The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House (41 page)

‘Well, I think it’s a damn shame,’ I said, which was as
diplomatic as I could be, considering I had put quite a lot of my own time into the project for free. ‘Alec’s rather upset about … well, the whole thing.’

‘Oh, the Bray’ll be all right. Chaps like him always are. Listen, Carver, let me introduce you. Robert Carver, an artistic chap. Lady Ariadne Tarnish, daughter of the Duke of Dellsway … oh, and my fiancée.’

Her hand, when I shook it, was like a bunch of twigs. ‘Congratulations,’ I said, to which she sniffed and yawned.

‘Heard the buffet’s been laid out,’ said Bump. ‘I forward the motion we investigate. Sweetest?’

Sweetest avowed that she would rather stay where she was, and so Bump and I left the arbour together. ‘Dull as ditchwater,’ he said regretfully, ‘Still, her old man’s absolutely stinking. We’re going to honeymoon in India. Shoot a few Bengal tigers, what?’

The buffet table was groaning with cold hams and roast chicken, egg salad and pickles, salmon en croute, cheese straws in dainty pots, crudités arranged in concentric circles around a centre of artichoke hearts. Bump stuffed his face and took another glass of champagne from a platter held out by the under-housemaid Harriet, who’d been run ragged all morning by the upper servants. He winked at her and I turned away in disgust.

‘Robert!’ I heard a female voice cry, and I turned my head to see Lizzie walking towards me, her parents and siblings following along behind.

I smiled automatically ‘Lizzie!’ It was surprising how her eyes still gleamed when she saw me. I had barely thought of her these past few weeks, despite upholding our rendezvous as regularly as a shift in the office, allowing
her to linger outside the rings on display in the jewellers’ shops in the Snooks, smiling indulgently as she coyly discussed children’s names as if all these topics of conversation were as irrelevant to our friendship as the clouds that occasionally fluffed across the powder-blue sky. I had even kissed her, although more for show than anything else, and all the time my mind had been somewhere else entirely.

‘Afternoon, Robert.’ Feathers pumped my hand up and down. ‘Splendid feast, eh? And what a beautiful garden, don’t you think, Tamsin? Of course, back in Viviane’s era there were parties like this all the time – we used to dance until dawn, didn’t we, dearest? Before the war, you know. Those were the days, eh?’

‘Yes, dear,’ said Mrs Feathers vaguely, gathering her older children round her like fence stakes bordering a precious flower. I saw Nanny in the background, draped in the younger Featherses and warning little Anthony not to steal food from the buffet.

‘Daddy’s always talking about the olden days and how wonderful they were, and I don’t believe a word of it,’ said Maddie. ‘Hello, Robert, we haven’t seen you much lately. What’ve you been getting up to?’

‘N-nothing really,’ I said, with the disquieting sense once again that Maddie knew exactly what I’d been getting up to. ‘How have you been?’

‘Bored,’ she said. ‘I want a beau, like Lizzie. At least it would give me something to do in the evenings.’

‘Now, dear, you know you’re too young,’ murmured Mrs Feathers.

‘Modern girls always want to grow up too fast,’ said
Dr Feathers. ‘What’s wrong with being a child? That’s what I’d like to know. By the way, Robert, have you seen your cousin? I wanted to ask his opinion on these damn-fool bungalows.’

‘Um … he’s about somewhere,’ I said, sure that Alec would not give two hoots about the damn-fool bungalows. ‘Perhaps by the fish pond?’

‘I see. Well, I’ll catch up with you later.’ He walked off, and Mrs Feathers drifted after him, pulling along the others in her wake, and then there remained only Lizzie and the guilty sense, not that I had betrayed her, but that I had hardly thought of her as I was doing so.

She was holding a glass of iced lemon water and was sipping from it, her parasol balanced on one shoulder. ‘It’s terribly hot, isn’t it?’ She squinted out from under the umbrella. ‘Father says it’s going to thunder later.’

‘I don’t think so. Apparently Scone has the weather entirely under control. Had a word with the man upstairs, you see.’

Lizzie giggled; I had learned her ways over the recent weeks, and now I was able to scatter conversation about her that made it appear as if I were utterly engaged in whatever topic she had brought to mind.

‘Doesn’t Mrs Bray ever feel the heat?’ She nodded to where Clara was standing with a group of friends, resplendent in her ivory shift, her head thrown back with laughter. ‘She looks so lovely.’

‘Not as lovely as you,’ I said automatically, with the vague sense that I was being a complete cad.

