Chapter Fifteen
London
Honor
The morning they were due to motor down to Kelvedon, Honor came downstairs to find Andrews hovering in the hallway. Her heart sank.
‘Madame, may I have a word?’
‘You are having a word, Andrews. What is it?’
‘There is a lady in the library, Madame.’
‘Well, why have you not shown her in? I will receive her in the small drawing room.’
‘The lady is asleep, Madame.’
Hence, she thought, the hovering. ‘You’d better tell me.’
‘I believe it to be Ms Ponsonby but it is difficult to be certain.’
‘I see. Well, I’d better go and have a look. Will you bring coffee? Strong coffee.’
In the library, the heavy green velvet curtains were still partially closed, so that light came through only in one narrow shaft.
The whole room looked as though Andrews had been interrupted in his task.
A collection of sticky glasses had been herded to one corner of the vast leather-topped desk but not yet removed.
Beside them, a near-empty bottle of crème de menthe had the same thick green hue as the light coming through the curtains, so that the room made Honor think of the swimming pool at Elveden after winter – when jade-coloured algae grew dense around the concrete sides and bottom, turning the trapped rainwater to the same greenish hue as the copper-domed roof.
Beside the bottle, a dusting of white powder told her that Chips had been at his trickery again; ‘dynamite’ he called it.
On a sofa in the corner, illuminated by a finger of light, someone lay sprawled, half covered by a fringed shawl.
Honor moved closer. The someone’s head was tucked in under a bare white arm, and the corner of the fringed shawl had been pulled almost to the top of the head so that only a few dusty brown curls were visible.
It was a woman, and indeed there was something about the lanky form, the insolence of that flung-out arm, that said Elizabeth Ponsonby.
Momentarily, Honor marvelled at Andrews’ discernment.
‘Elizabeth.’ She shook the arm. Her skin was cold to touch. It was already warm outside but the library never saw sun until lunchtime. Nothing. ‘Elizabeth.’ She shook the arm again, harder. A slurred murmur from beneath the shawl. ‘Elizabeth.’ Louder, harder.
‘What is it?’ A voice raspy with sleep and whatever had been drunk and smoked the night before.
‘Elizabeth, get up!’ Honor said sharply. The figure stirred and the arm dropped, taking the shawl with it so that a face was visible. It was indeed Elizabeth, her round eyes – like a surprised baby, Honor had always thought – more heavily lidded than usual.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, struggling to sit up. The straps of her evening dress, some kind of deep red silk, slipped down so that Honor saw far more of her bosom than she wanted to.
‘Who else would it be? What are you doing asleep in my library?’
‘I wasn’t entirely sure where I was,’ Elizabeth confided. She pushed her hair back from where it hung, tangled, around her face. ‘Might you have a cigarette?’
Honor fetched a box from the desk and offered her one.
Elizabeth’s hands shook so badly she could barely get the cigarette into her mouth, let alone light it.
Honor plucked it from between her lips, lit it herself and passed it back, blowing out a cloud of smoke.
‘Yeuch. I don’t know how you can at this time. ’
‘Don’t be censorious, darling, not so early.’ Her voice shook too.
‘Now, what are you doing here?’
‘Well,’ Elizabeth leaned forward, confidingly, ‘I don’t quite know … We were at the Café de Paris, and then some darling little dive off Mayfair. One of Ma Merrick’s, I expect. Your husband was there. Or was he somewhere else?’ She screwed her face up, trying to remember.
‘Never mind that. Why here?’
‘Well, the police arrived and broke up the Mayfair place. Which makes me think it can’t have been Ma, because of how she’s so careful to pay the poor fellows so they don’t have to waste their time at such silliness …’
‘Elizabeth!’
‘I’m getting there, darling. Be patient.’ She took another drag of her cigarette, blowing smoke into Honor’s face. ‘Your husband – ever so jolly! – suggested we come back here for just one. And, well, here I am.’ She looked around brightly.
‘You came back here, alone, with my husband?’ Surely not even Chips, in their own home, with Elizabeth …?
