The Magic Hour Read online

‘Quite a rich dog, I hope,’ she snapped.

  ‘You know the way a dog hides its head under a tablecloth fondly thinking that you can’t see the rest of its body?’ Tom continued inexorably. ‘That is what you remind me of when you speak about the past – because you know and I know that you are not telling me the whole truth.’

  ‘I suppose I should feel grateful that you didn’t say a bitch hiding its head under a table.’

  Tom leaned forward and took his wallet out of the breast pocket of his suit.

  ‘I have always meant to pay you back, and now I can.’

  He placed an envelope on the table in front of them both. Florazel stared at it, and then him. He was being fair and honest, and honourable, and he was insulting her too, and they both knew it.

  ‘Oh Tom, but how sweet of you. But don’t think this is the last you will hear about us, will you?’

  Florazel’s beautiful blue eyes crinkled yet again. It should have acted as a warning to Tom, but it did not.

  * * *

  Alexandra ran towards Claridge’s with only one aim in mind, to pack up and leave as soon as was perfectly possible. She did not know what to do about the bill, but since the manager had reassured her that the suite was booked in Mr O’Brien’s name and therefore the account would be paid by him, she had to believe him.

  She drove through the early afternoon until she reached Deanford at last. The call of the seagulls was always the first thing that seemed to come to her, long before she saw the sea, or the white tops of the waves, or the pier stretching out to sea, as if reaching out to invite the fish to play on its decks, fish that no one ever seemed to catch in any kind of numbers.

  ‘Oh, so you’re back.’ Mrs Smithers looked vaguely irritated as people do when their game of Patience is interrupted. ‘Mrs Cruddle won’t like that. Mrs Cruddle and Jane are managing really rather well.’

  Alexandra nodded, knowing without being told that things had already changed while she was away.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said eventually. ‘Well, why don’t we keep her on for a few days, until we have made up our minds about everything.’

  Mrs Smithers looked up sharply from her cards as if she had guessed that there was some inner struggle going on.

  ‘So what’s to be done?’

  Alexandra thought for a moment.

  ‘I thought I would go next door, and work on the house there. I’ll take the dogs with me, she won’t mind if I take the dogs, I don’t suppose.’

  ‘As long as you tell her.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Alexandra started to turn on her heel. Mrs Smithers did not look up this time.

  ‘Enjoy London, did you?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Quite an experience after Deanford, I should imagine.’

  ‘Quite an experience,’ Alexandra agreed.

  ‘But not so good that you wanted to stay. Missed old Deanford, I expect,’ she added comfortably.

  Alexandra, already halfway out of the room and on her way to the basement to collect her dogs, called back, ‘That’s right.’

  But Mrs Smithers had looked up from her cards once again.

  ‘By the way, you may be glad to hear that I was right about Lydia Passmore. She has not changed one bit.’

  Curiosity forced Alexandra to be drawn back into the room as Mrs Smithers knew very well that she would be.

  ‘Yes, she has not changed an iota. Kindness does not pay with those sorts of women, Minty, really it does not. I should have listened to myself.’ Mrs Smithers paused. ‘She has only pinched the Major from me this time, as a bridge-playing partner. She has, she has pinched the Major. Leopards do not change their spots, Minty, remember that. Not ever. People do not change.’ She sighed with some satisfaction, and returned to her game.

  No one who has ever gone through the heartbreak of disillusion can ever forget what they have experienced. Happily however, no one can quite remember just how sharp the pain, once it fades. It is as if not just the whole heart, but the whole body is being twisted in opposite directions, as if all emotion has been battered out of it, leaving only a shell out of which the possessor stares with disinterest at the passing parade that is known as life, but in which they are now quite certain they can no longer be involved.

