Carnforth's Creation (5 page)

‘Fine,’ he cried, ‘just think about it. Plenty of time …’ He touched her cheek; a gesture of encouragement before returning to his workmen.

‘All right, lads,’ she heard him say, ‘let’s have those ladies on their feet.’

*

Not long after leaving the library, Matthew made up his mind to patch things up with Bridget. Looking for her in the
gardens, he passed the swimming pool, hidden away behind a creeper-clad wall. From the other side he heard sounds of splashing and laughter. On passing through the small arched entrance, instead of finding his wife, Matthew saw Gemma and Eleanor’s languid cousin, Jonathan, cleaving the
sparkling
water with fluent strokes. As Matthew backed towards the gate, Gemma spotted him.

‘Not so fast, Fellini,’ she spluttered. ‘I want a word with you.’

Rather than risk a repeat of last night’s scene, he decided to humour her. Five minutes later, sitting in a deck-chair next to the swing-seat occupied by the other two, he listened glassily while Jonathan yarned about soldiering in Aden. Gemma nudged his lean brown torso.

‘Tell him about the baboons, Jonno.’

Supposing ‘baboon’ to be an appalling synonym for ‘nationalist guerrilla’, Matthew was pleasantly surprised when Jonno gave a humorous account of how his company had opened fire on some real baboons, mistaking them for nationalists in the dark. The volleys had sent thirty or forty terrified apes storming through an unsuspected Arab
position
, causing enough confusion for Jonathan’s men to
capture
their machine-guns with ease.

Though his own forays among the under-privileged were “B” Features to Jonno’s Major Motion Picture, Matthew suspected that Gemma thought the man a droll period piece. When Jonathan left to get dressed, Matthew rose too, but complied when Gemma patted the cushion next to her.

‘I’ve been an awful fool,’ she remarked, smiling with wry acceptance of life’s incalculable shifts. Matthew merely smiled back, wondering whether she would try to charm him into changing his mind. ‘I mean it, Matty,’ she murmured sadly. ‘I had no right to expect anything … Paul thinks so too.’ Matthew tried not to look too sceptical. ‘Perhaps you’ll believe me,’ she continued huskily, ‘if I tell you Paul’s given up any idea of a film about Roy.’

The pool water had darkened Gemma’s ash-blonde hair
and washed away the mascara from her eyes, making her look younger and more ingenuous.

‘I don’t deny I thought I could persuade you,’ she
admitted
, with a chastened laugh. ‘But after a while I started enjoying seeing you so much that it didn’t really matter what came of it in that sense.’ She looked down bashfully. ‘I probably shouldn’t say this … I want to go on seeing you.’ Surprised, Matthew abandoned his study of the way in which the stretched fabric of her bikini snugly defined the
underlying
contours. She looked at him directly; blue eyes
unwavering
. ‘That’s why the film’s a non-starter … Can’t be anything else if we’re to keep seeing each other.’ A lovely smile, half-elegiac, half-worldly-wise, seemed designed to implore him to brave his fears. And suddenly there it was, that ‘come-on’ look he remembered so well, with its
unspoken
challenge. Surely you’re grown-up enough to take your sex straight, without reassuring splashes of guilt con carne? You can’t be spineless enough to
want
to limit your options before you have to?

He was tempted to say something encouraging, but was too aware of the many times she had fooled him in the past. Perhaps she had talked tactics with Paul since the night before. Her cornflower eyes were regarding his distressfully now. (How well he recalled those sudden darts from
cynicism
to injured innocence.)

‘I’m not going to press you for an answer,’ she whispered, kissing him lightly on the cheek. ‘You’ll be the one to decide how much time you can spare.’

Not wanting to commit himself, Matthew remained silent. To his relief she began talking about Paul’s plans for the evening.

*

Without intending to tell him yet about Paul’s astounding offer, Bridget nonetheless set out in search of Matthew after leaving the Statue Walk. To have any chance of winning him over to the idea of acceptance, she would first have to mend a number of fences. So why not start at once? Back in the house, nobody seemed to have seen Matthew for some time.
When Eleanor’s cousin came into the Great Chamber as she was leaving it, Bridget thought it just worthwhile to ask him.

