Privileged Children (18 page)

‘I’ve paid your bills,’ said her father. ‘Your dressmaker’s bill was fairly steep but you seem to have been economising in your hats — very modest bill from your milliner. I want you to dress well, you know — I mean of course you do dress well — so don’t worry too much about the cost. Just as long as you don’t want three diamond tiaras.’

‘I thought you were still having a financial crisis?’ said Miranda, opening her eyes wide.

‘Well I’m not any more,’ he said. ‘This isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about,’ he said. He started to choose logs from the log-basket to put on the fire. His hands were shaking.

‘Listen, Miranda,’ he began, ‘I could talk about this later but I’d better make it clear now. I don’t — I don’t want you to have too much of a shock. The thing is this: if you get married I will settle three hundred thousand pounds on you, and if you don’t I will not pay you an allowance if you chose to live apart from your mother and me after you’re twenty-one, nor will I leave you anything in my will,’ he gabbled. He did not hear a sound from Miranda in the second or two which he took to pause. He drew his breath in quickly.

‘You could have any man you liked, Miranda. You know you could. I don’t know why you object to getting married, it’s a quite irrational obsession, you could twist some man round your little finger anyway,’ he hurried on, while Miranda neither spoke nor moved. He tried to think of more things to say.

‘I see,’ said Miranda, in a very soft voice. ‘I have disgraced the family sufficiently already. I can’t be allowed to be an old maid in addition, or, of course, to marry someone unsuitable
— naturally, you didn’t need to voice that clause in the ultimatum. Good heavens, here I’ve been living at your expense for two years after I could have caught a husband. As it is, here I am committing the heinous crime of sleeping with any man who takes my fancy, and not even having the decency to demand payment for my services …’

‘Stop it,’ he shouted. He covered his ears with his hands. ‘You’re deliberately misunderstanding me. Good God, Miranda, I’m thinking of your happiness. I can’t let you ruin yourself. I don’t want to see you an unwanted middle-aged woman on your own. Do you think I like having to — to blackmail like this?’

‘Of course, of course, Father, it hurts you more than it hurts me.’

He looked very old as he at last turned towards her again. ‘How can you think that I think that about you? You were accusing me of thinking you some sort of — of high-class prostitute,’ he said slowly.

Miranda started to laugh, and then she forced herself to stop. She walked out of the room.

Her father gazed. When she was out of his sight he ran to the door and shouted after her. ‘Miranda!’

‘I don’t think we’ve got anything more to say,’ she said and her footsteps clattered away.

In the flower room she put on her mother’s fur coat. She forgot to take gloves, galoshes or a hat. Swearing, she fumbled with the key of the flower-room door and at last wrenched the door open. She left it unlocked behind her as she went out into the icy stable yard and walked as fast as she could towards her car. Shivering, she clambered inside it and jerked it into action.

The drive from Cheshire to London usually took six and a half hours, but Miranda had reached the outskirts of London after five and a half. She continued to drive very fast until she reached the top of Baker Street, and then she slowed down and started to think of the coming conversation with Alice. Until now Miranda had held the pleasant belief that her father was unable to prevent her from doing as she liked with regard to Alice, although she was not yet twenty-one. ‘What do you mean you’ve got to marry some fool?’
Alice would say. ‘Mother of God, as though you couldn’t come and live with us. It’s not as though we’re so poor … you’ve told us you want to be comfortable financially, I know, but if you wouldn’t prefer to live with people who love you than to marry someone you despise … you were happy here, weren’t you?’

Miranda drove very slowly down Baker Street. She reached the corner of Marylebone Road and stopped. For a moment she rested her head on the wheel. She was shaking. Then she pulled herself round into Marylebone Road, and she took the last few hundred yards of her journey at over fifty miles an hour. She got out of the car in Bryanston Square and briefly looked up at the familiar house which was her final destination.

She had not brought the key to the house and she had to ring the doorbell several times, weeping with tiredness, before the housekeeper heard her and opened the door to her. Miranda barely apologised to the woman for fetching her from bed. She crawled upstairs and straight into her unaired bed. She slept until one o’clock the following day and then she drove back to Lynmore.

The following week she came down to London to see her dressmaker. She spent a very pleasant evening at Bramham Gardens, and said nothing of her new situation.

