Chapter Thirty-Six
Fifteen years later
1958
She didn’t like driving too fast, she said – but he saw the way that when he took the corners really fast, she drew her breath in with a gasp and he knew it was excitement, not fear. Her little hands in their coral kid gloves clutched the cream interior of his new Austin as he took the lanes past Wareham at a lick, occasionally reaching over to touch her thigh, or turning to smile at her.
‘I want you to love it,’ he said. ‘As much as I do.’
He’d said it before, but he thought this time he might mean it.
Althea Moray was nineteen – ten years or so younger than him. He liked her youth. She had been a child in the war, barely remembering it beyond being cold all the time and National Banana Day in 1946, when every child in Britain was given a banana. Her first clear memories dated from the Festival of Britain, seven years ago. She’d come down to London for it, with her family. She mentioned it often, as though to back up her credentials as a woman of the world; he found it rather touching.
She was Scottish – she’d been in London for six months, studying at Central School of Speech and Drama, and she lived in a hostel with several other girls in Marylebone. She’d never been to Dorset. And she’d never heard of Anthony Wilde, wasn’t impressed by him, hadn’t heard about Hamlet.
‘It was eight years ago, rather well-received, you see, sort of right-place right-time jobby,’ he’d explained to her over dinner, with the blend of self-deprecation and awkwardness that he knew he could pull off without being nauseating and which oh-so-modestly drew a veil over the rhapsodic attention he had received.
‘Why would I have heard anything about it, squirrelled away in Dumfriesshire?’ she’d said, laughing at him. ‘Who came to see you, then? Marilyn Monroe? Mario Lanza?’
He couldn’t tell her she should have heard of it, that a critic had written an entire book about his performance and the production, which was stripped back and all the actors dressed in black, the only item on stage a vast rusting, half-gilded and lopsided metal carapace to represent Elsinore: part prison, part birdcage. Mario Lanza had come, and Olivier with Danny Kaye and Vivien Leigh and she’d written him an utterly sweet note afterwards. That they’d had to draft policemen in on the last night to control the crowds. It had made the front page of the Evening News. One policeman had told Tony the crowds hadn’t been this hysterical since Ivor Novello’s funeral.
‘Because it was a huge – oh, never mind, I sound ghastly, explaining it like that,’ he’d said, giving up, and taking her hand to kiss it. ‘Princess Margaret came one night. There. You’re a child.’
‘I was a child when you were Hamlet, yes.’ Her eyes twinkled. ‘Tell me, was she very beautiful?’
She was self-absorbed, but could laugh at herself, and he liked that, because he recognised a little of himself in her.
Bertie Hoare, that awful mischief-maker, had introduced them one night at the Phoenix club. ‘Tony darling,’ he’d said, in his drawling voice, stopping in front of his table. ‘Here’s a new prize for you. Meet Althea Moray. She’s desperate to know you.’
Tony of course had fallen for it, had stood up, hand outstretched, polite but showing just a little of the boredom he aped in front of his friends now to demonstrate that it was awfully tedious, being hounded like this . . . he had held her hand and then looked into the face of this ravishing Titian-haired girl and murmured, ‘Awfully nice to meet you, Althea,’ and then been astonished when she had replied, in a soft, Scottish burr, ‘Bertie, forgive me, but I’ve already told you I don’t know who this gentleman is at all.’
Tony had sat back, to general shouts of mirth from his friends, and gleeful pats on the back. He’d stared up at Bertie, furious, realising this was a stunt to take him down a peg or two, and then once again gazed at this girl, at her green eyes, her white skin set off by the black polo neck and the heavy eyeliner.
‘Anthony Wilde. He’s a dangerous man, darling,’ his friend Guy had said to this impassive young beauty.
‘Oh.’ But still his name appeared to mean nothing to her, and as she shook hands with Guy and Dougie Betteridge, he’d said to Bertie, ‘Can I buy you both a drink? Please, join us.’
