Chapter 16: Villy - The Golden Hours

The bell at the door in Brook Street gave its familiar ting as Villy stepped in, shaking her less-than-perfect umbrella and enjoying the luxe hush, the calm breath of expensiveness which gave Hermione’s boutique such a relaxing and delicious atmosphere. Hermione, Villy’s old friend, was behind her counter, doing something with a ledger.

‘I haven’t come to buy,’ Villy said, giving her friend a look which she hoped was both clear and dignified, but not, she also hoped, clear to the other lady in the shop, and not consciously dignified, in that dreadful way of women who knew perfectly well that they were being forced into a massive indignity. Which of course I am, she thought. Another of Edward’s humiliations.

‘Ah,’ said Hermione, with perfect poise and just the right amount of kindness. ‘Samantha!’ she called to her assistant, who was reverently folding cashmere in a corner. ‘Would you take the counter, please? Mrs Cazalet and I are going to . . .’ and she beckoned Villy into her inner sanctum, the tiny back office where exquisite clothing in various stages of arrival and despatch lay or hung, layered in tissue or draped over cedar; a chapel to silk and tweed, linen and moiré, shades of beige and cream and blues from peacock to navy via lilac and a bright April sky. Villy reached out her hand to a crisp ruffle down the front of a fitted white blouse, little pearl buttons and a Peter Pan collar, then withdrew it. ‘Oh, delightful!’ she said. ‘For a young girl.’

Hermione, as calm and not-a-hair-out-of-place as she had been through all the years they had been friends, said, ‘Actually, shall we go for lunch? My treat.’

Round the corner in Davis Street at the little Italian, they both ordered salads.

‘Well,’ said Villy, determined to say it herself and not have Hermione guess. She thought Hermione probably knew exactly why she had come, and had probably had exactly the conversation they were about to have with countless other divorcées, perhaps at this very table. Only there weren’t countless other divorcées, were there? Of course there were some, more than there used to be, but Villy could not think of one woman who had been treated as shockingly badly as she. Twenty-five years of marriage. Four children. Never a complaint from her. And then the lies, the lies, spilling out, more and more – and then learning how long it had been going on.

Days, weeks, years take on a rhythm, whether you want them to or not. For decades Villy’s days had been ruled by Edward’s. Her days had been spent running his home, instructing his servants, bearing his children, spending his money, drinking his cocktails, smiling wanly at his spontaneous bursts of enthusiasm, enduring his sexual voracity, accepting his ideas and plans, holidaying with his family, looking marvellous on his arm, ignoring his minor infidelities, appreciating the gradual fading of his sexual requirements of her. In between this array of duties, she’d tried to lace her own impatient desires and interests – and what a variety they had been. To study Russian in order to read War and Peace, to make, to do, to learn, to contribute during the war. She’d done it with increasing desperation. But nobody can run on only their own enthusiasm, she thought, and nobody ever cared what I did. None of those things had come to anything, because marriage is a career, and she had devoted herself to it.

So it had been rather an explosion, when Edward had announced that they were to move house. They had house-hunted, together, and then he had told her that he wasn’t coming – that the dark little house they’d chosen was for her to live in alone. That he was moving in with that woman. The Destroyer. Then came the insult – that their daughter Louise had been in on it, had actually advised her father on how to leave her mother. She recalled Louise as a young girl, crazy for Shakespeare, reciting reams of it whether or not anybody wanted to hear: ‘sharper than a serpent’s tooth is an ungrateful child’. Was that it? Well, it certainly was to her.

In the rhythm of her life now, the term That Woman always, still, produced a pause, and an image: Diana, dark and majestic in evening dress, laughing, on Edward’s arm, him in white tie, both a little drunk. Gleaming black satin, glowing white bosom, late one night during the war, coming through the front door – her front door, hers and Edward’s, in their marital home. Villy had stayed up in town on a whim; she’d tried to get hold of him at the office and at his club, she’d even rung Hugh, but no luck. And then she was putting down the receiver, turning, witnessing this vision, hearing – and believing – the facile, lucid stream of lies that poured from her husband’s mouth.

