Dancing in the Dark (17 page)

‘I'm going to.'

‘Well, for God's sake do it
now
.' I'm losing control again. ‘I do not want to come back and find that . . . that ridiculous hairdo in my office. Change the colour,' I say.

‘Keep your shirt on, I—'

‘I never wanted to have you here in the first place,' I say, my voice rising, the pressure building, my face reddening. ‘It was only as a favour to Mick Haigh that I agreed to it. If you don't feel inclined to do as I ask, then perhaps you shouldn't bother coming back.' I hate myself but seem to have run out of self-control.

She squeezes her mouth into a thin line but doesn't say anything.

I stamp out into the kitchen. On the counter is a basket of fresh-picked runner beans, a bowl of strawberries, three courgettes. And, in several pieces, my favourite mug, sponge-ware, cream-coloured pottery with bunches of grapes stencilled on the side. It seems like the last straw. Marching back into my office, I say, ‘Right, Trina. I'm sorry but I'm not putting up with having my things damaged. You'll have to leave.'

‘What you on about?' She stares at me, her face closing, stiff with resentment.

‘We said an initial month's trial and it's nearly that now. I'll pay you until the end of the week but don't bother coming back.'

‘I won't, you needn't bloody worry,' she says. Under her breath she adds something which sounds like, ‘Neurotic bitch.'

Slinging her bag over her shoulder, she steps out of the open French windows on to the path which leads around the side of the house. As I'm about to bang them shut, she says, ‘If you're losing your bleeding rag about that mug, it was Marnie who broke it, not me.' And off she marches.

Marnie? Oh shit, shit, shit! Trina picks courgettes for me, harvests beans and strawberries, anticipating my pleasure. And I treat her like a piece of nothing, because of a stupid bit of pottery.

What's wrong with me?

As if I didn't know. The glue which has held my life together for years is melting. I feel beleaguered from all sides. For some reason I am, though I hate to admit it, aware that I am frightened. What of, or why, I cannot say. Is it something to do with a profound sense of loss because the Vernon Barnes portrait of a man who is not my father, and the subsequent loss of self? Or is it more tangible than that? Am I becoming as paranoid as my mother, seeing enemies all about me, like that hieratic figure outside my mother's hotel? Why does he disturb me? Why do I link him with my father, the painted garden, the hidden watcher at the window?

In addition, as well as alienating both Marnie and Trina, I've managed to screw up the two most significant relationships in my life: daughter and wife. Perhaps Trina's right and I
am
a neurotic bitch. I'm certainly acting like one. It's not a pleasant thought. I press the message button on the answering machine and listen to Jenny asking how I am, Terry sending her love, Elizabeth Crawfurd saying she hopes I hadn't minded her speaking to James Bellamy about the Vernon Baines painting and if he's upset me, she's really awfully sorry, she had no idea that . . . I cut her off in mid-message.

Not only have I been both unfair and bitchy to Trina, I've accused her of something she didn't even do. Woman behaving badly. I change into my grubby gardening clothes and go outside to survey my small kingdom. The further away from the house I go, the wilder the lushness of grass and fern. I love this area of untamed natural growth. Dozens of bulbs have been planted here: fritillaries, daffodils, grape hyacinths, lilies, wonderful tulips which push their way through the fecund grass like multicoloured ballerinas. As I walk, I recite the lovely names of grasses: fescue and timothy, fiorin and foxtail and Yorkshire fog.

Harry Lovage has obviously been busy down by the spring; the last of the stone flags has been set the way I showed him, and he's bedded in the remaining hostas. Eventually the giant leaves of the
hosta sieboldiana
will try to take over, if the slugs don't get it first. I make a mental note to topdress around it with a thick layer of sharp grit.

In the area which will eventually be my scented garden, I spend a couple of hours turning over the soil, jabbing my fork into the ground and lifting huge chunks of heavy earth. It all needs to be mulched and turned before I can complete the plantings I have in mind. There are no roses here. I prefer a dedicated rose garden. Two springs ago, I put in an
acacia dealbata
;
it's not a hardy species and I'm delighted that it's still doing well. The gorgeous perfume of
philadelphus
drifts across the space, intoxicating and seductive, mingling with honeysuckle and lavender. This is open-air aromatherapy.

