‘This can’t be right,’ Venetia was saying.
The creature belonged to Monty’s lawyer, Heseltine Bergman – they were in his office. How proud he must be of his little capuchin, thought Bettina. How he must love showing it off. That Bergman’s a real character, clients would say, have you seen his pet monkey yet? Such a jolly fascinating man, with his pet monkey. A man with a pet monkey is certainly someone I trust to handle my legal affairs. And the ladies? How sensitive this man must be, with his pet monkey.
‘I’m afraid it is indeed right, Mrs Wyn Thomas,’ Bergman said. ‘I’ve laid it out as clearly as I possibly can.’
The capuchin nibbled at the pulpy apple flesh, its eyes gently opening and closing. The core slipped out of its paw and it nodded off, its little chin tucked into its chest.
‘Please, Mrs Wyn Thomas, I’d rather you didn’t smoke in here.’
Venetia’s cigarette case closed with a snap and the monkey woke up.
‘You land me with a bombshell like this and then don’t permit me to smoke?’
Bettina tore her eyes from the monkey. ‘Did you let my father smoke in here?’ she asked Bergman.
‘Of course not.’
‘That’s a lie. I don’t believe you for a second.’ As if her father would’ve let this monkey-loving twerp tell him what he could or couldn’t do. ‘Let my mother smoke, please.’
‘I cannot—’
‘Let my mother smoke!’
Bergman crumpled his mouth. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘It has been a rather shocking disclosure.’
‘On top of other shocking disclosures,’ Venetia murmured, blinking damply at him.
Today’s news, that Monty had run his business into the ground with poor investments, only slightly trumped yesterday’s news – that Monty had been riddled with the clap at the time of his death. Venetia had wept all night over that, holed up in her bedroom, alone, not even letting Lucille in. She’d come out eventually and sat with Bettina and Lucille in the drawing room, drinking sherry with a pinched, dead-eyed face. ‘One small consolation,’ she’d said, ‘I probably don’t have it. We hadn’t been intimate in rather a long time.’ She and Lucille agreed that he’d probably caught it on a business trip to Brussels shortly after Jonathan died, since he’d sunk low over this period. Bettina had listened to all this, staring vapidly at the table leg, much like she was now staring at the monkey in the cage.
‘So I suppose I must now tighten the belt on my household?’ Venetia said to Bergman. ‘Lose a few more staff? We’ve already downsized in recent years – at this rate I’ll be scrubbing the floors myself.’
Bergman rested his elbows on the desk, looking up at Venetia with eyes not entirely devoid of human feeling. ‘I don’t think you appreciate the severity of your situation. You cannot keep the house.’
Venetia stared at him.
‘Your husband’s mismanagement has left profound debt. The house will need to be sold.’
‘No,’ said Venetia, shaking her head. ‘That’s absurd.’
‘Sadly not.’
‘But what about the summer house in Carmarthenshire? I could just sell that, surely?’
‘It wouldn’t be enough. You’ll be lucky to be left with the Carmarthenshire property. I cannot even guarantee that you will be.’
Venetia turned to Bettina. ‘He’s wrong. Tell him, darling. He’s wrong. What is he – he can’t possibly – he’s wrong, Bettina. Tell him.’
Bettina just looked from her mother to Bergman, her mouth open.
‘We’ll just get a second opinion,’ said Venetia, shrilly. ‘This can’t possibly be right.’
Bergman settled his gaze on Bettina, perhaps judging her to be the sensible one. ‘She’ll need time to fully accept her new situation—’
‘Don’t talk about me as though I’m not in the room! I’m not a child.’
‘Mr Bergman,’ said Bettina, ‘my mother has just lost everything. Please don’t be condescending.’
‘I’m not! Goodness gracious, I’m not. But I would thank you both not to shoot the messenger.’ He waved his hand desperately in the direction of Venetia’s cigarette. ‘I let her smoke, didn’t I?’
Venetia shot two arrows of smoke from her nostrils, her eyes dribbling tears. ‘Your monkey is eating its own faeces right now. I thought you should know that.’
It was a dispiriting week in Brighton – that was the word Bettina kept hearing uttered. ‘Dispiriting’ – such a weak, kitten’s swipe of a word when there were so many other more suitable choices: atrocious, dire, ghastly, despairing, miserable, aching, awful, terrible, horrible, horrific, horrendous. She quite liked ‘aching’. Her bones ached, her brain ached, in a literal sense her breasts ached, swollen as they were from milk destined to soon dry up, and of course her heart ached – for her widowed mother and fool of a dead father, and for her baby, who’d remained behind in London under the care of an agency nanny. Even the house seemed to ache. As if it too understood its loss.
One afternoon of this dispiriting week, as Venetia, Bart and Lucille met with countless clerks, Bettina went to her old bedroom and found her bundle of journals inside the locked desk drawer for which she still had a key. The books for 1919 and 1920 were largely filled with poetry. 1919 contained the poetry of others – favourite lines and snippets – mostly Emily Dickinson with all exclamation marks removed (which much improved them). 1920, the poetry was all her own. Wildly inspired, she’d spent an entire summer experimenting with the villanelle. She began to fantasise about a life as an acclaimed poetess – a prodigal artist discovered by a visiting writer of great taste and henceforth plucked from obscurity, her first collection selling out immediately. Some critics would find her too dangerous, too challenging, for she’d perform her readings dressed all in black wearing a mourning veil – she would be grieving for her lost innocence.
Her fantasies had been smashed when, in a hopeful, vulnerable moment, she showed her villanelles to her father. Oh, the look on his face! As if he was embarrassed for her. What could be worse? ‘You knew, handing me these, that I am a man incapable of dishonesty,’ he’d said – which was rubbish, for a start, because the man was always lying about something or other – ‘and because I love you and don’t wish to see you hurt, I very much wish you hadn’t showed them to me.’ She’d run to her room and cried. Hadn’t she also fantasised about hanging herself? Yes. From the huge oak. Her father finding her dangling, limp feet swaying slightly, her skin made silver by the moonlight.
She re-read the villanelles on her old bed, knees tucked up to her chin. They were terrible. Of course they were. But had they deserved that embarrassed, pitying look on her father’s face? She’d been fifteen. How had he not taken that into account?
Maybe Tabby would come to her with her own attempts at poetry one day. ‘This shows great promise and I am very proud of you,’ she might say, ‘though you may want to think about going through it with a fine-tooth comb and removing all clichés.’
She took the last journal downstairs (Lucille was shouting from inside the drawing room – she imagined a bespectacled clerk shrivelling in his chair) and went out into the garden, sitting under the giant oak from which she’d swung limp-footed in her adolescent fantasies. She started to write a formless poem entitled ‘Aching’. The bones of her father’s house were aching. That’s what she wanted to get across. The house was her father. It was held up by his bones, but his bones were diseased (with gonorrhoea) and crumbling. But she must choose. Diseased or aching? Ache suggested arthritis and her father did not deserve to be redeemed by an ailment so blameless as arthritis.