The Parrot Cage, page 14
He said nothing and after a while she left him alone in the chaos of their office.
As she walked back across the park there was a metallic taste in her mouth that seemed vilely familiar. She had reached the bridge before she tracked down the memory. Years before, she must have been about five years old, she had rifled her mother’s purse and taken a florin, an enormous amount of money it had seemed, she remembered. Just before she had been able to scamper out of the room she had heard the unmistakable sharp tapping tread of her detested French governess and had stuffed the heavy coin into her mouth to hide it. The taste that now filled her mouth was just the same. It seemed to be the very taste of shame itself.
She stopped on the bridge for a minute or two to try to collect herself. But, looking down at the water, Gerry felt as though the perfection of the dawn mocked her. The view down the lake towards the roofs of Whitehall that she had always loved so much was untouched and looking even more glorious than usual with the sun gilding the bare tips of the willow branches that dabbled in the steel-grey water. She could not resist leaning forward on the bridge and remembering the days when her feelings for Suvarov were innocent. From her present position it was hard to remember how they had troubled her then. Now the idea that any such basic affection could be wrong seemed absurd. She thought of Andrew, too, for the first time since Peter had kissed her. What she had just done was a betrayal not only of the vows she had made in the small grey stone church near her home on her wedding day, but also of the love that Andrew had tried to give her, and even of the battles she had fought to find her own love for him. Gerry turned her face back towards Queen Anne’s Gate for a moment. Suvarov’s tenderness and the feelings he had awakened in her body had shown her at last how poverty-stricken she and Andrew had been in their physical relations. For the knowledge Peter had given her she would always be richer. She tried to believe that he had taken nothing from Andrew except her ignorance and clumsiness.
As she looked up towards the black pinnacles of Whitehall’s grey towers, she thought of the unhappiness in Peter’s face and once more could not believe that he was the conscienceless seducer of Evelyn’s veiled warnings. Besides, she thought that it was simply not possible for her to suffer such strength of feeling for a man who did not care.
A kind of resilience started to press the self-disgust out of her mind. Her hands, which had been gripping the rusty iron rail of the bridge, relaxed. She straightened up, looked once more down the lake and, almost as though her mind were speaking directly to some entity represented by the contrived beauty of the lakescape, promised: ‘Very well, I shall not give way to feeling filthy and miserable. I care. He cares. There will be a way out.’ Then she nodded decisively at the willow and, ignoring the highly surprised stare of another early pedestrian, walked off towards Green Park and Dover Street.
Towards the end of the next excruciating fortnight, during which Suvarov spoke to her as little as possible and she never looked directly at him, he said one evening:
‘Gerry, I have to go down to Etchingham this weekend. Would you come with me?’
‘Etchingham? Oh, the coding school those Americans are going to help with. Of course, if you need me.’
As usual she could not bring herself to look into his face and she saw his fingers tighten so hard on the pencil he was holding that it snapped in two jagged pieces. But when he spoke his voice was without passion of any kind.
‘Yes, I have to go to see the coders. But it’s my home, too. At least my wife’s home.’ Her eyes lifted in the sudden shock to look directly at him. I see, she said to herself, but why does he want to take me? And why the hell couldn’t Evelyn have told me that? It would have saved a lot of trouble, and my ideas about poor Andrew wouldn’t be in such chaos. Aloud she said:
‘Of course I’ll come.’
‘Thanks. It’s not an order, so if you change your mind tell me.’
She nodded and went back to her overloaded desk to process the increasingly dramatic reports of the analysts downstairs. But her heart was beginning to sing again. If he were married that might explain the dismissal; if he wanted to take her, Gerry, as protection against his wife then there was obviously something terribly wrong with their marriage and … Gerry even began to preen herself a little.
She began to paint ever more fantastic pictures of this mysterious wife, who had never been spoken about and who clearly cared nothing for her husband. By the time Peter opened the door of his own car for Gerry on the following evening she had worked herself back into a frame of mind in which she could smile at him.
