Moonshine. Victoria Clayton

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       NINE

      ‘So what are your plans, Roberta?’

      Simon’s car was rushing through the darkness, the headlights making a silver tunnel of the overhanging branches. Burgo and I shared the capacious back seat, he lounging with his legs stretched out while I sat primly, knees together, clutching my evening bag.

      ‘I haven’t any. Not until my mother gets better.’ I explained about the broken hip.

      ‘It hardly seems fair to expect you to suspend your life indefinitely. Can’t you get a nurse in?’

      ‘Apparently there isn’t enough money. My father’s just had a line painted round the insides of the baths so we don’t take too much hot water. It’s just as though there’s a war on.’

      ‘I’m sorry. I hadn’t realized things were so tight. In that case it was extremely generous of your father to make such a substantial contribution to party funds.’

      ‘He hasn’t! Well! That’s the most ridiculous piece of swank—’

      Just in time I realized that Burgo could not possibly be interested in our family travails. I suppressed my indignation. Outwardly that is. I stared unseeing into the bushes as they flashed past. I was simmering with rage. How dared my father tell Brough to change all the lightbulbs in the house to forty watts so that it was virtually impossible to read at night and then make extravagant donations to the Conservative Party merely to impress a lot of men who despised him anyway?

      ‘Now you’re angry.’ Burgo sounded sympathetic.

      ‘Not at all. It was a lovely evening. Thank you so much for inviting me.’

      ‘I can almost hear the snorts of fury.’

      ‘Do you have a busy day tomorrow?’

      ‘Yes. Come on, Roberta. You needn’t pretend. You’re miserable and angry because you’ve been forced to live at home. You’re homesick for London and freedom and your job and who could blame you? You hate spending your days in the sickroom and your evenings washing up.’

      ‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘It’s grim. I don’t suppose a salt mine could be much worse.’

      ‘Colder. And darker.’

      I explained about the forty-watt bulbs. ‘The worst thing about it is that I don’t feel I’m doing any good,’ I concluded. ‘I could put up with it if I saw the least sign of improvement. My mother barely speaks to me and never gets any better. She seems to prefer Mrs Treadgold’s company to mine. She’s our daily. Though, heaven knows, my mother grumbles all the time about how clumsy she is. No matter how hard I try, tidying rooms, arranging flowers and so on, the entire place feels like a mausoleum for flies. When I planted some heliotrope in the urns on the terrace they went from a healthy green to brown in three days and died. I’m sure Brough watered them with weed-killer. He hates anyone to interfere with his pogrom against Nature.’

      ‘Can’t Mrs Threadbare do the nursing? It would save your father the cost of your keep.’

      ‘Treadgold. He’s actually talking about cutting down her hours. I think I might kill myself if he does.’

      ‘You wouldn’t consider jumping bail?’

      ‘What, going away and leaving them to it?’ I shook my head. ‘I admit I’ve once or twice considered it. But I can’t. I don’t trust my father and my brother to look after my mother properly.’

      ‘I thought you’d say that. You’ve a tender conscience.’

      ‘Not particularly.’

      ‘Do you think anyone would even ask me to devote myself to domestic vassalage? Of course not. Partly because I’m a man. And because they’d know I’d be useless. But just suppose for the sake of argument they did. I wouldn’t dream of agreeing to do it. I might put up with boredom and discomfort and the suppression of my immediate pleasure for a brief period if it was in my own interest to do so. I endure things like today’s lunch because that’s part of my job, which is supremely important to me. You, on the other hand, put up with the lunch solely to please your father.’

      ‘I did escape the major part of it.’

      ‘True. That gives me hope for you. But most people are thoroughly selfish, Roberta, and if you don’t make a fight for survival you’ll be in danger of being trampled underfoot in the rush.’

      ‘You make me sound feeble-minded and spineless. A doormat. I’ve always thought of myself as being someone who knew what she wanted and who went out to get it. But I hope not at other people’s expense. I know that sounds revoltingly sanctimonious,’ I added apologetically.

      ‘That’s quite right and proper and it’s what we’ve all been taught. But the doing of it’s so much harder than the theory would have it. If virtue is its own reward, it explains why there isn’t much goodness in the human race. I’m like everyone else in that it gives me pleasure to do good to others. I’m happy to make the relevant telephone calls, write the necessary letters, have a word in someone’s ear. I might even undertake an arduous journey or put myself through a whole evening of dreariness if it benefited someone who deserved my help. But these would be trivial privations. I should never throw away the things that make me what I am, the mainsprings of my happiness. My work, my love, my greater good.’

      It occurred to me then that we might not be talking simply about the sacrifice of my joie de vivre to serfdom. Was there the suggestion that I might be giving up a valuable contribution to my happiness by withstanding his advances? Then I reminded myself that he had made none.

      ‘Beware the man who begins by telling you that you’ve got life all wrong,’ Kit interrupted. ‘It’s a prelude to him telling you how right you can get it if you’ll only do exactly what he tells you. And before you can say “Family Planning Clinic” you’re too busy sending him to heaven a dozen times a day to fret about a modus vivendi.’

      ‘Should you be exposing your own sex as a band of cynical, intriguing libertines?’

      ‘I’m not saying we’re all the same. Or even that the new Minister for Culture is such a one. Merely remarking that there are some snakes out there, coiled seductively in the grass. Anyway, tell me how the evening ended.’

      It had ended without incident. Simon, having satisfied his thirst for speed, drove us slowly over the thin gravel beneath the horse chestnuts that lined the drive and drew up by the front steps of Cutham Hall. The house was in darkness except for a faint light from the third storey where Oliver slept.

      ‘Thank you for a marvellous evening.’