She sighed happily. ‘Do you know who her friends are? They look awfully glamorous.’

I recognized Eli Golden and George from the club, but there were two women I did not know. One was very tall, with a sharp black bob and charcoal dress, and the other was wearing men’s flannels. ‘Theatrical people, I expect,’ I said. ‘Would you like to meet them?’

‘Oh no.’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘They’re not my sort of people at all.’

‘Don’t be such a goose.’ I took her by the arm and dragged her across the lawn, because I had been loosened from Clara’s side for long enough and I yearned to be near her.

‘Ah!’ As I approached the group, Clara turned to me. ‘I was wondering where you’d got to.’

‘Sorry, old thing.’ I sensed that Lizzie was hiding behind me. ‘I was talking to Bump. Did you know he’s turned up with some titled fiancée you couldn’t imagine him less suited to?’

‘God! He’s not even invited.’ I saw she was halfway tipsy already on champagne. ‘I ought to kick him out for what he’s done.’

‘Is that Lord Mason?’ said the woman in the bob, in an accent as coarse as the seabed. ‘He used to come and watch me nightly. He’s a depraved beast, that one.’

‘Anyway.’ The woman in the flannels turned to me and held out her hand. ‘This isn’t getting us introduced. I’m Mary Garrett, and I take it you must be Clara’s husband?’

I heard a cough from one of the men. ‘Not at all,’ I said with an easy smile, my heart racketing hard, aware of Lizzie behind me, ‘I’m Robert Carver, Alec’s cousin, and this here is my friend Miss Feathers, who lives next door.’

I shoved Lizzie in front of me. ‘How do you do,’ she
said in that same tight, nervous voice she’d used on me the first time we’d met, and I saw the amused confusion on Miss Garrett’s face at the odd combination we must make.

‘And this is Miss Lilian Marshall.’ Clara indicated the tall woman and beamed at me, and I saw that the shift to her evening persona had begun, the one that, relaxed by alcohol, would flirt with me in secret and whisper in my ear about the night-time adventure to come. Strangely, I felt more restrained than ever before, conscious of Lizzie, awkward beside me.

‘I looked after this little one when she first came to London.’ Lilian put her arm about Clara’s waist. ‘Put her on the stage, I did, at the mercy of all them horrible men.’

‘Until I was rescued,’ she said with an ironic twist to her mouth.

Behind me there was an almighty crash, and we all turned to see Alec stumbling through the glass doors, falling down the steps and landing in a heap at the bottom. Scone rushed to help him up, but Alec waved him away, getting to his feet and announcing, ‘I’m quite all right! No need to panic.’

He staggered towards the bar, and Clara pushed a high, brittle laugh out into the air. ‘And as if on cue,’ she said, ‘my knight in shining armour.’

I turned to Lizzie and was surprised to find her gone. I saw her parasol nodding its way along the path towards the fish pond. I blinked, confused, and George said, ‘I think we scared your friend away.’

‘Oh, she’s tougher than she looks,’ I murmured, although I had no doubt something had upset her, perhaps to do
with the unusual ladies. She probably thought they’d been sneering. Later, I would talk to her, but my head was already cocooned in champagne, and I had not the slightest inclination to do so now.

‘I wish I were young again,’ said Mary Garrett. ‘To have all that life ahead of you. Everything opening up. I remember that feeling, as if the whole world were yours for the taking.’

Lilian leaned on her shoulder and looked at her adoringly. Clara said, ‘Before it clamps you up and begins chewing you to pieces.’

‘I don’t think you even believe that,’ I said.

She pouted. ‘Oh, darling, I’ve been trying for years to be a cynic.’

‘Cynics don’t mean what they say,’ I observed. ‘They’re children, desperate for their innocence to be restored.’

‘Do you know, I think you’re right,’ said Miss Garrett. ‘Only I’d never thought of it like that.’

The conversation wound back and forth as the afternoon became evening. People drifted away from and joined our group, and the servants lit the lanterns strung between the trees, and the candles on the steps, and the evening sky became thick with the day’s heat, with just the breeze from the sea to relieve the humidity. I found myself making jokes, and the jokes being appreciated, and the conversation skittered from the theatre to politics to London to the differences between men and women, and I felt a little of what Miss Garrett had been trying to describe, that soaring delight in the world, the feeling that I could go down any path, take any life that appealed to me; and as champagne became cocktails, I realized with
a pure clarity that the life I wanted was this one. Not the peaceful silence of back home, nor even the perfect elegance of Castaway, but this: parties and lights and rattling conversations with people who had slipped the moulds society had laid out for them, and did not care at all.

