Moonshine

We had gathered quite a crowd of spectators now, who applauded almost every point and maintained a polite silence whenever I bungled a return. Roddy contrived to hang on to his serve by spinning about the court as though under attack from bees, intercepting any ball that was directed towards me. I was vastly encouraged when I managed to return one of Mr Lightowler’s rather feeble serves, sending it down the line between our opponents. There was a storm of applause quite out of proportion to the skill of the shot. I felt bucked to discover that I had the sympathy of the crowd.

That, as it turned out, was my only moment of glory, but I did manage after that to whack the ball back over the net a few times only to see it driven practically through the tarmac by Mrs Mountfichet or directed cleverly just out of my reach by Mr Lightowler. They won the first set 6–2, owing to me losing both my service games.

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ I said to Roddy as we changed ends. ‘I hadn’t realized you were all so good or I’d never have agreed to play.’

‘It’s too late to think of that now,’ said Roddy, rather ungraciously I thought. ‘It’ll be better if you stay back. Try to get the baseline shots and I’ll cover the rest of the court.’

We got on better with this method and actually got to thirty all during my service game. Mr Lightowler sent up a high lob. Skipping energetically backwards to be sure of getting it, I slipped on the loose gravel and fell hard, grazing my elbow. The ball bounced two inches inside the baseline and, to add injury to insult, struck me on the chest. There was a murmur of concern from the spectators and a burst of laughter from several of the children so I could be certain I had looked a complete fool. Roddy bared his teeth at me.

I was tempted to throw down my racquet and walk off in a huff but a glance at Dickie’s anxious face restored me to my senses.

‘I’m absolutely fine,’ I said in answer to his enquiry. ‘Not a bit hurt.’

‘Thirty, forty,’ he murmured kindly.

My elbow was now throbbing every bit as painfully as my finger. I had a moment of mild success when I returned one of Peggy’s ballistic backhand passes, though the impact jarred my arm from my wrist to my shoulder. I was running forward with a renewal of confidence to tackle what looked to be a fairly easy drop volley when Roddy yelled, ‘Mine!’ but just too late. My outflung racquet collided with his prow of a nose. He gave a howl of pain as the ball flew unhindered into the tramlines.

‘Game.’

‘I’m awfully sorry,’ I said.

There was another flourishing of handkerchiefs. Poor Roddy’s nose splashed his snow-white shirt with scarlet and the concerted mopping seemed to make it worse. A key was requested from the crowd and put down Roddy’s shirt but did no good.

‘Pinch his nostrils,’ suggested Dickie.

‘Ow-how!’ protested Roddy as Mrs Mountfichet almost twisted his nose off his face.

After ten minutes of copious bloodshed it was agreed that he should go and lie down with an ice-pack.

‘I’m so terribly sorry …’ I began but Roddy was stalking away holding a towel to his face and affected not to hear me.

‘That’s put a spanner in the works,’ said Mrs Mountfichet.

I hung my head.

‘Damn shame,’ said Mr Lightowler. ‘I was just warming up.’

Dickie turned to address the audience. ‘Perhaps someone would be good enough to stand in for Mr Bender. Just for a few games until the bleeding stops.’

‘Good idea!’ seconded Mrs Mountfichet. ‘Come on, somebody,’ she urged the watching crowd. ‘Be a sport! It’s only a bit of fun.’

The spectators blenched and shook their heads.

‘I will,’ said a voice from the crowd.

I experienced a frisson of horror as Burgo stepped on to the court. He was wearing white duck trousers, a red shirt that had faded to pink and his ancient espadrilles. On his face was an expression of great good humour. He had told me that he had meetings all day. Had I not been absolutely sure that he would be in London I would never have agreed to come to Ladyfield. I wondered how much he had witnessed of the exhibition I had made of myself. He must have seen me flat on my back in the dust.

‘A round of applause, ladies and gentlemen, for our Member of Parliament, Mr Burgo Latimer,’ said Dickie.

The crowd clapped and whistled, delighted that their entertainment was not to be cut short. I debated whether to faint or run away. Burgo was going to leap athletically round the court like a knight errant, demolishing the opposition, saving the day and completing my humiliation. Little did he know, I thought with savage satisfaction, that there was nothing I disliked so much as a show-off.

‘Hello,’ he said pleasantly as he strolled over to me, twirling Roddy’s discarded racquet with a careless assurance. ‘You seemed to be having such a good time that I couldn’t resist the call to arms.’

