The Ashford Affair Read online

  “You care more about that plane than you do any person.”

  “But of course. People can be so tedious, with their claims, their duties, their obligations, their endless whining. All the Moth asks is a regular supply of petrol.” Val leaned an elbow against the cockpit and raised a brow. “Are you going to play, pet, or shall I put you into your nice little motorcar and send you back to your family?”

  “No one sends me anywhere.” She saw the amusement in his eyes and knew he’d done it on purpose, to get a rise out of her. And she’d fallen right into it. “Damn you.”

  “Dearest, dearest … You’re wasting your breath. I was damned long before I met you.” With exaggerated gallantry, he lifted her hand to his lips. “Not that you wouldn’t be worth a brief stint in the infernal regions, but I’m afraid you’ll have to get in line.”

  Enough was enough. Besides, much as she hated to admit it, time was getting short. She’d meant to be back by lunchtime, before Addie and Frederick realized she was gone. It was already getting on towards ten. With an hour in the air, she’d be cutting it close.

  “Take me flying,” she commanded. “Or I’ll go home.”

  “All right,” he said. She should have known he was always his most dangerous when he was his most accommodating. He turned her hand over in his. She shivered as his lips grazed the inside of her wrist. “But first…”

  She shouldn’t. Ten o’clock already, and when one gave in to Val he always took it as license to press even harder the next time.…

  He expertly turned back her sleeve, his lips moving along the inside of her arm, and Bea’s brain turned to jelly.

  “Unless, of course, you can’t.”

  He looked at her disingenuously, daring her to say it, daring her to say she had to go, to admit that she was less free, shackled to a husband who didn’t want her and children who baffled her. She knew if she said it, he’d pat her on the shoulder and let her go. She’d fume all the way home, squirming with sexual frustration and rage and wanting him all the more because of it.

  “It’s your choice,” he said.

  Only it wasn’t, really, was it? She’d forfeited her choices years ago, when she’d got pregnant with Marjorie.

  “Yes,” she said defiantly, “it is.”

  And she dragged his mouth to hers, closing her eyes against the sky and the struts and the birds watching from the trees, kissing him as though she could suck out the secret of his marvelous unconcern and make it hers. She heard his breath quicken, felt his pulse beat faster, and felt a surge of triumph. In this, at least, she was master, not he.

  There was more than one way to fly.

  New York, 1999

  “But I’ve seen the pictures,” said Clemmie. “The ones of Granny and Grandpa together in Kenya.”

  There was the one on the table in the living room, the two of them in their coffee field together, Grandpa Frederick in a solar topee and Granny Addie in a pair of high-waisted trousers, and another that used to live on the bureau, Granny Addie and Grandpa Frederick in the same stone house Clemmie had seen in Bea’s album, seated on the porch with Clemmie’s mother standing on one side and a sulky-looking Aunt Anna sitting on Grandpa Frederick’s lap. Clemmie was sure she’d seen others, too, if only she could remember where.

  “Those are all later,” said Aunt Anna. “Take a closer look at them, you’ll see. She didn’t come out until 1926.”

  Several years after Clemmie’s mother was born. “Did she send you to Kenya with Grandpa Frederick?”

  Clemmie had heard of children left in England while their parents went off to the colonies, but never the other way around. On the other hand, people were strange. Perhaps they’d been going through a bad patch; perhaps Granny Addie needed to stay behind for business reasons. It could have been anything.

  Clemmie’s mother cleared her throat and said, with difficulty, “I was born in Mombasa. Your aunt was born in Nairobi.” She cast a narrow-eyed look at Aunt Anna. “What your aunt is trying to get me to tell you is that biologically, your Granny Addie wasn’t my mother. Not that I can see why that should matter at this point, after so many—”

  “Biologically?” Clemmie broke into her mother’s tirade. “What?”

  “She wasn’t our mother,” said Aunt Anna.

  “She was in every way that counted,” said Clemmie’s mother stubbornly. “She was far more of a mother to us than—”

  “You can’t even say her name, can you? She doesn’t even exist to you.”

  “We barely existed to her.”

