Daniel Martin (15 page)

I knew from Caro that the house and its old facons de vivre had gone the way of all things: that death duties had severely diminished the estate, the park had largely gone under the plough, that Nell had to make do (and complained endlessly) with the help of an Italian couple and a daily woman from the village. But just as I had envied Andrew that departed world in my one glimpse of it, so I still envied Caro its remnants. It was all very well condemning such worlds politically nothing easier. But it was like some of Ezra Pound’s poetry. You could blow the philosophy to bits; the lines and images still haunted you.

I sat there sipping my drink, once more tempted to blame Nell for everything and thinking of the immediate future. Presumably she would very soon be back in Oxford at Jane’s side; and whatever other reconciliations might take place, I doubted whether there could ever be a sincere one between us two. If I had been technically and legally guilty, I still saw her as the first cause. No doubt all divorces repeat the Adam and Eve situation. Genesis is as silent as the grave concerning what happened when they were expelled from Eden, except for their producing a corpse and a murderer by way of children. Our Cain-and-Abel had been a total unforgivingness. with nearly three years after the action I virtually did not speak with Nell. Occasionally she brought Caro to London, usually I went do to Oxford for the day. We would exchange a few frigid commonplaces over the child’s head at the handover place, and when I brought her back. I was prepared, after a while and for purely civilized reasons, to be warmer, but Neil wasn’t. Then one day she wrote to say she wanted to meet me in London without Caro. She had something to discuss. I presumed it was to do with the alimony. I could afford more then, though I wasn’t going to give it without a battle. Nell was very far from poor, and she knew I knew that. We met for lunch. But she hadn’t come for a finer pound of flesh. She was going to marry Andrew.

My first reaction was an incredulous repetition of his name. I had read of his father’s death at about the time of our divorce and I realized he had come into the title; but I still saw the condescending young drunkard of our joint past, the impossible drawl, the posing, the blend of Regency rake and Tony Lumpkin… to say nothing of the summary he had been of all we at least pretended to despise. His one virtue had been a kind of outrageousness, that was why one had tolerated him. I wasn’t forgiven that instinctive response to the news and by way of punishment she would tell me very little of how they had met, except that it had been some six months before, by chance, in Oxford. Now he ‘happened’ to be very much in love with her ‘fantastic though that may seem’. I noticed that she did not say she was very much in love with him. Her line was much more that she had to think of Caroline, who apparently ‘adored’ him. They had been to stay at Compton.

I had to accept the fact, improbable though it was; but I couldn’t understand why it had to be announced to me in this face-to-face way. Nell made a little speech about Caro being my daughter and my ‘presumably’ having some ‘faint’ interest in her future; and there were new financial arrangements to discuss. I wasn’t taken in by this sudden descent from crowing to consultation, and I suspect Nell half hoped I would be violently angry or try to stop her or it may have been that Anthony and Jane, though they had by then banned me from all contact with them, were still prey to scruples and had argued that she must do this. I am quite sure she was not angling for some sort of reconciliation; it was far more as if I must be made to see what I had reduced her to… which was absurd. He was rich, he had a beautiful house, he was a baronet; and I could even believe he was in love with her, since he must have had free range over any number of eligible young county dollies from his own world. Perhaps she didn’t really know herself why she had come. She was very nervous, and taking the first major independent decision of her life, and I might have been kinder.

So she duly became Lady Randall. We had met more than briefly only three or four times since then. On all but one occasion Caro had been present, and we had been on our best behaviour. The other time Andrew had been there that was the most recent meeting, to discuss Caro’s future now she had to leave school. It had been rather comic, since after a stiff beginning (we two men hadn’t seen each other since Oxford) Andrew and I had decided that we were, beyond the barriers erected by our very different ways of life and political convictions, both reasonably amusing and interesting fellows. He had matured and quietened down considerably. My old rural self liked the shrewd squire in him, his still not quite dead love of the outrageous clearly took to the show-business gossip I offered on my side. We talked about the old days at Oxford. Nell grew increasingly silent as the evening drew on and Andrew and I got agreeably drunk. I knew he would have been happy to have me down to Compton; and that such sanity would take place over Nell’s dead body. I was very glad she was now his wife when we finally left Wheeler’s and said goodbye.

All water under the bridge; and sitting there in the flat, with more whisky, my thoughts returned to Jenny. I wanted to hear her voice; or her voice as reminder of a simpler, less sentenced present. Perhaps Nell was right, there had always been an aura of despair about the flat, of makeshift and wrong choice. I was staring at the telephone, very near to giving way. Then suddenly the real present was in the doorway again: Caro, in a long dressing-gown. I knew at once that something was wrong. She had been supposedly gone to bed for at least twenty minutes, and now she wore the air of a both disobedient and reproving child.

‘I can’t sleep.’

‘Have a whisky then.’

She shook her head, but came into the room. She went to one of the windows, the curtains weren’t drawn, and stared out.

I said, ‘Caro?’

For three or four seconds she said nothing.

‘I’m having an affaire with Bernard, daddy.’ She stared down at the street below. ‘I’m very sorry. I didn’t know how to tell you earlier.’

I felt shock, but no flash of disbelief; if anything, a fool for not having worked it out for myself. They had both thrown dust in my eyes, but there had been enough clues.

She murmured, ‘Please say something.’

‘How did it happen, for God’s sake?’

She shrugged, still turned away: how does it ever happen? I wanted to ask what on earth she saw in him. He had looked to me every year of his age, I had even congratulated myself on not looking so pouched and raddled, physically gone to seed ‘I didn’t know he was coming home with you. The last time we talked he said another two days. When I saw… Ms wife, I wanted to run away. But she saw me first.’

