Seven For a Secret (28 page)

‘Sorry to be so long, Julia's just arrived and we thought we should water her dogs first.' Clarissa plonked a large butler's tray down on the dark green wooden table. Delia inspected the crockery with interest, hoping to see some delicately patterned Meissen, but being disappointed to recognize a floral tea-set identical to the one her friend Peggy had bought in the John Lewis sale. Delia thought it entirely appropriate to put the dogs before humans: it was suitably aristocratic.

As tea was being poured, Julia came out carrying a large chocolate cake and accompanied, as always, by her labradors. ‘Hello! How lovely to see you! Oh and don't touch the dogs, one of them has been in something disgustingly foxy and he stinks.' She put the cake on the table and waved her arms at the dogs. ‘Boys! Get away! Go and roll on some fresh grass!' she commanded.

‘Lovely cake,' Delia commented.

‘Mmm. These weekly WI sales are marvellous aren't they? I buy all my cakes and jams at them,' Clarissa said with enthusiasm, shattering another of Delia's illusions. So much for the teams of cooks and kitchen maids. It was probably like anyone else's kitchen really, all Magimix and muddle. It probably wasn't even ‘below stairs'. ‘So is the whole village still in chaos with the film company? Or are they almost finished? I heard a rumour they were going to take over the churchyard and that everyone's furious that all their old Auntie Doris's graves will be vandalized. We're so on the edge of everything out here, I hardly know what goes on,' Clarissa asked Delia.

‘We don't see much of them,' she replied, wondering at the same time why there were no cake forks, and if it would be rude to ask for one. The chocolate icing was very gooey, and she hoped there wasn't any caught on her lip-edge.

‘Not even that attractive chap staying at Margot's? That writer, Iain whatsisname, Ross?' Julia asked through a mouthful of cake.

‘I haven't seen him at all, in fact I'm afraid I don't recall him being mentioned,' Delia confessed apologetically. She felt she was disappointingly under-informed. Both women had a rather beady gleam in their eyes as if he was someone who
should
have been the talk of the village, and that somehow she was supposed to have brought with her a useful amount of gossip.

‘Of course Ross is just the name he writes under. You
must
have heard of him, surely, all those gory crime novels?' Clarissa was saying. ‘His real name is Iain Ross
MacRae. Sir
Iain, I should say. Owns an awful lot of Scotland.'

Delia suddenly found it impossible to swallow her cake. She had the same feeling she'd had on the train at Reading, short of breath and with her blood pressure going haywire. She immediately had no doubts, none whatever, that Heather had known all along that he was there in the village. She'd been keeping secrets again, of that Delia was suddenly certain. She thought about leopards not changing their spots. Then she thought about the phone call in the car and Heather's silly girlish grin and knew there would not be spaghetti defrosting in the kitchen when they arrived home. She unfastened the top button of her blouse, tangling her fingers awkwardly in the pussy-cat bow ribbons, and tried to regulate her breathing. The tea was making her perspire.

‘We used to know his people,' Clarissa was continuing, calmly pouring more tea. ‘I should have had him over for drinks of course, dreadfully remiss. Father knew
his
father out in Kenya. Old Sir Cuthbert died out there, I believe. Couldn't stand the frozen north, so he stuck to his plantations and the decadent ex-pat life – all gin and giraffes I imagine.'

‘Do you know,' Julia leaned forward towards them both in a confiding manner, ‘when Heather came round to bring my camellias, she did make the slight suggestion that he might just
do
for a lonely widow like me!'

‘No, oh no he wouldn't do at all.' Delia heard her own voice coming from somewhere. They were looking at her in polite surprise and she looked back blankly, feeling much as she had the last time she went to the dentist and had come out of the anaesthetic murmuring about cushion covers.

‘No, you're quite right my dear, I've heard he only likes the young ones. Absolutely typical man! Think they can have anything they want!' Clarissa said with a snorting laugh.

‘They usually can,' Delia added grimly.

‘Did you have a good look round the roses?' Heather asked her mother as they both climbed into the baking hot car for the homeward journey.

‘Yes. Quite lovely,' Delia replied briskly.

Heather waited for her to be more forthcoming. She thought that she'd at least, on this occasion, done the right thing by Delia. It was just her sort of outing, not only a visit to a historic house, but tea with its owner who could quite reasonably be referred to as a friend. She'd been thrilled enough to be joined for tea by an Earl, the previous summer, when on a Townswomen's Guild visit to a famous garden. She'd mentioned it, as if in passing, then quipped, ‘Well of course it's probably included in the entry fee,' but there'd been no disguising how delighted she'd been.

‘Were there any you took a particular fancy to?'

‘Any what?'

‘Roses. Did you jot down any of their names? Nigel might have some in stock, we could come back again before you go back to Putney and have a look.' Delia seemed vague and Heather's insides tensed, wondering if her mother was actually ill. Now that the strain of Uncle Edward's care was removed from her, the sudden relaxation, combined with the August heat that had been grilling the car when it was parked, might be enough to bring on a stroke.

‘There was a very striking “Masquerade”,' Delia said pointedly.

Heather, driving along the narrow road, risked a sideways glance at her. Her mother sat impassively, staring straight ahead through the windscreen. It was a very intense stare into the middle distance, Heather thought, for someone who didn't have to think at all about where she was going.

‘Are you all right? Shall I open the sunroof?' Heather asked, reaching up for the handle.

