I nodded. Our interview was over. We stood and had almost left the room when Lady Uckfield clearly felt impelled to convince me further of the urgency of her request.
'You see, Charles is so dreadfully unhappy. It can't go on, can it? It's so terrible for us. Seeing him like this.'
In answer I put my arm round her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. It was considerably more intimate an action than anything I had attempted before. Perhaps it was a sign that we were somehow bonded by this awful mess of tears and waste.
At any rate, she didn't object. Nor did she assume that faintly perceptible stiffness that her kind of English women use at such a moment to demonstrate that some unwarranted liberty has been taken.
We went back to the drawing room where Adela, in an effort to escape from Tigger's meticulously outlined plans for the South Wood, was attempting to teach one of the dogs to balance a biscuit on its nose. She looked up when we came in and, since she was burning to hear what had happened (as I was to tell it), we made our excuses fairly soon after that. We still had the awful burden of David's invitation to impart but, since it was the price by which we had bought our tea, we knew it had to be done. Lady Uckfield followed us down to the Under Hall so it was easier than it might have been.
'David and Isabel,' I started. She looked quizzical so I clarified, 'Easton. Our hosts.' She nodded. This interchange alone would have been enough to have depressed David for months. 'They wondered if you'd like to bring your party over for a drink tomorrow morning?' It was done.
Lady Uckfield smiled briskly. 'But how
This was kindness above and beyond the call of duty. Feeling guilty at the thought of David's delight had he but known, I shook my head. 'I think that's rather a bore for you, isn't it? Let's leave it for another time.'
But Lady Uckfield, to my further bewilderment, was insistent. 'No, please. Do come.' She smiled. 'Charles will be back. I know he'd love to see you.'
At the time, I didn't understand what she hoped to achieve by bringing us together with Charles. It seemed if anything a risk to her plans, for if I had confided her mission to her son, I am certain he would have been furious. But later I realised that she wanted me to see Charles in his misery for this would be her justification and might motivate me more than ever to carry out her wishes. It is possible too that she believed that by allowing us to bring our friends to Broughton we would be even more tightly strapped to the family carriage. 'Don't feel you have to,' said Adela, but we could protest no more and so, bidding her goodbye until the morrow, we set off to deliver our happy message to a delighted David and a less enthralled but pleasantly surprised Isabel.
Charles was waiting for us in the drawing room when we reappeared the next day or so it seemed. He bounded out of his chair, kissed Adela on both cheeks and almost wrung my hand. He wasn't able to say much more than how pleased he was to see us, as his mother approached to normalise the situation and lead us over to the drinks cupboard, cunningly inserted behind a dummy door that had originally been constructed to balance the door that led, through an ante-room, to the dining room. Tigger stood there in his role as Mine Host, dispensing Bloody Marys. He presented one to his wife. She wrinkled her nose fractionally. 'Not enough Tabasco, the wrong vodka — and you've forgotten the lime juice.' I was waiting for a bowl of fresh limes to be rung for when to my surprise Lord Uckfield took down a plastic bottle of lime juice cordial and sloshed a great measure into the jug. I was about to request one without this ingredient then thought better of it and took what I was given. Naturally enough, it was delicious.
'How do you think he's looking?' said my hostess.
She knew well enough that Charles looked perfectly terrible. His face was tired and lumpy. His skin, which normally shone with the kind of uncomplicated health redolent of grouse moors and hunting fields, looked sallow and almost dirty. His hair hung in unsorted tendrils down his neck.
'Not great,' I said.
She nodded. 'You do see why I felt I had to ask your help?'
She drifted away without referring again to our curious interview of the previous day. To be honest and in her defence I could see why, as a mother, she had been driven to pretty desperate measures. Clearly her son was dying by inches before her eyes. What puzzled me was this hinted-at, burgeoning romance that promised new life and happiness. He really did not look like one who has found his True Love, even though Clarissa was in his eye-line. There were some other pre-lunch drinkers and she was again playing the hostess, leading people here and there and introducing them but, so far as I could tell, without exciting any special interest in her cousin's heart.
The house-guests were as surly as they had been the previous day and I saw a couple of them being grudgingly yoked to David and Isabel. One, Viscount Bohun, who had been out for a walk the day before, I had met occasionally in London. His youngest sister had been a vague friend of mine at one time and I had always suspected him then of being mentally sub-normal
— or at least as near sub-normal as one can be without actually risking clinical classification — so I had been quite surprised to read somewhere that he had married a pretty girl with a respectable job in publishing. Remembering this, I was curious to see the new Lady Bohun, she who had made this unholy contract. She was easy to spot. Her shining hair swept back flawlessly under a velvet band, her nose tilted in the air, she was being as grand and as difficult with a foundering David as it is possible to be without actually resorting to insults. The poor man struggled on, hopefully dropping names and references, all of which were courteously spurned, until I could almost see the sweat popping out on his brow. I can only hope that such petty victories were worth the terrible sacrifice of her life that she had made. Bohun himself had caught the wretched Adela and was telling her some interminable story, which he kept punctuating with a shrill and unprovoked laugh. I could see her checking the exits.
Charles approached and touched me on the elbow. 'So how are you? How was your filming?'
'OK. How about you?'
He gestured towards a window seat where, untroubled by the others, we might perch and be a little alone. He stared out over the gardens for a moment in silence. 'Oh, I'm fine.' He smiled rather wryly. 'Well, quite fine.'
He didn't look it but I nodded. 'I'm glad.'
'Mummy said you were over here yesterday.'
