Against Her Nature, page 1
Elizabeth Buchan was a fiction editor at Random House before leaving to write full time. Her novels include the prize-winning Consider the Lily, international bestseller Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman, The New Mrs Clifton, The Museum of Broken Promises and Two Women in Rome. Buchan’s short stories are broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in magazines. She has reviewed for the Sunday Times, The Times and the Daily Mail, and has chaired the Betty Trask and Desmond Elliot literary prizes. She was a judge for the Whitbread First Novel Award and for the 2014 Costa Novel Award. She is a patron of the Guildford Book Festival and co-founder of the Clapham Book Festival.
Also by Elizabeth Buchan
Daughters of the Storm
Light of the Moon
Consider the Lily
Against Her Nature
Beatrix Potter: The Story of the Creator of Peter Rabbit
Perfect Love
Secrets of the Heart
Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman
The Good Wife
That Certain Age
The Second Wife
Separate Beds
Daughters
I Can’t Begin to Tell You
The New Mrs Clifton
The Museum of Broken Promises
Two Women in Rome
First published in hardback in Great Britain in 1997 by Macmillan, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
First published in paperback in Great Britain in 1998 by Macmillan, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
This eBook edition published in 2022 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.
Copyright © Elizabeth Buchan, 1997
The moral right of Elizabeth Buchan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
eBook ISBN: 978 1 83895 544 1
Corvus
An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd
Ormond House
26–27 Boswell Street
London
WC1N 3JZ
www.corvus-books.co.uk
For my mother-in-law, Hope Buchan, with love
Chaos Theory: The branch of mathematics used to deal with chaotic systems, for example, an engineered structure, such as an oil platform which is subjected to irregular, unpredictable stress
From the Hutchinson Encyclopaedia
PROLOGUE
Perhaps it was something to do with their height: tall women are treated differently from their small sisters. Being tall means that you must work hard to blend.
Perhaps it was their differences: one from a gentle, unthreatened upbringing in Hampshire, the other from the tough outreaches of a council flat in Streatham, and they recognized in each other the polarity essential to balance.
Perhaps it was the era, which promised that all things were possible. It was not so surprising that a girl nurtured in the city’s anarchy should be drawn to one to whom it had always been suggested that the world was ordered for her comfort.
Whatever, the two girls met at a reception given by Women in the City (WIC) a new and, of necessity, rather poorly subscribed association. For ten seconds or so, they scrutinized each other. Long seconds. Instantly, and to her immense surprise, a love, both deep and loyal, destined to outlive feelings for lovers, perhaps husbands, trembled on the edges of Becky Vitali’s uninhabited and sceptical heart but drove a spear through Tess Frant’s. And that was that.
‘Let me draw sustenance from life,’ wrote Tess in her childish five-year diary. ‘I must not fail.’
CHAPTER ONE
THE FIRST LETTER ARRIVED ON 25 JUNE 1987, THE DAY OF the Frants’ annual cocktail party. Like most letters, it looked innocuous: in a rectangular white envelope with a typed address.
I am writing to inform you [it said] that the Quattro Marine Syndicate 317/634 will produce a substantial loss in respect of the 1985 Underwriting Account.
You will see from the enclosed letter, which Mr Quattro has sent to his direct Names, that the overall loss is approximately 200 per cent of allocated premium income . . .
A schedule summarizing your underwriting position as of 31 December 1987 is enclosed from which you will note that your cash call will be approximately £6,400 . . .
Colonel Frant read it in the privacy of his study at the High House. Conscious that his heartbeat had raised a little, he frowned, laid the letter to one side and rejoined his family in the kitchen.
Of its contents he said nothing.
*
Summer had applied its colours over the shires and the day was filled with bright hot sun, and with the sound of skylarks swooping over the crops in the fields that lapped the village of Appleford. By six thirty the heat had distilled and rested heavily over the land. Clearly, the sun was going to take its time to set.
As this was England, the topic of the weather was on everyone’s lips.
Mrs Frant moved or, rather, sailed through the drawing room and the coveys of guests. Recognizing a superior might, steam victorious over wind-power, as it were, they gave way and many followed in little dribs into the dry, manicured garden. From time to time, her snorting, slightly anarchic laugh, so at variance with her appearance, could be heard above the murmur of conversation.
‘Margery, my dear,’ she said, halting beside two women on the York stone patio, and kissing the powdered cheek that had been proffered. ‘How lovely.’
‘Lovely,’ echoed Margery Wittingstall, middle-aged, divorced and depressed, but the sentiment did not seem to register with her hostess, who turned to the second woman.
‘And Jilly. How lovely too.’
Jilly Cadogan smiled, safe in the knowledge that she was a beautiful woman who donated energy and attention to the maintenance of that beauty. ‘With time and money, any woman can be good-looking,’ she was heard frequently to say to her friends, and Jilly had plenty of both.
Jilly also proffered a cheek. ‘How good of you to invite us.’
