Winter of the World

She felt like crying. She had given him everything he wanted. She had never told him she was too tired to make love – even when she was – nor had she refused anything he suggested in bed. She would even have posed like the women in the book of photographs, if he had asked her to.

What had she done wrong?

She decided to ask him.

Sorrow turned to anger. She stood up. She would take the paper packets down to the dining room and confront him with them. Why should she protect his feelings?

At that moment he walked in.

‘I saw the light from the hall,’ he said. ‘What are you doing in here?’ He looked at the open drawers of the bedside cupboard and said: ‘How dare you spy on me?’

‘I suspected you of being unfaithful,’ she said. She held up the condom. ‘And I was right.’

‘Damn you for a sneak.’

‘Damn you for an adulterer.’

He raised his hand. ‘I should beat you like a Victorian husband.’

She snatched a heavy candlestick from the mantelpiece. ‘Try it, and I’ll bop you like a twentieth-century wife.’

‘This is ridiculous.’ He sat down heavily on a chair by the door, looking defeated.

His evident unhappiness deflated Daisy’s rage, and she just felt sad. She sat on the bed. But she had not lost her curiosity. ‘Who is she?’

He shook his head. ‘Never mind.’

‘I want to know!’

He shifted uncomfortably. ‘Does it matter?’

‘It sure does.’ She knew she would get it out of him eventually.

He would not meet her eye. ‘Nobody you know, or would ever know.’

‘A prostitute?’

He was stung by this suggestion. ‘No!’

She goaded him further. ‘Do you pay her?’

‘No. Yes.’ He was clearly ashamed enough to wish to deny it. ‘Well, an allowance. It’s not the same thing.’

‘Why do you pay, if she’s not a prostitute?’

‘So they don’t have to see anyone else.’

‘They? You have several mistresses?’

‘No! Only two. They live in Aldgate. Mother and daughter.’

‘What? You can’t be serious.’

‘Well, one day Joanie was . . . the French say Elle avait les fleurs.’

‘American girls call it the curse.’

‘So Pearl offered to . . .’

‘Act as a substitute? This is the most sordid arrangement imaginable! So you go to bed with them both?’

‘Yes.’

She thought of the book of photographs, and an outrageous possibility occurred to her. She had to ask. ‘Not at the same time?’

‘Occasionally.’

‘How utterly foul.’

‘You don’t need to worry about disease.’ He pointed to the condom in her hand. ‘Those things prevent infection.’

‘I’m overwhelmed by your thoughtfulness.’

‘Look, most men do this sort of thing, you know. At least, most men of our class.’

‘No, they don’t,’ she said, but she thought of her father, who had a wife and a long-time mistress and still felt the need to romance Gladys Angelus.

Boy said: ‘My father isn’t a faithful husband. He has bastards all over the place.’

‘I don’t believe you. I think he loves your mother.’

‘He has one bastard for certain.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Then you can’t be sure.’

‘I heard him say something to Bing Westhampton once. You know what Bing is like.’

‘I do,’ said Daisy. This seemed a moment for telling the truth, so she added: ‘He feels my bottom every chance he gets.’

‘Dirty old man. Anyway, we were all a bit drunk, and Bing said: “Most of us have got one or two bastards hidden away, haven’t we?” and Papa said: “I’m pretty sure I’ve only got one.” Then he seemed to realize what he’d said, and he coughed and looked foolish and changed the subject.’

‘Well, I don’t care how many bastards your father has, I’m a modern American girl and I won’t live with an unfaithful husband.’

‘What can you do about it?’

‘I’ll leave you.’ She put on a defiant expression, but she felt in pain, as if he had stabbed her.

‘And go back to Buffalo with your tail between your legs?’

‘Perhaps. Or I could do something else. I’ve got plenty of money.’ Her father’s lawyers had made sure Boy did not get his hands on the Vyalov-Peshkov fortune when they married. ‘I could go to California. Act in one of Father’s movies. Become a film star. I bet you I could.’ This was all pretence. She wanted to burst into tears.

‘Leave me, then,’ he said. ‘Go to hell, for all I care.’ She wondered if that was true. Looking at his face, she thought not.

They heard a car. Daisy pulled the blackout curtain aside an inch and saw Fitz’s black-and-cream Rolls-Royce outside, its headlights dimmed by slit masks. ‘Your father’s back,’ she said. ‘I wonder if we’re at war.’

‘We’d better go down.’

‘I’ll follow you.’

Boy went out and Daisy looked in the mirror. She was surprised to see that she looked no different from the woman who had walked in here half an hour ago. Her life had been turned upside-down, but there was no sign of it on her face. She felt terribly sorry for herself, and wanted to cry, but she repressed the urge. Steeling herself, she went downstairs.