My suicidal self-hate subsides a little. Sitting on a curved stone bench beside the glorious pastels of sweet peas, I reflect that I myself am like an overgrown garden, where any number of delights may lie beneath the jungle of weeds and bramble, creepers, poison ivy, bindweed, the waist-high grass. Marble statues may be there, pools of rainbow fish, crystal-clear springs, beds of violets, heavy-laden fruit trees. But until I can clear away the creeper and the couch grass, cut down the brambles and scythe the grass, I shall never know.

Night-time scents – honeysuckle, jasmine, orange blossom, nicotiana – rise from the beds around me as I finally make my way back to the house. A neon city glow illuminates the horizon; nearer at hand, I can see the lights of the village through the trees. At the edge of the lawn, bushes quiver, shadows stir. A car engine thrums in the lane. A lone dog barks and is joined by a chorus from others. The image of that still, dark figure outside the Lotus Flower Hotel slithers into my head. Where have I seen him before? I shiver.

A lycanthropic moon hangs to one side of the sky and briefly I wonder why werewolves are always male when women, too, possess just as many of the baser appetites which inform the myth.

As if conjured by my thoughts, the telephone rings and it's him. ‘I enjoyed our dinner together,' he says.

‘So did I. Thank you.' I'm not just being polite.

‘We could do it again.'

‘That would be nice.'

‘Or instead of dinner, we could go to the theatre.'

‘Indeed.'

‘Or skinny dipping, deep-sea diving, bungee jumping, Morris dancing. Anything you like.'

‘All or any,' I say.

‘Or none,' he says. ‘We could go to Corfu, instead.'

‘Fergus, I really can't take—'

‘It's all settled, I've got the house sorted, I can leave as soon as I like. It'll be fantastic, especially if you come with me.'

‘I'd love to Fergus, I really would. But honestly, I can't, I have far too much work to do here.'

‘How can I persuade you to change your mind? What inducements can I offer?'

‘Unfortunately, none. Really, I haven't time for holidays at the moment. Besides, I'm not . . . not what you want.'

‘How do you know what I want?'

‘I don't know, someone bright, happy, enthusiastic.'

‘And you're none of those?'

‘At the moment, I don't believe I am.' Was I ever?

Abruptly he changes the subject. ‘So, where have you been? I rang a couple of times but you weren't home.'

‘I drove up to Yorkshire to advise someone about a garden.'

‘Did he take your advice?'

‘I didn't give him any. He turned out to be so disagreeable that I thought the hell with it, and drove straight home again.'

‘Just like that?'

‘Best way to deal with it.'

‘I'd no idea you were so firm of purpose.'

‘I'm not, usually. But sometimes life's too short.'

‘Isn't there a danger that they'll look at the plans you've drawn up for them and then put them into practice without using you?'

‘I took my design away with me. Of course, I'll have to send back the money he's already paid.' I sigh. Once that would have been a minor disaster, but now it merely seems irrelevant. ‘Anyway, you can't patent ideas.'

I have an urge to confess my sins, tell him how mean I was to Trina, get from him some kind of absolution. But of course I don't. We talk for another ten minutes or so about very little. Tomorrow I will telephone Trina, apologize, beg her to come back. Ask her to talk over her garden plan for Holly Crawfurd. Praise her for the excellent job she's done.

I go to bed with one of Fergus's books. It's both clever and moving, a sensitive story about coming of age. But I am tired, both physically and emotionally, and fall asleep at chapter three. I dream I am dropping out of the sky, my parterred garden below me. I dream the flowerbeds are full of shrivelled plants; that the white pebbles have turned black and the unicorn is now a raging monster clawing to break in. I wake in a sweat of terror. I see the man at the window and he is not my father.

I dream again, this time of Luna, running, running, her red shoes clacking as she drags me behind her, running so fast that I flow horizontal in the slipstream of her passage, pursued by a black shadow. She is crying as she runs. So am I.

Once more I wake and toss around in the darkness, feverish, unable to get comfortable. Everything is breaking up around me, leaving me abandoned on the ice floes. My life is tilting, swinging, turning upside-down.

F
ergus receives a padded envelope from Ian Parker. There are keys, photographs, local maps, directions for how to reach the house from the airport or the harbour. He can leave tomorrow, this afternoon if he wants. Suddenly Corfu has become a reality instead of a dream. His fingertips are blocked with words, ready to jump on to the page. Time to go, time to write.

