Bed of Roses (6 page)

The photograph of Fanny and her fancy bra, arms outstretched and leaping into the arms of (an unseen) Louis, makes the whole of page 7 of the
Western Weekly Gazette
that Thursday. It is the same day that Robert White puts in his first appearance at the school since slinking off with a cold ten days earlier. And there is, most understandably, an air of repressed glee about him as he and his sandals and his thick polo-neck jersey shuffle into the staff room that morning. Behind the beard, his pink lips are upturned in wry, self-conscious amusement. He has the newspaper opened and folded under one arm.

Fanny, having ignored various
Gazette
telephone messages on her answer machine at home and here at the school, naively imagines that the newspaper has lost interest in the story, and has by now virtually forgotten it herself. So when Robert comes into the staff room she’s sitting very peacefully with her feet on the coffee table, chuckling over a copy of
Private Eye
. It is only half past eight. School doesn’t start for a quarter of an hour, and Fanny has once again been up for hours. (It’s a new habit, and slightly disconcerting to her. She continues to work harder than ever before and yet
recently she’s been literally springing out of bed.) So she’s already taken herself and Brute for a run, and put in a couple of hours’ work on the increasingly damp stack of papers under the kitchen sink. Now she is relaxing. Beside her Linda Tardy the teacher’s assistant is munching prematurely on her lunch-time sandwich, as usual, and staring blankly into space. Mrs Haywood the glass-eyed secretary is making herself coffee. Contentment reigns.

‘Hell-o!’ says Robert warmly. ‘Morning all! Good morning, Fanny!’

They look up, mildly surprised. It’s rare for Robert to come in at all. It’s exceptionally rare for him to come in sounding excited.

‘Morning, Robert,’ they say. ‘Welcome back. Good journey in?’

Robert lives in a village almost ten miles from Fiddleford, and he usually has a little observation to make about the traffic, or the inconsiderate behaviour of his fellow drivers. Today, most unusually, he says the journey was ‘very good indeed’.

Mrs Haywood offers to make him coffee.

‘Oh, that would be splendid!’ he cries, rubbing his hands together. ‘What a splendid idea, Mrs Haywood. Yes, please. Much obliged.’

‘Glad to see you’re feeling so much better,’ Fanny says drily. Among all the other problems spinning around her head this week, the problem of Robert’s absenteeism has not been forgotten. On the contrary, with every day he has failed to appear she has grown more resentful. She discussed it over the weekend with Louis, who was no help at all. On Friday night, after she reeled back to the limbo, she even found herself discussing it with old General Maxwell McDonald.

‘Our real obstacle is Dr Curry,’ General Maxwell
McDonald had shouted over the calypso music. ‘Robert White’s sister is Dr Curry’s wife, of course. Excellent doctor, but weak-minded. That’s the problem. He knows perfectly well his brother-in-law is a good-for-nothing layabout. I’ve spoken to him about it. But then Robert White turns up in the surgery, snivelling like a girl and asking for a “sick note”.’ The General shuddered at the words. ‘Curry won’t tell the man he’s an idle bugger and pack him off back to work. I should, certainly. But then again,’ he chortled, ‘I’m not married to Dr Curry’s wife…’ At which the General had tapped his nose and added, incomprehensibly, ‘Silent but deadly, see? Courageous work with Mrs Guppy, by the way. Thought you looked marvellous! Great success. Well done!’

Fanny smiles to herself, remembering the General’s kind words, and Robert, hovering beside Mrs Haywood for his coffee, feels a squirt of glee. Fanny Flynn is looking very relaxed, he notes. She clearly hasn’t seen the paper yet. Which means he can be the one to show it to her.

So. He looks thoughtfully at Fanny. With an effort, he suppresses the smirk he’s been wearing all the way in to work – ever since the
Western Weekly Gazette
first plopped on to his doormat this morning – and pads, with his coffee, across the room to sit beside her. Meticulously, silently, he unfolds the newspaper and lays it out on the coffee table at her feet. Fanny ignores him, irritated by his proximity. She continues to stare at her magazine in the hope that he might move away, which he does not.

Silence. The gentle tinkle of Mrs Haywood stirring coffee. The passing of air through Robert’s agitated nostrils. The squelching of tuna and watercress between Linda Tardy’s teeth.

It is Linda Tardy who notices the article first.

‘Oh, my gracious Lord!’ she screams, making Mrs Haywood jump. ‘Fanny! Mrs Haywood! Robert! Everyone!
Fanny, you’re famous! We’re all famous! LOOK AT THIS! This was—Oh, Robert, we were THERE! Fanny took her shirt off and—It’s such a shame you didn’t come; I know it’s a journey for you but my goodness, look what you missed! What does it say?’

Robert watches Fanny’s face as she glances up from
Private Eye
and slowly registers what is laid out before her.

