Lynne had distrusted Paul from the
outset (how right she was) and the feeling; although voiced by
neither – was mutual.
With the supposed mellowing of age and
the fact that life had propelled them all in different directions, it
had ceased to matter, because opportunities for meeting had naturally
decreased.
In Gridchester days, a pattern emerged
whereby she would invite Lynne to stay when Paul was visiting the
Oxbridge colleges.
On the rare occasions that she slipped
the domestic leash for a day’s shopping in London, they sometimes
did lunch.
As years passed, these were
increasingly strained affairs. She wanted to tell her oldest friend
the truth about her marriage, but words failed her.
How could you talk about that?
When Greg Salt popped up as part of the
equation, the possibilities of disclosure moved from remote to
impossible.
Lynne’s husband was not sympathique.
He was, however, rich and successful,
and she suspected that he had never experienced a moment of
uncertainty from Nanny to Prep to Big School.
Paul and Donald’s upbringing (if
that was the right word for the dilettante, faintly bohemian
parenting of Lilias and Eric) had not lacked money.
Their mother and father were
journalists on national newspapers, and Lilias in particular had
connections with B-list actors, artists and musicians (Peter,
Paul and Mary but not Dusty; Denholm Elliot but not Olivier).
As Eric was prone to say (especially
on the rare and uniquely embarrassing occasions when he met her own
parents) a Waverley education was the best gift he had given to
his sons, and he was possibly right, as evinced by Paul’s Third at
Cambridge.
But the middle-class aspiration of her
husband’s family paled into insignificance beside the landed
certainties of Greg Salt’s clan.
The third son of Appeal Court Judge Sir
Boniface ( Boner) Salt; he had been raised in Tulberry; an
hour’s drive from central London but another country to all
intents and purposes, where visitors were more likely to encounter
deer and horses than people.
Wickery Court, the family seat,
would have been instantly recognised by readers familiar with the
novels of Waugh and Mitford. Greg had followed his father and
brothers into Pop at Eton; his sisters Delphine and Maris had boarded
at St Mary’s Ascot.
All rode to hounds.
Sir Boniface and Lady Eleanor embodied
the England of The Countrywoman magazine and, of
course, each to their own.
But how on earth Lynne had become
enmeshed in this world to the extent of marrying into it was beyond
her understanding.
Over the years it formed another
wedge between them.
Lynne married Greg in 1989, shortly
after she had moved with her own family to Littelbury following
Paul’s appointment as Deputy Master at the school of the same name.
The wedding itself was a shock (she had
not seen it coming, and Greg had featured in only one letter from
Lynne, in connection with a planning issue) but everything about the
man placed him in polar opposition to her friend.
Lynne’s father was a GP in a
family-run medical practice where her mother provided administrative
back up. Lynne and her twin sister Olive had attended the local
grammar school on scholarships and while Lynne had taken the academic
path, Olive had married her first boyfriend, Kelvin. The couple now
ran a successful optician’s business and were themselves the
parents of twin boys.
It was obvious why Greg Salt; a rather
portly Tufton-Bufton-style lawyer, would be attracted to
acerbic, career high-flier, Lynne Lessways, who had already carved
out a name for herself within the Department as one to watch.
She was going places fast, and already
the routines of the Civil Service; dusted and tended generation after
generation like plastic geraniums, seemed too outmoded for a woman of
her ambition.
But why Lynne; passionately egalitarian
in every respect; a voracious reader, free-thinker and a fervent
advocate of what used to be called women’s lib,should wish
to tie herself in perpetuity to a person who regarded Earl Grey’s
Reform Act as midwife to the permissive society, was
the eighth wonder of the world.
How could the woman who had dated
some of the most interesting and intellectual men in London have sunk
to this?
She suspected that the answer was the
usual root of all evil – money.
Lynne earned a good salary at the
Department; the type of income that no main grade pay scale teacher
would take home. She had progressed from a series of rented studio
apartments in the less fashionable parts of London to a very decent
one bedroom flat in Pimlico, courtesy of a ruinous mortgage.
It was pleasant – and Lynne’s eye
for detail and an interesting artefact had meant that she had
acquired some extremely nice pieces from foreign travel,
including severa modern mosaics from Sicily and a splendidly ornate
rug; a memento from her Moroccan holiday with Sandra.
After her marriage to Greg, Lynne kept
the flat (now dubbed a pied-a-terre) possibly as an
insurance policy should the relationship fail.
But whatever her intentions had been,
it was rarely if ever used, because when
Mr and Mrs Salt (junior) were not
residing at their spacious Surrey home, or holidaying at the Seville
apartment, they spent time with Greg’s family at Wickery Court.
Shortly after the wedding (listed in
the Society column of The Sentinel, after the weekly
Court Schedule), Lynne left the Department, retaining tenuous links
as an Advisor and set up her own Consultancy, Saltways.
Exactly what Saltways did was never
clear, but within the space of a year, its plush offices in Park Lane
were augmented by sister concerns in Brussels and Madrid.
Lynne became a regular on the more
serious quasi-scientific radio and television programmes; chaired the
judging panel for the annual Green Businesses Award, and
started to write.
The Inuit: Man and Myth,
shortlisted for the Attenborough in 2009, was a sparkling tour
de force; there was talk of a series of documentaries based on its
findings, and even a short film, courtesy of the acclaimed director;
Anton Lubyeck.
And of course the dogs.
She had absolutely no idea where Pork,
Scratching and the long trail of their ancestors, had come from.
At Dorlich, Lynne had evinced a total
lack of interest in any animal apart from the human male.
Within a month of becoming Mrs Salt,
however, the first puppies arrived and assumed pole position at the
centre of hearth and home with their baskets, pedigrees and expensive
medical treatments.
Crufts and breeders took on an
inordinate importance although Lynne showed no signs of breeding
herself and thus doing her bit for the Salt dynasty.
It was a life of money and the freedom
and influence that money can bring, and she had to admit that her
friend had thrived.
But in the death-watch hours of the
night, did the woman who had esteemed Ben Bex-Oliver wonder exactly
what she was doing lying next to Greg Salt; a man who (despite his
wealth and connections) probably wore sock suspenders?
If so, she did not say ...9
Now, she held the telephone, barely
recognising the guttural stream assaulting her ears. It was
incomprehensible but perfectly lucid
It was all about pain.
She left the house and set off for the
station; her ultimate destination a Pimlico flat that she had not
visited for 21 years.
She wondered if it had changed.
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