A Splash of Red (4 page)

'I see, dear. I'll just go on calling you Dollie, if you don't mind,' was the most her mother could be persuaded to comment.

'Is that you, Mrs Fontaine?' said Jemima hastily. 'I'm afraid Chloe's gone away.' She did not feel like entering the Dollie charade herself; considering Chloe's ancient annoyance at her mother's obstinacy, it seemed somewhat disloyal to her friend. Chloe had after all lived as long under her new name as her old, and had written a great many books under it (for which reason she had never adopted either of her two married names).

'I'm her friend, Jemima Shore,' she threw in. 'You may remember: we met once at Cambridge. I'm borrowing her flat while she's on holiday.'

There was a moment's silence. Jemima had a picture of an old person at the other end of the telephone, grappling with unexpected information. And Mrs Fontaine, having, as far as she could remember, borne Chloe when she was something like forty, must be in her seventies by now.

'Not Mrs Fontaine, dear. Mrs Stover,' said the voice at last. It was less plaintive, much firmer. Further
Cambridge memories came back to
Jemima. The trouble with Chloe's change of name was that she had changed both her Christian name
and
her surname on arrival at university. Fontaine was the name of her real father who had been killed early in the war, and Stover the name of her stepfather who had adopted her. Presumably the reversion represented some kind of protest; at this distance Jemima hardly remembered. Where 'Chloe' came from, Jemima had absolutely no idea; it was an unlikely middle name for Dorothy Stover. At all events, Mrs Stover had persisted in addressing letters to Miss Dorothy Stover at first, until Chloe defeated her by sending them back unopened: 'Not known at this College.'

'Jemima Shore. Well,' went on Mrs Stover, as though digesting this information in its turn. Jemima heard her say to someone quite loudly: 'Dad. Did you hear that? Jemima Shore Investigator is in Dollie's flat. I'm talking to her on the telephone.' A strong and very angry man's voice could be heard saying:
‘I
don't care who you're talking to on the telephone, not even if its Michael Parkinson himself or the Queen of England. I want to know where Dollie is, that's what I want to know.'

'You see, Dollie said she would come down here and spend the night with us.' Mrs Stover was now speaking directly into the telephone again: 'And she hasn't come. And Dad's worried.'

'Worried!' came a shout from the background. 'Tell her I'm not
worried.
I'm bloody fed up, that's what I am. She rings up her mother the other day, out of the blue, haven't seen her for ages, too busy, that's what she says, busy with what, says I, she rings us up, says she'll be late, so we sit up for her, Mrs Stover prepares a meal, and now her royal highness doesn't even turn up before midnight. Worried. I should bloody well think I am worried.'

'Whereabouts do you live, Mrs Stover?' enquired Jemima cautiously, when this tirade appeared to have stopped.

'In Folkestone - "Finches", Bartleby Road. Near the park if you know Folkestone. She was going to spend the night here and take the ferry to the Continent tomorrow morning. She did say she would be late. But now it's nearly twelve o'clock.'

'It
is
twelve o'clock,' came the voice of Mr Stover in the background. 'It's tomorrow already, that's what it is.'

Jemima gave Mrs Stover her most soothing television voice. 'How very worrying for you - both,' she said diplomatically. 'Chloe left here about nine so she certainly should have reached Folkestone by now. There wouldn't be much traffic. She didn't however mention that you were expecting her. She told me she was driving to Dover. I just wonder if she could have forgotten.' As she spoke Jemima - rather wearily, for she agreed with Mr Stover that it was tomorrow already - was rehearsing the familiar routine of checking for the non-arrival of a person. She would, she supposed, have to telephone the hospitals and the police, in case Chloe had had an accident or breakdown on the way.

There was another silence. Jemima half expected a roar from Mr Stover: 'Forgotten! She'd bloody well better not forget.' Slightly to her surprise there was silence from both Stovers. Then she realized that Mrs Stover was whispering to her husband. A moment later she heard Mr Stover himself take the receiver before
speaking in a more conciliatory
tone.

