Chapter 39: Archie and Clary - The Golden Hours

The day before Stella’s wedding, Clary and Archie were packing up for their summer trip in the new bus, as it was known: a Volkswagen camper van, two-tone green and cream. In the middle section there was a table they could lower to the level of the seats (which faced each other across the table), then the cushions from the backs of the seats were laid flat and lo, they had a double bed! Clary and Archie would sleep there, Harriet on the banquette driving seat, Bertie in the sort of nylon hammock that slung over it on rods, and Buttercup at the rear above the engine. A little gas cooker hung on the inside of one of the double doors on the side. They could wind the roof back like a sardine can, and when they were on the road the bigger children would want to stand up and put their heads out in the wind, and Buttercup would weep because she just was too small.

‘Don’t put luggage there,’ Archie said, as Clary heaved a canvas sack of sheets into the back. ‘I need to see out. Anyway, what’s in that bag?’ Clary was trying to smuggle bedlinen. They were driving to Archie’s – everyone thought of it as his, though of course it was everyone’s place in France.

‘Oh, there’s plenty of room,’ Clary was saying, moving round, trying to shove the bag under the table in the middle. ‘That’s where legs go,’ Archie pointed out. Harriet and Bertie would probably end up on a groundsheet in the vineyards and lay-bys where they would stop, but Clary wanted there to be room for all in case of rain. No hotels meant more money for delicious food.

Clary was saying she half wished her Dad and Zoë had agreed to come, they were both so low still. And for the same reason, she was so glad they were not coming. Archie was pointing out how stroppy Clary got when she really didn’t feel like helping people she loved very much. Him saying that wasn’t making Clary any less stroppy. Archie pulled the bag out, and peered into it. ‘But we have sheets,’ he said. ‘And you can spend lovely mornings in the markets looking for those old linen ones you like, with the red monograms.’ He put the bag in the ‘back inside’ pile, along with Bertie’s second suitcase of clothes, and half of Harriet’s box of books. Nanny picked them up and carried them in.

They’d be leaving at the crack of dawn, taking the high road out of London across Blackheath, then the long trek to Folkestone; the ferry across the Channel, late breakfast in Calais, late lunch in Paris, or perhaps early dinner, nights in fields, and on south . . . Nanny wasn’t coming. She was going home, with her sister. Clary had only a vague idea of Nanny’s own family: a darling ma, handsome brothers, lots of opinions, little nephews and nieces. Soda bread, presumably? Nanny’s soda bread was legendarily good.

Anyway, Clary was looking forward to proving to herself that she could, when required, look after her family without Nanny. It was so much easier in France anyway. Drop them in the river, throw books at them, fill them with baguettes and pan bagnat and that lovely fish soup they do in the cafe, and they’ll all come home brown and relaxed and ready.

And Neville would be house sitting, and in charge of Laura until she went back to Norfolk, so that was good.

She sneaked Harriet’s box of books back in, in the gap under the cooker.

But first, Stella’s wedding.

‘She looks beautiful!’ everybody whispered to each other, the words susurrating around Marylebone registry office. Stella had gone Pre-Raphaelite: queenly and creamy in a plain silk dress the colour of golden wine, with dark roses in her pushed-up black curls. And Jonathan, strutting in his morning suit, looked like the cat that had got the cream. None of the parents seemed to mind that it was not a synagogue. Various people noted the similarity between the groom and the bride’s father. Louise, the matron of honour, was visibly tearful. Juliet was there, her hair and her eyes shining. Jonathan’s mother, tiny in a tiny Chanel suit, moved so fast and drily that it was almost impossible to converse with her. There was a reading from Kahlil Gibran, and the bride and groom both broke glasses under their feet, then they all went for the wedding breakfast at a Polish restaurant with beige silk moiré on the walls.

Clary cornered Juliet, who was wearing bright green and holding a silky red dog on a pink lead. She found out that Juliet was just moving; yes, Pansy’s place had ended, she’d be in Chelsea, but was between places at the moment. ‘I never see you,’ said Clary, overcome rather. Weddings could do that.