In fact her journey to the swimming pool ended in the rose garden, where she spotted Matthew and Gemma Lucas ambling in her direction through a galaxy of red and yellow blooms. They were doing nothing more incriminating than talking, yet something about the way they were moving (hardly seeming to take in their surroundings) made her skin prickle. Considering how enraged the woman had been only hours ago, it was strange to see them chatting so amicably. Quarrels followed by smiles, sunshine after storms: a
well-known
syndrome. Bridget felt breathless. Wasn’t it clear as daylight? The trouble Matthew had taken to explain away Gemma’s abuse was of a piece with the elaborate plausibility of recent excuses for plans overturned and unannounced latenesses home. How
dare
he, she thought, with a burning tightness in her throat: how dare he pretend to be pleased to be at Delvaux with me, when all the time he had seen this visit as an opportunity to be with
her
? Too upset to confront them, Bridget hurried away.

*

By five o’clock, Cosmic Gloom (Paul’s nickname for his wife’s elderly lady’s maid) had laid out her mistress’s clothes ready for the evening. In response to Paul’s plea for ‘
something
spectacular’, Eleanor and her dressmaker had obliged with an outfit combining Thirties’ Hollywood chic with oriental opulence. Yet gazing on these expensive fabrics, patterned with swirling dragons in gold-thread, she felt no trace of her usual delight in dressing-up. Alarmed by Paul’s preparations, she had considered telephoning some of the more straitlaced guests to warn them. But of what precisely? Plaster women? Cabaret acts they might find offensive? Fountains floodlit in the nauseating purples and greens normally confined to cinema foyers? Knowing that if
questioned
she would have no idea how to explain such things, Eleanor had remained inactive, feeling increasingly frantic.

An hour later, wearing a close-fitting crepe de chine turban, she gathered up her gold and black skirt and swept
into the Long Gallery, determined even in present
circumstances
to look and behave decorously, at least until the departure of the last guest.

*

‘Holy smoke,’ gasped Bridget, rushing to the bedroom window. At the bidding of some hidden switch the entire east front, from the tallest Elizabethan chimney to the moat, was suddenly bathed in an aqueous glow of slowly moving colours. Matthew left the dressing table, where he had been wrestling with his double-ended black tie, and leant against a window-mullion.

‘It’s done by putting oil between plates of coloured glass, then revolving them in front of a few thousand watts.’ Bridget drew the curtains with a clatter of brass rings. ‘I didn’t mean to sound disparaging,’ he murmured.

Since his talk with Gemma, Matthew had at last made up his mind not to go on seeing her. Whether Bridget knew anything definite, or merely sensed something wrong, it was useless pretending that Gemma had not been affecting their marriage.

Looking at Bridget now as she crossed the room turning on lights, he was relieved to see an expression less pinched and vulnerable than earlier in the day. Recently she had been having problems at work; but he had been too absorbed with his own to be much help. In the aftermath of demonstrations and sit-ins at her college, she had been harder hit than many of her colleagues by the stream of questions about the ‘relevance’ of literature while B-52s were raining death on Hanoi. When they returned home, he would try to be more supportive.

While fixing his cuff-links, he watched her examining a small seventeenth century landscape. Her concentration touched him. Considering how much he too had once
enjoyed
visiting galleries, it was pathetic how rarely they went.

‘Who’s it by?’ he asked gently.

‘Hobbema,’ she replied, still gazing; head slightly tilted. ‘Makes one long to walk through the frame, and sit in the grass by the waterwheel.’

He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Strange to think of such a wonderful artist earning his living checking wine casks.’

‘Wouldn’t it be fantastic to own it?’ she whispered.

‘Wouldn’t one be tempted to sell?’

‘I expect so,’ she replied, surprising him with a brilliant smile.

Since talk of money usually depressed her, Matthew found her good-humour encouraging.

*

Even before setting foot in the gardens, Eleanor had endured some bad moments. In order, she supposed, to stop details of his ‘entertainment’ leaking out and spoiling the impact of whatever coups he had in mind, Paul had left a large
proportion
of the arrangements dangerously late – essential matters like parking for instance. Consequently guests had had to walk through the paddock on their way to the house. Because of heavy rain earlier in the week, those finding no Wellingtons in their cars, had been obliged to squelch their way housewards in light evening shoes. Some had also plainly been put out by the very large numbers invited, and by the news that they would be dining in a circus tent rather than in the house. But by and large, the majority seemed set on enjoying themselves even if things turned out not quite as expected.