‘Oh no! You mustn’t worry.’ She reached out and patted Honor’s arm. Her fingers, thin and white with their crimson nails, were stained yellow at the tips.
‘I’m not worried,’ Honor said, drawing back her arm.
Elizabeth gave her a mischievous look, then opened her eyes very wide.
‘Of course not,’ she agreed. ‘In any case, you need not be. There were quite a number of us here. Billy Cavendish, at least one Mitford – although where there’s one, there’s usually more, don’t you find? ’ she added, nodding wisely.
Honor found herself nodding too, then stopped.
Chips had had a party, here in the library, while she slept oblivious upstairs?
There was something she didn’t like about the idea.
And yet, the truth was that, so big was the house, so great the distances between its rooms – many of which Honor hardly visited – he could have had a dozen parties and she would never have known.
There was something a little sinister about that.
She shook off the thought and returned to the matter in hand.
‘But why are you still here?’
‘I fell asleep. Must have, else I wouldn’t still be here, would I?
’ As though it were the most logical thing in the world.
Beside the sofa Honor noticed for the first time a pair of silver sandals with high spikey heels.
They were placed neatly, lined up one beside the other.
She wondered had Elizabeth done that, or someone else?
‘Well. Here’s Andrews.’ The butler entered with a tray on which stood a silver coffee pot and two china cups. Honor hoped Elizabeth wouldn’t break them. Her hands still shook alarmingly. ‘You may have a cup of coffee and then I’m sure you’ll want to be getting on. You must have so much to do.’
‘Not a thing,’ Elizabeth said cheerfully.
‘Not ’til lunchtime at least. I say, be a darling, Honor, may I have a bath before I go?
You wouldn’t send poor tiny me out in last night’s fug, now would you?
’ She stared at Honor, an expression that for all its childish defiance held something else too. Something hopeful.
So that Honor said, ‘Very well. I will ask Molly to draw you a bath.’
As she crossed towards the door, she caught sight of one of Elizabeth’s bare feet poking out from under the shawl. The sole was entirely black. She shut the door behind her. ‘Where is Mr Channon?’ she asked Andrews.
‘Just returned, Madame. He has been shopping.’
Of course he had. More antiques, she supposed. He never would go to Kelvedon empty-handed. ‘Ask him to come up to my sitting room.’
When Molly had drawn a bath for Elizabeth, Honor sent her to pack and, while she waited for Chips, began to compose a letter to Doris: ‘You cannot imagine what I found this morning, quite as though some bird had flown in and started a nest in a corner: Elizabeth Ponsonby, rather the worse for wear, fast asleep on the sofa like something from an Aubrey Beardsley sketch – all charcoal smudges and spikey lines …’ She tried to make the telling something amusing, a trivial but curious episode.
But it was hard. She felt furious. With Elizabeth, with Chips, obscurely with herself, for being the sort of person a thing like that could happen to.
No one, she thought, would ever dare fall asleep on a library sofa in her parents’ house.
And if they did, one look at Lady Iveagh’s face in the morning would be enough to send them packing.
There would be no cups of coffee and – imagine it! – baths.
‘What is the meaning of it?’ she demanded when Chips came in, as soon as the door was safely shut behind him.
‘What was I to do?’ He put his hands out in front of him, palms up, fingers spread wide. ‘I tried to find her a taxi but it simply wasn’t possible to get her out of the house.’
‘Why could not one of the others have taken her?’
‘They were gone and she was left and there seemed nothing at all to do only cover her and leave her on the sofa where she was already asleep and snoring. In a way that was surprisingly loud.’
‘What about that chap she goes about with, Ford?’
‘They seem to have had some sort of a row earlier in the evening. He stormed off and she said she wouldn’t go with him because he was “simply beastly” when in that kind of humour.
Truth is,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure she had anywhere much to go.
I rather got the impression she didn’t. Surely you do not think I wanted her here? ’
No, Honor knew him better than that. Poor Elizabeth had none of the things Chips looked for.
Neither power nor influence; little beauty, certainly not now.
