Dreams of another day, p.12
Dreams of Another Day, page 12
‘Although,’ she added, remembering Natalie’s invitation, ‘I might go to Paris for a few days in September.’
‘I haven’t been to Paris for years,’ said Mark with a slightly wistful expression in his eyes. ‘It should be lovely then. Lucky old you.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Ming, ‘but the magazine takes up so much of my time now that I might have to combine holiday with work of some kind to salve my conscience. I say,’ she added, looking down at her watch. ‘Talking of consciences, I suppose we ought to get going.’
‘Pity,’ said Mark with a rueful grin. ‘I’d much rather stay here with just you and talk about Paris – or anything else, for that matter.’
Ming looked at him in silence for a disconcertingly long moment and then veiled her remarkable eyes. Mark looked thoughtfully back at her before turning to signal to a waiter.
When they were sitting side by side in his car, Ming said:
‘I would too.’
‘Would you?’ he asked with a return to the wistfulness that seemed so odd in someone as direct and strong as he. ‘I’m glad.’
He drove slowly to Belgrave Square, where the Attingers had borrowed a huge house with a first-floor ballroom. From the moment the car turned into the square, Ming could hear the thin, sweet sound of a Strauss waltz floating out across the trees in the middle of the square. The house itself was obvious, with all its windows open wide and light and music pouring out of them between the looped curtains. Ming felt a light tickle of anticipation that surprised her.
‘Doesn’t it look romantic?’ said Mark, echoing her silent thoughts as he parked the car.
Ming nodded her silvery-fair head in a movement of great grace, but when she spoke she surprised him.
‘Perhaps it’s the sort of thing one should enjoy from outside, instead of having to admit that the reality is boredom, sweaty bodies, smoke and a longing for one’s bed,’ she said with a laugh in her voice.
‘I’d never realised you were so cynical.’ Mark swung his legs out of the car and walked round it to open Ming’s door.
‘D’you mind?’ asked Ming without getting out of the car.
‘The cynicism? No. It’s just surprising – but I like it. In fact you’re turning out to be surprising in lots of ways. Come along: into the fray!’
Ming left her jacket in the ground-floor cloakroom and together they walked up to the ballroom, where they stood in a queue waiting to shake hands with their hosts. Ming congratulated them when it was her turn and was duly kissed.
‘Both your sisters are here,’ said Mrs Attinger over her shoulder as she turned to greet the next arrival.
Mark took Ming’s arm and they walked together into the ballroom, where the young were twirling cheerfully in each other’s arms and the older guests were standing or sitting in groups chatting with glasses in their hands.
Realising that she was not at all sure in which camp she belonged, Ming stopped at the edge of the floor to watch. She felt excluded from both. It was an odd sensation, which disappeared only when Mark touched her bare arm to urge her forward.
The first people Ming saw whom she knew were the two Suvarovs and Julia Wallington and she took Mark to meet them.
Flixe was looking noticeably pregnant by then but superb in low-cut ivory silk embroidered with gold. Her huge sapphire and diamond brooch was pinned to the deep neckline of her tactfully spreading dress and echoed the colour of her eyes. There was a wall sconce just above her head, shedding its light on to her luxuriantly piled fair hair. At her side Peter Suvarov, looking slim and dark in his evening clothes, was chatting to Julia Wallington. Flixe caught sight of her sister and waved.
‘You look pretty well,’ said Ming as she kissed her sister. ‘Hello, Peter. Julia, how are you? That was a wonderful lunch you gave me.’
‘Well, thank you. And you?’ said Julia with a full smile.
She was wearing a severely cut dress the colour of new horse chestnuts, which added warmth to her skin and emphasised her tall, straight figure. Her gold jewellery was simple and unobtrusive, but there was a big ruby above the wedding ring she always wore. She looked thoroughly distinguished, completely in control again, and quite unlike Amanda’s harassed mother in Kennington.
‘I’ll get you a drink, Ming,’ said Peter, blowing her a kiss as he wandered off. Ming nodded and then turned to answer Julia’s question.
