A Piece to Cling To: Chapter Two

              A decent nap had done wonders for Liam, and his only gripe as he heard his sister’s knock was in having to walk all the way to the front door. Neither of them attempted to apologize; they knew, somehow, that all was forgiven. Liam didn’t even bother to ask where Marcella had been for the past ninety minutes or so, because it was sure to come out sooner or later – as it did, almost the second they sat down in the parlor. “Did you know we have new neighbors at Number Forty-Four?” she asked, practically bouncing into her seat.
         “No, but Father mentioned that the old chap went to live with his son in Finchley. Have you met the new family?”
         “Yes – well, the mother, at least, but she mentioned a husband and sons who go to Eton.”
         Liam, who had been less than galvanized by Marcella’s news and rather wished he could go back to sleep, suddenly caught the spark of her enthusiasm when he heard that name. “Eton,” he repeated thoughtfully, a bit of the old sparkle returning to his glassy eyes as a smirk crossed his lips. “They’re…like that?” His sister nodded. “Exactly the sort of people Patrick wouldn’t want us to spend too much time with, I suspect.” This was precisely why Marcella preferred her brother’s company to that of anyone else when he was in a good mood: only they could understand each another so well that speech often became superfluous, and there was virtually no discrepancy in their opinions on important matters. The two sat in silence for a few minutes before the boy, looking out the window, offered a casual, “And that must be their car parked outside – it’s the latest model, too. Do you imagine,” he added, turning back to his sister with impishly raised eyebrows, “that we’ll have any chance to meet this family, or have you scared them off and ruined it for all of us?”
         Earlier that morning, this would have been an insult, but now it was simply his typical teasing. Mirroring his countenance, Marcella replied, “I don’t believe they’re absolutely terrified by us quite yet, but that’s probably because I didn’t mention you.” She paused momentarily to dodge the pillow his feeble arm tossed at her, then said, with her original ebullience, “Actually, she said we’d have to get together while we were here; of course, that might just be something people say to be polite, but it isn’t very smart to tell someone that and not mean it if you’re apt to run into them whenever you leave the house.”
         “You never know with those upper-class types,” responded Liam in Patrick’s familiar Mancunian accent. “There may not be many of them, but they still manage to cause most of the problems in the world.”
         Derisive as this impersonation was, it was not far off the mark; however, such skepticism proved unnecessary. As Mr. Paris was dashing off to work the following morning, he nearly tripped over a young man in servant’s garb who was lying flat on the front step, trying to push an ivory-colored envelope under the door. “I’ll take that, thank you,” he said once he regained his footing. Unable to spare a minute to peruse its contents just then, it remained unopened in his pocket until he settled into his favorite armchair that evening, when one of its corners happened to jab him in the side.
         “What’s that, Adrian?” his wife inquired, having glanced up from her newspaper to see him pull the epistle from his jacket.
         “Something a boy delivered this morning as I was leaving for the office; I forgot all about it, to tell the truth.”
         “Let me see it.” Without more than an instant’s hesitation – these things were usually Vanessa’s province anyway – he got up and handed her the envelope, from which she removed a piece of stationery and proceeded to read it in silence. “Mmm,” she eventually murmured; Adrian, who had turned his attention to a review of the latest exhibition at the National Gallery, pretended that he had been watching her all along. “It seems that a Mr. and Mrs. Edward Westbrook – that new couple next door, apparently – have invited us to dine with them tomorrow night, including the children.”
         “That sounds nice,” Adrian ventured, though he thought it best to gauge Vanessa’s sentiments before saying anything less vague. She scanned the invitation once again, smiling to herself as she did so, and he felt safe in saying, “The children should enjoy that, or at least the girls will – I’m afraid we shouldn’t throw Liam in with strangers when he’s contagious, even if he does feel strong enough to go.”
