4
Sunday started badly for Tory Maxwell. Unable to sleep, she had heard the floorboards outside her room creaking as the colonel crept out at dawn. But he was back by twelve-thirty, spruced up in clean clothes, mustache brushed, and bearing a bottle of gin, and he and Molly Maxwell sat out on the terrace drinking dry martinis while Tory cooked the lunch.
“As I have to fork out so much for this cookery and typing course,” said Molly, “I might as well make use of her.”
“What a charming garden,” said the colonel.
“The lawn needs mowing,” hinted Molly Maxwell. “But I seem to have so little time this summer.”
The white sauce for the cauliflower went lumpy because Tory was trying, at the same time, to read a piece in one of the color supplements on deb’s delights. The piece included a profile of Rupert Campbell-Black. After three years in the Blues, he was now too busy making a name for himself as a show jumper to go to many deb parties, but whenever he did he caused a rumpus.
“You can say that again,” sighed Tory, adding more milk to the sauce. She had been a victim of Rupert’s bitchy asides on numerous occasions. He had got that blank stare of complete indifference to perfection. The sight of his cold, arrogant face looking out at her made her feel quite sick. Particularly as her mother thought he was absolutely charming and kept nagging Tory to ring him up and make sure he’d got the invitation and was coming to Tory’s drinks’ party.
Tory was dreading the party. She didn’t think anyone would come and she was sensitive enough to realize that, although some of the fathers and the young men flirted with her mother, the mothers thought her pushy and jumped up.
At one-thirty, although Fen still wasn’t back from the stables, they started lunch. Colonel Carter carved. Conditioned by wartime austerity, he cut very thin slices. Tory noticed he touched her mother’s hand when he passed her a plate. She knew they found her presence a strain. Her mother found fault with everything. The white sauce was too lumpy and thin, the meat overdone, and the roast potatoes soggy. Molly, who wanted the colonel to think she had an appetite like a sparrow, pushed hers to the side of her plate.
“I don’t mean to nag,” she said to Tory, “but one day you’ll get married and have to cook for some chap, and he’ll expect decent grub.”
Some hope, thought Tory. As she cleared away in an excess of misery, she ate the two roast potatoes her mother had rejected and two more left in the dish. When her mother came in, weighed down by the gravy boat, as an excuse to powder her nose in the kitchen mirror, Tory had to swallow frantically.
Halfway through the pudding, when Molly was grumbling that the meringue was just like toffee, Fen walked in with a filthy face and hands and the same shirt she’d been wearing the day before, so triggering off a storm of reproof which Fen accepted with equanimity. The colonel droned on about bridge.
“Jolly good roast potatoes,” said Fen. “Are there any more?”
“There were two in the dish,” said Molly.
Tory blushed. “I threw them away.”
“I bet you ate them,” snapped Molly. “Really, Tory. D’you want to look like a house for your drinks party?”
“Did you have a good ride, Fenella?” asked Colonel Carter.
“Not very,” said Fen. “Jake was in a foul temper.”
“Nothing new,” said Molly. “Would you like some Stilton, Bernard?”
“Hardly surprising,” said Fen, glaring at Colonel Carter. “Africa might have been ruined for life.”
“Shut up,” snapped her mother.
“Malise Gordon dropped in to see if Africa was all right, but Jake says both he and Sir William are after her. It’s a rotten shame. Jake’s worked so hard on her; no one gets her going better than he does. And he’s got the most awful lot to take out this afternoon — fat grown-ups who can’t ride, and in this heat, they’ve booked for a whole two hours. I’m going back to help him after lunch.”
“You are
“Whatever for?” wailed Fen.
“Because they asked us.”
“Tory as well?”
“No. Tory’s got to do her homework and write her thank-you letters.”
“It’s not fair. I loathe Melanie Braithwaite. She’s a drip and she’s not my age.”
Molly Maxwell insisted on taking Fen with them, as otherwise she would have had to go back to the colonel’s house on the way home and spend an hour in bed with him. That was the tiresome thing about men, she thought. They always wanted bed all the time and she so much preferred the flirting and the wining and dining.
Tory watched Fen, scrubbed and mutinous in a new dress, being dragged off to the Braithwaites. She then wrote five thank-you letters in her round, careful hand, and then accepted four more invitations. Being fat and plain and no threat to prettier girls, and because many of the debs’ mothers had known and liked her father, she was asked to quite a lot of parties. Each one spelled disaster.
I’m like a terrible first night, but first nights are lucky enough to fold, while I have to flop on forever, she said to herself.
Letters finished, she started on her homework, gazing at a page of shorthand until the heavy and light lines swam before her eyes.
“We are in receipt of your favor, yours faithfully, yours truly,” she wrote.
Oh, she’d be faithful and true to Jake. Then she wrote “Jake” in shorthand, the dark backward sloping J and light horizontal K on the line, with two little commas underneath to show it was a proper name. Then she wrote “Lovell”; it was the same sign as Lovely. He was lovely, too. She tried to visualize his face, but she could only picture his body and a blur. She felt impossibly restless. The telephone interrupted her daydreams; perhaps by a miracle it might be him, but it was only her mother saying that the Braithwaites wanted to play bridge and had pressed them to stay on for an early supper, so they’d be home at about ten, and could Tory do Fen’s packed lunch and see that she had a clean tunic and leotard for tomorrow? Poor trapped Fen, thought Tory.
The evening stretched ahead of her. Jake would be back from his ride now and settling the horses. The longing became too much for her. She’d nip down to the stables on the excuse that Fen might have left her whip behind.
Quickly, she washed her hair. Her mother liked it drawn back from her forehead, but today she was jolly well going to let it flop loose. If only she had a slimming black dress, but her mother said she was too young and anyway she couldn’t go down to the stables dressed as though for a funeral. Ponchos were fashionable; as if they covered all the spare tires; but when they slid down on the shoulders they showed her bra straps, and if she didn’t wear a bra she flopped all over the place. If only she had a waist, she could wear a long skirt to cover her fat legs, but it made her look like a barrel. In the end she gave up and wore a navy blue T-shirt outside her jeans. Her hand was shaking so much she couldn’t do up the clasp of her pearls, so she left them off. In a fit of loathing, she drenched herself in her mother’s scent and, as it was drizzling slightly, borrowed her mother’s white trench coat, with the belt trendily done up at the back. It didn’t matter if it didn’t meet over her bust.
As she passed the church, people were coming out of Evensong, putting up umbrellas. On the village green, cricketers huddled disconsolately into the pavilion, hoping the apricot glow on the horizon meant that the rain was about to stop and they could finish their game.
The Brook Farm Riding School tackroom was overcrowded but very tidy — saddles and bridles occupying one wall, food bins another, and medicines, principally Jake’s gypsy remedies, yet another. Room had also been found for a few faded rosettes and old calendars. The order book was open. Sunday, full of bookings, had been crossed off. Monday was comparatively empty, except for a group of children who wanted to ride after school. Jake sat on a rickety chair, cleaning a bridle and reading the color supplement piece on Rupert Campbell-Black. The bastard was
