The White Marriage Page 20

  ‘What a dreadful situation in which we find ourselves,’ she said, at last, in a cool voice as the darkness around them seemed to mirror their despair. ‘Quite dreadful.’ She gave a small sigh, and the expression in her eyes hardened as she realised that Dilke might make her go and live abroad in tax exile, which meant that she and Gray could not possibly continue as they had. ‘There is some small hope, however, Dilke darling.’ She put a hand as cool as her voice on top of Dilke’s hand, but he did not look round at her. ‘I have been hatching a plan for some time, for Gray and myself and you, for all three of us.’

  ‘Gray!’ Dilke said, suddenly coming to and pronouncing his name in his customary manner. ‘What possible good could Gray do us, outside of being charming at a Friday-to-Monday gathering? He is not rich enough to rescue us; he is not anything enough to do any good whatsoever.’

  Leandra let that go. It wasn’t worth defending Gray to Dilke. For some reason, despite Dilke’s own infidelities, his endless extravagance as far as his love life was concerned, while she herself could not care who he was with, Dilke still managed to feel jealous of Gray. It was absurd.

  ‘Dilke, we must be sensible. Gray is engaged to a nice young girl, of whom even his father approves. Once Gray is married, the family trust is such that he will be very, very wealthy indeed. His father, unlike yours, has been extremely clever. Their money is abroad in Switzerland; it is in gold, it is in paintings, it is anywhere except in an English bank paying English taxes. I know all this because Gray works for the trust, but should he not marry, it all goes to his cousin. Once he marries, he can buy Maydown from us, and we can continue in the old way. The girl knows this. She knows that Gray can never be a husband to her, that theirs will be an arranged marriage. It is often done, and is perfectly acceptable. She will be rich and happy, obviously, and we will be as we have been. Gray thinks it a splendid notion. The only pebble in the shoe is her father, who has insisted on a long engagement. But once that is over, it will all be as we wish. We just must not panic.’

  Dilke straightened up. ‘Do you really think all this could work?’

  ‘I do. Always providing that you will stop pretending that you need me to be with you twenty-four hours a day.’

  ‘Have I been a pest lately to my Dippy?’

  ‘You have just a little, darling. But not meaning to, of course. And not you being a pest so much as Mr Whisky. Mr Whisky can make us behave in a way we wouldn’t normally, don’t you think?’

  ‘I will be like Queen Victoria from now on, darling, I promise.’

  Leandra stared ahead of her. Her plan must work. More now than ever she must get Gray married off, and all of them freed by the terms of his father’s trust. But would it work? She cleared her throat. Of course it would work. It was her plan, she would not tolerate it not to work. Gray was the love of her life. Dilke was her husband, and although she had never loved him, on the whole he had behaved quite well throughout their marriage. The Little Puppy from Rushington needed a social and monetary leg-up. All in all, it was a good plan, a solid plan, and nothing must be allowed to interfere with it.

  ‘I think I am feeling a little tired now, Dippy. I think it must be Mr Whisky; he is a bad friend to me.’

  They stood up.

  ‘You always make me feel better, do you know that, Dippy? Always, always make me feel better, and I dare say you always will.’

  Leandra slipped her arm through his and they wandered back into the house. When they reached the landing, she leaned forward and kissed him as she always did when he was at home. It was a nice kind sort of kiss accompanied by a hug such as his nanny might have given him.

  ‘Goodnight, darling.’

  ‘Goodnight, Dippy.’

  They smiled vaguely in each other’s direction, and then wandered off to their separate rooms. Once in his room Dilke lay down on his bed and, reaching into his bedside cupboard, he pulled out a bottle of brandy and, without using a glass, started to drink from it. Leandra, on the other hand, once she was in her suite of rooms, reached for the neatly addressed brown-paper parcel that had arrived from Beetle’s Bookshop.

