Voices in Summer (6 page)

'I'm glad you did. Perhaps I shall find that we have American friends in common, and we'll be able to gas about them. What are we eating?'

'Smoked salmon and then grouse.'

'Very smart. White wine or red?'

‘I think some bottles of both, don't you? Don't be too long, will you, Alec? I'd like to have a bath myself and it's too hot to hurry.' And she turned and went back into the bedroom. He heard her opening the sliding mirrored doors of her wardrobe. Imagined her standing there, trying to decide what she would put on. Thoughtfully, he squeezed dry the sponge and reached for his towel.

Alec, with his guests and his wife already seated, moved around the table pouring the wine. The windows of the dining room were wide open. Outside, it was still light, and very warm. There was not the faintest breeze and the garden drowsed in the scented evening air. On the table the candle flames glowed palely, striking soft reflections on crystal and silver. The kingcups, brilliant butter yellow, seemed to shine with a light all their own.

He put the bottle of wine back on the sideboard and went to take his place at the head of the table.

'. . . of course, you would probably think it was terribly boring after fishing in those wilderness rivers in the United States, but there is something very special about Glenshandra. We all adore it . . . we're like children there.'

That was Daphne, in full cry, monopolizing all conversation.

Strickland, Strick – Alec couldn't decide which was worse –assumed a modest expression. 'I'm not actually much of a fisherman myself.'

'No, of course you aren't, how silly of me, you wouldn't have time.'

'Why wouldn't he have time?' asked Tom.

'Well, darling, of course he wouldn't have time if he's in training for some world-shaking equestrian event.'

'Equestrian.' That was George. 'Daphne, I never realized you knew such long words.'

She pouted at him, and Alec was reminded of the young girl she no longer was.

'But it is the right word, isn't it?'

'Sure,' said Strickland. 'It's the right word.'

'Oh, thank you. You are sweet to be on my side.' She picked up her fork and speared a delicate sliver of rosy-pink smoked salmon.

Erica had placed her guests as she normally did when there were eight people present. Alec was in his normal chair, at the head of the table, but Erica had moved around to the side and relinquished her place to Strickland Whiteside, in his capacity as guest of honour, so that he and Alec faced each other down the length of the table. In fact, although they sat thus they didn't have a particularly good view of each other because the tall silver candelabra got in the way. When Erica was sitting there, Alec sometimes found this irritating, because if he wanted to say something to her, or to catch her eye, it involved some manoeuvring, but this evening he decided that it was probably a good thing.

He wanted to enjoy his dinner without being conscious the whole time of Strickland Whiteside's disconcertingly pale blue eyes.

Daphne and Erica sat on either side of Strickland and Marjorie Anstey and Gabriel on either side of Alec. Tom and George faced each other across the middle of the table.

Strickland Whiteside also took up his fork. 'Do you ride?' he asked Marjorie.

'Oh, heavens no. I never rode, even at school. I was always far too terrified.'

'She doesn't know a horse's arse from its elbow,' said George, and his wife said
'George'
in tones of extreme disapproval, and glanced towards Gabriel.

'Sorry, Gabriel, forgot you were there.'

Gabriel looked embarrassed, but Erica put back her head and laughed, as much at George's discomfort as at his joke.

Watching her, Alec decided that the time spent pondering over her wardrobe had not been wasted. She wore a caftan of the palest blue Thai silk, with the earrings he had once given her for some long-forgotten birthday and gold bracelets on her slender brown wrists. She looked amazingly young this evening. Her face still beautiful, her jawline firm, her hair without a thread of grey. Of all of them, he decided, she had aged and changed the least. Because, although not old, not even middle-aged, they, who had all been young together, no longer were.

He wondered what Strickland thought of them all. What was his impression of them, as they sat there, dressed up and festive, around the formal dinner table? They were Alec's oldest friends; he had known them for so long that their individual appearances he took totally for granted. But now he let his eyes move around the table deliberately observing each of his guests with the eyes of the stranger who sat in Erica's chair. Daphne, tiny and slender as ever, but with her blond hair now silvery white. George Anstey ponderous and red-faced, his shirt buttons straining over his considerable waistline. Marjorie, who of all of them seemed happy to mature into full solid middle age, without any tiresome backward glances over her ample shoulder.

