The White Marriage Page 22

  ‘This is terrible. You mustn’t laugh.’ She stared ahead of her, then, seeing Sam’s face, she too started to laugh. ‘No, really, this is serious. I mean, Sunny really loves this chap. She thinks wherever he is the sun shines brightest. She is going to be heartbroken.’

  They fell silent, both staring ahead.

  ‘A fine mess someone’s got someone in, then?’

  ‘Well, if that’s not stating the obvious – but what do we do now?’

  Sam held up his hands. ‘No “we” to it – you are in this thing alone, Arietta Staunton. I try to avoid post offices at all times, and as for reading other people’s love letters, not my thing, kid, just not my thing.’

  ‘No, I am not in this alone, I’m really not. You are in it too. After all, it’s your uncle that owns the blooming bookshop that allows this sort of thing to happen.’

  ‘Can’t quite see that, but no doubt I will come round to it in a few centuries’ time.’

  Arietta shook her head, not really listening. ‘And the worst of it is, she’s coming up to London in a few days, so do I tell her then? What do I do?’

  ‘No, no, you can’t tell her! You can’t possibly. It’s not up to you. She has to find out for herself.’

  ‘I can tell her, but should I? If I don’t she might find out that I knew all along, and that will be that.’ She stared not at Sam, but through him. ‘Oh dear, this is a bit like something beastly in Shakespeare.’

  ‘Never mind what it’s like. You still can’t tell her, you know you can’t. You just can’t. She probably wouldn’t believe you anyway.’

  ‘No, I can’t tell her, I agree.’

  ‘Something will happen,’ Sam stated finally. ‘It always does. Let’s forget about it for a few hours. Do let’s.’ He paused for a second, changing tack. ‘How about coming for a spaghetti bolognese instead of sitting agonising about this Sunny girl?’

  At that Arietta stared at Sam, not through him. If you came from Rushington, spaghetti bolognese was exotic to a degree. You had heard about it, but you had never actually eaten it.

  ‘Spaghetti bolognese? Are you sure?’

  ‘I am sure I’m sure. Follow me. Giuseppe does the best, and he is only a few streets away. The secret is, well, there are two secrets to a spaghetti bolognese. One is the celery, and the other is chicken liver. But you must let him tell you …’

  That was all a few days ago. Now Arietta was strolling home alone, staring up at the evening sky, and wondering why Sunny hadn’t called round to the bookshop for her key, wondering if she had changed her mind about coming to London, wondering if she might have already found out about her beastly fiancé? It would be so good if she had. It would be better than good, it would be frabjous, as in ‘frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’

  When she reached the house she rapped on the basement window, and called to where she could see Sam sitting reading some sheet music. He beckoned to her to come down and, going to the basement door, he let her in, at the same time placing his finger to his lips.

  ‘I found your friend on the doorstep an hour or so ago. She’d been there for hours.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You were wrong by the way.’ Sam gave her a sly look. ‘She’s not pretty at all. She’s beautiful.’

  Arietta stared at him. It was probably true. Sunny probably was beautiful, but quite honestly, at that minute, she had other things on her mind.

  ‘Where is she now?’ she asked.

  ‘She’s asleep on the sofa in the other room.’

  ‘Why is she asleep?’

  Sam looked innocent and scratched his head in a comical fashion, which made Arietta feel suspicious.

  ‘I don’t know. I think it must be because she felt tired from sitting on her suitcase since heaven only knows when – since this morning. Since lunch-time I think she said, actually.’

  ‘You can wake her up then, I’m not going to. Apparently she’s lethal when she’s woken up, always has been, can’t help it.’

  Sam nodded. ‘Some people are. My father is the soul of sweetness, but my sister is beastly punchy when woken.’

  Despite his cheerful tone, Sam was feeling rueful. He had hoped to make Arietta jealous by his observation about Sunny Chantry’s being beautiful, which although true, had been a trifle unnecessary. He saw that he had failed to make Miss Staunton jealous. This impressed him. He was used to girls being jealous of each other, and the fact that she had not shown the slightest interest in his observation meant that she really was what Uncle Randy would call ‘stalky’.