‘I’m fine!’ said Juliet. ‘Look at me!’

‘It’s not about whether or not you’re fine,’ Clary said. ‘You’re my only sister and I’d like to see you sometimes. And you know, Dad and Zoë are both so . . . sad, or troubled, or something. Have you seen them at all?’

‘I know,’ Juliet said. ‘Dreary!’ The crowd was lively, and she was glancing about.

‘And I don’t suppose you know where Neville’s living?’ Clary said.

‘Oh!’ said Juliet. ‘Ask him! I think he’s here?’

‘Really? Why?’ Clary said.

‘I don’t know,’ said Juliet. ‘He came to lunch at the flat. I suppose they invited him.’

Clary felt things unravelling suddenly. She ought to know where her siblings were. She’d taken her eye off the ball. ‘Let me know if you see him? Tell him to be in touch. And send me your address. What if anything went wrong with Dad?’

‘Why would anything go wrong with Dad?’ Juliet said.

Otto Rose made a speech. It was mainly about how much he would miss his daughter’s devotion to him, and how Jonathan had better never hurt a hair on her head. Sophie Rose smiled widely. Her hair is so solid nobody could ever hurt that, Clary thought. But Sophie’s face was marshmallow, and her eyes full of tears.

Louise slid in next to Clary. ‘What were you talking to Juliet about?’

‘Where she’s living,’ Clary said. ‘She says she’s about to move and she’ll let me know. She’s being very slippery and possibly treacherous. I said I need to know where people are because of Dad and she wasn’t really interested in that. She just wanted to tell me she didn’t know anything about Neville. Do you know, I think we might have done the wrong thing leaving Bank House. Wrong for them, I mean. It’s lovely for us. Apart from how we feel about how they feel.’

‘No, you did the right thing,’ Louise said. ‘People must always leave if they want to.’ Clary wondered who she was actually talking about.

Then Jonathan stood up and made a speech about how wonderful Stella was. Clary loved it. As always at weddings, she thought, the married couples are all remembering their own. She squeezed Archie’s hand. She would never forget her luck.

‘Louise looks upset,’ she whispered to him. ‘Does she like Jonathan?’

When the speech ended, Juliet came over to Louise. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she was saying. ‘I’ve been moving about so much and not keeping in touch, not paying attention. Now’s not the time to talk about everything, I know, but we should talk, shouldn’t we – I’m so sorry – oh, look, I must go, actually. I’ll be in touch soon –’

‘What have you been paying attention to, Juliet?’ Louise said, putting her hand on her cousin’s arm, and Clary felt the change of atmosphere.

Juliet smiled emptily.

‘Where are you living?’ Louise went on. ‘I mean, where are you going to sleep tonight? You must be sleeping somewhere.’

Juliet blinked, her lovely long eyes focussing and unfocussing.

‘How can I be your agent when I don’t have your address and phone number?’

‘There hasn’t been any work,’ said Juliet. ‘We talked about that.’

‘You’ve been avoiding me,’ said Louise. For a sharp frightening moment, it seemed to Clary that Juliet was a speeding car, and Louise was a big brick wall.

‘Please don’t bully me, Louise,’ Juliet said, her voice frozen.

‘Tell your sister where you live then,’ Louise said, gesturing to Clary. ‘Or your parents. Your father’s in a deep depression and your mother is at her wits’ end. Whatever you’re doing, you’re being selfish. I know because I used to be selfish, too.’

‘There’s absolutely nothing to tell,’ Juliet whispered.

‘Street name and number,’ Louise hissed – and Clary noticed the tiny curl of smile on Juliet’s mouth as she turned away.

‘What?’ Louise said. ‘Why are you smiling?’ And Juliet went white.

‘I can’t,’ she said, glancing at Clary, and turning quickly away. What is all that about? Clary thought.

‘Juliet,’ said Louise – but then Tom Locke stood up to make his best man speech which was also – and oddly, Clary thought – about how wonderful Stella was. Wasn’t the best man meant to say how wonderful the groom was? And then it was time for the meal: a buffet with rabbit in mustard, pickled herrings, beetroot, and sweet cheese pancakes.

