Helen understood Tommy's position: He'd given Barbara a series of directives, and Barbara had been less than cooperative in carrying them out. Tommy had seen this as an acid test which his former partner had failed; Barbara had seen this as an unfair punishment. Neither of them wished to acknowledge the other's point of view, and Barbara was the one who stood upon the less solid ground when it came to arguing her perspective. So Helen found no difficulty in admitting that Tommy's ultimate reaction to Barbara's defiance of his orders was justified, and she knew his superior officers would agree with the action he'd taken.
But that same action, when considered in conjunction with his earlier decision to work with Winston Nkata and not Barbara Havers, was what bothered Helen. What, she wondered as she rose from her bed and donned her dressing gown, was really at the heart of her husband's animus towards Barbara: the fact that she had defied him or the fact that she was a woman who'd defied him? Of course, Helen had asked him a variation on this very question prior to his departure on the previous day, and unsurprisingly he'd hotly denied that gender had anything to do with how he was reacting towards Barbara. But didn't Tommy's entire history give the He to any denial he might make? Helen wondered.
She washed her face, ran a brush through her hair, and thought about the question. Tommy had a past that was littered with women: women he'd wanted, women he'd had, women with whom he'd worked. His very first lover had been a school friend's mother with whom he'd carried on a tumultuous affair for more than a year, and, prior to his relationship with Helen, his most passionate attachment of the heart had been to the woman who was now the wife of his closest friend. Aside from that latter connection, all Tommy's associations with women had one characteristic in common as far as Helen could see: It was Tommy who directed the course of the action. The women cooperatively went along for the ride.
This exercise of command was simple for him to gain and maintain. Myriad women over the years had been so taken by his looks, his title, or his wealth that giving over to him not only their bodies but also their minds had seemed of little consequence in comparison with what they hoped they'd be getting in return. And Tommy had become used to this power. What human being wouldn't?
The real question was why he'd grasped the power that very first time with that very first woman. He'd been young, it was true, but although he could have chosen to meet that lover and every lover that followed her on a playing field that he himself made level despite the woman's reluctance or inability to insist upon that leveling, he had not done so. And Helen was certain that the why of Tommy's sway over women was behind his difficulties with Barbara Havers.
But Barbara was wrong, Helen could hear her husband insisting, and there's no damn way you can twist the facts to make them read that she was right.
Helen couldn't disagree with Tommy on that. But she wanted to tell him that Barbara Havers was only a symptom. The disease, she was certain, was something else.
She left the bedroom and descended to the dining room, where Denton had assembled the breakfast she preferred. She helped herself to eggs and mushrooms, poured a glass of juice and a cup of coffee, and set everything on the dining table, where her morning's copy of the Daily Mail lay next to her cutlery and Tommy's Times lay just beneath it. She flipped through the morning post idly as she added milk and sugar to her coffee. She set the bills to one side—no reason to spoil her breakfast, she thought—and she also set aside the Daily Mail upon whose front page the latest decidedly unattractive royal paramour was being acclaimed as looking “radiant at the annual Children in Need tea.” No reason, Helen thought grimly, to spoil her entire day as well.
She was just opening a letter from her eldest sister—its postmark from Positano telling her that Daphne had prevailed over her husband in terms of where to spend their twentieth wedding anniversary—when Denton came into the room. “Good morning, Charlie,” Helen said to him cheerfully. “You've excelled with the mushrooms today.”
Denton didn't return her greeting with similar enthusiasm. He said, “Lady Helen …” and hesitated—or so it seemed to Helen—somewhere between confusion and chagrin.
“I hope you're not going to scold me about that wallpaper, Charlie. I phoned Peter Jones and asked for another day. Truly, I did.”
Denton said, “No. It's not the wallpaper,” and he lifted the manila envelope he was holding, bringing it level with his chest.
Helen set down her toast. “What is it, then? You look so …” How did he actually look? she asked herself. He looked quite agitated, she concluded. She said, “Has something happened? You've not received bad news, have you? Your family's well, aren't they? Oh Lord, Charlie, have you got yourself into trouble with a woman?”
He shook his head. Helen saw that a duster hung over his arm, and the pieces fell into place: He'd been doing a spot of cleaning up, she realised, and no doubt he wished to lecture her on the messier of her habits. Poor man. He couldn't decide how best to begin.