How had she not known then that the pirates were already aboard? She had swallowed his fatuous story. How smoothly he had lied, and for so long . . . It was years before he finally abandoned her. What a fool he’d made of her.

She had invited dear Miss Milliment to come and live with her in the dark little house, and the rhythm that grew up quite naturally between them was actually, though she wouldn’t admit it, easier. They had a balance of respect and affection which she had never known with Edward. Two old ladies, was Villy’s view of them, though Miss Milliment was decades older than she was, and had been her governess. But the shame, the indignity of being abandoned, remained a third party in the household. And then dear Miss Milliment died, taking with her her dry wit, her encyclopaedic knowledge, her profound understanding and, most importantly to Villy, because nobody else bore this for her, her loyal and forgiving affection. In her place, shame and indignity had settled in like presumptuous old pals, expanding to fill the vacuum, taking Villy for granted. When the time came, she sold the house and packed up shame and indignity to bring with her to the flat where she now lived in St Leonards-on-Sea.

She had tried to consider the move a new start. The flat was on the first floor; it looked out through tall windows across a lawn to the sea. Some rather sad palms tossed their scraggy tops when the Atlantic winds blew up the Channel; then, the flat seemed cold, windows trying to rattle but failing, swollen with salty damp, and she drew the long heavy curtains. In summer red-hot pokers stuck their heads up behind low white walls, clumps of plaster falling off at their base. It was not, really, comfortable. Something about it felt like a stage set, a neglected glasshouse, as seaside places often do. Unsteady and unsturdy, undermined by salt and damp, as if it all might just softly fall apart at the turn of the tide.

Recently, the rhythm of Villy’s days had started to include something new, between her breakfast egg (boiled, soft, digestible) and lunch, lunch and the small walk she made herself take before tea, tea and the glass of sherry she allowed herself with the news on the wireless at six. The new thing was interludes of What If. What if? she thought, sitting in her upright velvet chair, looking out across the livid green and windswept lawn before her, out towards the sea, 2.30 p.m., lunch over, tea far ahead, prospect dismal.

What if I hadn’t married him?

What if I’d carried on dancing?

What if I’d really attended to the piano?

What if I’d stayed in Paris?

What if I’d managed with Russian, and travelled?

What if they’d let me do something, during the war?

What if any of my children, any one of them, had turned out to have the slightest sense of responsibility towards their mother?

What if I were sitting in the foyer of a hotel in Majorca, with high arched ceilings and a Bechstein, playing Rachmaninoff, with the smell of jasmine and a tiny cup of very black coffee?

What if I’d gone to Venice that time?

Who would I be now?

But if nobody but you is interested in you, it’s a non-starter, isn’t it? No matter how interested you are in yourself. And a new thought had brushed the edges of her mind, a moth-wing of terror: she wasn’t even very interested in herself any more. With nakedly false cheer, she had announced to her sister Jessica (when she finally came to visit) that she intended to die in St Leonards. But Villy, though she was older than she looked or admitted, hadn’t died yet. She was fit as a fiddle, and now had to pay the price for it. She was running out of money. Even flats in St Leonards have bills, and Mrs Smith who did for her needed to be paid. Nobody had ever explained to Villy that you don’t live on capital, and now the money from the sale of the dark house was almost gone.

‘Dearest Hermione,’ Villy said, and it was true. Hermione had been straighter and kinder than any family member – she was her dearest. Villy smiled bravely on that thought, sat up straight and went for it. ‘I’m hoping you can give me some advice. Edward . . .’ Hermione’s eyes took on a slight wariness, and Villy gathered herself. Of course everybody was bored with Edward. Even she was bored with Edward.

She started again. ‘Well. In confidence. Of course’ – they smiled at each other – ‘Well. Things have reached a point where I need to – I mean of course I don’t have to, but I feel it would be prudent –’ yes, prudent, that’s a good way of putting it ‘– to find a safe and discreet, um . . .’ She had thought about it so much coming up on the train. Which words would be effective without being demeaning, leaving her open to mockery from luckier women? Merchant? Buyer? Opportunity?