He did not speak, except to ask if she was cold, during the entire journey in his uncomfortable little dark-green Morgan, but she did not mind. She felt as though they were back in tune with each other and supplied in her head all the conversations they might have had as they drove down towards the coast. It took nearly three hours to pick their way through South London and out into the Sussex countryside, past horrific bomb damage and around enormous craters that had still not been filled in. But they got there at last, sweeping down a long drive past a large square red-brick house with many windows that reflected the cloudy moonlight.
‘That’s the school. My wife and her sister moved out into the Dower House at the beginning of the war and offered the house to the government long before any requisitioning came in.’
‘Oh,’ said Gerry inadequately, thinking how rich his wife must be and how selfish to live in such splendour with her sister while her husband had to make do with rooms in London. Perhaps she was afraid of the bombing, thought Gerry disdainfully, almost ready to blame the unknown Mrs Suvarov for Annie’s death. Only she was probably not Mrs Suvarov but the Lady Something Suvarov if she lived in a place like this.
The drive seemed to wind on like some dream-extended road that would end only in high cliffs above a nightmare sea. They passed a lake and enormous trees whose species Gerry could only guess at in the inadequate light until at last the car turned through some high open gates, whose wrought-iron curlicues spelled centuries-old extravagance, to draw up outside a neat little box of a Georgian house built of grey stone.
Suvarov took the key out of the ignition.
‘Well, here we are. All right, Gerry?’
There was concern in his voice and she dared to touch his gloved hand. She could feel him still, hardly even breathing, and she withdrew.
‘Yes, Peter. Of course I’m all right.’ She opened the car door and got out, hearing and feeling the gravel crunch beneath her feet. He swung his long legs out of the driver’s seat and came round to the boot to take out their bags. Then he led the way up the steps and opened the front door. Once they were inside, in sudden stuffy darkness, he shut the door behind them and then pushed aside a thick blackout curtain, standing back to let Gerry go first into the warm, brightly lit hall.
A tall thin woman with immaculately arranged dark hair was stooping to add new logs to a fire that burned below the white marble mantelpiece and warmed the black and white squares of the marble floor. Portraits of severe-faced men and over-decorated women lined the walls, hung from a rail on long, vertical, black chains. A cocker spaniel skittered across the hard, shiny floor towards Suvarov, its tail thrashing like a flail and its tongue hanging out. Gerry was surprised and rather touched that he should have aroused such evident affection in an animal. He had never struck her as the kind of man to spend time on something so ordinary as playing with a puppy or training it.
She watched him bend down and take the animal by the ears and receive its exuberant homage. Then he straightened up and walked across the black and white checks to kiss the thin, elegant woman on each pale cheek, before putting an arm around her shoulders and bringing her to where Gerry stood just inside the blackout curtain beside the baggage.
‘Connie, this is Mrs Kyrle, my invaluable assistant. Gerry, this is my sister-in-law, Constance Wroughton.’
‘How do you do, Mrs Kyrle?’ she said, holding out a shapely hand. Gerry looked surreptitiously at the other hand but there was no wedding ring. Constance turned to Suvarov. ‘Diana’s in her drawing room.’
‘Thanks, Connie. We’ll go in. See you later.’
‘Dinner in half an hour.’ He waved in acknowledgement and led the way to the back of the hall where a panelled door stood closed. He opened it and ushered Gerry in ahead of him.
Even in the middle of her confusion and sickeningly muddled feelings, Gerry noticed that it was a beautiful room, rather under-furnished but with an atmosphere of complete calm. The panelling had been painted a warm oyster grey and instead of the family portraits that decorated the hall, this room was hung with a collection of charming drawings of sunny, domestic scenes: a child playing, a cat on the windowsill beside a potted geranium, a woman dressing. Most of the furniture was made from some golden wood, satinwood perhaps or kingwood, and to Gerry’s inexpert eye it looked as though it dated from the eighteenth century. There were flowers here and there in pretty porcelain bowls, and a sweet-scented fire of apple logs burned in the white fireplace.