  She tore off the wrapping and stared at the book. How nice to be sent the new Angus Wilson. He was such an amusing author, and could always be counted on to be writing about his friends, about people she knew, who could be counted upon to read his books and writhe. She smiled at the choice, which she knew would have been Randy Beauchamp’s choice for her, since Gray was not someone who would ever read fiction.

  Inside the book was the expected letter from Gray. As always the sight of his writing gave her a frisson. Dilke had been impossible lately, drunk and abusive, demanding and rude. It had taken every bit of her strength to keep an eye on him, to stop him from upsetting the servants, to cope with his sudden jealous rages, but as always when he was going through one of his dark periods, one of the compensations had been that Gray and she had been forced to return to secret lovers’ ways, and that was always exciting, adding a thrill to her life that she really enjoyed. She adored getting love notes from Gray in this way, hidden in a book. She opened the letter.

  Darlingest – Leandra loved that.

  I am writing this in some haste as you-know-who, the Little Puppy, may be coming to London. It seems she has stamped her tiny foot and does not wish to stay in her puppy kennel.

  She is coming to London to work, and to be near me! This has put me in a muddled position, since I know from you that there is a ‘complication’, in other words I am sure that her real reason for coming to London is the ‘complication’ rather than yours truly. I think we should meet, but since I know that Dilke is doing his best to behave like a wounded bull in a very tiny china shop, it is probably quite difficult for you … nevertheless I think we must try.

  Gray

  Leandra put the letter down. The Little Puppy was not meant to go to London at this stage. She was meant to be a good puppy and stay at college, living in Rushington with her parents, being good and looking forward to making a marriage of convenience with an older man. She was not meant to be let off her lead.

  Besides, there was no complication. Leandra herself had invented the complication because she felt jealous of Sunny, because she saw that Gray was speaking about her in a different way.

  She picked up the telephone to ring Gray. Never mind the hour, she must tell him that, whatever happened, the Little Puppy must not come to London. He must insist that she stayed in her sweet little village, or wherever it was that she lived with her parents. She must be kept in her familial kennel and not allowed out until she was safely married, and Gray was wealthy beyond even her dreams.

  She picked up the telephone. The line was dead. She rattled it desperately, trying to force it into life, but it was not having any. She replaced it. She must get in touch with Gray. They must stop the Little Puppy from going to London.

  Chapter Seven

  John Chantry was feeling rather pleased with life. Some of the building restrictions were being lifted, and his partner had found a large supply of building materials which had been smuggled in from France. Not that its provenance was something that they could admit to officially knowing about – of course not – but nevertheless a supply of old building materials that could go to repair some of the war damage on the Fairview estate was making both himself and Lord Fairview very happy indeed. All in all John could not wait for Monday morning.

  He hummed as he dead-headed the roses around the French windows, thinking as he did so that no one ever told the truth about dead-heading. When an actress in a West End play came through the French windows wearing a flowered hat, carrying an elegant basket on her arm, and remarking that she had just finished dead-heading her roses, she should, if she was half an actress, be covered with scratches and breathing heavily, not looking fresh from her makeup mirror without a hair out of place.

  ‘John?’

  John looked round at Mary. Despite the heat of the day, and the fact that she was working all God’s hours o
n a trousseau for Lady Finsborough’s daughter, his wife of a quarter of a century was looking very fresh and pretty. He smiled at her.

  ‘Yes, love?’

  Mary too smiled, and then remembering why she had come out to the garden, she stopped smiling.

  ‘We have a visitor.’

  ‘Yes, love?’

  ‘Yes, John. That Gray Wyndham man. He is outside the front door again, in his Bentley.’

  John could not help approving of Mary leaving Gray Wyndham outside the front door. He also approved of her referring to him as ‘that Gray Wyndham man’; that was just how someone should refer to a bounder like him.

  ‘I suppose you will have to show him in,’ he said in a purposefully bored voice.

  ‘Either that or tell him to go back to London, or wherever he is staying at the moment.’

  John thought for a minute.

  ‘No, show him in, love.’ He put down his secateurs, and removed his gardening gloves slowly and methodically, laying them down with care on the old oak garden table, as a boxer might lay his gloves.

