Reckless (17 page)

Rupert watched her, entranced; but she said no more.

‘You’re not going to tell me, are you?’

‘No, I can’t. Which is such ingratitude, after all you’ve done for me.’

‘Is there anything more I can do for you?’ he said.

‘Oh, no. I mean, why should you?’

Impossible to answer. Why was he helping her? Because she amazed him. Because in her presence his life was transformed. But for her benefit, he gave a more sober reason.

‘I’m a civil servant,’ he said. ‘I work for the Ministry of Defence. My area of expertise, as they say, is the risk of nuclear war. When you live with the knowledge that the world may end any day, it makes you more willing to help people.’

She gave him a long keen look.

‘So it does,’ she said softly.

‘I can’t offer you a room in my flat,’ he said. ‘That would be open to misunderstanding. But I might be able to help you find somewhere else.’

‘I told you,’ she said. ‘I’ve no money.’

He thought of his sister’s big house in Kensington, and Geraldine’s loneliness. Empty rooms there and to spare. But he thought it only to dismiss it. There were other options.

‘How about a room in a family house in exchange for help with childcare?’

He had in mind his former brother-in-law’s business partner, Hugo Caulder. Hugo had a family house with many rooms, and a wife who was often poorly, and a child. Of course, Rupert knew nothing about this Mary Brennan, but presumably the nuns would vouch for her.

She was astonished by his suggestion.

‘Why would anyone take a stranger into their home?’

‘We all start out as strangers,’ he said. ‘I have a family in mind. They’re good people. Shall I ask them?’

‘To tell you the truth,’ she said slowly, ‘I’d go anywhere that would have me, if I could get out of the convent.’

‘I take it you can’t go home.’

‘No.’

A pregnancy? An abortion? The Irish took all that sort of thing far more to heart.

‘Let me have a number where I can reach you,’ he said. ‘I’ll have a word with the family.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll phone you.’

He gave her his home number and told her what time in the evening was best to find him in. Before they parted she offered him her hand again.

‘Thank you, Mr Blundell. I don’t know why you’re helping me. But as they say, beggars can’t be choosers.’

‘I’ll do what I can, Mary.’

‘And thank you also,’ she said, looking at him very gravely, ‘for the Knickerbocker Glory. It was a glory. You should have had one too.’

‘We all come short of the glory of God,’ he said.

She stared for a moment, and then realising he was teasing her, she smiled a sweet warm smile.

‘Can it be that you’re a papist too?’ she said.

‘I was once.’

‘I might have known. The way you lied with a straight face.’

‘Does that mean you tell lies?’

‘You know as well as I do,’ she said. ‘When you’re raised our way you’re filled to the brim with stories that aren’t exactly true and aren’t exactly lies. Isn’t that what’s called faith?’

With this she made him a little curtsy, as she had done to the nuns, and headed back across the park. Rupert watched her go in wonder.

She may be lost and unhappy, he thought, but she’s certainly no fool.

Pamela told Hugo that she was spending that Saturday afternoon with her friend Susie in Cadogan Square. It was a sunny day in June, and she had put on her prettiest summer frock, cornflower-blue edged in white. She left the house in Brook Green and headed in the direction of Hammersmith Broadway. Long before she got to the tube station she stopped beside a tobacconist’s shop. Here, pulled up at the kerb, was a white Jaguar sports car with Stephen Ward at the wheel.

He jumped out and opened the passenger door for her.

‘I’d just decided you weren’t going to come,’ he said.

‘I said I’d come,’ said Pamela. ‘I always do what I say.’

This was not true at all, but it came to her in the moment as a fine thing to say, and she was pleased by the sound of it. She meant Stephen Ward to know from the start that she was no wide-eyed child.

He pulled the Jaguar out onto the main road and drove round the Broadway onto the Great West Road. He never looked at her once as he drove, and seemed to take her presence for granted. Pamela was both relieved and a little disconcerted. What for her was an extraordinary adventure seemed to be for him an everyday occurrence. She tried to guess his age. Forty at least, more than twice as old as she was.

‘There should be a few other people turning up,’ he said as they bowled down the straight road past the airport. ‘Quite a mixed bunch.’

Pamela wanted very much to know if any of them were famous, without giving away that she had never in her life been in the company of famous people.

