The Magic Hour Read online

  ‘How could anyone be cruel to you, Florazel? What a bastard he must have been, a hateful cruel bastard.’

  ‘Oh I’m afraid he was hateful, but I was a silly ignorant young girl, so we made quite a pair.’ She laughed. ‘By the way, Tom, apropos of nothing we were talking of, your call-up papers? The good doctor did write to my contact, a dear old general, great friend of my brother’s actually, and it seems your dear little tubercular gland does mean that they have deferred any National Service until further notice. You are not suitable to be an officer, and since you are already a gentleman, we now know where we are with you, don’t we?’ She stood up and kissed him lightly across the tea table. ‘Do you realise that this means that we can sail to New York as soon as may be? I have booked tickets on the Queen Mary. You will love it.’ Her expression grew dreamy. ‘Cut off from the whole world, one sails along in a whirl of luxury. It is something you have to know or you simply haven’t lived.’

  Tom stared at her. There seemed no end to the wondrous life she had opened up for him, and perhaps as a consequence no end to his desire for her.

  ‘What are you thinking of, Tom?’

  ‘I was wondering what would have happened to me if Mrs Posnet, my landlady, hadn’t sent me up to your brother’s estate that day. What would I be doing now? That’s what I was wondering. What would have happened to me?’

  ‘You would be waiting for me to come along, which I would have done, sooner or later, because you needed me, Tom. You would be waiting for me; you need me, as much as I need you.’

  As Tom caught her hand and kissed its smooth, white surface, and as he reluctantly gave her back her hand, having admired her beautiful rings and her perfectly manicured nails, he turned away from the sudden memory of Bob Atkins’s voice, which would recur at such odd moments. What did it matter if Florazel had enjoyed other affairs? She was a beautiful woman, for God’s sake. He would make her life, as she had made his, as beautiful as it could be. He would give her anything she wanted.

  Perhaps it was thinking of this that led him to go in search of the box that contained his mother’s final gifts to him: the touchingly few pieces of jewellery, her passport, the letter, everything – besides a few hundred pounds in the bank – that she had left in the world, which she had left to him. When he eventually found the cheap cardboard box, he could not help feeling almost repelled by its drab appearance, so incongruous did it appear among all the luxury of his surroundings, so out of place in his new life; and that was all before he opened it and reread her last letter to him, written with such difficulty in cheap biro on lined, narrow, blue writing paper. Mrs O’Brien and her son Tom, they had been everything to each other, no matter what, and they had been so happy at Knighton. If only he had not gone for Westrup’s medicine, if only he had not opened that barn door, she might perhaps be alive now. He might have been able to help her, find her a pretty cottage somewhere, give her everything that he had ever wanted for her: a happy life, money enough to buy a new dress or a winter coat, expensive shoes – money to have her hair done properly, things that could have transformed her back into the girl that he could see in her passport photograph.

  He looked up as Florazel returned, humming in time with a tune that was playing on her dressing-room radio. She was dressed to go out for the evening in a black lace cocktail dress with a small silk bolero jacket over the top. Her whole allure, the way she wore her clothes, everything that she suddenly seemed to stand for – sophistication, good manners, and elegance – was in such sharp contrast to his mother’s few possessions in their small box, that looking from the contents of the box to Florazel was like a blow in the solar plexus.

  Little surprise therefore that Tom felt overwhelmed with love for this new older woman in his life who had lifted him into another world, a world where power and influence were taken for granted, where life’s small luxuries were a permanent suite at the Ritz in London, a convertible Bentley in the garage, and a wardrobe of couture clothes.

  ‘What would you say are the great luxuries in your life, Florazel?’

  She was standing in front of the mirror over the chimneypiece, so she now eyed him in it.

  ‘My great luxuries?’ She sounded puzzled, as if she had never before thought of her life as having any luxuries. She frowned. ‘My greatest luxuries,’ she repeated. ‘Oh, love, of course, love is one of life’s greatest luxuries. And quiet, and – oh, and privacy. After that, maids and valets and so on, which of course all come with living at the Ritz.’