  Alexandra wandered round number thirty-three with her dogs on leads, shivering with the cold. She could remember, only six short days ago, how proud she was of finishing the first of the bedroom suites, how proud she had been of her purchase of some bridge tables to set about the first-floor drawing room, but she could not feel those emotions any more. It was not just love that had fled and hidden its face, it seemed to her that it was life itself, her life that had fled. Everything seemed not just cold and sad, but dead. As if the people who would be occupying the rooms were already dead, and she with them.

  Tom returned to the hotel with his packages feeling coldly satisfied. He had seen Florazel, he had seen that she was still Florazel, and he knew that the boy that he had been who had loved her did so no longer, and the man that he was could not do so any more.

  ‘Ah, sir?’

  Tom turned and, having collected his key, smiled back at the hall porter. Nice fellow, old-fashioned sort with gentle, good manners, not obsequious, just right. Now, however, the look in his eyes was a little cautious, even sorrowful, as if he had to tell Tom something that he might not like.

  ‘The lady who was staying,’ he said tactfully, ‘your wife,’ he added firmly, both of them knowing that the old-fashioned rules still pertained, that the old hotels, if no one else, still maintained their standards. ‘She left an hour or so ago. Left this for you.’

  He handed Tom a small package. Tom looked at it, and then hurried towards the lift, knowing but not wanting to know what he would find when he went to his suite.

  He found no letter, but he found no clothes either, no trace of Alexandra. He put down all his carefully chosen presents and stared around him. She had left the wardrobe doors open as if to prove that everything she owned was gone. He turned to the small package and started to open it, knowing that she must have chosen whatever it was with care, for he could already see from the way that she dressed that she had taste.

  He stared at the cufflinks. They were exquisite and expensive, but since Alexandra was gone, they were just heartbreaking.

  ‘Mrs P.?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Mrs Posnet was answering the telephone in the vague, distant and distrusting manner that Tom had noticed everyone new to the telephone answered it – as if it was about to explode, or tell them something that they would not like.

  ‘It’s Tom O’Brien.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I, er, wondered if you have Alexandra Stamford’s address. I seem to have lost it.’

  ‘You mean Minty that was? Yes, I have her address, yes.’

  ‘Could you give it to me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She put the telephone down, and Tom could hear her footsteps crossing the tiled kitchen floor, and then recrossing it.

  ‘I shall be some time since my book is in the scullery.’

  There was a much longer pause, more footsteps, each of which seemed to Tom to be taking more time than he had taken to fly across the Atlantic. Finally the receiver was picked up again.

  ‘Yes. I have it here, Tom. It is thirty-two Queen Alexandra Square, Deanford. No, I tell a lie. She sent me a card a few weeks back. No, it is thirty-two and thirty-three Queen Alexandra Square. They seemed to have named the square after her,’ she joked.

  ‘Thank you Mrs P. And – thank you. Goodbye.’

  Mrs Posnet stared at the telephone with some satisfaction. She did not mind people calling her. She just did not ever want the expense of having to call them. She would not call Miss Stamford. Cost too much money, that would.

  Alexandra stepped back and stared at the suite to which she had just finished adding the final touches. It was very pretty and chintzy, just right for Deanford, but with some sea
side touches, like a striped rug on the floor by the bed, and a picture of children with buckets and spades over the chimneypiece.

  She had made excuses to Mrs Smithers because she did not want to face going back to her basement at number thirty-two. For some reason going back to the basement meant that the door would be closing on her London days for ever, and she could not quite face that, instead she had made up her mind to stay the night where she was. The house was warming up, and in some ways so was she. The horror of the day had begun to fade a little. Perhaps it was the view of the sea from the windows, the heartbreakingly beautiful sky seeming to Alexandra to be making fun of human feelings, seeming to be telling her that a love affair gone wrong was just that, a love affair gone wrong, nothing more. She would get better, because she had to; finally everyone had to.

  She set a table in front of the fire that she had lit in the still empty drawing room, and placed the only large armchair in front of it. She made herself a drink, happily to hand on the improvised drinks table, and promptly fell fast asleep.

