An Absolute Scandal Read online

  It was fantastic, having a boyfriend who was older, who had his own place. She and Dan had whole long evenings while she was supposed to be shopping or out with friends; the result was that sex was utterly wonderful. Utterly. He was terrifically good at it; of course, she didn’t have any comparison, but she could just tell, from what other people said, that he was. Well, he should be, he’d had lots of practice.

  He was twenty-two, and working for his father’s stockbroking firm. She’d met him at a party and just fallen for him, absolutely. And tomorrow, New Year’s Eve, she would see him; she had already spent hours trying on different outfits, experimenting with her hair; she might try doing it up again now, with the bits falling loose at the sides, she’d liked that best, but she hadn’t quite got it right—

  “Annabel! I thought you wanted to go for a walk?”

  It was her mother; she’d agreed to the walk at breakfast, thinking it would pass the time, but now she’d rather stay in, in case Dan phoned. But then—he probably wouldn’t.

  “Yeah, I do.” She headed in the direction of the utility room to get her Wellies; halfway across the hall she heard an odd sound coming from the drawing room. Going in, she found Tilly sitting huddled onto the window seat, sobbing as if she would never stop. Annabel sat down beside her, put her arms round her.

  “Angel, don’t cry, whatever is it?”

  “I heard Daddy on the phone. He was talking about selling Chadwick, saying that it was an appalling waste of money. Just think if he did, I couldn’t keep Boy in London, I’d have to sell him too. I couldn’t bear it. You don’t know anything about it, do you?”

  “Of course not. I’m sure you heard wrong, but I’ll ask Mummy anyway. She’ll obviously know. He was probably just trying to get an idea of its worth or something; you know how obsessed he is with that sort of thing.”

  “You’re not thinking of selling this place, are you?” Elizabeth had cornered Simon in his study; the children were all upstairs, watching television.

  He looked awkward, then said, “I am, as a matter of fact.”

  “Simon! Why, for God’s sake? We all love it here. And don’t I have any say in it? It’s mine as well, or so I’ve always thought.” She felt a rush of anger, that he had not discussed it with her.

  “I know, I know, I’m sorry. But we could all go for a holiday to the Bahamas three times a year for what Chadwick costs to run.”

  “Well, I’d rather have Chadwick.”

  “Elizabeth,” he said, and his expression was very serious, “this is not a matter of either-or. I’m sorry. It will probably have to go.”

  “Well, thanks for telling me,” she said. She felt extremely upset suddenly. “Tilly’s been crying—she overheard you talking about it. I told her it must be a mistake, that you’d never do it without discussing it with me. Which you shouldn’t.”

  “You’re not exactly available for discussion,” he said, “very often.”

  “Simon, that’s not fair. You know it’s not.”

  “It may be. It’s true.”

  She felt near to tears herself: she loved Chadwick, and not just for itself but for what it represented, those carefree years when she had been what seemed now unimaginably happy. And thought how she longed to be back there, or at least in what they had given her, those years, the warmth, the closeness, the sense that she and Simon were at least travelling in the same direction. Now they seemed lost to each other, in some cold, uncharted territory.

  “Simon, I do have time to talk,” she said. “When it’s important.”

  “Do you?”

  She knew what he meant; precisely. Her lack of time for him had been the excuse. With—as she knew—a degree of justification. “And in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m doing quite a big job and running quite a big family.”

  “Yes, and don’t we all know it.”

  “You bastard,” she said slowly, “and don’t you dare sell Chadwick. I won’t let you.”

  She went upstairs to pack; half an hour later he came into the room.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “very sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “No, you shouldn’t.”

  “You’re doing a fantastic job, and I don’t deserve you. Oh, Elizabeth.” He reached out and took her hand. “It’s all very sad, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she said, “very sad.” Knowing he meant more than the loss of Chadwick, more than the distance between them. “You’re really worried aren’t you?” she said. “Is it this Lloyd’s thing?”

  “It is. Yes.”

  “Is it really so bad?”

  “It will be,” he said, “I’m afraid.”

  “And you can’t just—just get out? Now?”