Before Bertie could answer she’d said, ‘Champagne, please,’ and settled herself into the booth, folding the voluminous netting of her skirts against her legs, like the petals of a flower.
‘I say,’ Bertie had said, not sitting down. ‘Weren’t we going to catch that show?’
‘Some bored girls wiggling in wee frilly knickers and taking ten minutes to remove a glove really isn’t my idea of a grand way to end the night, Bertie,’ she’d said, shaking her head ruefully. ‘I’d rather stop here with these gentlemen, especially since one of them is apparently famous.’ She smiled at him. ‘You’re not cross, are you?’
Bertie had rolled his eyes and Tony watched his friends opposite him at the booth as Guy and Dougie had stared at her, open-mouthed, at the fresh-faced charm of her words, and at her staggering beauty, which simply kept rolling over you again and again in waves, the more you looked at her. But it was her manner, her smile, her sense of humour, the twinkle in her eye, that was so immediately attractive to him. He wanted to laugh, and he didn’t know why.
‘I have to go, need to see a man about a dog there,’ said Bertie, huffily. ‘But this means your card is marked. You owe me dinner, darling. Ditching me for these three reprobates.’
For the first time her eyes widened and she looked uncertain. ‘Yes—’ And Tony could see her wondering whether she ought to stay here alone with three men about whom she had claimed with pride to know nothing. Bertie, the bounder, didn’t help but, spotting someone he knew, called their name and simply melted into the throng. He saw her fingers clutch at her black-and-gold silk evening bag.
‘Miss Moray, I’m Tony Wilde, and I’m a gentleman, not a scoundrel, I promise you. And these fellows are my friends, Guy de Quetteville and Douglas Betteridge.’ They shook hands with her, formally. She nodded, lips pressed together, as though she were trying not to laugh. ‘If you agree I’d like to escort you home. We’ll take the night bus too, with other people, so you can see I don’t want to try to murder you.’
‘You aren’t putting your life in danger, are you? What if we’re accosted by hysterical fans wanting a piece of your jacket?’
He frowned, then saw her irrepressible smile, and grinned, unable to stop himself. ‘We’ll risk it.’
Outside her hostel in Dorset Square, he’d taken her key and unlocked her door, then removed his hat, and said, without thinking, ‘I say, would you like to come to the seaside with me some time? I’ve a place there. It’s awfully jolly.’
She’d paused, her gloved hand on the door knob, calmly looking him over. And then she said, ‘I’m working on Saturday. I could go next Sunday. Yes, I’d like to.’
‘Sunday it is, then,’ he’d said.
When he told Guy, with whom he shared a dilapidated flat in Onslow Square, South Kensington, Guy had said, ‘You’re crazy. Taking a girl you’ve never met before tonight down to the Bosky? I thought that was for sure things only?’
‘Oh, come on, Guy,’ Simon Chalmers, his other flatmate, who had turned up later in the night at the club and met Althea, chimed in. ‘She’s worth it, old boy. And she’s a terrific actress.’
‘She’s an actress?’
‘Well, she’s at Central. But she’s doing the Open Air Theatre this summer. Viola. She’s got special dispensation.’
‘And she’d never heard of you?’ said Guy, in mock tones of outrage, and then he’d laughed.
‘Leave him alone,’ said Simon, taking a cigarette from Tony’s packet, and Tony smiled at him with gratitude, and not a little surprise, Simon being well known for stealing a girl from under one’s nose if he could. Privately, they had christened him the Waltzing Snake after he had literally waltzed off with Guy’s first great love, a willowy blonde deb called Candida.
‘Thanks, Simon old man,’ said Tony.
Simon said, with a straight face, ‘Well, you know how difficult it is for Tony. He can’t rest until he’s personally deflowered every virgin in London. Poor old chap. I say, bring her to the flat some time, let me have another look at her, will you?’
‘Do shut up, Simon,’ said Tony, staring out of the window on to the garden square, where the first blossom of spring was emerging. ‘Not this one.’