  “Whoa,” said Clemmie. She felt like Alice through the looking glass, everything upside down and topsy-turvy. “But she and Grandpa Frederick—they met when she was thirteen! She told me the whole story. With the mouse.”

  “There were intervening events,” said her mother primly.

  Aunt Anna gave her sister a look. “They were married in 1929. There’s probably a marriage certificate floating around somewhere if you don’t believe me. You do the math.”

  By 1929, Mother would have been almost eight years old, Aunt Anna five. But there, in front of her, was an album dated 1926, featuring everyone but Granny Addie.

  From a very long way away, she could see a manila folder, splayed open on the floor of Jon’s study, and the grainy photocopy of the cover of an old magazine. Another picture without Granny Addie. She could see the caption in front of her, ink smeared but still legible: LADY BEATRICE DESBOROUGH AND THE HONOURABLE FREDERICK DESBOROUGH.

  Not Gillecote. Not Rivesdale. Desborough.

  Clemmie pointed at the album. She was amazed at how steady her hand was. “It’s Bea, isn’t it? She’s the intervening event.”

  It was easier to think of it that way. An intervening event was so cold and anodyne. Not a person, an intervening event.

  Her mother nodded.

  “She’s—” Clemmie couldn’t bring herself to say “my grandmother.” The words choked at the back of her throat. Her grandmother had been Granny Addie. Only she wasn’t. The words burst out of her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Her mother’s throat worked. “It didn’t seem important.”

  “Not important?” Clemmie had spent her whole life trying to remake herself in the image of a grandmother who wasn’t her grandmother. She was—Clemmie didn’t even want to try to do the genealogical plotting. Her voice wobbled as she asked, “Was Grandpa Frederick really my grandfather? Or was that a lie, too?”

  “You have his eyes,” said her mother.

  “You used to say I had Granny’s chin,” retorted Clemmie. “I just didn’t realize it was the wrong granny. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  There was silence.

  Clemmie’s nails bit into her palms. “What happened to her? To my real grandmother?”

  It felt like a betrayal to say it, to even think it, here in Granny Addie’s room, with the ghost of Granny Addie still among them, in the pictures propped against the wall, the clothes in the boxes. Clemmie had spent so many hours in this room, bouncing on the bed that wasn’t here anymore, playing dress up with the clothes that used to hang in the closet, sitting by that horrible metal hospital bed. They’d spent so much time together, she and Granny Addie.

  But Granny Addie wasn’t Granny Addie, and she had betrayed Clemmie, too, by keeping silent.

  “Your sainted Granny Addie got rid of her,” said Anna. “She came out to Kenya and everything went to hell.”

  “That’s not fair,” said Clemmie’s mother sharply. “You can’t blame it on Mummy. It wasn’t her fault.”

  “Mummy?” Aunt Anna made choking noises. “God, she had you so brainwashed! You just couldn’t wait to get rid of our real mother, could you?”

  “You weren’t old enough to remember,” said Clemmie’s mother with dignity. “You don’t remember how it was before.”

  “Yes, I do.” There were lines in Aunt Anna’s face that Clemmie had never seen before. “I remember our mother—our real mother. I remember her perfume. I remember h
er laugh.”

  Clemmie’s mother rose to her feet. “Do you remember the fighting? Do you remember how she used to disappear for weeks on end? Do you remember any of that?” She clutched the back of the chair with both hands. “I remember. I remember the way the governesses used to come and go. I remember the nights she didn’t come home. You were only a baby—you wouldn’t remember. She never wanted us. She never—”

  “Maybe she didn’t want you,” Aunt Anna tossed back.

  Clemmie’s mother shook her head. “Addie was more a mother to both of us than she ever was.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Anna. “She could afford to be. She got everything she wanted. Once she got rid of our mother.”

  Tension sizzled between them. For a moment, they looked eerily alike, not in feature, but in expression, in the hostility radiating from each.

  “Stop! Stop it, both of you!” Clemmie rounded on her mother. “Were you ever going to tell me?”

  “You don’t understand how it was. Our own mother … left us.” Aunt Anna made an indignant noise, but Clemmie’s mother didn’t let herself be diverted. She looked steadily at Clemmie. “Your grandmother was my mother in every way that counted. She was my mother for seventy years. She’s the mother I would have chosen if I’d have the chance to choose.”

