Windfallen

  The girls were always welcomed. Once they had arrived to find Adeline dressing Frances as an Indian princess, draping her in dark silks spotted with gold threads and painting elaborate markings on her hands and face. She herself had dressed as a prince, with a headdress that, in its elaborate peacock ornaments and intricately interwoven fabrics, must have been genuine. Marnie, the maid, had stood looking mutinous as Adeline painted Frances's skin with cold tea, withdrawing in high dudgeon when she was instructed to bring flour, to make Adeline's hair look gray. Then, while the girls watched silently, the two women had posed in a variety of arrangements while a thin young man who introduced himself rather pompously as "school of Modotti" had taken their photograph.

  "We must go somewhere dressed like this. To London perhaps," Adeline had crowed afterward, as she examined her altered appearance in a mirror. "It would be such fun."

  "Like the Dreadnought Hoax."

  "The what?" Celia had temporarily forgotten her manners. She frequently did when at Arcadia.

  "A very good joke Virginia Woolf played. Many years ago." George had stood and watched the whole proceedings. He only ever seemed to watch.

  "She and her friends blacked up and traveled to Weymouth as the emperor of Abyssinia and his 'imperial entourage.' Some flag lieutenant or somesuch ended up giving them a royal salute and escorting them all around HMS Dreadnought. Caused a frightful stink."

  "But such fun!" said Adeline, clapping her hands together. "Yes! We could become the raja of Rajasthan. Visiting Walton-on-the-Naze." She twirled in a circle, laughing, so that her elaborate coat flew out around her. She could be like this, childlike, exuberant. As if she weren't an adult woman at all, weighed down by the responsibilities and worries that being female seemed to entail, but more like Freddie or Sylvia.

  "Oh, Adeline. Nothing too dramatic." Frances looked weary. "Remember Calthorpe Street."

  They were like that. Half the time, Celia confided afterward, she hardly understood a word that was said. It wasn't just the accent. They didn't talk about normal things--about what went on in the village and the cost of things and the weather. They would go off on tangents and talk about writers and people Lottie and she had never heard of, all draping themselves over each other in a manner that the girls knew Mrs. Holden would find scandalous. And they would argue. My God, they would argue. About Bertrand Russell saying they should ban the bomb. About poetry. About anything. The first time Lottie heard Frances and George "in discussion" over someone called Giacometti, it had become so fierce and passionate she'd been afraid that Frances would be struck. That had been the inevitable outcome at home when her mother argued with her boyfriends at such a pitch. And at the Holden house nobody ever argued. But Frances--normally subdued, melancholy Frances--had batted back every criticism of this Giacometti that George put forth and then finally, having told him that his problem was that he needed to "respond with instinct, not intellect," walked out of the room. And half an hour later come back in as if nothing had happened to ask him if he would take her to town in his car.

  They seemed to obey none of the normal social rules. There had been the time that Lottie had come by herself and Adeline had walked her around the entire house, showing her the dimensions and unique angles of each room, ignoring the piles of books and dusty rugs still unplaced in various corners. Mrs. Holden would never have let someone see her house in this unfinished--and often unclean--state. But Adeline didn't even seem to notice. When Lottie tentatively pointed out a missing banister in one of the stairwells, Adeline had looked mildly surprised and then observed in that impenetrable accent of hers that they would tell Marnie and she would take care of it. What about your husband? Lottie wanted to ask, but Adeline had already glided off to the next room.

  And there was the way she was with Frances, less like sisters (they didn't argue like sisters) than a kind of old married couple, finishing each other's sentences, laughing at private jokes, breaking off into half-explained anecdotes about places they had been. Adeline told everything, and she revealed nothing. When Lottie thought back after each visit, which she did--each being filled with such color and sensation that it had to be digested slowly afterward--she realized that she knew no more about the actress than she had on their first visit. Her husband, whom she had yet to refer to by name, was "working abroad." "Darling George" was something in economics--"such a brilliant mind." ("Such a brilliant beau, I bet," said Celia, who was working up something of a crush on the linen-clad one.) Frances's tenancy of the house was never explained at all, although the girls noted that, unlike Adeline, she didn't wear a wedding ring. Neither had Adeline asked much about Lottie--having established only the details that she needed to relate to--whether she had been painted, whether she was interested in certain things--she displayed no interest in her history, her parents, her place in the world.