And now they were almost there and as ever, his heart sang with joy at the swallows darting out from the hedgerows across the fields, the vast barrow rising behind them, the curving lanes thick with flowers, and eventually they turned down the small track and Tony switched the engine off.
‘Here it is. The Bosky,’ he said.
Her hands were clenched in her lap. She smiled at him, thinly, and he realised she was nervous.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I won’t bite. Let’s go inside, get a drink.’
He would have her, of course, but not yet, not until she was quite relaxed and sure it was what she wanted, perhaps even that it was her idea. Of course not.
It was all part of the game and he had to keep playing. He was always busy, either working, or out with his friends, or down here having fun. He worked especially hard to avoid thinking about Daphne. Once, he thought he saw her in Coptic Street, by the British Museum, and simply turned and walked the other way. He dreamed of her, and that night, terrible, churning, sickening dreams. But he told himself he’d locked it away. That it was old news now, just as Dinah was. He barely thought about Dinah.
He hadn’t been here alone with a girl since the Easter weekend – a plump, funny little receptionist at his agent’s office named Ann who was from Dover and whose father was, somewhat improbably, a clown: she was a limerick waiting to be made up, he told her. She was fun; he’d taken her into Swanage to see the amusements. As they bowled through Staines on the way back into town, he’d done his bit about ‘entanglements’, where he explained about his dead parents and usually made them cry and agree they mustn’t bother him ever again. Ann had taken out a powder compact and started making herself up.
When he’d finished she’d said, ‘Tony, I’ve got a fella already. He’s doing National Service. He’s out next month. It wouldn’t do for me to see you again anyway.’
‘Oh – well, I didn’t know that.’
‘Yes. We’ll get married when he’s set himself up. He’s very into shoes. Wants to open a shop. So you don’t need to give me your sob story, honest.’
‘I just wanted you to understand that I—’
‘I know your sort, Tony. We’re the same, you and me. It was fun, wasn’t it? Thanks ever so. Don’t you worry, I won’t blab, but I can’t do it again, much as I’d like.’
It was the clear, breezy assumption that they were the same – both in it for sex, fun, uncomplicated companionship – that stung. It was the truth, that’s what he loathed. In that instant he wanted to hurt her, or say something cutting, for he hated her for understanding what it was. Who he was. He had dropped her at Richmond, almost frostily. When the May Bank Holiday came around, he took a group from the play down, and achieved a successful result with both the Winslow Boy himself (in reality a young-looking actor of twenty playing a thirteen-year-old boy) and the actress playing his sister. He didn’t care that they were both annoyed and upset at the discovery of the other’s presence in his bed during the weekend. He gave them both the orphan speech and was richly rewarded both times. The less he seemed to care, the greater those rewards. It was a weekend of pure debauchery, the high-water mark for the Bosky, and at one point he came across Simon having his way with the Winslow Boy’s mother on the porch – which Tony thought a little unnecessary, but didn’t comment on. He never liked to seem a prude in front of Simon.
No trace of any of this existed in the Bosky – he had Mrs Proudfoot’s newly married daughter, Eliza, coming in to keep the place shipshape while he was away and getting everything ready, and though the new Mrs Gage was a deeply conservative soul she never seemed to question any of his demands, nor the endless stream of bright young people who thronged the Bosky at Bank Holidays, leaving bottles of champagne stuck on to branches of the rose bush, or sheets filthy with scrambled eggs, gramophone records out of their cases and piled high for her to put away.
You’d never have known that on his previous visit someone had been sick on the porch seat, or that ten people had crammed into the wooden house that previous Bank Holiday . . . Tony passed a hand across his forehead. He was glad Althea hadn’t met Simon yet.