Later, at the doorway, Juliet hurtled by, dragging the dog. ‘Are you all right, darling?’ Clary said, putting her hand to her arm.

‘Leave me alone!’ Juliet snapped.

‘Hey,’ said Archie.

‘Juliet, talk to me,’ Clary said, following her.

‘Why shouldn’t I live with my brother?’ Juliet cried. ‘Why’s everyone making so much fuss? Brothers and sisters are meant to love each other!’ Taxis were roaring by outside and Juliet was in the street, trying to hail one.

‘Of course they are!’ said Clary, as Archie said, ‘Are you staying with Neville?’

‘Why shouldn’t I?’ Juliet shouted, and stared, and her face collapsed, like a pudding left out on a summer’s day.

They gazed at her, kind, puzzled. ‘Well, why shouldn’t you?’ said Clary – but a cab drew up, and Juliet was off.

A huge pale green Cadillac festooned with red roses was waiting shark-like at the kerb. Simon, in a morning suit, grinned in the driving seat. Inside the restaurant, a bustling started and Jonathan came out, his arm slung over Stella’s shoulder, his face aglow. Then Stella was at Louise’s elbow, smiling and saying, ‘I’m going to throw the bouquet now. Do you want it? I can throw it at you. Or not . . .’

‘God, no,’ said Louise.

‘Throw it at me,’ Tom Locke said, and ‘Really?’ said Stella. ‘Who?’ But then they were all laughing, and the bouquet flew. Tom waved it high like the Statue of Liberty with her torch, and the happy couple headed for Venice.

Clary cornered Louise. ‘She’s living with Neville!’ she said. ‘She seems really upset about it. But he’s here, and he’s staying at ours while we’re away, she didn’t even speak to him, I don’t think, and now she’s left in a state.’

Louise’s face went so tight that Clary steered her back inside and sat her down. She ordered coffee. Archie came and sat with them, the white tablecloth scattered with petals and ashtrays and used napkins and the remains of food.

‘Where is Neville?’ Louise said.

‘I didn’t see him,’ Archie said. ‘Perhaps he’s left, too?’

So Louise spoke. At length.

Archie ordered three tiny icy glasses of sour cherry vodka.

Clary did not, for a while, believe it.

‘We just have to tell Dad and Zoë,’ she said, when her outpouring of disbelief, dismay and anger started to dry up a little. ‘I mean, what on earth does Neville think he’s – I mean –’

‘I’ve been wanting to tell them,’ Louise said. ‘But you were away, and I had to speak to you first of course, and anyway, I just didn’t think Rupert was up to it. But then she told me it was all over! I even checked with her again.’

‘Oh God,’ said Clary.

‘I think we just want to turn to Rupert and Zoë because they’re the parents and can tell them off. As if we were all ten,’ said Louise.

‘When actually we need to be the grown-ups,’ said Clary, with a hollow laugh.

‘To be honest,’ said Louise, which always annoyed Clary because why wouldn’t she be honest, ‘I think Neville ought to see a psychiatrist. And Juliet, too. There must be reasons for it; psychological reasons – I was thinking, you know, him having no mother.’

‘Neither do I have a mother,’ said Clary. ‘And I’m mostly all right.’ She glanced at Archie. ‘But yes, the psychology is obvious.’

‘Is it?’ asked Louise.

‘Motherless children are odd,’ said Clary. ‘Our mother – well, I had her long enough to get five years of love when it’s most needed. And he didn’t. He got nothing, just being Ellen’s favourite. It’s as if he never learned how to understand other people. Never learned to love. You know, all the staring into each other’s eyes when they’re tiny. If that’s not there – if it gets broken –’

Louise was listening politely, concernedly.

‘Oh God, Louise,’ Clary said. ‘I’m so sorry –’

‘We’re talking about Neville,’ said Louise, fishing a packet of cigarettes out of her bag; lighting one quickly with her little gold lighter. ‘Go on.’

‘Oh God,’ said Clary again. Then, ‘And he’s never forgiven Dad for not writing to him during the war . . . Look, I’m so sorry to be prurient, but when we say she’s in love with him and thinks he’s in love with her, and they’re living together, do we know they’re having sex?’