Gerry stood still in the doorway. Peter gave her a little push, and when she moved out of the way he walked past her towards the fire where a woman was sitting with a soft, misty-rose rug on her knees. Gerry watched as he stood in front of her, almost as though in homage, and then leaned forward to take her hands and kiss her forehead. Gerry heard his voice as soft and gentle as when he spoke to Ming:
‘How is it, Diana?’
Boiling with indignation on his behalf that this rich wife of his should sit to receive his greeting, Gerry watched her put one of her astonishingly thin hands up to his face and hold it there for a moment. Then in a voice that had a beautiful tone, slightly cracked, like a bell with a flaw in it, she said:
‘I’m well enough. But you, my dear, you look very worn.’ He shook his head and stood up to beckon to Gerry. Obediently as always, she walked forward, feeling clumsy and very puzzled.
‘Diana, this is my assistant, Mrs Kyrle; Gerry Alderbrook to her friends.’
‘How do you do, Gerry?’ came that voice again and Gerry walked forward to stand in front of her. ‘Forgive my not getting up, my dear. This wretched thing keeps me chained to my chair.’
A steely cold vice gripped at Gerry’s insides as she let her glance follow Peter’s wife’s fluttering hand and she saw the implacable wheels of the chair. The significance of the pretty rug, Peter’s gentle concern, and Mrs Suvarov’s regal reception of him all became instantly clear to Gerry, and so did her place in their tragedy and theirs in hers. This, then, was Suvarov’s private misery at which Tony Eynsham had once hinted. Gerry’s eyelids dropped over her eyes and she made a supreme effort to speak normally.
‘Please don’t think about it, Mrs Suvarov. It is so good of you to have me to stay like this.’ The fluttering hand with the big sapphires on the third finger touched her own.
‘Sit here beside me, Gerry, while Peter finds us something to drink.’ Gerry, moving as though still in the nightmare, pulled forward a brocade-covered elbow chair, and sat down. ‘I am so glad he’s brought you this weekend, so that I can tell you how grateful I am that you’re being such a help to him. His life is so bleak alone in London and I know how much it has done for him to have your intelligent, sensitive help in his work.’ Gerry could not answer; it was all she could do not to let the tears out of her mind into her eyes. She just tried to smile.
As though to protect her, Suvarov found things for Gerry to do at the coding school for the whole of the Saturday while he presumably sat with his wife and told her whatever it was that he had come to tell. Lying in bed that night, tired to a point where sleep seemed to be an impossible longed-for paradise, Gerry decided that of all the hurts that were digging into her liked barbed needle points, the worst was the knowledge of the gentle, loving, tolerant peace between Suvarov and his wife, which was the absolute antithesis of the tensions Gerry felt about her own marriage. Well, now she knew what marriage should be about; she and Andrew had had their health until her miscarriage, which was as nothing compared to whatever it was that had wasted Diana Suvarov’s limbs. They had thought they loved each other, they had married. Only recently had Gerry wondered whether each had invented the person they thought they loved. Now she was certain.
She must have slept in the end, for when she turned over restlessly for what felt like the thousandth time, she saw that there was light edging round the curtains. Relieved, she got quickly out of bed, wincing at the cold, and flung back the thick old yellow brocade curtains and looked out.
The Dower House had a perfect view of the lake and the carefully placed trees that led the way towards the main house; the stands of ancient oaks, the one massively stepped cedar of Lebanon and the three or four immense copper beeches whose last few leaves seemed to deepen the colour of the graceful redbrick house. Peter’s wife seemed to have everything that Gerry had ever wanted – except her health, and without that what use was all the rest? But just at that moment Gerry thought that the bargain might have been worth while.
She looked at her watch and, seeing the time, rushed to wash and dress for breakfast. As she got her tweed coat and skirt out of the walnut wardrobe, she felt suddenly ashamed that she had selected the clothes with a view to showing Peter’s wife just how well she dressed. As though anyone as young as Gerry, as lacking in character and knowledge, could rival someone like Diana Suvarov, whose beauty had survived despite the ravages of illness and who obviously had wells of fortitude and affection on which to draw. And, thought Gerry, determined to face the completeness of her inadequacy, who obviously loved her husband and was most greatly loved by him.
