I wondered why she'd married him, but then I'd attended their wedding also, and if one hadn't in the past been on the wrong end of his glowing cigarette, one could have taken him as he seemed on the surface, confident, good looking, positive and strong. A rising young stockbroker. A catch.
I put Gervase and Ursula back in the envelope but they wouldn't stay there, they stuck like burrs in my mind.
There must be thousands, hundreds of thousands of sad marriages like that, I thought, where the unhappiness came from inside. Probably one could more easily withstand disasters that came from without, survive wars, poverty, illness, grief. Much harder to find any good way forward when personality disintegrated. Each of them was disintegrating, Ursula because of Gervase, Gervase because of…
Because of Malcolm? Because of Malcolm's boredom with Vivien, his affair with Alicia, his quick marriage to Joyce? Because of illegitimacy? But Ferdinand had been a product of the same process, and Ferdinand was whole.
There were questions without answers. The most likely answers were often wrong. I didn't know why Gervase was disintegrating. I thought only that the process had already begun when we both lived at Quantum; had maybe begun in the womb.
I slept with troubled dreams and went to ride the next morning as if for therapy and release. Solace, Norman West's word, met the case.
The raw morning, the moving horses, the filthy language and the crude jokes, a daily fix of the sort of reality I'd chosen at eighteen. I didn't know why I'd liked horses so much. Choice sprang from deep needs, but where did the needs come from?
I wasn't accustomed to thinking in that way. I usually coasted along, not worrying much, doing my job, enjoying riding in races, making love without strings. Lazy in many respects, I dared say, but uncomplicated. An opt-out that had come to an abrupt end with meeting Malcolm at Newmarket.
It was Tuesday.
Ursula's cleaner, I thought, driving back to Cookham, would currently be chatting away with no respite for Ursula until the girls got back from school. I wondered if Ursula was quietly going bananas at 14 Grant St., Maidenhead. I changed into ordinary clothes and went along there to find out.
The cleaner came to the door; middle-aged, in a flowered overall, with an inquisitive face. Mrs Pembroke was lying down with a headache, she said, and yes, perhaps she could go upstairs and ask her if her brother-in-law might take her out to lunch. Perhaps I would like to wait in the hall.
I waited, and presently Ursula came downstairs looking wan and wearing a coat and gloves.
"Oh!" she said faintly when she saw me. "I thought it was Ferdinand."
I'd hoped she would. I said, "Where would you best like to go?"
Oh. "She was irresolute. She looked back up the stairs and saw the cleaner watching interestedly from the landing. If she didn't come out with me, she'd be stuck with explaining.
"Come on," I said persuasively. "The car's warm."
It sounded a silly thing to say, but I suppose she listened to the intention, not the words. She continued across the hall and came with me out of the front door, closing it behind US.
"Gervase won't like this," she said.
"Why should he know?"
"She'll find a way of telling him." She gestured back to the house, to the cleaner. "She likes to make trouble. It brightens up her life."
"Why do you keep her?"
She shrugged. "I hate housework. If I sack her, I'd have to do It. Gervase thinks she's thorough, and he pays her. He said he wouldn't pay anyone else."
She spoke matter-of-factly, but I was startled by the picture of domestic tyranny. We got into the car and I drove out of the town and towards the village of Bray, and twice more on the way she said, "Gervase won't like this." We stopped at a small roadside restaurant and she chose homemade soup and moussaka, several times looking over her shoulder as if her husband would materialise and pounce. I ordered a carafe of red wine. Not for her, she protested, but when it came she drank it almost absentmindedly. She had removed the coat and gloves to reveal a well-worn grey skirt topped by a blue sweater with a cream shirt underneath. She wore a string of pearls. Her dark hair was held back at one side by a tortoise shell slide, and there was no lipstick on her pale mouth. The sort of appearance, I supposed, that Gervase demanded.
When the soup came, she said, "Ferdinand phoned last night and told Gervase that Malcolm had made a new will, according to you."
"Yes, he made one," I agreed. "He showed it to me."
"Gervase didn't tell me," she said. "He phoned Alicia and told her, and I listened. That's what usually happens. He doesn't tell me things, he tells his mother."
"How do you get on with Alicia?" I asked.
She very carefully drank the soup already in her spoon. She spoke as if picking her way through a minefield.
"My mother-in-law," she said intensely, "has caused more trouble than anyone since Eve. I can't talk about her. Drink your soup."
I had the impression that if she once started talking about Alicia, she would never stop. I wondered how to start her, but when I tentatively asked what she meant about trouble, she shook her head vehemently.
"Not here," she said.
I left it. She talked about her children, which she could do without strain, looking almost animated, which saw us through to the moussaka.
"What do you do on your trips to London?" I asked casually.
She looked amazed, then said, "Oh yes, that wretched Mr West. Gervase was furious with him. Then Gervase was annoyed with me also, and wanted to know where I'd been. I'd been wandering around, that's all." She ate her moussaka methodically. "Ferdinand told Gervase and Gervase told Alicia something about a tree stump. What was that all about?"
I explained about the cordite. She nodded. "Gervase told Alicia he'd had a good laugh when old Fred was knocked flat."
She seemed undisturbed by the thought of explosives. We finished the lunch, I paid the bill, and we set off on the short road back to Maidenhead. A little way along there, I stopped the car in a lay-by and switched off the engine.
She didn't ask why we'd stopped. After a pause she said, "Alicia is ruining our marriage, I suppose you know that?"
I murmured an assent.
"I'd known Gervase for only four months when we got married. I didn't realise… She's twisted him from birth, hasn't she? With her awful lies and spite. She sets him against you all the time. Gervase says terrible things about you sometimes… I mean, violent… I hate it. I try to tell him not to, but he doesn't listen to me, he listens to her. She says you sneer at him, you think you're much superior, because you're legitimate. I know you don't. Gervase believes her though. She tells him over and over that Malcolm threw them out and never loved them. She's wicked. And look what she's done to Serena. Gervase says she was a bright girl, but Alicia wouldn't let her stay on at school, Alicia wanted her to be a little girl, not to grow up. And Serena hates all men, and it's Alicia's fault. The only men Serena will let touch her are Ferdinand and Gervase. It's such a waste. Alicia got rid of Ferdinand's first wife, did you know? Went on and on at her until she couldn't stand it and left. I don't know how Debs puts up with her. It's driving me insane, you know, her drip, drip, drip. She's the worst enemy you'll ever have. If it was you that had been murdered, she would have done it."
"She wasn't always like that," I said, as she paused. "When she lived at Quantum, she treated me the same as Ferdinand and Gervase."
"Then it must have started when Malcolm kept you there on your own, and as she's got older it's got worse. She's much worse now than she was when we got married, and she was bad enough then. She hated Coochie, you know, and Coochie was nice, wasn't she? I was sorry when Coochie died. But Coochie banned all the family from staying in the house except you, and I should think that's when Alicia turned against you. Or let it all out. I bet it was there inside all the time. Like Gervase keeps things in and lets them out violently… so does Serena, and Ferdinand too… they're all like that. I wish Alicia would die. I can understand people wanting to kill. I would like to kill Alicia." She stopped abruptly, the raw truth quivering in her voice. "Drive me home," she said. "I shouldn't have said that."