‘I hoped it was to be just you,’ she said. ‘I do find crowds boring.’

‘Oh, I don’t think you’ll be bored.’

After a while they turned off the main road and headed down a narrower road between trees. Then they passed through some grand gates, down a long private drive.

‘This is Bill Astor’s place,’ said Ward, gesturing at the woodland on either side. ‘The big house is up that way. We go down here.’

He made a sharp turn to the left, and they drove deeper into the woods. In a little while the trees ended, and there was the river with a pleasure boat cruising slowly by. On its deck lounged two pretty young women drinking what might have been champagne. Both were wearing dark glasses and gazing impenetrably at the river bank as they churned by. Seeing them Pamela wished she had brought a pair of dark glasses.

The Jaguar followed the track by the river for a little way, and pulled up at last beside a large cottage with steep roofs and high chimneys and leaded windows. Between the cottage and the river was a sloping garden bright with roses and irises.

‘Oh, it’s so pretty!’ Pamela exclaimed.

‘My hideaway,’ said Stephen Ward, escorting her to the door. ‘I love it here.’

His hideaway. A romantic nook where he brought his women. He took her arm as he led her inside, and there was something about the pressure of his hand that told her he knew just what to do with women. He was slim and muscular and
moved with grace. She wondered if he would try to kiss her, and what she would do if he did. Many boys and some men had made lunges at her in her young life so far, and she had become adept at evasion. One day, of course, she would not get away. She would be caught and kissed properly, and all the rest of it.

The interior of the cottage was not glamorous. It was basically furnished, with worn and non-matching chairs. The rooms were heated by oil stoves. There was no phone or fridge. The kitchen seemed to be bare of food.

‘Everyone just mucks in here, as you see,’ said Ward, dropping his jacket on a chair. ‘What can I get you? Tea? Coffee? I can usually scrounge up a cup of coffee.’

Saying this, he produced a sketch pad and a tin of pencils. Pamela realised with a shock that what she had taken as a ruse was in fact genuine. He was going to draw her portrait.

He sat her outside on a low wall of rocks by a little stream that tumbled past bright blue campanulas to the river. The afternoon sun shone warm on her face as she posed, two hands crossed obediently in her lap. He worked quickly, squinting his eyes in concentration, looking from her face to his pad and back. She felt the unceasing intensity of his gaze but was unable to tell from it what he was thinking about her, if anything. She found this provoking.

‘So what have I done to deserve the honour of this invitation?’ she said.

‘Nothing at all,’ he replied.

‘That’s not very gallant. You make it sound as if you picked me out at random.’

‘On impulse, let’s say.’

He went on sketching. Pamela began to feel restless. She wondered what would be done about lunch.

‘When can I have a fag?’

‘Any time you like.’

‘When are all these other people coming?’

‘Later,’ he said.

‘Will they be fun? What if I don’t like them?’

‘My dear,’ he said, ‘if you feel yourself becoming bored, you have only to say the word and I’ll run you back to Hammersmith.’

He was so relaxed about her presence that it bordered on indifference. Pamela thought that perhaps she was bored already. Perhaps she would ask him to take her home as soon as he was done with his sketching.

‘So do you have a boyfriend?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Do you have a wife?’

‘Not anymore. I like my freedom too much.’

‘Oh, your freedom.’

She meant her tone of voice to imply that she knew just what men meant by ‘freedom’.

‘I like to come and go as I please. I like to see who I please. Really I’m a collector of people. I love to meet people, and get to know them, and bring them together.’

‘Have you collected me?’

‘Of course. Here you are.’

Pamela pouted at that. She didn’t want to be just another specimen in his collection.

‘You’re very beautiful.’ His voice was matter-of-fact. ‘Play your cards right and you could have any man you wanted.’

‘My cards?’

‘There are ways of doing these things. I can introduce you to some real prospects. What sort of chap are you looking for?’

‘Who said I was looking for anyone?’

‘Oh, come on,’ he said. ‘What’s the point of a pretty girl if she doesn’t let some lucky fellow love her?’

‘I’m sure you know a great deal better than me.’

He laid down his pencil and smiled at her, crinkling up his brown eyes.

‘Don’t be cross with me,’ he said. ‘I’m on your side.’