That stopped Louise in her tracks.

‘Or are we assuming?’

Archie ordered more coffee. And vodka, on second thoughts.

‘She said they weren’t, and hadn’t,’ said Louise. ‘But that was last year. She said she’d never had sex. And she said it had started years ago, before he went to New York.’

‘But she was a child!’ said Clary. ‘She was Harriet’s age. Oh, for God’s sake – and Archie, wasn’t it that Dad made Neville go away then? Do you remember, that evening at Bank House, Neville saying –’

Archie did remember, and saw it coming.

‘Did he know?’ Clary said, realisation crowding in, shock, her great eyes flaring. Archie looked from her to Louise, two faces, one expression.

‘Is that why?’ Clary said.

‘What an absolute mess,’ said Louise.

‘Does Zoë know?’ Clary said. ‘Does everyone know except me? Why didn’t they do something?’

‘Nobody knows,’ said Louise.

‘And we’re not even sure what there is to know,’ said Archie.

Archie and Clary lit cigarettes.

‘I mean, perhaps it only matters if they are having sex,’ Louise said, almost conciliatory, as if the outrage was just too much for them to carry, even together, sharing the shock between them. ‘Obviously if she were to get pregnant –’

‘It’s illegal to have sex with your sister,’ said Archie.

‘Incest,’ said Clary, bringing the word out, unflinching, ‘is illegal. But is incest sex, or being in love? You can’t really have legislation about being in love. You can’t legislate about what people can’t help, can you? And the law is beginning to recognise that – they’re going to change the law for queers, after all.’

‘But queers aren’t going to be getting each other pregnant from too small a gene pool,’ said Archie.

‘What are we going to do?’ Clary cried. ‘Juliet must be so unhappy! Both of them stuck in a situation which can never make them happy! And is this why Dad and Zoë are so unhappy? I mean, this is awful!’

‘We love them,’ said Louise, ‘and we hate what they’re doing.’

‘But is it all right, if they’re not sleeping together?’ Clary said. ‘I mean, I’m not saying it is. I don’t know. But if it isn’t all right, is that just because it’s a terrible relationship with no future? Because of course everybody’s allowed to have those, we all do that –’

‘But does anybody ever get charged with incest?’ Louise said. ‘I’ve never heard of that. You don’t see news stories –’

‘Either way, we have to talk to them,’ said Clary. ‘We can’t leave them thinking they have this secret life, in some kind of vacuum . . . it’s just not sustainable.’

‘That might be a kind of answer,’ said Archie. ‘The fact that it’s not sustainable, and so it’ll implode on its own, without intervention. But at the same time it’s, well, it can be a sign of mental illness. There was a film about a man who was committed to an asylum – but he was trying to rape his sister – and it was in America –’

‘Ugh,’ said Louise.

‘We can’t leave them alone with it,’ said Clary. She looked up. ‘It’s my little brother and sister!’ All three of them thought suddenly of Neville as a small boy. That horrid little pest, thought Louise; that sad, clever, irritating creature, thought Clary; and Archie thought, that constrained little asthmatic child, who Rupert tried so hard to see through his grief.

And Juliet, that pretty, sweet, dazed girl.

‘But we’re leaving tomorrow for a month,’ Archie pointed out.

‘I’ll talk to her,’ said Louise. ‘If I can find her. Point everything out. If she’s losing control and telling people, it will get out. And then God knows. I’m not talking to Neville, though. There’s something wrong with that man.’

‘Perhaps we should all do it together,’ Archie said. ‘But you’re right, I don’t think we can tell Zoë or Rupert. He’s just too low. They both are.’ Archie had been trying to talk to Rupert for months, and had come away with the idea that he was angry with him for leaving. But this did throw a new light.

‘We shouldn’t go away,’ Clary said. ‘Oh God, Archie, Neville will be staying in the house! What if he brings Juliet and –’

Everybody stubbed out their cigarettes at the same time. The tablecloth was a scandal. Then suddenly Stella’s father was looming above them with a bottle of wine. ‘Why so serious?’ he cried, his waistcoat stretched across his belly. ‘Come, drink and dance!’