  “Absolutely not,” he said. “If I could, Elizabeth, I would. Believe me.”

  The children said it had been the best Christmas ever; Debbie found that hugely annoying, thinking of all the ones she had slaved over, struggled to make perfect, consigned to a sort of “could do better” in her mothering report book.

  They’d gone down to Wales, to stay with Flora. Debbie hadn’t exactly wanted to, of course, but the others all had, and Flora had said she’d love to have them, it would be a way of saying thank you, and Debbie’s own parents had gone on a cruise, so there was no excuse there and—no way out, really.

  And it had been lovely: midnight mass at the beautiful little church above the sea at Oxwich, a Christmas-morning walk down onto the beach at Three Cliffs Bay where the children had played for hours on the stepping-stones, Christmas dinner by candlelight—and yes, all right, the children had been tired next day, but it had been rather special, something they’d remember always. Flora had sold one of her horses, the younger, feistier one.

  “Well, I was getting a bit old for him,” she said with a quick smile, “and I’m giving up hunting next season, it costs so much—another bit of belt-tightening, you know. Every little bit helps.”

  As belt-tightening went, it didn’t seem too stringent to Debbie, more of a token really; but it was somehow soothing to think that Flora was prepared to do it. On the other hand, she was slightly alarmed that there was a need for further economies.

  It had been a very jolly Christmas indeed at the Diamond Bay Hotel in Barbados. The clientele weren’t quite the crème de la crème crowd to be found at the Sandy Lane; the Diamond Bay was mostly full of the Thatcherite newly rich, survivors of the ’87 crash—people who had gone public with their companies in the early to mid-eighties and walked away with millions, or ridden the wave of the property boom and then surfed off it with skill—all wearing their money in the form of cars and speed-boats and jewellery, and taking suites at the Diamond Bay for Christmas and the New Year.

  Tim Allinson would probably not previously have wished to join them; Tim was old money, Harrow, Guards, a resident of Belgrave Square; tall, blond, always impeccably dressed, hugely charming. Since leaving the Guards he had worked for one of the blue-chip estate agents, mostly engaged in finding clients from his impressively large circle of friends and acquaintances in both London and the country. Finding clients or, as he preferred to express it, “making introductions” was his métier; a very pleasant second income had been earned over the past ten years by introducing people to Lloyd’s. Or, to be more precise, to one of the Members’ Agents. His commission on it was a very modest-sounding percentage, but the large number of new Names on which he earned it had certainly financed much of his lifestyle.

  The Lloyd’s shore was getting just a trifle rocky. But there were still plenty of outsiders who didn’t share that knowledge, and many of the revellers at the Diamond Bay, greedy for social cachet as well as financial security, were among them.

  He had gone as the guest of the hotel’s owner, who had appreciated what someone of Tim’s class would add to the tone of the place; thus they suited each other very well. And by New Year’s Day, as he packed to go home with some relief, he reflected on at least two and possibly three new introductions.

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nbsp; Chapter 4

  APRIL 1989

  “I can’t tell him this week. I just can’t.” Lucinda’s voice was shaky on the phone. “It would be too cruel, Blue. I’m sorry. He got a letter from Lloyd’s this morning. It really upset him, he—”

  Blue sat bolt upright in his chair.

  “Lloyd’s of London? He’s a Name, is he? I didn’t realise.”

  “Yes, he is. And it all seems rather bad.”

  “Yeah, well, it would be—”

  “Last year his main syndicate made its first loss ever. Nigel had to write a cheque for about ten thousand pounds. And this year it’s about double that. He’s terribly—” She paused. “Blue, what did you say?”

  “I said it would be. Would be bad. It’s obvious. You never heard of asbestosis?”

  “No. Whatever is it?”

  “Dear oh dear. Very nasty thing. Contracted by workers in the asbestos industry. Or rather, workers in the industries that use asbestos. Like construction. Cars. Furniture. Leads to cancer, all sorts of horrible things in your lungs.”

  “I don’t see what that’s got to do with Lloyd’s.”

