A Rather English Marriage (37 page)

‘Tol' ve girz,' said Reggie.

‘It's very recent,' said Liz. ‘Though we've known each other for quite a long time. It's nearly a year now, isn't it, darling?'

‘Ockober,' said Reginald.

Liz released her hand, which was growing sweaty in Reginald's grasp, and, to compensate, gazed intently into his eyes. He's lost some weight, she thought. Colour's better; those awful veins on his forehead have gone. How about his speech?

‘You're looking wonderful, Reggie,' she told him.
‘So
much better. How do you feel?'

‘Veelin' vine. Be even be'er if vey'd le' me fmoke.'

‘You can't
possibly
smoke, darling,' Liz said. ‘Can he, Lord Blythgowrie?'

Vivian shot her a patronizing glance and Liz thought, OK, not to be won round. Well, at least I know where I stand.

‘I'm sure Reginald is well aware that he can't ever smoke again,' Vivian said crisply. ‘And now, Mrs Franks, I wonder if you'd be so good as to allow me five minutes on my own with my uncle, and then perhaps if you know of anywhere decent locally, we might have a glass of wine together before I return to London.'

‘That
would be nice,' she said, riled by his adroitness in
putting her down. ‘Reggie, sweetheart, I'll look in again soon. Mmm …' She kissed his forehead, clasped one hand in both of hers for a moment, murmured ‘My darling,' and left his bedside.

‘Who is that?' asked Vivian, the moment she was out of earshot. ‘Is she really your fiancée, Uncle Reginald? In which case, is she living with you? Or do you plan to move her in? Can she look after you? Because I rather think you're going to need a fair amount of nursing from now on.
And
someone to monitor your alcohol intake.'

Yes, Reginald explained laboriously, Liz Franks was indeed his fiancée, though they hadn't got round to deciding when they would marry. He hoped very much that she would live with him as soon as possible, since he had no desire –
‘oh
i-ire' – to be transferred to a nursing home and was keen to leave this infernal hospital as quickly as possible.

‘Right,' said Vivian. ‘Well that gives me some idea of how matters stand for the time being. I'll have a word with Mrs Franks and see how she's placed. Meanwhile I'll come down again as soon as I can, with a bit of luck before the end of the month. Trip to Hong Kong coming up in September. Do you want me to send the girls to see you?'

‘No!' said Reginald, with surprising emphasis. ‘Vanks or ve same, bu' no.'

‘Susan?' said Vivian, doubtfully.

No, not Susan.

‘Anyone else?'

No, no one, Reggie assured him stubbornly. He was fine. Or would be, as soon as he got out of here.

‘Want me to inquire about a private hospital? You must be with BUPA?'

No, neither a private hospital nor a nursing home. Reginald wanted to go back to his own home and sleep in his own bed. With Liz, he added to himself.

Vivian Blythgowrie felt he had done all that could be expected of him, and took his leave with a firm handshake and a half-formed reassurance: ‘Anything you need, sure you'll …?
Jolly good.' Had he turned to wave as he left the ward, he would have seen Reginald ferreting in his locker for the
Telegraph
, and his hand closing gleefully upon the Benson & Hedges packet.

Liz was waiting in the corridor outside. She had applied some lipstick and tucked the shirt into her trousers, the better to display what was, Vivian conceded, an excellent figure for a woman who must be in her fifties.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting,' he said brusquely. ‘My car's outside.'

They descended to the ground floor and walked past the new hospital building towards the large car park at the back. A Rolls Royce detached itself from the ranks of parked cars and glided smoothly to a halt beside them. As the chauffeur slipped out to open the door and Vivian handed her in, Liz felt like a schoolgirl being taken out on Parents' Weekend.

‘Where are we going?' Vivian asked.

‘I thought the Spa Hotel might do,' said Liz. ‘Just at the top of Reggie's road, if you know where that is. The bar isn't too bad.'

‘Can you direct the driver?' he said, and she did so clearly and concisely.

He chose a table in the far corner of the Equestrian Bar, beside the window, and Liz sat down. Vivian Blythgowrie had a word with the barman and returned a moment later, followed shortly afterwards by the barman bearing a bottle of wine and two glasses. How does he do it? Liz thought to herself, this born-to-command act? Normally this place makes you buy wine by the glass.

