He wondered what Strickland thought of them all. What was his impression of them, as they sat there, dressed up and festive, around the formal dinner table? They were Alec’s oldest friends; he had known them for so long that their individual appearances he took totally for granted. But now he let his eyes move around the table deliberately observing each of his guests with the eyes of the stranger who sat in Erica’s chair. Daphne, tiny and slender as ever, but with her blond hair now silvery white. George Anstey ponderous and red-faced, his shirt buttons straining over his considerable waistline. Marjorie, who of all of them seemed happy to mature into full solid middle age, without any tiresome backward glances over her ample shoulder.
And Tom. Tom Boulderstone. Affection filled Alec’s heart for the man who had been his closest friend for so many years. But this was an objective appraisal, not a sentimental one. So what did Alec see? A man of forty-three, balding, bespectacled, pale, clever. A man who looked more like a priest than a banker. A man whose sombre expression could gleam with hidden laughter. A man who, when called upon, could make an after-dinner speech so witty that it would be quoted in the City for months to come.
Daphne ran out of words at last, and George Anstey took advantage of the subsequent lull to lean forward and ask Strickland what had decided him to come to this country.
‘Well’—the American glanced around the table and grinned depreciatingly—‘I seem to have done most everything I could in the States, and I felt there was real new challenge over here.’
‘It must have meant the most awful lot of organization,’ Marjorie remarked. She was interested in organization. She organized her local Meals on Wheels. ‘I mean, renting a house for yourself and getting your horses over … what do you do for grooms?’
‘I flew them over as well, and a couple of stable lads.’
‘Are they black or white?’ Daphne wanted to know.
Strickland grinned. ‘Both.’
‘And what about a housekeeper?’ Marjorie persisted. ‘Don’t say you flew a housekeeper over as well?’
‘Yes, I did. There wasn’t any point taking Tickleigh Manor if I didn’t have some person to look after me.’
Marjorie sat back with a sigh. ‘Well, I don’t know, but it all sounds like pure heaven to me. I’ve only got a daily two mornings a week, and she’s never even been in an aeroplane.’
‘For that you should be thankful,’ said Tom dryly. ‘Ours flew to Majorca for a holiday and married a waiter and never came back.’
Everybody laughed, but Tom did not even smile. Alec wondered what Tom was making of Strickland Whiteside, but that pale and clever face gave nothing away.
The American had arrived after they were all gathered with their drinks, bathed and shaved and changed and scented and expectant. When they heard the sound of his car drawing up outside the house, Erica went to greet him, and bring him indoors. They returned together, and there was no reason to imagine they had embraced, but Erica brought with her, out of the fragrant evening, a nervous glitter, like a nimbus of light. Formally she introduced Strickland Whiteside to her husband and her friends. He did not seem in the least put out by being suddenly faced with a roomful of people he had never met before, and all of whom, obviously, knew one another very well. On the contrary, his manner was almost benign, satisfied, as though he knew that the boot was on the other foot, and it was he who must put them at their ease.
He had, Alec guessed, taken some trouble with his dress. He wore a maroon gabardine jacket, brass buttoned, smoothly tailored; a pale blue polo-necked sweater; and a pair of maroon and pale blue plaid slacks. His shoes were white. There was a thick gold watch on one sinewy wrist and a heavy gold signet ring on his left hand. He was a tall man, lean and muscled and obviously immensely strong, but it was hard to guess his age, for while his features were formidable, hawk-nosed, big-jawed, intensely brown with eyes as pale as sixpences, his hair was corn coloured, thick as the hair of a boy, growing springily from his forehead in a deep wave.
‘Glad to meet you,’ he said when Alec welcomed him and gripped his hand. It was like shaking hands with a steel spring. ‘Erica’s spoken so much about you, and it’s a real privilege to make your acquaintance at last.’
He continued to be charming. He kissed Gabriel—‘My little girlfriend,’ allowed himself to be given a martini, sat in the middle of the sofa with one long ankle hitched up onto a hard-muscled plaid knee. He began at once to ask about Glenshandra, as though knowing that this topic would naturally bring everybody into the conversation and so break the ice. Marjorie was disarmed by this, and Daphne could scarcely keep her eyes off him and for the first five minutes was rendered speechless. After that she scarcely drew breath.
‘What’s Tickleigh Manor House like? Didn’t the Gerrards used to live there?’
‘They still do,’ Erica said. They were eating grouse now, and Alec poured the red wine.
‘Well, they can’t live there if Strick’s living there.’
‘No, they’ve gone up to London for a couple of months.’
‘Were they going away, or did Strickland chase them out?’
‘I chased them out,’ said Strickland.
‘He offered them money,’ Erica explained to Daphne. ‘You know that old-fashioned stuff you keep in your wallet.’
‘You mean he bribed them…!’
‘Oh, Daphne…’
Erica was laughing at Daphne, but there was exasperation in her amusement. Alec sometimes wondered how the friendship of two such totally different women had lasted for so long. They had known each other since school days, and it was doubtful that there was a single secret they did not share, and yet, on analysis, they had nothing in common. It could be that this was the glue that cemented their friendship. Their interests had never overlapped, and so the relationship was not in danger from the destructive touch of jealousy.