The honeysuckle was beginning to open, and scented lavender and rosemary sprang from the cracks by the house. Inside, a small vase of tiny sun-yellow roses, from the rose bush that had begun to climb up the side of the house after years of inactivity, had been placed on the wooden table. A cold chicken salad stood on the dresser, the table was set for lunch, the cushion on the window seat where someone had accidentally dropped a glass of red wine miraculously clean once more. Althea walked about the place, taking it all in. She didn’t exclaim breathlessly, nor flutter round him while he was opening the shutters and windows, she just stared. At herself in the mirror, out of the window, in drawers – not nosily, but calmly, with intense interest in everything but still revealing nothing of what she was thinking. He liked that about her. Oh, he liked her so very much and he hadn’t realised before that one ought to like someone, as well as wanting them. Not since . . . a long time ago.
He made them both gimlets – not too strong, it wasn’t done to get a girl tight. They sat on the porch together, for the first time, the only sound the wind and the chink of her swizzle stick against the crystal.
‘So it’s your place, then?’ she asked, after a moment or two.
‘All mine.’
‘No family?’
‘My parents are dead.’
‘Yes. Bertie told me.’ So Bertie had been filling her in. ‘I’m sorry. I meant any other family.’
‘Nope.’
Her stick clanked against the glass, mechanically. ‘Really no one at all?’
‘Dammit!’ He said, much louder than he’d meant. ‘No. I said no one.’ There was an awkward silence. ‘I’m so sorry. Would you like a refill?’
‘Not just yet.’ She stood up and looked over the balustrade. ‘When I was little, my sister and I used to catch trout off the jetty at the end of our garden, even though our father absolutely forbade it.’
‘Your garden?’
She turned round to face him, leaning against the railings, her hair blowing about her face. ‘The house I grew up in Kirkcudbright. It had a long garden that led down to the River Dee. My father’s an artist. He had a studio at the bottom of the garden, and he sang all day long while he was painting.’
He nodded, liking the feel of the prickling breeze on his neck, and the chink of metal on the wet glass.
‘There’s a castle just along the way, and a wee harbour. It’s a beautiful place. The sky’s bigger than here. I don’t know why. Anyway, one day my sister had a catch but she lost her footing and fell into the river, and I had to dive in to rescue her, and she’s bigger than me and I was only about nine. It was quite a job. But when we got back, absolutely drenched and stinking, Father dashed out of his studio and asked us why we were dripping wet and Isla said, ‘It’s best we don’t remember why.’ Father thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. He gave her a toffee.
‘The point is, sometimes one has to forget.’ She held on to the railings, and leaned towards him. ‘Just forget it ever happened.’
‘Mrs Gallagher, our neighbour in London,’ said Tony thoughtfully. ‘She lost her son in the Great War. She never mentioned him ever again. Her daughter told me. It was as though he’d never existed.’
‘I think it’s for the best, that course of action,’ said Althea, frankly, and she held out her glass. ‘I’ve changed my mind about the refill, if you’re offering.’
He stood up and took the glasses inside, thoughtfully, and mixed more cocktails. The idea that one might simply never think of it again, of Mummy and how much he still missed her, of Dad and how he’d died, of Dinah and whether she was alive, safe, happy (but he knew she couldn’t be happy, because she wasn’t here) – of Daphne’s face as she left the house the morning afterwards. When he went back into his bedroom she had left her underthings behind, and he knew it was deliberate, so that he would have to get rid of them, so that he would think about her with no underwear on for the rest of the day.
He never went back into that room again. Not once. Over fifteen years later, a grown man by then, in the darkness of the kitchen-diner, it seemed to Tony that it was the solution he had been searching for ever since that morning in wartime when he’d realised he was totally alone, for better, for worse.
It became the metaphor in his head, the shut door of that bedroom where he and Daphne had sex, the same night he lost Julia. What if you simply pushed this all out of your mind, like shutting the door on that room? What if you pretended it had never happened, instead of enduring these periodic bouts of misery that led one to drink and treat people so badly, that meant one sometimes dried on stage, or couldn’t concentrate because of the shakes. What if one simply . . . tamped it down, like tobacco into a pipe, set fire to it, let it burn away?
He poured the gimlet mixture into Althea’s and his glasses, reflecting that this was another thing it was best not to think about.
