Bad Heir Day (18 page)

Anna had no idea what stovies were, except that they sounded like something you presented to your doctor in a glass jar for examination. “Too late for me,” she muttered. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll turn in.”

“I’ll take ye up to bed then,” the ancient heap growled.

Anna swallowed, trying to stifle the almost unimaginable thought of snuggling down with such a creature. She lifted her ring finger half in protection. The diamond glimmered dully in the lamp light. But MacLoggie showed no signs of noticing it.

“Take Miss Farrier to Dr. Johnson,” said Jamie.

“Dr. Johnson?” echoed Anna. “But I feel perfectly all right. I know I was slightly carsick around Scotch Corner but I’m fine now.”

“The Dr. Johnson
suite
,”
said Jamie. “He slept in it when he visited Dampie on his tour of the Highlands. Thought that might appeal to your literary side. He really enjoyed himself here,” Jamie added. “Wrote in his diaries that Dampie was ‘a most impressive ruin…the first sight of which weighed very solemnly on me.’”

“Oh.” It didn’t sound like a five-star recommendation to Anna.

The weak light from MacLoggie’s lantern had faded to a pinprick in the all-absorbing gloom of the back of the hall; Anna, stumbling in his wake, found a far more reliable guide to be the strong smell of whisky trailing after him, and the faint rattling of keys. Endless passages and stairways were negotiated, one spiral. As she pushed her shoulders up the claustrophobically tight and twisting stairwell, Anna had the impression the walls were pressing in and squeezing her. She wondered which of the many dark passages contained Nanny.

“Hae we are,” MacLoggie said as they finally emerged on a red-carpeted landing where a number of low, wide white doors with brass handles were set deep into their respective frames. He unlocked the door and, turning on his heel, disappeared into the darkness without another word. The blackness descended on Anna with the intimidating suddenness of a kidnapper’s cloak.

As she felt for the bedroom door and opened it, the chill air hit her like a fist. She fumbled and found a light switch, revealing a room vaguely similar to that she recalled occupying with Seb. This was, however, much larger and presumably much grander, so vast were its proportions, so impressive in size if possibly not in comfort the large four-poster bed which stood in the centre of it, scented slightly with mildew and mothballs. A honeymoon suite for the Addams Family, thought Anna, peering closely at a murky oil which hung between two deeply recessed windows and depicted what looked like a soldier dying in the arms of a tragic-looking woman. A spaniel apparently also breathing its last lay nearby; the picture was entitled “The Double Sacrifice.” A door in one wall of the room led to a cavernous Edwardian bathroom with a rust-scabbed container of Ajax standing on the bathside where the Crabtree and Evelyn ought to be.

Anna returned to the bedroom, knelt in the recessed window and squinted out through the diamond panes. One was missing, and the draught shot through Anna’s thin Ghost dress—a good luck present from Geri—like a bullet. She shivered, hoping it was the only Ghost in residence.

A hideous and heavy mahogany piece of furniture, seeking to combine the functions of desk, dressing table, and decorative object and failing singularly at all three, stood against the faded floral paper of one wall. Anna debated whether to put her underwear in it, but having taken one sniff at the damp and dusty interior, decided not to. The flat, wide drawer just below the mirror in the centre would, however, be the perfect place for her diary. After she had written today’s entry, of course. Fishing the small exercise book out of the front pocket of her bag, Anna crouched on the end of the bed and scribbled her account of leaving the vibrancy and crowds of London—never had she thought of them with such attention before—for a land where both the warmth and the light seemed permanently switched off. She shivered as she scribbled, noting at the end of her entry that she seemed to be further from writing a novel than ever. But perhaps the silence and space of the castle might prove an inspiration. After all, hadn’t Dr. Johnson stayed here?

Anna unpacked quickly and thrust her clothes into the dank and icy wardrobe. After finally screwing up the courage to get between the sheets—just as cold and old-smelling as anticipated, and very possibly the very same the eminent lexicographer had slept in—Anna lay and waited for Jamie. As the fatigue of the journey overcame her, she drifted in and out of dreams where she was being chased up an endless and ever-shrinking spiral staircase by a large, bewigged, and whisky-scented creature who may have been Dr. Johnson. Or Nanny.

The doctor put his pen down on his desk, sighed, and looked at Cassandra.

“Mrs. Knight. Is there anything in Zachary’s past, any experience he may have had, that could have left a deep and abiding impression on him?”

“Certainly not,” snapped Cassandra. “Zak’s very resilient. Nothing ever makes an impression on him.”

“Yes,” said the child psychologist. “That’s roughly what I’d heard from Mrs. Gosschalk.” He sighed, picked up his pen again, and tapped it on the desk. Mont Blanc, Cassandra noticed crossly.
And
the desk was antique. Bound to be with the fees she was paying him.

“Children are very sensitive, you know. It could have been something minor.”

“Zak’s never met a miner. I try and keep him away from
that
sort of person.” Cassandra narrowed her eyes and hoped the psychologist—all too obviously
that
sort of person himself—would get her drift. Large, red-faced, and florid, with a distinctly regional accent; it was
ludicrous
.
What on
earth
could a creature like this tell her about Zak?