Daphne was interested only in men. That was the way she had been made, that was the way she would be even if she lived to be ninety. She came to life only if there was a man in the room, and if she did not have some current admirer tucked up her sleeve, to take her out for little luncheons or to telephone her in the mornings after Tom had gone to work, then life had lost all meaning and she became snappish and despondent.
Tom knew about this and accepted it. Once, very late at night, he had talked to Alec. ‘I know she’s a fool,’ he had said, ‘but she’s a very sweet fool, and I wouldn’t want to lose her.’
Whereas Erica … Erica was not really interested in men. Alec knew this. For the last few years he and Erica had lived more or less apart, but agonized conjectures as to how she spent her time had been the least of his worries; in fact, had scarcely entered his mind.
She had always been if not exactly frigid then sexually very cool. The emotions that other women needed—passion and excitement and challenge and affection—were apparently fulfilled by her obsession with her horses. Sometimes Alec was reminded of the small girls who haunted the Pony Club circuit. Pigtailed, single-minded, cleaning tack, mucking out their ponies. ‘It’s a sex substitute,’ some person had once assured him, when he remarked upon this phenomenon. ‘Let them reach fourteen or fifteen, and it’ll not be horses they’ll be interested in, but men. It’s a well-known fact. A natural development.’
Erica must once have been just such a child. I rode every day of my life until I went to Hong Kong. But Erica, for some reason, had never grown up. For a little, perhaps, she had loved Alec, but she had never wanted a child, had never experienced the accepted maternal instincts of other young mothers. As soon as humanly possible, she had returned to her original love. That was why she had made him buy Deepbrook. That was, basically, why Gabriel had been sent away to school.
Now, her life revolved around horses. They were the centre of her life, all she truly cared about. And the people who became her new friends were the people who rode them.
* * *
Two months after this weekend, on a dark, wet evening in November
, Alec drove back to Islington from the City at the end of the day, expecting as usual to find his house empty. He had made no plans for the night and was glad of this, because his briefcase bulged with reading matter that he had had no time to deal with during the day, and there was a directors’ meeting planned for the next day, during which he would be expected to make some well-studied pronouncements. He would have his meal early, then light the fire, put on his spectacles, and settle down to work.
He turned at last out of the City Road and into his own street, Abigail Crescent. His house stood at the far end, and he saw the light shining from its windows. Erica, for some reason, had come up to London.
He was puzzled by this. The weather was bad and he knew that her social diary was empty for most of the week. A dentist’s appointment perhaps, or a yearly checkup with her doctor in Harley Street?
He parked the car and sat, staring at the lighted house. He had grown accustomed to being alone, but he had never truly come to terms with it. He remembered when they had first come to live here, fresh from Hong Kong, before Gabriel was born. He remembered Erica arranging furniture and hanging curtains and struggling with huge books of carpet samples, but always finding some time to come and greet him as he let himself in through the door. That was how it had been. For only a little time, maybe, but that was how it had been. For a moment he let himself imagine that the years between had never happened, that everything was unchanged. Perhaps this time she would come to greet him, kiss him, go into the kitchen to fix him a drink. They would sit with their drinks and exchange the small gossip and doings of their day, and then he would ring some restaurant and take her out for dinner.…
The shining windows stared back at him. He was suddenly tired. He closed his eyes, covered them with his hand, as though to wipe fatigue away. After a little he collected his briefcase off the back seat and got out of the car, locked it, and walked across the rain-soaked pavement, with his bulky briefcase bumping against his knee. He got out his key and opened the door.
He saw her coat, slung across the hall chair, a silk Hermes scarf. He smelled her perfume. He closed the door and put down his briefcase.
‘Erica.’
He went into the sitting room, and she was there, sitting in an armchair, facing him. She had been reading a paper, but now she folded this and dropped it on the floor beside her. She was wearing a yellow sweater, a grey wool skirt, and long brown leather boots. Her hair, illuminated by the reading lamp that she had lighted, shone like a polished chestnut. She said, ‘Hi.’
‘This is a surprise. I didn’t know you were coming up.’
‘I thought about telephoning your office, but there didn’t seem much point. I knew you’d be here.’
‘For a moment I thought I’d forgotten about some dinner party or other. I haven’t, have I?’
‘No. There’s nothing on. I just wanted to talk to you.’
This was unusual. ‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked her.
‘Yes. If you’re having one.’
‘What would you like?’
‘A whisky would be fine.’
He left her and went into the kitchen and poured the drinks and manhandled ice cubes out of the tray, then carried the two glasses back to where she waited. He handed her the glass. ‘There’s not much food in the fridge, I’m afraid, but if you like we could go out for dinner.…’
‘I shan’t be staying for dinner.’ He raised his eyebrows, and she went on smoothly, ‘I shan’t even be staying the night, so you don’t need to worry about entertaining me.’
He reached for a chair and pulled it forward and sat facing her across the hearthrug.
‘Then why have you come?’