‘Oops,’ she says. She lets out a sigh. ‘Oh, dear.’

‘I’m so sorry, Fanny, to be “the messenger”,’ Robert murmurs softly, ‘only I thought you would probably want to see…’

‘
What does it say?
’ demands Linda Tardy impatiently, trying to nudge Robert out of the way.

‘Bloody hell,’ mutters Fanny. She takes the newspaper and stands up. ‘Robert, I think you’d better take assembly this morning. It looks like I need to make a few calls.’

But as she speaks the telephone rings (as, in fact, it will continue to do incessantly now, for the rest of the morning; something about that picture has awoken the snake in every prude and pervert in the county). Robert doesn’t notice the telephone at first, he’s too busy watching Fanny. Unfortunately, the handset is on the window sill beside his elbow and no one else can get to it.

‘Pick it up then!’ says Mrs Haywood.

‘Mmm? Oh!’ He picks it up. ‘Fiddleford Primary,’ he snaps, his eyes fixed on Fanny, watching her as she digests the ribald picture caption at the bottom of the page. ‘Pardon?’ He frowns. ‘No. This is Fiddleford Primary School. I think you’ve got the wrong number…Who? I can’t hear you properly. You’re sounding—Fanny Flynn? Oh,’ he looks hesitant, ‘I’m not sure. Who may I say is calling?’

In a rush of irritation – she’s not sure if it’s with the gloating Robert or with herself – she reaches across and snatches the receiver.

‘Fanny Flynn here,’ she says briskly.

She hears breathing. Panting.

Fanny Flynn used to do shifts on her university student helpline. Unlike Robert she knows at once what she is hearing. She ought to hang up, but she can’t. Something’s frozen.

Panting
. And then her name.

Still, it doesn’t sound like him. It
isn’t
him. And yet somehow—

‘Say something, Fanny.’ And then nothing. Breathing. A long sigh. ‘I’ve written you a poem,
Miss Flynn
. Want to hear it?’

‘Fuck off,’ she says at last, ‘or I’ll call the police.’ She slams down the receiver, and without looking left or right, heads straight for the door.

The telephone starts ringing again at once.

‘Don’t answer it,’ she says blandly. ‘Nobody answer the telephone this morning, please. OK? Let this stupid thing blow over. And I’m sorry, everyone, about my terrible language.’ She leaves the room in such a hurry that Brute is caught in the staff room behind her.

Alone at her desk, the first thing she does is to call Louis. Again. She hasn’t heard a word from him since he headed back to London on Sunday and she’s lost count of the number of messages she’s left. She imagines he’s already swallowed up in some new bloody ‘love’ marathon, since Louis is always falling in love, and it makes her wretched to think about it, even more wretched than she was before.

Louis’s answering service picks up, as always, and this time Fanny hangs up without bothering to leave a message. The bell goes for the start of lessons but she doesn’t react to it. She sits there, feeling sick. Was it him? She doesn’t know. She can’t even remember what he sounds like any
more.
Was it him?
She doesn’t know. But
it might have been.

Half an hour later Robert follows her to her office. The school telephone has been ringing solidly, and though he isn’t entirely clear what happened back in the staff room earlier, it had been disconcerting enough, annoyingly, to ruin his enjoyment of the scene. He taps on her door, waits, and when she doesn’t answer, lets himself in anyway.

Fanny is sitting behind her desk, as before. She looks exhausted; pasty, tiny, vulnerable, unhappy. He feels, in spite of himself, a surge of pity for her. She doesn’t look up, or invite him to sit down, so he rests his bottom against the radiator on the wall directly opposite her, and waits.

He clears his throat. ‘Are you OK, Fanny?’

‘I’m fine,’ she says, glancing up at last, sending him a feeble smile. ‘I’m fine. Sorry. Sorry not to er—’

‘The kids are missing you. Lessons began quarter of an hour ago.’

‘Yes, I know. I’m coming down in a minute. Could you—’

‘Mrs Tardy’s in with them.’

‘Oh, good. Good. I’ll be down in one minute.’

He sighs, a sigh full of teacherly, mature forbearing. ‘Fanny, are you going to tell me what’s going on?’

‘Nothing’s going on. You can see what’s going on. That silly picture.’ She stops, shrugs. ‘You know how it is. Lonely people out there. They get the wrong idea.’

It takes him a moment to work out what she is implying. ‘Ah, of course,’ he says slowly, ‘how very disagreeable.’ A tiny flash of vexation that he hadn’t worked it out before, and then he imagines it: the strange man, the photograph, Fanny listening. He feels faintly aroused. ‘Well, I suppose you’re always going to get these specimens, aren’t you. They see these sort of images in the paper and they take them as an invitation…’

Fanny doesn’t say anything. The room feels small with Robert in it, talking confidingly about things she’d so much prefer never to discuss with him. People wanking over her. She feels claustrophobic. She wishes he’d leave her alone.