Clary jumped up. ‘Neville!’ she yelled. He was across the room, heading for the door. ‘Neville, come over here!’

He looked over, and for a moment Clary saw them as through his eyes: Louise, Archie and her, standing up, staring accusation at him from behind a wrecked table across a crowded room.

He waved and smiled and didn’t break step.

‘Leave this to me,’ Clary said, and pushed her chair out.

She caught up with him in the street, took his arm, and said, ‘Come on. Pub. Just you and me.’

He was very quiet sitting behind the sticky wooden table, flicking ash into the brown glass ashtray. He’d refused a drink. Clary felt like a headmistress.

‘How are you?’ she said.

He made a face at her, one she couldn’t construe at all. But for the first time in years he looked neither defiant nor sneaky.

‘Darling, do you have friends?’ she asked suddenly. ‘A girlfriend? Or a boyfriend? You’ve never introduced anybody to us. Is it because you don’t have anyone, or because you keep them to yourself?’

‘Kind of you to take an interest,’ he said, watchfully. It wasn’t the usual sarcasm.

‘I have a theory about you,’ she said.

‘Do share,’ he said.

Did she dare? She thought for a split second, and then the phrase ‘sole purpose of visit’ flew into her mind, relevant yet irrelevant, and her old bold courage flooded her, and she dived in.

‘I think you only really love people in the family,’ she said, ‘because you should have had love from this family, and you didn’t get it, and you’ve still got a gap where it should be.’ She waited for a reaction before continuing, for a sneer or a diversionary joke. None came. In for a penny, she thought.

‘But you can’t actually get on with us, because you never had the love. I should have loved you better – I really do think that. I’m sorry I didn’t. I tried. But life got in the way and we’re all idiots. So you ran away to America, to escape, to look for something, and now you’re cynical and selfish and self-obsessed, and you think that’s your actual character but I don’t think it is.’

Breathe. She was rushing but it was the only way. It seemed terribly important that she not stop now.

‘Your love is all mixed up, and you’re somehow mistaking Juliet, female family member, for our mother, or your true love, or . . . some female thing you need. You’re looking in the wrong place for what you never had.’

Neville flinched. Then said, ‘Clary, my dear, obviously I love to be talked about, but –’

‘We know about it,’ she said. ‘There’s no point prevaricating. Are you sleeping with her?’

Silence, which she let lie.

‘We’re not having sex,’ he said. ‘If that’s what you mean.’

‘Then what are you doing?’ she asked. ‘If you love her and she loves you and you live together and she’s been faithful to you for ten years and you wanted to marry her, why aren’t you having sex? It’s not as if law and custom are any kind of barrier in your mind.’

‘You have rather a bourgeois idea of love, you know,’ he said. ‘Haven’t you heard? The times they are a-changing. Love is free . . .’ He didn’t sound very happy about it. He sounded bitter and scared.

‘Human nature doesn’t change that much,’ she said. She stared at him: her little brother, her needy, clever, peculiar little brother. ‘Is she a virgin, do you think?’

He glanced out the window, which confirmed what Louise had said.

‘So she is,’ said Clary. ‘Hmm. Self-protective, both of you.’

He rubbed his mouth.

‘Jesus, Neville,’ she said.

He lifted his chin.

‘Neville, are you a virgin? Have you ever actually had sex?’

His eyes narrowed and he stared straight at her.

She put her hand over her mouth, elbow on the table, and for a few moments they both just breathed.

‘I’ll tell you what I think,’ she said in the end.

He made a be-my-guest gesture, and lit another cigarette.

‘Deep down, you think you killed our mother,’ she said. ‘I mean, we all just say that, don’t we? “She died having Neville.” People said that all the time when we were kids. Ergo, you killed her. Perhaps you think that you’re not safe for women, that if you get close to them, they’ll die. Perhaps you think – not consciously, you know, deep down, sub-consciously – that you’re all-powerful and dangerous and destructive to women so you mustn’t be close to them, you know, genuinely close, emotional, and physical. Or that you’re helpless and powerless and had no choice about killing her, so nothing you feel or do about anything makes any difference anyway so you might as well be a bastard. Perhaps you have no self-esteem. People think all kinds of things they don’t know they think.’

