In her first year away from home Nina had fallen in love for the first time, with a painter of difficult and uncommercial abstracts who also taught at her art school. Within three months she was pregnant, and within as many weeks the painter had faded out of her orbit and resubmerged himself in his life with a wife and two small children.
After she had listened to what Barney had to tell her, Nina offered her own story in response.
‘His name was Dennis O’Malley,’ she confessed. ‘He was not that unlike Jimmy. I haven’t thought about him for years.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Had an abortion.’
The thought of Lucy Clegg sharpened the memories of it for her. Nina found that she could recall exactly the metal-framed furniture in the office where an unsympathetic doctor had interviewed her, the street in a London suburb where she had walked up and down under the plane trees for an hour before deciding finally to enter the clinic, and the nauseous complex of feelings, fear and loneliness and anger, with the alarming longing for the baby itself that was all the more disturbing because it must be pinched down and denied. When it was over she had felt empty and stricken.
Those brief weeks carrying the flutter of fear had been the only pregnancy Nina had achieved. When Gordon Ransome had admired her flat and unmarked belly, she had not told him quite the whole truth. Nor had she kept the promise to herself, made when she re-emerged into the suburban street, that she would never again entangle herself with a married man.
She thought of Star, and the cool and dignified way she moved through the Grafton parties with her face turned away from Jimmy’s antics, and the offer of friendship she had extended to Nina. Nina wondered how many other Lucys there were, and whether Star knew about them, and, with a kind of internal shrinking as if to deflect a blow, she also thought of Vicky Ransome. Nina shifted, turning away from Barney on to her back, so she could look up again at the impassive ceiling.
‘Lucy is going to have an abortion too,’ Barney said.
‘As long as that is what she wants. And Jimmy?’
‘Jimmy nothing.’
‘Yes, I see.’
Barney moved closer to her. She could feel the tiny currents of displaced air between them in the places where their naked skin did not quite touch.
Barney said, ‘There is an added complication. To do with Darcy. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but I can’t ask for your help without letting you know why. Can I?’
Nina sighed. ‘I don’t know. I think you imagine I’m much wiser than I really am. The truth is that I’m full of confusion and misgiving.’
‘Please. I need to tell you.’
‘Then do.’
She listened again, this time to Barney’s much longer account of the police arriving at Wilton, and the suppressed concern in the house, and Darcy’s blustering, clay-footed explanation of the events to his children. Nina was filled with sympathy for Hannah, and for Darcy, because she liked him, although she did not believe that he would be entirely incapable of a criminal act.
And then an image came into Nina’s head, as pin-sharp as if it were projected on to the blank plaster above her. She saw the Grafton couples dancing, two by two, as she had first seen them at the Frosts’ Hallowe’en, only the smiles they wore were the Hallowe’en masks, and behind the masks there were the hollowed faces made unfamiliar by the shadows of secrets and fallibility. She saw herself amongst them, first with Gordon and then, in response to some unseen dance-master, changing her partner for Barney. Around her the couples changed their partners too, and danced on in their broken gavotte with their faces hidden behind the grinning masks.
‘Are you asleep?’ Barney whispered.
She had kept very still, but she had heard every word he said. He had not asked her what she thought, nor even suggested that his father was anything but innocent. Nina liked him the more for it. She thought that Darcy would be generously supported by his family.
Nina turned her head. ‘No, I’m not asleep. Poor Darcy. I’m sorry.’
She kissed the corners of the boy’s mouth, and held him. Now she did feel the span of the years separating them.
‘Do you see what it means?’ Barney was intent on his explanation. ‘Lucy wants to tell Darcy what’s happened to her, so he can make it better. That’s what he does, always has done for her. Only she mustn’t, now. He shouldn’t have to worry about anything else.’
‘I think your instinct is right,’ Nina said.
‘It’s just that Lucy isn’t particularly … stable, or reliable. She needs someone who knows what to do, to help her get through it. So I’m asking you. Is that trespassing too much, on this?’
The small movement he made took in their proximity, and the tiny world they made together between the curled ends of Nina’s bed.
‘No. It isn’t trespassing. I could give Lucy the number of my gynaecologist. He’s in Harley Street, although there are plenty of other places and different agencies that Lucy could go to. But I know that Mr Walsh will understand what she needs and how it should be handled. I should think that with his help Lucy could be in and out of a clinic within a couple of days.’
‘How much will it cost?’
The memories of that distant, suburban clinic and the doctors behind their metal desks and her own long-ago desolation gathered around Nina again. She was not sure whether to interfere in Lucy Clegg’s life would be damaging, but since she had come this far she resolved that she might as well go on.
She said very carefully, ‘You can tell Lucy that I can easily afford to help with that too. Perhaps she can pay me back one day.’
Barney touched her cheek, and then her mouth, with the tips of his fingers. She could see the relief in his eyes. Nina was pleased to be able to offer him what he and Lucy needed, but she knew she was also doing it for Star’s sake. If Star could be shielded from at least this much, then it would be something.
‘And if Lucy would like somewhere in London to stay, before or afterwards, just for a day or so, we could always ask Patrick.’
‘Thank you,’ Barney said humbly.
‘Not at all,’ Nina murmured. He answered by kissing her, and she felt the neat contraction of her own pleasure in response to him.
*
It was raining. Thick ropes of rain twisted out of the grey layers of sky overhead, bouncing up and breaking into steely threads as they hit the streaming pavements. Hannah and Michael ran, hand in hand, with the wetness plastering their hair to their skulls and cheeks and soaking in black patches across their shoulders to glue their clothes to their skin. They ran and dodged the rain-stalled London traffic until Hannah was gasping for breath and stumbling in her ruined shoes.
‘I can’t run any more.’
‘It’s not far,’ Michael called to her.
There were lines of taxis in the streets but not one of them offered the comfort of a yellow light. He pulled her on behind him, across the murky rivers swirling in the gutters, until they turned a corner and saw the windows of their hotel. A minute later, with the doorman offering them the pointless protection of his umbrella, they reached the revolving door and were delivered by its rotation into the mirrored warmth of the hotel lobby.
‘Safe,’ Michael proclaimed. He was exhilarated by the dash through the rain. He took Hannah’s soaking arm and steered her into the lift, and they were swept upwards in the company of their own dripping but flatteringly tinted reflections. Down the corridor to the door of their room they left a trail of watery steps.
‘Let me dry you,’ Michael said. He came out of the bathroom with an armful of towels, and he unbuttoned Hannah’s clothes, bundled