Prudence (11 page)

To my amazement it was Pendle.

‘Pru,’ he said, ‘are you OK? Suddenly you disappeared. Ace has arrived a day early and my mother’s having hysterics. Come and meet him.’

He took my hand and led me downstairs, stopping on the way to say, ‘Sorry I’ve been uptight. This place always has a devastating effect on me. Thank you for being so sweet.’ He squeezed my hand and suddenly kissed me on the cheek.

That threw me. I nearly started crying again. What the hell was going on? Perhaps things were going so well with Maggie, he could afford to be nice to me. On the other hand it was only Jack’s word against his. All that talk about Pendle and Maggie might easily be Jack’s method of prising me loose from Pendle!

In the drawing-room I was hailed like a long-lost sister. Conversation was very sticky with everyone trying to conceal the fact that they were half cut. All the guests had evaporated which only served to emphasize the chaos. A battalion of empty bottles stood on the table. Records out of their sleeves lay like a handful of loose change in the corner.

‘Pru, darling,’ said Rose, pronouncing her words very carefully. ‘This is Ace, twenty-four hours early, but no less welcome for that.’ Ace got to his feet and shook hands with me, giving no sign that he had already met me in less happy circumstances.

‘Come and sit down,’ he said, pointing to the big armchair, right away from Jack. Pendle sat on the arm. Maggie and Jack were holding hands on the sofa.

‘Why
are
you a day early?’ asked Jack.

‘The Venezuelan riots were crushed much quicker than anyone thought they would be. There was no point in hanging around, so I flew straight back.’

‘How long will you be here?’ asked Rose.

‘Hard to tell — perhaps indefinitely. The BBC have offered me a news programme.’

‘That would mean you’d be in England all the time?’ said Rose faintly.

‘Yes,’ said Ace, with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Then I could keep an eye on you all, couldn’t I? How’s Lucasta?’ he said to Maggie and Jack.

‘Oh she’s absolutely gorgeous now,’ said Maggie enthusiastically. ‘We’ve got her next weekend, so you’ll be able to see her.’

She’d certainly changed her tune — not a trace of the wicked step-mother anymore.

‘Humbuggery is legal after ninety days at sea,’ I muttered.

I could now understand why they were all so wary of him. He was tall — easily the tallest of the three brothers — and even broader than Jack, and his skin was tanned to the colour of old leather. He’d grown a black moustache since the photograph was taken, which made him look not unlike a Venezuelan bandit himself, and he obviously hadn’t slept for days. But even exhausted, he was formidable. He was one of those tough, self-assured men who rove round the world in search of truth, always where the action is, watching wars begin and governments fall. Each time he opened his mouth, I expected the
Panorama
signature tune to strike up.

He had a rough, abrupt way of shooting out questions, then listening closely to the answers. I sat in a semi-comatose state as he asked Jack about the mill, Pendle about the Bar and Maggie about the new house — just as if he were conducting a series of short, sharp interviews. Each time Rose chipped in, he brushed her aside. Occasionally his eyes flickered over me. My turn would come later. I don’t like him, I decided. He’s a bully.

Rose picked petulantly at her nail polish for a few minutes, then announced she was off to bed. I went too. In the hall we found someone had left the telephone off the hook.

‘What a frightful waste of electricity,’ said Rose, putting it back.

This time when I got upstairs, I strewed my clothes all over the bedroom, and when I lay down the room went round and round.

I dreamt I was trapped by falling masonry, with the flames flickering towards me. I woke up pouring with sweat to find Coleridge lying heavily across my legs. After yesterday’s deluge, the waterfall outside the window was thundering on the rocks, which did nothing to alleviate my excruciating hangover. I lay for a bit trying to adjust to the pain. After all, people learnt to live with suffering, people with cancer, and Odette Churchill having her fingernails pulled out. Just relax into it, I told myself, clutching my head. I gave a low moan. It was no good, I got up and staggered down the passage to the bathroom, where I was confronted by the most glorious back view: broad brown shoulders, thick black hair curling into the nape of the neck, powerful haunches wrapped in a scarlet towel, and long brown muscular legs. Perhaps I’d died after all and gone to heaven.