  ‘Don’t you ever think of having a house of your own? A garden. Somewhere only you went, not owned by anyone but you?’

  Florazel shook her head and laughed.

  ‘Gracious, Tom, you’re beginning to sound just like my brother. No, is the answer to that. I do not dream of owning a house and garden. For the very good reason I could not bear to deal with servants and gardeners.’ She stopped, looking vaguely embarrassed, remembering Tom’s previous profession. ‘You know what I mean.’

  Tom laughed as she coloured.

  ‘You mean you’d rather take the gardener to bed than have to tell him what to plant?’

  At this they both laughed, and Tom, having replaced his treasured box on the desk, caught at her hands and pulled her to him.

  ‘You are outrageous, Florazel Compton, did you know that?’

  She nodded happily.

  ‘I certainly hope so, goodness knows I have worked hard enough to be so.’

  Tom, his heart flowing over with love for her, turned back to the desk.

  ‘I have something in here for you, Florazel …’

  He carefully opened the box, and took out first his mother’s letter, and then her passport.

  ‘These were my mother’s,’ he said with reverence in his voice. ‘Her last letter to me, and her passport, from before she was married.’

  ‘Oh poor lady, how she must have loved you.’

  Tom nodded. His mother had loved him. He had been all she had. He opened her old passport and stared at the photo of the slender, pretty young woman and shook his head.

  ‘She changed so much in her life, once she had me, she even changed her name. She always seemed so frightened in case my father might catch up with her. She never would talk about it much; except to say that my father was cruel and that she prayed to God every day that I would not turn out like him. And that’s how it stayed until one day she told me that she’d heard that he’d died, but that she could not even bring herself to feel sorry. That was what she dreaded most, I think. Sometimes it wasn’t easy for her, because if she was cooking in big houses, she never really knew who might turn up at any time, she was always dreading that someone might recognize her from her former life. “You never know, Tom.” She always said that, she was always suspicious, always listening, waiting, in case one of my father’s family caught up with her, took me away from her. Never would tell me my father’s name. “You’re Thomas O’Brien, and that’s all you need to know,” she would say. And now I suppose, in respect to her memory, I don’t want to know about him either. I will always stay, as she wanted me to be, plain Thomas O’Brien. And proud of it too.’

  ‘May I see?’

  Florazel stretched out her hand and took the passport from him and stared first at the front page, and then the page containing the photograph.

  ‘She was very pretty, Tom,’ she stated, after a long pause during which she continually turned the first pages of the passport, examining them closely, before flicking aimlessly through the rest. ‘Didn’t travel much, though, did she?’

  She turned away and going to her evening bag she took out her cigarette case and a tipped cigarette.

  ‘So you don’t remember your father at all?’

  Tom shook his head.

  ‘No. I was just a mistake. Some people are, aren’t they? But if I was a mistake, which I assuredly was, I know it would be a greater one to try and find who I was meant to be, who my poor dead mother married. I know what he must have been like f
rom what she didn’t say about him. She was like someone who’d had a rotten time as a prisoner of war, she really wouldn’t mention her marriage, and I don’t blame her. So, I’m Tom O’Brien, and that’s good enough for me, whatever it says there on Ma’s passport. Maybe it will be different when I’m older, but I doubt it.’

  ‘You are quite right, Tom. As I said: one should never go back to the past. It is the golden rule, never, ever go back.’

  Florazel went over to the drinks tray, lighting the cigarette as she went. Tom replaced the passport and his mother’s letter in the box, and after a few seconds followed this by taking out a small leather box which he held tightly as he walked towards her.

  ‘Florazel?’

  ‘Yes. Tom?’

  She was now mixing them both one of her stunning cocktails.

  ‘You know how much in love with you I am, don’t you, Florazel?’

  She looked up from her task, smiling.

  ‘And I with you, Tom. We are both in love with each other. We know that, don’t we?’

