Chapter 12 #3
Elizabeth glided up to Jasper. They were standing on the edge of the crowd, slightly apart from everyone else.
Her mouth went dry as she gathered the courage to speak.
She watched as Clementine and Alfie held the silver knife in their hands and plunged it deep into Daisy’s handiwork, slicing through the white icing, the soft marzipan, the brandy-soaked fruit.
Neither of them took their eyes off the happy couple as they spoke.
‘That was a marvellous speech, by the way. Thank you.’ Her appreciation was genuine. ‘It must have taken a lot of thought.’
‘It was from the heart.’ Jasper put his hands in his pockets. ‘I’ve missed you.’
‘I’ve been rather busy.’
‘Of course.’ He paused, cleared his throat. ‘You should have more time, now it’s all over. Shall we—’
She cut him off before he could make a suggestion. ‘I don’t think so.’
He turned to look at her, frowning. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean …’ Elizabeth sighed. If she skirted around the issue, he would only persist. It felt important to do it today. ‘It’s over, Jasper. I can’t do it anymore. There’s too much at stake, especially after today. I have to put the family first.’
She could smell his cologne. It brought back so many memories. She had to be resolute.
‘So that’s it? No explanation? No discussion?’
‘There’s not much more to say.’
‘Eight years, and you just—’
His voice was a little too loud. She put a restraining hand on his arm, smiling in case anyone was looking.
‘Jasper. This isn’t the time or the place.’
‘Well, exactly. Pretty brutal, don’t you think? Ditching me right here, in front of everyone?’
‘Please respect my decision.’ Elizabeth turned and accepted a plate with a piece of cake on it from a passing waiter. ‘Oh, how absolutely lovely. Thank you so much. Jasper, would you like some cake? Daisy made it.’
She was making it quite clear the conversation was over.
Jasper stared at the plate offered to him by the waiter. ‘No, thank you,’ he said crisply, and walked away.
Elizabeth watched him go, her lover of eight years, and lifted the cake to her mouth. She knew it would be perfect. Moist and not too sweet and just the right amount of brandy. She must remember to thank Daisy. She was such a treasure.
But the crumbs turned to sawdust in her mouth, and she couldn’t taste a thing.
‘I just don’t understand. He knows nothing about that factory. Nothing! He’s barely stepped foot inside it. You could write what he knows about it on a postage stamp.’
‘Diana, calm down.’ Rory usually made himself scarce when Diana had one of her rages but they were trapped inside their hotel room, and he wanted to try to quieten her. It would be awful if anyone could hear her.
She’d been impossible during the wedding breakfast, flirting – if that’s what you called it; he wasn’t sure, for he’d never seen her flirt before and it made him very uncomfortable – with both Jasper and Ben, getting them to light her cigarettes, batting her eyelashes and leaning all over them.
At one point she had even force-fed Ben his pudding.
‘Come on. Here comes the choo-choo,’ she’d said, and Ben had opened his mouth obediently, he and Jasper laughing their heads off.
Rory had felt an absolute chump, sitting there not sure what to do while Diana made a fool of both herself and him.
He couldn’t remonstrate with her, and tell her to pull herself together, for he knew that would cause a scene.
So he ignored them, and tried to make conversation with Clementine’s mother, who was very kind, just like her daughter, but they ran out of things to say to each other pretty quickly leaving Rory to stare at his plate.
And now she had worked herself up into a fury.
‘Calm down?’ she scoffed. ‘I’m not going to bloody calm down. I’m livid. I mean, where was Alfie when all the men went off to fight in the war?’
‘To be fair, he was at school,’ Rory pointed out.
Diana ignored him.
‘It was me on the factory floor, keeping everyone’s spirits up. But no one gives me any credit for keeping it all going, keeping up morale, churning out gallons and gallons of blackout paint.’
‘You’re working yourself up.’
Diana snatched up a paperweight from the little writing desk and hurled it at him. Rory, who was the captain of the Breverton cricket team, dodged out of the way and put out a giant paw to catch it. He’d had enough.
‘Diana. This is the Savoy, not the backroom of the Trout on a Friday night. Pull yourself together.’
She glared at him. ‘Everyone just ignores me and what I did. The war ends and I’m just supposed to slip away quietly and get married like a good girl.’
Rory’s face crumpled. ‘Well, I’m sorry if it’s been such an ordeal. I’ve only ever tried to do my best to make you happy.’
At these words, Diana seemed to see him for the first time.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I just find it so …’ She grasped for the word.
‘Boring. Not you. You’re not boring. But everyone waiting for me to get on with it, to have a baby, looking at me as if I’m a useless lump, when I could be doing something useful …
’ She made a sound which was something between a snuffle and a gulp.