As though answering her question, Vivian said, ‘I explained that we should prefer to be left in peace. Now then …' He poured two glasses of wine and Liz sipped from hers. He can make the first move, she thought.

‘Did you ever meet Reginald's first wife, Mary?' he asked.

‘He and I only met one another in October,' Liz said. ‘Mary died in …June, wasn't it … of last year.'

‘She was very different from you.'

‘Yes,' said Liz composedly, ‘I imagine she must have been.'

‘She was a very sweet, generous person. Immensely kind to my daughters.'

Liz nodded. ‘How nice.' Bastard, she thought.

Blythgowrie took several sips of wine. Liz watched him. He is, she thought, arrogant, very much used to power, and exceedingly sexy. I can just about catch a look of Reggie in him, though he's tougher and brighter than the poor old heffalump can ever have been. Must be the same age as me.

On impulse she said, ‘I wonder if you would have known my first husband? You and he might have been contemporaries.'

‘Oh?' he said, sceptically.

‘David Franks,' she stated. David had been a cricket Blue; they could easily both have been at Oxford at the beginning of the Sixties.

‘Ah,' said Vivian. ‘Yes, I believe the name rings a bell.' He sipped from his glass noncommittally as she watched him in silence.

‘Mrs Franks,' he said, ‘you will forgive me if I seem businesslike, but I am Reginald's nearest living relative, and I'm bound to say this engagement is news to me. He has not, as far as I know, mentioned you hitherto.'

‘No,' said Liz, ‘but then, I believe you haven't seen him for several months?'

‘Be that as it may,' conceded Vivian, ‘could you put my mind at rest on one or two points? I'm sure you'll tell me if you feel I'm being intrusive. You and David Franks were married long?'

‘Over ten years. About as long as you and your first wife, I believe?'

He ignored that. ‘And you're now divorced?'

‘Certainly.'

‘So presumably David Franks supports you and – do you have any children?'

‘I have two grown-up children, yes.'

He waited for her to amplify that.

‘My daughter, Alicia, works at the Soho Brasserie. I don't suppose you know it, but your daughters might. My son, Hugo, is currently travelling.'

‘Drugs?' said Vivian.

She met his eyes steadily. ‘Yes. Something, unfortunately, of which many parents nowadays have had experience.'

‘Yes,' he said.

There was a long pause, during which he refilled their glasses. Liz felt her colour rising. Steady on, she told herself, you're doing well. Don't spoil it by getting reckless. She waited again for him to speak.

‘My uncle,' said Vivian Blythgowrie eventually, ‘is, as you must know, fairly comfortably off. He is not, however, a rich man. I don't know whether you are privy to the terms of Mary's will?'

‘No.'

‘Perhaps he would not object to my telling you that he has the use of the house during his lifetime, but after his death, half of it – his wife's half, so to speak – is left to a children's charity.'

Damn and blast him, thought Liz, arrogant upper-class shit.

‘Ah yes,' she said. ‘Because of Cecily, I imagine?'

That rocked him.
‘Cecily?'
he asked, and then, recovering himself, continued, ‘Of course. Their daughter. Tragic. Mary never got over that.'

‘Nor,' said Liz, ‘has Reggie.'

‘Furthermore,' Vivian continued, ‘Reginald has a small fixed income, derived from a family trust which I administer, and few if any investments. In other words, an income more than adequate for his own needs, but'

‘Not, you are thinking, sufficient for mine?' said Liz.

‘I see we understand one another perfectly.'

‘No,' replied Liz. ‘We do not. That is to say, I understand you very well. You, however, are making a number of unjustified, and indeed insulting, assumptions about me. You have not met me or heard about me before because you and your
wife have so little concern for your uncle, whose “nearest living relative” you are, that you have not seen him since his wife's funeral – over a year ago. You did not even have the decency to invite him to join you for Christmas.'

‘We were skiing, in Switzerland, actually,' he said, in an attempt to regain the initiative.

