Love Song Read online

  Chapter Two

  ‘Everything in its own time, darling.’ Alexander smiled at his wife, who had just asked whether ‘Letitia’ should be christened ‘Letitia’ or ‘Daisy’, the corners of his eyes creasing as he spoke.

  Like most things about Alexander, his even-featured face, white teeth, and slim figure, Alexander’s smile was perfect – a mix of lazy charm, sweet good nature, and beguiling humour.

  When he had first smiled his perfect smile at Hope – eyes first, then a slow widening of that perfect mouth, finally showing a set of perfectly even snow-white teeth – Hope had fallen instantly in love. She worshipped smiles, probably because when she was growing up her father had rarely smiled and her mother never, at least not at her. And of course her ballet training had encouraged such a serious attitude, while at home her father, once her mother had run off with a publican, had never smiled again; small wonder, therefore, that when she met the handsome, charming and above all laughing Alexander Merriott she had fallen immediately and hopelessly in love.

  Alexander leaned over and kissed Hope long and lingeringly, feeling, if anything, more passionately affectionate towards her than ever, suddenly wondering whether his male friends were not after all right in their frequent assertion that a ‘little fling’, as they always called it, made them feel even more loving towards their wives.

  ‘I’ll leave all that to you, darling. You’re wonderful with the girls, really you are.’

  Hope nodded, and then, looking down at the tiny child in her arms, wondered aloud, yet again, about a name for her.

  Alexander got up from off the bed and stretched. ‘Diaspora,’ he announced. ‘I like names ending in “a” best.’

  ‘Oh, Alex! You say that every time the subject comes up. We must decide on a name for her, or people will feel we simply don’t care, that we were counting on having a boy, and didn’t want another girl.’

  She looked across at her elegant husband, who was now gazing at his own reflection – as well he might, she thought affectionately, because when it came to Alexander’s looks they were both ardent fans.

  ‘Thank you, darling,’ Alexander said, talking to her through the mirror. ‘If there’s one sure fire way of killing a joke for good it’s to point out that it is old.’

  But, seeing the defeated look in his wife’s eyes, he immediately sat back down on the bed and, with a sigh, took hold of one set of Hope’s toes through the bedclothes and wiggled them affectionately. ‘No, I mean it. I don’t know how you put up with me.’

  Hope looked at him. ‘It doesn’t really matter, does it?’ she asked. ‘About her being a girl? It is still wonderful to have a new baby after all this time. Isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course it is.’ Alexander squeezed her toes and got up once again from the bed. ‘Anyway – c’est la vie. These things happen, darling. We’re just getting someone else’s share of girls. Now. I have to go out. I have an appointment with a man who I’ve been told has money to burn. Wants in on the trout farm in Scotland, I’m happy to tell you. I just hope he never takes the night train to Oban and finds out the problems. You are going to be all right now, aren’t you?’ He said this last as a question but did not wait for any reply, because he was already late, and awfully afraid that the man concerned was merely playing him along.

  ‘You are going to be all right?’ he called once again from the door.

  Hope smiled at him. He always asked that question before he left the house. It was one of his most endearing habits.

  The question Alexander asked his father’s lawyer the following week was altogether different.

  ‘That is the way it was ordained, Mr Merriott,’ came the reply. ‘Whether one considers it fair or unfair, mad or wise, that is the way it was ordained – and there is precious little one can do to effect any change.’

  ‘Meaning there is nothing one can do about it, Mr Wilson – full stop.’

  ‘Exactly so, Mr Merriott.’

  ‘One lives in hope that there will be a change – that something will change. That somebody will come to their senses about this matter.’

  ‘Isn’t it a little too late for that, Mr Merriott?’

  ‘It is never too late for anything, Mr Wilson. The goalposts are being moved all the time in our country, everywhere. Particularly in cases as absurd as this.’

  ‘It might seem absurd to you, Mr Merriott. It might seem absurd to me. But to your respected father it obviously makes perfect sense.’

  ‘One has heard of wills being … re-written, even after death.’