Nothing attached to her name except exasperation, indifference and, among those who had known her a decade ago when she was the very brightest of the Bright Young People, a lingering pity.
‘No, I don’t suppose you did. Though why you must go giving late-night parties …’
‘Not a party,’ he said, ‘just one or two friends. Now, Brigid is downstairs.’
‘And Maureen and Duff will be here any moment. We must be ready to leave.’
By the time she got down, Maureen had arrived and was standing, tapping her foot impatiently and blowing smoke in exaggerated fashion from a cigarette held in a long ivory holder.
She was far too smartly dressed for the country, in a cream jacket and skirt that were too hot for the already-sultry day.
Pugsy, her bad-tempered Peke was slumped at her feet, defeated by the heat.
Beside her on the hall chair Duff sat and read The Times. Maureen looked up. Duff did not.
‘I thought we would be gone by now,’ Maureen said. Behind her, in one of the smaller rooms, Honor could hear Brigid chattering on the telephone.
‘Andrews has ordered the motorcars,’ Honor said soothingly. The last thing she wanted was a row before they even set off. ‘You and I and Brigid and Duff will go together. Chips will follow with Bundi. Those dogs had better not travel together. The servants will come after with the luggage.’
‘I say, where are you going?’ It was Elizabeth, leaning over the heavy banister and calling down to them from the first floor.
‘Kelvedon. Essex. And we should have left by now,’ Maureen said. Then, in an audible hiss, ‘What is she doing here?’ to Honor.
‘Essex. What fun,’ Elizabeth said, starting down the stairs.
She looked fresher – Molly must have done her hair as well, Honor thought; what were the bets Elizabeth hadn’t tipped her – and also familiar. ‘I say, is that my dress?’
‘Yes, I knew you wouldn’t mind. You can’t expect me to wear last night’s.
Red silk. So simply perfect for a nightclub.
Not at all the thing for daytime. You must see that, Honor?
I told your maid – darling creature, you are lucky!
– that you wouldn’t mind a bit. I hoped you would have trousers, but of course you don’t have the figure for it. ’
Beside Honor, Maureen was laughing openly. ‘I’d forgotten you could be amusing, sometimes. You should come with us,’ she said lightly.
‘Now that’s a jolly idea.’ Elizabeth beamed. ‘I think I shall. It’s much too hot in London anyway.’ She had reached the hall and stood close enough, fanning herself in exaggerated fashion with a limp hand, so that Honor could smell her own geranium soap, a gift from Chips.
‘Don’t be absurd, Maureen,’ she said crossly. ‘Elizabeth must have a million things to do. Besides, there simply isn’t time for her to gather her things. The motors have been brought round and we mustn’t keep Michaels waiting.’
‘I’ll just borrow some of yours,’ Elizabeth said.
‘I know we aren’t at all the same size,’ she smiled kindly at Honor, ‘but you do have so many heaps of clothes, I’m sure that clever maid of yours can find a few things.
I don’t need much. I don’t imagine there will be any real fun in Essex.
’ She said it almost reassuringly. At that, Duff looked up and grinned.
‘Excellent plan!’ Maureen said with a snigger, so that Honor felt she could have cheerfully murdered her.
‘Well, if you must come, at least let us stop and let you pick up some things. It really won’t do …’
‘The truth is,’ Elizabeth said with dignity, ‘my effects are scattered. I have been staying rather here and there this last while. My own flat has … too many people in it.’ She opened her eyes very wide, as if daring them to ask more.
So Chips was right, Honor thought. ‘But there isn’t room in the motorcars,’ she tried one last time.
‘Oh, little me can squeeze in anywhere.’ Then, ‘Duff, darling, why don’t you fix us a drink before we go, and Honor can send for her adorable maid to do the packing?’ Duff stood up and tucked The Times under one arm, holding the other out politely for Elizabeth.
‘Damn you, Maureen,’ Honor said when they had moved away. ‘What was that?’
‘A joke that may have got rather out of hand,’ Maureen said, watching her husband and Elizabeth disappear into the library.