Next moment my illusions were shattered. Ace Mulholland turned round, the bottom half of his face covered with lather. Under the black thatch of hair, his eyes were swollen with sleep and not particularly friendly.

‘Won’t be long,’ he said, starting to scrape off the soap.

‘At least the rain’s stopped,’ I said faintly, hanging on to the door handle for support. ‘We might get a lovely day.’

Then I remembered I was wearing my black temptress see-through nightie, which must look pretty incongruous in my present state of collapse, so I went back to my room, and sat on my bed groaning. If I didn’t get a drink pretty soon the top of my head would come off. I put on a brown sweater, and a pair of brown corduroy jodhpurs which were fashionable that autumn. (I’d never been on a horse in my life.) It took centuries to get dressed, and I had awful trouble with my new walking shoes. Every time I bent down to do up the laces, I was nearly sick. It was a bit late anyway to try and impress Ace with my respectability. I threw my walking shoes in the corner, and put on my orange boots. I seemed to have gone downhill rather fast in the last two days.

Clinging on to the banisters, holding my head in place with my left hand, I found Ace prowling round the downstairs rooms drinking black coffee, and looking bootfaced. Certainly the state of decay looked even worse by daylight. Coleridge, now stretched out in the hall, thumped his tail.

‘Oh please don’t,’ I groaned. ‘Have you got any Alka-Seltzer?’

‘You’ll never keep it down in that condition,’ he said. ‘I’ll get you a Fernet Branca.’

In the kitchen I found Mrs Braddock noisily washing up, trembling with rage that she’d been caught on the hop.

‘Mrs Mulholland should have warned me Mr Ace was coming back,’ she grumbled.

‘She didn’t know,’ I said, remembering Rose’s inside-out dress. ‘She was more surprised than anyone.’

‘Probably never read Mr Ace’s letter properly, and I was going to take the budgie in for a check-up this morning,’ said Mrs Braddock, viciously crashing a saucepan down on the draining-board, which didn’t really help matters.

Ace came in with a glass.

I gulped it down, then choked.

‘You’ve poisoned me,’ I croaked.

For a second I thought I was going to explode. Then suddenly it was a horror film in reverse. The terrified creature being torn apart by Dracula’s teeth was transformed into the radiant bride again. Suddenly I was all right. I shook my head three times. It didn’t even hurt.

‘Very clever,’ I muttered.

Ace regarded me thoughtfully; then, waiting until Mrs Braddock had stumped off to collect some more glasses, said, ‘Do you always drink as much as this?’

I looked him straight in the eyes. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’ve been corrupted by your family.’

He sighed. ‘I was afraid you had.’

‘Where is everyone?’

‘Still asleep. Before you came down, I discovered a man from the tax office stretched out in the broom cupboard.’

I giggled. ‘He had a heavenly time last night.’

‘Well he wasn’t feeling so hot this morning, but was coherent enough before he left to give me a few details about the financial set-up here. I’ll have to have a session with my step-mother later.’

‘Oh dear. Can’t you wait till tomorrow? I don’t imagine she’ll be quite up to it today. I thought you’d sleep in too.’

‘I haven’t got used to the time yet.’

Coleridge wandered in, gazed at me with lustrous brown eyes, then put a large speckled paw on my knee.

‘If he tells you he hasn’t had a mouthful since yesterday, he’s lying,’ said Ace. ‘I’ve just fed him.’

‘He’s terribly nice,’ I said, scratching him behind the ears. ‘Where’s Wordsworth?’

‘Buggered off somewhere, probably after a bitch in the village.’

‘You haven’t possibly got a cigarette, have you,’ I said. ‘I left mine upstairs.’

‘No,’ said Ace, ‘You’d do better with some fresh air. D’you want to come and look around outside?’

‘All right,’ I said. After all it
was
important to get on with Pendle’s family, although I’d been getting on a bit too well with Jack.

Ace got me one of Rose’s old sheepskin coats from behind the door, picked up a large parcel on the dresser and we went out of the back door.

The most radiant morning greeted us. The air was as soft as primroses. The sun had broken through. Everything in the drenched garden sparkled. Deep puddles reflected a sky as blue as the Angel Islington in Monopoly.

