Chasing Men (6 page)

‘
Hetty. Your mother. Terrific – I will delay my trip to Florida. Can’t imagine why I’m going, I hate mosquitoes. I may have an escort – nobody terribly grand, one of your father’s old cronies. Shall I suggest he bring somebody along for you, too?
’

Would they come?

The flat was pristine; the heat had been on, then turned down in case it got too stuffy. Perfumed candles were lit on the mantelpiece, their flames flickering over the little ornaments. The Lladró statuette was adorned for the occasion with a blue ribbon around her neck. White wine was in the fridge, three bottles were uncorked on the table with the glasses, washed and wiped. Mrs A – Doris – was pottering in the kitchen. A bowl of hyacinths added to the fragrance. Thomas the cat had appropriated a chair and curled up to sleep; ginger hairs scattered with every breath. Hetty heard him purr.

The CD player murmured Enya: suitably anodyne, Hetty hoped. She dried her hands on a tea towel, checked around. The dim sum (if Markus had said spring rolls and bits, Hetty grumbled inwardly, she would not have balked) sat on baking trays ready to be popped into the oven, or on Pyrex dishes for the microwave. The house did not run to steaming bamboo baskets tonight.

Sally would come. Hetty wondered about the boyfriend. Her daughter was so cagey about Erik. He did exist: he was not a fantasy of Sally’s. Hetty had glimpsed airmail letters postmarked from various parts of the globe, and accepted that he was constrained by his career in the airline industry like Sally. But her daughter did not keep a framed photo by her bed, and never spoke of long-term plans.

‘He’s probably married, and stringing her along,’ was the main conclusion Hetty could arrive at, in the absence of further information. How little she knew of her daughter, of what inspired or drove her, if anything. The girl kept things close to her chest. That hurt.

An icy sliver of melancholy entered her soul. Peter was away, almost a grown man, and though dutiful – as his grandmother had remarked – was never likely to be a dear friend to his newly single mother. More tactful than his sister, he would avoid taking sides, and probably slide away from either parent. He would go his own way, as he had been brought up to do. Would that make him a selfish adult? His easy manners Hetty recognised: they might have been inherited from his father or herself, but they made him pliant, and thus not available. Sally was less sunny, more introverted. If additionally she was willing to let a man walk all over her … Hetty sighed. That was hardly a recipe for a contented life. Was she about to admit that her daughter was not a great success emotionally? Was that Hetty’s fault too?

The doorbell rang to interrupt her reverie. Hetty leaped to switch on the oven and tore off her apron. In the kitchen, like the sprite of the hearth, Doris hovered with a proprietorial air. The turban had been discarded, revealing dangling earrings and a fussy perm, which did little for her appearance, but she had donned a flowered frock, cheerful and brassy.

‘Hey! Happy house-warming! Mwah, mwah!’

Three girls and five men bounced noisily across the threshold, four carrying bottles of wine and one, Christian, a bouquet of flowers, which he thrust into her hands. ‘May you have good fortune in your new home, Hetty.’ He smiled down at her, with the slow bob of the Adam’s apple that made her gulp. Then he busied himself arranging the blooms artistically in
the other gift they had brought, a Finnish blue vase.

Annabel was still in black, garments too tight for her
embonpoint
. She resembled an overstuffed sausage, the type that hangs in glistening rolls in French delicatessens. Wholesome and worth eating, but a trifle overpowering. She loomed over Hetty; she must be five feet ten and over fifteen stone.

Annabel gave her rescuer a bear-hug. ‘Thank you for saving my life! God, was I a pig. Sorry you found me like that. Next time I’ll puke on my own doorstep. Where’s the bottle-opener?’ And she was gone.

‘Hi. I’m Shelagh. That’s Flo. Thanks for asking us. Have you got any music? We can bring over some CDs to dance to, if you’d like.’ Shelagh had a mass of extraordinary
flame-coloured
hair that was confirmed by her pale skin and freckles to be entirely natural. Even in the dimmed light her eyes were a bewitching green. She spoke in a high lilt.

‘Maybe later,’ murmured Hetty. Dancing? That was not quite what she had had in mind. ‘Who are the boys?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Shelagh did not seem troubled by the lack of introductions. She pointed at the young men who were now casually opening bottles and pouring drinks. ‘Making themselves useful. Richard you’ve met – he was the one Annabel was breaking her heart over, but he’s after Flo.’ Shelagh grinned. ‘For the moment. But I’m working on him. I’ve told him he doesn’t need to kiss the Blarney Stone, but he should see the Wicklow mountains. He says he may come in the summer.’