“So, no trigger that you can think of?”

“Well, he does have a number of guns piled under his bed.”

“He
does
,
Mrs. Knight?”

“All toy ones, of course.
Almost
all, at any rate.”

Still, she had had no choice but to come, such had been the verdict of the St. Midas’s parents in that
bloody
extraordinary general meeting held after Zak’s performance at the Tressell birthday party. Cassandra boiled inside at the memory of that
wretched
Fenella Greatorex, now risen to chairman of the SMSPA, telephoning her afterwards and telling her in a voice
saturated
with sugary condescension that, given his obvious degree of mental disturbance, Zak needed to be referred to a child psychologist, on the basis of whose report Zak’s future at St. Midas’s would finally be assessed. Stay of execution, then. But executions there would be, Cassandra was determined. Eventually.

“Never mind, darling,” Cassandra had reassured her son. “What goes around, comes around, and when you’re head of MI5, you can have them all stabbed to death with poisoned umbrellas.” Zak’s eyes had lit up; Cassandra had tried not to notice when, several hours later, she spotted him looking with interest at the furled inhabitants of the Jade Jagger umbrella stand in the corner of the hall.

Great though the relief that Zak could—at least temporarily—stay at the school had been, the expense of fulfilling the conditions had been greater. Cassandra had been amazed to discover the waiting list for a child psychologist was almost as long as that for a Hermés Kelly bag. She’d virtually had to found a whole ward before she could leapfrog it. But it was unthinkable that Zak lose his place at St. Midas’s.

“So.” The psychologist looked up at Cassandra from his notes. “As far as you are concerned, Zachary’s childhood has passed entirely without any violent or emotionally upsetting incident?”

“Yes.”

“Sure?”

“Well, there was a
slight
scene on the Ghost Train at Chessington when he was about six years old, but I never managed to find out whether it was Zak or his father who burst into tears during the ride.”

“Mmm.” The psychologist raised an eyebrow. “Is that all?”

“And I suppose I was a
bit
cross with him when he only came second in the hundred metres sprint at the school sports day last year. But I was entitled to my view—after all, I’d won the mothers’ race only after
months
of intensive daily training with a former Olympic athlete. I felt Zak was rather letting the side down.”

“Ah.” The psychologist brightened. “Now we’re getting somewhere. You must beware of ambitious parent syndrome, Mrs. Knight.”

“
Tell
me about it,” Cassandra sighed dramatically. “The parents at St. Midas’s are so pushy it’s
embarrassing
.
One of them is talking about getting his child selected for Labour at the age of twelve. He says if William Pitt can do it, so can Mungo, although I suppose William Pitt must be at another school somewhere. I don’t think he’s at St. Midas’s.”

The psychologist’s eyes boggled slightly. He rippled his fingers repeatedly on the desktop as if playing an overture. “Zachary, Mrs. Knight, is a child. Not a racehorse.”

It was Cassandra’s turn to stare. “Dr. Leake,” she said, flaring her nostrils, “I find it hard to believe that I am paying good money—and rather a lot of it at that—to be told my son is
not
a racehorse. Do you think I wouldn’t have noticed when he was born?”

“You misinterpret my meaning, Mrs. Knight. What I am trying to say is that parenting is not a competition. Pushing him too hard can result in burnout syndrome. You don’t want him to win cups at eight only to drop out at sixteen.”

“No, of course not. I want him to win cups at sixteen as well.”

The psychologist sighed. “Mrs. Knight. Like many parents you are over-anxious that your child should be a success. You are perhaps expecting too much of him. Parents who want their children to be MPs at ludicrously early ages are not really doing them any favours.”

“I agree. The very least they should expect is Prime Minister. Aim high, that’s what I say.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Knight. I think that’s quite enough for one afternoon.”

Put
him
in his place, Cassandra thought triumphantly as she drove home. How dare anyone suggest Zak was anything other than an angel?

“I mean, really,” she declared to Jett on arriving back at Liv. “How could anyone possibly take any of this
seriously
?
Just because Zak’s a chip off his father’s old performing block and has a powerful stage presence. What’s happened to everyone’s sense
of humour…
?” Her voice tailed off as, having finished flinging off her pashmina and checking her makeup in the hall mirror, she turned and caught Jett’s expression. It was one of unbounded fury.

“Yes, well, the little
bastard’s
done more than demonstrate stage
presence
,”
snarled Jett. “He’s been demonstrating some of the
goddamn props
as well.” He shook a fist at the ceiling from where lengths of wire dangled like beheaded flower stems.

Zak, it emerged, had discovered a broadsword from the forthcoming Solstice stage show under the chaise longue in Jett’s study and, with the aid of judiciously-placed chairs and tables, had immediately set about hacking every ceiling light in the house from its flex on the pretext that he was playing at pirates.

“Well, quite right too,” yelled Cassandra, determined to defend her son. “Everyone knows ceiling roses are hopelessly passé. Zak’s just taken the first step on the road to uplighters.”