And now she was stuck again. Miss Milliment had always argued against saying things in the passive, as it distanced the reader . . . Villy took a sip of her coffee, smiled at the chopped-up lettuce and tomato in front of her, and said, almost musically, ‘Can you think of, or do you know, anybody who might be interested in acquiring some really lovely ladies’ clothes, and – and –’ she just managed to avoid gulping ‘– jewellery?’

Hermione’s face was as warm and polite as Villy could have hoped. Had she broken into sympathy, or said anything about having expected this, Villy would not have been able to take it. But Hermione just smiled as if this were a novel and fascinating situation. Then, ‘My dear,’ she said, putting her elegant hand on Villy’s, which was holding rather tight to her napkin. ‘I do. And this is such perfect timing. You might be in a position to do me a big favour.’

Hermione, it turned out, had recently acquired premises near to her boutique, in which she was planning to branch out rather.

‘There are all sorts of marvellous things happening in fashion,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you’ve noticed, especially for the young. Did you ever go down to Bazaar, on the King’s Road? It’s really something. New designs every week, and an entirely new attitude, of course it’s more for the younger set, but it’s made me think that we can all do things that we would never have thought of before. I honestly think we can take risks and have fun. And everybody wants new clothes – or at least, clothes that they haven’t worn before. So this is what I’ve been thinking. I want to open a boutique selling – and buying! – absolutely wonderful high-quality clothes for people who simply want a change! Why should we carry on wearing the same tweed suit for thirty years? Even if we just swap it for another tweed suit in a different green! And everybody wants a new frock, for an occasion. Do you see?’

Villy did see.

‘I’m thinking of calling it Carousel. We’ll hang the clothes on circular racks, and there’ll be this idea of swapping in and out; getting on and off. It’s not so much about ownership as a sort of opportunity to own everything, but not for ever! Or perhaps Encore – what do you think? Of course everything will be entirely clean and in excellent condition; anything too dated we can remodel.’

For a moment, as Hermione started to outline her dream, Villy wondered if she was making all this up to allow her, Villy, to feel better. But no, it was a well-thought-out plan.

‘So frankly, if anyone you know has a few things they could let go, or wanted a bit more space in their wardrobe, you could direct them straight to me. I’m going to make it available to all my own ladies, because then I can be certain of the quality of the clothes as they will have bought them from me in the first place. And while I don’t know much about real jewellery – at least, about the market in it –’ here she gave a little laugh, and cheerfully surveyed the diamonds and sapphires on her strong fingers ‘– I certainly know people who do.’

‘Oh Hermione,’ said Villy. ‘What an absolutely splendid idea.’ She wasn’t sure it was at all. Would people want other people’s cast-offs? Second-hand clothes? She was quite certain that she wouldn’t, and she didn’t think any other respectable woman would. Imagine going to the theatre, or to dinner – you’d never be able to go anywhere without thinking that the former owner might be sitting across from you, smirking. Or running into somebody in your old dress! You wouldn’t be able to keep a straight face. Though, if she were to be honest, she had been out to dinner precisely once since she’d been at St Leonards, with a local canon, and there was no conceivable risk that any of the dusty old ladies present had ever been clients of Hermione’s. And it was over a year since she’d been to the theatre. Perhaps there would be a market, though one fraught with potential social difficulty – but then Hermione had always been so tactful, so good at that sort of thing. If anybody could do it, it would be her. And anyway, what did it matter? All she, Villy, needed, was someone to buy the clothes.

‘I’m sure I’ll be able to help you with stock supply,’ she said.

She noticed that Hermione had done something new with her eyeliner. It looked rather dashing, and hardly seeped into the tiny wrinkles of her eyelids at all. Hermione opened her snappy little handbag and reached for her spectacles: tortoiseshell, and smart. Villy couldn’t resist a tiny sigh. Hermione was still in the game in a way which she, Villy, simply wasn’t.

‘Actually,’ said Hermione.

‘What?’ said Villy.

