She sat frowning prettily for a few seconds more, then commenced her own account of their shared past.
You have all heard Henry (she said) dissect our marital problems. You’ve heard him operate on them, with a steadier hand than he operated on that poor woman in Ottawa. Yes, yes, Henry, I know, you weren’t ‘dead drunk’, I know that. But I also know that, if you weren’t drunk, you were drinking, and I think, if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll admit that perhaps after all you weren’t in a fit state to perform that operation.
What was it Socrates said? That a doctor can’t make a mistake because, the instant he does make a mistake, he ceases to be a doctor. Well, let’s just say that, for a few instants in the operating-theatre, you ceased to be a doctor.
Perhaps, too, according to the same logic, I was never truly unfaithful to you because, the instant I started going around with other men, I ceased to be your wife. Oh, and please don’t pretend to be surprised or shocked, my dears, you all knew that was coming. You all saw Gentry’s notes and I can’t imagine you haven’t already worked out for yourselves who he meant by ‘MR’.
Henry, though, was right. If our marriage collapsed, it was for the simple, stupid reason that the only thing I ever really wanted out of life was children and we couldn’t have them. I assure you all, the pain involved in giving birth is nothing, nothing, to the pain of not giving birth. It’s funny. I remember how terribly upset I was when he told me about that baby dying on the operating-table and for a long time I wondered why – until it finally dawned on me that his death had had the effect of making me feel childless all over again …
In any event, after the scandal and the sacking and the scary ’phone calls and the flight back to Europe, we fetched up in the South of France with Auntie’s five thousand pounds still in our pockets. And, there, we did what most of you would have done. We did our darnedest to spend it.
We started running with a crowd of English expats in Monte – the usual Riviera riff-raff. There was John Fitzpatrick and Patrick Fitzjohn – those were the only names they’d answer to – Eddie and Henrietta Arbuthnot, ‘Plum’ Duff Something-or-Other and his boyfriend Dickie – and now I come to think of it, there may have been more than one of those Dickies, wasn’t it so, Henry, I seem to remember that Plum referred to all his boyfriends as Dickie? – and life was a perpetual whirlwind of breakneck drives along the Grande Corniche, hair-raising sessions at the Casino, balmy nights under the sheltering palms – Plum used to call it ‘moonbathing’ – and weekend jaunts across the frontier to San Remo and Ventimiglia. Oh, it was such fun and we were, of course, perfectly miserable.
Then I met Raymond Gentry.
Yes, it’s true. I see the surprise on your faces, especially on yours, Chief-Inspector, but it’s all too true. I already knew Ray before he turned up here on Christmas Eve.
But I insist you understand that I never knew him Biblically, as they say, even if in those days that was the only meaning the word ‘Biblical’ had in my life. Frankly, like Cora, I had him down as a pansy. Or a eunuch. And with his cocktails and his cravats and his cut-glass accent, I felt he was just too perfect an Englishman to be the real McCoy. I assumed he must be some sort of Central European Jew with ideas above his station, though he was too slippery an operator to let anything be proved against him. And I was broad-minded. Lord knows, I was broad-minded.
In any event, the Gentry I met in those years was one of those prettified young men who hired themselves out to escort rich old hags to the Casino and the Carnival while pocketing a few extra bob for themselves along the way. And if I was certainly no hag – though, had Henry and I hung around the Riviera long enough, I’d surely have got there in the end – that was the service he provided for me. While Henry drank away the nights alone in our hotel room, I was looking for somebody – ideally, somebody not too threatening – to accompany me up and down the Croisette. And no more than that.
It’s true, at the beginning he did pay me fumbling court. Once, I recall, he even copied out a poem by Rupert Brooke, altered a couple of names so that it would apply to us, and presented it to me tucked into a corsage of orchids. But it was all really for form’s sake, more of a face-saving exercise than anything else. We both knew where we stood with each other.
Then, one evening, at a party given by the Murphys, Gerald and Sara, at the Hôtel Welcome in Villefranche, he introduced me to an acquaintance of his, Maxime Pavesco. I never did know what Maxime’s nationality was. He wasn’t Rumanian, even though his name appeared to suggest he was and he did claim to be a close personal friend of Princess Marie. Nor was he Greek or Spanish or Corsican. I actually took him for an Albanian. I always say, if someone doesn’t come from anywhere else, then he must come from Albania.
Now I know what you’re all thinking. How could an Englishwoman like me sink so low as to consort with an Albanian? Well, to be honest with you, I’d have gone out with a Hindoo if he’d had a clean collar and a presentable dinner-jacket.
And Maxime, you see, was just so handsome, so very silky and smoky and seductive. So very, very un-English. When we were on the town together, he made me feel desirable all over again. When I saw how other men envied him, just as I could see other women envying me, I no longer felt as though, well, as though I was on my way to becoming a dowdy back number.
Oh, don’t imagine I had any illusions about him. He was a parasite and a sponger and, when he was in one of his moods, he could be a cad. Yet, I can’t deny it, I was proud to be seen with him.
What I came to realise only later, because that contemptible little Ray Gentry had naturally never breathed a word to me, was that I was making an utter fool of myself. Maxime, my Maxime, had already done the round of every lonely, wealthy, middle-aged woman on the Riviera, every not-so-merry widow and not-so-gay divorcee who’d lost, or was prepared to lose, whatever pride in herself she’d once possessed. He was recommended by one to the next like a manicurist or a fortune-teller. If I was second-hand goods, then Maxime was off the slush pile.
It was I, of course, who always picked up the tab. In restaurants I’d slip a few hundred francs into Maxime’s pocket so he could pay the bill and save face – also save a few francs for himself, for I never saw any change. Then, gradually, he no longer cared about saving his face. When he was losing at the roulette tables, and he never did anything but lose, he’d brazenly hold out his hand to me for an immediate supply of new funds. Sometimes he’d even stick his fingers into my handbag and draw out a fat wad of notes for himself. And all this in full view of everybody else.
I myself was already so far gone I, too, had ceased caring. I didn’t care a jot when he and I would drop into some fashionable men’s boutique on the Promenade des Anglais and, without worrying whether he might be heard by the shop assistant who was serving us, he’d start wheedling with me to buy him a Lanvin safari suit. I didn’t care that he was nothing but a scheming gold-digger. I knew he was and it meant nothing to me. Or I pretended it meant nothing to me …
Then it happened, the cruellest irony of all. I discovered I was expecting his child. I, who had for so long hoped to have not just one but lots and lots of children with Henry, there I was, pregnant by an Albanian gigolo!
Well, as I’m sure you understand, no matter how strong my maternal instinct, there was never any question of having and keeping such a child. Which was when, all very neatly, all very conveniently, Ray Gentry popped up again in my life.