Jane turned up wearing her art-student uniform—ponytail, chunky sweater, wide corduroy skirt. She looked about as haggard as I felt. Coffee came round at that moment. Although she’d been so urgent about talking to me she didn’t pick up my hint about moving off to somewhere private, but lolled against the make-up table in the middle room, leafing contemptuously through the proofs of not-yet-used cartoons which she’d found in an open drawer. Nellie came in and said that Jack Todd had decided to take the day off because of not wanting to be pestered by journalists ringing up to ask about the News Chronicle piece; but poor Tom—he’d obviously had a bad weekend and now had a greyish, sweaty look, as though he was going down with flu—was pretty well anchored to his telephone, fending off inquisitive Fleet Street cronies. I let Jane finish her coffee and then dragged her away to look for somewhere where we could talk.
The waiting-room was occupied by a pipe-puffing cartoonist who’d come to show his portfolio to Bruce Fischer. Mrs Clarke was in her room. My desk, out in the corridor, seemed far too public. Then I remembered what Nellie had said about Jack Todd not coming in so I put my head round the secretaries’ door and asked if we could use his room for twenty minutes. Nellie said she supposed so.
As soon as we were alone I put my arm round Jane’s shoulders. She didn’t respond.
‘Darling, I’m desperately sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sure it’s all my fault.’
‘What is?’
‘Whatever’s happening.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. I suppose you couldn’t have known.’
‘I guessed.’
She loosed herself from my arm and moved away.
‘You guessed this?’
‘What?’
‘I thought she’d written to him.’
‘He didn’t show me the letter.’
‘Oh.’
‘I gather she wants him to pay for the Banqueting Hall roof.’
A long pause. I sensed a deep reluctance in her. Apparently she’d been expecting I would have read Mummy’s letter. For some reason it was difficult for her to begin without that.
‘Do you do everything he says?’ she asked.
Quite unreasonably the thought crossed my mind that she was about to make the same ghastly suggestion I’d thought B’d been hinting at that morning. I couldn’t see any possible connection between this and our problems with Mummy.
‘Almost,’ I said.
‘If he told you to go away?’
‘That’s part of the bargain.’
‘Oh.’
‘But if I thought he was doing it because of Mummy, I’d fight.’
‘I thought you would.’
‘What did she say to him at the party? Do you know?’
‘She asked if he was going to marry you. He said of course not. He said you understood that. She told him he’d got to send you home. I don’t know what he said. She was raging.’
‘He’s ruder than anyone I’ve ever met when he wants to be. What do you think, Janey? About B and me, I mean? Do you mind?’
This was something we’d decided without discussion not to talk about. It was too tricky. In spite of our endless rows, Jane was the only person I’d ever properly loved until I met B, but I knew I couldn’t count on her feeling the same. It was so much easier for me. Almost everything that had happened to us, all our lives, had been unfair on Jane, and the only excuse had been that I was the sacrifice. In the end she might be free, but I never would. Even that makes it sound a better bargain for her than it really was—nobody could call inheriting Cheadle a specially painful sort of sacrifice. And now, well, part of the unwritten contract was that the central ritual of the sacrifice would take place on the day I married, and thus brought a man home to look after Cheadle and sire another generation on me, so that the sacrifice could be repeated in thirty years’ time; and a vital part of the magic was that I must go spotless to that altar. It may seem a bit loopy to talk like this, in this day and age, but though Mummy would have been completely incapable of expressing herself in those terms, it was how she thought, and so, in spite of ourselves, the way Jane and I thought too.[1] By having an affair with B I had broken the contract and spoilt, or at least risked spoiling, the magic, but I was still going to inherit Cheadle. And on top of all that I was having a glorious time. Jane wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t minded.
‘She wants him to let you go and have me instead,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘She hasn’t actually said so, but that’s what she wants.’
I didn’t understand at once. It was such an obviously impossible suggestion, she must mean something else. Then I remembered B saying ‘There is a hint of other elements in the transaction.’ I remembered him looking me over, like a slave merchant, after I’d made the suggestion about Jane moving in upstairs. He’d been wondering whether I knew, somehow, about Mummy’s idea, was part of the scheme, and was making a first move towards bringing it off. And then he’d decided that I wasn’t, and he’d said what he had about being trusted. The extraordinary thing was that when I did understand I didn’t blaze into one of my rages with Jane. I was appalled. Sick. Chilly with shock. Jane was watching me.
‘I don’t want him,’ she said. ‘I don’t want that. She can’t make me.’
Her voice was creaky with tension.
‘You can have Cheadle,’ I said.
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘You can be Mabs from now on,’ I gabbled, ‘and I’ll be Jane. Like we’ve done before, only we’ll keep it up for the rest of our lives.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Yes, absolutely. Don’t you see . . .’
And I was. It was a totally absurd suggestion. Mummy would have known at once, for a start, and there were all sorts of other things which made it impossible, but all the same I did mean it. If I had the choice, I would give up my rights to Cheadle for ever rather than give up B, even though he might choose to turf me out next week.
‘Don’t be bloody stupid!’ she snapped. ‘I don’t want anything you’ve got. I don’t want him. I don’t want Cheadle. I want myself. Me!’
The pig-mask had started to form, but then her glance shifted. She looked over my shoulder for an instant, twitched herself round, swirling her skirt out, and leaned panting with her hands on the edge of the desk, her pony-tail hanging down to hide her face. I turned and saw Brian Naylor standing in the doorway.
‘I trust I don’t intrude,’ he said in his flat, oafish voice.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t realise . . . Nellie said . . .’
‘Having a wee bit of a tiff, are we?’
‘Mr Todd’s not coming in today.’
‘A great loss. A great, great loss to us all.’
‘This is my sister Jane. We had an urgent family problem we had to talk about. I’ll find somewhere else.’
‘Hello, Jane. Don’t go. The feminine touch is called for. Tell me what you think of the furniture and fittings in this salubrious accommodation.’
‘Dreary,’ said Jane, barely looking up.
‘Dreary. That is your considered opinion.’
‘Yes. Can I go now?’
‘Not quite appropriate for the editor of Britain’s foremost humorous weekly?’
(He was quoting from the slogan of an advertisement we were running as part of a circulation battle with Punch, but his leaden intonation—as with almost everything he said—implied the opposite of what the words seemed to mean.)
‘You’d better get Heal’s in,’ Jane muttered. ‘Tell them Swedish.’
‘Heal’s. Swedish.’
‘Elephant-grey carpet and dead white walls and stainless steel floor-lamps and natural linen curtains and Bernard Buffet prints and Orrifors glass. Can I go now? I’m trying to talk to Mabs.’