         “Ay, there’s the rub,” muttered Liam after his father broke the news to him the next evening, less than two hours before the family would have to leave. He had put up a brave front while Adrian remained in the parlor, but the second he stepped out of the room, the young man flopped lifelessly back onto his couch with a sigh. With his dark hair, pallid face, and black pullover, he really did look like a contemporary Hamlet, even if his troubles weren’t quite so dreadful. In all honesty, though, he was about as far from that tragic, brooding prince as anyone could be. A friend once described him as “a firecracker that never went out” and, whether that was meant as a compliment or an insult, nobody who spent more than two minutes with a healthy Liam would disagree. He’d been in perpetual motion from the second he could crawl, by his mother’s reckoning, and she used to tie her toddler son to her lap during church to prevent him from interrupting the vicar’s sermon (“As if people need another reason to talk about us,” Adrian would sigh). Even when he fell into a rare melancholy, there was forever a joke lurking beneath his frown. The idea that he could fall victim to glandular fever was, consequently, almost laughable to his family, because it was the antithesis of everything that Liam embodied; of course, he didn’t find it so humorous.
              While Marcella was sympathetic yet quietly pleased about the impending event, Allegra said, “I don’t know why you’re so upset.” Neither did he, as a matter of fact, but there was definitely something seductive about the very idea of such a lifestyle, and who could say when he would have an opportunity like this again? It wouldn’t happen in Tilbury, anyway. “I wish I could stay here,” his younger sister continued bitterly, “instead of sitting around with all those snobs while they tell us how much their polo ponies cost. Patrick says if they spent half as much…”
         “Oh, shut up about Patrick,” her brother interrupted. It wasn’t mere irritation: he had an eerie sensation that his stepfather had caused this in spite of the fact that he was hundreds of miles away, that he had inexplicably set him up for this disappointment. Forget the wealthy – it was Patrick himself who caused most of the problems in Liam’s world. He was still ruminating on this issue when the rest of his family said goodbye, going over each and every disagreement between them in the past eight years, which would at least give him something to do for the next couple of hours.
         It was a comfortably warm evening, better than most at the end of August and, though the hour was reasonably early, a blanket of purple dusk had already settled on the street. Ordinarily, Marcella would have lingered on the sidewalk, absorbing the last remnants of the dying summer and attempting to translate them into a sonata that conveyed even the slightest glimmer of truth, but she had other issues to occupy her thoughts. As the only member of her family who’d set foot in Number Forty-Four, at least under its current ownership, she felt like the unwilling ambassador. Yes, Mrs. Westbrook had been kind on Wednesday, but that might have been the influence of a compassionate whim. Marcella had never actually attended an elegant soiree like this, to be sure, yet she found it difficult to reconcile the woman’s approachable, unpretentious conduct with her mental picture of white gloves and diamond necklaces; besides, she could only guess what Mr. Westbrook and the boys would think of her. Well, at least her own family looked presentable. She was a reluctant but devout admirer of Vanessa’s sense of style, and her stepmother was in top form tonight: clean, chic, and icily striking. When she wished, Mrs. Paris could intimidate both men and women with a single glance, a gift that served her just as well in social settings as in the Old Bailey, and she dressed to accentuate this quality. Her husband, while considerably less daunting, shared her cool sophistication. He had at last reached the point where he could don a tuxedo without laughing at himself, although the irony was not yet lost. If he had seriously imagined himself in dress clothes fifteen years ago…
              The girls, meanwhile, were attired in their best frocks, to Marcella’s delight and Allegra’s chagrin, for the younger sister had fought a losing battle with Vanessa for the right to wear her beige calico. “It looks so lower-class,” her stepmother had argued, suspecting that that explained the girl’s fondness for it. “If you want to wear that dress around the house when you’re working on your art projects, I won’t complain, but you can’t wear it out in public.”
              “I do at home.”
              “You’re not at…” Vanessa hadn’t intended to step into this trap. “This is a special occasion,” she corrected herself, though they had both finished her original sentence in their heads, “and you aren’t going to look like a child whose parents can’t afford good clothing.” There was, she realized, another unintentional barb in this comment, and it surely didn’t go unnoticed by Allegra, who glared at her stepmother with pure odium; still, she sullenly gave in without further dispute. While a frown continued to rule her countenance, she had resolved upon passive resistance, just like that Mr. Gandhi whom Patrick was always extolling.
