The White Marriage Read online

  ‘Yes, you’re right, darling. You’re quite right. I’m being peevish and silly. Forgive me, won’t you?’ she asked with uncharacteristic humility.

  She absented herself from the room for a short while, and when she returned, freshened and scented, Gray noticed that the cross look had gone from her beautiful violet-blue eyes and in its place was her usual sparkling amusement.

  ‘I must tell you of a rumour I heard regarding the first family in the land,’ she began, looking up at Gray in a way that she knew he loved.

  Gray stared down at her. He loved the scent she wore. It was very, very special. It always excited him, made him feel marvellous, even when he was feeling much less than marvellous.

  ‘Shall we forget about rumours for a while?’ he asked her in a lowered tone.

  ‘If you wish, sir?’

  ‘I certainly do, madam.’

  Gray took Leandra by her heavily ringed hand and they left the drawing room together, the Little Puppy at last forgotten.

  Later, Leandra smiled to herself as she dressed. It was as well to be sophisticated. No matter how innocent the Little Puppy, she would never, ever be able to keep up with Gray. Whatever Gray said about her, Sunny Chantry was too young and stupid to understand how to please someone like Gray.

  She kissed him goodbye. It was a kiss designed to remind him of the sensual hour that they had spent together, but without any sense of lingering passion. There was, after all, work to be done.

  Gray watched Leandra crossing the street below him.

  She was a beautiful woman who knew exactly how to please him, and, as always, please him she had, but what she could never do now was to take away a thirst that had been awakened in him for something else, something fresh and young. It was that which artlessly, and without perhaps meaning to, Sunny Chantry had awakened in him.

  He sighed and, Leandra having rounded a corner and disappeared from sight, he went to the drinks tray and poured himself a Scotch.

  One remark that Leandra had made during her tedious diatribe had hit home.

  Supposing, Leandra had suggested, Sunny did not get in touch with Gray herself? Supposing she had left home because she had indeed found someone else? Her parents might even know this, and it might explain their proud intransigence.

  He contemplated the idea for a few seconds and, finding it intolerable, he quickly finished his drink and went out to his club, just as Leandra found herself slipping unobtrusively back into her London house, only to discover that in the space of only a few hours, her situation was a great deal worse than she had thought.

  She knew this the moment she saw Bennison, her London butler’s, face. She knew it from the way his eyes could not look into hers, the way they strayed to the drawing-room door as a dog’s eyes might stray reproachfully to an empty dinner bowl. She knew it from the sound of the low murmur of the voices, and how hurried the voices were at points, and excited, as voices always became when there was money at stake.

  ‘They’re all still here, are they, Bennison?’ she asked, in a low voice.

  Bennison nodded.

  ‘I am afraid so, Mrs Fortescue,’ he replied in an even lower tone. In fact he spoke so low that for a moment Leandra had the feeling that if he dropped his voice any more she would be reduced to lip reading.

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘All of them.’

  Leandra nodded silently and then, quickly and quietly, she went to her bedroom suite and, without ringing for her maid, pulled down her suitcases and began to pack.

  She would leave London for Maydown as soon as possible. Once at Maydown she would start to think of what to do. Rule would help her. They could hide a great many things against the creditors – the smaller paintings, the treasured objets. They could put the copy of the most valuable painting, The Rape of the Sabines, into the old frame, and roll up the original and put it somewhere safe, somewhere where no one else would think of finding it.

  As she looked up train times and rang for a taxi – calling for the car would take far too long – Leandra found herself thinking of her grandmother, and she thanked her lucky stars that she had always told her granddaughter to have a contingency plan, that she had warned her, time and time again, that life could change suddenly and violently, and that being so, you always had to be ready to roll up paintings, hide precious objects such as jewellery and gold, and take to the hills, or in this particular case at this particular hour, the Sussex Downs.

  Chapter Nine

  Hart was making coffee for Sunny, whom he had just woken up.

  ‘I expect you’re like me, you like it black?’

