his children, but he had to admit they were happier because of it. Dramatically happier in some cases, like Donald and Helen whose problems had all been financial. Helen redeemed her baubles and stopped painting china, and Donald paid off the finance company and the bank and ran the golf club with a light heart.
A few weeks after Serena’s death, Helen asked me over to Marblehill House. ‘A drink before dinner,’ she said. I went on a freezing evening in December and she surprised me by kissing me in greeting. Donald was standing with his back to a roaring fire, looking contentedly pompous.
‘We wanted to thank you,’ Helen said. ‘And I suppose… to apologise.’
‘There’s no need.’
‘Oh, yes. We all know there is. Not everyone will say so, but they know.’
‘How’s Malcolm?’ Donald asked.
‘He’s fine.’
Donald nodded. Even the fact that Malcolm and I were still together seemed no longer to worry him, and later, when we’d sat round the fire drinking for a while, he asked me to stay on for dinner. I stayed, and although we were never going to be in and out of each other’s houses every five minutes, at least on that evening we reached a peaceful plateau as brothers.
Some time later, I went to see Lucy. She and Edwin had made no changes to their cottage and had no plans to move, much to Edwin’s disgust.
‘We should live somewhere more suitable,’ he said to her crossly. ‘I never thought we would stay here when you inherited.’
Lucy looked at him with affection. ‘If you want to leave, Edwin, you can, now that you have money of your own.’
He was disconcerted; open mouthed. ‘I don’t want to leave,’ he said, and it was clearly the truth.
Lucy said to me,’1*11 find a good use for my money: keep the capital, give away most of the income. We have no anxieties now, and that’s a relief, I agree, but I haven’t changed altogether. I don’t believe in luxurious living. It’s bad for the soul. I’m staying here.’ She ate a handful of raisins determinedly, the old man looking out of her eyes.
Thomas was no longer her guest. Thomas, against all advice, had gone back to Berenice.
I called at Arden Haciendas one dark cold afternoon and Thomas opened the front door himself, looking blank when he saw me.
‘Berenice is out,’ he said, letting me in.
‘I came to see you. How are you doing?’
‘Not so bad,’ he said, but he still looked defeated.
He gave me a drink. He knew where the gin was, and the tonic. He said Berenice and he had been going to marriage guidance sessions, but he didn’t know that they were doing much good.
‘You can get vasectomies reversed sometimes,’ I said.
‘Yes, but I don’t really want to. Suppose I did, and we had another girl? Unless Berenice can get over not having sons, I’m going to leave her again. I told her.’
I gazed at him, awestruck. ‘What did she say?’
‘Nothing much. I think she’s afraid of me, really.’
As long as it didn’t go to his head, I thought that might not be at all a bad thing.
I went to see Gervase and Ursula soon after. The change in Ursula, who let me in, was like unwrapping a brown paper parcel and finding Christmas inside. The old skirt, shirt, pullover and pearls had vanished. She wore narrow scarlet trousers, a huge white sweater and a baroque gold chain. She smiled at me like a shy conspirator and came with me into the sitting-room. Gervase, if not overpoweringly friendly, seemed ready for neutrality and a truce.
‘I told Gervase,’ Ursula said sweetly, ‘that now that I can afford to leave him and take the girls with me, I’m staying because I want to, not because I have to. I’m staying as long as he gets help with this ridiculous fixation about his birth. Who cares that Malcolm wasn’t married to Alicia at the time? I certainly don’t. No one does. Ferdinand doesn’t. Ferdinand’s been very good, he’s been over here several times giving Gervase advice.’
Gervase, who in the past would have shouted her down, listened almost with gratitude. The bear that had run himself into a thicket was being led out by compassionate hands.
Ferdinand, when I called, was in rocketing good spirits. He and Debs had moved immediately from their small bare bungalow into a large bare bungalow with a tennis court, a swimming pool and a three-car garage. Affluence was fun, he said; but one of the new house’s rooms