walls were hung indiscriminately with paintings: on one side of a Lawrence portrait was a water colour of Venice done by some Maclayne great-aunt, while on the other side hung photographs of long-dead hunting dogs. Also suspended upon the walls were many ancient relics of the British Empire: assegais from Boer War campaigns, ceremonial fly swatters from the Sudan, moth-eaten stuffed heads of dead animals, and the occasional oar, lettered to indicate in which university boat race it had been pulled.
Miranda decided that the castle sanitary arrangements were little better than those provided by the railway: raised bathtubs with ineradicable greenish-brown marks on their enamel, caused by years of leaking taps; lavatories, encased in mahogany boxes, operated by stiff hanging chains.
When Angus was not out shooting or fish inS he took Miranda sightseeing, either in an estate car with a wired rear compartment to keep the dogs from licking his cars, or in an arthritic Daimler, the back seats of which were flecked by straw and smelled of chickens. Angus would stop this car at the base of some heather-clad craig, and he and Miranda would scramble to the top of it, to gaze over other heat her-covered hills, all the colour of Angus’s ginger tweed jacket.
At the knobbly summit of one of these hills, as the sun was setting in a particularly lurid salmon-pink sky, Angus took the hand of a breathless and puffing Miranda and asked her to marry him. Miranda, who had been hoping for this for months, was taken by surprise.
After she had puffed her acceptance, Angus briskly burrowed beneath the heather and pulled out a ginger wicker basket; this contained a tartan rug, a Thermos flask of ice, a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, and two glasses.
At Miranda’s look of astonishment, he grinned and said, “Never accuse me of being unromantic. I heaved this up here before breakfast.” That night, Angus-crept along a long, dark corridor to Miranda’s room, and was allowed to enter.
Elinor, depressed at losing Miranda but delighted to lose her to the brother of an carl, was determined that one of the O’Dare girls should have a traditional white wedding: it was planned for Monday 3 April ig6i, at St Margaret Westminster, the reception afterwards to be held at the Savoy Hotel.
After her beauty classes, Miranda often drove her new purple, custom-painted Mini to Clare’s smart little terrace house in Poulton Square. The visits continued even after she had started to work, and here in Chelsea, as autumn leaves drifted from the trees in the square, the sisters pondered over Miranda’s many lists. There were lists of guests, ess suppliers of Qf hoped-for presents, of seemingly 0 r … seemingly essential nuptial purchases: all details of these purchases were of vital importance, from the correct source of invitation envelopes Smythsons of Bond Street to the specific red-coated major domo who would announce the guests Mr. Pecksniff.
MONDAY, 14 NOVEMBER 196o “Why do I need fish forks? Why does anyone?” Miranda asked. Clare’s pert, careless, nineteen-year-old French au pair only two years younger than her mistress was serving them tea from an elaborate silver tray before the fire in the drawing room.
Clare, no longer a bride but a housewife, checked that everything necessary was on the tray: tea, cake, plum jam from Starlings, and a pile of muffins to toast. Both sisters had kicked off their uncomfortable stiletto-heeled, sharp pointed shoes. Clare wore a primrose linen suit with a short, tight skirt, Miranda a spinach-green tweed tube with an enormous black knitted collar.
“Fortnum’s chocolate Sacher torte!” Miranda cried.
“When I’m married, I shall have it every day!”
Clare laughed and said, “Please put towels in the pink spare bedroom, Marie-France. My sister is staying the night.” Sam was away, on business.
At two o’clock in the morning, Clare was shaken awake. Alarmed, she quickly sat up and saw Miranda’s face, weakly spotlit by a silver shaft of moonlight that fell over the dark trees of the square.
“Listen, Clare,” Miranda whispered, “I must talk to you. At teatime, I was too … Hell, I was embarrassed.” She climbed on the bottom of Clare’s bed, where she sat cross legged, her face again in the shadow.
Clare rubbed her knuckles into her eyes and reached for the bedside light.
“Can’t it wait until morning?”
“Don’t turn the light on,” Miranda urged.
“It’s easier to talk in the dark. I can’t … I’ve never been able to talk to anyone but you and Frog about sex, and I can’t discuss it over the telephone, with New York operators listening…”
“What’s wrong, Miranda?”
“Do you know about Lady Chatterley’s Lover?”
“Of course, everyone does,” Clare said, puzzled. A few weeks before, Penguin Books had been acquitted of a charge of obscenity for publishing this book after the Public Prosecutor had asked the jury, “Is this a book you would wish your wife or servants to read?” The question had become a public joke.
“When Angus and I are in bed together,” Miranda went on, “it doesn’t feel for me like it did for Lady Chatterlcy. No peaks of ecstasy.” Silvered by moonlight, Clare pulled her knees up and clasped them.
“Me neither, as a matter of fact.” Both sisters were silent, until Miranda said, “I can’t understand why I find it so difficult to talk to you about sex now, when at school we used to discuss nothing else.” Clare pushed her hair behind her ears and said sadly, “Do you remember how we all used to wonder what a good ]over does? And how one could be better than the other?”
Miranda nodded.
“Well, I still don’t know,” Clare said.
“Sam seems to think that being a good lover is doing it in a hundred acrobatic positions. Sometimes I feel I’m back in the school gym.”
“Angus seems to think it means banging away until I’m sore and exhausted and sort of embarrassed for him because I know it won’t work. He doesn’t seem to notice that I have a problem since he’s clearly satisfied, I expect he thinks I am, too.”
“Sam says I’m frigid … although it often feels as if but then at the last g is about to happen to me, nt it doesn’t.” I know the feeling! Hesitantly Clare added, “Before we married, Sam said it was probably because I was afraid I’d get pregnant-He said I’d relax after we mar ned and then everything would be okay.” 1But it wasn’t?”
