A Fall from Grace, Maggie Ford [best english novels to read txt] 📗

James hadn’t been at all keen on the idea. ‘Do you think it right,’ he’d said, ‘throwing such a grand function when we’re still at war?’

‘It’s just what we should be doing,’ she’d told him, ‘keeping up morale. This war has been going on for three years now and everyone said it would be over in a few months. How much longer? We hear so much bad news from the front, people need cheering up. A party would help do that.’

It had all gone splendidly although he had stayed in the background most of the time. She wondered if he’d do the same this year.

She’d discovered during their first few months of marriage that James preferred to spend the festive season quietly with his widowed sister-in-law Mabel at her home in South Kensington together with her older sister and brother-in-law.

At the time not knowing enough people to organize a party, she hadn’t enjoyed spending that first Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve with virtual strangers. They’d been nice enough, but like James, rather quiet and withdrawn. Had it not been for his nephew, Anthony, who’d managed to get leave to be with his mother that Christmas, she’d have felt rather like a fish out of water.

His lively chat had been an immensely welcome deliverance from the dull conversation that had promised to endure the entire day. Yet she found he could become serious, even intense at times when discussing politics or the war’s progress, still going on more than a year after everyone had said it would be over in a few months.

‘I’ve a feeling it’ll be carrying on for several more years yet,’ he’d said, his handsome face deadly serious for once, ‘certainly far longer than a lot of people expected.’

‘What makes you think that?’ she’d asked as everyone else adopted half concealed expressions of mild exasperation at his outspoken opinion.

‘Stalemate,’ he’d continued. ‘Dug in as they are which side’s going to give way? The whole thing’s bogged down in mud and as for this ridiculous business of sending men over the top, mostly at a walking pace, to be mown down in their thousands, like cattle to the slaughterhouse, as far as I can see the big brass are living in the past, trying to conduct a war the way they did back in the last century. It’s a wonder they don’t stick our lads in scarlet uniforms so they can stand out even more for Jerry to shoot at. It’s more like a bloody shooting gallery!’

‘Anthony!’ his mother had cried out. ‘Please, my dear! Please try not to swear in company.’

Madeleine could still remember his response which had been to give her a cryptic, sideways glance, together with a crooked grin and a brief wink that had had the effect of making her feel as if she was being treated as his confidante. That and the pleasing timbre of his tone had raised her heartbeat so much so that for months afterwards she’d find herself thinking of him, recalling his voice in her head. She would find herself imagining what it might be like to be married to him, be kissed and caressed by him and hear words of love as he lay beside her.

In fact it was what was missing in her own marriage. She and James had slept together only on their honeymoon and for all that had happened there might as well have been a bolster between them down the centre of the bed, he kissing her lightly on the forehead before turning over to sleep, in the morning enquiring if she had slept well – like some fond, elderly father.

Not that she wanted physical love from him. She was fond of James, she told herself, but not that way. Back home, to her relief, it was arranged each to have their own bedrooms, she with her own little sitting room next to hers while he had his library just along the hallway. As he had said, their marriage was purely one of companionship. They ate together, would relax compatibly together in the morning room or of an evening in the drawing room before retiring to their separate rooms for the night, went to the theatre together, met friends, attended meetings together, and this way they got on very well.

But sometimes she would find herself longing to have been married to someone younger; someone like Anthony. At times she was even aware of being glad he was still single. Were he married she might not experience this ridiculous racing of her pulse every time his name cropped up, though why being married should make a difference it was hard to say.

The simple answer came that he would no longer be free for her to daydream about him. Yet were he to marry she’d be devastated. If only she had known him before having met James, she might have ended up with him instead and would have been happy in a normal marriage rather than what she now had. Then common sense would prevail, telling her that had she not met James she would not have known Anthony anyway and she would be angry at herself for these silly dreams of hers.

Even so she found herself jumping each time the post arrived, hoping it might contain a letter from him. Merton would bring it in on a silver tray as they sat at breakfast or at lunch. James would scan each envelope before slitting it open. Now and again they were from friends or his younger brother and he would read them out aloud to her. More often they were business letters or letters from colleagues or his bank or an invitation to a business meeting. But she’d watch hopefully, all the time her heart beating rapidly, only to feel it drop like a dead weight as he lay each to one side.

The few times Anthony had written, hardly more than a couple this year, each letter contained little more than a few scribbled