  This was exceedingly odd to Lottie, who had grown up in two homes where, despite their myriad differences, one's history informed everything that was likely to happen to one. In Merham her history within the house meant that she was accorded all the advantages given as a right to Celia--all the education, the upbringing, the clothes and food--while both parties were subtly aware that these gifts were not quite unconditional, especially now that Lottie had come of age. Outside the house the Mrs. Anstys and Chiltons, the Mrs. Colquhouns would assess one immediately by history and associations and ascribe all sorts of characteristics simply by those virtues (as in "He's a Thompson. They're all prone to laziness" or "She was bound to leave. The aunt bolted two days after her confinement"). They were not interested in what one cared about, what one believed in. Celia would be held to their collective bosom forever, for being the doctor's daughter, for being from one of Merham's best families, despite officially having become "a handful." But if Lottie had turned to Mrs. Chilton and asked her, as Adeline Armand had once done to her, "If you could wake up in someone else's body for just one day, who would it be?" Mrs. Chilton would have suggested that they remove Lottie to the nice institution over at Braintree where they had doctors to deal with people like her (like poor Mrs. McGrath, who had been there ever since her monthlies turned her funny).

  They were definitely bohemians, decided Lottie, who had just discovered the word. And it was only to be expected of bohemians. "Don't care what they are," said Celia. "But they're a damn sight more interesting than the old bores around here."

  IT WAS NOT OFTEN THAT JOE FOUND HIMSELF THE FOCUS of attention from not one but two of Merham's more attractive young ladies. But the longer Adeline Armand lived in the village, the more disquiet had been expressed about her unconventional way of living, so that Lottie and Celia had had to become increasingly inventive about disguising their visits. And the Saturday afternoon of the garden party, they had been left with no option but to call on Joe.

  The presence of most of their friends' mothers in the house meant that they couldn't use visiting as an excuse, while Sylvia, feeling mutinous after Celia had reneged on a promise to let her use her new record player, was threatening to follow them and tell if they went anywhere even remotely off-limits. So Joe, who had the afternoon off from the garage, had agreed to come and pick them up in his car and pretend to be taking them on a picnic up at Bardness Point. He hadn't been terribly keen (he didn't like lying--it made him blush even more than usual), but Lottie had employed what Celia now referred to sarcastically as her "smoldering look," and that had been Joe in the bag.

  Outside the filtered gloom of Mrs. Holden's front room, it was a glorious afternoon, the kind of May Saturday that hinted of simmering summer afternons to come, that filled Merham's streets with dawdling families and sent shop displays of beach balls and postcards spilling out onto the pavements. The air was filled with the cries of overexcited children and the twin scents of cotton candy and sun oil. The fierce winds that had so far plagued the east coast had for the last few days dropped, lifting temperatures and moods so that it felt, prematurely, like the first true day of summer. Lottie leaned
out the window and tipped her face up to the light. Even so many years on, she still got a faint thrill of excitement to be at the seaside.

  "So what are you going to do, Joe? While we're inside?" Celia, in the back of the car, was applying lipstick with a new compact.

  Joe blushed slightly and pulled out through the level crossing that separated the two sides of the town. Although Arcadia House was, as the crow flies, less than a mile from Woodbridge Avenue, to get there by road one had to dip into the town, past the municipal park, and come out again on the winding coast road.

  "I'll go to Bardness Point."

  "What, by yourself?" Celia snapped her compact shut. She was wearing little white gloves and a bright red dress with a circle skirt that nipped in almost painfully at the waist. Celia didn't need a girdle, although her mother was forever trying to persuade her to wear one. It would, apparently, hold her in "properly."

  "It's just for if your mother asks me anything about the weather when I drop you back. I shall need to know what it's been like up there, so I can say so without messing up."