‘Look, darling,’ Hermione said, with a rueful little moue of her scarlet mouth. ‘Are you frightfully busy? I mean, in general? I’m sure you are but if you’re not, the thing is, I’m not sure I can do this on my own.’ Her expression was all appeal, her eyes frank.

It took a few moments for what Hermione was suggesting to sink in.

‘A woman like you should not be living in a small town,’ Hermione added, meaningly.

‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ Villy murmured.

‘Do you know I’ve never liked that saying,’ Hermione said. ‘I rather think that beggars can’t be beggars either, in the long run. It’s just not practicable, is it? As a long-term policy? It’s not sustainable.’

‘So where do you think I should live?’ Villy asked. Clearly, there was nowhere else she could live. She was doing her best.

‘Well,’ said Hermione, rather delicately. Then, ‘Perhaps with me.’

Hermione lived in a smart little flat in the same building as the boutique. ‘A nasty little room above a shop’ was the phrase it first brought to Villy’s mind, but of course it was neither nasty nor little nor indeed a room. It was lovely, with a dining room big enough for dinners and a sitting room with a fireplace and two sofas. They’d spent many jolly evenings there.

‘Times change, and women need choices,’ Hermione was saying. ‘Nobody wants to end up a downmarket version of their mother,’ she said, speaking as if to the ashtray.

‘Good God,’ said Villy. Was that what Hermione thought? Her mind flashed to her mother: so grand that they used to have to clear the corridors at Home Place so that nobody would see her approaching or leaving the bathroom. So grand she had never heard of fish knives, never permitted diamonds during daylight, nor smoking before the royal toast. Her mother, ancient, garlanded with resentments, a great collapsing judgemental shipwreck. Is one in danger of becoming that? she thought. A terrifying thought. And not true.

‘I’m quite simply going to need somebody I trust around, when I expand. And you could stay with me and we’ll see how it goes.’

‘Well, I’m always here if you need to talk something through,’ Villy said. ‘I can be quite a good sounding board.’

‘Villy,’ said Hermione, rolling her handsome eyes. ‘I’m offering you a job.’

A job! Villy thought. And a place to live.

‘You’d be doing me a favour,’ Hermione said again, and suddenly Villy realised: there was truth under the good manners, the gracious gesture. Something almost shy shone in Hermione’s face as she looked up.

I would be doing her a favour, Villy thought. Then, Is she lonely? Hermione, so sleek and well-equipped, so ironclad, always there to help? Is she, Hermione, asking for help from me?

‘Do say you’ll think about it,’ said Hermione.

Villy had never in her life had a job. She’d never known a woman who had a job – apart from Hermione, and she didn’t have a job, she had a small business. That was different, surely?

Unless dancing had been a job. No, surely not. It was almost a career, but you couldn’t consider it a job.

She had decided to walk back to Victoria. The rain had stopped, and pale drops of sunlight dangled and glistened on leaves and canopies. London had the clean feeling that a good downpour always released. Villy remembered the stinking horrible fogs of not that long ago. It wasn’t something you thought about much, but it really had been a huge change. That sort of fog is actually over, she thought. Like the war, like servants, like my marriage. My youth.

For a few minutes she recalled being young: how nervous and happy she had been as a dance student; how angry with her implacable mother; how disappointed in her unattainable father; how proud when she made it to Paris, when the Ballets Russes accepted her. She took out her favourite memory and polished it a little: a dance studio in Paris, around 1920, cold, high-windowed, the crunch and smell of rosin on the darned tips of her pink satin pointe shoes, sitting on the wooden floor retying her ribbons round her strong narrow ankles, and the terrifying Monsieur Diaghilev above her saying, ‘A woman’s knees are the ugliest part of her, but yours are beautiful.’

All gone. When she gave up dancing for Edward, she had thought she was giving up not much for everything. Much later, she realised she’d given up everything for not much. Over the past five years, she’d had to acknowledge that it couldn’t matter less whether they were everything or not much, as both dancing and Edward were nothing now. She had concluded that after all these years what remained to her was nothing.