              This was the party that entered Number Forty-Four at precisely eight o’ clock, trying not to look impressed by the spectacle within. Marcella had related every particular of her first visit in great detail over the past two days, simultaneously disgusting Allegra and intriguing everybody else, but the improvements the Westbrooks had made in that period reached an echelon of glamour beyond the Parises’ most outlandish expectations. To think that people lived like this! It would have been extraordinary if the family had put all its resources into this house, but this was merely a second residence, a place to dwell when they happened to be in town. The money they must have spent on ornaments alone would have fed a small nation for a year, Allegra supposed, and she counted no fewer than eight different servants before Mr. and Mrs. Westbrook finally made their appearance. They, indeed, were even more striking than their surroundings. One might have thought they were meeting the king and queen rather than an architect and his family, had Mrs. Westbrook not been so congenial as she welcomed them. Her husband, though significantly more reserved, was decidedly friendly, and much of the Parises’ trepidation was gone by the time they reached the table.
              “Allow me to introduce Mr. Neil Gilmore,” said Mr. Westbrook, indicating a gentleman who stood up as they walked in and gave the visitors a gracious bow. “We’ve been friends since our schooldays and, as he happened to be in London on some government business, I thought he’d like to dine with us tonight.” Anyone could have surmised this just by looking at him: Mr. Westbrook and Mr. Gilmore were clearly cut from the same expensive cloth – what was it about money that gave men an unmistakable look, quite separate from their attire? – and the latter boasted the equally distinct countenance of a shrewd politician, the sort who could get exactly what he wanted before his opponents realized what he was up to. Paradoxically, he was also the type of person whom everybody liked before he uttered a single syllable.
              “And these,” continued his friend, an imperceptible note of pride entering his voice, “are my sons, Damon and Graham.” The boys were now miles away from their Wednesday morning hooliganism, appearing very comfortable amid all this formality, and Marcella was strangely disappointed to discover how polite they could be. She shouldn’t have felt that way; there was more than enough chaos waiting for her in Tilbury, not to mention her general displeasure when liveliness crossed the line and became rude, as it so often did when more than one boy was involved. Still, she had wanted them to be animated. There would have been something comforting in that, something to breathe a little reality into this dreamlike world, and she was suddenly as apprehensive as she’d been when she first walked into the house.
              The meal began, as usual, with hors d’oeuvres and pleasantries: Mrs. Westbrook commented on the lovely weather, Adrian remarked on the advantages of the neighborhood, Vanessa praised her hostess’s gown, and so on. By the time soup was served, the party had broken into predictable factions. Adrian had very naturally fallen in with Edward and Neil, whose conversation about an old schoolmate was just beginning to lag when Mr. Paris interjected, “I think Mr. Westbrook said you were here on government business, Mr. Gilmore. What is it that you do?”
              “I’m an MP, actually,” he replied, speaking in such a casual way that he might have said he dumped out the ash cans for the Forestry Commission. “It’s not a bad job, all in all, though I won’t tell you it’s been nothing but sunshine and roses over the years, especially during the war.”
              “You’ve been in the Commons for a while, then?”
              “Since 1910, yes – nineteen years, and I’ve only just made it into the Shadow Cabinet, which probably doesn’t say much for me,” he chuckled, then lowered his blue eyes to his bowl in either modesty or embarrassment over this fact. You couldn’t be sure with politicians, as far as Adrian was concerned, though he found himself willing to believe in this one’s humility.
              Mr. Westbrook, at least, was inclined to trust his friend, and declared, “Really, Gilmore, you don’t need to be so self-effacing about things. Did you know,” he asked, turning his attention to Adrian, “that he could have been the Foreign Secretary right now if Baldwin was still the Prime Minister?” Mr. Gilmore shook his head, laughing quietly to himself over the other man’s ludicrous claims, which were little better than sheer lies. That was one difference between them, at least: Edward required a joke of the highest caliber to warrant a public display of mirth, while Neil was more jovial, more relaxed, though he certainly maintained a patina of dignity at all times. “Of course,” added Mr. Westbrook, somehow growing graver than before, “I suppose that has to be forgotten for the present, thanks to this Labour nonsense. Do you imagine they’ll hold power for more than nine months this time?”
              Gilmore grinned. “Not if we can dig up another Zinoviev letter. What do you think about this Labour business, Mr. Paris?”
