She went downstairs to where Leonora and Alicia were talking to Aunt Cicely and their father in the kitchen. Leonora was lying on a beanbag with Barley, who gazed up at her with the opaque eyes of an old man. He had even grown white around the nose and eyebrows. Alicia slouched in the armchair by the Aga, drinking Coca-Cola and eating a packet of crisps. She looked up at her mother when she entered the room and suddenly remembered Mercedes. ‘Mummy, was Merchi sad to say goodbye?’ she asked.
‘You know Mercedes,’ Audrey replied, raising her eyebrows. ‘She never liked to show emotion. But I think she was sad. Mind you, she was old and it was time for her to retire and rest a little. You know she’s living with Oscar now.’
Alicia laughed heartily. ‘That doesn’t surprise me. He always had the hots for her. What happened to that hideous parrot?’
‘Oh, Loro.’ Audrey chuckled. ‘I’m afraid he died.’
‘How did he die?’ Leonora asked from the beanbag. She paused her hand over Barley’s head and he began to nudge it with his wet nose.
‘He fell into a pot of boiling water.’
The girls both stared at their mother with shock. Cicely stopped stirring the Bolognese sauce and turned around. ‘What a hideous way to go,’ she said. ‘Reminds me of the pheasant that flew in here one evening. I found him roasting with the chicken. Of course, it would have been a bonus had he been plucked first.’ Cecil looked at his sister quizzically. Cicely never used to be this fanciful. When he later met Marcel, who deigned to descend from his attic studio for supper, he understood why she had changed. Later when he looked at himself in the mirror he realized that he had changed too, and not for the better.
He climbed into bed with his wife and they both lay staring out into the darkness and into their future, which now seemed suddenly frighteningly uncertain. ‘I was brought up in an old house like this,’ he said. ‘We used to play hide and seek, though Papa used to call it “Cocky Ollie” for some reason. The house was a labyrinth of corridors and little rooms here and there, it was a magical place for Cocky Ollie. You could disappear for hours and never be found.’ He wanted to add that Louis often hid somewhere so brilliant that they were still searching for him long after the game had finished. Then they stopped bothering and just left him until he came out on his own, hungry and sleepy, having missed supper and his bedtime. But he didn’t want Audrey to think of Louis. That was behind them now. He took her hand and remembered what she had said in the church. She didn’t withdraw it.
‘Tell me more about your childhood, Cecil,’ she whispered. While he began to paint a vivid picture he felt her edge closer until their bodies were pressed tightly together like they had often been in the early days of their marriage. As she revealed the quiet stirring of her affection, Cecil’s confidence began to grow. He was suddenly reminded of the man he had once been and with a fiery determination he vowed to find that man again. He was still there somewhere, beneath the broken pieces of a once formidable soldier. He could hear the distant echo of the accolades heaped upon him after his glorious successes in the war and he began to emerge from a long and wintry hibernation.
He rolled over and kissed her. At first Audrey was stunned. She lay a moment without moving, her body frozen with panic. But little by little she warmed to his attentions until she finally surrendered the long war of resistance. She wound her arms around his neck and became his wife once again. And with his gentle loving she was reminded of all the reasons she had married him in the first place and why she had grown so fond of him. He held her with reverence and made love to her with the tenderness of a man who, in spite of all the pain and humiliation, had never allowed resentment to destroy his love. He had always hoped that if he resisted acknowledging her affair it might go away. His instincts had been right.
Chapter 29
‘I don’t love you any more,’ said Alicia to Florien. She watched his face turn grey with disbelief, leaving only his ears to throb as the blood from his cheeks drained into them, betraying his anguish. He was speechless. He had been on the verge of asking her to marry him.
Since leaving school Leonora had taken up employment with Aunt Cicely. In exchange for gardening she boarded and lodged for free. Although her parents had bought a house only twenty minutes away in a small village by the sea, it was more convenient for her to continue living with her aunt. Alicia had spent one year at finishing school in Switzerland, learning how to ski, speak French and the fine art of seduction, of which she had had no little experience with Florien in the barn in Dorset. Rich, handsome men from all over the globe came to study at Le Rosay in Morges and there was more on their minds too than algebra.