  ‘Not in cases like this, Mr Merriott. No, no – I am very much afraid not. Besides, it is not the practice here. Your family – the Merriotts – have been looked after by us for many years now.’

  Alexander pushed his chair back, putting his hand up to his mouth to stifle a yawn. ‘Excuse me. New baby.’

  ‘Having never had that problem, Mr Merriott,’ Mr Wilson replied, getting to his feet, ‘I can only say I envy you, whatever the outcome.’

  Alexander thought of his house teeming with young girls, of his newest and most beautiful daughter, and yet again sighed inwardly. It was not that he did not love his daughters, all of them, it was just that his own father did not like them. That was just how it was. Merriotts had to be male to inherit.

  ‘What a pretty little baby,’ the elegant, red-haired woman exclaimed as Hope carefully placed Letty’s carrycot on the floor beside her chair in the highly polished hallway. ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Six weeks,’ Hope replied, sitting back and brushing her hair from her eyes. ‘Thank you. Yes, she is a pretty little thing, isn’t she?’

  ‘I have two little girls,’ the woman volunteered. ‘Jemima and Rosanne.’

  ‘I have a Rose,’ Hope told her. ‘In fact it’s Rose who’s here. To audition.’

  ‘How old would Rose be?’

  ‘Rose is fifteen. Here she comes now.’

  Rose appeared from the changing room opposite, dressed in a black leotard, pale tights, and new pink ballet shoes her mother had given her for her birthday and with her ever growing long dark hair tied up on the top of her head by a black velvet ribbon. Hope picked up the cross-over cardigan she had left on the chair and draped it round Rose’s shoulders for her. Rose was tall, dark and beautiful, and never more so than when she was as anxious as she was now.

  ‘What is your daughter going to dance for them?’ the red-haired woman wondered, most of her attention still on Letty.

  ‘What everyone is, I imagine,’ Rose muttered nervously, with a look to her mother. ‘The Dying Swan.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s how you dance it that counts. They’re not judging you on the music. You didn’t write the music.’

  ‘I know, Mums. But Miss Somerville said everyone will be dancing it.’

  ‘It’s the piece you do best. That’s what counts.’

  ‘Oh – what a dear little hand!’ the red-haired woman exclaimed to Letty.

  ‘Rose Merriott?’ a voice called from down the hall.

  ‘Good luck, sweetie. Blow them away.’

  Rose managed a tight smile in return, slipped her white cardigan from her shoulders, and pattered her way down the shining corridor to where another woman was waiting at an open door.

  ‘You have to feel sorry for them,’ Hope’s neighbour said. ‘No-one knows what they go through, poor kids.’

  Hope was about to say that, having been a dancer herself, she knew just what Rose would be going through, but remembered how such an admission usually led to a lot of awkward questions about why she had not continued with it. Instead she picked up a book and started to read.

  ‘So you have two girls, like me.’ The woman could not leave the subject alone.

  Hope looked up, finally fed up. ‘No, four, actually.’

  ‘Four! Oh dear, your poor husband! He must get terribly teased at the pub.’ As Hope looked openly bewildered, she added kindly, ‘Don’t you know, love? If men only have girls, it means they’re n
ot real men.’

  Alexander sat drumming his fingers on the chrome bar top and looked at his reflection in the mirror behind the row of bottles. As always the sight of his own image cheered him immensely, and only yesterday Imogen had told him that he was one of those lucky men who got even better-looking as they got older.

  Not that he was going grey at the temples yet – far from it. His hair, which he wore swept straight back, was as black and as thick and lustrous as ever, but at thirty-eight his face was just beginning to show experience. In his twenties he always thought his boyish good looks counted against him, since in the final analysis a lot of his women admirers failed to take him as utterly seriously as he had wanted them to, feeling – he always reckoned – that because he looked so absurdly young it must follow that he was feckless. But now that lines were appearing at the corners of his eyes and interesting dark shadows under them, and his cheeks had hollowed out so satisfactorily, Alexander looked much more the part he was intent on playing – part gambler, part roué.