‘I suppose you’re going to make mincemeat of all of us.’

‘Hardly that. I haven’t played for at least ten years. I can barely remember the rules. But it seems a pity for the match to fizzle out.’

I smiled coolly. At least it was an opportunity to impress the voters so his time would not be entirely wasted.

‘Play!’ called Dickie.

Mr Lightowler flipped a gentle serve over the net. Burgo hit it so far into the air that we all peered for what seemed like minutes into the sky until our eyes watered.

‘I think it’s gone into orbit,’ giggled Mrs Mountfichet.

‘Ouch!’ Dickie rubbed his skull. ‘Fifteen, love.’

Mr Lightowler served again. I slammed it back. It came flying over the net and Burgo took a swipe at it, missed, pirouetted on the spot, ran backwards, picked it up on the rim of his racquet and hurled it over the wire netting where it fell into the cheering crowd.

‘Thirty, love.’

‘Sorry,’ Burgo said easily. ‘I did warn you.’

After that I managed to place a few unremarkable shots and Burgo got in a spectacularly good return by what was clearly a fluke. He had a way of running up to the ball, seeming to hesitate and then either rescuing the point with extraordinary brilliance or losing it with such spectacular ineptitude that I became suspicious. Whether he hit it in or out the spectators began to enjoy themselves so much that they reached a state in which they found everything funny. The prevailing good humour was irresistible. Soon I was giggling helplessly. Mrs Mountfichet and Mr Lightowler made stern attempts to control themselves but that only made us laugh more. In the end they stopped playing seriously themselves, to the detraction of their game.

The match ran swiftly on to a final score of 6–2, 6–1, 6–3. The crowd revelled in it. That a Member of Parliament, an important man in the county, whose name was frequently in the newspapers, was prepared to make a cake of himself to save their tennis party was a marvellous thing and they loved him for it. When he came off the court they would willingly have carried him shoulder-high through the streets, had it been at all convenient.

The players and spectators converged on the tea table with enthusiasm to devour sandwiches, sausage rolls, cream horns, brandy snaps, meringues, plum cake, gingerbread and eclairs. I found I was extremely thirsty. The tea, stewing in a giant aluminium pot, was brown and bitter. I was no longer required as a player so I had a glass of wine-cup. Though it was the colour of marsh water with a flotsam of rapidly bruising fruit, it was refreshing, so I had a second. I felt suddenly light-headed and a little dizzy and resolved that it should be my last. Roddy Bender, his nose swollen and purple like an exotic fruit, loomed into view. By mutual consent we pretended not to have seen each other.

‘I’ve saved you one of my specials.’ Mrs Mountfichet handed me a plate on which two meringue halves were held together by cream and raspberries. ‘You were a thoroughly good sport, dear. You mustn’t worry about Roddy. Do him good to have his nose put out of joint.’ She laughed heartily at her own joke. ‘He’s so competitive. Mr Latimer was a breath of fresh air.’

I looked across the lawn to where Burgo stood, surrounded by adoring women who were insisting he try their own particular contribution to the banquet. I saw he was charming them like birds to his hand. He looked both handsome and intelligent, a rare combination. His pale hair, slightly disordered after the game, and dégagé appearance contributed to a panache that made him extremely attractive. He seemed to have a sort of glow about him that had nothing to do with sunburn. It was the magnetism of complete self-assurance. I tore my thoughts away with difficulty and fastened them on what Mrs Mountfichet was telling me about her Clematis viticella ‘Purpurea plena elegans’.

‘Pruning group three, dear. Savage it in February. It’s the only way to stop it flowering in a horrid tangle at the top.’

‘I’ll be certain to do that.’

‘I doubt it, dear. You haven’t heard a word I’ve been saying, have you?’ She leaned closer and said, almost in my ear, ‘He’s very good-looking. If I were twenty years younger I think I’d be ready to throw my cap over the windmill. And Mr Mountfichet after it. But no doubt I’d be sorry later. A man with two women eager to tend to his needs is rather too comfortably circumstanced for his own good. Certainly for anyone else’s.’

‘Have some wine-cup, Mrs Mountfichet?’ Burgo was beside us, holding a jug. ‘Not exactly the milk of paradise but it has quite a kick.’ He filled my glass despite my murmurs of protest.