And Tom. Tom Boulderstone. Affection filled Alec's heart for the man who had been his closest friend for so many years. But this was an objective appraisal, not a sentimental one. So what did Alec see? A man of forty-three, balding, bespectacled, pale, clever. A man who looked more like a priest than a banker. A man whose sombre expression could gleam with hidden laughter. A man who, when called upon, could make an after-dinner speech so witty that it would be quoted in the City for months to come.

Daphne ran out of words at last, and George Anstey took advantage of the subsequent lull to lean forward and ask Strickland what had decided him to come to this country.

'Well' – the American glanced around the table and grinned depreciatingly – ‘I seem to have done most everything I could in the States, and I felt there was real new challenge over here.'

'It must have meant the most awful lot of organization,' Marjorie remarked. She was interested in organization. She organized her local Meals on Wheels. ‘I mean, renting a house for yourself and getting your horses over . . . what do you do for grooms?'

‘I flew them over as well, and a couple of stable lads.'

'Are they black or white?' Daphne wanted to know.

Strickland grinned. 'Both.'

'And what about a housekeeper?' Marjorie persisted. 'Don't say you flew a housekeeper over as well?'

'Yes, I did. There wasn't any point taking Tickleigh Manor if I didn't have some person to look after me.'

Marjorie sat back with a sigh. 'Well, I don't know, but it all sounds like pure heaven to me. I've only got a daily two mornings a week, and she's never even been in an aeroplane.'

'For that you should be thankful,' said Tom dryly. 'Ours flew to Majorca for a holiday and married a waiter and never came back.'

Everybody laughed, but Tom did not even smile. Alec wondered what Tom was making of Strickland Whiteside, but that pale and clever face gave nothing away.

The American had arrived after they were all gathered with their drinks, bathed and shaved and changed and scented and expectant. When they heard the sound of his car drawing up outside the house, Erica went to greet him, and bring him indoors. They returned together, and there was no reason to imagine that they had embraced, but Erica brought with her, out of the fragrant evening, a nervous glitter, like a nimbus of light. Formally she introduced Strickland Whiteside to her husband and her friends. He did not seem in the least put out by being suddenly faced with a roomful of people he had never met before, and all of whom, obviously, knew one another very well. On the contrary, his manner was almost benign, satisfied, as though he knew that the boot was on the other foot, and it was he who must put them at their ease.

He had, Alec guessed, taken some trouble with his dress. He wore a maroon gabardine jacket, brass buttoned, smoothly tailored; a pale blue polo-necked sweater; and a pair of maroon and pale blue plaid slacks. His shoes were white. There was a thick gold watch on one sinewy wrist and a heavy gold signet ring on his left hand. He was a tall man, lean and muscled and obviously immensely strong, but it was hard to guess his age, for while his features were formidable, hawk-nosed, big-jawed, intensely brown, with eyes as pale as sixpences, his hair was corn coloured, thick as the hair of a boy, growing springily from his forehead in a deep wave.

'Glad to meet you,' he said when Alec welcomed him and gripped his hand. It was like shaking hands with a steel spring. 'Erica's spoken so much about you, and it's a real privilege to make your acquaintance at last.'

He continued to be charming. He kissed Gabriel – 'My little girlfriend,' allowed himself to be given a martini, sat in the middle of the sofa with one long ankle hitched up onto a hard-muscled plaid knee. He began at once to ask about Glenshandra, as though knowing that this topic would naturally bring everybody into the conversation and so break the ice. Marjorie was disarmed by this, and Daphne could scarcely keep her eyes off him and for the first five minutes was rendered speechless. After that she scarcely drew breath.

'What's Tickleigh Manor House like? Didn't the Gerrards used to live there?'

'They still do,' Erica said. They were eating grouse now, and Alec poured the red wine.

'Well, they can't live there if Strick's living there.'

'No, they've gone up to London for a couple of months.'

'Were they going anyway, or did Strickland chase them out?'