‘Oh, I’m fine. But I had some dull news today. I’m awfully sorry, but this wretched crisis in the Middle East has meant that my editor has postponed my piece about you until the autumn.’
‘That doesn’t matter in the least,’ said Julia, with a self-mocking grimace. ‘In some ways it’s rather a relief.’
Ming laughed and asked whether David was at the party. Julia shook her head.
‘Not yet. He’ll be here after the Division,’ she said and then she turned to Mark, who was talking to Flixe.
Ming remembered her manners and introduced him to Julia.
‘Gerry’s right. He’s nice, Ming, and intelligent, and attractive too,’ whispered Flixe, as soon as the others were distracted.
‘I know,’ answered Ming with some asperity. ‘But I do wish that you and Gerry would stop matchmaking – and mother.’
‘Oh, who’s she picked on?’ asked Flixe, her blue eyes alight with amusement. ‘She can’t really have thought she could do anything with that man who bought Church Hall Farm last year, can she?’
Ming burst out laughing at the thought of the fifty-year-old bachelor who had four cats and an unrivalled collection of antique church vestments.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not even mother has thought him suitable. I don’t think she likes him much.’
‘Then who? I wouldn’t have thought that there was anyone else available down there.’
‘She thought I’d do nicely for Jack Hazeldene,’ said Ming forgetting her amusement.
‘That’s not really decent, is it?’ said Flixe at once. ‘No wonder you’re angry. Did you see him when he brought the children back?’
‘Yes. Mother asked him to lunch, but he and I met on our own first. It’ll be a long, long time before he’s in any state to think about anyone else. Poor man, he is still completely devastated.’
‘I can imagine,’ said Flixe, adding by way of distraction: ‘Have you seen Gerry and Mike yet?’
‘No. Are they here?’
‘Somewhere about. Gerry’s dressed in the oddest frock – rather like a gym-slip. Shall we go and sit down? My back’s beginning to go.’
Ming nodded, touched Mark’s elbow and told him that she was escorting Flixe to a chair and would see him later. As they sat down on gilt chairs at the edge of the dance floor, Ming saw Gerry dancing with her husband. They looked completely absorbed in each other, moving in perfect time.
‘I don’t know how poor Charlie Bederley is going to recover from your savaging,’ said Flixe, still trying to distract Ming.
She smiled dutifully just as they saw Peter coming back towards them with three glasses of champagne in his hands. Before he was more than half-way, he was stopped by a ravishing young woman with a fashionably tousled mop of red hair. Her stunning figure was clothed in a clinging grass-green frock and she looked both beautiful and fun. Peter bent towards her with a smile that Ming remembered well. Flixe sighed.
‘Do you mind?’ Ming asked her for the first time. She did not look at Flixe as she spoke.
‘That Peter’s a rake, and an irresistible one? Yes, I mind,’ answered Flixe truthfully. She tipped her head back, partly to ease her aching neck and partly so that she did not have to look at her husband exercising his devastating charm. ‘But I try to keep it under control.’
She brought her head back to its normal position and made herself watch Peter. He looked almost boyishly eager and very happy as he talked to the red-haired beauty.
‘He always was, and he always will be. When it gets a bit much for me, I remind myself that it’s me he always comes home to, that he seems to want me more – or at least more permanently – than any of the others.’
‘Is it worth it?’ Ming asked gently. Flixe not only looked at her sister then, but she also touched her hand.
‘Yes, Mingie, it is well worth it,’ she said. ‘Even after all these years I’m potty about him. It is simply not rational to mind that an awful lot of other women are potty about him too. It’s a fact of life.’
‘I suppose so,’ Ming was beginning when they were interrupted.
‘Champagne?’ Peter Suvarov’s voice, which still had a faint, attractive Russian accent, stopped Ming from saying anything else. Both sisters accepted.
‘Sorry it’s a bit warm, but I got waylaid. You look lovely, Ming. I don’t think you need have any fears about being a cabbage white. How’s the work?’