Jessica, of course, would now give her a profoundly irritating look and start lecturing her about her four healthy children, how lucky she was, et cetera. And of course she’d be quite right. Beautiful Louise with her perfect marriage and her Shakespeare. Such an irritating child! It was just as well that she gave up the silly dream of acting. She wasn’t very good. Abandoning her rich and famous husband had been quite ridiculous – but one knows to keep one’s opinions to oneself. Once a girl is married she’s beyond her mother’s influence; a good mother will recognise that. Though it wouldn’t be too much, surely, to expect an elder daughter to take a little interest in her abandoned mother? But then Louise had abandoned her own child, so what could one expect? She knew Louise was living in a nasty little room above a shop, with a Jewish career woman who was never there. No further boyfriend had been introduced to the family. And that only meant one thing.

Well. Divorce! She closed her eyes a moment for the sting. Divorced mother; divorced daughter. And after the sting, the tiny comfort: Louise brought it on herself, whereas I am innocent. Villy’s innocence was her girdle and her crown: I can stand tall, it told her. I can preen.

Lydia, meanwhile, had disappeared into Scotland and become a teacher of some kind. She emerged sometimes for Christmas, but with a rather brazen, distancing bearing, chatting loudly about things of little interest or importance, making it rather impossible for one to talk to her. She told long stories about friends of hers in Edinburgh, people nobody knew, but in whom they were expected somehow to be interested. And she quite simply did not listen to anybody else. It was almost comical. But still. Lydia was settled.

As for Teddy – oh dear. A dreadful flash of memory hit her: Teddy’s awful wife Bernadine, who he’d brought back unannounced from Texas when he was a mere boy, another shamelessly sexual woman, an embarrassment, though of course nobody said anything – what could you say? – and thank God she hadn’t lasted. Bernadine had said, of her own mother, ‘She’s thirty-nine plus tax’ – which she pronounced tayux. Villy had certainly not been the only one to think it vulgar. And also that it might well apply to Bernadine herself. Poor Teddy had had a lucky escape when she bolted. But he still hadn’t settled down. Villy blamed Bernadine, frankly. That sort of woman – voracious – could put a man off for life. And now he was in Africa: Ethiopia? Nigeria? Somewhere like that. He hardly wrote, so how could she be expected to know? And of course he was flying, a pilot, so he wasn’t even in one place. It sounded tiring. Rather glamorous, though. A man should have adventures. Dear boy. Teddy would always do right by her if he could.

And then there was Roly. Her baby. It was true she had perhaps resented him a little to begin with: he’d been unexpected, and she’d been hoping to get a useful job of some kind during the war and then of course she couldn’t. But once he appeared, they’d always been so close. Even during his long terms away at school, at Radley, he’d written, and they’d been affectionate. But he rebuffed her now. Not rudely. Not noisily. He just didn’t respond. She didn’t know where he was – in himself, she meant. He was in the Far East. Of course she knew that. In Hong Kong, she believed. But she didn’t know what he wanted, what he minded about. At twenty-four, of course a young man has better things to do than think about his mother. You had had no choice but to keep him away from his father, she told herself, when his father was living in sin with That Woman. The Destroyer clearly didn’t want him around, and no responsible mother would let a boy go where he wasn’t wanted. The familiar thoughts went round and round, digging their ruts deeper, reaching the same conclusions as they always did: her children were cold and ungrateful, she had done no wrong, her sons couldn’t help it, her daughters should know better. Her mouth felt thin on her face, the corners dragging down.

A car drove by, close to the kerb, making her jump, spinning an arc of rainwater up and out where it caught the sunlight and splashed her legs and her smart pair of pumps, her London shoes. She almost cried out, but stopped herself. At a bench a few yards ahead, she perched on the edge so as not to get her raincoat wet, and dabbed with her handkerchief at the raindrops on the leather. For the first time in years, she could honestly consider the possibility of there being something new for her, and she quite simply didn’t know what to do about it. Somebody wanted her. Hermione wanted her to help set up and run a new boutique off Bond Street. And to live with her. Right in the middle of the West End.

Put that way, she thought, it does sound rather splendid.