Mrs Mountfichet shook her curls. ‘Not for me, thanks. I’ve got to play again, thanks to you. You can crown the occasion by drawing the raffle if you’d be so kind. I’ll just go and check that they’ve sold all the tickets.’ She marched off.

‘You’ve made a hit,’ I said. ‘I don’t suppose that was all put on, was it? Being hopeless at tennis, I mean.’

Burgo looked injured. ‘What do you mean, hopeless? I thought I played rather better than usual.’

‘Remember, a liar needs a good memory.’

‘You’ve got cream on your chin.’

I had to have recourse to the back of my hand, my handkerchief having been saturated with Roddy’s blood.

‘It’s all over your cheek now,’ said Burgo. ‘Here, let me.’

He took a spotted bandanna from his pocket and dabbed at my chin with it. Something extraordinary happened to my knees. A second that seemed like an age passed before I looked down at my glass and drank its contents in three swallows.

Mrs Mountfichet was back. ‘Come with me, Mr Latimer, and we’ll do the draw now. Perhaps a little speech?’

While Burgo was encircled by the crowd I wandered about its perimeter and had another glass of wine-cup. How they lapped up his words and laughed at his jokes! I tried to listen to what he was saying but my mind fragmented, soared and swooped uncontrollably. The sun had ceased to scorch but gusts of heat rose from the parched turf and Dickie’s beloved roses hung their heads, longing for the cool of evening.

‘Hello, Bobbie.’ It was Dickie. ‘You look very happy.’

‘Do I? So do you.’ I wondered why I was laughing. ‘What did you put in the wine-cup? I’m pretty sure if I flapped my arms hard enough I could fly.’

‘I put in an extra bottle of cognac while you were coming off the courts. It’s a relief that it’s all gone so well. I feel I owe it to the old place to try to make these things a success. Don’t know why I should care but I do.’

‘Let me give you a hand with those.’

Dickie handed me the bag of old balls. ‘Thanks. We always change them before the final match though there’s nothing wrong with them. They’re not heavy but a bit awkward with this damned leg. I thought I’d put them behind the screen in the China House for the time being. Really, I want an excuse to look at the ferns. I’ve been too busy getting the garden ready for the tennis to check they’ve been properly watered.’

We turned off along the path that led to the Chinese garden. Regal lilies with white, waxy throats and garnet streaks on the backs of their petals leaned over the rosemary hedge. Their powerful exhalations were like a drug, setting one’s mind free to dream. Tortoiseshell butterflies fluttered like twists of coloured paper among the frothy stands of Verbena bonariensis.

The ferns were taking root and beginning to put out new fronds. The interior of the China House seemed velvety dark to our dilating pupils. I leaned against a bedpost while Dickie stowed the balls out of sight.

‘The silk for the bed came this morning,’ said Dickie. ‘I’ll pop back to the house and fetch it, shall I, so we can get an idea of how it’s going to look?’

‘Lovely,’ I said, marvelling at the myriad emerald flecks that buzzed round the room everywhere I rested my eyes. When I closed them they were still there, swirling like clouds of gnats.

‘I may be five minutes or so. I want to check that everyone’s got what they need.’

‘No hurry.’

After Dickie had gone I sat on the Chinese bed. The old counterpane that was its temporary covering was deliciously cool and soft. I removed my shoes and stretched out full length. The room revolved in time to the strange music inside my head, a combination of buzzing bees, singing birds and the pulse of my own blood. I heard Dickie come back. Felt the bed sink beneath his weight, felt his arm slide beneath my head that was as weak as a snapped stalk. Heard him say, ‘My love, my love. Don’t resist me any longer. This had to be.’

It was not Dickie. I knew this by a violent quiver of joy that ran from my burning forehead to my naked feet.

‘Of course,’ I murmured. ‘But I … so terribly … didn’t … want …’

‘It’s too late for regret. It always was.’

He was right. I had been a hypocrite, paying lip-service to propriety, trying to cheat myself into believing that my own sense of probity could conquer selfish desire. From the moment we had stood in that hideous room at the Carlton House Hotel sharing a dish of stale peanuts I had known that it was only a matter of time before I became Burgo’s lover. I gave myself up to the inevitable.

THIRTEEN

‘Do look at those sheep.’ I peered through slashing rain at bundles of grey and white wool crouching down beside rocks. ‘They’ve got the most magnificent curling horns.’