‘You mean, you’re all in love with him? With the same chap?’ Hetty’s eyes rounded.

‘Not exactly in
lurve
,’ Shelagh drawled scornfully. ‘Annabel’s the one who’s in love with him. It’s a gross turnoff for a fellow like Richard. Commitment isn’t his scene.’

‘Isn’t he in love with Flo?’

‘Not him. He’s only ever been in love with one person.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘Richard? Himself, of course.’

Two glasses of wine were thrust into their hands. Before she could speak to the young man who had produced them, he had vanished back into the throng. The other two remained anonymous.

‘So why – forgive me being nosy – are you all three so besotted with Richard?’

‘Oh, but he’s a catch, isn’t he? And
fabuloso
in bed. Or so I’ve been told.

On the other hand, you’d want to check that out for yourself, wouldn’t you?’

The doorbell went twice; the nearest person answered it. A timid couple, one of whom Hetty recognised as Mrs McDonald, tiptoed in, jostled from behind by a portly gentleman with a moustache booming greetings, who was completely unfamiliar. Behind him, however, were Hetty’s mother and Sally.

‘Darling!’ Peggy was being helped out of her coat by the moustachioed gent. ‘I’ve brought the Colonel. You do remember him, don’t you, darling? He and your father were adjutants together in Egypt.’

Hetty politely composed her face, but could not recall having seen the mottled jowls and beetle brows before. ‘Nice to be here,’ he called, glancing over his shoulder. He pronounced the word ‘hyar’ with some flourish. ‘Your mother’s a splendid woman. D’you know we’re going to Florida together?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ Hetty told his retreating back. Who was this man?

The smell of baking pastry began to waft from the kitchen. Doris had told Hetty firmly that she would like to make herself useful. There was a yowl from the corner and a cackle of laughter. Someone had inadvertently sat on Thomas, who fled in disgust under the sofa.

The doorbell rang once more; Hetty reached it first. Rosa burst in, hair flying, a bottle wrapped in silvery Cellophane with ribbons in her hand. More mwah-mwahs ensued. Hetty reflected briefly that she had not been kissed so much for years. It was rather pleasant.

She fetched a glass of wine for Rosa and refilled her own. ‘Golly, everyone’s come. I can’t believe it,’ she said.

‘Well, I must admit, you’ve made lots of new friends already,’ Rosa said, peering round the now crowded living room. ‘Fast mover. Who’d have thought it?’

‘It’s misleading,’ Hetty confessed. ‘About half of them, apart from family, I’ve never seen before. For example, one of those boys is Ted, and one’s Stuart, or at least I think so, but I couldn’t say which is which. Or who each is with. And that’s Mr McDonald who lives downstairs, but that’s the sum total I can tell you about him: tonight is the first time we’ve met. And as for the Colonel –’

‘The Colonel? Which one is he?’

Hetty saw that Rosa was casing the joint in a highly practised fashion. She pointed. ‘He’s with my mother. She’s seventy-three. Can you credit it? Arrives with a bloke I’ve never heard of before, out of the blue. Heavens, look at him.’

The Colonel’s hand was patting her mother’s bottom while he knocked back an entire glass of white wine and smacked his lips.

‘Beefy piece of meat. You should be thrilled for her,’ Rosa chided.

‘I’m a bit startled. One doesn’t quite think of one’s elderly mother as a sex object.’

‘Ask her for her secrets. Is she on HRT?’

‘My mother? I haven’t the foggiest. It’s not the sort of subject we’d have talked about – before.’

‘Are you?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Have you been through the change yet?’

Hetty felt her knees wobble. She drank more wine to steady herself. ‘No, not yet. Everything seems to be working normally.’

‘God, then you could still get pregnant. You’ll have to be careful.’

‘Rosa, I have no plans to –’

‘You
never know
. Women get pregnant in their fifties. Even without fertility treatment. Anyway, I wanna give you one piece of advice you’ll thank me for. When the hot flushes come, don’t put up with them for a minute. Not one minute, d’you hear? You get straight down to your doctor and you
demand
HRT. If yours won’t help, I’ll give you the name of one who will.’

‘But don’t they say – the side effects?’ Hetty was wilting under the onslaught.

‘Sure. The best. The juices keep flowing and the skin’s soft as a baby’s. Here, feel.’ She offered her forearm; Hetty prodded it tentatively. ‘Made me a new woman. The libido’s up and running.’ Her eyes roved and settled on Christian, who was talking animatedly to Flo
and Shelagh. ‘Now, who is that stunning Adonis over there?’