As Eleanor was leaving the terrace, Betty Fernleigh, whose husband was Lord Lieutenant of the county, caught up with her and smiled archly. ‘All very exciting, my dear, but what’s going on exactly?’ A moment earlier, the house had turned an astonishing bilious yellow. As Eleanor looked down the Statue Walk, the marquee also changed to the same ghastly colour. She laughed helplessly. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to ask Paul.’ Before she could add more, a brief but hysterical firework display got under way.

An initial flurry of rockets, some grumbling detonations (seemingly the build-up to some stupendous set-piece in the park), then after a dazzling burst of Roman candles, total blackness and silence, punctuated by three feebly popping flares. Still expecting the missing finale, people were talking
in hushed voices. Lady Fernleigh said gruffly, ‘Irritating things fireworks, never go off when you want them to.’ Surrounded by sympathizers Eleanor felt herself blushing. Very likely Paul had intended what had happened. Waiters were now asking people to leave the terrace for the marquee.

On the steps leading down to the Statue Walk, Eleanor greeted Lord and Lady Broughton, a friendly couple who had asked her and Paul over for several shoots during the winter. Also sympathetic about the fireworks, they praised her enterprise for ‘daring’ to throw such a big party. Nothing like it in Jack R’s day. Looking around, Eleanor saw the Dowager Lady Yelverton, and Mark Parnham, whom she had never met properly. The same story with dozens of others. Paul had cast his net so wide that if they had lived ten years in the county, and attended every hunt ball, dance, and charity jamboree, they might still have done no better than strike up a passing acquaintance with half of the hundreds present. ‘But we don’t know
them
at all,’ Eleanor had
frequently
wailed when Paul had drawn up his mammoth guest list. ‘Most of them’ll accept out of curiosity; you’ll see.’ And most of them
had
accepted, not just landowners and local gentry, but people as varied as the vet, the owner of Flixton garage, and the village publican. For moral support Eleanor had asked some of her closest friends, but the number present and her obligation to circulate prevented her seeing much of them.

The Statue Walk was already thick with people on their way to the marquee. On both sides, Paul’s dummies glowed luridly against the dark shrubs. Suddenly she froze. Unless she was seeing things, several were moving. The truth dawned quickly. At intervals along the walk, Paul had placed real women, painted the same unnatural pink as the plaster figures, and like them wearing skimpy briefs and sequinned tassels on their breasts. Eleanor forced herself to keep going. Mercifully, those around her were showing admirable
sang-froid
. Not wanting to seem either prudish or intrigued, perhaps they had no choice. Passing one of these almost naked girls, Emma Broughton turned a worried face to
Eleanor, ‘Don’t you think they must be frightfully cold?’ As she agreed, Eleanor heard a scream, and saw one of these pink females in headlong flight, pursued by a
dinner-jacketed
man. She was aware of a general buzz of
consternation
and a few weak cheers.

‘I suppose it’s one of those
happening
things,’ drawled a dismissive voice. Other remarks, equally detached, told Eleanor that, if out to shock, Paul was not yet succeeding. Seconds later a volley of cracking detonations shook the air. Whizzing snakes of light and bright starbursts shrieked skywards on every side. As the crumps grew louder, thick smoke drifted across the gardens. People were coughing and cursing; and not a few running towards the marquee. The entire event lasted less than a minute, as if the climax of the earlier display had suddenly been remembered and
telescoped
into the shortest possible time. Horrified by bitter complaints voiced openly around her, Eleanor was suddenly gripped by a remarkable spectable.

Two figures had appeared on one of the twin-turrets of the gatehouse. They were very small, but, in the glow of the lights, resembled the painted girl and her pursuer. They appeared and disappeared behind the battlements,
struggling
like Punch and Judy, though the effect was far from funny. Knowing the height of the battlements, Eleanor could hardly watch. Having looked away, she raised her eyes just as a dark shape hurtled earthwards from the tower. A scream from someone close by scarcely reached her as she began to run. One thought: find Paul and stop it
now
.