‘And Alfie gets it all handed to him on a plate. And any minute now she’ll have a baby, and will make me look even more useless. ’
‘Diana, you are not useless. Come on. Why don’t you get into bed and sleep it off? I think you might have had too much to drink. It always makes you cross.’
‘But I’m not cross,’ she said in a very small voice. ‘I’m just sad.’
She sat down on the bed. She was utterly deflated, all the rage suddenly gone.
Rory wondered why he couldn’t make Diana happy.
He could never live up to the glamour and charisma of either of the Arbutus brothers, who Diana had grown up with.
But he hadn’t forced her to marry him. She’d seemed keen enough at the time, and Birch Farm wasn’t Foxwood but it was jolly comfortable and she had the whole of the stable yard and he would give her whatever she wanted, she knew that.
And he wasn’t sure where all this anger about the factory had come from.
If that’s what she wanted to do, surely she should just tell her father?
Five minutes later, Diana was passed out on the bed, fully dressed. She was lying diagonally, which made it impossible for Rory to get in. He contemplated her for several moments, wondering if he could shift her without waking her up.
He sighed. He wasn’t going to risk waking her.
He took two of the pillows, found a spare blanket in the wardrobe and curled up on the floor.
He’d done his National Service. He could put up with discomfort, and it wasn’t as if it was cold.
He shut his eyes, thinking what a lovely day it had been, and how content Clementine and Alfie seemed.
And he decided that the best thing would be to get Diana in a good mood, somehow, when she was sober, and talk to her, really talk to her.
Was she warm enough? he wondered as he started to drift.
He jumped up, took one of the spare blankets he was using and tucked it over her.
She gave a little snuffle accompanied by a snort.
He patted her gently and headed back to his makeshift bed on the floor, settling down under the remaining blanket to try to get some sleep.
Three rooms along, Michael poured himself and Elizabeth a Scotch.
He walked over to the dressing table where Elizabeth was sitting, wrapped in a pale green satin dressing gown.
She looked even more beautiful without make-up and her hair down.
Less as if she was hiding behind a mask.
And younger, somehow. She put up a hand to take the glass.
‘Thank you.’
He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘That was an unforgettable day.’
She smiled at him in the mirror. ‘It was.’
‘To be honest, I was rather dreading it. I was terrified about how I was going to feel. You know, with … Edwin not there.’
Her eyes widened in surprise. It was very rare that he spoke his son’s name out loud, or discussed his feelings.
‘But I felt very happy,’ he went on. ‘I mean, the sadness was there, of course. I think it always will be. But it sort of … made room for a bit of joy today. For the first time.’
Michael was tracing his fingertips along her collarbone with a featherlight touch that spread a familiar warmth deep inside her.
She shut her eyes, relishing the sensation.
Michael was right. The wedding had been a joy.
It had been magical. It had broken the spell she had been under.
She felt as if a huge burden had lifted.
After the cake cutting, after they’d spoken, Jasper had studiously avoided her, and had gone off into the night with Clementine’s half-brother, Ben.
She didn’t want to think about what they might get up to, or who they might end up with, two eligible bachelors with a sense of devilment and no one to answer to.
She imagined some darkly glamorous Mayfair club, girls with laughing eyes and low-cut dresses.
But that was just as it should be. Perhaps he would meet someone?
Once that thought would have twisted her up inside with jealousy, but now she rather longed that Jasper might find someone he could call his own.
Michael was drawing little circles along the length of her spine now, teasing, his touch so delicate she could hardly feel it, but when she did, it sent ripples through her. She tipped her head back.
‘Kiss me,’ she said, and when he did, she remembered he was a marvellous kisser, ironically much better than Jasper, starting off gently and building up to something more intense, while Jasper had kissed her with a fierceness that sometimes bordered on desperation, which led her to wonder what on earth she found so wretchedly compelling about him.
She stood up and pressed herself against him, and he pulled at the belt around her robe until it came loose.
‘You know ours is the only room with a balcony?’ she whispered to him. ‘We ought to make use of it.’
He looked at her in delighted surprise. She reached over to snap off the single lamp that was lighting the room, took his hand, shrugged off her robe and led him through the French door that had been left ajar.
They stayed in the shadows, but making love in the moonlight gave everything a delicious edge, with the whole of London laid out in the distance and the cool night air on their skin.
‘Got you,’ Michael breathed in her ear as she reached an intense climax, and he was smiling.
‘You absolutely have,’ she whispered.
They were back, she thought. Somehow the awful distance between them had gone, and they were together again. The two of them. Husband and wife. Michael and Elizabeth.