Before Ming could do much more than tell him which articles of hers Max had accepted for publication, they were interrupted yet again.
‘Ming?’ The familiar voice of Roger Sillhorne surprised her. She stood up, shook his hand, and introduced, him to the others.
He was fair-haired and had a strong-featured, if pale, face. He would have been quite attractive had he not been rather portly and full of self-consequence. Flixe smiled to herself as she listened to his pompous greeting. He looked as though he ought to have a rich, deep voice, and when he spoke the light, drawling sound was almost shocking.
‘Will you dance with me, Ming?’ he asked and then added as she obviously tried to think of an excuse to refuse: ‘And give me a chance to tell you I’m sorry?’
At that she had to smile, and she tucked her hand in the crook of his arm.
‘You don’t have to do that, Roger,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you later, Flixe. Peter.’
Roger held her stiffly and danced as though he were afraid that he might slip and fall on to the floor in an undignified heap. His constraint made Ming feel uncomfortable, but she did her best to look as though she were enjoying herself.
‘I meant it, you know,’ he said after a while. ‘I owe you an apology.’
‘For what?’ asked Ming lightly, suppressing a sudden fear that he was about to admit to having written the anonymous letters.
‘Driving you into the arms of that wretched pervert,’ he said, not sounding apologetic at all.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You were ill when you left and it really wasn’t fair of me to try to make you come back then.’
‘That sounds better, Roger.’
‘Your judgement was obviously affected,’ he said, swinging her round and forcing her out of step with the music.
‘Wait a minute, we’ve lost it,’ she said and persuaded him to moderate his steps.
They danced in silence for a while and she tried to forget what he had said, but eventually she realised that she could not.
‘What did you mean by pervert?’ she asked. Roger gave a short laugh.
‘What do you think? You can’t really believe that simply by changing his name he was going to mislead people into believing that he’s a decent man.’
Ming stopped and moved off the floor.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The so-called Mr Hillary,’ said Roger, laughing at her distress. ‘Typical to choose a girl’s name for his surname.’
‘You’re as bad as my father. What are you talking about?’
‘For God’s sake, stop playing the little innocent. You must know as well as I do that he spent eighteen months in Wormwood Scrubs after the police caught him.’
‘Poor Max,’ said Ming, understanding at last all the things that had puzzled her about him and the life he was leading sequestered in the country.
The music stopped and she knew that she had to get away from Roger, who was watching her with a kind of satisfaction that disturbed her.
‘You really didn’t know, did you? Poor little Ming. How wretched for you. Did you have romantic feelings for him? Dear, dear.’
Ming wrenched her arm away from him.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘He’s old enough to be my father.’
Over his shoulder she caught sight of her eldest sister and left Roger to stand alone at the edge of the dance floor.
Gerry, seeing the tension in her sister’s face, walked across the floor at once.
‘What’s up? Are you feeling faint? It is horribly hot.’
Ming shook her blonde head and in spite of her muddled feelings tried to concentrate on Gerry’s blue dress, which she saw did look rather like a long version of a gym-slip, comfortable but not at all elegant.
‘Then what is it?’ asked Gerry, pointing to two gilt chairs behind them. They sat down.
‘Roger has just told me …’ Ming found that she could not repeat his exact words. ‘That Max served a sentence in prison.’
She took a tiny lace handkerchief from the gold bag that hung over her wrist and blotted the sweat carefully from her upper lip.
‘Of course. Didn’t you know? Why did you think Connie set up the magazine if not to give him a job when no one else would?’
‘I feel so stupid. I never realised he’s a … you know, a…’
‘Oh, grow up, Ming.’ Gerry sounded thoroughly impatient. ‘You must have been talking to Father – or Flixe. It’s one of her most incomprehensible blind spots.’
‘Flixe?’ Ming ought to have been used to Gerry’s impatience but she found it almost as daunting as she had done in childhood.
‘Yes,’ said Gerry, still angry. ‘She believes they suffer from an illness that should be cured by the nearest doctor or psychiatrist.’