‘It’s best we don’t remember why.’ He gave a small smile, and went back out on to the porch with the drinks. Althea was talking to someone, and he paused in the doorway, watching her, how gracefully she turned round on the balustrade, how she left one white hand holding on to the railing, as though she belonged to this place, as though it was hers. He peered forwards to see who it was. Reverend Goudge, who had taken him in and made sure he got to Central, had died a couple of years ago, his kind wife had moved away, and there weren’t many others in the village now that he knew. The war had scattered people – some simply hadn’t come back. A hotel had been built further along the beach. People were starting to come here on holiday, not to live here all year round. Tony stared, and realised he recognised the stranger.
Althea was talking to Ian Fletcher. He looked much older; the shock of unruly black hair that stuck up on his head was greying and his curling, untidy eyebrows were flecked with white. His face already showed signs of dissipation, a redness that he hadn’t had as a boy. Tony was used to him hanging around whenever he had visitors, literally an uninvited guest, but he never spoke to him. He’d walk past ostensibly on his way down to the beach and raise his eyebrows, as though wanting to come in, but he never did. He never said hello, just stared at Tony. It must have been well over a decade since Tony had actually looked at him properly, much less spoken to him.
‘Where in Scotland?’ Althea was asking him, politely.
‘Stirling, but we moved down to Bristol when I was eight, after my mother died, and we bought our place just along the way from here.’
‘So you boys must have played together then,’ said Althea, catching sight of Tony, as he advanced towards them with the drinks.
‘Me and Tony, yes, and my sister, Julia, though of course it was the war, and we were all away at school, and various other happenings,’ said Ian, and he didn’t look at Tony. ‘I had a letter from Julia, only yesterday.’
Tony handed Althea her drink and she took it, and lightly touched his hand, and her calm certainty and self-assurance was like a raft in a churning sea, something to cling to, as black spots fizzed around the edges of his vision.
‘Oh? How is she?’
Ian rocked on his feet. Tony wished he’d just scarper, clear off. But he seemed to be gearing up to say something.
‘She’s well enough,’ he said.
‘That’s good. Where’s she living these days?’ said Tony.
Ian looked directly at him. ‘She lives in Melbourne now, she’s married, she’s got a dog called Buster, after Mottram.’
‘Ah,’ said Tony politely, his heart hammering. Something was in his throat, closing it up, a ball of something.
‘Her husband’s English, tennis mad. They have it as their little joke against the Aussies, you know. And she’s working for an animal wildlife place. She likes bats,’ said Ian, to Althea, who was looking a little bored. ‘She’s running a campaign to get them protected. Bats, of all things.’
‘She always did,’ said Tony. ‘Used to look out for them in the evenings when we were walking back from rehearsals and so on . . .’ He trailed off.
‘It’s not been easy for her,’ said Ian, suddenly. ‘You knew her, didn’t you, Tony? They were friends in the war, he and Julia.’
‘Oh,’ said Althea slowly. ‘I see.’
‘She wasn’t a bad girl, was she?’ Ian said innocently. ‘She wasn’t . . . you know, one of those girls. Just misguided and it was a jolly hard time, jolly hard . . .’ He shrugged.
‘I never heard back from her,’ Tony managed to say. ‘I did write to her, here, but she never answered. I don’t know if she got the letters—’
‘Father sent her to school in Scotland, and then of course she stayed there till the war was over. She wasn’t well for a while after that summer, the air in Scotland did her good. And then, then . . .’ His face clouded. ‘She was first to leave for Australia after the war, you know, they were looking for teachers. She went as soon as she could and she’s never been back. I don’t know if she ever will . . .’
Althea had wandered to the other end of the porch, looking out over to Bill’s Point and the calm, grey sea.
Tony said quietly to Ian, ‘I’m sorry to hear she wasn’t well. I trust she recovered.’
Ian faced Tony, and his shoulders hunched, and he smiled, slowly; it was an extraordinary expression, a ghastly rictus.
