‘Mrs Dawes,’ he said, his face almost unreadable – almost, because no matter how well he affixed his mask, there were always the eyes peeping out, and they could only hide so much. He was wearing his usual black trousers but no jacket or tie – just a white shirt. She could see his vest underneath and the saggy flesh of his man-breasts. His nose seemed to have grown in the last few years, especially the nostrils, and where his hair had once been, there now grew only a few long grey wisps, which anyone possessing a mirror and half a shred of sense would’ve plucked out long ago. He looked very old now, but nowhere close to feeble or doddering, and his posture was immaculate. ‘You weren’t expected,’ he said. ‘Your mother and Mrs Dawes are out in the garden.’ He stepped to the side and signalled with his hand for them to pass him.
Lucille and Venetia were hanging out sheets on the line, pegs clipped onto their collars. Black socks and nylon stockings were draped over every croquet hoop on the lawn. The birdsong in Lucille’s aviary mingled with the notes of a Puccini aria playing from the conservatory’s gramophone. Venetia shielded her eyes with her hand, squinting against the glare of the sun.
‘Bettina?’ She was wearing a cream housedress with a tan leather belt. She looked thin. Lucille was also thinner, except for her backside, which was genetically designed, it seemed, to withstand the barest of winters. She had a red scarf tied up in her greying hair, the bunny ears flopping down over her wrinkled forehead, and she was wearing blue dungarees – clearly she’d wanted to dress the part for the manual work. Her ears and wrists were still crowded with jewellery.
‘What are you doing hanging up sheets?’ said Bettina.
‘The cleaning woman went and had a stroke last week.’
‘What a bother for you.’
‘Well, it is actually.’ Venetia gave her a kiss on each cheek.
‘This is Ivy Turner. She works with me on the farm and we’re both on leave – I hope you don’t mind if she stays, I’ve been telling her all about the lovely beaches and she’s very excited. Aren’t you, Ivy?’
Venetia gave Ivy a shrewd up-and-down appraisal before putting out her hand for shaking. Ivy looked strong and serene, controlled – it was a look Bettina recognised from their very first meeting at Hathaway Farm. She knew now, of course, that it hid terrible nerves.
Lucille was standing back a little, lighting a cigarette, also appraising Ivy. She had that look in her eye, like she knew what was what. Of course she did.
‘You’re looking well,’ Venetia said to Bettina.
‘The outdoors agrees with me.’
‘Rationing too, by the looks of things.’ She poked Bettina’s belly. ‘You were getting tubby.’
‘As were you.’
‘Well, we’ve no staff, dear, except good old Henry, and he can’t very well do everything himself. I’ve had to sweep the floors this week! Can you imagine?’ She chuckled, looking over at Lucille. ‘Wasn’t I a sight?’
Lucille nodded, smiling.
‘And her, beating the rug,’ said Venetia.
‘I imagined it was Goebbels,’ said Lucille, her eyes deadpan but her lipsticked mouth twisting like jelly worms to keep the laughter in. ‘I did a bloody good job of it.’
‘You must be thirsty,’ said Venetia. ‘Henry! Oh, where’s he got to? Henry!’
Bettina adjusted a wonky peg on the line.
‘Well, well, well,’ came a man’s voice. ‘My wife, doing housework.’
Bart. Standing at the conservatory doors in white linen trousers and a blue shirt, holding a glass and a cigarette. Appearing the way his mother always seemed to appear at doorways – lazily, casually. Cat-like. He was thin, almost as thin as he’d been for his role as Edward Crabbe. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up, showing brown arms, and his face too was brown, except for the squint-creases around his eyes. He had a folded-up beach blanket draped over one arm.
‘Bart.’ She said it carefully, as if testing out the word.
‘Bettina. You look well.’ He saw Ivy, who was staring at him, goldfish-mouthed, all her poise gone.
‘This is Ivy, my friend and colleague. Ivy, this is my husband, Bart.’
He tipped an imaginary hat to her. She regained her equilibrium – good for her – and merely nodded, her eyes giving out nothing.
‘I’ll get out of your hair,’ said Bart. ‘You won’t see me much. Have fun with your friend.’ A slight emphasis on that last word. He strolled past them and went down the garden, towards the path that led to the beach.
Venetia and Lucille had been watching all this. A pair of thirsty old sponges. Venetia looked upset – she hadn’t known quite how bad things were. Lucille, clearly, had.
‘Henry!’ shrieked Venetia, the sound like a starter pistol. Bettina snatched up her basket and they rushed into the house.
Chapter 30
Bettina’s room had a view of the countryside. She used to loathe the countryside, the scraggly, parochial quaintness of it. The unsexiness of it. She took her clothes bag out of the basket and put each item – trousers, blouse, cardigan, dress, underwear – in the correct drawers. Her toothbrush she left on the dressing table. She brought out the wrapped-up pistol and put it on top of the wardrobe, standing on tiptoes and nudging it with her fingers until it was out of sight. She returned to the window. A few cows, a gypsy caravan glinting far off in the distance. Clear skies save for the odd sneeze of cloud. She started crying – a sudden storm, the kind that has you bent, that aches through the middle.
They spent the days at the beach mostly, lying side by side on a picnic blanket and reading their respective books. Monty’s old pavilion had been taken down fifteen years earlier, but not before one of its great white gull-shitted tarps had been snatched away by a gale-force wind and blown up into the cliffs, where it had snagged itself on a rock. It was there still – a crumpled white mess, high up, reflecting the light on sunny days so that the eye was always drawn to it.
The beach was a long stretch of pale sand and grey pebbles curving off into the far distance and usually empty of people – twenty miles along it joined Brighton Beach, and this was where you went if you wanted people. Bart was most likely up near the cove-end, partly enclosed by an arm of jagged rocks – he’d always liked dabbling his feet in the rock pools there. When they came down for breakfast in the mornings he’d already be gone, his empty porridge bowl left on the table next to an ashtray with three butts. He took his evening meal at a nearby pub which served fresh fish.
On the second night, while Ivy was playing solitaire in her bedroom, Bettina went downstairs to find her mother – also playing solitaire, funnily enough – in the sitting room. There was a glass of some sort of spirit at her right-hand side.
‘Where’s Lucille?’
‘She’s gone to the cinema with Bart. They’re running an old Clark Gable.’ She sipped her drink, eyes on the cards laid out. ‘I’d have liked to have seen it myself, but that would mean I was picking sides.’ She placed a four of clubs on a five of diamonds. Made the row neat with a little push of her fingernail.
‘Don’t be silly. You should have gone.’ Bettina sat opposite her mother. ‘I’m sorry you’re stuck in the middle like this.’
‘Not as sorry as I am.’
‘What am I supposed to do?’
‘Fix your marriage.’
‘What marriage? I don’t have a marriage to fix.’
Venetia put her cards down. She took her cigarette out of the ashtray and inhaled, her mouth wrinkles deep and long, like seismic ruptures. ‘Anything that is broken can be fixed,’ she said.
‘So wise.’