Finola was studying her face. She was standing several paces away from the mirror, squinting at her reflection. Slowly she walked towards it to see at what distance the three spots on her chin became noticeable: they could not be seen unless one was really quite close. Finola was not comforted. She stared at the spots and gingerly squeezed one. Then she opened a bottle of a new astringent and doused her face with it, though she had been told by Kate that anything other than plain water would probably do her skin more harm than good. Perhaps one day someone would want to kiss her, and he would certainly notice her spots, and then he would say a hurried goodnight instead of kissing her. Jane at school had said that this particular lotion had rid her of several spots.

Next Finola brushed her hair and wondered whether she might wash it. She brushed it very gently because it took a long time to curl it, with rags. She was saving up for a permanent wave at the moment: she had not mentioned this to anyone at home because she was certain that everyone would claim firstly that it would ruin her hair, which was probably untrue, and secondly that her hair was beautiful anyway, which was a blatant lie, for her hair was ginger, although Alice called it red-gold and said it was almost as lovely as her mother’s.

Finola put on some white powder and red lipstick. The colours distracted attention from her large, soft, dark-grey eyes but she felt comfortable behind the bold lipstick. She still had half an hour before she was due to go out with the other
girls to the cinema, although she was quite ready. She decided to go and see Jenny, who was in bed with ‘flu’. Jenny now had her doctorate, and was a biochemist. She worked at London University.

‘You look like a fashion plate,’ Jenny said from her bed when Finola came in.

‘Oh no,’ said Finola, ‘my hat’s a bit too big and my skirt’s too short too.’

‘Well, you know all about it,’ said Jenny.
‘Mais
tout de même,
tu
es
très jolie.
’

They continued to talk in French. Only Anatole and his daughters were French speakers, but they did not all speak French to each other. Anatole occasionally spoke in French to all of them; Liza always spoke English.

Finola sat down on Jenny’s bed.

‘I wanted to talk to you about something,’ said Finola, plucking at the eiderdown. ‘I don’t know whether I really want to carry on at school. I’ve spoken to Anatole and he was very understanding but he didn’t give me any advice, and Alice said it was entirely up to me to decide, and she was too busy to listen. Clementina was a bit patronising. She said I was too young to know my own mind and that I’d enjoy Queen’s.’

‘What will you do if you do leave school in the summer?’

‘That’s the problem,’ said Finola.

‘What do you want to do eventually? Do you still want to live in the country and have lots of children?’

‘Yes, of course. Why should I change my mind?’

‘Well, very few people are as constant in their ideas as you are. I had absolutely no idea of what I wanted to do until I was fifteen or sixteen, and plenty of people go to university and still don’t know what they want to do after that. Do you know why you’ve always wanted that so much, Fin?’

‘I suppose loving children is just nature,’ said Finola, ‘not just children but helpless things. Everyone responds to people who need help.’

‘So long as they know they need it. Most people never see people, or things, who are badly off. That’s the problem.’

Finola forestalled her. ‘Now don’t start talking about socialism and the class system again,’ she said. ‘I was saying
that I don’t really know why I want children so much. But I want to live in the country because I so adored those holidays at Aunt Caitlin’s. I know,’ she said. ‘I want to be like Aunt Caitlin. I want to support people.’

Aunt Caitlin had died in February.

‘It’s odd you should say that,’ said Jenny. ‘I’d never seen Caitlin as a matriarch before. But she was, wasn’t she? We all used to go up to King’s Norton when we were fed up, and we all came back feeling better. And yet we never really appreciated it while she was alive. You don’t think that it was Caitlin rather than the place itself that made King’s Norton have that effect on you, Fin? Just because you didn’t really feel her influence directly?’

‘Maybe,’ said Finola, ‘but knowing that isn’t going to stop me wanting to live in the country.’

‘Do you know, the other day Liza told me that
she
wants to live in the country.’

‘Liza? She’s never said anything about it.’

‘I know, but Liza never says much. She used to talk to Alice a bit before …’ Jenny paused.

‘I know what you’re talking about,’ said Finola. ‘Liza thinks Alice jilted her, sort of.’

‘So you do know.’

‘I’m not a baby. I was actually around when Miranda was here, too.’