He telephones Carolyn Cartwright to tell her he is leaving. ‘You sound lonely,' she says.

‘I am.'

‘Why don't you come round for supper? Spaghetti, a salad, the first bottle's just being opened.'

‘Sweet Caroline.'

‘Well?' Behind her, a squall of noise, fractious boy-voices, nordic soothings from the au pair.

‘It's knowing that I
could
come round. Instantly, I'm no longer lonely.'

‘Seen anything of Theo?'

‘I have indeed.' He explains the sight of her at his book reading, the meal shared, the jazz listened to. Pause, sup at the opened beer, emotion fizzing in his mouth along with the hops and the yeast. ‘Haven't met up with her since, Caro, and to tell the truth, I wish I had.' Wish I could stop thinking about her. Wish I could unlock the secrets she stacks so pack-rattedly inside herself.

‘Are you going to say goodbye to her before you go?'

‘I hope not.' Lungs filled. ‘You may not believe this, Caro, but I asked her to come with me.'

‘What? To Corfu?'

‘That's right.'

‘I'm gobsmacked! I don't know what to say.'

‘Best to say nothing. Tell me more about her.'

‘I don't know a lot. There's a dead father, some kind of war hero, I believe, and a slightly mad mother. According to Terry, the woman's a world-class dancer and choreographer, always on the move, but never seems to have had much time for her daughter. Disappeared for about ten years when Theo was twelve or so, resurfaced after Theo married Harvey.'

‘Strange.'

‘We all thought so.'

‘She just took off? I wonder why.'

‘She's . . . weird.'

‘Or running from something or someone.' His novelist's mind drums up possibilities: Mafia, murderer, stalker, debt collector.

He thinks of Theo's fingers so tender among the leaves of Caro's garden. Nurturing. The way she touched petals, stroked leaves. Bending her head to sniff at the flowers, hair falling away from the white nape of her neck, graceful. He thinks of love and its complications, how a person might be who suffers from a chronic lack of it.

‘She's very like you, Fergus, in all sorts of ways,' says Caro. ‘Which is why I knew you two would get on. You'd understand each other where other people might not.'

‘Glass of wine, Caro?' Charlie's voice.

Fergus can almost smell the bolognese sauce, the sharpness of the fresh-grated parmesan, see the gleam of oil on green leaves, basil. All he has to do is walk out of the door and hail a cab.

‘So, is something stirring between you?' Carolyn asks.

‘Takes two to have a between, don't you think?' he says. ‘Or a stir, for that matter. A person on his own couldn't manage it.'

‘How can you get her to be the other person?'

‘That would depend on whether I wanted to.'

‘And you don't?'

You're not going to ask if you can come up for coffee, are you?
Well, yes, as it happens, I
was
going to, as a matter of fact, since you're asking, actually I was, since I'm keen and growing keener by the second, since I can't see the way into you and need to discover it, and while I have no expectation of sex or even a chaste kiss, I want to spend longer with you. And there was definitely a deliberate and derisive deepening of those dimples as she got out of the taxi. Laughing at me. No question about that.

‘She'd laugh at me,' Fergus says.

‘She's too kind-hearted to do that.'

‘She already has, more than once.'

‘She's normally rather solemn.'

‘Solemn? I don't think so.'

‘Why did she laugh at you?'

‘I was being pompous. It's too embarrassing to be discussed.' Water-swell against the hull. Floor moving under his feet. Rocked in the cradle of the Thames.

‘You didn't grope her, did you?'

‘Of course I didn't.' Press of the cold beer's rim against his mouth. ‘I'd better let you go.'

‘Keep in touch. Don't be lonely. We love you.' Carolyn makes a kissing noise into the phone and switches off.

Theodora weighted down with chains . . . Maybe something of the same for Griselda Fargo, patience made anorexic by her husband's indifference. But loves him still, the garden a substitute for the affection she yearns for, the chaos she can't control? He's gone, and seeking her own epiphanies, she goes after, follows (or pursues, there's a world in the difference) the hard-found trail to Mexico, a woman chasing a dream she never even realized she had, intrepid, yes, definitely better her story rather than his, would it work?