‘She doesn’t know?’

She shook her head. ‘I suppose she suspects. Their marriage has been empty for years.’

‘Are you in love with him?’

‘I feel sorry for him. I don’t know.’

‘This is why you didn’t write?’

She nodded, and I thought for a moment that she was going to cry. I went and fetched another glass, poured a little whisky in, went to where she was.

‘Come and sit down.’

She let me lead her to the settee and sat down beside me.

‘Does your mother know?’

‘No, I… I’d rather you didn’t tell her. Just yet.’

We both looked at the glasses in our hands.

‘Why are you telling me?’

‘Because I’ve spent most of my life not telling you the truth. Because… ‘ but she shrugged again.

‘You seem rather miserable about it.’

‘Only about having to inflict it on you.’

‘And?’

‘Meeting his wife like that.’ She added in a lower voice, ‘His coming back without telling me.’

‘Do you imagine you’re his first infidelity?’

‘I’m not a total innocent.’

‘Then you know the score. Margaret, he doesn’t leave.’ I added, ‘God knows why.’ She said nothing. ‘Is this why you dropped Richard?’

She shook her head. ‘That’s been coming for months now.’

‘But it is why you’re his secretary?’

‘I’m quite good at my job. Incredible though it may seem.’ She glanced at me. ‘Why’s that funny?’

‘Because your mother once threw the same unjustified sarcasm at me. In another context.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘My dear, your ability to take shorthand isn’t what worries me.’

‘But that it’s someone you despise.’

She was staring down at the carpet. I said evenly, ‘I don’t despise him personally, Caro. Or not more than anyone else in that world.’

‘Which you advised me to enter.’

‘Guilty. But in the hopes you’d see through it.’

‘As Bernard does. Far more than you seem to realize.’

‘But goes on living in it?’

‘He’s not as lucky as some people. Apart from anything else he has a wife and three children to support.’

‘All right. Fair enough.’ She remained obstinately looking down; the gymkhana again, but now she was like a rider who has forgotten which fence comes next. ‘Tell me why you like him.’

‘Because he’s sad. And gentle. On his own. And grateful.’

‘So he ought to be.’

She left a pause. ‘Also I can talk to him.’

‘Is that an accusation?’ She shook her head, but not very convincingly. ‘Come on. Out with it.’

‘Talk seriously.’

‘What about?’ sorts of things I can’t talk about with you. Or Mummy.’

Such as?’

‘You don’t seem able to understand that anyone could love you both. For all your faults.’ She went on before I could answer. ‘I know she can be a bitch, I know you can be at least half the selfish bastard she thinks you are. It’s not just you two. The whole family. We seem to have banned and buried so much.’

‘You know what happened.’

‘It’s not the past. It’s what I feel about you both. Now.’

‘And he listens?’ She nodded. ‘How serious is he?’ She said nothing, and I had to coax her. ‘If that doesn’t sound too old-fashioned.’

‘He feels guilty about… his wife.’

I doubted that; or suspected that such a guilt, or decency, was too attractive and convenient a ploy to be as disinterested as she made it sound.

‘And if one day he decided he wasn’t any more?’

‘I haven’t lost my head. It’s not like that.’

There was a silence. I drank from my own glass; she still had not touched hers.

‘Is this what he was supposed to telephone me about?’

‘We did discuss it. He knew what you’d feel.’

‘Did you?’

‘Not at the beginning.’

‘And I haven’t much ground to stand on, have I?’

‘That’s nothing to do with it. At all.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Daddy, I’m not ashamed that you’re still rather an attractive man. I know you can’t be Andrew.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I know you despise all that world as well. But he’s a much better father than you’ll ever be.’ She added, ‘Perhaps just because he’s always there. And he can handle Mummy.’

I left a silence.

‘You seem to think I despise everything, Caro.’

‘You expect everyone to think and feel like you.’ She added, ‘I’m not blaming you, you’re probably right about Fleet Street,’ but again she shook her head.

I didn’t know whether she was accusing my career or my nature; it was not a new accusation, though it had never been brought quite so near to the bone before. My only consolation was that it must hide a certain doubt in Caro herself.

‘Will you at least promise me that when you’re married you’ll have more than one child?’

She searched my eyes. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because single children are always intensely self-absorbed. But also they can’t imagine that anyone else might ever actually need them. It isn’t quite as simple as their never having time for anyone else.’

‘I just meant your work.’ She managed a rueful little smile. ‘Anyway, it’s too late now to trade you in.’

‘At least we’re agreed on something.’

She passed me her glass. ‘I don’t want this.’ I poured its contents into my own and she stood up and went to the fireplace, her back to me.

‘Are you angry because he didn’t tell you himself?’

‘I can see it was difficult. I just wish he hadn’t tried so hard to sell himself as a pathetic failure. I don’t know who he’s trying to kid.’

‘I should have thought you would. You always’ but she bit the sentence off.

‘Go on. Truth time.’

‘You don’t exactly oversell your own professional life.’

‘That’s mainly because I’ve seen too many movie-land children drilled into uncritical admiration.’

‘I’ve only very recently realized how much you’ve conned me. Quite a lot of people at work think I’m rather lucky to be your daughter.’

‘That’s a press-clippings view of life.’

She was silent a moment. ‘When Bernard moans, he’s much more convincing. People are always attacking him. Nobody attacks you.’

‘Sweetie, all this is proving my point. Middle-aged men may seem mature and knowledgeable and all the rest of it. But when they have to have girlfriends of your and Jenny’s age, they’re not. Deep down they’re still frustrated adolescents. Running scared. They’re in a panic.’