Erica took a mouthful of the whisky, and then laid the glass delicately down on the small marble-topped table that stood by her chair.
‘I’ve come to tell you that I’m leaving you, Alec.’
He did not at once say anything to this. Across the space that divided them, her gaze met his, her eyes unblinking, sombre, quite cold.
After a bit, he said mildly. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t want to live with you anymore.’
‘We scarcely live together anyway.’
‘Strickland Whiteside has asked me to go to America with him.’
Strickland Whiteside. He said, ‘You’re going to go and live with him?’ and he could not keep the appalled incredulity out of his voice.
‘You find it astonishing?’
He remembered how they had come indoors together that warm, scented September evening. He remembered the way she had looked, not simply beautiful, but radiant in a way that he had never seen before.
‘Are you in love with him?’
She said, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever exactly known what being in love means. But I feel about Strick as I’ve never felt about anyone else. It’s not just infatuation. It’s doing things together, sharing interests. It’s been like that from the moment we met. I can’t live away from him.’
‘You can’t live away from Strickland Whiteside?’ The name still sounded absurd. The whole sentence sounded absurd, like a line from some ludicrous farce, and Erica exploded into irritation.
‘Oh, stop repeating everything I say. I can’t make it any plainer, I can’t make it any simpler. Repeating everything I say isn’t going to change what I’m trying to tell you.’
He said ridiculously, ‘He’s younger than you are.’
For a moment she looked a little put out. ‘Yes, he is, but what difference does that make?’
‘Is he married?’
‘No. He’s never been married.’
‘Does he want to marry you?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you want a divorce?’
‘Yes. Whether or not you agree to a divorce, I’m leaving you. I’m going out to Virginia to be with him. I shall simply live with him. I’m long past the age of minding about what people say. Conventions really don’t matter anymore.’
‘When are you going?’
‘I’m booked on a flight to New York next week.’
‘Is Strickland flying with you?’
‘No.’ For the first time, her gaze faltered. She looked down, her hand reached for her drink. ‘He’s already gone back to the States. He’s in Virginia, waiting for me.’
‘What about all these big events he was booked in for?’
‘He’s given them up … cancelled everything.’
‘I wonder why he did that?’
Erica raised her eyes. ‘He thought it would be better.’
‘You mean, he’s chickened out. He hadn’t the guts to face me and tell me himself.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘He left it for you to do.’
‘It’s better for me to do it. I wouldn’t let him stay. I made him go. I didn’t want there to be rows, unpleasantness, things said that are better left unsaid.’
‘You could hardly expect me to be delighted.’
‘I’m going, Alec. And I’m not coming back.’
‘You’d leave Deepbrook?’
‘Yes.’
This astonished him almost more than the fact that she was leaving him.
‘I always thought that house meant more to you than anything.’
‘Not now it doesn’t. Anyway, it’s your house.’
‘And your horses?’
‘I’m taking my horses with me. Strickland’s arranged for them to be flown to Virginia.’
She was, as usual, presenting him with a totally conceived plan, her usual method when she was utterly determined to have her own way. Strickland, Deepbrook, her horses, all had been neatly dealt with, but to Alec none of these things mattered a damn. There was only one real issue at stake. Erica had never been a moral coward. He waited in silence for her to continue, but she simply sat there, watching him with grey eyes unblinking and defiant, and he realized that she was waiting for him to fire the opening shot of the battle for the only thing that really mattered.
‘Gabriel?’
Erica said, ‘I’m taking Gabriel with me.’
The fight was on. ‘Oh no you’re not!’
‘Now we’re not going to start shouting about this. You’re going to have to listen to me. I’m her mother, and I’ve as much right as you—and more—to make plans for our daughter. I’m going to America. I’m going there to live, and nothing is going to change that. If I take Gabriel with me, then she can live with us. Strickland has a beautiful home, with space and land all around it. There are tennis courts, a swimming pool. It’s a wonderful opportunity for a girl of Gabriel’s age—young people have such a good time in America—life is geared to them. Let her have this chance. Let her take it.’
He said quietly, ‘What about her school?’
‘I’ll take her out of school. She can go to school there. There’s a particularly good one in Maryland.…’
‘I won’t let her go. I won’t lose her.’
‘Oh, Alec, you won’t lose her. We’ll share her. You can have access to her whenever you want. She can fly back to this country and stay with you. You can take her to Glenshandra with the others. Nothing’s going to change that much.’
‘I won’t let her go to America.’
‘Don’t you see, you have no alternative. Even if we drag this thing through the divorce courts and you fight me every inch of the way, ten to one the custody of Gabriel will be given to me, because they only separate a child from its mother under the most extreme of circumstances. I’d need to be a drug addict or proved in some way to be totally unfit to bring my daughter up, before they even considered giving her to you. And think what that sort of hideous, public tug-of-war would do to Gabriel. She’s sensitive enough as it is, without you and me inflicting that sort of horror on her.’
‘Is it any worse than the horror of having her parents divorcing? Is it any worse than the horror of having to go and live in a strange country, in a strange house, under the roof of a man she scarcely knows?’