Almost a crime, p.9
Almost a Crime, page 9
Octavia had contacted Louise through her agency and they became close again, Louise taking Octavia shopping (‘You look awful, you’ll never get a job wearing clothes like that’), and Octavia dragging Louise to theatres and art galleries (‘No need to be pig ignorant and empty headed just because you’re a model’). Octavia went to supper parties in Louise’s big sunny studio flat near Primrose Hill, and met her friends – other models, photographers, dress designers, fashion editors, rather alarming they seemed to her, with their wild clothes and outrageous gossip. Louise was invited to slightly intense evenings in the rather grand flat Octavia’s father had bought her in the Old Brompton Road, formal three-course dinner parties with Octavia’s fellow lawyers and old friends from Cambridge.
Louise, by then, had a string of lovers, Octavia one fairly serious one; they shared appallingly intimate details of their sex lives, saw one another through pregnancy scares, heartbreak, career crises – Louise was fired by her agency for turning up late once too often; Octavia decided, just into her first big case, that she hated law, could stay in it no longer – and then Louise took off for America for five years to work and Octavia met and became engaged to Tom.
Louise had approved of Tom: ecstatically. ‘Heaven!’ she had said happily, over supper with Octavia the night after the engagement party Felix had insisted on giving, and which she had flown over for. ‘Too good looking and charming for words, of course, but you can handle that, can’t you, my darling?’
Octavia had said she was sure she could, but quite what had Louise meant? Louise had got a bit flustered and said nothing, nothing at all, it was just that terribly good looking and charming men did tend to be a bit of handful, she should know, and Octavia had said if Louise meant she thought Tom was going to play around, then she was wrong, they had both agreed that fidelity was of paramount importance, or perhaps she’d meant that she, Octavia, was less good looking and charming than Tom, in which case she would rather Louise came out and said so.
Louise had become very upset and said she hadn’t meant anything at all, and anyway it had been the champagne talking and Octavia had obviously forgotten what a lot of nonsense she did talk, champagne or no. Octavia had forgiven her, of course, but it had cast a shadow over the evening.
Louise had come over again, for the wedding, had been chief bridesmaid, and in his speech thanking her, Tom had said he half expected her to join them on honeymoon, so integral a part of his bride’s life did she seem; Louise had stood up laughing and said was it an invitation because she’d adore to accept; Octavia and Tom went to Barbados without Louise, and when they got back to London she had gone.
For a while they had lost contact; then the phone rang one morning in Octavia’s office and the lovely voice said, ‘Boot? I’m getting married. He’s called Sandy and he’s divine, and utterly right for me. Come and meet him and approve – and keep quiet if you don’t.’
She hadn’t approved and she didn’t keep quiet: she felt she couldn’t, felt it was her duty as Louise’s friend to be truthful.
‘He is – marvellous of course,’ she had said carefully, ‘but I don’t think quite right for you.’
‘But he is,’ said Louise, her blue eyes shining with earnestness. ‘Almost everyone says he’s not right, even Mummy says it, just because he’s in the army, and not a photographer or something, but he’s what I want, he’s so stable and utterly reliable and – and English.’
‘But your lives are so different, Louise. You’ll have so little in common and—’
‘We do, but I’ve had enough of that life, Boot. It’s so ridiculous, so excessive, and everyone treats you like shit in the end. Sandy is so wonderfully old fashioned. And romantic. He’s like – well, he’s like Daddy. Daddy’s the one person who’s very happy about it. Now do stop fussing, I know we’re going to be utterly, perfectly happy.’
And she had married him in a cloud of euphoria and wild silk on a glorious spring day in the village church in Gloucestershire, emerging to a guard of honour formed by Sandy’s fellow officers, a cloud that broke up fairly soon into a series of storms before changing heavily and permanently into a grey mass, overhanging what clearly was, to Louise, an endlessly disappointing landscape.