  The only thing which was spoiling this otherwise perfect moment was that she for whom he was waiting was late, so late that he had actually had time to enjoy a fantasy or two about some of the pretty women who seemed to be intent on passing by his part of the bar. Sirens all of them, but very pretty, or so it seemed to a bored man fresh from his father’s lawyer.

  ‘Another glass of white wine,’ Alexander ordered, ‘And this time I would infinitely prefer if it were properly chilled.’

  When she finally arrived ten minutes later, Alexander was pleased to see Imogen was wearing a long dark brown light wool dress with some sort of honeycombed texture bodice, which showed off to perfection the soft roundness of her stomach and her small firm breasts. She swung into the bar with the easy gait of a woman who knows that the man will wait for her, and wait for good and long if she so wishes. As he watched her Alexander wished that she was not looking so terribly attractive, but fresh from the office of the wretched Mr Wilson and his interminable intransigence, he felt like going to the devil in the arms of a passionate woman. Mr Wilson would have that effect on a saint.

  Imogen was Alexander’s first affair, and he had not expected to be so hooked by it – not, of course, that he was hooked by it, but really he had never realized until now that he was quite so attractive as she had made him feel, or quite so handsome as she kept insisting that he was. He could not help realizing, much as he tried hard not to, that after he had been with Imogen he felt – what was it that Melinda would say? – he felt he was the cat’s pyjamas.

  In fact he had promised himself, after that first evening, that he would definitely not continue the affair. He loved Hope and he loved his daughters, and he certainly did not need another woman in his life. But it was not as easy to give up an alluring and beautiful woman as he had first hoped. Particularly not one who lived so nearby and was so chic, so soignée, so full of sympathy, and, most of all, understood his world, and his problems. How terribly, terribly difficult it was to make money – money enough to house and feed not only three girls, but four.

  And then again West Dean Drive now seemed to be teeming with babies and nannies – not to mention teenage daughters who were all busy growing so fast that sometimes he thought they would grow straight through the roof like shot plants in a greenhouse.

  And to cap it all he had not been able to make love to Hope for six whole weeks, and might have to wait even longer, the doctor had said, so – well, so it was nice – to make love was so nice. And Imogen had fallen into the habit of booking hotel rooms so that they could carry on their affair near to her office, and there was something about hotel rooms that was so conducive to affairs, their anonymity, their pristine cleanliness, the room service that just came and went so silently leaving lovers to be so intimate, and, sometimes, so daring. They had been to an hotel only the week before that Imogen had told him was designed only for that, and it had been – well, delicious really. And Imogen, being a professional woman, had paid, which was also delicious, as well as a change, to have someone pay for him rather than having always to be putting his hand in his pocket.

  ‘You look very good indeed, Mogs. In fact you look altogether perfect,’ Alexander said, appraising her. ‘From that dear little velvet cloche hat—’

  ‘It’s wool felt actually,’ Imogen corrected him, rummaging in her handbag.

  ‘To those very sexy boots.’

  ‘They’re Peruvian, actually.’

  Alexander called for his tab, spreading some money out on the counter.

  ‘You may not have noticed, Alex, but I have only just arrived.’

  ‘Thirty-five minutes late.’

  ‘The traffic was terrible.’

  ‘I got here on time. Now come along.’

  He took her arm on the rise, steering her towards the café door as the barman muttered dark imprecations behind his back at the lack of any gratuity.

  ‘Where is the fire, Alexander, please?’ Imogen insisted as she pulled her arm free from his hold.

  ‘In the Hotel Utopia, I hope,’ Alexander replied, scanning the street for a cab.

  She stopped and sighed, staring at him in a challenging manner. ‘I would quite like to talk, actually.’

  ‘We can talk in the taxi.’

  ‘About us.’

  Alexander frowned and looked round at the tall, slender woman beside him. Why – he wondered – are so many good-looking women born with no minds? Or is it perhaps because they are born beautiful that they never bother improving their grey matter? Deciding the latter was most probably the case, he pulled the cab door open, gave the driver directions and climbed ahead of her into the back.

