Moonshine. Victoria Clayton
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above his ears in speckled tufts and his eyebrows were unruly. He bore a striking resemblance to a wire-haired fox terrier. He spoke in an aggressive, impatient manner and when he was angry the spaces between the thousands of freckles on his face became tomato red and the bridge of his short, hooked nose grew purple.
Of course he was going to find out.
When I had seen the newspaper neatly folded by his plate, placed there by our daily, Mrs Treadgold, I knew the moment of revelation had come. The story had been the third item on the television news the night before. I had switched it off with a fluttering heart and a sick feeling in my stomach as soon as I saw Burgo’s face appear on the screen. Luckily my father considered television plebeian, so he never watched it. For the remainder of the evening I had sat in painful suspense by the telephone in the hall in case one of my father’s cronies at the Army and Navy Club should have seen the news and be stirred by curiosity to ring him up on the pretext of condoling with him. No one had. Perhaps they too were a little frightened of him.
I cannot explain why I was afraid of my father. I could not remember a time when I had not heard his approach with apprehension. Even when he was in a jovial mood, there was something combative in his voice and manner. And I knew how rapidly the joviality could turn to rage. I could be coldly analytical behind his back and sarcastic, even defiant, to his face, but none the less I dreaded his anger.
The moment had come. I had braced myself inwardly and pretended to be busy with the marmalade while he cut the rind from his bacon, buttered toast and poured himself a second cup of tea before picking up the newspaper. I heard the abrupt cessation of crunching as his eyes fell on the offending photograph. He had let out a sudden roar of fury that made me drop my knife.
‘What! … No! … I don’t believe it!’ My father’s voice, usually distressingly loud, had an ominous strangled sound. He clutched the edge of the table as though unseen hands were attempting to drag him away.
My heart, which had been pounding more or less continuously for the last few days, skipped a couple of beats. But I forced myself to look indifferently, even coldly, at him. We were alone in the dining room – my mother being an invalid now and Oliver unable to get up before noon. My father’s small brown eyes were watering with shock and he was making a gobbling sound in his throat. I watched him, wondering with a frightening detachment if he were about to have a stroke. He threw his napkin to the floor, clapped his hands on to the arms of his chair, stood up, strode round the table to where I sat and prodded energetically at the front page of the Daily Chronicle:
‘Well? Is there a word of truth in this?’
I stared up at him dumbly. He seemed to interpret my silence as denial.
‘I want you’ – my father was breathing heavily and his eyes were bulging and crazed with red lines – ‘to tell me why anyone should … want to make up this disgusting farrago of lies.’ I noticed with a detached part of my mind that a blob of spit had landed on the butter. I made a mental note of exactly where so I could scrape it off afterwards.
‘Well? Well?’ He tried to shout but violent emotion had divested him of strength. ‘Are you going to give me some sort of … hah! … explanation?’
I stood up, perhaps subconsciously to give myself the advantage of height. I was three inches taller than he. I wiped my fingers slowly with my napkin while schooling my face into an expression of challenge and defiance. ‘If you mean, have I been having an affair with Burgo Latimer, yes, I have.’
He landed a smack on my jaw that knocked me sideways and made my teeth rattle. ‘Whore! Bitch! Shameless whore!’
I shut my eyes to prevent tears falling and though my cheek immediately began to throb I remained outwardly calm. I braced myself for a second blow but it did not come. Probably it was the undeniably proletarian flavour of domestic violence that saved me.
‘By Christ!’ he said at last. ‘That ever a child of mine … behaving like a bitch on heat … common little tart … the disgrace … never live it down … sacrifices for my country … my own daughter … how am I going to hold up my head in the club?’
I knew it would be pointless to attempt an explanation. I let him rave uninterrupted to get it over with as soon as possible.
‘I blame your mother,’ he concluded, in a tone into which some of the bittersweetness of having been deceived and betrayed was beginning to trickle. ‘She’s filled your head with sentimental claptrap. I suppose you fancied Latimer was in love with you. I hope he was good enough in bed to justify compromising the first decent government we’ve had for years. Don’t imagine you were the only one! He’ll have had his leg over every party worker under forty. What fools women are!’
‘You kept your word, I see.’ Kit evolved from the darkness and stood before me, laden with bulky objects. ‘Feeling better?’ He dropped a pile of blankets on the bench beside me and proceeded to wrap me in them. A man in uniform approached with a tray.
‘Just put it there. We’ll help ourselves, thanks.’ Kit put something into his hand and he slid away with a respectful murmur. ‘Now.’ Kit began to unwrap packages. ‘Never let it be said that we English can’t enjoy a picnic whatever the weather, even in the middle of the night on a ship trying to stand on its head. Cheese sandwich, madam? Or would you prefer cheese and pickle? Or there’s cheese and egg, and, for the connoisseur, cheese and sausage.’
‘I thought you said something about a mill-pond.’ Suddenly I found I was even a little hungry.
‘So I did when it was. As smooth as. But we’ve got out beyond the point now and it’s blowing up. No’ – as I turned my head to look – ‘just take my word for it. Now have some hot coffee and if you eat up your sandwiches you can have a treat afterwards. I managed to commandeer the last two jam doughnuts. When in my extreme youth we had them for tea, Nanny used to wash them under the bathroom tap to get rid of the sugar because she feared for our tooth enamel. Ever since then, when things have looked on the bleak side, I’ve found there are few things more comforting than a dry, plump, sugary doughnut. Other men may hanker for foie gras but I thank God my tastes are more easily satisfied.’
Warm within my nest of blankets, with a strong breeze in my face, looking up at the stars while I ate the sandwiches and sipped the cooling coffee, I began to feel the truth of the saying that stuffing holds out a storm. It would be too much to say that I felt cheerful but while Kit was talking nonsense and when I was not thinking about Burgo I began to feel a little less miserable.
Ironically, it was entirely due to my father’s passion for interfering with other people’s lives that I had met Burgo.
By my own reckoning I had removed myself from my father’s sphere of influence years before. As soon as I was capable of living independently (that is, the summer after I left school), I had spent three months living in a bed-sitter in Earls Court and working in an antique shop. That autumn I had enrolled at London University to read History of Art and after graduating I took a poorly paid but interesting job at Boswell’s, one of the smaller auction houses. I shared a tiny house with two friends, Sarah and Jasmine, in an enchanting cul-de-sac near the river in Chelsea. To help pay the rent I spent some of my spare time writing articles for periodicals about things like embroidered textiles, fans, silhouettes and custard pots. For relaxation I was entertained by my share of the large, fluctuating collection of men friends about whom Sarah, Jasmine and I speculated endlessly over bottles of cheap wine in the intimacy of the shabby but pretty sitting room of 22 Paradise Row.
Jasmine was in love with a married man called Teddy Bayliss. Though Sarah and I had told her (until we were in danger of sounding like evangelists for the Divine Light through Abstinence and Purity) that this was asking for trouble and bound to make her miserable, it was impossible to be anything other than sympathetic when one saw her lovely face ravaged by grief. Naturally, after the first wild rapture of romance with Teddy had passed, all our predictions came true. There were long lonely evenings in thrall to the telephone, broken dates because of