“Trust you to take his side,” roared Jett. “You let him get away with goddamn
murder—
almost literally in the case of Otto Greatorex. Gave his goddamn arm so many Chinese burns yesterday he nearly burst into goddamn flames. What sort of example are you setting him?”

“
You fucking hypocrite
!”
shrieked Cassandra. “If we’re talking examples, just hang on in there while I get the lawyer on conference call. What about you and that Yugoslavian
slapper
?”

“Ethnic Albanian, actually,” huffed Jett. “She lost her entire family in the Kosovo war.”

“And then she came here and got screwed by
you
.
I wonder which was worse.”

Svetlana, the East European nanny, had seemed manna from heaven the day, almost a week after Anna had left, that Cassandra had spotted her ad in the local freesheet. She had been irresistible to Cassandra because she was cheap; to Jett she had been merely irresistible. Just as Zak could not pass over the opportunity to call her Sweaty instead of the approved diminutive of Sveti, Jett could not pass over the opportunity of making a pass.

“I didn’t screw her.”

“Oh no? What about all those scratches and squeeze marks on your back?”

Jett’s protestations and excuses that Sveti had been a dermatologist before the war in Kosovo and was giving him some free treatment cut no ice with his wife.

“A
dermatologist
?”
Cassandra hissed. “She’s got a face like a
pizza
.
Probably thinks cathiodermie is an
Irish barmaid
.”
She was, Cassandra suddenly decided,
sick
of playing host plant to a parasitic philanderer. The last strumpet had sounded. She’d had enough.

Seeing the genuine light of battle in her eyes rather than just the drunken rage he had privately come to think of as the Warninks signals, Jett panicked. A large house in Kensington and a lavishly subsidised lifestyle seemed to rise up before him and disappear out of the window.

“Um,” he stuttered. “I can explain…”

Cassandra held up a hand. “And besides,” she spat, “what the
hell
do you want with dermatology anyway? You’ve got skin like an old teabag that’s been buried for years. Just
look
at you.”

Jett bristled. He stared at his wife with a mixture of fear and loathing. Finally, squeezing through the decayed and dripping cells of his brain came the dim memory that attack was the best form of defence.

“You’re jealous,” he hurled back. “You can’t bear to think another woman finds me attractive.” As Cassandra stared at him in disbelief, he wondered whether he had got it wrong. Perhaps defence was the best form of attack. “So what harm does it do?” he wheedled. “It’s not as if
you
give two hoots. I’m not
hurting
anyone.”

“
That
,”
snapped Cassandra, “depends whether you’re wearing your Five Gates of Hell penis strap or not. I imagine that could hurt quite a lot.”

“How do you know about
that
?”
Jett demanded as what colour there was in his face drained out of it. “Been opening my post again, I suppose?”

“Never mind how I know. The point is,” Cassandra said, feeling suddenly exhausted, “it’s over. Our marriage. I’ve had enough.”

“I’d say you haven’t had anything
like
enough,” Jett said bitterly. “That’s the problem.”

“You’re a dead loss,” snarled Cassandra. “Or, to be more specific, you look dead and you make a loss. I can’t afford to have a sponge like you hanging round me any longer.”

“Dead loss?” expostulated Jett. “What about the band getting back together? The TV deal?”

“TV deal?” snorted Cassandra. “You mean that cowboy outfit wanting to make a fly on the wall documentary about your shitty band re-forming and going on the road? Hardly your own
chat
show, is it? Fly on the wall documentary my arse—fly on the
fly
is what they should make about
you
.”

Desperate, Jett produced his trump card. “So what about Zak? How’s he going to feel when he finds we’re splitting up?”

“Delighted,” Cassandra returned triumphantly. “I’ve already discussed it with him and he’s thrilled. Very keen it should go through as soon as possible, in fact.”

“
Bastard
.”

“Sadly, no,” Cassandra said. “I wish he was but, unfortunately, my child
has
a father.
You
.”

“Worse luck,” said Jett, to whom it had now become evident that resistance was useless.

“For
you
,
yes,” spat Cassandra. “Zak, as a matter of fact, was the one who alerted me to your antics in the first place.”

“
What
?”
Jett’s hands clenched and unclenched as best they could while sporting a row of rings like knuckledusters.

“Oh
yes
,”
Cassandra said. “Asked me why does Daddy have Sweaty in bed with him when you’re not there, Mummy? I had to tell him it was because Daddy was frightened of the dark. He thought that was pathetic and that I should divorce you.”

“I bet he did,” Jett snarled. “He’s set the whole thing up. I
knew
it.”

“How
dare
you?” shrieked Cassandra. “Typical! You’d blame your own eight-year-old son rather than take responsibility for your inability to keep your trousers zipped.”

“Yes, because as far as he’s concerned, us splitting up means two lots of Christmas and birthday presents for
him
.
Can’t you
see
?”

“Don’t be
ridiculous
,”
snapped Cassandra, recalling that, now Jett came to mention it, Zak
had
raised the matter of presents during the divorce discussions she had had with him. Quite frequently, in fact.