              Adrian, who had been emitting a stilted, awkward chortle in response to his inquisitor’s last comment, nearly choked on his soup before replying, “I’m afraid I don’t follow politics too closely, or not closely enough to have a meaningful opinion on anything.” This was the truth, if not quite the whole truth. He had neglected to mention that he avoided politics because he basically abhorred the entire system and most of the people in it, an attitude he had picked up from his father in childhood and cultivated over the past thirty years, regardless of his own elevated position in society. Rich or poor, he couldn’t shake his feelings about these government bigwigs. It was all well and good that Mr. Gilmore was affable away from his work, but even the nicest politician had to be a bit of a weasel if he wanted to make any progress in Whitehall. The very fact that this man was so likable was the sole thing that prompted Adrian to tiptoe around the issue, because he would have spoken out otherwise; no one could coerce him into silence except his wife.
              Unfortunately, Mr. Westbrook interpreted his guest’s answer as more gratuitous modesty, and inquired firmly, “But how do you vote?”
            “Liberal,” was his curt reply. He didn’t care what they thought of him, didn’t care that Mr. Westbrook grimaced and Mr. Gilmore opened his eyes in half-farcical horror; even so, he was glad that he had never cast a ballot for Labour.
            “Well,” Gilmore said after a pause, “I must say I admire your loyalty, if nothing else.” His tone and facial expression made Adrian feel better about his general aversion to politicians, because they seemed to express pitying contempt for anyone who refused to subscribe to the indubitable wisdom of the Conservative Party. “I…I don’t want to offend you, by any means,” he continued, “but, much as I dislike Labour, I must say I’m happy that somebody’s replacing the Liberals. Mind you, I had no problems with them at first – apart from the fact that they were the other party, of course – until Lloyd George made such a fiasco of the Treaty of Versailles.” He sighed. “I’m as patriotic as any man, and I certainly don’t think Germany should have gotten off scot-free after they did so much damage, but that document absolutely ruined them. Is that what the Liberals wanted with all that pacifist drivel – to carry on the war without weapons?”
            Now it was Edward’s turn to feel uncomfortable. He’d heard his friend rant about this topic a hundred times in the past decade, and he only seemed to grow more ardent in each successive occurrence. Neil was, under most circumstances, an easygoing gentleman, definitely the mellower of the two of them, and it was always unsettling when he exhibited such zeal. These moments reminded Edward of an incident back at Eton when Neil suspected another student of cheating in the Wall Game which, after a year and a half of mounting anger, resulted in this other boy being strung by his ankles from the branch of an elm. It was unlikely that he’d find Mr. Lloyd George wriggling on a rope someday, but…well, Gilmore had his ways. At any rate, Edward didn’t like this conversation, or the abuse to Mr. Paris’s political views (much as he disagreed with them), so he tried to change course by declaring, “I still think Labour is going to ruin this country. There was an article in the paper this morning…”
              “Oh, stop criticizing them,” his wife broke in, momentarily halting her own dialogue with Vanessa. “Goodness, you’re perfectly willing to give charity to the destitute, but you won’t do anything to help the working classes, who aren’t much better off.” Pleased to observe a faint blush crawling up her husband’s cheeks, she turned back to Mrs. Paris and said, “Anyway, do you have to put up with a great deal of prejudice from men in your profession? I imagine a female solicitor is quite a rarity, even these days.”
         “Yes, I’m afraid so,” Vanessa replied, “although I can cope with it better than most women I’ve met. If I’d just had the basic training, I might have struggled, but I learned more from my father by age ten than I ever picked up during my formal education. Whether or not they want to – and, believe me, they don’t want to – the men come to respect you sooner or later if you can prove yourself.” She was unabashedly proud of her legal skills, and loathed the widespread assumption that she had gotten where she was by virtue of that cold charm she possessed in abundance. In earlier days, she may have used it to her advantage on one or two occasions, but she had finally reached the point where her professional merits could stand on their own. It was a fine thing to impress people with intelligence rather than looks, not that Vanessa couldn’t do both at the same time.