‘Yes, you must have been hurt by it all.’ Jenny wanted to see whether Finola would talk.

Finola shrugged. ‘I’m going to give all my love to my children,’ she said. ‘All of it. So,’ she finished as she got off the bed, ‘you think I ought to go to Queen’s?’

‘Well, I didn’t actually say so, but I think you ought to try it. The only thing I really would say to you is that you should remember that you’re going to be a woman of means when you’re twenty-one; Caitlin left you quite a bit. You won’t have to marry for money to obtain your leisured life in the country.’

‘Not for the money, no.’

‘Liza’s had to earn money,’ said Jenny, ‘and she hates it. You won’t have to do that, either.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Finola, ‘I’m privileged. Everyone’s privileged
in one sense or another. By the way, do you want anything from downstairs?’

‘No, I don’t think so — oh, you couldn’t get me an apple, could you?’

‘Hot-water-bottle?’

‘That’s a good idea.’ She gave a luscious sniff and wriggled in the bed, realising at Finola’s suggestion that she was actually cold.

‘You know,’ said Finola, ‘I’m sure you’re not really a distinguished lady academic. You just don’t look right.’

Jenny laughed. ‘Wait till I get grey hair,’ she said, and then added, ‘but the bit about “distinguished” is certainly true.’

‘Oh, they just won’t give you a lectureship because you’re a woman and probably better than most of the doddery old men. They don’t want to be put to shame.’

‘You’re a darling,’ said Jenny, and she meant it, but Finola thought that Jenny didn’t believe her.

She went down to the kitchen, filled a hot-water-bottle and took it up to Jenny together with the apple.

‘You could always be a nurse, you know,’ said Jenny with a smile as Finola tucked in her sheet.

‘Yes,’ said Finola, as she left the room, ‘that’s quite a good job for a girl who’s not very clever.’

Finola was due to meet her friends, Stephanie and Marianne, in a quarter of an hour at Marianne’s family’s house in the Little Boltons, before proceeding to the West End for the matinée. She had rarely seen either of them since they had left Cressida Lake for St Paul’s last summer; but Marianne had rung her at short notice with a spare ticket.

Finola looked up at the large, white, ornate house. The garden in front, bounded by a wall instead of railings, was just beginning to come to life. Two solid pillars enclosed the wrought-iron garden gate, which was left ajar; and a black and blue and white tiled path ran up to the front steps. A gleaming knocker was fixed on the dark green door. Finola could see nothing of the inside save the edges of the curtains in the windows, which were lighter in colour and weight on each ascending floor.

Finola thought firstly of the large, dirty, orange-brick
house in Bramham Gardens, with its awkward gable and grey peeling window frames, and secondly of the country equivalent of this house, which would be smaller and more comfortable than King’s Norton but which might well have a Victorian greenhouse in the garden. She set her hat on her head at an acute angle, marched up the path and firmly rang the bell, which was answered by a maid.

‘Fin!’ Marianne shouted from over the second-floor bannisters, which were painted smooth clean white. ‘We’re upstairs — second door on the left.’

Finola had been here once before, and remembered the house quite well, but Marianne had forgotten this.

‘I say, devastating lipstick,’ said Marianne, when Finola came in, in a very good imitation of her elder sister’s manner, which Stephanie recognised.

‘Thanks,’ said Finola. She peered at them both to see if either of them looked really sophisticated. They had both turned fifteen.

‘Steph, do please finish those chocolates, you know. I’m banting and I simply can’t resist,’ said Marianne. Stephanie was sprawling on the bed. ‘Fin, do finish them. Steph’s so fat anyway and you’re quite a skinny little thing still, aren’t you? Just wait a year or two before you have to start worrying!’

She sighed and plumped herself down at her dressing-table as though she had been covering up wrinkles there for years. She searched in a little bag at the back of one drawer for her one lipstick: it was such a discreet colour that her parents never noticed when she was actually wearing it.

‘Am I fat, Fin?’ asked Stephanie, holding the chocolates out to her.

‘Oh no,’ said Finola, looking at the bulge of flesh which poked over Stephanie’s waistband, ‘not really. Just puppy fat,’ she added.

‘Puppy fat is babies and children,’ said Stephanie, looking up.