  Lottie felt a sudden pang of conscience at their using him in this way. "I'm sure you don't have to do that, Joe," she said. "You could just drop us outside when we get back. She won't get a chance to ask you anything."

  Joe's jaw set, and he signaled to turn right into the high street. "Yes, but if I do that, my mother will want to know why I didn't pass on her good wishes, and then she'll be in a temper."

  "Good thinking, Joe," said Celia. "And I'm sure Mummy will want to say hello to your mother."

  Lottie was pretty sure Mrs. Holden would want to do nothing of the sort.

  "So what's going on at this house after all? When do you need picking up?"

  "If it's a garden party, I'd imagine they'll be doing tea, don't you, Lots?"

  Lottie found it hard to imagine sponge cakes and scones being laid on at Arcadia House. But she couldn't imagine what other form a garden party might take.

  "I suppose so," she said.

  "So about half past five? Six o'clock?"

  "Best make it half past five," said Celia, waving at someone through the window before remembering that it was Joe's car she was in and sinking quietly down on the backseat. "That way we'll be home before Mummy starts going on."

  "We won't forget this, Joe."

  There were only two cars on the drive when they arrived, a paltry total that, when Joe remarked upon it, prompted Celia, already snappy through overexcitement, to observe that it was "just as well he wasn't invited, then." He didn't snap back; he never did. But he didn't smile, even when Lottie squeezed his arm with as much apology as she could muster while they climbed out. And he drove off without waving.

  "I do hate a man that sulks," said Celia cheerfully as they rang the doorbell. "I hope they don't have coconut cakes. I do detest coconut."

  Lottie was feeling faintly sick. She had none of the appetite for social gatherings that Celia displayed, largely because she still felt uncomfortable explaining herself to those who didn't know her. People were never satisfied if she said she lived at the Holdens'. They wanted to know why, and then for how long, and whether she missed her mother. At Mrs. Holden's last garden party (Poorly Children in Africa), she made the mistake of admitting that it had been over a year since they had last met and subsequently found herself, uncomfortably, an object of some pity.

  "They're outside," said Marnie, who looked, if it were possible, even more grim-faced than usual as she opened the door. "You won't need your gloves," she muttered as she followed them down the hallway, gesturing toward the back.

  "On or off, then?" whispered Celia as they walked toward the light.

  Lottie, her ears already trained on the voices outside, didn't answer.

  It was not your standard garden party; that much was clear immediately. There was no marquee (Mrs. Holden always insisted on a marquee, in case of rain) and no trestle tables. Where is the food going to go? thought Lottie absently, and then she cursed herself for sounding like Joe.

  Instead they walked out across the patio area, and Marnie gestured toward the steps leading down to the small stretch of private beach that ended at the water. It was on this, scattered around on a variety of blankets, that the garden party guests sat, some sprawled barefoot, some seated, deep in conversation.

  Adeline Armand was seated on a mint green wrap made from some fabric with a satin sheen. She was dressed in a shell pink summer frock of crepe de chine and wore a large, floppy white hat with a broad brim, the most conventional outfit Lottie had seen her wear so far. She was surrounded by three men, including George, who was peeling leaves from some peculiar plant (an artichoke, Adeline explained later) and handing them to her, one by one, from under the half shelter of a large parasol. Frances was wearing a swimsuit, revealing a surprisingly lean and toned body. She stood more comfortably in her skin than in her clothes, her shoulders thrown back as she laughed heartily at something a neighbor had just said. There were at least four bottles of red wine open. There was no one else Lottie recognized.

  She stood still, feeling suddenly foolish and overdressed in her white gloves. Celia, beside her, was trying to remove hers behind her back.

  George, suddenly looking up, spotted them. "Welcome to our little dejeuner sur l'herbe, girls," he called. "Come and sit down."

  Celia had already kicked off her shoes. She was picking her way through the sand to where George was seated, her hips swinging in a manner Lottie had seen her practicing at home when she thought no one was looking.

  "Are you hungry?" said Frances, who looked unusually cheerful. "We've got some trout and some delicious herb salad. Or there's some cold duck. I think there's some left."