         Again, it was almost impossible to electrify the worldly Mrs. Westbrook with anything short of an outright miracle, and she remained nonchalant even as she inquired about every detail of her guest’s job. She was intrigued, really; she would have been a dynamic suffragette if she’d been born a little lower, and she had nothing but the highest regard for women who earned their livings in a world dominated by men, yet it didn’t produce a single mark of excitement in her manner. In anyone else, this might have irked Vanessa, but in such a personage it was a remarkable trait. Yes, they were going to get on very well, provided that Mrs. Westbrook didn’t expect to intimidate her. The two women smiled at each other just then, as if they had both reached this conclusion at the same instant, and continued their cool conversation.
         Marcella, who had been listening to this discussion with one ear, shifted her attention to the end of the table when she heard Graham sneeze. “God bless you,” she said mechanically, in unison with her sister and Damon, and then they fell quiet once more. The four teenagers had had an incredibly dull evening thus far. None of them knew what to talk about with total strangers, especially total strangers of the opposite sex, and though Allegra had a million things to say to anyone who wasted money on solid gold silverware, her sister’s sporadic glares served as a sufficient muzzle. This was precisely what Marcella had feared when she first saw the boys. If they were only in a less restrictive setting, they might have been excellent friends by now – perhaps not, of course, although it was impossible to know without trying – but the double bonds of shyness and civility made them slaves to silence.
         It was Damon who first attempted to break the ice while they were waiting for the main course. He, like Marcella, had unintentionally been eavesdropping on his mother and Vanessa for lack of anything better to do, and he reasoned that this was as good as topic as any. Clearing his throat, he began, “So, your mother is a solicitor?”
         Bad move. “No,” said Allegra, her eyes burning like green fire, “my mother is an artist.”
         “Vanessa’s our stepmother,” her sister explained, quickly and softly.
         The tone of this brief statement was so sweetly apologetic, so different from the younger girl’s livid reprimand, that it gave Damon the courage to try again. “Your stepmother is a solicitor, then?” The girls nodded. “I wonder,” he mused, unsure where to carry the subject now that he had their attention, “if she’d…give Graham some advice.”
         Allegra, who was still annoyed with the world at large, was about to respond that Vanessa didn’t have time for anyone under twenty-five, even if he was wealthier than Solomon, but Marcella managed to open her mouth a second faster. “Are you planning to study the law?” she asked the young man in question, giving her sister a solid kick in the shin as she spoke.
         Truthfully, Graham had never given that idea more than a moment’s thought, although it was one of his father’s pet notions, and he was forced to reply, “It’s…a possibility, I suppose; you know, the second son has to do something to earn a living.”
         For the first time all night, Allegra felt her exasperation with this family soften. Unlike her sister, she had not read enough Jane Austen novels to fully comprehend the landed gentry lifestyle, so the idea that this boy was going to work for his money someday shed an entirely new light on him. She opened her mouth to ask why Mr. Westbrook didn’t just split the money evenly between his two children, as there was clearly more than enough to go around, but the words would not come out. Suddenly, she was just a foolish little girl rebelling against things she didn’t understand. If Patrick disliked this affluent rubbish, there had to be something iniquitous in it, yet maybe it wasn’t as black and white as she had always thought. Her confusion merely increased as she listened to Marcella and the brothers talk of work and school, of Liam and his enthusiasm for football, of ice cream and boating parties and lazy summer afternoons, without the slightest hint of the anticipated pretension or snobbery. They were – well, a lot like the boys she knew, as a matter of fact. It was like she had spent the past thirteen years in a storybook where everyone was either exceedingly good or dreadfully wicked, only to turn the page and discover the princess dancing with the dragon.
         “You were quiet tonight,” Marcella whispered while they waited for the adults to finish their goodbyes. “I thought you would spend the whole evening criticizing the family until they agreed to give away all that money and take up bohemianism.” Allegra, who had thought the same thing, reacted with a shrug. Imagining that she had stumbled across a chink in her sister’s armor, the older girl smirked as she hissed, “You fancy one of them, don’t you? Otherwise, nothing would have stopped you from saying exactly what you thought of this place.”
         But this was the farthest thing from Allegra’s mind. Surely, three hours had not produced so great a change that she could lose her heart to one of these highborn types, or even like them in the way she liked ordinary people. She was still quite positive that there was cause to revile the wealthy for what they were, for the problems they created, for the poverty that existed as a direct result of their greed; however, she had a few questions to ask Patrick when she went home, and her world would have to remain off-kilter until he gave her some answers.