  “She wasn’t my grandmother,” said Clemmie. Her mother’s voice was a buzz in her ears, her arguments going past her, making no sense. “If she wasn’t your mother, she couldn’t be my grandmother.”

  “She didn’t think of it that way,” said Clemmie’s mother. “It would have hurt her to hear you talking like that. Your Granny Addie loved you,”

  “She wasn’t my Granny Addie.” Clemmie felt as though she’d been pummeled. Every muscle in her body hurt. She felt slow and stupid. “She was my—what? My cousin two times removed? How could you keep that from me?”

  “What good would it have done to tell you?” Her mother’s voice was almost pleading. “You had a grandmother, a real grandmother. Why would I take that away from you?”

  “You should have told me,” Clemmie said stubbornly. She couldn’t get past the injustice of it, the not being told, the not knowing. A horrible thought struck her. “Did Dad know?”

  “Yes,” said her mother.

  “Bob? Bill?”

  “No.”

  It ought to have made her feel better that her brothers were equally ignorant, but it didn’t. They wouldn’t care, either of them. They’d always belonged more to her dad’s side. They’d known their other grandmother, Dad’s mother, who had died before Clemmie was born. It was Clemmie who had come to New York after the divorce, who had lived day in and day out in Granny Addie’s house, constantly being told how much alike they were, how much she was following in her grandmother’s footsteps.

  Which grandmother?

  “Jon knew, too, didn’t he?”

  Clemmie didn’t even have to wait for the answering nod. It was so obvious. All of that about not digging too deep, letting sleeping dogs lie, et cetera, et cetera. She didn’t know whom she wanted to punch more, but one thing was clear: She couldn’t punch her seventy-eight-year-old mother.

  Clemmie ran a shaking hand through her hair, Bea’s hair, short, and straight, and cut like a flapper’s. “I’ll talk to you later.” Guilt forced her to add, “If you need me for anything, with the apartment, let me know.”

  “Where are you going?” her mother asked.

  Away. Just away. Away where she could fume in peace. If she stayed—what was the good of staying? They would just go round and round and round and someone would wind up saying something horrible that couldn’t be unsaid.

  You lied to me. You lied to me. You lied to me.

  She wasn’t sure if she was saying it to her mother or Granny Addie, but either way, she needed out.

  “Out,” she said shortly. “Just out.”

  TWENTY

  New York, 1999

  “Clemmie! I thought you were the Chinese food.”

  Jon stood in the doorway, his body blocking the entrance. He didn’t look entirely thrilled to see her. Good. Let him be afraid. Let him be very afraid.

  She’d meant to go home. But once she started walking, her feet had turned her right instead of left, uptown towards Harlem. All around her, cabs with their lights off carried loads of revelers to their New Year’s celebrations. She knew from experience, it was nearly impossible to get a cab on New Year’s Eve. But Clemmie didn’t mind. She wanted to walk; she needed to walk. She’d left her gloves upstairs at Granny Addie’s—at Addie’s. There was no way she was going back for them, so she’d tucked her cold hands in her pockets, tucked her head down into her collar, and plowed into the park, picking her way over slick leaves and fallen branches. There had been a dusting of snow earlier, frozen now into a fine crust. She could hear it crunching under her heels as she walked, faster and faster, her breath coming in sharp bursts, misting the air in front of her.

  Her mother would have been horrified at the idea of her walking through the park. The park had been no-man’s-land when she was little. That was one of the rules: no park after dark, no going above 96th Street, no West Side. Rules, rules, rules and she’d obeyed them all, Mother’s rules, Granny Addie’s rules, unquestioning. She’d worked so hard to please them—and for what? Clemmie’s inappropriate heels skidded on a thin layer of ice. She caught herself just in time. Let a mugger try to take her on; she’d have his balls for breakfast. Hell, she’d welcome it. She was spoiling for a fight, for something; the blood boiled in her veins. She should have been cold, but she wasn’t. She was seething, burning up from within.

