Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Other People’s Marriages, Every Woman Knows a Secret, If My Father Loved Me, A Simple Life. Rosie Thomas
Nina. His shirtsleeve had been cut away, and his arm was bandaged from wrist to elbow and supported in a makeshift sling made from someone’s silk evening scarf.
‘Are you all right, my son?’ Barney enquired in mock Cockney.
‘Yeah. Sorry, all.’ To Nina he said, ‘Sorry about the mess.’
Gordon had turned away, as she had known he would. Nina made herself smile at the boy. ‘Don’t worry. I’m glad it’s not as serious as it looked.’
Michael said, ‘Still, he needs someone to drive him to casualty to get that arm stitched. I’m damned if it’s going to be me.’
Barney sighed. ‘I guess that’s my job. I’m just about fit to drive.’ He patted Nina on the shoulder. ‘See you again, I hope. Come on, Thomas. Let’s go and join the festivities in the accident department.’
When they had gone Michael rolled down his sleeves and fished for his cufflinks in his trousers pocket. Without thinking, Nina held out her hand for the gold links, and when he gave them to her she threaded them through the double cuffs for him as she had always done for Richard.
‘Well done,’ he commended her.
‘Well done, doctor,’ she returned.
Michael sighed. ‘It’s one of the hazards of the job, never quite to get away from it.’
She saw that when he was not frowning he had a good, plain, likable face.
‘Join me for one last drink?’ he asked her. ‘Before we head home for Christmas? A proper drink, not bloody champagne.’
‘I will. Thank you.’ She already knew that Gordon was nowhere to be seen.
When Gordon crossed the hall Marcelle stepped out and put her hand on his arm. Gordon stopped at once. They saw Darcy hurrying down the stairs but he brushed by them, unseeing, heading for the kitchen.
‘I feel like the Ancient Mariner.’ Marcelle’s mouth made a sad, acknowledging twist. ‘Can we talk for a minute?’
He looked down at her fingers, the red-painted fingernails against his black sleeve. She had capable domestic hands and the red varnish seemed slightly incongruous. Gordon’s head was full of Nina’s pale, imploring face and the little swimming movements she had made with her smeared hands. He answered vaguely, but with a cold sense of impending catastrophe, ‘Talk? Yes, of course.’
‘In here.’
Marcelle opened the door of the gunroom. There were the two creaky wicker chairs that she and Jimmy had occupied, and Jimmy’s empty glass on the floor where he had left it.
‘Parties, these parties. Getting together and talking and drinking and being good fun. At all costs, good fun.’ She put her hand up to her neck, where she could feel a vein pumping. She was very tired now.
‘Marcelle? What do you want to say?’
She nodded, feeling that her skull was too heavy for her spine. Was it only this evening, how many hours ago, that Jimmy had kissed her in here and she had worried about the creases in the skin between her breasts?
‘I know it isn’t any of my business,’ she began, and then faltered. ‘Gordon, I’m sorry. That’s what malicious gossips always say, isn’t it?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’ His mouth became a grim line. ‘Do you listen to gossip?’
She felt rebuked, but also that the rebuke was justified. ‘All right. I’ll just tell you how it is. You know what I saw the other day, and you should also know that until this evening I hadn’t mentioned it to anyone, not to Michael or anyone else.’
He said stiffly, ‘Thank you. You were right, of course, at the beginning. It isn’t any of your business.’
A retrospective, wasted prickle of anger went through Marcelle.
‘Even though Vicky is my friend?’
‘It would be an act of friendship, wouldn’t it, not to pass on speculative whispers about a brief glimpse of two people? A glimpse that might easily have been mistaken or misinterpreted?’
‘But I don’t think I was mistaken, was I?’
When Gordon said nothing she rushed at her admission, wanting to get it over with so she could escape from the horrible room,
‘This isn’t coming out the way I meant it to, not that I know how I meant it. We know each other well enough, don’t we? I wanted to say that I meant to keep my mouth shut, but I didn’t, stupidly, and I’m very sorry. I told Jimmy Rose about it.’
Gordon repeated, ‘You told Jimmy?’
His fuddled mind filled up with images of Jimmy’s cunning fox-head bent close to a circle of heads, and then the heads turning to more circles of listening heads, and mouths whispering, all of them Jimmy’s mouth, on and on in widening ripples into infinity.
‘I’m very sorry. It was a thoughtless and damaging thing to do.’
‘Yes.’
He could think of nothing else to say, other than to acknowledge the truth of it.
Marcelle’s hand wavered towards him, as if to offer meaningless comfort, but he made no move and she let it fall to her side. Then she turned sharply and ran to the door.
Gordon watched the door close behind her. He stood and stared at it, his eyes retaining the blue-green swirl of her skirt. He felt a leaden pity for Vicky and Nina, for himself, even for Jimmy and Marcelle, which he knew would shortly flower into pain.
The party was coming to an end. Couples were filtering into the hallway to stand in their coats under the pine garlands and exchange the last words of the evening. The music had turned smoochy and it was punctuated by the slamming of car doors outside and by headlamp beams raking over the conservatory glass. The smashed door had been hastily patched up with a flattened cardboard box.
Darcy had stationed himself near the front door to say good night to his guests.
Gordon and Vicky came down the stairs together, Gordon carrying the baby basket. Darcy kissed Vicky on the cheek and she leaned against him for an instant, looking up at him, her fingers closing on his arm. Gordon was stiff and dark beside her.
‘Good night. Merry Christmas.’
The Wickhams followed the Ransomes out into the cold darkness, with the Frosts and Star not far behind them. They called out, wishing each other a happy Christmas, separating into the old pairs for the drive home into Christmas Day.
Marcelle stared ahead, watching the way the car’s headlights sliced at angles over the flat-topped hedges. She wanted to build a bridge to Michael now, before they reached home, where Michael’s visiting parents might not yet be in bed.
‘Was the boy all right?’
‘Yes, more or less. He was quite lucky.’ Michael glanced at her. ‘Did you enjoy the party? I didn’t see much of you.’
He was aware of all the evenings of their years together meshed behind them. He thought of the parties they had been to following the one at which they had first met, the clothes and places and friendships that had been discarded, temporary attractions to other people flaring and fading, leaving just the two of them. The weight of so much history pulled at his shoulders as if he was wearing a heavy train.
Marcelle thought of Jimmy with his head bent to kiss her lined skin, and Gordon’s rebuke, and his cold face. She also remembered the furtive delight that she had glimpsed in the red Mercedes.
‘Yes,’ she lied. ‘Yes, I did.’
Michael took one hand off the wheel to touch her arm. ‘Let’s try to have a happy Christmas, shall we?’
‘Of course,’ Marcelle answered.
Vicky rested her head against the cool glass of the passenger