bad, oh so bad, you can’t imagine how bad. Ask Hermione Mortlock. She knows me well – better than anybody. She will tell you. She has no illusions about me.’
It was a hot day and we were standing in the shade of the oak. Lena said, ‘I don’t like this tree. It has the face of a very old, very evil man who gapes and grins. You don’t see it, do you?’ She seemed irritated that I had failed to see. ‘I hate that hollow! It wants to swallow me up, I am sure of it.’ She touched her crucifix as though for protection. ‘I always see things like that – terrible, vile things. I never see anything beautiful. I am not meant to be happy.’ She then turned round and started walking in the direction of the house.
‘Some women must never be allowed to become mothers.’ It was another of my fellow guests who had addressed me thus: a Mrs Vorodin. Veronica Vorodin. ‘You too think it, don’t you?’ I nodded. She took off her dark glasses and looked at me out of lavender eyes. ‘Lena used to amuse me, but now she only fills me with horror. She’d do anything for money. Cranked up, did you realize?’
‘Was she? I thought she was merely drunk.’
‘That too… They used to call her LSD, you know.’
‘Lena Sugarev-Drushinski? Oh, you mean – Really?’
‘Yes. She had quite an addiction.’
As it happens, Veronica and Lena are distant cousins, but the contrast couldn’t have been greater. Veronica was wearing an ice-blue dress, which simply shrieked designer. All her clothes are made by Oscar de la Renta, couturier to Nancy Reagan and Princess Grace of Monaco, among others, Mrs Falconer had informed me. Both Veronica and her husband Anatole (also of Russian extraction) spend most of their time commuting between Florida, London, Rome and the South of France, in each of which they have houses. Fabulously rich, Lady Mortlock had said. They have their own jet, apparently, also a yacht.
(Vorodin – corruption of ‘Borodin’?)
Well, the Vorodins are the epitome of cosmopolitan sophistication – slim, suave, accentless, with those glowing perma-tans. Though I understood them to be thirty-nine and thirty-eight respectively, they look barely out of their teens. They give the impression of being typical jet-setting wastrels and professional bon vivants. The kind of people who have drawing rooms that take half an hour to cross, Monets and Picassos hanging in the lavatory, truffles and Beluga caviar for dinner, which they eat with a spoon. However, looks can be very deceptive. Lady Mortlock told me that they were generous to a fault, philanthropists with a number of charities named after them. Most of the charities are for children.
As Sonya and Miss Haywood passed by, Veronica said, ‘She looks like an angel, doesn’t she? Such a sweet little girl. Helplessness personified.’
‘I always thought angels looked confident and a bit smug – if Christmas cards are anything to go by. What is wrong with her exactly, do you know?’
‘She is said to be autistic. I wish Lawrence and Lena would do something about it. They haven’t really seen “everybody”. It doesn’t all start and end with Harley Street. There are good specialists abroad… If I had a child like that, I’d love her more than I would a normal one!’ Veronica spoke vehemently, with genuine passion. ‘A mentally handicapped child is a very special child – a gift from God. A child like that would help me preserve my humanity – would prevent me from getting spoilt, keep me to the ground.’
How odd it is that one woman should consider a gift what another describes as punishment.
‘I love children, so does Anatole,’ Veronica went on. She had been a beauty queen and an actress, but she spoke simply and naturally, without the slightest trace of affectation. I found myself warming to her. ‘We don’t have any children, sadly. Do you?’
I told her I had a boy of Sonya’s age. Her face lit up. ‘A little boy! How wonderful for you. And he is – fine? He is in good health? I am so glad! You must be very happy. I’d love to meet him. What’s his name?’
‘David. I nearly brought him here with me.’
‘Oh, why didn’t you? I must send him something – some little present. How about a pair of platinum cuff links with the initial D?’
‘Oh, that’s very kind of you but I couldn’t possibly -’
‘Of course you can. It’s nothing. He can use them when he grows up. I have them in my room. We always carry two boxes full of cuff links that have all the letters of the alphabet on them. I carry the ones with A to K, Anatole has the rest. We present them to deserving little boys. I hope you won’t think us too peculiar!’ She laughed. ‘We have things for girls too.’ A shadow passed over her face. ‘We’d give anything to have a child. If you only knew what it means to us – ’ She broke off, then changed the subject. ‘Twiston is a lovely house, isn’t it? One thing we haven’t got is an English country house. Sorry, this sounds terribly spoilt of me!’
‘It is the kind of place exiles think of when they dream of home,’ I said.
‘Beautifully put… Perhaps one day I will buy this house and live in it.’
Lawrence Dufrette had strolled along and he was joined by Miss Haywood and Sonya. We watched him pick up Sonya and swing her round by her hands, making her scream with laughter. He then put her on his shoulder and unexpectedly broke into song.
‘Some to make hay, Dilly, Dilly,
Some to cut corn,
While you and I, Dilly, Dilly,
Keep ourselves warm.’
Sonya clapped her hands. She looked delighted.
Lawrence Dufrette was wearing a white shantung suit and a Panama hat, which he allowed Sonya to take off his head and throw down to the ground. This was repeated several times. She laughed. Her brown eyes were bright. He laughed too. I was amazed since I hadn’t thought Lawrence Dufrette capable of laughing like that. His whole face changed. He looked happy and relaxed. More importantly, it was clear to meat that moment that he loved his daughter. I said as much.
‘Oh yes, he loves her all right,’ Veronica said in a toneless voice. ‘Lawrence is nothing like Lena in that respect.’
Three men wearing overalls were walking towards the ancient oak tree. Veronica asked what they were doing, did I know? I did – Sir Michael had told me. ‘The tree is something of a historical monument. It was planted by James I. They are going to provide it with a cement base in an effort to preserve it. It is entirely hollow inside. It’s starting to disintegrate.’
‘It looks horrid. If it were up to me, I’d have it removed. Wasn’t there a poem about a hollow? Do you know the one? It always gives me the creeps when I remember it.’
‘Would that be Tennyson’s Maud?’
She looked blank. “‘I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood…” How did it go on?’
I completed it for her:
‘Its lips in the field above are dabbled with blood and heath,
The red ribb’d ledges drip with a silent horror of blood
And Echo there, whatever is ask’d her, answers “Death”.’
6
The Royal Wedding
The cuff links had been left on her dressing table, in a charming presentation box with an onyx lid. She had found them later that day. She gave them to David on his twenty-first birthday, though she hadn’t seen him wear them very often…
How many people had there been altogether? Antonia was standing in her kitchen now, heating some excellent Marks and Spencer’s asparagus soup in a pan. Ten? Twelve? Excluding Sir Michael and Lady Mortlock, that was. She counted on her fingers. The Dufrettes, the Vorodins, Major Nagle, somebody called Bill Kavanagh, whose bald head and thick black-rimmed glasses brought to mind a bank manager, um, Sheikh Umair, several FO types and their wives. A couple called Falconer and another called Lynch-Marquis. She remembered Mrs L-M. as a large woman with a Roedean voice, wearing a long white silk robe with black stripes from the shoulders down both sides of the skirt.