‘She had an abortion,’ he said. ‘She nearly died. A nice place it was supposed to be, a wee house in Shepherd’s Market in London. Father took her. But they did it badly, I suppose – she was very ill, an infection. She nearly died, yes, and Father wouldn’t have her in the house afterwards. She stayed at school. They taught her alone, didn’t want her with the other girls, so she failed her School Cert. I saw her once before she left . . .’ He had lowered his voice, so Althea wouldn’t hear, or to draw Tony closer, Tony didn’t know. ‘My father died, soon afterwards. She never saw him again.’
‘She never answered my letters . . .’ Tony felt his heart pounding, hands sweating.
‘Funny, she wrote to you at school, and at the Bosky, but she wasn’t ever sure the address of the school was right because you never replied . . .’ He shrugged, and Ant knew Ian had had a part in it, whatever had happened. Maybe he’d given her the wrong address, or torn up the letters . . . ‘She was rather upset, especially when she was so ill . . . I suppose you were off and out to drama school afterwards. We’ve heard all about you down here.’
‘I went a year early . . . they let me in because . . .’ Tony rubbed his eyes. ‘I should have let her know where I was . . . I didn’t know why she wouldn’t reply and of course she wasn’t here any more . . .’
Ian’s frightful sing-song voice carried on. ‘It’s all in the past, isn’t it? She’s awfully glad to be out of Britain. Says it’s a dead country and perhaps she’s right. She got as far away as she could.’
It’s all in the past, isn’t it?
Tony nodded, using every ounce of self-possession and acting ability to keep control of his emotions. Althea wandered back over, looking from one to the other.
A car sounded its horn in the distance, and Ian looked up. ‘I must go. That’s my wife.’ He shook hands with Althea. ‘We’ll have you round, if you come back here,’ he said, almost jovial now. ‘My wife loves to entertain. She’d be pleased to meet you.’ He nodded at Tony, and he saw the twisted pain on his face. ‘G’bye, then, Anthony,’ he said.
‘What a curious man,’ Althea said, after he’d gone.
Tony shook his head. He pushed it all down, as far down as it could go, took a great gulp of his drink. ‘I never knew him that well.’
‘But you knew his sister,’ she said, wryly. ‘That much was clear.’
I abandoned you, Julia. You never wrote back and I never wrote again and I was too busy surviving to carry on. I abandoned you.
‘I hope she’s happy,’ he said.
She looked at him intently for a moment. ‘I hope so too.’
Push it down, push it all down . . . Tony briefly closed his eyes, and then he opened them, focusing on the seam of Althea’s stockings, the auburn curls on the nape of her neck where her hair was swept up into a chignon. ‘Come inside,’ he said, with difficulty. ‘Forget about him. I want to show you the rest of the house.’
She smiled over her shoulder at him and he drank in the sight of her. Her knowing smile, her great beauty, her seriousness, her gentle Scottish accent. She was new, and strange, and didn’t know him yet, and he could be himself, or a version of himself that he liked, and didn’t have to edit. She might even take it all away for a while.
‘I’m jolly lucky you trusted me to come down here,’ he said, trying to affect a jovial tone, but inside he felt sick, shaking, as they went downstairs towards the bedrooms. He had seduced scores of women, many of them here, this being his preferred line, but this was the first time he’d felt sick. He clutched on to the railing.
Althea was ahead of him – she said, in her carefree, calm way, ‘I like you. I liked you the moment I saw you. That’s all.’
She shrugged, as though it was as simple as that, and as she turned to him Tony stumbled on the last step, holding on to the bannister.
‘Goodness,’ she said, as he righted himself. ‘You look awfully green. Are you ill? Here.’ She took his arm. ‘Let’s – oh, gosh, the lights are off. Where’s the switch?’
He could hardly hear her. It was safer to just stay holding on to the bannister, gently swaying, letting darkness and waves of nausea wash over him. ‘Here,’ she said, taking his arm. ‘Perhaps you ate something. Come in. Come and lie down.’
‘No.’ He pulled away from her, tears starting in his eyes. ‘No!’