‘I am sure Reginald would have enjoyed that, given the chance,' she retorted. ‘And now you have the nerve to pry into
my
affairs. Let me tell you that
I
am practically the only person in the last year who has had the slightest concern for Reginald's welfare. Where were you? Where were his friends? His wife's friends? You abandoned him, one and all, to
rot
in his comfortable house in Tunbridge Wells! If it weren't for that man you met earlier at his bedside, Southgate, who has looked after him devotedly, your uncle Reginald would have gone to pot. And
you
wouldn't even have known about it. I take exception, therefore, very great exception, to your inquisition. I do not propose to enlighten you as to my plans. Perhaps when you next see him,
when
you have a moment to spare, your uncle will tell you them for himself. Good evening, Lord Blythgowrie!'

She walked out thinking, Damn, damn,
damn
him!

Later that evening, swept home on a tide of such incandescent rage that she could not remember how she got there, later, sitting over a page of figures and bank statements, Elizabeth Franks thought, The truly bloody thing about that unspeakably bloody man is that he is absolutely
right
. I was of
course
interested in Reginald's money, though God knows why else anyone should want to marry him; and now that I know how he's placed it has tipped the scales conclusively against him.

An open bottle of wine stood at her right elbow. Liz had written down her major assets – house, car, shop – and what they might fetch. If she reckoned £135,000 for the house; £50,000 for the business (stock, goodwill, and eight years left on the lease); and £2,500 for the car (a lipstick-red MG, twenty years old but a ‘modern classic', the garage said) – this
came, at worst, to just under £190,000. Take away the mortgage of £40,000 and the bank loan of £22,000, and she had £120,000 in the world. Then there were a few tax and VAT bills to pay. But, even so, she couldn't have less than £100,000. Nothing else, of course, but still, £100,000 seemed a good round sum.

The real question was, what did she propose to do with it? France, she thought wistfully, would be idyllic. Little town in the south – not the Mediterranean, the fewer tourists the better: just the natives – with terracotta tiles and flat roofs; market day on Saturdays, long lazy afternoons … The perfect combination of business and pleasure. She smiled. Maybe Lissy would come as well. The baby would grow up brown and bilingual. What's to stop us? Nothing!

Emptying her wine glass, Liz realized she had eaten no supper and, thanks to Constance Liddell, no lunch either, but that, none the less
(néanmoins
, memory supplied helpfully), counting bloody Blythgowrie's two glasses, she had got through a bottle and a half of wine. That being so, she said to herself carefully and sensibly, I must be more than somewhat pissed. Which is not to say I shall change my mind in the morning, because I won't. Will I? No!

The telephone made her jump. Oof! Who's that? Blythgowrie, crawling apology? No. Reggie, hospital maunderings? Hope not. Dunno. Pick it up, then, silly cow.

‘Hello?'

Lissy.

‘Darling! I was just thinking about you. How
are
you? How's the bulge? Are you in a phone-box? Want me to call you back? No. Good.'

Just had a card from her father. For her birthday. Bit late.

‘From Daddy? How?'

Sent it to her bank.

‘I say, clever old him. Where is he?'

Somewhere in the south of France.

‘Did he sign off with one name at the end of it, darling, or two?'

Just one. Just his. Why?

‘Because, my treasure, I have just had the most brilliant idea. I am going to take a train to the south of France. Tomorrow, if I can fix it. Well, no, not tomorrow, but as soon as possible. I am going to find your father, and when I've found him, I shall tell him he's about to become a grandfather. Now tell me again, slowly:
what
was the postmark?'

‘I really like that Gorby and his wife,' said June. ‘What's her name? Not Rita – Raisa. Sort of Russian version of Rita, I expect. I thought it was all going to go back to the bad old days. I saw this TV programme last year, about Stalin. Terrible, what he did. Worse than Hitler.'

‘Nothing changes,' said Roy. ‘Human nature don't change. You think it does, but people is always the same underneath. You got to train them, civilize them, or they'll always be animals.'

‘No, Dad. People is different. Takes all sorts. There'll always be bad eggs, I grant, but most people try to be decent. Love your neighbour,' she added vaguely.

‘Used to,' said Roy. ‘Not any more. Once it was the Ten Commandments. Now it's a comedy show on telly.'