‘Perhaps we should call the police?’ he says.

‘No.’

‘Well, Fanny, it’s obviously upset you…’

‘No. Robert—’ She stops, forces herself to smile again. ‘I’m fine. Forget it. So, anyway, you came to see me. What did you want? How can I help? Actually, I’m glad you came, because I’ve really been wanting to ask you about Scarlett.’

‘Scarlett?’ He looks confused.

‘You know Scarlett. Little disabled Scarlett, with the thick specs.’ Fanny speaks quickly, keen to move the conversation on. ‘Scarlett Mozely. Only she won’t show me any work and there are no notes. Mrs Haywood can’t find any notes and I’m wondering—’

‘Fanny, excuse me, but I return to work to discover photographs of our new head teacher in her bra and panties all over the press and you’re talking to me about—’

‘I wasn’t in my “panties”,’ she snaps. ‘Don’t get carried away.’

‘The telephone hasn’t stopped ringing all morning. You’re hiding away in your office here, refusing to pick it up, refusing to come to class. It’s hardly the way—It’s hardly a very good example.’

‘I know.’ She sighs. ‘I know it isn’t. And I’m sorry. Give me two minutes—’

‘What were you doing in your bra and panties, anyway?’ he persists. ‘In front of everyone! What are the kids supposed to think? More to the point what is the
Local Authority
supposed to think? They’re seeing images of our new headmistress in her bra and panties—’

‘I wasn’t in my pa—’ She stops, glares up at him.

He smiles. ‘And what about me?’ he adds softly. ‘Tell me, Fanny.’ He moves across and sits down on the edge of her desk. ‘Hmm? What am I supposed to think?’

She can’t stand it. She can’t stand him. What’s he doing, sitting on her desk? She feels anger rising, and panic. She needs, she knows, to get on top of the situation. And yet—‘Please, think whatever you want.’ She longs for him to go away. Instead he leans forward, over the table, and rests a light hand on her shoulder. ‘No, really, Robert. Please,’ she shrugs her shoulder, but the light hand stays in place. ‘Thank you for trying to help. And I don’t mean to be rude, but—’

‘
Shhh
,’ he says, and begins to massage ever so gently. ‘You’re so tense, Fanny,’ he murmurs. ‘You need to relax.’

‘Please – seriously – piss off.’ And from nowhere she notices that she’s crying, and that he hasn’t pissed off, far from it. And that the telephone is ringing again. He’s slid further across the desk and now he has both hands on her shoulders, massaging, stroking and she’s still bloody well crying.

‘
Shhh…Shhhh
,’ it’s barely a whisper, ‘
relax. Relax, Fanny. Why so tense? Hmm?…Why so tense?
’

Out of desperation, to get him away – to bring a third party into the room – she picks up the telephone. ‘
Louis?
’ she says. ‘Is that you?’

Panting
.

‘Oh…Fuck off!’ She bends her head to the desk, with the telephone still rammed to her ear.

Robert eases the receiver from her hand and gently returns it to its cradle, and as he does so his soft pink lips burrow beneath her hair, and he kisses her neck. ‘Louis isn’t here now,’ he murmurs, ‘I’m here…
I’m here.
’

And though she tells him to fuck off, more than once, it
sounds muffled, with her face on the desk. It’s possible Robert doesn’t hear.

And from nowhere, for the moment, can she seem to find the strength to push him off…

Louis grew up in Baton Rouge, the son of an Anglican vicar and a classics professor at Louisiana State University. His parents sent him to England for his degree, because it was something they had both always wanted to do themselves, and because he asked, and they could just about afford it. He and Fanny were both enrolled on the same course and have been friends since the first week of their first term together. Louis is happy in England (he tends to be happy wherever he finds himself), and except for the occasional holiday, he hasn’t quite got around to going home since.

He spent a couple of years after university driving removal vans. Then he went to art school. He worked briefly as a children’s illustrator. He trained as a TEFL teacher and for a year or two made a fortune giving private English lessons to Japanese bankers. He worked as a park attendant. He took a course in cabinet-making.

For the past year Louis has been working as a freelance news photographer which, with the occasional boost from painting and decorating jobs, more or less pays his way. He enjoys the work: it allows him to travel, and to chat to people (which he loves) and he’s actually a pretty good
photographer, too. But Louis isn’t somebody who lays much weight on his ‘career’, nor has he ever been. In fact he’s always found other people’s career obsessions very comical.

And yet, to his own dismay, he finds himself more than a little undermined by Fanny’s recent stride towards adulthood and respectability. He feels as though he’s dragging behind. After all, he has two degrees, one in English, another from the Camberwell School of Art, and almost nothing to show for either of them: a rented flat in horrible Hackney, a part-time job, a motorbike with two helmets, an overdrawn bank account and a credit card that’s just hit its limit.