On a hot summer evening, Jilly would have preferred to have been sitting in her own garden, a careful – and fashionable – concoction of scent and colour, but she seldom allowed her preferences to override her social ambitions or duties. In Jilly’s case, these were routed mainly through her husband, Louis, and it was for his sake that she had donned a black linen shift and lipstick, and stood making conversation with the abandoned Margery.
‘That’s just what that guru chappie said. “Think the unthinkable, question the unquestioned, say the unsayable . . .”’
Mrs Frant caught the tail end of a conversation, and a somewhat tired cliché she considered, between a young Turk in the City and the local Tory grandee who resided, with a lot of fake ancestral clutter, in the manor house to the north of Appleford. Both were endeavouring to impress the other.
She beckoned to her son, Jack, who abandoned the group that contained her daughter, Tess, and Tess’s friend Rebecca, or Becky as she preferred to be called.
‘Hand round the drinks, darling,’ she ordered fondly, never ceasing to admire her tall, rangy, unusual son who, during the twenty-five years she had known him, had never given her any worry at all. Until now. ‘Your father’s being a bit slow.’
A toddler in an expensive and useless blue romper-suit, of the type favoured by well-off Parisians, clung to his mother’s leg while a second, older one wove between the legs of the guests unfortunate enough to be in its vicinity. Mrs Frant’s invitation had specifically excluded children, and it was with mild amusement that she saw that the mother, clamped, hobbled and flushed, was paying for her sanction-busting.
Satisfied, Mrs Frant moved on. A big woman, who had once been as slender as a dream, she was given in late middle age to wearing tweed skirts, floral blouses and pale stockings, none of which suited her. Today, however, in honour of her annual showcase party, which was designed to make the point – very subtly, of course – that families like the Frants were the real heart of the village, she was wearing an old-fashioned shirtwaister and flat sandals that revealed unpainted toenails. Yet, in contrast to the gaudy assembly of her guests, well-to-do and smart, there was something magnificent in Mrs Frant’s refusal to submit to the tyranny of appearance: a spirit and independence that, if it had been recognized, might have been admired.
In fact, Mrs Frant was admirable in many ways, not least for her secret life. Like many people who are burdened domestically and tied to one bit of earth, a part of her had cut free, gone undercover, to explore the strange and awful regions of the spirit. Her epic journeys, she called them, secret voyages to match those of the Greek heroes, herself an Odysseus. In reality, Mrs Frant rarely ventured further than the south coast.
‘Becky,’ Tess Frant grabbed her friend, ‘you must meet Louis Cadogan. He’s rich and wicked and he’s lived in Appleford for ages.’ She turned to Louis. ‘And this is Becky, who’s also wicked but poor and wants to make lots of money.
Height, looks, energy: with his usual quickness, Louis summed up the girls. He judged Becky to be the same age as Tess. Twenty-two? Possibly twenty-three. Of course, he already knew Tess. Tall, fair, slightly plump and dressed to attract attention away from that condition, she combined innate, hopeless romanticism with innocence; Becky, tall, pencil-thin and huge-eyed, hid, he saw with a clarity that startled him, an orphaned spirit under glossy hair and skin (and cheap clothes). Her face was dominated by those doe-like eyes above which were drawn, as if by a thick black pencil, a pair of eyebrows. Once seen, few would forget the curious combination of brow and eye. In that careless arrangement of features was cast her future.
And what would be the changes and transformations, wondered Louis, to dent those tender, unformed spirits and write on the untouched faces?
A significant proportion of the men she encountered were smaller than Becky. Louis Cadogan was not. He was big, but narrow, loose-limbed, well dressed and, she calculated, approximately twenty years older than she was. Instinctively she knew it was the moment to use her smile – a seductive smile that, along with her eyes and eyebrows, was the sole inheritance of any use bequeathed by the parents who had been so careless of her procreation and subsequent nurture.
‘Let me guess,’ said Louis, who even if he was dazzled recognized a wile. He studied the face in front of him. ‘Fund management?’
‘No,’ said Becky. ‘I’ve just started at Landes.’
Louis’s interest quickened. Landes was one of the biggest managing agencies working at Lloyd’s and, as one of Lloyd’s noted underwriters (El Medici, said his friends and enemies), he knew it well. ‘As?’
‘A secretary. But I’m hoping to get a job as a reinsurance claims clerk.’ She shrugged. ‘Apprenticeship. It has to be got through.’
‘And?’
‘Well, I’ll have to see,’ said Becky. ‘I don’t intend to stay there long.’
Louis turned to Tess. ‘How are things with you?’
After university (BA Hons, English and psychology), Tess had taken time off while she considered teaching as a career. After a year of reading through textbooks on semiotics and deconstructionism, and temping – a hideous combination – she had decided to flee the shores of literature. An active pursuit of money had been frowned on by the more intellectual undergraduates, the type with whom Tess had mixed. They had felt that Art and Culture were so much more important. At any rate, this was what they said, although Tess noted that the two who had been the most vociferous (and who had produced the plays with the most nudity and violence) had subsequently got themselves extremely well-paid jobs in advertising and the civil service. Tess was more honest and it was, after all, the eighties when, thank goodness, there was no nonsense about getting on and it was not unfashionable to be interested in making money. The upshot was that Colonel Frant made a telephone call to Louis and the job at Tetrobank had materialized.
