The Visitors by Sally Beauman Page B

fired two days in. Meanwhile, their mother’s always gadding about somewhere. Eve says she’s got a new man – I overheard her.’
    ‘A what ?’
    ‘A new man – you know. One of those flirty-flirty sort of things.’ Frances batted her eyelashes hideously. We stared at each other and then giggled.
    ‘But I don’t understand,’ I said, when we’d finally stopped laughing. ‘How can their mother flirt? She’s a mother. She’s married. What about her husband?’
    ‘Ah,’ said Frances, giving me a measuring glance. ‘Well, that’s kind of tricky. You see, she divorced her first husband, and now she’s finished with her second husband too – people say he got his marching orders before she sailed for Cairo with Eve. So I guess she’s on the hunt for a third husband, and that takes time. Which is why we have to look after Peter and Rose, and why you have to be nice to them.’
    I considered this. I was wavering.
    ‘Also,’ Frances continued, ‘Rose and Peter’s father, who was the first husband of course, is a man called Lord Strathaven. He’s an earl too, like Eve’s father, and he’s horrible. Peter and Rose hate him. But Peter lives with him because he’s the heir, so he can only escape for holidays, and Rose lives with her mother because her father can’t be bothered with a stupid girl.’
    ‘Oh, poor Rose – does she hate her mother too?’ I asked.
    ‘Of course not,’ Frances replied airily. ‘She adores her – everyone does. She’s really sweet-natured and good fun. It’s just that she isn’t like most mothers and she isn’t around much. But you must know that – you’ve met her.’
    ‘Met Rose and Peter’s mother?’ I met many people at Shepheard’s in the course of the day, and was finding it hard to navigate their bewilderment of names and titles. ‘I haven’t met anyone called Lady Strathaven.’
    ‘Don’t be silly. I told you: she’s divorced. She used to be Lady Strathaven. Three years ago she was still Lady Strathaven. But she couldn’t bear living with the horrible earl a second longer, so she bolted. She escaped two months after Peter was born. Now she’s Poppy d’Erlanger.’
    ‘Mrs d’Erlanger is their mother? But I’ve never seen her with Peter or Rose.’
    ‘Of course you haven’t – I told you, Poppy is too busy finding husband number three, so she leaves them with Eve, or her maid Wheeler, or whoever else she can persuade to look after them. Anyway,’ she made an impatient gesture, ‘if her plans work out, she won’t be Poppy d’Erlanger much longer, she’ll be Poppy-someone-else. And just think, she and Rose and Peter are all coming to Luxor too, so we’ll have ringside seats when Poppy finally decides who to marry next. My money’s on that Carew man we saw playing polo at the Gezira… Now, can we get on with this dancing class?’
    It was shaming how little I knew, I thought, as we returned to the echoing bathroom. This world of multiple divorces was as foreign to me as the world of the pharaohs. Frances was light years ahead of me. None of this appeared to shock or confuse her; she simply took it in her stride with a sophistication she’d acquired in Cairo. In the fustian Cambridge circles in which I’d grown up, divorce equalled disgrace. Yet here was Rose with a mother who’d already dispatched one husband, possibly two; a divorcée who was welcomed on all sides at Shepheard’s… I was never sure whether to believe all the things Frances told me: I had much to learn, I realised.
    Before we began our ballet practice we played a game; Rose and Peter had already begun it before we rejoined them. The huge, marble-floored and -walled bathroom contained the largest bath I’d ever seen, mounted on a marble plinth with four couchant lions as feet. By the time Frances and I returned, both Rose and her little brother were lying down in this sarcophagus.
    ‘We’re playing mummies,’ Rose announced. She crossed both her brother’s arms on