Octavia, saddened by the disappointment (unacknowledged by Louise), had formed her own theory about the alliance. Despite (or perhaps because of) more than half a decade in the fashion industry, with its careless morality, its shifting emotional sands, its frenetic concern with style and appearance, Louise was extremely romantic. It was a joke about her that her sexual fantasies were not of multiple lovers, of nightlong orgasms, of outrageous practices, but were set in a time warp, Hollywood style; Louise dreamed of eyes locking across a crowded room, meetings in slow motion along a deserted beach, passionate embraces against a storm-tossed sky. Sex to her only worked in the context of such things – as a pleasure in itself it was a devalued currency. And Sandy, when she met him, came from that segment of society that was – on the surface at least – courteous and considerate to women and well behaved, in a rather old-style way: totally different from most of the men she met in her coolly fashionable world. His dark looks were best described by that old-fashioned adjective ‘handsome’, he was flamboyantly well mannered, rode superbly, played polo for his regiment, had been mentioned several times for his courage and resourcefulness during an horrific tour of duty in Bosnia; but he was a man’s man, not quite at ease with women, at once protective and very slightly patronising. Louise had been charmed by the protectiveness and did not discover the tendency to patronise until it was too late.
He had dined and wined her, insisted on paying for everything, told her repeatedly she was the most beautiful girl in the world, sent her a great many bunches of flowers and didn’t even suggest they went to bed together for quite a long time. For Louise, moving in a world where sex was seriously devalued except as a rather transient pleasure, as much taken for granted in the briefest relationship as food and drink, this was in itself rather romantic. When they finally did go to bed, it was in a country house hotel that Sandy had booked; the bed was a four poster, there were white roses on the dressing table, and champagne on ice beside the bed. Louise was so overwhelmed by all this that she managed to ignore the fact that the sex itself was rather run-of-the-mill; the fact that after it Sandy had toasted her in what was left of the champagne, told her he was in love with her and had never before felt quite as he did, had been to her ineffably more important.
Sandy had left the army a year after they were married and set himself up with a fellow officer in the wine business. A small local chain, it ran a wine club for its customers, offering tastings, masterclasses in wine and even trips to vineyards. Having developed a strong brand loyalty, Sandy intended to move it from its purely Cotswold base to London and the home counties.
Louise, released at least from the crippling boredom (as she had found it) of being an army wife, had found herself happily pregnant; Dickon was born, and two and a half years later, a little girl, Juliet. She threw herself wholeheartedly into motherhood and being a good wife to Sandy.
Octavia had seen very little of her at this time. Their husbands had not been greatly impressed with one another: the fact that Sandy was an Old Etonian with an extremely patrician background did nothing to endear him to Tom, and Tom’s ceaseless pursuit of success and money seemed to Sandy a rather severe case of bad form. Meetings between the two families were awkward, and after a few attempts, both Octavia and Louise agreed they should be avoided.
And then one day, nine months after the birth of Juliet, Octavia’s phone rang. It was Louise, her voice leaden, strange, panic underlying it.
‘Octavia,’ she had said. ‘Octavia, Juliet’s dead. Please come.’
It had been a cot death; she had gone in to pick the baby up for her morning feed and found her. ‘White, cold, quite quite still. And dead.’
Octavia had gone at once. Louise was calm, deathly calm, enduring the dreadful ritual demanded by the law, the police visit, the registration of the death, the taking of her baby to hospital for an autopsy, the planning of the funeral. Louise’s mother, Anna Madison, was there, gently, sweetly efficient; Sandy was there, ghastly pale, pacing the house. Octavia had felt like an intruder. But she had found a role for herself, caring for Dickon, who was stumbling about looking terrified and lost. She had taken him out for much of the day, brought him back when the worst of it was over, suggested he came to stay with her for a couple of days.
Louise had accepted the offer, in her new flat, still voice. ‘It would be such a help. He loves the twins. And you will come to the funeral, won’t you? It would help me so much if you were there.’
Octavia had promised she would, shrinking from the very thought of witnessing such pain; she drove Dickon back to London, where the twins, only half-comprehending what had happened, drew him into their rather rough kindliness; he finally fell asleep that first night in Poppy’s plump little arms.