‘I feel … It’s difficult to absorb the fact that a man one’s liked – and trusted – could be … well, something like that. No wonder Father was so put out at my championing the magazine.’
‘That’s absurd, Ming. Max hasn’t changed just because you’ve heard about his past. You can still like and trust him as you always have done.’
‘Do you really not think that they are dangerous? What about the Russian spies?’
Gerry raised her eyes to the ceiling and tried to control her irritation. After a moment she looked back to her youngest sister and understood that she was grappling with a concept that was quite new to her.
‘That’s like saying that promiscuous heterosexuals are wonderful painters simply because a few geniuses have been rakes. If the law didn’t make criminals out of the homosexuals no one could blackmail them and they would not be subject to that sort of pressure.’
The tension was leaving Ming’s face under Gerry’s bracing treatment.
‘Sorry. I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it before. It’s not something I’ve ever come across. You’re probably right, Gerry.’
‘Don’t worry about it. Just concentrate on what you’ve always known and liked about Max.’
‘Gerry! How good to see you.’
Both sisters looked round to see Mark and Julia walking towards them. Gerry smiled at Julia and kissed Mark. Julia turned to Ming, who was still sitting down.
‘I’ve just been trying to persuade Mark to bring you on a picnic we’ve planned on the river at Oxford. Will you come? Next Sunday. David and I thought we’d drive down in the morning with the children, take a punt up the river and picnic on the bank somewhere.’
‘It sounds lovely,’ said Ming vaguely, still taking in what Gerry had just said.
‘I thought so, too,’ said Mark from Gerry’s side.
‘Good,’ said Julia. ‘Now, I’m sure you’re pining to dance with each other, so I’ll leave you to it. See you both on Sunday.’
When she had gone, looking self-contained and impressive in her austere dress, Mark offered Ming his hand.
‘How about it? Will you waltz with me?’
Ming looked quickly at Gerry to see whether she would mind being left on her own.
‘I’m going to find Mike,’ she said with a smile. ‘Off with you, and forget all about your erstwhile boss and his idiotic ideas.’
Ming stood up and Mark swung her into his arms and led her into the dance.
He was completely at ease with the music and the steps and Ming lost both her shock and her distress as they danced. After a while she gave herself up to his lead. He felt her relax and tightened his hand very slightly on hers. She could feel the strength that he usually disguised and she suddenly admired the confidence that let him keep so many attributes and talents out of sight.
‘You dance beautifully, Mark,’ she said. ‘It’s very unexpected.’
‘Like you, I’m an unexpected sort of person,’ he replied with a cheerful smile.
‘I’m beginning to think that you are,’ said Ming more seriously. ‘And a very kind one.’
They were passing one of the three immense open windows that led to a balcony overlooking the garden. Mark looked down at her sleek head.
‘I’m awfully hot. Shall we?’
‘Let’s,’ said Ming and preceded him through the swagged, gold silk curtains.
The air was almost as warm outside, but the sky was clear for once and the stars in their indigo background gave an impression of coolness. Ming breathed deeply and looked up, wishing that she recognised more of the constellations.
‘I’m beginning to think that I should have waited to ask you to marry me until now,’ said Mark, sounding more amused than anything else. ‘This is a positive cliché of romance.’
‘Ah, but we were always told as girls never to believe a man who told us he loved us in a ballroom,’ said Ming, growing more cheerful with every minute in his company. ‘Over bacon and eggs is much more romantic really.’
Mark was silent for so long that Ming regretted her instinctive teasing. He put his right hand lightly on her bare shoulder.
‘You will tell me if you change your mind, won’t you?’
‘Mark, I …’ Ming broke off, biting her lip. Her eyes were huge and worried when she looked up at him. ‘I’m so bad at this. It’s just that I’m not…’
‘Not quite sure? Don’t worry, darling. I shouldn’t have said anything, but I have been getting the feeling that you might be moving towards me a bit and I couldn’t resist asking.’ Mark’s face looked pale in the moonlight and his eyes seemed very dark.