  She was awoken by the sound of voices. One of them that of Mrs Smithers saying, ‘The bell doesn’t work, you see. We’re only just doing this place up. But you’ll find her at the top of the stairs I expect, busying herself as usual.’

  The front door closed and there was the unmistakable sound of male feet on the stairs. For some reason she did not understand, as the dogs barked and she nearly knocked her drink flying, Alexandra positioned herself behind the winged chair, hastily pulling her long hair back into their side combs, pulling down her skirt, doing up the top button of her blouse.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked into the growing darkness of the old, tall-ceilinged room with its decorative plasterwork and air of having been, like herself, only just awoken.

  ‘I have come to fetch you back, Alexandra.’

  ‘Back?’

  ‘Yes, back. You know what I mean. I have come to fetch you back.’

  ‘I don’t want to be fetched back,’ she retorted, and she turned to switch on the table lamp beside the fireplace, but it wasn’t working yet so they remained as they were in the gradually darkening room.

  ‘Yes, you do. You know you want to be fetched back.’

  ‘For what reason?’

  ‘To be with me.’

  ‘I don’t want to be with you. Haven’t you had enough women to date? Why do you want me as well?’

  ‘I admit—’

  Tom walked forward a few steps.

  ‘You just stay right where you are. This is my house and I don’t want you near me, not now, not ever.’

  ‘I won’t move a muscle, if you will only tell me why you ran off the way you did.’

  ‘You read newspapers, don’t you?’

  ‘No. At least not since I met you. Been too preoccupied,’ he said, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

  ‘Well, I had lunch with my Millington cousins, and they do read newspapers, and they showed me the item about you and Lady Florazel whatsit; and they told me all about how you were sacked for being found with a girl in a barn, by my uncle.’

  Tom stared at her.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Well, at least I do.’ He paused. ‘You’re a – Millington? Of Knighton Hall? James Millington is your – uncle?’

  ‘My mother was James Millington’s sister. She died when I was born, but I used to stay at Knighton. When you worked there I was staying, but we never met. If we had, I might have known you for what you are; it might have saved me from making a fool of myself over you.’

  Tom sighed.

  ‘Mr Millington never found me in a barn with a girl. I found him in the barn, with his girl, now his wife. I found him with Jennifer Langley-Ancram. I was on my bike, going to fetch old Westrup his cough medicine when I heard a noise. To tell you the truth I thought a cow had locked itself in there—’ He stopped. ‘Now I come to think of it, a cow had, but not the kind that gives milk.’

  Alexandra did not smile. The reason she did not smile was not because the remark was not apt but because she knew, right down in her deepest heart, that Tom might actually be telling the truth. It fitted in with everything she knew about Jennifer and her uncle, about everything that had happened at Knighton. She had always heard Jessamine and Cyrene joking and laughing about the handsome groom they called the oik, planning some new way to flirt with him.

  ‘I don’t mind that you’re a Millington, so you mustn’t mind if I’m whatever I’m meant to be – oh yes, a Hardwick – except I am not. I am actually Thomas O’Brien of New York, and Long Island, and from now on, occasionally Claridge’s.’

  Alexandra was silent.

  ‘So on to today. What happened today so particularly that made you run away the way you did?’

  Tom had cautiously put in a few more steps, but he was still a long way from Alexandra behind her winged chair.

  ‘What happened today was that I saw the item about you and Florazel, the person you were meant to be meeting for your so-called “business drink”. My cousins showed me the item about you and Lady Florazel, about how you were about to become engaged.’

  Tom closed his eyes momentarily and sighed. Oh dear God. Of course, what was why when he had left Florazel she had seemed to have a positive gleam in her eye. She had always laughed about Fleet Street, about how easy it was to use the gossip columns to discomfort your enemies, how you just had to use some paid ex-public-school snitch to plant something, while you yourself distanced yourself from the item.