He woke in the night, screaming from a nightmare; and then said he wanted to phone his mother.
‘Dickon, darling, it’s three in the morning.’
‘She might be dead, though,’ he said. ‘She might! Please ring, please . . .’
Octavia had given in and phoned, and a clearly wide-awake Louise had answered the phone, reassured him, fetched Sandy to do the same. Dickon had spent the rest of the night in her bed, tossing and turning restlessly; after a second, identical night, she had been deeply grateful when Anna Madison phoned and said she thought it would be better if Dickon came home, Louise was missing him, and she drove him down to Cheltenham with some relief.
Louise had greeted her strangely, almost detachedly, still with the same deathly calm.
‘Louise, are you sure you’re all right?’
‘I’m fine. Really. Sandy isn’t too good,’ she added, almost matter-of-factly. ‘He was in tears last night. I told him he had to be brave, for Dickon and me.’
It had seemed a curiously harsh reaction, but Octavia supposed she could hardly expect rational behaviour from her.
Later, as she walked to the car, Anna Madison had come running out of the house. ‘Thank you for everything, Octavia. I’m so pleased you’re coming on Friday.’
‘Of course I’m coming,’ Octavia had said, and then added, ‘Louise seems – odd.’
‘Yes, she’s in shock. God knows when it will break. But actually, it’s getting her through this dreadful time. Things like choosing a coffin, the flowers . . .’ Her large blue eyes, so like Louise’s, had filled with tears.
Octavia put her arms round her; she adored Anna. ‘Thank goodness she’s got you. Look, I have to go. Please ring if there’s anything else I can do.’
‘I will, Octavia darling. Thank you.’
Louise had still seemed in shock at the funeral, icy calm and composed, watching Sandy carry the tiny coffin into the church, with dull, expressionless eyes; she had sung a hymn, listened to the agonisingly touching address with courteous attention. Even at the graveside, she had not broken down, had knelt and placed a note and a flower on top of the coffin, had then gone back to the house with her family and Octavia and Tom – the only non-family present – and although quiet, had managed to offer them tea, and thank them politely for coming.
‘I’ll come and see you soon,’ she had said, kissing Octavia goodbye. Octavia had put her arms round her, tried to hug her, but she was rigid, unyielding. The last they saw of Louise was her waving them off down the road, holding Dickon’s hand, Sandy standing behind her.
‘How brave,’ said Tom, ‘how terribly brave she is.’
‘Too brave, I think,’ said Octavia.
That night Louise had cracked, had cried for three days and nights, had finally been heavily sedated – and when she came round, began her slow and painful journey out of grief and back to normality.
‘I worry about them all so much,’ Anna had told Octavia one night when she phoned to see how Louise was. ‘It’s dreadful for Louise, of course, so dreadful, and she is quite fragile, you know, emotionally, and little Dickon is terribly upset, but Sandy has had a terrible time too, and Louise doesn’t seem to recognise it.’
Octavia had gone down to see them quite frequently during that time; she felt helpless and useless, and Louise had been strange with her, oddly distant and almost hostile, but she always thanked her effusively for coming, told her she felt better afterwards, and Sandy was always deeply grateful too and told her so. He had changed visibly, more than Louise, through the experience, looked older, seemed less confident.
‘Oh, doesn’t matter about me,’ he had said one night as Octavia was leaving and she had managed to ask him if he was all right, ‘it’s Lulu we have to worry about.’
‘Well, she was your baby too,’ Octavia had said quietly, and he had said, yes, of course, but he hadn’t given birth to her, it was different for men. He sounded as if he had rehearsed the small speech; in a way no doubt he had, she thought, he must have made it dozens of times, poor man.
There was a time after that, over much of the following eighteen months in fact, when they hardly saw one another. Louise withdrawn further into herself, discouraged visits, was almost taciturn on the phone. Octavia had several worried conversations with Anna Madison, who had been equally ostracised from her daughter’s life, and a few with Sandy who clearly felt quite out of his depth and embarrassed by any attempt to discuss the matter. ‘She’ll be fine,’ he’d say, determinedly cheerful, ‘just a matter of time.’