He’d gone white.

‘Perhaps it’s even simpler,’ she said, her mouth dry now but she had to say it. ‘You’re terrified to be physically inside a woman because when you were inside Mum she died. As a result of pregnancy, which is the result of sex, so sex is dangerous. And it was Dad who got her pregnant, so you can’t trust him, and so you can’t trust yourself, as a man, and as a sexual man. And everything is shit. Because of that.’

He was still staring. She expected him to say she was insane, or ‘what absolute rot’, or issue some sneering dismissal. Or make a cruel joke.

He didn’t.

‘And there was nobody around to tell you anything different,’ she said, realising it even as she said it. ‘So it’s lodged and tangled up in your psyche, and comes out in odd ways, like thinking you and Juliet can be some kind of pure sex-free love miracle . . . because you need love, you want it so much . . .’

He stood up, picked up his cigarettes. Left.

Oh God, she thought. What have I done.

Clary pushed back into the party, through the laughing, chatting, dancing guests. Men had taken off their jackets; women’s hairdos were becoming dishevelled. ‘WOOLY BULLY! Wooly Bully!’ reverberated on the dance floor, satin-clad backsides gyrating, sweat beginning to overpower aftershave. Louise and Archie were drinking coffee in the comparative calm of the bar.

Archie stood, and flung his arm round her. ‘All right?’ he said, finding her eyes, holding on to her.

‘Cats, bags, pigeons,’ she said, turning against the racket of the party. ‘Can I have another of those cherry vodkas?’

Archie ordered three more, and Clary gave a short and slightly clearer version of what she had said to Neville.

They were stunned.

‘Good Lord,’ Louise said. ‘It makes a kind of sense. I mean, it’s all very Freudian, but – and then what about Juliet? What’s her excuse?’

‘They’re reasons, not excuses,’ said Clary. Then: ‘Juliet is very romantic. She had no father for her first four years, so missed that relationship, so connecting with men is odd for her. She’s insecure and unfocussed and proud and she’s fixated on Neville because in some peculiar way he’s safer than other men. You know, strangers. Men who would actually want sex from her.’

‘She gets a lot of pressure for being so beautiful,’ said Louise. ‘I’ve had to be careful because she’s always been quite unrealistic about handling the dreadful men who run our business. She’s not tough. Doesn’t know how to slap them away.’

‘The question remains,’ said Clary. ‘What now?’

Archie said, ‘Well, Neville knows we know, and has had this, um, massive delivery of psychological insight which he’s going to need to think about. If he’s capable of it. So how about we give them time to sort it out themselves while we’re away, realise that it’s untenable, then we see where we all are when we get home.’

‘I’ll ask her back to stay with me,’ Louise said. ‘There’s a room now after all, with Stella gone.’

‘What if,’ said Clary, ‘what if we came up with an amazing job for him, somewhere very far away?’

‘Could you do that?’ Archie asked.

Clary and Louise looked at each other.

‘Perhaps?’ said Clary.

‘It’d be nice to do that for her,’ said Louise. ‘If a lot less doable.’

‘I’ll try and ring some people tonight,’ said Clary. Her fingers were sticky from the sweet vodka. ‘But Juliet and Neville have to feel it, and understand,’ she said. ‘They have to do it.’

‘Crikey,’ said Archie, on the way home. ‘I’m not sure we need a psychiatrist when we have a writer.’

‘One day everyone will have a psychiatrist and then we won’t need writers any more,’ said Clary.

They walked in silence.

‘I didn’t think he’d take it from me,’ she said. ‘But I couldn’t stop myself. Sometimes one really needs a hand out of a hole. Especially when you don’t even know you’re in one.’

They walked on towards the Tube.

‘Look, would you ring him,’ she said, ‘and tell him he’s still more than welcome to stay here? He’s got the keys.’