Clouds among the Stars. Victoria Clayton

You don’t think … No, Portia can’t have gone abroad; she would have telephoned. He’s made it all up. It’s just nonsense like the rest.’ I read the article again, wanting to reassure myself. Supposing there was even the smallest amount of truth in the story?

      ‘There isn’t anything about me.’ Cordelia sounded disappointed.

      ‘No doubt there’ll be something in the evening edition.’ Bron was bitter and I couldn’t blame him.

      ‘I don’t suppose I’ll ever be able to make you see how sorry I am,’ I said sorrowfully.

      ‘I shouldn’t think so, no.’ Bron took a plate, filled it with buns and went slowly upstairs with the mien of a man betrayed.

      I felt deeply remorseful. I had been an idiot and I deserved all the vituperation that would no doubt be coming my way. Dirk put his paws on my knees and tried to lick my face. I was grateful for his solicitude.

      ‘Don’t worry, Hat,’ Cordelia patted my arm, smearing my sleeve with custard. ‘I shall go on speaking to you even if everyone else in the world refuses to. There was a sad film I saw once called The Angry Silence about this man who was sent to Coventry by his workmates …’

      I stopped listening to Cordelia’s recital of the plot as my eye fell on another, smaller item on the same page.

      

      DRUGS SEIZED AT HEADQUARTERS OF REBEL POLITICAL ORGANISATION.

      Acting on information received, police yesterday raided a house in Owlstone Road, Clerkenwell. They took away several packages, believed to be cannabis, and the remains of a cake. The officer in charge said he could not confirm the presence of illegal substances until these items had been subjected to laboratory tests. Several arrests were made and an injunction has been served prohibiting the group known as SPIT to hold further meetings on the premises.

      ‘… I mean, nothing could be that important, could it?’ asked Cordelia. ‘I’d have given in at once – What’s the matter?’

      ‘This is the worst day of my life.’ I groaned and put my head in my hands.

      ‘You can’t possibly know that. You might have something really awful going to happen to you later on. All your children burned to death or your nose cut off in a revolving door.’

      I was too depressed to argue. The telephone rang and went on ringing. There had been an offended silence since I had dared to plug it back in, the night before. And the gang of pressmen outside the front door was considerably depleted. It seemed they were busy digesting Stanley Norman’s scoop. Now the telephone bell seemed to have a new tone, insolent and at the same time imperative.

      It was Mr Potter, the bank manager. When I said my mother would not be able to answer his letter for at least two weeks he sounded cross. He kept saying that it was all ‘very irregular’, to which I could make no answer, having no idea what, in a bank’s eyes, constituted regularity. I have never been good with money. In this I am a true Byng. I always hope some will come from somewhere and, so far, it always has. I waited patiently, mostly in silence, while he remonstrated with me. Sometimes I said ‘I see’ when he seemed to require a response. I suppose this was irritating for he got more and more tetchy. When he began to talk of solicitors and bailiffs I felt alarmed but continued to say ‘I see’ because I really couldn’t think of anything more appropriate. It would hardly do any good to beg him for mercy, or a donation to the fund for indigent Byngs.

      ‘I’m sorry, Miss Byng, but I don’t think you do see. Unless funds are immediately forthcoming, I’m afraid the bank will have to freeze the account.’

      I was suddenly annoyed beyond bearing by the hypocritical tones of regret he put into his voice. I was certain that the fall of the House of Byng was brightening his dreary life immeasurably. Why should he have all the fun, lecturing and threatening and making himself out to be a model of deportment when he probably fiddled his business expenses, bullied his children and neglected his poor old mother, if he had one? ‘Why don’t you give yourself a well-deserved rest from these onerous duties?’ I said in my sweetest voice. ‘Go and – make love to your mother’s cook.’

      I could not quite bring myself to use an obscenity so it lost something in translation but I put the receiver down with a sense of triumph. It was a cheap victory but nothing better was likely to come my way.

      The arrival of the post brought more unhappiness. I saw at once, among the bills and circulars, a letter addressed to me, in Dodge’s handwriting.

      I never would have believed it of you. My confidence in my own judgement is severely undermined. You grassed on your friends to save your own skin. You are a traitor and that is the kindest thing I can say. You are expelled from the society – and my heart – for ever, with effect from this moment. D.

      There was a postscript: ‘Yell says she saw you let that pig put his arm round you. I hope there was nothing worse.’

      The ink grew faint at the end as though the pen was spluttering with indignation. I had felt too many things too violently in the last forty-eight hours for this latest blow to my happiness to have much immediate effect. Dodge’s pale, angular face, fierce with polemic, loomed up in the forefront of my brain from time to time and there was an intensification of the gnawing sensation in my stomach that had been there since I heard of Pa’s arrest, but I was incapable of anything like serious reflection.

      Dirk followed me up to my room and stretched himself out on the bed next to Mark Antony, his head pillowed on my pyjamas, while I sat at my desk and wrote several stanzas of verse. I knew the poetry was bad but I didn’t care. Anything was better than thinking about life.

      Maria-Alba brought lunch up to my room. I rushed to take the tray from her so she could recover her breath, for the last flight of stairs was steep.

      ‘I call and call but you not answer so I think Harriet like to be alone. Perhaps it is better. Ophelia is in cattivissimo umore, eccome!’ She flapped her fingers and blew out her cheeks, to denote tempestuous rage.

      ‘I can’t say I blame her.’

      ‘Certo.’ Maria-Alba settled her huge frame on my bed. Mark Antony removed himself to the windowsill but despite the circulation in his paws being cut off, Dirk merely smacked his lips and continued to snore. ‘It is not a thing a woman enjoys to be know – to be abandon by a man. And a woman like Ophelia – mio Dio!’

      ‘I’d better resign myself to being extremely unpopular for several years.’ I felt my chin wobble.

      ‘Su, su, Harriet!’ Maria-Alba stroked my arm with her large yellow fingers. ‘It will come better. We are all in troubles but they will go away.’

      ‘It isn’t only Bron and Ophelia. The bank’s going to stop our money. And I’m very worried about Portia. Supposing that beastly, bloody Stan didn’t make it up? I mean, what does a man have to do to be nicknamed The Gravefiller? And Dodge thinks I informed on him to the police. He doesn’t want … to see me … any more.’

      I burst into tears and sobbed on Maria-Alba’s comforting bosom, as so many times in the past. ‘Che stupido!’ she hugged my head. ‘You are too good for him. He is lucky you speak him in the street, besides you allow him to kiss you. He is a bad boy, e disordinato.’ Maria-Alba had not forgotten that Dodge’s shoes had left a deposit of Deptford river mud on the drawing-room carpet and that he had stubbed out his cigarette among the sugared almonds in the silver bonbonnière.

      ‘He isn’t bad,’ I sobbed. ‘He really cares about people and wants to help them. I do love him.’ And just at that moment I did. There is nothing like being handed notice to quit to fan the flames of passion, even if you were only lukewarm before. Never had Dodge’s virtues been so desirable and his faults so negligible.

      ‘Cocca mia, you are tired. Eat your good lunch that Maria-Alba brings despite the poor legs, and you feel better.’

      I was obliged to try though I was not in the