  ‘There is no truth in whatever you read. I admit I didn’t tell you about going to see Florazel, simply because I didn’t want to upset you.’ He stopped, realising that to his shame he was now sounding rather too like Florazel. He started again. ‘No, that’s not true. I just thought that since Florazel no longer mattered to me, that she needn’t matter to you.’

  He was closer to Alexandra now, and had her whole attention; so much so that it seemed to him that she had not noticed.

  ‘Florazel would have posted that piece in whatever gossip column it was. Nothing to do with reality, nothing to do with anything but her making mischief, wanting history to repeat itself, since my father ran off with her when she was young.’

  Alexandra stared at Tom.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I have known for some time. But since our affair was long, long over, and I believe that as far as the past is concerned the buck stops here, it didn’t seem to matter. It was a temporary, wounding embarrassment, and then I realised it really had nothing to do with anything. She had run off with him, had the briefest of relationships, and then run away from him. He had died. All that was their business, not mine. Finally I felt it should mean nothing to me, must not mean anything to me and, truthfully, now it doesn’t.’

  Alexandra stared at him and then past him, bewildered by so much information, yet longing to believe him.

  ‘Oh darling, I brought you so many presents this morning – I ran back to the hotel with them so longing for you – and I found you gone. Do you know what it felt like not to find you? It felt as if I was dying. You are the person I have been longing to meet all my life – and I could have done. We must have passed within a few yards of each other dozens of times at Knighton, but never quite seen each other, because we were not meant to meet until now. But now we have met – we know what we know. The past few days surely have proved that. Haven’t you felt that this was all meant, that we were supposed to be together, and that if we pass on each other now, for whatever reason, that we will be passing up on love for ever? It doesn’t happen twice in a lifetime. And it won’t. I know it, and I think you do too.’

  He was so close to her now, so near that he could have put out his arms and pulled her to him, but instead he pointed past her to the curtainless windows.

  ‘Look at that beautiful sky, look at the sunset reaching out to meet the dark of the sky. Do you know what that is called?’

  ‘No—’ She turned

  ‘
It’s called the magic hour, because myth says that this is the magic hour of the day and if two people embrace, just as the sky meets the sun’s setting before it gets dark, they will always be together.’

  Tom held out his arms to her. Alexandra turned from the sky which was just beginning to touch the orange of the sunset and, not willing to risk her happiness ever again, she went quickly into them.

  Epilogue

  Tom had longed to see James Millington humiliated, longed to see him handing over the keys to Knighton Hall, James a ruined man at last, but he never did.

  Not that Jennifer Langley-Ancram did not ruin James, because, inevitably, and really rather satisfyingly, she did: over-spending on the house, and socialising to such an extent that Millington lost his touch on the stock exchange and eventually all his fortune.

  While Tom did not feel sorry for him when he heard the news, at the same time he had no desire to snub him by buying Knighton from him, his impending Long Island wedding to Alexandra bringing with it, as it would do, good sense and a generous attitude.

  Their wedding was not the highlight of the following summer season, but it certainly caused a stir in Deanford, not least because so many of its residents had been invited, at the bridegroom’s expense, to attend. Naturally Mrs Cruddle and Jane, who had taken over the running of the houses from the bride, could not attend, but they were well content with the photographs which Mrs Smithers and her entourage brought back.

  The black and white images showed an elegant bride in a decorous dress of white chiffon, high-waisted and falling to the back in a long train, the cap sleeves of which were braid-edged. Her long, dark hair was caught up in an elegant figure of eight from the back of which sprang yards of netting topped with fresh white flowers. In her short-gloved white hands she carried one long stem of white lily. The honeymoon was spent in the Bahamas, but the following anniversaries were all spent in England, not at Knighton Hall, but at Claridge’s; which, as the happy couple would acknowledge for the rest of their lives, had in truth been somewhat of a fairy godmother to their romance – never adding, as perhaps they should have done, that other godparent to love: the Magic Hour.