Biting the inside of her lower lip, she pulled up her stockings and snapped the suspenders through them. Then she found the correct shoes, put them on and went downstairs to the morning room, where she found Constance Wroughton laying the walnut table.
Constance looked round at the sound of the door’s opening and smiled gently.
‘Good morning, Gerry. I hope you slept well? I’m afraid Diana had rather a bad night and so she’s not getting up this morning. She asked me to apologise to you.’
‘Heavens, she shouldn’t have done that,’ said Gerry instinctively, and then motivated perhaps by memories of her muddled relations with her own sisters, went on more carefully: ‘Do you always get on so well?’
Constance leaned across the table to put the last French flowered porcelain cup on its saucer and then turned back to look at Gerry.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘I’ve just been thinking about my dealings with my own sisters and wondering how any of us would measure up to what you and Diana have achieved and, well, doubting that we’d be able to.’
‘It doesn’t come all of a rush. We’ve both had to fight to get where we are now.’
‘Fight each other?’ asked Gerry doubtfully. Constance smiled ruefully and poured coffee for them both.
‘Even that sometimes, but mainly ourselves. It helped, of course, that we were left the house together; and that it’s so big, which meant that it was a job in itself. But of course it is very difficult for any two people to live together, particularly when one is trapped as Diana is …’
‘And the other therefore has to do more of the Martha-ing,’ supplied Gerry.
‘Peter’s right,’ said Constance with apparent irrelevance, and Gerry seized on the introduction of his name to ask:
‘Has Diana always lived here, I mean when they were first married?’
‘No, they were in London for a few years – during the week; they always came down here at weekends. But once she got ill, she found London a terrible burden and I think it frightened her at a time when she needed absolutely every bit of resolution and courage to cope with her disease. Peter saw that and brought her back to me despite her protests.’ She sipped her coffee and Gerry sat looking down at her plate, trying to concentrate on the pretty mixture of blue and yellow flowers painted under the glaze. Then Constance said: ‘He has done everything he could for her, you know. I used to … Things used to be difficult between him and me, but I think we’ve come to recognise what each other does and respect it. I can see now what marrying Diana’s cost him one way and another.’
‘Cost him?’ repeated Gerry in a small, high voice.
‘No children; no real marriage, physical marriage, if you see what I mean; a weight to be carried all the time and wondering, always wondering, if he’s doing enough for her, doing the right things. He is a good man, Gerry.’
‘Yes, I know. May I help myself to some more coffee?’ Gerry asked, unable to bear the conversation any longer.
‘Of course. Oh, by the way, the local parson comes to the chapel every Sunday for morning service. I always take Diana. Would you like to come with us?’
‘Chapel?’
‘Yes, in the house. It’s pure delight – tiny and quite perfect. You ought to see it while you’re here, but you can always pop up this afternoon if you’d rather.’
‘No, no. I’ll come with you. But will your sister be well enough?’
‘I expect so. By the way, Peter never comes. The C of E is not really his sort of thing.’
‘No, I don’t suppose it is.’
And so Gerry Alderbrook, after what felt like the worst shock of her life, spent a Sunday of complete English conventionality with morning service, then lunch back at the Dower House with the vicar and the commanding officer of the coding school, and then a bracing walk around the park afterwards, while Suvarov sat with his wife and talked by the fire in her drawing room. Then at the end of the day he packed Gerry and her luggage back into his little dark-green car and drove her back to London.
She sat quietly with her hands in her lap waiting for him to speak. They had reached Dorking before he started.
‘Gerry, Diana’s illness is not something I can ever talk about to anyone, and after … You had a right to know, but I did not know how to tell you. Any explanation I could find words for sounded as though I was trying to make an excuse and there isn’t one. I had to show you.’