‘He’s an actor. Christian Devenish. Lives upstairs.’

‘Oooh! I wonder if he’ll come on the programme.’ And with that Rosa was off, nostrils flaring, a greyhound after a hare.

Mr and Mrs McDonald were standing quietly together by the wall. Hetty took a bottle and topped up their nearly full glasses.

‘Thank you so much for coming. I wanted to get acquainted, and this seemed the easiest way.’ She shook hands with them, formally. His was cold and bony, his wife’s plumply soft.

‘It was kind of you to ask us, Mrs Clarkson. We can’t stay, we don’t have a baby-sitter.’ Mrs McDonald’s speech was richly accented, and she spoke so low that it was hard to understand her.

Hetty bent closer. ‘Are the children all right? D’you need me to pop down and –?’

‘No, they’ll be fine. They’re watching the telly and eating a Chinese takeaway. Bit of a treat for them. And they know where we are.’ Mrs McDonald smiled faintly.

They were not – odd, exactly, Hetty reckoned. A mite out of place, maybe. The wife was about five feet four, dumpy, plain, with a careworn face. The husband was Hetty’s height and thin, his face shadowy. He might have been slightly younger than his spouse – under forty. He wore a cheap grey suit, a blue shirt and tie. Both, indeed, had dressed up, a compliment to her. Perhaps they were not asked out much.

‘Are you both from up north?’

‘We are. From Cathcart. Glasgow, that is.’

‘Have you been down here long?’ The conversation had a forced quality, but Mrs McDonald did not appear ill at ease. Her husband said nothing; his eyes darted, but his mind seemed partly elsewhere. The pair stood so close that they gave an impression of being joined at the hip, needing no contact with anyone else.

‘About three years. We’ve been married seven; the children were born in Scotland. We came down here for the work – my husband’s a lorry driver.’

‘Oh.’ Hetty felt puzzled. ‘Were there no openings for lorry drivers in Scotland?’

‘Long-distance. He couldn’t get home nights. But we’re getting used to London. Better now the children have lost their accents – they don’t get teased so at school.’

‘Well! If ever I can help …’ Hetty stopped. That was unwise. She did not intend to get stuck as a regular baby-sitter, not for complete strangers, though the children had been well behaved when she saw them.

‘Thank you for that, Mrs Clarkson, but we’re okay. We don’t go out often. This is quite a treat for us too.’

On the other side of the room Sally was signalling for her attention. One of the men – Stuart? Ted? – was trying to chat her up, an approach clearly not to Sally’s taste. Hetty moved adroitly away from the quiet couple, as she had begun to dub them, but not before adding, ‘Enjoy yourselves. Food’s coming. And please call me Hetty.’

Sally pursued her into the kitchen. With Doris’s help, Hetty transferred the hot pastries and dumplings to platters and thrust one into her daughter’s hands, along with a wad of napkins. ‘Go serve,’ she ordered. Sally pursed her lips and did as she was told.

Doris’s eyes followed her in curiosity. ‘She’s not much like you, your daughter, is
she?’ she said.

This was not the time for confidences; in any case, Hetty knew that her worries about Sally would have to be resolved with the girl herself, if at all, and with no one else. ‘Too darn like her father,’ she replied briskly. ‘Sorry. Shouldn’t have said that. Had two glasses of wine. Goes to my head. Isn’t it awful?’

‘Have another.’ The old lady grinned. ‘You’re much more relaxed. Doing you good, it is.’ She peeped round the door. ‘Is that your mother? I’d like to meet her.’

‘Oh, yes. Excellent idea. Remiss of me. Wait.’ Hetty grabbed a second tray and sailed out into the room. Was it her imagination, or had the music changed? Madonna, maybe, or an imitator. Not one of her own. The noise level was higher, too: everyone, apart from the silent McDonalds, seemed lively and happy. The eats were vanishing fast – she should have bought more. Eight empty bottles already! Everyone would soon be pie-eyed. Oh, well, that was the objective.

Her mother was leaning against a table edge, elegantly displaying her figure in a maroon Jean Muir dress and jacket. The Colonel was half bent over her and appeared to be whispering something entertaining in her ear. Hetty smiled sweetly, took her mother’s arm and led her towards the kitchen. ‘You planning to marry him, Mother?’ she asked urgently.

‘Heavens, no. What a barmy suggestion.’ Her mother’s laugh tinkled out.

‘Why? What’s so barmy about it? He seems quite besotted.’

‘So he should be. But for one thing, he’s only a half-colonel. Your father was two ranks up. And if I remarried, I’d lose my pension. We’d have to manage on his alone.’