due to her? She grew bored with the tasks required of her, decided that she must go back to work, left Lizzie at Wellington Square for a whole day while she had her hair done, and, while she was about it, treated herself to a manicure and a pedicure, and—why not?—something new to wear. For Jack might come home, unannounced, at any moment, though he showed no signs of doing so. ‘Somewhere in Israel,’ she replied to Harriet’s question, sitting in Harriet’s drawing-room, accepting a glass of sherry from Freddie, while Lizzie plucked fretfully at her short and unmaternal skirt. ‘But he’ll be back as soon as he can manage it.’ ‘He won’t, you know,’ Freddie remarked to Harriet, when they were preparing for bed that evening. ‘She really is a tiresome woman. And why can’t that child go to its grandparents?’ ‘You weren’t listening,’ said Harriet. ‘They’ve sold Cadogan Square and moved to the mews. Now that he’s retired they plan to spend most of the year at their place in France. Tessa will be entirely alone.’ ‘Why don’t you think Jack will come back?’ she asked, a little later. ‘Why should he?’ Freddieretorted. ‘He’s not my idea of a married man.’ He resented Jack’s freedom on behalf of married men like himself. ‘He’s never spent any time at home, if you can call it home. And neither of them seems particularly interested in the girl.’ For Lizzie was ‘the girl’ to him. He could not, perhaps would not, take to her. She was inferior in every respect to his own child, who was quite enough, sometimes too much for him. Lizzie Peckham was an annoyance, a distraction, with her woeful face and her grubby track suit. She did not seem to care for him, or indeed for anyone except her mother. She sat out her periods in Wellington Square as if they were a long exile. Harriet was sorry for her, but Immy came first.
Imposing Lizzie on Freddie meant imposing Tessa as well, for Lizzie had to be collected at the end of a long and tiring day, when the child’s face was already wan with fatigue. And Tessa was not easily dispatched; Freddie fumed. It seemed to Harriet that her friend was endangered by various antagonisms; Dawn too rather disliked her, thought her a bad mother, and to Harriet’s amazement remarked that she thought Tessa frivolous. ‘Frivolous?’ echoed Harriet. ‘But in fact her life is rather hard. She never knows when her husband is coming home.’ (Or indeed whether he is coming home at all, she said to herself.) ‘And her parents are leaving London, going to live abroad—she will hardly ever see them. And Lizzie does rather cling to her. I think perhaps she’s a little unsettled,’ she said moderately. ‘She was talking about going back to work.’ ‘Lizzie might as well be a weekly boarder here,’ said Dawn, who liked the child. ‘And she’s not happy. Anyone can see she’s unhappy here. Women like that shouldn’t have children,’ she added virtuously, as the young sometimes will.
Women like that? But Tessa was not like anything, thought Harriet, for whom Tessa had lost none of her prestige, indeed had rather gained a little more by virtue of having marriedJack, and married him against his will. Tessa spoke of him only in the airiest terms, which particularly angered Freddie, although Harriet knew that it was all an act. But it was the kind of act which confers a certain glamour on a woman, a recklessness, a restlessness, even a depth denied to staid wives like herself. And Tessa responded to her strange condition of abandonment—if that was what it was—of ambiguity, certainly; she even played up to it, saw herself as an object of interest, of speculation. In her heart of hearts she knew that her marriage was threadbare, was inferior in quality even to Harriet’s own, knew that it was over, knew that the child was irrelevant, since it had not served its purpose of winning back the errant father. In the light of such terrible knowledge,
Imposing Lizzie on Freddie meant imposing Tessa as well, for Lizzie had to be collected at the end of a long and tiring day, when the child’s face was already wan with fatigue. And Tessa was not easily dispatched; Freddie fumed. It seemed to Harriet that her friend was endangered by various antagonisms; Dawn too rather disliked her, thought her a bad mother, and to Harriet’s amazement remarked that she thought Tessa frivolous. ‘Frivolous?’ echoed Harriet. ‘But in fact her life is rather hard. She never knows when her husband is coming home.’ (Or indeed whether he is coming home at all, she said to herself.) ‘And her parents are leaving London, going to live abroad—she will hardly ever see them. And Lizzie does rather cling to her. I think perhaps she’s a little unsettled,’ she said moderately. ‘She was talking about going back to work.’ ‘Lizzie might as well be a weekly boarder here,’ said Dawn, who liked the child. ‘And she’s not happy. Anyone can see she’s unhappy here. Women like that shouldn’t have children,’ she added virtuously, as the young sometimes will.
Women like that? But Tessa was not like anything, thought Harriet, for whom Tessa had lost none of her prestige, indeed had rather gained a little more by virtue of having marriedJack, and married him against his will. Tessa spoke of him only in the airiest terms, which particularly angered Freddie, although Harriet knew that it was all an act. But it was the kind of act which confers a certain glamour on a woman, a recklessness, a restlessness, even a depth denied to staid wives like herself. And Tessa responded to her strange condition of abandonment—if that was what it was—of ambiguity, certainly; she even played up to it, saw herself as an object of interest, of speculation. In her heart of hearts she knew that her marriage was threadbare, was inferior in quality even to Harriet’s own, knew that it was over, knew that the child was irrelevant, since it had not served its purpose of winning back the errant father. In the light of such terrible knowledge,
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