  “My darling Lucy, all companies insure with Lloyd’s. They cover things like bodily injury, I think it’d be called. Year after year now, starting in the States, people have begun to claim huge sums of money. And the companies bloody well deserve all they can possibly get. They’ve acted disgracefully, tried to wriggle out of it, hush it up. Anyway, the floodgates could start to open here now. Billions and billions of pounds’ worth of claims, I reckon. So course Lloyd’s is affected. Horribly.”

  “God. So it could get worse?”

  “Not could, sweetheart. It will get worse. And worse. Maybe you should get this thing over now, quickly, before it does.”

  “Blue, I can’t. Not just…just yet. He’s so upset.”

  This was a terrible indictment of her motherhood, Elizabeth thought. That she’d had no idea, no idea at all what was going on, and—

  She heard the front door slam. Simon. He’d been on a business trip to France for three days. She was going to have to tell him, and quickly. He’d be pretty shocked. And he’d probably cast a lot of the blame at her.

  There was a pause while he checked the post. She heard him ripping open a few envelopes, heard a suppressed groan and a “Shit. Holy shit,” and then he walked into the drawing room, went straight over to the drinks table without seeing her, and poured himself a very large whiskey.

  “Hello, Simon,” she said.

  “Elizabeth! What are you doing home at teatime? Are you ill?”

  “No, I’m fine. Simon, we need to talk.”

  “I was about to say the same thing to you. You first.”

  “It’s Annabel. She’s been expelled.”

  “Expelled! Annabel? Jesus. I don’t believe it. But what’s she done? She’s only been back at school a week.”

  “She bunked off, spent Saturday night in London. She came up to see some boy. Who,” she hesitated, he really wasn’t going to like this, “who she’s been seeing for a while, apparently.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Yes. Anyway, we have to go down, bring her home.”

  “Why in God’s name didn’t they ring us? When they found her missing?”

  “They didn’t know about it. Her friends covered up for her beautifully, it’s not difficult over a weekend. They caught her coming in last night, it seems, complete with bottle of champagne in her rucksack. Oh, and some reefers.”

  “Dear God! So why the hell didn’t they ring us then?”

  “I was told they wanted to conduct a full enquiry first. Make sure they’d got everything straight, that it really was necessary to expel her.”

  “Well,” he said, “I can see it is.”

  “So come on. We’re going down now.”

  “Now? To Somerset?”

  “Yes. I…thought it best if we went together.”

  “Of course. Let me just change my shirt and I’ll be with you.”

  As the car pulled onto the Cromwell Road, he said, “I’ve got some more bad news. If you can take it.”

  “Of course I can.”

  He looked at her and half smiled for the first time. “I have to say, Elizabeth, you’re very good in a crisis. Always were.”

  This was true; she never panicked, never cried—just stayed calm and positive and clear-thinking. When Tilly had been thrown by Boy and quite badly concussed she had met the news with dignity, bravely cool. It was her way of coping; holding on to herself and her image of herself.

  “Try me now,” she said.

  “It’s—it’s Lloyd’s. Second year. Much worse. Chadwick will have to go.”

  “Oh Simon, no. It must be very bad. How much this time?”

  “Well, about forty-five thousand.”

  “My God.” She was stunned. “That’s huge. Absolutely huge. I thought you said you’d built up a hedge fund to deal with this sort of thing.”

  “I—” He didn’t look at her. “Not enough there, I’m afraid.”

  “Can’t we borrow the money from the bank?”

  “Well, no. I’m already quite heavily in hock to the bank. I made a loss on the stock market. In the crash. It’s not good at the moment. And I put a lot of money into that overseas hotel business. Set up by Ted Rayne, remember?”

  “What, in the Bahamas?”

  “That’s the one. It went belly-up, earlier this year.”

  “You didn’t tell me that. Well, not that it had gone bust.”

  There was a silence, then: “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry, I should have done. But I couldn’t see much point worrying you. I thought things would sort themselves out, that the market would recover.”

  “Which it has.”

  “Not nearly enough. The country’s in a hell of a mess, and Lawson seems set on taking us into the Exchange Rate Mechanism, which would be disastrous in my view. And his policy on inflation isn’t helping. Businesses are going under right, left, and centre. He’s at loggerheads with Thatcher over that. Anyway, I should have discussed it all with you, I know. I’m very sorry.”