  Back in Rushington Sunny normally took her coffee not only with milk, but with about four sugars. Now, however, she nodded in agreement because she did not want to appear unsophisticated.

  ‘Oh, yes, coffee must always be black,’ she agreed, watching Hart boiling a kettle and spooning a heaped spoon into an Alessi cafetiere.

  ‘I get this blend from Soho. It is actually Jamaican, very, very tasty, very strong. I bribe the kitchen boy at the back door of Gianelli; where he gets it from we do not ask.’ He smiled happily. ‘This should wake you up for the rest of the evening all right. There, I hope it’s strong enough?’

  Sunny took a sip of the coffee and despite the assault on her senses, she managed to smile. Only minutes before she had opened her eyes to see a more than interested male face staring at her. For a few seconds she had smiled, probably because the face had been smiling at her, but then she had sat up, feeling odd, as if she had been caught trespassing.

  ‘Just how I like my coffee.’

  Now she was in London she must change, and change she would, in every way, no matter what. She would change her hair, her clothes, her tastes in food and drink – everything. She would become sophisticated, and therefore older, and more suitable for Gray. She would learn new manners and new words such as Arietta had used on the telephone to her, words like ‘hip’ and ‘square’.

  ‘Are you going to be a great jazz musician?’ she asked Hart, after a minute or two during which the effects of the coffee took such strong hold she felt quite giddy.

  Hart stared at her. He wanted her to hurry up with the coffee, because he was dying for a beer, but was too polite to say so.

  ‘Good God, no! I’m never going to make it as a musician. Down here in the basement with the others, fine, anything more, no. We just like to have a bit of a blow. No, no, I could never make it. Just not good enough.’

  ‘What are you going to be then?’

  Hart looked at Sunny, his expression serious. ‘You wouldn’t want to know.’

  ‘Oh, but I would, I would really. I am so interested in everything and everyone in this house, truly I am. What a bit of luck to have Arietta come here and then for her to find a room for me, and everything like that. Really, what a bit of luck, because I know no one in London, so I am interested, truly I am,’ she assured him, the words tumbling over each other, again, because of the coffee.

  ‘Very well, I will tell you if you promise not to tell anyone else, ever? I am working for an auction house.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Oh.’

  ‘Living here, being here, I thought you would be doing something more exciting.’

  ‘I know. Not exactly very bohemian, is it? Actually quite the opposite. I am not proud, though. I need to learn about Art, and this is the best opening I could find, slogging away in the basement with lots of other young men, all determined to uncover their very own masterpiece beneath centuries of old varnish.’

  Sunny looked sober. ‘It can’t matter that much that you’re doing something sensible, can it?’

  ‘Down this end of the King’s Road? You must be surely making une tiny little blague, or joke, as the French call it? The moment I get home I tear off the suit, the shirt, the whole caboodle, and plunge into the navy-blue polo neck and the jeans before anyone catches sight of me. Then, in the early morning, before anyone can see me, before an
yone can note my square clothes, my hair slicked down, my demeanour of unholy capitalism, I creep out, under cover of early dawn, and slide off to the offices of Messrs Rookery and Co., and start wheeling fabulous works of art about the basement with a reverent gleam in my eye.’

  ‘Auctions and auction houses are quite glam, aren’t they?’

  ‘Glam? My dear girl, whatever gave you that idea?’ Hart’s eyes widened and he laughed. ‘The buying and selling of objets is what Sam calls “a terrible biznai”. As a matter of fact, Sam is so embarrassed by my job he ignores the fact that I even leave the house to pursue my shameful calling. It is too sweet really. He is so protective of my hip status, if someone phones he always says, “He’s just popped out,” because he doesn’t want them to know that I am gainfully employed. Finds it just so embarrassing. He is so idealistic, bless his nasty red socks. Just can’t face the idea that I am working for someone who charges interest for handling someone else’s possessions. Not that Sam’s a socialist or anything, he’s just so ultra refined. He makes it his special, special biznai to be so. It could almost be touching, except I can’t help noticing that his sensitivities in monetary matters do not quite last out the month, and once he has run out of filthy lucre, he suddenly finds this fiendish capitalist friend Hart Dorling becomes just a little useful to him.’