“No. Now after we’ve made love, I get back pains that last for hours, and I can’t get to sleep because I feel so churned up I want to cry-I “I want to shake Angus awake and kick him hard.”
After another long silence, Clare said, “Who would have thought it would be so disappointing? I never expected to feel frustrated; I expected to feet a oneness with Sam that I’d never experienced before, as if we both floated on the sarneyarm cloud. I expected ecstasy.”
“That’s what Gran’s heroines always get,” Miranda replied mournfully.
“Endless bliss in his strong arms. How did Gran manage to convey the idea that a virile, masterful lover was the ideal lover without describing what he did?”
“By endlessly repeating that he was virile and masterful, as if that was all that mattered,” Clare said tartly.
“But where did she pick up that idea? I wouldn’t describe Daddy Billy that way.” Miranda looked thoughtful.
“In fact, I can’t imagine them ever doing itV “Those two certainly had something going,” Clare said.
“You could sense the electricity, even when Daddy Billy was quite old.”
“Perfect lust and mutual climaxes like Lady Chatterley and her gamekeeper?”
“D’you suppose that’s really possible?” Clare asked.
“I’ve no idea,” Miranda said.
“What is good sex supposed to be like?”
11 suspect that D. H. Lawrences sex was as idealized, in a masculine way, as Gran’s romantic, nc4 nickers-off sex in her silly novels.”
“So how can we learn what we’re missing?” “I don’t know,” Clare said helplessly.
“I thought of talking to Annabel about it: she said she doesn’t have a problem.”
“Lucky bitch!”
After a few minutes, Clare said gloomily, “I must be doing something wrong.” Miranda retorted crossly, “You’re taking the blame, as usual: that’s the difference between you and me. I think that Angus is doing something wrong. Or perhaps … perhaps Angus is the wrong man for me. Perhaps I’m too small for him.” She sighed.
“If I didn’t love Angus so much … But I’m not sure I’ll be able to live like this for ever … On the other hand, perhaps we just need more practice … perhaps things will improve.”
“They. didn’t for me,” Clare said morosely.
Miranda looked worried and depressed. The room darkened again as the moon disappeared behind a cloud.
THURSDAY, 17 NOVEMBER ig6o In the dimly lit living room of his chambers in Albany, Angus crumpled up another sheet of paper and hurled it into the cosy glow of the fire. At least Miranda hadn’t sent him a letter to tell him. Yesterday she had told him, face to-face, in this very room not that this had helped Angus to understand her reasons for calling off their wedding.
Miranda had dodged the issue; she said she thought that, at nineteen, she was too young to marry, she wanted to see a bit of life before settling down, she hoped to have her own business one -day and she’d never get around to it if she was married. She swore there wasn’t another man, which was the first thing that had occurred to Angus.
Too young9 Angus pointed out that Miranda’s mother had already given birth to two children by the time she was nineteen.
Miranda burst into tears. Okay, so he was tactless, but Angus had merely meant to point out that life might be short, and it was crazy to put happiness on hold if it wasn’t necessary.. After she stopped crying, he had pointed out that, as the wifie of an international banker, Miranda could expect to travel a lot and so see plenty of life after settling down; he added that he was happy to set her up in a little business, should she want some distraction from domestic life.
Miranda had abruptly stopped looking evasive and apologetic; instead, Vesuvian rage erupted as she repeatedly accused him of masculine complacency. After she stamped out, banging the mahogany door behind her, Angus immediately telephoned Elinor, who already knew.
“Perhaps the best course of action would be to ignore her for a few days,” Elinor suggested.
“Give her a little time to calm down; the poor darling is clearly experiencing wedding nerves well in advance of the ceremony, instead of the night before it.” “What was odd,” Angus said, “was that Miranda wouldn’t say that she didn’t love me. I kept asking her, but I couldn’t pin her down.” He added sadly, “But neither would she say she loved me.”
“Do you love her, An gusT Elinor asked. She seemed a trifle nervous.
“Good Lord, yes! I’ve never before asked anybody to marry me. Of course I love Miranda!”
He agreed with Elinor that the best plan was to keep calm, do nothing, and give Miranda a chance. She was certain to reconsider her hasty action.
However, the following morning, Angus opened The Times to read that the wedding of the Hon. Angus Maclayne to Miss Miranda Patricia O’Dare
would not take place. Only Miranda could have inserted the announcement. After the sixth call of commiseration, Angus angrily took his telephone off the hook.
Now he started another letter to Miranda, but again threw it in the dying embers of the fire. He could not put what he felt into words. His instinct told him that he hadn’t heard all of Miranda’s story; he felt also he would have a better chance of getting what he wanted if he kept quiet, refused to discuss the matter, and let everyone think it was over between them. Angus was determined to marry Miranda.
TUESDAY, 20 DECEMBER 196o
The week before Christmas, Adam drove to Starlings in a maroon Rolls-Royce Phantom V: this Christmas present to himself had just cost him nearly nine thousand pounds. He whistled cheerfully as he turned off the main road down the bumpy country lane that led to Elinor’s home.
On a winning streak, Adam had recently paid off all his debts. Strangely, this did not bring him relief but a feeling of unease. He worried that if he wasn’t using all his available credit, then he wasn’t deploying all his available assets, And if he didn’t use all his assets, he would never be able to afford a house like Mike’s in Eaton Terrace. And Adam was determined that when he could afford it, he would purchase an even grander house than his brother’s: a reassuring facade” was just as important to his business as it was to a bank.