  ‘Well, I wonder if you would marry me, Florazel?’ Tom opened the top of the leather box and was gratified to see that the small diamond ring inside was just opulent enough to catch the lights far above them. ‘Will you marry me, Florazel?’

  Florazel stared first at the ring in the box, and then at Tom, his grey eyes so obviously full of the emotion of which he was speaking.

  ‘No, Tom, I will not marry you.’ She smiled. ‘I will do anything for you, but not that, I can never marry, not ever.’

  Tom stared at her as she smiled apologetically.

  ‘I don’t like commitment, Tom. I don’t like permanence. Now is the time I like. Tomorrow I might not like anything here, not even myself. We don’t need rings and commitment. We have now and here, anything else is not worth thinking about, not worth sighing over.’ Seeing the look of hurt on his face, she touched him lightly on his cheek. ‘Cheer up, darling, it might be worse. I might say “yes”!’

  Tom turned away feeling the most awful fool, and at the same time Bob’s words came back to him from that early spring afternoon that now seemed like a century ago. ‘She’s a nymphomaniac, didn’t you know, old boy? It’s well known that Lady Florazel Compton devours younger men. It’s her hobby.’

  ‘Hadn’t you better go and change? We are entertaining in a private room downstairs tonight. So many more of my friends I want you to meet, darling.’

  Later he heard Florazel saying laughingly to some friend, over the sound of the usual cocktail party chatter, ‘You must come and meet my new toy, so handsome, such fun.’

  Her words, lightly said, nevertheless had a horrid theatrical ring to them. They were false and he knew it, just flippant words that people use when they are at pains to appear lightweight and social, but now that he knew that Florazel did not want to commit herself, that he might well be just a passing fancy, her words seemed to have a cruel reality to them.

  Filled with an overpowering desire to be on his own, away from all the inconsequential chatter, Tom slipped away from the party without bothering to collect Florazel, or even to tell her that he was leaving.

  For the next few hours he walked around Mayfair, staring up at the lights in the elegant houses, looking at cars arriving and departing, their chauffeurs standing to attention, the maids in their black and white uniforms holding open the doors to allow the beautifully dressed guests to pass in or out. This was the world to which Florazel had introduced him. This was the world that he now inhabited. He had tasted of not one forbidden fruit but many. In a very few months he had grown used to the feel of good clothes, to eating exquisite food, to the constant attention of hotel staff, to chauffeurs and maids, valets and waiters. There was no going back now, and Tom knew it.

  Bob was standing on the corner outside the Lyons teashop looking vaguely embarrassed as people do who are waiting for someone that they fear might not turn up. He shifted every now and then from foot to foot, and looked up and down the old street, noting how few people took a walk on Sunday afternoons, how the world and his wife seemed to disappear never to return, and at the same time remembering how long Sunday afternoon had been when he was a boy. He recalled how he had invented a friend with whom he would play imaginary games, games of which his friend would never tire – but the moment he caught sight of Alexandra being bowled along by the dogs, his face lit up and he forgot all about those lonely Sundays of childhood, and bounded forward, his hand outstretched for one of the tartan leads.

  ‘Here, let me have a dog, Minty. I want a dog to walk too, you know.’ He leaned down and patted the top of Rupert’s head. ‘He’s a real gent, I can tell. He won’t mind me taking charge of him, will he, Minty?’

  Alexandra hesitated, about to tell him her real name, and then she stopped. It suddenly seemed better to stay being Minty, at least in Deanford, so much less confusing for everyone, including herself.

  The green of the grass that day was a powdery green, as it would be, given the underlying chalk of the Downs, but the wild flowers did not seem to care that the lush green of the meadows far below was brighter than anything that surrounded them, any more than the birds that sang and flew past as Alexandra and Bob and the dogs attempted to run up the steep hills, only to stop out of breath, before turning to stare down the incline up which they had all come.