  ‘Tell you what, we can both be stalky about this situation, really we can,’ he went on as airily as he could. ‘I’ll leave my flatmate Hart a note to wake her when he gets in, and he can take the flak, savez?’

  ‘But will he?’

  ‘Hart? Hart will take anything from flak to your best evening jacket. He’s the most stalky of us all, there is no biznai that he does not know about. Come on, off to the pub. I’m fed up with being cooped up inside this hellhole on a hot summer evening.’

  ‘What about giving her the key?’

  ‘I’ll put it on the hall table with the note.’

  Arietta nodded. She had hoped that Sam had been trying to make her jealous by extolling Sunny’s beauty, and now she knew that she was right, or he would not be leaving Hart a note, and taking her to the pub.

  She walked ahead of him up the area steps. The truth was even if she didn’t like being with Sam, which she did, she was actually feeling nervous and shy about seeing Sunny now that she knew that awful Wyndham man was deceiving her with ‘darlingest’ Mrs Fortescue. The morbid truth was that Sunny knew Arietta too well not to sense that something was wrong. Arietta had to prepare herself to be quite normal. She sighed, setting out towards the pub ahead of Sam. What a pickle it all was, and it was sure to end in everything being beastly rather than stalky.

  Sam caught her up and took her arm as they walked along.

  ‘Stop worrying,’ he ordered, giving her arm a little shake. ‘It’s a fine evening, we’re going to the pub. That’s all that matters just now.’

  He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. Arietta pretended not to notice, just kept walking. Sam smiled. He knew that she had noticed, because she coloured a little, although she didn’t bother to turn to look at him.

  This he realised, as they walked along in companionable silence, was going to be the signature on their relationship, how it would always be. He would be the one to kiss, she would be the one to receive the kiss.

  Arietta knew herself too well not to realise it also. She had been too hurt in her childhood ever to risk being hurt any more. Whoever liked her would have to come to her. She would go to no one.

  ‘Come on!’ Sam let go her arm and started to run. ‘Race you to the pub!’

  Although she was running well and fast, perhaps because she started later, Arietta found herself having to put on a great deal of speed in order to catch up with Sam.

  Sam smiled as he heard her sprinting behind him, thinking that any girl who was that athletic had to make a great model. By the time she was trying to overtake him he had already composed the painting. Perhaps because Arietta was at the centre of it, he finally let her win.

  ‘Slow coach,’ she said, turning to face him, her hand on the pub door, her face pink with the effort.

  Sam smiled, and his green eyes glinted in the early evening London light. For a second Arietta caught the glint as she walked ahead of him into the pub. That smile reminded her of someone. Too late she realised who it might be. It was Beatrix Potter’s foxy-whiskered gentleman. Was she then to play Jemima Puddle-Duck?

  Leandra was furious, not just with Dilke for being so stupid, what with his disastrous affairs, both monetary and amatory, but she was also furious with Gray.

  Gray had somehow let the Little Puppy slip through his fingers, and not just his fingers, he had let her slip through their fingers, and now the Little Puppy was doubtless gadding about London in a manner that,
given her age and innocence, could surely only lead to trouble. There must have been some way that Gray could have stopped her from coming to London.

  Gray was looking suitably miserable. Well, he looked as miserable as anyone with his looks could look, which was not really very miserable at all.

  ‘How could I stop her from coming to London, darlingest, when it was her parents themselves who were actually sending her? They quite obviously do not want her at home any more; and really, considering their quite open dislike of me, you can’t really blame the poor creatures, can you?’

  Leandra felt quite able to blame them. In fact, she was sure that should they have been within a few feet of her, she might feel strongly tempted to bang their heads together, the idiotic couple!

  ‘What could they be thinking, sending a young, stupid girl to London on her own that way?’

  She started to walk up and down Gray’s drawing room. She did not much like visiting Gray at home, for all sorts of reasons. The hall porter, she knew, must pass on information about visitors to all sorts of people in the know, gossip columnists, people in the security services, you name it, he would undoubtedly be in the market for receiving payments of any size for information, gossip – anything.