  ‘Oh, so it’s one law for you, and a completely different one for him?’

  ‘Naturally, but since, besides being my boyhood fishing friend, he’s the best drummer around these parts, and Phillip is the best pianist, and I am by far the least talented, I have kept my observations to myself – until now, that is.’ Hart gave Sunny a pretend soulful look.

  Sunny laughed.

  There was a pause as Sunny considered something very seriously. ‘Can I say how much I like your boots? They are really chic.’

  Hart looked down at his boots. ‘I am so glad. I bought them in America. In New York, actually, on Second Avenue. They were pleasantly cheap.’

  There was a longer silence this time, which Sunny finally thought should be filled because Hart was staring at her in a way that made her feel shy.

  ‘Do you think that Sam and Arietta have gone to the pub?’

  Hart, who had read Sam’s note quite carefully, before having the pleasure of waking up surely the prettiest of sleeping beauties, nodded.

  ‘I am quite sure they have gone to the pub.’

  ‘Should we join them?’

  ‘Well, we could, or I could show you to your room, and you could change, and then I could take you out to dinner.’

  Sunny stood up, relieved to have broken the silence, and excited by the invitation to dinner. Suddenly London seemed really rather marvellous.

  ‘What should I wear to dinner, do you think? I am a bit at sea in London,’ she confessed as they walked up the long narrow flights of stairs to what would be her room for the next few months.

  Hart put her key in the door of her flat, and then gave the door a little push.

  ‘I would say a circular skirt with a petticoat that really rustles underneath, and a tight belt, and those flat ballerina-type shoes that make it easier to rock and roll, baby. Oh, and if possible, a Chinese-collared shirt. That would all suit where I am going to take you quite admirably.’

  Sunny stared at him, amazed.

  ‘How did you know that I have just that outfit in my suitcase?’

  Hart smiled, and half closed his delightfully dark eyes. He knew that Sam would say that it was because Hart was stalky, and really, if he was honest, Hart might be forced to agree, but he was too modest to say so.

  ‘I knew it because you have just the figure for a circular skirt,’ he confessed, ‘and because you are very, very pretty; and pretty girls always travel with petticoats that rustle, not to mention wide belts that can be pulled really tight.’

  He started to walk back down the stairs, as Sunny closed her door, but she reopened it before he reached the turn.

  ‘Before we go to dinner, I have to tell you – at least I think I should tell you – well, that I am meant to be engaged to a chap called, well, never mind what he’s called. But I am meant to be engaged at least for the next year, so—’ she stopped. ‘Well, I just thought I ought to tell you, because it might mean that you wouldn’t want to take me to dinner, once you knew.’

  Hart stared at Sunny for a few seconds, astonished that her really rather bald announcement had had such an effect on him, and after such a short acquaintance.

  Just for a few seconds he felt as if he had been kicked in the stomach, until he examined the statement a little closer, the way he was learning to examine paint, to stare at the varnish close up, to look at the tiniest detail, see where a painting had been repainted or revarnished too heavily, learning to recognise what had happened to a canvas over the years. On examining Sunny’s statement in this increasingly professional manner he recognised that there was surely less need to panic than he might have thought, because what Sunny Chantry had actually said was, ‘I am meant to be engaged …’

  That did not smack of any kind of finality, or even formality. It did not sound ominous, it did not smack of notices posted in the Daily Telegraph, or rings about to be bought from Mappin and Webb. Indeed, it smacked of nothing more than a somewhat loose arrangement, a little like the way Miss Sunny Chantry wore her hair – loose and flowing. That was what her engagement sounded like – a loose and flowing arrangement, a little like the really rather dreamy look in her large eyes when he had finally woken her up, because he thought he should. And also because she was far too beautiful to leave lying around on a sofa by herself, let alone lying around on his sofa.