  It was a rare feeling to be free of cooking and cleaning, to have the wind blow your hat off and to have to run back after it, to have Bob catch your hand to steady you as you stood on the crest of the topmost incline, and in turn for you both to catch up the spaniels and put them on their leads. It was deliciously satisfactory to walk slowly down to a nearby village, some few miles away from the still, Sundayness of Deanford, and order tea and toast at Ann’s Pantry, not to mention sponge cake with a cream and jam filling, which suddenly seemed to both of them, what with the walking and the climbing, to be the first food they had eaten in days, so intense and individual were the tastes, so delicate the cups of tea, so friendly the service.

  Up until then thoughts of love had not really entered Alexandra’s head, and despite the usual adolescent anxieties over the exact way to wear her shoulder-length dark hair, or the advisability, or not, of sunbathing – something of which her grandmother had heartily disapproved – she had reconciled herself to realising that for her, as yet, the opposite sex was something about which she knew little and cared less. Her life at home had been too confined, altogether too regimented to allow for anything more than dreams, and any thoughts of romance had always to be put aside in favour of the practicalities of living.

  Now was different. Now she was away from home, and she could see that Bob was already imagining that he was in love with her, and that was at the very least interesting, and at the very best exciting, because Bob was tall and handsome, and he had such an engaging manner that Alexandra soon realised that long before he came into sight, she was smiling just at the thought of him.

  ‘I say, wasn’t it ner-ner-nice that they let the dogs in?’

  Although Alexandra had walked out of the café, closely followed by a deliriously happy Bob, she felt so carefree she now skipped one pace as children suddenly do. Seeing this Bob’s heart too skipped a beat, and he knew instantly that he would love her all his life, and that no one else would do, that Minty was everything he could wish for in a girl, so different, so innocent of the false coquettish ways of other girls he had taken out.

  ‘I must see you again, Minty. Please.’

  They were standing by the back door to her basement flat. Alexandra looked away, not really wanting to see what Bob was feeling, not wanting to get there yet, wanting to keep everything as it had been that afternoon.

  ‘I-I-I only have Sundays off, and then only really after mer-mer-midday, because I ler-ler-like to make sure that Mrs Smithers has her ler-ler-lunch laid on, that she doesn’t feel lonely, especially on Sundays.’

  ‘Does she feel lonely often?’

  ‘She is going out to ler
-ler-lunch next Sunday.’

  ‘Then so are you, Minty.’ Bob leaned forward and kissed her gently, lips closed. ‘So are you.’

  Seconds later he spun off down the street, whistling.

  Mrs Smithers stared at Alexandra.

  ‘This is becoming a bit of a habit, Minty. You have been going out so often with Mr Atkins over these last months, it won’t be long before there are rumours running riot all over Deanford. I do hope that nothing is happening between you and Mr Atkins that might affect our little business, really I do.’

  Alexandra, who was wearing a new evening dress bought for her by Bob, shrugged her shoulders lightly.

  ‘If you’d rer-rer-rather I stayed behind …’

  ‘Of course I would rather you stayed behind, but it is Saturday evening, and we have agreed recently that you are allowed Saturday off if we have no engagements in the house, so no more to be said, I don’t suppose.’ Mrs Smithers sniffed and shook the evening paper. ‘I just hope that you don’t bring trouble home, Minty dear. Maids so often do, in fact maids are famous for bringing trouble home.’

  ‘I-I hope so ter-ter-too, ma’am!’ Alexandra laughed lightly, and as she did so Mrs Smithers gave her a brief look over the top of her newspaper.

  With the growing success of their little business, their relationship had changed a great deal, as it would. Even so, every so often, Alexandra delighted in saying ‘ma’am’, which she knew nowadays actually made Mrs Smithers feel vaguely uncomfortable.

  But Mrs Smithers had said ‘maids do bring trouble home’ so often lately that Alexandra could not help teasing her a little. It was irresistible.

  ‘Yer-yer-your supper’s laid in the dining room, and Mr Ber-Ber-Bellasco is calling round at eight to ter-ter-take you for chatty bridge to Mr and Mrs Mitford’s opposite; so you won’t be wanting for distractions, as my grandmother used to say.’