We walked through the kitchen garden, past overgrown gooseberry bushes, blue and green cabbages, full of fat rain drops, and ancient fruit trees, the ground beneath them covered with rotting yellow apples that no one had bothered to pick. Along the fence the remnants of former shrubberies were thickly choked with weeds. There was a lovely smell of wet earth and mouldering vegetation. A robin perched on a spade, thrusting out its orange breast in the sunshine.

At the top of the garden, we went through a rusty iron gate into open fields. At the end of the fields, beyond a belt of dark pine trees, a huge mountain reared up, covered in rocks, khaki grass, and bracken so red it looked as though it had been dipped in henna. Coleridge charged on ahead, snorting down rabbit holes, his plumy tail going all the time. It was very quiet; all you could hear was the occasional mournful bleat of a sheep, and the full roar of hundreds of little becks coming off the mountain.

‘How much of the land is yours?’ I said.

‘About twenty thousand acres,’ said Ace. ‘Most of it is let to local farmers. It stretches to beyond the village over there.’

He pointed to a clump of little grey houses in the distance. The smoke was going straight up from the chimneys, the sun caught the gold lichened roofs, and the blue dress of a woman who was hanging out washing.

‘It’s so beautiful,’ I breathed. ‘Aren’t you glad to be back?’

‘Not sure yet. Haven’t been here long enough.’

Suddenly I decided I rather liked him. Then he started grilling me, and I decided I didn’t. It was just like being interviewed for a job. How long had I known Pendle? Where did my family live? What did my father do? How many brothers and sisters had I got? Why hadn’t I gone to university? How long had I been in my present job?

‘Two years,’ I said defiantly — that should show him I’d got staying power. ‘If you’ve got a good job, you hang on to it at the moment. Everyone’s nervous. The advertisers are still pulling back. The bosses spend more time worrying about cashflow than producing ads.’

‘What do you do?’

‘I work for the creative director — and doesn’t he create sometimes!’

Ace was like Pendle, he didn’t laugh at my jokes either. In need of light relief I kicked a toadstool, and then did a handstand. Coleridge had reached a little stream, and was splashing up it, snapping at the waterfalls.

‘He’s what they call a “watter” dog round here,’ said Ace. ‘When he gets home, he’ll rush upstairs, and dry off in someone’s bed. You’d better keep your door locked.’

I told him about Pendle’s rape case.

‘Yeah, he did well. I got the cuttings in the States.’

Even abroad he kept tabs on them.

Then he started quizzing me about the English political scene, which was totally disastrous. I couldn’t even remember who was Minister of Labour, let alone Shadow Chancellor, and I’d never known what the balance of payments was anyway.

‘I’m not interested in politics,’ I said crossly. ‘They’re always changing. Can’t we have a commercial break? I really don’t care about the State of the Nation at this hour of the morning.’

The dark searching eyes held mine for a minute.

‘Do you ever?’ he said dismissively.

‘Not if I can help it. You should try Professor Copeland if you want serious conversation,’ I snapped, and did a couple of cartwheels, which didn’t do my head any good either.

We had come full circle now. The house was visible over the hill. We passed a thick clump of silver birches, and reached the stables, and whatever state of delapidation the rest of the house had fallen into, you couldn’t fault them. Everything had been newly painted a glossy duck-egg blue, the yard was swept, and the horses in the boxes were in magnificent condition. And one felt that never in the past two years had they ever been anything else. There was also no doubt about the incredulous delight on old Mr Braddock’s face when he saw Ace who handed him the parcel he was carrying. He was too shy to open his present in front of us, but stumped off bowlegged to leave it in the tackroom, and then took us on a tour of the horses.

‘This is new,’ said Ace, stopping in front of a handsome chestnut, looking balefully out of her box, and pawing at the straw.

‘Mr Jack bought her for young Mrs Mulholland last summer,’ said Mr Braddock. ‘Jumps anything you can see the sky over, but she doesn’t get enough exercise.’

We went out to the paddock to look at the ponies. A plump blue roan came bustling up to us, whickering through her nostrils, nudging at Ace with her roman nose.

‘This is Bluebell,’ he said, pulling gently at her ears. ‘She taught us all to ride. God knows how old she is now.’

I was just bending down to pick her some grass, when a pair of hands grabbed me round the waist. I let out a piercing shriek and leapt forward. Bluebell tossed up her head and cantered away.