'Well you see, Miss Shore, it's like this. It is just possible that she, Dollie, as Mrs Stover and I are in the habit of calling her, has overlooked the appointment. The reason being—' another brief silence of hesitation - 'I may as well say, to save your time and ours, that I indicated to Dollie that she had better be here by six o'clock in the evening or not come at all. And she said she couldn't, why I don't quite know, but still we'll leave that one. So I said, I indicated to her, that if she couldn't be here at six in the evening to eat supper with Mrs Stover and myself she had better not come at all, under the circumstances, if you understand me. It's true that she still said to her mother that she
would
come—'

'I understand.' Jemima felt relief. Chloe had quite clearly not gone to Folkestone, but had driven directly to Dover. It made no sense to leave so late, to spend her time in Bloomsbury chatting to Jemima, if she had been intending to have supper in Folkestone. Why not mention casually to Jemima that she had to visit her parents?

'Look, I think she probably decided in the end not to come,' Jemima went on. 'Not wishing to keep you up late.' That was a diplomatic way of putting it. 'Will you ring me in the morning if you have any further problems?'

The Stovers, both of them, rang off. Jemima turned off her light. But sleep did not come. She lay for an hour, rather irritated by the whole affair. In the end she decided that it was because she was not quite convinced that Chloe had not set off for Folkestone. A responsible person would ring the police.

Jemima Shore rang the police, and after being put through to the various exchanges, established that there had been no road accidents involving a Miss Chloe Fontaine in central London or on the Folkestone or Dover roads that night. A call to the hospitals? No, at this point; that was really going too far. It was quite the wrong way to spend her 'disappearing in London' holiday, trying to track down Chloe Fontaine. She drifted into sleep.

The next time she was woken by the telephone, she was aware that it was morning. The next thing she was aware of was that the anonymous caller was back again.

At eight thirty in the morning, to her amazement, Jemima Shore found herself listening to words which began something like: 'Shall I come and give it to you in that great bed? I could, you know. Or shall I just watch you through the walls, my private view? I haven't made up my mind. Have you made up your mind? How do you want it, Jemima Shore?' The mention of her own name broke the spell and Jemima slammed down the telephone.

It rang again instantly, as though the slamming action had set off the ringing. Trembling more with annoyance than anything else, she picked it up ready to swear at her anonymous friend.

'Look here—' she began in a loud and furious voice. Then she stopped.

'Miss Shore?' someone was saying at the other end. 'This is Mrs Stover, Dollie's mother. Miss Shore, we don't know what to think now. We had a letter from Dollie this morning. You know what the posts are - it was posted three days ago. First class too. She left out the road number, of course, she always does, although I've written to her about it over and over again, and sent her the Post Office's communication that the name is no longer sufficient, you need the number, and you have to put in Lethermere Road as well as Bartleby Road. Still, as she writes so seldom, I suppose - anyway "Finches" ought to be enough after seventeen years. There's really no call for marking it "Insufficient Postal Address".'

Jemima thought she distinguished a cry of 'Bloody ridiculous' from the background. Mrs Stover continued hurriedly.

'Anyway, she said she was sorry she had to be so late, to tell Dad not to be too angry, she was sorry about their words, b
ut she'd definitely be with us b
y eleven. She said she had something special to tell us. She had to tell it to us personally, couldn't write it. We didn't know what that was, of course. So, Miss Shore, she's not here, her bed's not been slept in, she didn't come in the night. Miss Shore, wherever can Dollie be?'

3

'Care for a visit?'

The next voice on the telephone was more vigorous. Mr Stover also sounded angry, as though Dollie had deliberately failed to arrive during the brief period of forgiveness he had extended and must now take the consequences. But his actual words were jovial enough, if hardly likely to cheer Jemima herself.

