‘I do.’
‘I had a very peculiar dream the other night. The wake of a battu. Dead boars, at least fifty of them, all very young, laid out on the drive leading up to the house. Some of them still twitching. The house, I am sure, was Twiston. All lit by flambeaux held by beaters – while men in letter-box red outfits were cutting out the boars’ livers. It has to be done at the moment of death, you see, that’s when it becomes a delicacy. One of the men was Michael and he was extremely busy cutting away with an enormous carving knife. His hands were covered in blood… He looked different from the others. He was got up in white robes, like some high priest… Funny how badly Michael took it when that little girl drowned. One would have thought she was his daughter!’
‘Miss Garnett thinks the girl in the photographs is your daughter.’
‘Well, that was a fiction which was started by George. Michael’s son. In the name of decency and propriety, I imagine. George had guessed my secret, you see. George is the master of polite fictions. He used to be in the diplomatic corps. Insufferable prig. Can’t stand him. When he is here, I always put on a show. I act as though I were really demented.’ Lady Mortlock laughed – it came out as a cackle.
‘Was Lena one of your pupils?’
‘Most perceptive of you. Yes, she was one of my pupils. She was at Ashcroft from 1951 till 1956, I think. She was not the brightest of girls, but one of the prettiest. No – “pretty” is not right. Lena had a certain quality, I can’t quite explain it… I taught her German. I allowed myself to become extremely fond of her. In academic terms she was little better than “satisfactory”. Do you know how I define “satisfactory”? “Neither laudable nor culpable.” None of it matters now. Long time ago.’ Lady Mortlock paused. ‘What else do you want to know? You are after something, aren’t you? You didn’t just wake up this morning and say to yourself, high time I looked up Hermione Mortlock, did you? You must have a good reason. Out with it.’
Antonia began, ‘Yesterday was twenty years since Sonya’s disappearance -’
‘Whose disappearance?’
‘Sonya’s. Sonya Dufrette – Lena’s daughter.’
‘Oh yes. Lena’s daughter. I remember her. Shrimp of a girl.’ Lady Mortlock yawned, displaying dazzling white teeth of preternatural regularity, clearly the result of superior dentistry. ‘She drowned, didn’t she? She had some form of mental deficiency. She was damaged goods. Hardly surprising. Bad heredity on both sides. If she’d been allowed to grow up, she’d have been one of those slobbering child-like idiots.’
‘What do you mean “allowed”?’
‘That’s only a figure of speech, Antonia. I’d be extremely grateful if you refrained from snapping at me,’ Lady Mortlock said grandly. ‘I did tell Lena to reconsider when she told me she was pregnant – we were still on speaking terms then – and she promised she would, but didn’t. She said afterwards she had forgotten – that it would have been too much trouble, having an abortion. I wanted her to have an abortion. Among other things, that would have made her marriage to Lawrence less real… Oh she was hopeless – hopeless!’
Antonia opened her mouth but then decided against saying anything. Better let her speak on, she decided.
‘I did warn her of the possible consequences. Lawrence suffered from pathological folie de grandeur while hers was an addictive, irresponsible, rather reckless personality – and of course she was a Yusupov on the distaff side. It was a recipe for disaster. The marriage itself should never have taken place… Sonya drowned, didn’t she? Michael cried his eyes out, the old fool. He kept calling out her name in his sleep… In my opinion that was the best thing that could have happened in the circumstances. What good would it have been to anyone if the girl had lived on – if she had grown up? So much time and energy, not to mention money, are spent nowadays on the care of idiot children. It’s like growing weeds in a garden. That poor young woman, I remember, Sonya’s nanny, didn’t have time to breathe. What good was Sonya to anyone?’
‘Her father loved her.’
‘A little bit too well, perhaps? No, don’t ask me what I mean – please – too tedious for words! A bee in Lena’s bonnet, that’s all. I shouldn’t have mentioned it at all. Lolita love. Still, to be fair to her, Lena had to put up with an awful lot. Not only married to a madman, but with an idiot child. Small wonder she became so fat and took to drink… Do you know? Every now and then I’d remember the sunny girl with skin as smooth and pale as pearls, the radiant smile and lithe limbs, and I’d feel warm – here.’ Lady Mortlock touched her shrivelled bosom. ‘Lena, you see, was the love of my life. My one folly. My only taste of the forbidden fruit. Lena made me happy in a way I’d never been happy before – or since.’
‘Didn’t Sir Michael suspect anything?’
‘About my vicio nifando? No. Nothing at all. Poor Michael. He who trained spies for a living wasn’t particularly perceptive in his private life. I took good care not to be discovered of course. Oh I hated the secrecy, the subterfuge, the pretence, but it was necessary. Duty and discipline, that was my motto. It wouldn’t have done for anyone to know. Remember that I was an extremely successful professional woman. It was under my headship that Ashcroft became a byword for academic excellence at a time when many other supposedly good schools were reeling under the pressures of post-war inflation and social change. There was Michael’s career to consider too. Dear me. It was so difficult. I remember reading Radclyffe Hall and feeling absolutely terrified. Are you familiar with The Well of Loneliness?’
‘I know what it’s about, but I haven’t read it.’
‘You needn’t sound so defensive… Look at this. You might as well.’ Lady Mortlock took a folded sheet of paper from inside the book on her lap and handed it over to Antonia. ‘Read it. Read it aloud.’
Antonia obeyed. The paper was yellow and brittle with age. ‘Dear Mine, my darling Mine -’
‘Hermione – Mione – Mine. It’s the name Lena had for me. I loved it when she said it. Go on, go on, don’t stop. Why did you stop?’
‘I do love you and want you and want to spend my life with you – more than anything in the world, and by this, I mean anything.’ Antonia looked up. ‘It’s unsigned.’
‘Lena wrote it. I let Bea think it’s one of Michael’s love letters. Well, Michael never wrote me any love letters. Michael was never interested in me in that way. Mercifully, he turned out to be what is known as “under-sexed”. I wouldn’t have survived the marriage otherwise!’ She cackled. ‘We did our own things. Sometimes, at weekends, he disappeared completely. He went bird-watching. Anyhow. Lena kept writing notes like that, reckless creature. She loved me too. I think she was sincere. At one point she did want us to move in together, but of course that was out of the question. It was the fifties. I could never have contemplated setting up house with another woman and leading the life of a social outcast. Never. Besides, it wouldn’t have worked. I loved Lena but I also saw how she would deteriorate with age. The seeds were already there… By the way, it was she who seduced me, not the other way round. She was extremely knowledgeable about that sort of thing. You see, before I met her, she had been with both men and women. I was thirty-seven. Nothing like it had ever happened to me before. As a matter of fact, I rather despised women of that ilk. I remember when we went to see that play -’
‘Not The Reluctant Debutante?’
‘No. Of course not. Whatever gave you the idea? It was an underground play called The Monocled Countess. It had been inspired by Wedekind’s Lulu. The main protagonist was this tortured gentlewoman. A pathetic, tragic-comic sort of creature who sits at a rather louche cabaret and drowns her frustrated lusts in absinthe as she ogles the naked girlies who prance around her. We see her sitting at a table, on her own, with a carefully poised, long cigarette holder, a monocle and a mannish bob. That is how the play opens. After her heart is broken by a heartless little minx, she starts visiting Sapphic brothels. All of that was considered extremely risque at the time. I don’t suppose anyone would bat an eyelid nowadays?’