  She was silent. Then she said, “Not a lot we can do about it, it seems. It’s OK. Do you think we can squeeze one last summer in at Chadwick before it goes?”

  “Yes, I should think so.”

  “Well, that’s something. After that it won’t matter quite so much. Except for Tilly, of course. Let’s keep it from the children for as long as we can.”

  “OK.” He looked at her, smiled his sudden sweet smile, reached out and briefly took her hand. “Thank you, darling.”

  “What for?”

  “For not blaming me.”

  “It’s not exactly your fault, is it? And don’t forget, we had some awfully good years. We wouldn’t have had Chadwick at all without Lloyd’s. I would say,” she said, realising that she felt closer to him than she had for a long time, able to comfort him rather than rail against him, “this thing with Annabel rather puts it in perspective. And it’s not as if we’re starving.”

  “Well, not yet,” he said.

  And in the days that followed he struggled to be his positive upbeat self; but it was hurting him badly, the erosion of his personal heritage. Simon was not old money; his father had scrimped and saved to send his bright, handsome, and already charming son to public school, wanting him to have as if by right the confidence, the accent, the manner that he himself had been at such pains to learn.

  Simon had left Charterhouse and then Oxford and moved straight into the City, a shooting star; within a very few years he was making a fortune. But as a boy, he had loathed the comparison between his school friends’ lavish houses and his own modest one, had been miserable at not being able to return invitations, to offer hospitality. He had loved his parents dearly, but he had suffered what all children in his position suffer: at best embarrassment, at worst shame. And the symbols of his own wealth had been doubly important, doubly precious because he had secured them for an
d by himself.

  He found the contemplation of their loss—and the effect of it on his own children—almost unbearable.

  Flora sat staring at the letter. It had happened again. Lloyd’s wanted more money: possibly twice as much. How could she have been so stupid, how? Why had she let William do this to her, make her a Member?

  “I’m persuaded to become a Name,” he had said, fifteen years ago. “It seems an excellent idea. But there are risks, and I think with your agreement, I’d rather it was you. That way, they can’t bankrupt us. You’ve got no money and the house isn’t in your name, so it’ll be pretty foolproof. I’ll make over just enough money to you to do it. And it’ll be a nice pension for you when I’m gone. How would that be?”

  She hadn’t actually been very keen; she’d always been slightly suspicious of the whole Lloyd’s thing, the assumption that you could get something for nothing, and her visit to Lloyd’s when she’d been admitted as a Member had done nothing to make her feel better. She’d been unimpressed by Edward Trafford Smythe, the Members’ Agent who had talked William into this (as she saw it); he was some kind of distant cousin to William and seemed to her very second-rate.

  But, uneasy or not, she had to admit that for the past decade and more it had been an excellent source of income. Every June or July the cheque arrived; not vast, but extremely welcome. It had funded the purchase of stocks and shares, their horses, their hunting, wonderful trips to South Africa and India; and then the house soaked up money of course, they’d had dry rot one year, needed a new roof another…

  “Good old Lloyd’s will see to it,” William always said, and indeed it had. And land had come onto the market, adjacent to the house, which they had bought, including one huge field sloping right down to the top of the cliffs at Broken Bay—so called, it was said, because of the way three huge, jagged rocks lay in the centre of the beach, as if they had been dropped from a great height, fracturing the smooth curve of the bay.

  Flora loved that field; she called it the Meadow and she refused to put sheep on it, or graze the horses; she kept it in its natural state, filled with wildflowers and grasses. It had three dilapidated stone buildings on it, once cowsheds, but they in no way spoiled it, rather they adorned it, the flame-red climbing roses of Gower half covering one, and ivy and honeysuckle the others. When she walked through the Meadow in early summer, butterflies rose in great clouds about her, and at night she would hear the owls cry as they hunted the voles and mice that lived under the surface of the grasses. In the autumn she and the children would gather baskets of blackberries from the hedges that marked the boundaries of the field and she would turn them into jam and jelly and blackberry crumble.