  ‘I will show him into the sitting room. That is what you want?’

  ‘Yes, yes, love, by all means.’

  ‘Do you want me to fetch ice and lemon for drinks?’

  ‘Yes, yes, love, fetch ice and lemon.’ John smiled, and Mary too smiled. ‘And by the way, love. You look very, very sweet in that flower-printed frock. Have I seen it before?’

  ‘Yes, dear. I wore it when we got engaged. Up on the Downs that day, remember?’

  ‘Ah, yes, I thought I remembered it. Well, you look as young and pretty as you did then. Fallen in love with you all over again, really I have.’

  ‘Thank you, John.’

  Mary’s smile broadened, and she hurried off, first to fetch the ice and lemon, and then to let in the Gray Wyndham man, whom she had deliberately left standing outside the front door, his wretched car parked too close for comfort to their beech hedge.

  The ice and lemon having been laid out on the drinks tray, she walked slowly to the front door, and finally opened it.

  She had to give the Gray Wyndham man his due, he was very good at pretending that she was behaving towards him in a normal fashion. His smile had never been more urbane, white teeth sparkling, tanned face, above the blue of his immaculate laundered shirt, handsome in every way.

  ‘My husband will see you in the sitting room.’

  Gray followed Mary into the increasingly familiar flowered chintz sitting room with its bowls of roses and Alchemilla mollis, its photograph of the Chantrys on their wedding day, and its charmingly quaint copper objects. Despite the fact that the sitting room was filled with warm, welcoming English style, Mrs Chantry’s manner towards him made Gray feel just a little as if he was a patient following a nurse into a dentist’s waiting room.

  ‘There we are.’ Mary stood back waiting for John, who was still loitering in the garden. ‘My husband shouldn’t be long.’

  Gray thought, the dentist shouldn’t be long.

  ‘Would you like a gin and tonic?’

  It was such a hot day, how could he refuse?

  ‘I should love a gin and tonic, Mrs Chantry.’

  Gray was still standing.

  ‘Do sit down, please.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘No, thank you, I prefer to stand, if you don’t mind. I have been sitting in the car for most of the day. I had to go to see my father on family business, but then I thought perhaps it would be a good idea to call on you.’

  ‘You might have telephoned?’

  ‘Yes, I might have, except my father will not allow guests to use his telephone.’

  Mary looked at Gray. ‘How strange,’ she murmured, handing him a perfectly made gin and tonic.

  ‘Yes, but then he is strange. Since my mother died he has become more than a little eccentric.’

  ‘I believe people do. They lack the restraint of the other person. It can be tiresome.’

  ‘Very tiresome.’

  ‘Ah, here’s my husband.’

  The dentist will see you now.

  Mary left the room, eager only to go back to her sewing, to the thing that she knew she did best, the thing that she enjoyed the most, the thing that proved to her that she was just a little more than ‘Mrs Chantry, wife of John.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Wyndham.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Chantry.’

  John strolled across to his drinks tray, and made himself a gin and tonic, very, very slowly, tortuously slowly, so slowly that Gray found himself reduced to sipping his own drink, despite the fact that he had a raging thirst and would normally have knocked it back in no time at all.

  John strolled back to the other end of the sitting room, which was not a long walk, and joined Gray, who was now standing by the French windows staring out at the roses.

  ‘The roses have been magnificent this year, have they not?’

  John nodded slowly, smiling at his garden in a pleasant manner, as a vaguely proud mother might smile at the sight of her children playing.

  ‘Yes, they have been quite magnificent,’ he agreed, feeling almost bored at having to talk to this overelegant man who had come into their lives. He thought he must hurry things along, or he might have to offer him another drink, so he added quickly, ‘How can I help you, Mr Wyndham? Or rather, should I say, can I help you?’

  ‘As a matter of fact you can help me,’ Gray agreed, and suddenly caring less than he should what the other man might think, he quickly finished the rest of his gin and put his glass down on the top of a nest of tables nearby.