Before the portrait was done the other guests began rolling up. A small, very pretty, girl called Christine, who kissed Ward on the lips and called him ‘darling’. A broad-faced smiling man with a broken nose called Eugene, who Ward introduced as ‘our Russian spy.’ And a slender man called André, who was either Belgian or Dutch and had a sad but beautiful face. All the newcomers arrived with provisions of one sort or another. Eugene brought bottles of vodka. André brought wine. Christine had an entire shopping bag, out of which came fruit and vegetables, bread and pickles and chocolate.

‘Stephen never has anything in the house,’ she said. ‘If nobody feeds him, he just doesn’t eat.’

They clustered round and admired Pamela’s portrait, taking her presence in the cottage for granted. Pamela now looked at the sketch herself. She saw the head and shoulders of a haughty sophisticated beauty who looked like a fashion model.

‘Good Lord!’ she exclaimed. ‘Is that what I look like?’

‘Not one of my best efforts,’ said Stephen.

Christine made decisions about who was to sleep in which bedroom.

‘Eugene, you’d better share the front room with André. Pamela can go in the little back room. Pamela, is there anyone in particular you’d like to sleep with?’

Until this moment Pamela had not known she was staying the night.

‘Could I have Sean Connery, please?’

This went down gratifyingly well.

‘I think I’d better share Stephen’s bed,’ said Christine. ‘He’s very well-behaved, unlike some.’

‘So you’ve decided to stay?’ Stephen said to Pamela.

‘I might,’ she said. ‘And I might not.’

But she was starting to enjoy herself. Both of the new men were paying her attention, in their different ways. Eugene, the Russian spy, was open in his admiration.

‘Lovely, lovely,’ he said, pouring her a glass of vodka. ‘Stephen, how is it you know so many beautiful girls?’

‘Beautiful girls are the same as everyone else,’ said Stephen. ‘They want to make new friends. They want to have adventures.’

‘We have very beautiful girls in Russia,’ Eugene said.

He then proposed a toast to his country.

‘The greatest country in the world, and the future of the world.’

André smiled and shook his head.

‘Except you have to build a wall to keep your people in.’

‘Oh, the wall, the wall,’ said Eugene. ‘I don’t like walls. Don’t talk to me about the wall.’

They sat together on the river front and watched the Saturday cruisers go by and smoked and drank Eugene’s vodka. André gazed at Pamela from time to time, but he did not speak to her. When he himself was speaking she watched his face, and caught the sadness in his limpid grey eyes, and wondered what he thought of her, and whether he found Christine more attractive. Christine was curled up with her head in Stephen’s lap, which implied that she belonged to Stephen.

Eugene was boasting about the Soviet Union.

‘By 1970 we will be richer than the United States. That is a fact.’

‘Not the way you spend money,’ said Stephen.

‘Me! I am a man of modest means.’

‘You get your suits at Harrods.’

‘Of course!’ said Eugene. ‘I represent my country. I must dress well. Shirts and shoes from Barkers, suits and ties from Harrods,
cologne from Christian Dior. But when we are victorious, when we have built true Communism, all this will wither away.’

‘I’ve been meaning to ask you, Eugene,’ said Stephen. ‘Do you actually believe the tosh you talk?’

Eugene leapt to his feet.

‘I am Yevgeny Mikhailovich Ivanov, Captain Second Rank, descended on my mother’s side from the family Golenishchev-Kutuzov. My ancestor Mikhail Ilarionovich Kutuzov defeated the Grande Armée of Napoleon in 1812. I am Russian and patriot, and if you insult me I will break your nose, as my nose was broken when I was middleweight squadron champion of the Pacific fleet!’

He gave a mighty salute, and they all cheered. He sat down again, grinning, and poured everyone more vodka.

‘You’ll never build true Communism,’ said André. ‘America will never allow it. They’ll destroy Russia first.’

‘My friend,’ said Eugene, ‘that would be tragedy. All men of goodwill must combine to prevent. I tell my friend Stephen here, if the Germans gain access to nuclear weapons, the world is in great danger. The Americans must not supply nuclear warheads for their Pershing missiles in Germany.’

Christine was up on her feet now.

‘Come on, Pamela,’ she said. ‘The men are going to be boring. Let’s take a walk.’