At one point I walked away from them, with the vague intention of finding Lizzie; however, as I looked into the arbour I saw inside not Bump, but Alec in his shirtsleeves, sitting on one of the benches, an empty glass beside him, and looking at the sundial in the middle. I stood at the entrance and said, ‘Cheer up, old thing.’

He looked at me, startled, and then said, ‘Oh, it’s you.’

I refused to be swayed by his glum mood, so I sat beside him and said, ‘The party’s going well, anyhow.’

‘Is it?’ He appeared not to care either way. He patted his jacket pockets and said, ‘Blast. I’ve left my cigarettes inside.’

I took out my own tin and gave him one. He cupped his hands around the flame as I lit it. ‘I know you think losing Castaway is the end of the world –’ I began.

‘Not another lecture, Robert, I can’t bear it.’ He took a deep drag and sighed out smoke.

‘I haven’t even given you one lecture yet,’ I said, rather offended.

‘Well, everybody else has. Made my own bed, must lie in it, et cetera, et cetera. Actually doesn’t make me feel better one iota.’

‘I wasn’t going to say any of that.’ I lit my own cigarette. ‘I was going to say, it’s good to appreciate what one’s got, even if that is considerably less than before.’

‘What have I got?’ said Alec bitterly. ‘I’m a failure.
Mother was the only one with any hope for me, and now I’m selling her house before she’s even cold in her grave.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘You’ve your health,’ I said.

He grunted.

I added, although the words stuck in my throat, ‘You’ve a beautiful wife.’

‘Who hates my guts. That’s going to be fun, trapped in some God-awful flat in Ealing or somewhere hideous. Home from work at six, “Hello, dearest”, sitting on opposite armchairs, staring at each other and pretending everything’s fine.’

‘You can always divorce her,’ I said lightly. ‘Or … or separate or something.’

‘I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction,’ he said. ‘I’d just be playing into her hands.’

I didn’t really understand, but Alec was talking with a drunk’s logic. I added, ‘I know somebody who’d be glad to see you at the end of the day.’

‘Really?’ He said this with no hope.

‘Yes.’ I swallowed. ‘Sally Trent.’

There was a pause. Alec looked at the stone bird pecking at the edge of the sundial. Finally he said, ‘Have you been checking up on me?’

‘You didn’t tell me you’d been … with her,’ I said. ‘You didn’t tell me she’d had your baby.’

He turned to me, his eyes red-rimmed. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, am I supposed to tell you every detail of my life? I mean, what the hell business is it of yours, anyway?’

‘None whatsoever. Look, it doesn’t matter how I found out, but I’ve seen her, and I’ve seen the baby. She’s called
Grace.’ I took out my wallet and held the photograph towards Alec, but he turned away.

‘Don’t come the moral high ground with me, Carver. I know what happened with you and the call girl that night at the Majestic.’

‘I’m not coming any moral high ground,’ I said steadily, containing my anger. ‘She asked me to talk to you. She says she’s not interested in money. She just wants you to visit her and the baby.’

Alec was still turned away, staring at the hawthorn bush behind the bench. ‘We were still living in London,’ he said. ‘Clara and I, before I had to get rid of the flat. We had the blazes of a row – she told me the full story, how she’d only married me to get her hands on Castaway. I stormed out, came down here alone. Sally’d always been … well, I’d always noticed her. She made it easy for me.’

Quietly, I put the photograph back into my wallet. ‘I can imagine,’ I said softly.

‘Went back to Clara. Forgave her – after a fashion. We moved to Castaway permanently; I thought it would make her happy, but she wasn’t. And I continued with Sally. And you don’t need to tell me it was wrong. I know it was wrong. She was sixteen. A servant. Everything that everybody knows is utterly immoral. You won’t understand me for a second, Robert, but I seem to have this compulsion to wreck my own life. It’s as if it was what I was meant to do.’

There was another silence. Overhead, the lanterns swayed in the thick breeze. From somewhere beyond the arbour I heard a woman’s high, bright laughter. ‘And Gina?’ I said. ‘What about her?’

He looked at me. ‘Who’s Gina?’

‘The other parlourmaid. Nine years ago.’

‘Not the one who …?’ He shook his head impatiently. ‘You’re behind the times, Robert. I’ve already been accused of that one. Not guilty. I thought you’d know me better than that.’