‘Remember what it says in the Bible about dividing the nations, the worthy from the unworthy? You’ll never make a shepherdess if you can’t tell sheep from goats.’

‘You mean there are wild goats here? How romantic! We might be in Ancient Greece. Apart from the weather.’

‘Those are the Maumturk Mountains.’ Kit pointed to our left. ‘And beyond them in the distance a group called the Twelve Bens.’

All around us were sombre mountains, water running down them in rills. At their feet the ground fell to the road in tracts of undulating green dotted with rocks and clumps of spiky grass.

‘That’s cotton grass,’ said Kit. ‘It means the ground’s boggy. Thousands of years ago prehistoric man lived by slashing and burning the woodland that covered these parts. Eventually a layer of carbon formed that stopped the land from draining and thus the bog was created. When the woodland was all destroyed, the people who lived here could only get wood by digging up ancient trees from beneath the peat layers. Hence bog oak. A useful lesson for today.’

‘I’ve seen furniture made from black bog oak but I’d no idea how it was formed.’

‘So, during the game of tennis that so effectively demolished your defences, what was it, exactly, that you suspected? Are you unique among girls, do you think, in finding incompetence more disarming than proficiency?’

‘I thought you were the expert on female psychology.’

‘What was troubling you? Besides a sense of what you persist in seeing as impending moral collapse on your own part?’

‘Don’t you ever forget anything?’

‘Not when it’s a story.’ Kit slowed to let a ewe and her lamb, their underbellies brown with mud, cross the road. ‘Agents have to carry details in their heads. They’re the long stop for major authorial blunders.’

‘All right. Something made me think that he might be losing the game on purpose; that he was a much better player than he’d pretended. Then, in the excitement that followed, I didn’t think anything more about it. But weeks later the suspicion resurfaced when I was returning some gumboots I’d borrowed to the downstairs cloakroom at Ladyfield. The walls are hung with old school photographs, mostly of Dickie at Harrow: the usual rows of blazered, boatered boys, plus photographs of Dickie in the First Eleven and the Second Fifteen. I’d never bothered to look at them properly but something must have registered subliminally because I spotted at once a photograph of Westminster School’s Senior Tennis Team and guess who was sitting in the middle of the front row holding a large silver cup?’ I waited politely for Kit to finish laughing before adding, ‘Given that Burgo may not have played for a long time, is it possible for anyone’s game to deteriorate so drastically?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. You either have good hand – eye co-ordination or not. Besides, Burgo had been keeping his athletic prowess honed playing polo, hadn’t he?’

‘My goodness, I hope your authors deserve you.’

‘Did you take him properly to task?’

‘No. I tried to forget about it. I suppose I didn’t want to discover anything that made me trust him less. I wanted so badly to see him as perfect … and perfectly irresistible. In order to justify what we were doing I had to make myself believe he was the love of my life. And that I was of his.’

‘And despite everything you still believe that.’

I did not answer. I was no longer capable of interpreting my own feelings.

‘We’ve only ten miles to go until Kilmuree,’ said Kit. ‘Just tell me a little about the good times and I’ll pretend the tale’s been nicely rounded off. A sort of happy ever after that fades into oblivion. That’s what we all want from a story. Physical consummation isn’t enough. It wouldn’t be enough for Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy to climb between the sheets and indulge in erotic acts before going their separate ways. Or for Mr Rochester to take Jane Eyre through the Kama Sutra. The climax of a narrative is actually the moment when two people reveal themselves to each other by declaring a deeply felt, highly significant attachment.’

‘It’s strange that we get such vicarious pleasure from imagining other, wholly fictitious people falling in love. Is it just because we identify with one of them?’

‘I don’t see myself as Burgo Latimer. A public man, an orator, a manipulator of minds. Sorry if that sounds slanderous. Of course I’m jealous. In my mind he’s as fantastical a being as the Minotaur. He’s made you unhappy and left you to defend yourself.’

‘I quite agree with you about happy endings. We want to leave them suspended in blissful communion. We don’t want to be told afterwards how Jane and Mr Rochester remodelled Thornfield Hall in the style of William Burges. Or that Lady Catherine de Bourgh was catty about Elizabeth’s taste in bedding begonias.’

‘And I also want to know what happened to the lovely, feckless Jasmine. I realize her relationship with Teddy is a leitmotif of textbook adultery that runs parallel with your own love affair. Your audience is eager in anticipation.’