'I've just said to the wife,' he half-shouted, 'we're dealing with the Press here. This is Miss Jemima Shore we've got on the other end of the telephone. Jemima Shore, Investigator, no less. People round here would be queuing in their thousands to speak to her about the slightest thing, and we have her on the end of our telephone. She'll find Dollie for us, Mother
...'
But Jemima had not, she reminded herself, established a singularly successful career in television without being able to deal with the likes of Mr Stover.

She interrupted him firmly as he was still relating at some length his dialogue with his wife.

'I advise you to call the police, Mr Stover. That is, if you're really satisfied that Chloe—' she refused to adapt to Dollie; the persistent use of the name seemed to her part of the Stovers' fantasy about their daughter - 'if you're really satisfied that Chloe was intending to visit you and not go straight to the ferry.'

Jemima heard Mrs Stover's more plaintive voice in the background. It was still unfortunately clear.

'Show her the letter, Dad,' she was saying. 'We must show her the letter.' Strangled sounds from Mr Stover. A pause and an even more plaintive cry. 'You're
wearing
your spectacles, Charlie.' Mrs Stover added something which sounded like: 'But the telephone is cheaper on Saturday, Charlie. Your cousin Poppy told us.'

The image of the two old people in Folkestone - 'near the park, if you know the town' - worrying over their daughter and their telephone and their spectacles made Jemima feel increasingly desperate. Her holiday, her disappearance in London, was being melted away by the most unwelcome compassionate feelings.

It was not at all difficult for Jemima to imagine the Stovers at home in 'Finches' because she had just completed a programme on the special loneliness of elderly parents whose successful offspring had moved up the cultural scale, leaving them financially secure, but desperately, uncomprehendingly, lonely on their lowly rung of the ladder. It had been called
The Unvisited.
Chloe Fontaine had not contributed to it. She was, involuntarily and rather too late, contributing to it now.

'Read it over to me.' It was the best she could do. Yes, Chloe's letter sounded positive enough about her arrival as Jemima listened and the clear light of the August morning filtered delicately through Chloe's Japanese blinds. She imagined 'Finches', an immaculate little home, breakfast long since finished, crockery washed up, beds made, house garnished. The rooms would be small, unlike Chloe's airy palace. There would be plants in rows in unequal pots on the window sills, all green and rather bushy, with a small red flower or two, all quite unlike the graceful symmetrical white and grey shapes of Chloe's floral decor.

She could imagine photographs. A dark-haired Dollie with plaits winning prizes at her local grammar school. Dollie - now Chloe - in the group photograph of their first year at Cambridge. Dollie/Chloe marrying Lance Strutt? Chloe marrying Igor? Jemima had been to both weddings and not met the Stovers. It was more likely that one of those large romantic photographs of Chloe by Snowdon and Bailey and Lichfield and, best of all Parkinson, which adorned the backs of her novels and almost swamped the paperback versions, causing sardonic grief to reviewers, one of those must surely grace the Stovers' piano. Chloe in a picture hat, nestling on a swing, modern Fragonard, rising out of roses, corrupted Boucher; on one fabulous occasion actually surrounded by a flight of doves - only Binnie Rapallo could have decided to make a pastoral Greuze out of the author of
Old Miss Stevenson,
a wry tale about a spinster and her past.

Piano? A memory of Chloe at Cambridge: 'My mother actually wanted to send the piano along with my trunk. A chastity symbol I can only suppose. Certainly it would keep anything more tactile from entering this fearful room.' So the piano waited for Chloe in Folkestone. Like its owners. There would be much waiting done in that house. Waiting for Dollie.

