Moonshine

‘And do you think that’s true?’

‘Why shouldn’t it be? It’s not a particularly attractive attitude but it’s perfectly rational.’

‘Are men generally truthful when discussing their wives with their mistresses, do you think?’

‘I suppose not. But Burgo’s not quite like other men. Oh, I know people always say that when they think they’re in love,’ I added when I saw scepticism in Kit’s blue eyes.

‘Are you in love with him?’

‘Who knows what love is? Mutual need? Desire? Vanity? Illusion? I wish I knew.’

‘What’s he like, then?’

What was Burgo really like? I wondered.

The landlord appeared at that moment with our food. The chicken had been boiled to an unappetizing grey, a match for the overcooked cabbage. I knew if I did not eat I would get a headache and feel faint by the evening but the newspaper article had killed my appetite.

‘It’s bad, but not that bad,’ Kit said when I put my knife and fork together, having managed less than a quarter of what was on my plate. ‘Surely you can get those potatoes down? Come along, I’ll butter them for you and they’ll taste better.’ He unwrapped a square of butter, which had come in a foil packet with the rolls, and spread it over the vegetables as though I were a child. To please him I forced down a few more forkfuls. ‘That’s a good girl. Now eat that bit of chicken breast just to show you forgive me for upsetting you. I’m an ass and I’m really sorry.’

‘You’ve been my absolute salvation.’ I ate the chicken. ‘I’m sorry to be so pathetic.’

‘All right, so we’re both thoroughly remorseful. Now, Scheherazade. If you wish to avoid strangulation, carry on with your tale.’

I began to tell Kit about Burgo.

SIX (#ulink_895bdcc6-0b5b-5c77-8372-36c3ef6f636a)

‘Why are you dressed like that?’ Oliver had asked on the evening of the Conservative lunch at the Carlton House Hotel.

We were in the kitchen. I was wearing my mac buttoned to the neck while I washed up my mother’s supper tray.

‘I’m going out to dinner and I don’t want to splash my dress. It’s silk and even water marks it like crazy.’

‘What’s for supper?’

‘It’s called a navarin, but you’d better tell Father it’s lamb stew or he won’t eat it. It’s a classic French dish. It’s got peas and beans and turnips in it. It’s delicious, honestly.’

‘It doesn’t sound it.’

‘There’s Brown Betty with gooseberries for pudding.’

‘Oh, good. Custard or cream?’

‘Cream.’

‘Where’re you going?’

I took off the mac and examined my reflection in the mirror by the back door. My hair is naturally wavy and resists all attempts to tame it. I had fastened it back from my face with two combs. My eyelashes are dark, luckily, but I had thickened them with mascara. I had painted my lips with a colour called Black Pansy which I had found in the village shop. The deep red made my mouth look sulky but was effective, I thought, with my skin, which is pale. I fished the pink plastic case from my bag and applied a little more for good measure.

All the time I had been washing my hair and putting varnish on my nails I had been conscious that my blood was circulating a little faster. It was a measure of how miserable being at home was making me, I told myself, if going out to dinner with a man I knew nothing about, except that he had a job I rather despised and was married, could lift my spirits so dramatically. Not that the last was relevant. A Member of Parliament taking a single woman out to dinner in his own constituency could not afford the least breath of scandal. He would not dare to flirt with me. And even if he did, I was immune to his charms. Sarah and I had so often listed the reasons why it was certifiable madness to have anything to do with married men that we could have given public lectures on the subject.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Who’s taking you?’

‘A man called Burgo Latimer. Our new MP.’

‘Really? That sounds grim. What’s he like?’

‘He’s a Conservative but he’s not what you’d expect.’

‘What’s different about him?’

‘I don’t know, really. He isn’t dull, anyway. There’s the doorbell. Don’t tell Father anything about it. He won’t approve.’

‘What shall I say? He’s bound to give me the third degree if he thinks there’s a mystery.’

‘You’re the novelist. Make it up.’

Burgo was standing with his back to me when I opened the door. I had forgotten how tall he was.

‘Some good trees,’ he said, turning, ‘but if there’s one plant I can’t stand it’s the spotted laurel. It makes me think of a dread contagion. And you’ve got so much of it.’

After his telephone call I had tried to remember his face but could only be sure about his eyes which I knew were dark brown and his hair which was straight and of that extreme fairness – a sort of white-blond – that generally one sees on small children. It had the same juvenile texture, soft and untidy, and was, I guessed, worn a fraction too long for the conventional tastes of his female acolytes. His nose was finely shaped with arched nostrils, his mouth full. It might have been considered a slightly effeminate face but for the eyes. They were sharp, amused, combative.

‘We’ve practically got the National Collection of dingy shrubbery,’ I said.

I followed him down the steps to where an enormous black car stood on the gravel.

I was relieved he hadn’t expected to be invited in for drinks with my family. It seemed this was an opportunity to soft-soap the voters that he was willing to write off. Or perhaps he knew that even if he had snubbed my father, made a pass at my mother and taken an axe to the furniture, Cutham Hall would always be a staunchly Conservative household.

‘You can starve a laurel,’ I continued, ‘leave it unpruned for years then hack it to the ground, but it’s almost impossible to kill it. It’s difficult to love something that can be thoroughly abused and taken for granted. You need a little uncertainty. The feeling that you have to nurse the guttering flame.’

‘And this is so true of love between humans.’

A man in a real chauffeur’s uniform, grey piped with blue, which would have made Brough horribly jealous, had rushed round the car to hold open the rear door nearest the steps. Burgo went round to the other side and slid in beside me.

‘This is Simon,’ said Burgo, when the driver returned to his seat. ‘He drives me when I’m in Sussex. Miss Pickford-Norton.’

‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I don’t use the hyphen. I call myself Roberta Norton. Or, more often, Bobbie.’

‘How democratic,’ said Burgo.

‘Pickford is my mother’s maiden name. My father added it on when they married. It’s a bit of a tongue-twister.’

Also I thought, but did not say, that it was an embarrassing piece of social climbing on my father’s part. He liked to talk of the Pickfords of Cutham Hall as though they had lived there for centuries instead of barely a hundred years. And he kept quiet about the pickling.

‘I like Roberta, though. Pretty and old-fashioned. Bobbie doesn’t suit you at all. Step on it, Simon. We don’t want to be late.’