Lucky Tess. There was always some contact to fall back on. Some prop to hold her up. At least, that’s what Becky had said once or twice when they’d talked over their past and their future (which did not appear to include marriage or children). It was not a bitter or envious remark, merely one that summed up the situation.
Lucky Tess.
While Tess talked to Louis, Becky was making a covert study of his English features, fashioned into good looks by generations of prudent marriage plus a fortunate deployment of genes. Those looks were lent extra interest by a pair of knowing, clever, slightly weary eyes and a mouth that suggested this was a man capable of feeling.
Then Louis made the mistake of turning his head towards Becky. Mutually startled, she by the honesty of his gaze, which told her that he wanted her, and he by the hunger in hers, they exchanged a look. This time, it was Louis who smiled at Becky.
‘Hallo,’ said Jack. Fed up with doing bottle duty and, wishing to chat up Becky, he pushed his way into the group.
Colonel Frant was dispensing drinks on the shaded part of the patio by the house. To the onlooker, he seemed entirely absorbed in his guests. In reality, he was mulling over his business affairs, to wit his run of profits (that is, until this morning), resulting from being a Name at Lloyd’s.
Features set in a smile poised exactly between bonhomie and slight reserve, for he was a little shy at these affairs, he pressed a glass of iced champagne onto a latecomer who was in fact the chairman of the district council and a golfing companion. The glass was positively snatched from Colonel Frant’s hand and the chairman, having exchanged only the briefest of greetings, hightailed it over to the group under the apple tree, which contained his mistress. Colonel Frant poured out another glass.
A man who, after leaving the Army at the age of forty-five, had reinvented himself as a businessman and latterly as the chairman of a small fruit-importing company, he was both shrewd and cautious. But the eye contains a blind spot and it was possible that Colonel Frant did not see the whole picture with respect to his connection with Lloyd’s.
Yet 1983 had seen profits of around six thousand, 1984 had jumped a little to over seven and, gloriously, in 1985 to more than nine. Nothing excessive but very nice, all the same. Colonel Frant’s linen jacket was new, his shirt hailed from Jermyn Street and a gleaming set of golf clubs reposed in the hall of the High House.
‘Over twenty-five thousand Names,’ Nigel had said as he wooed. ‘Capital base? No problem. Means requirement? Say two hundred and fifty thousand. The risk-reward ratio? Best ever. A hundred thousand underwrites three hundred and fifty and we’ll split it up among some darling little syndicates.
‘Covering yourself? Take out stop-loss. You know about that sort of thing. Must do.
‘Good or what?’
‘Tell me,’ said Nigel Pavorde, members’ agent, materializing at the side of Colonel Frant, ‘who’s the chap who’s just moved into Threfall Grange?’
‘Farleigh,’ replied Colonel Frant. ‘Made a killing with an estate agent chain in the West. His wife, though, has made him move back here.’
Nigel looked as though he had been fed a bone. ‘Good or what, John? Introduce me.’
But Colonel Frant had caught his wife’s gaze and picked up a champagne bottle. In its blanket of ice, the glass had sprung a delicate bloom and he wrapped it carefully in a napkin. ‘Duty,’ he said. ‘Talk to you later.’
Nigel had a taste for outrageous waistcoats and possessed a great many. Some, the unkind, suggested that it was the only way he would ever appear interesting. Certainly, those who on first meeting him had been agreeably taken by his expansive figure and gestures found they were less so on the second encounter. Tonight, despite the heat, he was wearing a waistcoat striped in gold under a beige linen jacket, from the pocket of which he pulled a notebook.
‘8 p.m. discomfort in lower stomach, 4 glasses champagne,’ he wrote, on a page filled with similar notations.
He looked up to find Becky watching him. ‘I like to keep a record,’ he explained.
‘Quite,’ said Becky. ‘So useful.’
‘I’m Nigel Pavorde.’
Becky introduced herself, and set about finding out exactly what Nigel Pavorde did for a living.
They walked down the garden towards Eeyore’s Paddock, where Tess had once kept a pony, beyond which was a meadow that Colonel Frant had bought years ago from a farmer who went bankrupt.
Becky had no interest in gardens but she could, and did, appreciate the sight of the meadow dotted with poppies and cornflowers, a lush, old-fashioned sight. Colonel and Mrs Frant were great conservationists and last year had been delighted to find that the tiny harvest mouse could be tempted to nest in a strategically placed tennis ball. To the south lay a flattish plain and the market town of Granton. To the west was the cricket pitch: a tended strip of emerald that managed to be both plutocratic and democratic at the same time. Jimmy Plover was hard at work mowing and the sound of his machine reverberated, vague and soothing, through bursts of the guests’ conversation.