In Chloe Fontaine's new Bloomsbury apartment on the other hand no waiting had been done at all; Chloe had not even waited to tell Jemima that she intended to visit her parents. She had hardly waited to move into the flat itself before setting off for the Camargue. Jemima heard again the light clack-clack of her high heels and her characteristic rather breathy voice: 'No, no, down the stairs, there's no lift. I'm in a hurry.' A further pang of pity for the unvisited voices on the other end of the telephone seized Jemima; an atavistic pang perhaps for those dead parents of her own, dead before Jemima took her first steps into another world. Might they too have become the unvisited? 'Look, Mrs Stover—'

'Mr Stover here. The wife's gone into the kitchen to make us some tea. All this is very upsetting to her, Miss Shore. Her nerves have been all to pieces, I don't mind telling you.' He sounded reproachful and on the verge of rehearsing the events of the night before all over again. Jemima was once more engaged in cutting him short when she heard him say:

'One thing directly following upon another if you understand my meaning. First Dollie's call out of the blue, quite unexpected, equally unexpected, and then she doesn't make an appearance—'

Jemima with a sinking feeling heard the story all over again - all this still before her first cup of coffee (a time when Jemima always felt that the whole world should know that she was to be treated with circumspection).

'I'll call the hospitals in London,' she proffered. That could no longer be avoided. She did not mention having checked with the police the night before. 'You call them in Folkestone and Dover. I'll call Chloe's editor at
Taffeta
if I can find her home number. There's probably a perfectly simple explanation for all this. If not, it's up to you to decide whether you call the police. What with Mrs Stover's nerves,' she added in a slightly less crisp tone.

All this took some time although Jemima, uncombed hair flowing over her navy blue silk kimono, did at least manage to drink a mug of coffee while dealing with the little white telephone. She also took time to feed Tiger. But Tiger's presence, golden and expectant, was not as comforting as it should have been to a confirmed cat-lover. He crouched in the middle of the carpet, haunches raised, paws forward in the attitude of a slightly aggressive sphinx. His eyes were half closed, as if he did not want her to know he was watching her and regarding events of which he did not approve. When he did abandon this stance, it was only in order to stalk through the wide balcony windows, inspect Adelaide Square or perhaps the tops of the giant trees where inviolable pigeons might be expected to lurk, and then return to the same sphinx
-
like position. Once only he mewed at the front door of the flat.

Tiger did not coil himself or curl up with his paws under his cheek or slumber like a thrown-away toy as Colette would have done at this hour in the morning, dreaming of the night's adventures. Jemima, efficiently telephoning the hospitals - no, no one of that name admitted since yesterday evening - was vaguely disquieted by Tiger and tried to remind herself that the animal was not only new to her but comparatively new to the Bloomsbury flat. All the same, Tiger's restlessness perturbed her. She began to have a feeling of something not altogether explained quite near them both, the woman and the cat.

She went through to the large light bathroom with its shadowy flowers on walls and shutters, as though projected imperfectly by an unfocused lens. When she returned to the sitting room she reckoned that it was finally late enough to telephone Isabelle Mancini, the editor of
Taffeta,
without sounding a note of panic.

Isabelle Mancini was a notorious gossip. The trouble was that she liked to spend her night hours in company - when taxed on the subject, she was wont to point out that chic loneliness was hardly becoming or even useful to the editor of
Taffeta.
Gossip was Isabelle's personal contribution to these night marathons. She would certainly regard Jemima's present venture into loneliness as 'utter madness, dulling.'

This gossip was never intended to be malicious. On the contrary, the creation of legends (living) - that was Isabelle's business, and the business of
Taffeta.
If trouble was the outcome, no one was more distressed and even injured than Isabelle Mancini. But her very loyalty to Chloe might lead her to broadcast in Tasha's or Dizzy's or one of the other ludicrous smart discos for the young that she affected, that Chloe Fontaine was burdened with aged, tiresome parents 'to whom she was quite wonderful'.

Isabelle would never have heard of Chloe's parents and so would know nothing of their characters; nevertheless to Isabelle all her geese were swans, and since Chloe had parents, aged parents, apparently poor parents, it must inevitably follow that she was 'wonderful to them'. Jemima thought that Chloe would probably prefer to be spared Isabelle's loyalty on the subject of her parents.

Isabelle Mancini's private life, or to be more exact, her sexual inclinations, were like those of Valentine Brighton, a subject of occasional amused speculation among her friends. It was generally believed that she had been married, once, long ago, in Paris or possibly Rome, and that Mr Mancini had been abandoned along with residence in these capitals; nowadays she was resolutely Miss Mancini in public.