  No sensible mugger would take her on. She was muttering to herself, rehearsing arguments, practicing recriminations. The things she should have said to her mother! And Granny Addie—Granny Addie who wasn’t Granny Addie, who had spent all those years pretending and died before she could explain. Had she meant to tell her? Was that why she’d started with those stories? Maybe if Clemmie had been around more—

  Guilt warred with anger, combining into a bilious brew of self-righteousness, doubt, and hurt feelings. Fine. What about all those other years? What about the hours she’d spent after school in Granny Addie’s apartment? What about all the Christmases and Thanksgivings? Their special grandmother-granddaughter trip to London together? Why had she never sat her down and said, By the way …

  The park spat her out near 96th Street, on the West Side. She could have gotten on the 1, gone back to her own place to defrost and fume. Instead, Clemmie turned north. She didn’t remember the number of Jon’s building, but she remembered the block, or thought she did. She went down two wrong blocks before she found it, her adrenaline rising with every loop. There it was, Jon’s name on the buzzer, in block capitals in black ink on a piece of masking tape, unevenly applied over the name of the former tenant. By the time Jon’s crackly voice came on the intercom, she didn’t even bother to identify herself; she just barged right on through, stomping her way up the stairs, blood pumping, cheeks numb, hair standing straight up with static.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Clemmie’s voice came out in little pants. It had been too long since she’d been to the gym.

  Surprise, guilt, and confusion chased across Jon’s face. He glanced back over his shoulder. “I only just…”

  “Bullshit.” Anger felt good. Clemmie stepped forward, forcing Jon to move back, opening the door wider. “All that crap about letting sleeping dogs lie. You knew all along. Did you enjoy it? Being able to put one over on me?”

  A curious expression passed across Jon’s face. “Your grandmother,” he said slowly. “That’s what this is about.”

  “Not my grandmother,” Clemmie corrected him. “How long did you know?’

  Jon pressed his eyes shut. “Not that long,” he said. “Only just a few years. Listen, Clemmie—”

  “Just a few years,” Clemmie repeated flatly.

  How many was a few? Jon was a historian; he dealt with decades at a ti
me. Had he known in Rome? She knew, logically, the one didn’t have anything to do with the other, but somehow the thought made her even angrier. Sleeping with her, bad; lying to her while he was sleeping with her, unforgivable. Screwed and screwed over.

  “How long?” she demanded.

  Jon let out a short, frustrated breath. “I did some poking around when I was doing my dissertation research. You do the math. Look, Clemmie—” He blocked the doorway with his body, speaking quickly, “What difference does it make? Your grandmother was your grandmother. She loved you. I’ve always thought Bea sounded like a bitch.”

  The very fact that he’d known Bea existed, that he’d had time to develop theories about her, made Clemmie see red.

  “Great,” said Clemmie bitingly. “If she’s a strong woman, she must be a bitch.”

  “I never said that! I wouldn’t say Addie was a bitch—would you call her weak?”

  She didn’t know what to call her at all.

  Jon was off on his own line of thought. “It’s the weak who have to resort to bitchiness, not the strong, like a cornered animal. It’s a defense mechanism.”

  Lovely. Just what she needed. “Thanks for the fortune-cookie philosophy. Can I have some chow mein with that?”

  Jon held up both hands, propping open the door with his back. “You want someone to take this out on? Fine. Knock yourself out. But what good does it do? It was what it was. At least you had someone to call grandmother. Be grateful.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Clemmie shot back.

  “Because it’s not my family?” Jon smiled crookedly. “Thanks. I’d wondered when that was going to come up.”

  He had some nerve. “Because you’re not the one who’s been lied to for the past—forever!”

  Clemmie’s voice cracked, and she realized she was dangerously close to tears.

  She struggled for composure. Anger was okay; crying wasn’t. She couldn’t lose it all over Jon, not now. It had just been such an awful, awful day: the forced piety of the church service, the empty space where Granny’s bed used to be, lipstick on the teeth of the party guests… It all came crashing together. And now here she was, on Jon’s doorstep—not even in the f-ing foyer, for Christ’s sake—throwing a temper tantrum like a spoiled five-year-old who hadn’t gotten her cupcake.