  This was the drawback of being well known in polite circles, of always being mentioned and photographed in the press. A London hall porter would hardly need an Oxford degree to recognise her. Unfortunately, this particular day there had been no alternative to her visiting Gray rather than his being able to slip into her house by the servants’ entrance, as was his habit. The reason for this was that the financial vultures were already visiting their latest victim – Dilke – pencils and pens poised over their notebooks as they added up the value of the Fortescues’ many and beautiful objets.

  Just before she left she had actually found Dilke trying to hide his jade collection. Despite his protestations, she had insisted that it be left out for assessment, and not just because she knew that his collection was both rare and valuable.

  ‘Dilke was trying to hide his jade collection from the money men,’ she murmured inconsequentially. ‘I made him leave it out. They’re welcome to it. I hate jade.’

  Gray too disliked jade, almost as much as he knew Dilke disliked him, but for a second he felt sorry for the older man. The poor fellow’s collection meant so much to him.

  Gray frowned, lit a cigarette, and started to pace up and down the drawing room, wondering why things were not going better.

  His visit to Pear Tree Cottage in Rushington had been unfortunate, to say the least. In fact, driving back to London and Leandra with the news that the Little Puppy had fled her kennel had been really quite upsetting. He had found himself turning the events of the past days over and over in his mind, knowing that they were not going their way, and perhaps more importantly, they were not going his way.

  It was not just the idea of Sunny Chantry alone in London that had been upsetting, it was the fact that despite the frigid atmosphere, the parental disapproval, Gray had actually spoken the truth to her father. He did not like to think of Sunny as being anywhere except at home with her parents, and now that it was obvious that her parents – who were looking extraordinarily chipper and spry – were more than happy for her to be let off her lead, it must mean that Sunny meant more to Gray than he could ever have imagined.

  At first, in comparison to Leandra, Sunny had appealed only as a pretty little toy, but then seeing how adroit she had been at handling his father, she had started to appeal to him as being something rather more. A pretty little toy could not have won over his father, not to mention the whole household. A pretty little toy would have merely sat about making toylike noises, whereas Sunny Chantry, and in a very short space of time, had Jocelyn Wyndham eating out of her elegant little hand.

  ‘Hope that poor sweet creature you’ve got in tow sees sense before it’s too late,’ was what Jocelyn had actually said to Gray before he took his leave of his father, a remark that suggested to Gray that Sunny was perhaps not as firmly nailed to the idea of marriage to him as Leandra and he had fondly imagined.

  Remembering all this, the thought now came to Gray for the first time – was it possible that Sunny had seen sense? That she had gone to London not just at her parents’ suggestion, but of her own volition? That she had, in other words, determined not just to escape from her parents, but to escape from Gray and Leandra too? Had his father warned her off Gray? He would be quite capable of so doing.

  ‘Stupid, stupid girl,’ Leandra was now murmuring to no one in particular as she too lit a cigarette and stared out into the Mayfair street.

  Gray looked at Leandra. She suddenly seemed older, which was hardly surprising considering the strain she was under with Dilke’s mismanagement of their finances, but it was not just that. Leandra seemed older, perhaps, because he had been thinking about Sunny. Her voice seemed older, and her eyes had an older look, and she smoked in a way that older women do, intensely, as if the nicotine was not getting to her fast enough. She lacked Sunny’s freshness, she lacked her vivacity. Finally, he realised, she lacked Sunny’s warmth and kindness.

  ‘Sunny Chantry is not stupid, Leandra,’ he announced, after a long pause. ‘In fact, I would say that is the last thing that Sunny Chantry is. She may be innocent, but she is certainly not stupid.’

  Leandra glanced up at him, for once not really paying much attention.