What Isabelle patently did admire both in the pages of
Taffeta
and her own conversation, was the female sex.

At
Taffeta,
she patronized women writers, particularly talented women writers who were photogenic, with enthusiasm. Chloe, for example, owed a great deal to Isabelle's encouragement, particularly when her finances were low as in the present instance. So for that matter did Binnie Rapallo, a deliciously pretty photographer who had begun a successful career by celebrating these same writers in
Taffeta.
Were Isabelle's 'little passions' ever reciprocated? Or did her continuous emphasis on 'loyalty' - 'All my friends are completely loyal to me and of course I'm so loyal to them' - hide an aching heart because 'loyalty' was never equated with love?

It was Saturday. It was while looking for the telephone directory with Isabelle's home number that Jemima first noticed the piece of bright red paper lying on the carpet near the door. It was square, garish, made of card. Tiger had moved and was crouching near it. For one instant Jemima imagined that he had pushed the card to that position with his paws, had somehow delivered it.

She picked up the card rather gingerly and turned it over. 'A Splash of Red' was printed in black letters on the other side. Above it the words Aiglon Gallery, directors Crispin Creed, Peter Potter, and below: 'Recent pictures by Kevin John Athlone will be shown at the Aiglon Gallery February
1-28.'
It was now August. With relief Jemima realized that she was merely holding an official - and out of date -announcement of an exhibition. It was printed, formal, innocuous. She turned the card over again and saw for the first time that there was a message scrawled along the bottom in bold handwriting: 'Care for a visit?'

It was by now far too late for any London post. Indeed no letters had arrived that morning; the flat was both too new and too cut-off for that. Letters and circulars, if any, were probably mouldering downstairs in the empty hall with its freshly cut marble floor where a 'grand porter', Chloe had assured her, was shortly to be installed. The thought of this impending porter was not much consolation now, if in the meantime Kevin John Athlone was to be paying her unsolicited visits as and when he wished.

It struck her that the card must have been delivered while she was in the shadowy bathroom; she could hardly have missed the little red flag on the pale sea of the carpet while she contemplated Tiger's aggressive crouch. The coincidence made her both uncomfortable and angry.

Jemima would endure no more of this. The Stovers struck some chord in her heart; Kevin John Athlone nothing. Grimly, she went to the door to fling it open and if necessary confront him - only to be checked by the second lock. Jemima remembered too late that she needed a key to get out of the flat as well as into it.

Tiger sidled forward and gave a little plaintive mew beside her, something more like the cry of a baby in distress than the conventional cry of a cat. She was reminded unpleasantly of the cautionary tale of Harriet who played with matches: 'Miaow, Mioo, we told you so.' Perhaps after all it was better to dispose of the Stovers first; undoubtedly they were waiting anxiously by the telephone to hear from her. That meant calling Isabelle Mancini to get some kind of address in the Camargue for Chloe. She only hoped she was in England and not on a Greek island or in the South of France or somewhere else whe
re at this time of year in Isabe
lle's opinion it was all happening.

The telephone was answered immediately - but not by Isabelle. 'Miss Shore, Isabelle would just love to talk with you,' said a voice at the other end of the telephone warmly. Either its owner had just visited the United States, or she felt that only this kind of voice was appropriate to one who answered the telephone for the editor of
Taffeta.
The accent was not quite perfect but the expression of impersonal rapture at the mere sound of Jemima's name was well done - that she, Jemima Shore, should somehow have managed to get through to Isabelle Mancini's number without succumbing to the nameless perils which lay in wait for users of the telephone system! So was the sincerity of the disappointment which followed: 'But I'm afraid Isabelle is not available right now. May I take a message? T
his is Laura Barrymore, Isabelle
Mancini's personal assistant. As of now, I am also her house guest. I am between apartments. I should be so happy
..
.'