‘Come to think of it,’ said Bettina, ‘have him put it all in Megan’s old room for now. Don’t want to interrupt the cleaner, do we?’
Megan had slept in the attic, up three flights of stairs.
Looking after a small child all day long – and Bettina was loath to admit this, fearing that it pointed to some kind of deficiency within her – was the most boring task she’d ever undertaken. Tabby made her play games of the imagination which made no sense and went on forever. Pregnant mermaids who go to the shop to buy sweeties but then the shop turns into a hospital and the mermaid isn’t pregnant any more and actually, she’s not even a mermaid any more, and by the way, the hospital is a tree, and – God, it went on and on. Bettina would lie on her side, smoking and feigning interest and wishing she could return to her books, which had beginnings, middles, endings, and logic. Bart was much better at this stuff. He took delight in Tabby’s meandering imagination and knew how to make it fun for himself, putting on different accents, which of course he excelled at.
Now Tabby followed her grandmothers around constantly and Bettina spent a few peaceful days in the garden, working on the third chapter of her novel – unnamed as yet – in fits and starts. More than once – at least five times, actually – she caught movement at the corner of her eye and looked up to see Henry watching her from various windows of the house. Same old Henry, disgusting as ever. She considered talking to her mother about it, but really there wasn’t any point. Venetia felt – had always felt – that Henry was a loyal, hardworking servant that she couldn’t do without, so much so that she’d fought to bring him along to Longworth, where Lucille had agreed to demote her own butler, not having any fondness for him (‘Napoleon complex and don’t get me started on his fingernails’), and it had caused all sorts of resentments and conflict between the staff already there. All this for Henry. Any accusations from Bettina had always been met with incredulity, as if Bettina were imagining things. Better to ignore the bastard.
She introduced a new character – a pale-faced young man with sadistic tendencies. John. She’d probably end up bumping him off. Fire, perhaps. Yes – fire. And maybe John could have a horrid sinister butler, and he could die in the fire too. Might as well make it fun for herself.
Lucille had been out all day – in the morning she’d gone to visit a friend who might know of a good nanny wanting employment, and now, new nanny procured, she was at the travelling circus with Tabby. Bettina was in the sitting room, trying to give Ulysses another go. Venetia came in holding a book under her arm. She set it down on the drinks cabinet and poured herself a glass of port. She stood with her back to Bettina, slowly sipping her drink. She had the look of someone enjoying the sunset from a balcony.
‘Betts, put your book down,’ she said, turning around finally. ‘I want to talk to you.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Something was left under the mattress of your old bed. Do you remember what?’
Bettina shook her head.
Venetia picked up the book she’d come in with. ‘What about now?’
She squinted. ‘Is that mine?’
A dark nod. ‘Henry found it when we were moving everything to Lucille’s. He left it in one of my cases and it’s been there all this time. And lucky me – I just found it.’
It was a green leather-bound book – one of her diaries. She snatched it from her mother. ‘If you’ve read this…’
‘Of course I read it! I didn’t know what it was.’
Bettina opened the first page. ‘1 January 1922’ in black ink. She scanned the pages. ‘Well, I don’t know why you look so aggrieved,’ she said, ‘unless you’ve no patience for girlish histrionics.’
‘Skip to the end.’
She flicked to the last entry – 9April 1928. A sudden change of handwriting style – the letters broader, more hurried. Dear Father, you were wrong.
I liked to fuck women.
I just adore fucking women.
‘Oh my God.’ She sat down heavily on the sofa.
They were silent for a long, long time, smoking their cigarettes and glugging their drinks, the space between them an undetonated bomb. Birdsong and the chop-chop of the rotary lawnmower drifted in through the open windows.
‘I was distraught with grief,’ said Bettina. ‘I wasn’t in my right mind.’
Venetia snorted. ‘How could you say such things about your father? How could you even think them?’ She took the book out of Bettina’s hands and opened it to the right page. ‘“You squandering whoremaster, you abysmal punchline to a dubious joke, you posthumous failure… blah blah blah… you are sorely hated, Father.”’ She looked up from the page, her eyes moist. ‘How could you? He would have died for you. How could you?’
‘Easily. He ruined your life.’
Venetia slammed the book shut and threw it across the room with such explosive fury that Bettina instinctively covered her stomach with her hands. She’d never seen her mother so angry.
‘He made mistakes! I’ve also made mistakes. You’ve made mistakes. It breaks my heart to—’
‘How are you not mad about the other thing? Why is this the—’
‘I am mad about the other thing! But I already knew about the other thing. You don’t think I forgot about that incident, do you? With that fat girl?’
‘She wasn’t fat.’
‘Your father adored you. Which was obvious to everyone apart from you. He does not deserve your vitriol. So he had a tart now and then, and he listened to bad financial advice. Grow up! I have known monsters, Bettina, real-life monsters – you have no idea. You’re young and stupid. Your father was better than most men.’
‘I was angry. I had a right to be angry – I thought he’d made you homeless.’
Venetia tossed back the last of her port, the glass knocking against her dentures. She closed her eyes and seemed to concentrate on her breathing. On calming down. She opened them and they weren’t angry any more – just sad. ‘I don’t miss the house, Bettina. I walk past it sometimes. A family from Wiltshire’s taken it over and I think, well, good luck with that! You know how much trouble we had with damp, and all those drunkards passing by on their way home from the Prince Albert. No, I don’t miss it. I’m probably supposed to pine for the home in which my children grew up – all those memories and whatnot. But it caused me nothing but pain, Bettina. Every time I walked past Jonathan’s bedroom… I miss your father more than I miss the house. I feel sometimes as though the marrow has been sucked from my bones.’
Her mother stared at the opposite wall with glassy eyes. ‘There’s a lot you don’t know. Parents only reveal what they want you to see. Just remember that he would have done anything for you. So he quarrelled with you? Pff. If he didn’t care about you, he wouldn’t have expended the energy.’
‘You say he made mistakes and you made mistakes—’
‘Don’t even try it,’ said Venetia.
‘Henry’s read it. You know that, don’t you? He read it and he planted it in your suitcase so you’d find it.’
Venetia shrugged.
‘For God’s sake, Mother! That man is a—’ Oh, why bother? It just made her sound like she had a childish fixation. And it did come across like that, didn’t it? Like she was a spoiled little cow with a grudge. The butler’s a meanie, boo-hoo! Fire him, Mummy, at once!
Bettina tore out the entry. She flicked open her lighter and held the flame to the corner of the papers. ‘I showed Father some of the poems in my journal once,’ she said, dropping it in the fire grate and watching it blacken. ‘He was not enthusiastic.’