  Last of all, he knew the moment he saw her that he would want to take her out to dinner, and that his life was about to change for ever. It had been that sort of moment.

  ‘Never mind your engagement, I’ll soon talk you out of it,’ he told her after a brief pause, and gave a cheerful wave of his hand, before disappearing down the rest of the stairs, whistling a little too loudly.

  Sunny closed her flat door behind her again. She had to confess to feeling excited. There was something about Hart that was electric. Something about him that made you sit up straight away, something elusive in his personality that really swung. It came to her what it was, what it must be, what it had to be. Hart was what Arietta would call ‘hip’.

  And now she was going out to dinner with him.

  She gazed round her at the white painted walls of her little bed-sitter, at the cupboards, at the simple cotton curtains. Suddenly they seemed part of a tiny paradise, and she liked the room more than anywhere she had yet been.

  Early morning at Beetle’s Bookshop should have been a quiet time, but it actually wasn’t. As Arietta soon discovered, early morning for the shop – that was from nine thirty onwards – was the time that old ladies, thieves and eccentrics made it their business to call. It was a time when, Randy Beauchamp had warned her, she must be at her most stalky. But of course she had yet to learn just how stalky.

  ‘Oh, oh, here comes Silent Creeper.’ Randy nodded at a tall, bespectacled, bearded figure who was hovering outside the window.

  ‘Silent Creeper is so adept at sleight of hand, he should be on the Halls. You can stalk him this morning, while I shall take myself off to the back and make the coffee.’

  Arietta nodded. Mr Beauchamp had taken up swapping jobs with her so often, and so relentlessly, she had soon come to realise that it was his subtly sporting way of teaching her the job, without actually teaching her.

  ‘Silent Creeper is one of many who will spend hours reading all the hardbacks, only to end up buying a Penguin for all of half a crown, but you will find with this one, after the first hour that he has been sunk in the new biography of the week, if you stand behind him and cough and, if at all possible, sneeze, he will run off because he is mortally afraid of germs.’ As Arietta looked questioningly at Randy, he continued by way of explanation as the sound of the shop bell rang out in the sil
ence, ‘He has never been known to remove either of his two pairs of gloves, and wears a scarf over his face, whatever the weather. Good luck, Miss Staunton. You are now in charge.’

  Arietta circled around the shop in what she now knew to be the acceptable manner used by Randy, who brought her through a cup of coffee, and then promptly disappeared back into the stockroom, leaving her to feel proudly in charge.

  Next into the shop came a tall, slim, distinguished lady. Arietta knew at once that she was distinguished because she wore elegant clothes, a pearl necklace, and a hat at just the right angle. She also sported long white three-quarter-length gloves and a handbag with a gold cipher in the middle.

  ‘Do you have, might you possibly have, a copy of Giovanni Bellini’s Arcadia di Amore published by Intime?’

  Arietta disappeared to look, frowning. Mr Beauchamp had already educated her enough to be prepared to be asked for some strange titles. It seemed that books were constantly being smuggled into the shop for loyal customers eager to read something that the censor had decided was unsuitable for genteel eyes.

  ‘Mr British Censor is so sweet, always so anxious not to overexcite readers in Rye or Winchester with controversial books that would actually bore most people’s great aunts so effectively they would be able to sleep serenely through an air raid. However, it seems it is his duty not to lead them into dark paths by becoming interested in such matters as Irish martyrdom, or having a more imaginative love life such as the French have always enjoyed. Not that Irish martyrdom and the secrets of the bordello are necessarily one and the same thing, of course.’

  Arietta scaled the ladder to peruse the foreign section, and then rushed down again, and hurried off into the back of the shop to find Mr Beauchamp.

  ‘There’s a lady wanting to know if we have Arcadia di Amore published by Intime? We don’t seem to have it, so shall I tell her that I will put it on order?’

  She had hardly finished speaking when Randy shot past her, Arietta following closely. They arrived at the front of the shop just as the bell was sounding out a discreet farewell.