‘I chased them out,' said Strickland.

'He offered them money,' Erica explained to Daphne. 'You know that old-fashioned stuff you keep in your wallet.'

'You mean he
bribed
them . . .!'

'Oh,
Daphne

Erica was laughing at Daphne, but there was exasperation in her amusement. Alec sometimes wondered how the friendship of two such totally different women had lasted for so long. They had known each other since school days, and it was doubtful that there was a single secret they did not share, and yet, on analysis, they had nothing in common. It could be that this was the glue that cemented their friendship. Their interests had never overlapped, and so the relationship was not in danger from the destructive touch of jealousy.

Daphne was interested only in men. That was the way she had been made, that was the way she would be even if she lived to be ninety. She came to life only if there was a man in the room, and if she did not have some current admirer tucked up her sleeve, to take her out for little luncheons or to telephone her in the mornings after Tom had gone to work, then life had lost all meaning and she became snappish and despondent.

Tom knew about this and accepted it. Once, very late at night, he had talked to Alec. ‘I know she's a fool,' he had said, 'but she's a very sweet fool, and I wouldn't want to lose her.'

Whereas Erica . . . Erica was not really interested in men. Alec knew this. For the last few years he and Erica had lived more or less apart, but agonized conjectures as to how she spent her time had been the least of his worries; in fact, had scarcely entered his mind.

She had always been if not exactly frigid then sexually very cool. The emotions that other women needed – passion and excitement and challenge and affection – were apparently fulfilled by her obsession with her horses. Sometimes Alec was reminded of the small girls who haunted the Pony Club circuit.

Pigtailed, single-minded, cleaning tack, mucking out their, ponies. 'It's a sex substitute,' some person had once assured him, when he remarked upon this phenomenon. 'Let them reach fourteen or fifteen, and it'll not be horses they'll be interested in, but men. It's a well-known fact. A natural development.'

Erica must once have been just such a child.
I rode every day of my life until I went to Hong Kong.
But Erica, for some reason, had never grown up. For a little, perhaps, she had loved Alec, but she had never wanted a child, had never experienced the accepted maternal instincts of other young mothers. As soon as humanly possible, she had returned to her original love. That was why she had made him buy Deepbrook. That was, basically, why Gabriel had been sent away to school.

Now, her life revolved around horses. They were the centre of her life, all she truly cared about. And the people who became her new friends were the people who rode them.

Two months after this weekend, on a dark, wet evening in November, Alec drove back to Islington from the city at the end of the day, expecting as usual to find his house empty. He had made no plans for the night and was glad of this, because his briefcase bulged with reading matter that he had had no time to deal with during the day, and there was a directors' meeting planned for the next day, during which he would be expected to make some well-studied pronouncement. He would have his meal early, then light the fire, put on his spectacles, and settle down to work.

He turned at last out of the City Road and into his own street, Abigail Crescent. His house stood at the far end, and he saw the light shining from its windows. Erica, for some reason, had come up to London.

He was puzzled by this. The weather was bad and he knew that her social diary was empty for most of the week. A dentist's appointment perhaps, or a yearly check-up with her doctor in Harley Street?

He parked the car and sat, staring at the lighted house. He had grown accustomed to being alone, but he had never truly come to terms with it. He remembered when they had first come to live here, fresh from Hong Kong, before Gabriel was born. He remembered Erica arranging furniture and hanging curtains and struggling with huge books of carpet samples, but always finding time to come and greet him as he let himself in through the door. That was how it had been. For only a little time, maybe, but that was how it had been. For a moment he let himself imagine that the years between had never happened, that everything was unchanged. Perhaps this time she would come to greet him, kiss him, go into the kitchen to fix him a drink. They would sit with their drinks and exchange the small gossip and doings of their day, and then he would ring some restaurant and take her out for dinner. . . .

The shining windows stared back at him. He was suddenly tired. He closed his eyes, covered them with his hand, as though to wipe fatigue away. After a little he collected his briefcase off the back seat and got out of the car, locked it, and walked across the rain-soaked pavement, with his bulky briefcase bumping against his knee. He got out his key and opened the door.