To her shame, Octavia had given up. She was, in any case, pregnant – unbearably poignant, she felt, for Louise. And then, struggling to cope with the new baby and her professional life it seemed easier, better indeed, to stay away. She hoped she wasn’t making excuses for herself, opting out; she was rather afraid she was. She had written of course to let Louise know about Minty’s birth, had been almost shocked – while telling herself that of course she understood – to receive only a card in return.
Then, at Christmastime, she had felt things were getting out of hand. She missed Louise, she was concerned for her; she herself was strong, her own life so good, how could she possibly not present broad and loving shoulders to her friend? She had written a long letter, saying how much she missed her, and inviting her and Sandy to the Christmas party, which Louise had always loved: ‘So many glamorous people, you’re so clever, Octavia.’
Louise had phoned, full of fun and charm, and said how marvellous, they’d adore to come to the party, and she was buying a new frock. She had turned up looking luminously beautiful. ‘I’m quite quite all right now,’ she had said, hugging Octavia, ‘and I’m sorry I was – difficult. Now where is darling Tom? I want to give him the biggest Christmas kiss. And to meet dear little Minty – I have a present for her. Don’t look at me like that, Octavia, I’m quite all right. Honestly.’
Octavia had felt a huge sense of relief – not only on Louise’s behalf, but from her own guilt.
After Christmas, the Trelawnys had visited them in Somerset, although only for a day. It had been, as always, difficult, the men uneasy together; after lunch Octavia had proposed a walk, hoping that Tom and Sandy would decline, but they had both said it was exactly what they needed. She had found herself, rather than having a long, healing conversation with Louise, chatting over-brightly to Sandy while Louise walked ahead with Tom. Afterwards, when they had gone, she had asked Tom what they had talked about.
‘Nothing much,’ he had said. ‘She just prattled. As she does.’
‘She didn’t mention the baby?’ she had said.
‘No, rather the reverse. When I told her I was – sorry, you know, she just said she hated talking about it.’
‘She ought to talk about it,’ Octavia had said. ‘It would do her good.’
‘Octavia,’ said Tom rather shortly, ‘everyone’s different. You can’t make rules about these things.’
He had been in a difficult mood altogether: Sandy always affected him like that. Octavia had changed the subject.
They had met a couple of times since then, talked on the phone a lot; as far as Octavia could tell Louise was much better. She was very cheerful, and apart from being thinner than she had ever been, and rather restless, she was as much herself as could be reasonably expected. But she refused to talk about Juliet’s death. ‘I know it’s meant to be therapeutic, but it just hurts me,’ she had said, and was wary of any suggestion that she might have another baby. ‘People keep suggesting I do that, as if – Juliet—’ she hesitated over the word – ‘could be replaced. I don’t want to. Ever. She’s gone and it’s quite over. That’s what I want. Now let’s talk about other things. I’m just so glad we’re together again.’
Octavia, still faintly concerned, had telephoned Anna Madison to ask her if Louise was really as recovered as she insisted, but she had been airily cheerful, rather like Louise herself, and had said she was very proud of her and the way she had coped.
‘You’ve been such a good friend to her Octavia, thank you. We’re all so grateful.’
‘Darling Boot, it’s me. Sorry I couldn’t talk before.’
‘Is Dickon all right?’
‘What? Oh, yes. He’s fine. Too many Mr Men yoghurts, I think. He has a passion for them.’
‘And Sandy?’
‘Oh, he’s all right,’ said Louse dismissively. ‘Just hungry. Feed the brute, that’s what Mummy always says . . .’ Her voice tailed off and there was a long silence.
Octavia frowned. ‘Louise, is something the matter?’
Another silence. Then, ‘Yes,’ she said, finally, in the same odd voice, ‘yes, there is, I’m afraid. It’s why I rang you tonight. I’ve had some rather bad news. It’s – it’s Mummy. She’s ill. Quite ill.’