  ‘Thank you,’ Imogen said pointedly, although she did laugh.

  ‘You’re a feminist, Imogen,’ Alexander reminded her, smiling. ‘This is the last of the eighties, remember? You are meant to be a proto-feminist career girl with plenty of attitude and a briefcase with your initials on who has it all. That sort of thing not only doesn’t matter any more, you are meant to prefer it.’

  Imogen eyed him and smiled, for Imogen, almost demurely.

  ‘I really do think we should talk,’ she said, taking out a paper tissue and lightly touching her nose with it, more to gain time to think than anything else.

  ‘You haven’t got a cold, have you?’ Alexander enquired. ‘I can’t risk catching a cold, not with a new baby.’

  ‘I have not got a cold, Alex, and I am not even getting one. This is simply the result of traffic fumes. You know that. They always have this effect on me.’

  ‘I didn’t know that – I really did not know that.’

  Alexander pushed himself deeper into the corner of the cab and watched a particularly pretty brunette in a long red suede coat sashaying into Harrods. Had the taxi not still been moving he realized to his utter amazement that he would have climbed out of it and followed her.

  ‘We have to talk about you and Hope,’ Imogen was saying. ‘Or rather we have to talk about you and Hope and me. You owe it to me, I owe it to you, we owe it to each other. We should really put our relationship on some sort of firm footing, don’t you think? Not that I want to rock the boat—’

  ‘In this case don’t you mean cradle?’

  ‘You know where I’m coming from,’ Imogen said and she gazed into his eyes in a way that Alexander suddenly found embarrassing, just as, equally suddenly, he found her perfume cloying, suffocating, and the nails of her hand which was pressing his arm were no longer long red-painted shiny nails but talons.

  ‘I know where you’re coming from,’ Alexander mused, gazing out of the window as the taxi stopped again just beyond Brompton Road tube station. ‘But the trouble is I don’t know where I’m going to – but it can’t be here. Look, we’ll have a really long talk about how we are, and how we may be going to be, but – my God, I’ve suddenly remembered my meeting!’ He waved his leather organizer at Imogen. ‘Look, sweetheart, let’s meet tomorrow, all right? You know, same time, same pla
ce, only this time be on time!’

  At which he jumped out of the mercifully unsecured taxi, closed the door, and was gone across the road and through the traffic and into the entrance of the tube station before Imogen had the chance to follow, waiting just inside the subway until he was sure it was quite safe to re-emerge. Once reassured, and back in daylight, he sauntered across Hans Place and into the side entrance of Harrods.

  He had no idea what he was doing other than escaping from Imogen, so he wandered aimlessly around the ground floor of the shop looking at everything from food to men’s clothing with absolutely no interest. At the back of his mind was the very faint hope that he just might bump into the luscious brunette in the red suede coat but of course he did not, finding himself instead at the end of his short odyssey looking for a place to sit at the little coffee bar in the corner of the food halls.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said, standing by an empty stool. ‘Is this taken?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say so, would you?’ an American voice replied. ‘If it was I doubt it would still be here.’

  As he sat Alexander took a glance at his neighbour. She was a tall redhead dressed in what looked like only a fabulous phoney silver fox fur coat, since he could see no sign of any other garment apart from stockings and bright red leather shoes. He put her in her late thirties and, from her expensive accessories and jewellery, very rich. She even smelt rich – probably some perfume privately mixed especially for her. But what took his fancy more than anything was what she was reading, propped up against the sugar bowl in front of her – a book of poetry.

  ‘A jug of wine, a book of verse,’ he said casually.

  ‘I’m not reading Fitzgerald,’ she replied. ‘Robert Frost as it happens.’

  ‘Only thing I know about Mr Frost was that once apparently when he was watching the sunset from his veranda,’ Alexander said slowly, examining the menu card, ‘a young woman exclaimed, Oh, what a lovely sunset! To which your poet friend replied, I never discuss business after dinner.’