‘No it isn’t,’ said Finola eagerly. ‘It’s fat which you lose automatically as you get older. At any age.’

‘I think its’s about time my sister lost some of her puppy fat, then,’ said Marianne. ‘Just look at this dress. Miles too
big round the hips. And if I don’t wear this I’ll have to wear something about as flattering as my school uniform.’ She nodded at the open wardrobe which was full of new cashmeres and lawns and lace.

‘Your sister isn’t fat,’ said Stephanie, ‘she’s just developed.’ She pushed out her matronly bosom.

‘It’s not fashionable to be developed,’ said Marianne. ‘You can’t see how developed I really am because I’ve been banting so hard recently. It’s taken all my weight off. Honestly, parents are the lousiest bore. I’m just as mature as Celia — where’s the difference between fifteen and eighteen? But they behave as though I’m an absolute child. They even say I’m too young to bant. It really is absolutely crymaking. I have to eat simply masses and then make myself puke.’ She sounded very cheerful.

Finola stared at her. ‘You make yourself sick after every meal?’ she said.

‘Il faut
souffrir
pour
ê
tre
belle
,’ said Marianne. ‘Then I eat my diet afterwards. Oranges and brown bread.’

‘I think that’s plain silly,’ said Finola.

‘I’d forgotten,’ said Marianne, turning towards her. ‘You always start talking with an Irish accent when you start criticising people.’

‘I never do,’ said Finola. ‘Never. Even my mother hardly has an accent. She isn’t really Irish at all, she’s a Londoner.’

‘A Cockney born within the sound of Bow Bells, you mean?’ said Marianne, laughing.

‘Yes I do,’ said Finola, and flushed.

‘Come on,’ said Stephanie, ‘we’d better be going. I suppose your mother will insist we take a taxi, Marianne. That’s an awfully nice hat, Finola,’ she added. She smiled brightly as she looked at Finola and used her formal name, and then she led the way downstairs.

After the film the girls went to have tea at Fuller’s. Then they took a taxi back, but even so they were later than they should have been.

At Marianne’s house they were scolded, as Marianne had said they would be. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to explain this to your parents,’ Marianne’s mother said to Finola. Finola looked, then, as though she had parents who were like
Marianne’s mother.

Marianne’s mother looked at Finola’s painted mouth. ‘I hope they won’t mind too much,’ she said.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Finola.

‘Well,’ said Marianne’s mother, ‘what about a glass of lemonade before you go, Stephanie and Finola?’

They went into the drawing room. The drinks had already been brought in, and Marianne’s father and her brother Jeremy, a Cambridge undergraduate, were sitting there, drinking whisky. They were too deep in argument to pay any attention to the girls. Marianne poured out some lemonade for the three of them.

‘God, what a bore,’ she said. ‘They never seem to stop arguing. Honestly, neither of them will ever persuade the other one that he’s right, so why do they bother?’

‘You’re talking as though unemployment was some sort of accident,’ said Marianne’s brother. ‘Of course, as a pillar of the Establishment, you’ve got to talk like that. Anyone who hasn’t got a vested interest in the social order can see that unemployment is a deliberate weapon of the ruling class, used to keep the workers where they’ve always been. Goodness me, one couldn’t possibly let the lower orders join one in conspicuous consumption of non-necessities, could one? One might erode class differences.’

His father, who appeared to be an old man, slowly shook his head and peacefully finished his tumbler full of comforting golden whisky. Finola watched him. She had not paid any attention to Jeremy after she had heard his first comment, but she was surprised to note that his father did not look outraged or frightened at being made aware of ‘the threat of the people’.

‘I think,’ said Marianne’s father, ‘that where you’re really going wrong — in the sense that if you misinterpret this you’ll never achieve your revolution, granting for the sake of argument that the actual facts are as you say — is in your interpretation of people’s motives. There isn’t any conscious desire on anyone’s part to oppress the workers. The only conscious desire of the class you hate so much — of which, I may say, you’re still a member — is to cling to tradition. Possibly it is a form of cowardice, but it’s not an
evil intention. You mustn’t exaggerate. I’d like you to tell me what you’d put in place of our system, Jeremy.’

‘The classless society. It’ll come in any case after the revolution,’ he snapped.