  ‘It’s about Sunny, Mr Chantry, it’s about your daughter.’

  ‘Yes, I know Sunny is my daughter, Mr Gray.’ John smiled. It was not a particularly pleasant smile, nor was it meant to be.

  ‘She is affording me a great deal of worry.’

  ‘Well, that is Sunny, Mr Wyndham. She is a worry. We, her father and mother, have always known that, whereas it would seem you are only now beginning to find this out for yourself. Sunny likes to cause worry, it is her forte. She is dedicated to causing concern in others. She does not mean it, really. It is just in her nature.’

  Gray realised that Mr Chantry was telling him that Sunny was a troublemaker, although not in so many words. He did not like this. He did not like it for two reasons. The first was that he now thought of Sunny as being like her name, and the second was that it made Leandra’s plan for them all just a little less certain. It made him doubt its efficacy.

  ‘I have to tell you, Mr Chantry, that far from causing trouble, your daughter has won hearts wherever she goes. My father, who is a notorious recluse, almost, one could say, a thoroughgoing misogynist, was as putty in her hands. He did not want her to leave his house, whereas normally he wants everyone to leave after five minutes flat.’

  Now it was John who was not enjoying what he was hearing, also for two reasons, although really rather different ones. First, he did not like to think that Gray Wyndham’s father had seen a side to Sunny that he had not even glimpsed for some time, and secondly he did not like to think of Gray Wyndham being in charge of Sunny, when he, her father, had that duty.

  ‘I am very glad to hear that Sunny has been behaving herself.’

  Gray did not like that either. The idea of Sunny misbehaving herself was somehow belittling.

  ‘I would not think that Sunny knew how to misbehave, Mr Chantry.’

  ‘Then you obviously don’t know her very well.’

  ‘No, I do not know her very well, but as I just said, what I have seen of her is quite simply enchanting. What others have seen of her is quite the same. Sunny by name, Sunny by nature.’

  John made a slight sound. It was neither approving nor disapproving, but nondescript in a way that made Gray turn to look at his host with greater scrutiny, trying to translate both the man and the noise.

  ‘So what is it you want me to do?’

  John drained his glass and put it down beside Gray’s glass
on the nest of tables. For a second their glasses looked almost friendly, as if the users had both been enjoying themselves, as if they had been having a good time, which was so far from the truth that had Gray been still at his father’s house he would have rung the bell for Jones to come and take the wretched things away.

  ‘I don’t actually want you to do anything, Mr Chantry. I just wanted to warn you that I think that Sunny has it in her mind to go to London, and as her fiancé, this worries me, as I am sure that it worries you. I want to think of Sunny here with you, in Rushington, going to college, generally enjoying herself in her usual innocent way. I don’t want to think of her in the great metropolis, being laid open to temptations of every kind. I am not a great lover of London, although I do live there, so I must admit that while my fears are probably quite groundless, I do know our great capital city like the back of my hand, and for a girl as pretty and personable as Sunny, there can only be temptations such as you and I, as her father and fiancé, would not wish for her.’

  It was rather a pompous speech, and once he had finished it Gray realised it only too well. Perhaps he was so caught up in his own feelings, so embarrassed that he had begun to sound like some sort of modern version of Mr Barrett, the domineering father of Elizabeth Barrett who ran off with the poet Robert Browning, that he failed to notice that John Chantry’s eyes had hardened in a most unattractive manner.

  ‘You have overstepped the mark now, Mr Wyndham,’ he said. His quiet tone was much more frightening than any heightened volume. ‘You have overstepped the mark to such an extent that I really have no alternative but to call a halt to this whole charade of your engagement to my daughter. Because, let us face it, Mr Wyndham, it is a charade. I don’t know what you are up to, and I don’t know what your game is, but I do know that my instinct tells me you are up to no good at all.’

  Gray looked at him amazed.

  ‘But, but – but all I have just said was that I was worried about Sunny going to London. That is all I have said. I would have thought that as her father you would have found that reasonable.’