After Burgo and I became lovers, after those ten, perhaps fifteen minutes of intense physical pleasure, we lay in each other’s arms waiting for our hearts to slow and for our minds to begin working.

Then I said, ‘Dickie’s coming back any minute.’

‘I asked him to ring Simon for me, to tell him to bring the car round in half an hour. But he must have done that by now.’ There was a brief silence, during which I tried to calm my breathing and focus my eyes. Burgo said, ‘I’d better go.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll always remember the way you look now.’ He kissed me. ‘All my life.’

We pulled our clothes on quickly, not speaking. I was terribly afraid now that someone would catch us in a state of undress, though only minutes before I would not have cared if the combined teams of the Ladyfield Lawn Tennis Club and the Tideswell Tigers had crowded into the China House to cheer us on.

‘Goodbye, Roberta.’ Burgo lifted my hand to kiss it.

‘Goodbye.’

I watched him walk to the door and cross the little garden. I tried to tidy myself and the daybed. He must have met Dickie on the way. I did my best to enthuse about the new silk for the daybed to please Dickie but I don’t suppose I made much sense. I was trying to decide exactly what had happened, how it had happened and what the consequences would be. And I could not suppress a thrill of happiness. I wanted to grin with pleasure. Walking back through the garden I had forborne, with difficulty, to skip.

Dickie had politely pretended not to notice anything but had taken me into the cool, deserted drawing room and asked if I wouldn’t like a little rest after my heroic performance on court. Through the window I could see the back of Burgo’s head above the group that thronged about him on the lawn. When I insisted that I had to get back to Cutham Dickie had made me drink several cups of strong black coffee before conducting me to my car. Tipsy septuagenarians were packing their cars with tennis equipment and driving unsteadily away with two wheels in Dickie’s penstemon border. I was astonished that the world managed to go on in its ordinary insipid way.

I had flown through the countryside on a super-powered cloud, survived dinner somehow, washed up and gone upstairs at the first possible moment so that I could be alone. Naturally after drinking so much coffee I had lain awake for hours, reliving the excitement of being in Burgo’s arms, the protesting voices of sanity and prudence drowned by the singing of my effervescing blood.

The following day the weather conspired with a serious hangover to rub something of the bloom from my joy. Continuous drizzle cast a depressing grey light through all the rooms. The walls and floors seemed to sweat with damp. What was there, exactly, to be joyful about? I had had too much to drink and had made love in Dickie’s garden with his brother-in-law, a man I hardly knew and might never see again. Perhaps Burgo took it for granted that he would bed a provincial voter or two whenever he ventured out of the capital. Probably these fleeting intimacies were the perks of a politician’s life, a compensation for having to be charming to old ladies and committee bores. It could hardly matter that I always voted Labour.

He might tell his secretary to send the usual douceur of an expensive bunch of flowers, and she would know that he had once again been successful. She would be either indifferent to his behaviour or disapproving of it, but she would certainly despise me. Perhaps, the next time they were alone, Burgo would boast of his conquest to Dickie who, being a tolerant man, would smile and shake his head and mentally adjust his view of me, to my detriment. By the time Jazzy telephoned me from the Isle of Wight late the same afternoon, my mood had sunk from euphoria to bitter reproach, mostly directed towards myself.

‘Bobbie? I’ve been dying to talk to you! You’re the only person I can tell …’ Jazzy’s voice was tremulous. I pictured her face twisted with misery. ‘You’ll never guess … the most glorious thing.’ My mental picture changed – with difficulty. It had been months since she had been anything like happy. ‘He’s left her!’

I did not need to ask who he and her were. I had once glimpsed Teddy Bayliss’s wife, Lydia, at a party. She had hard eyes and a chin you could have struck a match on. Jazzy and I had invented a character for her so bad that between suffocating babies and experimenting on animals she would have had no time for Teddy’s sexual requirements or his dry-cleaning.

‘When? How? What’s happened?’

‘He says he’s not going to be dictated to by anyone. She said he had to spend more time at home with her and the children. He says the children do nothing but squabble and leave wet towels on the bathroom floor. And they play pop music and have scruffy monosyllabic friends. She’s a terrible cook and is always giving him takeaways. And she refuses to take his shirts to the laundry.’ We were almost right then, about some things. ‘And he hates her mother.’