  "We've eaten, thanks," said Celia, sitting down. Lottie sat slightly behind her, wishing that more people were standing up so that she didn't feel so conspicuous.

  "What about some fruit? We've got some gorgeous strawberries. Has Marnie taken them in already?"

  "They don't want food. They want a drink," said George, who had already busied himself pouring two large goblets of red wine. "Here," he said, holding one up to the light. "One for Little Red Riding Hood here."

  Celia glanced down at her skirt and then up again, pleased by the attention.

  "Here's to the fragile bloom of youth."

  "Oh, George." A blond woman in huge sunglasses leaned over and tapped his arm in a way that made Celia bristle.

  "Well, they might as well enjoy it while they've got it." George had the well-lubricated look and loosened vowels of someone who had been drinking all day. "God knows they won't look like that for long."

  Lottie stared at him.

  "Frances knows. Give it five years and they'll be thickhipped matrons, a couple of young brats hanging on their skirts. Fine upholders of the moral majority of Merham."

  "I know nothing of the sort." Frances, smiling, folded her long limbs onto a picnic blanket.

  Something about George's tone made Lottie uneasy. Celia, however, took a glass from him and gulped down half its contents as if accepting a challenge. "Not me," she said, grinning. "You won't find me here in five years' time."

  "Non? And where will you be?" It was impossible to see Adeline's face under her hat. Only her neat little mouth was visible, curved up in its polite, inquisitive smile.

  "Oh, I don't know. London perhaps. Cambridge. Maybe even Paris."

  "Not if your mother has her way." Something about Celia's determined ease in this company irritated Lottie. "She wants you to stay here."

  "Oh, she'll come around in the end."

  "That's what you think."

  "What's the matter?" said George, dipping his handsome head to Celia's. "Is Mater concerned for your moral welfare?"

  Something about the way that Celia and George looked at each other at this moment made Lottie's chest tighten.

  "Well . . ." said Celia slyly. Her eyes held a sudden flash of promise. "There are an awful lot of big, bad wolves about, after all."
r />   Lottie eventually settled down on the edge of Adeline's wrap, fighting the urge, even as she sat, to sweep sand from its folds. She felt overdressed and suburban and had trouble keeping up with the conversations around her, which made her feel stupid. Adeline, who normally took pains to make her feel at ease, was engrossed in conversation with a man Lottie hadn't seen before.

  Lottie sipped at her wine, trying not to grimace, and picked at a bowl of cherries.

  "Fabulous house, Adeline darling. More Moderne than Deco, don't you think?"

  "Of course Russell is an idiot. And if he thinks that Eden is going to pay the slightest attention to him and his bloody scientists, he's a deluded idiot."

  "Did I tell you Archie has finally got one in the Summer Exhibition? Hung so that it looks like a postage stamp, but you can't have everything. . . ."

  It was a long afternoon. There were no coconut cakes. Lottie, her cardigan pulled around her shoulders to try to stop herself tanning, watched the tide gradually ease away, lengthening the shore and turning an intricate sand castle that must have been made early that morning into a swollen pimple of sand. She could hear Celia giggling manically behind her and knew that she must be drinking. The girls only ever had wine at Christmas, and even the thimbleful of sherry they had been allowed before lunch last year had made Celia pink and her voice lift two pitches. Lottie had drunk half her glass before surreptitiously spilling it into the sand behind her. Even that had made her head ache and her brain feel fuzzy and befugged.

  When Marnie cleared away the last of the plates, Lottie moved around a little so that she could see Celia. Celia was telling George about "the last time she had been to Paris." The fact that she had never actually been to Paris seemed to have little impact on her elaborate tale, but Lottie, noticing the somewhat combative body language between Celia and the blond woman, thought it would be unsporting to undermine her now. From under her sunglasses the blond woman's smile had become more of a snarl, and, scenting victory, Celia had become exuberant.

  "Of course, the next time I go I'm going to have dinner at La Coupole. Have you had dinner at La Coupole? I'm told the lobster is fabulous."