  ‘She could be anywhere in this city, anywhere.’ She stood up and, going to a heavy glass ashtray, she stubbed out her Turkish cigarette in its gleaming, immaculate centre, before starting to walk up and down the room, not looking at Gray or anything else in particular, as people don’t when they are caught up in their own emotions. ‘Do you realise that, thanks to the total irresponsibility of her parents, we have absolutely no idea of where to find this girl? Or even where to start looking for her?’

  ‘Leandra,’ Gray caught at her now cigarette-free hands, ‘let’s be frank. This was a crazy idea. I mean, you have had some great ideas in your time, some wonderful ideas, but this was mad, darling. How could we possibly expect this poor young girl to marry me and live a virgin’s life while we carried on our affair? It is preposterous. Truly, it is.’

  Leandra snatched her hands away from him.

  ‘It is far from being preposterous,’ she told him in a low voice. ‘My plan is perfect. I told you at the start this sort of association is perfectly acceptable in Paris, in New York, and even in staid old London. But always to succeed one needs someone quite, quite innocent. The sophisticates that we know, know all about us, so they will never do. By chance, by good luck, we found just the one we needed. Nothing should have gone wrong. She is perfect for our plans. The only thing that has gone wrong with the plan is the parents of our innocent. It is they who have thrown a spanner in the works, and it is up to us to take the spanner out of the works, and throw it right back at them in Lustington—’

  ‘Rushington actually.’

  ‘In Rushington. Precisely. No, we have to keep our nerve. The debts are catching up on Dilke, and we are going to need to stick close together, you and I, darling.’ She looked up at Gray with sudden passion. ‘Not so difficult really, is it?’

  Gray smiled, but it was an uneasy smile and he knew it. He just hoped that Leandra did not recognise it as such. To cover the moment he returned to the subject in hand.

  ‘We cannot expect the Little Puppy’s parents to be on our side. They have never pretended to be on our side. They have always said that they do not approve of me, that I am too old, that I am unsuitable – which, let’s face it, I am.’

  Even as he stated this Gray had to admit to himself that he felt that he was actually far from being too old for Sunny, and was certainly not unsuitable. He was, after all, quite a catch, now that his father had lost his heart to Sunny. But how could he find out whether she felt the same as he, if he couldn’t find her, if he had indeed lost her?

  It seemed that Leandra was determined to return t
o the subject that was most occupying her.

  ‘The whole situation is now impossible, thanks to those parents!’ Leandra paused. ‘We can only hope that she will be in touch with you soon. That is our one hope. I know she was upset when you didn’t telephone her, because she told me as much.’ She paused again. ‘But in the event of her not getting in touch with you, then we can only take it that she has changed her mind, or met someone else. Oh, but those parents, they have made such a mess of things, truly they have.’

  Gray shook his head. ‘Let us drop the subject of the Chantrys and concentrate on trying to find the Little Puppy ourselves,’ he suggested. ‘It is really not very attractive to go about blaming these poor folk who are, after all, only acting in what they believe to be their daughter’s best interests. I cannot be a party to heaping blame on them, truly I can’t.’

  Leandra felt astonished, but was careful not to look it. She put her head on one side, and smiled.

  ‘Mmm, indeed, darling, you’re right,’ she agreed after a little pause. ‘That was very wrong of me.’

  ‘Besides, you know and I know that there was someone else, was there not? The complication that you told me about? It is becoming more and more obvious that he is the reason she has come to London.’

  ‘Oh, that was nothing,’ Leandra said, a little too quickly even to her own ears as she remembered her lie. ‘I found out about that. It was just a passing flirtation, nothing more. She told me about that. It was nothing. I shouldn’t even have mentioned it, really I shouldn’t.’

  ‘No, perhaps you shouldn’t. As a matter of fact, although we are meant to be keeping emotions out of it, it very nearly made me jealous. As I said, Sunny is still very innocent, you know. I’m quite sure she is incapable of having anything but the purest feelings for anyone. At the moment she is the proverbial rose at dawn.’

  All of a sudden, Leandra caught on.

  Gray was not just defending the parents of the Little Puppy, he was defending the Little Puppy herself, seeing her not as stupid, but innocent, which Leandra knew must be instantly appealing to an older man.