‘Here,’ she said, firmly, and she almost tried to push him into the room. ‘You really need to sit down, or lie down, Tony—’
‘No.’ Tony actually shoved her, so that she rocked back against the corridor wall. ‘I won’t go in there. Don’t. I won’t go into that room. Please.’ He cleared his throat – this was terrible, all of it, and he’d absolutely ruined everything now, if he could only stop the black wavy lines that ran up and down his vision, and the feeling that he was going to pass out . . . ‘Sorry,’ he said, reaching out and clutching Althea’s hand. ‘I’m so sorry . . .’
And everything went mercifully black.
When he woke up, he was lying on the bed in his old room. The nodes of the pink candlewick bedspread rubbed his neck; it was comforting, like fingers. He sat up, shaking his head, and a wave of dizziness overtook him again.
Althea was at the end of the bed, playing with something. She looked over at him, and swallowed.
‘Sorry. I found some marrons glacés in the cupboard upstairs. Delicious. I’m afraid I attacked them. Here. Have one. Do you good.’ She pressed the moist, caramel-coloured sweetmeat between his lips. ‘And here’s some water.’
‘Thanks.’ He raised his head and drank, then lay back, watching her.
‘What’s that you’ve got there?’
She passed it over towards him. ‘An old game.’
‘Oh.’ Heart thudding, he sat up. ‘Where’d you find it?’
‘Under the bed. I’m sorry if I shouldn’t have meddled. It’s beautiful. The tiles, and these metal flowers. What is it?’
Carefully, Tony put the tiles and the flowers back into the mahogany case and shut it, smoothing his hand over the mother-of-pearl dragon. ‘It’s a mah-jong set. It belonged to my great-aunt. We used to play it while the bombing raids were on.’
He put it under the bed again and smiled up at her. There was no point in being embarrassed, or acting his usual part. He’d shoved her, he’d cried, and he’d passed out. ‘I’m really sorry about all this. I – I don’t like this room.’
‘I guessed as much.’ She ate another chestnut. ‘My father used to get the sweats whenever he got the train back to Glasgow. Right at the train station. Nowhere else. But his father once beat him there, in front of everyone. He’d forgotten all about it till his brother reminded him. Isn’t it strange, what the mind can do?’
Tony nodded. It was late afternoon; very still. The smell of mothballs and mildew, of old books and comforting wood, wrapped around him. He felt peaceful.
‘So what happened in here, or don’t you want to tell me?’
He screwed up his mouth, and said nothing. Eventually, he shook his head. ‘I was a boy . . . I . . . Sorry.’
‘That’s no problem, and it’s none of my business.’ She stood up, brushing down her long blue skirt, and a beam of light caught in her auburn hair. ‘You can be two things, Tony. You can be the boy in the bedroom, for the rest of your life, or you can leave him in there, and come out. Jolly depressing to be the former, though.’
‘Yes.’ He stared at her. ‘Yes, it is.’
She ate another marron glacé, and then shut the box firmly. He watched her, and felt calm for the first time since they’d arrived.
Somehow, haltingly, he managed to tell her what had happened in that room, about Daphne, about Julia, and of course about Dinah. Later, when it was dark, he brought her back down there, and in the darkness he removed her clothing, her suspenders, her bodice, the silk shirt and the full skirt. She was large-breasted, large-thighed, tall like a goddess – she was magnificent, all of her. He took her there, frenzied, vengeful, and then again, more tenderly. She was impassive at first, as though she understood, and then fiery, passionate, catching his wrists above his head and biting his lip with her sharp white teeth, climbing on top of him so that he could hold her milky-white thighs, see her hair fall about her face, watch her ride him, take her pleasure – it was the first time, since Julia, that he had been with a woman who could with such unalloyed enjoyment, who wanted it as much as he did.
They stayed that night in Ant’s old room, and then, the next morning, crept into the master bedroom. And for many years neither of them went back into that room unless they had to. For a long while, it stopped mattering. For a long while, they both thought they’d beaten the ghosts back.