When, the day after the limbo cotillion, Louis had ambled into the Fiddleford village post office to ask, on a whim, about local housing, Mrs Hooper had recognised him at once. Mrs Hooper (who was feeling a little lousy that Saturday morning) told Louis she was aware of only three places which were available in the area: one, a cottage on the road to Lamsbury, close to the famous hat maker’s, large and newly refurbished, and likely to be expensive. The other two, she said with a smirk, Louis would probably already be familiar with. Numbers 1 and 3 Old Alms Cottages, she explained, on either side of Miss Fanny Flynn, had been empty for years and would certainly be going cheap. They, like number 2, belonged to Mr and Mrs Guppy.

‘Ah…’ Louis smiled with his usual deprecating charm. ‘After last night I guess that might prove something of a problem.’ To which Mrs Hooper had thrown back her aching head and cackled.

‘Believe you me,’ she said, ‘nothing’s a problem for Ian Guppy, except missing out on the chance to make money. You’ll have no trouble with Ian! Just ring him up and tell him you want to take one of his cottages. No need to mention Miss Flynn; he’ll realise soon enough…But hang on a moment, I’ve got his number somewhere.’

‘By the way, ma’am,’ Louis said, as she disappeared to rummage beneath the counter.

Super manners!
thought Mrs Hooper.
Goes to show not ALL Americans are bad.

‘Would you mind very much—To be frank with you, I’ve only started thinking about this, so please, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d be obliged if you don’t say anything to Fanny.’

‘I shan’t breathe a word to anyone,’ she swore, as she always did when people were delightful enough to entrust her with their secrets. ‘Don’t you worry!’ And to Mrs Hooper’s credit, it should be said that though she told Kitty Mozely, who told Geraldine Adams, and though she did mention it to Mr Guppy, and though she couldn’t resist dropping a clue to Mrs Haywood the glass-eyed secretary when she came in to buy her weekly Lotto, and though she implied as much to Messy McShane, and though she vaguely touched on the subject to young Colin and Chloe when they came delivering the eggs, and though she sort of hinted at it to the General, Mrs Hooper did not breathe a word to Fanny. And nor, of course, since the gossip was directly related to her, did anyone else…

Which is a shame because it would have cheered her up.

‘
Louis isn’t here now
,’ Robert White is murmuring, burrowing his soft pink lips into her hair, holding tight to that telephone receiver. ‘Louis isn’t here.
I’m here. Robert’s here…
’ And as he pushes her backwards towards the floor, she protests. She struggles, but her movements are restricted by her chair and desk; his wet mouth is covering her mouth, his wispy beard is soaking up her tears, and he has both arms around her.

Silence while Fanny tries to find some angle, beneath his bony limbs and wet, determined lips, to communicate more clearly her displeasure. She finds no angle. Can hardly
breathe, in fact. Robert, more or less oblivious, moans in gentle pleasure. And both of Fanny’s telephones strike up at once; the one on her desk, the land line, is Geraldine Adams, returning Fanny’s returned call, and still trying to make that reading-with-the-kids appointment. The other one, her mobile, which has just been knocked to the floor and out of reach, is Louis.

Stepping out into the Canary Wharf sunshine, fresh from a surprisingly successful meeting with his picture editor, Louis holds his telephone to his ear and waits impatiently for Fanny to pick up. She has only just called him according to his own mobile, so she must be there…

This morning he telephoned Ian Guppy, who, after extracting an unfeasibly large deposit, agreed to leave keys to both Alms Cottages at the Fiddleford Arms, allowing Louis to choose between them in his own time. So he has a place to live. He has the promise of plenty of work from his editor. He envisages making this one call – just to be sure she’s still speaking to him. And then sometime afterwards, sometime very soon now, tipping up outside the school with keys to the neighbouring Alms Cottage in one hand and all his worldly goods in the other, and surprising her. They would have the whole summer together.

Because he’s been unable to get the picture out of his head all week. He can think of nothing but Fanny, standing all alone in that wretched village hall. Of the Coca-Cola glistening on her pale skin, of her absolute defiance as she stood there with all eyes upon her, absolutely isolated, foreign, misunderstood; absolutely, unbearably—It was the moment – or the image – which finally allowed him to acknowledge that he probably loved her. Probably had been in love with her for a very long time. They would have the whole summer together.

Maybe even the rest of their lives.

No answer. She’s not answering. He hangs up. She must be in class, he decides. He pulls on his crash helmet, kicks his bike into action and accelerates away. Towards London, briefly, and then on, to the new beginning. Towards Fanny.

He doesn’t believe he’s ever felt so certain about anything in his life.