‘
I'm
fine. Nothing wrong with
me
,' was the reply which made Heather smile. It was just so exactly like when she was young and she was supposed to guess what she had done wrong, while her mother fumed and brooded and sulked and cultivated an atmosphere that reminded Heather of a severe choking fog. Then, once she'd worked out that it was probably because she'd been an hour or two later home from the college than she'd said she'd be, she would resolutely play a game in which she behaved with complete cheerful normality. She'd bang around the kitchen making cups of tea for them both, make a start on her homework, switch on the TV and chat about how envious she was of Val Singleton presenting
Blue Peter.
It was like staring someone out, waiting for her mother's patience to crack when she would at last blurt out her grievance. I must have grown up at last, she thought now. Life is much too short for these grudge-games.

‘OK, so what's wrong?' she asked as they turned on to the main road leading to the village.

‘You know,' Delia said.

‘No, as a matter of fact I don't,' Heather told her. ‘I don't want to play games, and you'll obviously want me to know what it is in the end, so out with it.'

‘
He's
here,' Delia said, still looking straight ahead. ‘That man you ran off with.'

‘Oh you mean Iain,' Heather said, in a more blasé and easy-going manner than she actually felt. There was a small amount of relief, but only a tiny one. She'd been quite savouring the secret. All those gossiping old ladies must have been discussing him over tea. She'd like to have been a fly on the ivy-covered wall when Delia realized who they were talking about. Her mouth twitched dangerously towards a broad smile.

‘And you've been seeing him, haven't you?' The interrogation continued, a sharp accusation, ludicrous from one adult to another.

‘Hey, does it matter?' Heather protested. ‘Though actually I haven't been “seeing” him, as you put it. Not in that way.' She wondered if she should start crossing her fingers on the steering wheel to fend off the results of what might start to be lies. A single magpie flew in front of the car as she slowed down near her own gateway.

‘One for sorrow,' Delia remarked, with a note of satisfied prediction.

‘They're always single in August,' Heather told her. She parked the car under the pergola and sat, thoughtful for a moment, fiddling with the keys in her hand. ‘I never got round to telling the girls I was married before, so they don't know anything about Iain. It might as well stay that way now. I've missed the moment for telling them, and besides, he'll be gone again in a week or so,' she said eventually. ‘Actually, he's been very nice to Kate, getting a part in the film for her. She's delighted.'

Delia opened the car door and looked back at Heather. ‘Well she would be, wouldn't she? She's a lot like you were at that age. You should keep an eye on her. A very close eye.'

More warnings, Heather thought, sighing as she climbed out of the car, her mother had obviously missed her true vocation and should be dressing up in shawls and earrings to tell fairground fortunes.

Up in Suzy's room, she and Tamsin were assembling the necessities for a night on the island.

‘Shall I take clean knickers for the morning?' Suzy said, half to herself, as she made a heap of possible clothing on the bed.

‘No, don't be stupid. We'll just go home, you won't need anything extra to wear at all,' Tamsin insisted impatiently. She was sprawled on the bed reading
Just Seventeen
and flicking off Suzy's clothing as it landed on her.

‘A nightie?'

‘In a tent? Are you mad? You can sleep in your clothes, though if you're sharing with Simon you'll probably not want to be wearing anything. I shall take perfume of course, something
irresistible
.'

Suzy gave her a quick, intense look. Tamsin was so flippant it was hard to know what she meant and what she didn't. Was she, she wondered, still intending to share her tent with Shane, and if so was she intending that he should remove
her
clothes, all of them even . . . She shuddered slightly and wished she didn't keep thinking ahead about possible awfulness. Suppose Tamsin changed her mind about not really
doing
anything with him? And then did
it
and got pregnant. Could you get pregnant before your periods had actually started? Or suppose she
didn't
change her mind, but he started to feel he'd been conned and then raped her . . . There was something in the bus shelter about a girl called Trace being a prick-teaser – somehow you just knew they hadn't written that because they liked her being one, not like the thing about Lisa. They'd be stuck out there on the island like . . . well, like sitting ducks.

‘Can't wait till next Friday,' Tamsin was saying from the chest of drawers where she was gazing into the mirror inspecting a potential spot on her forehead.

‘Friday?' Suzy yelled.' I can't go on
Friday
, it's the uncle's funeral.'

‘Well it won't take all night as well as the day, will it? Unless you lot are some fancy religion or something?' Tamsin asked via the mirror.

‘Well no, it's just . . . I don't think Mum will like it, or at least Gran—'

‘It's
got
to be Friday, it's all arranged. I fixed it with Simon and he's agreed to come, so you've got to.' She turned round to give Suzy her full, rather threatening, attention. ‘And if you don't . . .'

Suzy gazed straight back at her, refusing to be intimidated. ‘And if I don't, then what?'

‘Nothing.' Tamsin had a thinking face on, then looked up and beamed at her. ‘If you
do
I'll give you the new Blur CD. Simon's got some spares.'

‘Spares? Why's he got spares?' Suzy asked, mystified that anyone would want more than one of
anyone's
CD, however brilliant. She'd seen and coveted the new album in Harbutt's Hi-fi only the other day . . .

‘Don't ask,' Tamsin replied, turning back to the mirror with an infuriating wink.

‘And then we all had to look really
terrified
while the man, the bad guy, came in with a shotgun and threatened to kill us. I had to drop my glass of champagne, but it was OK, it wasn't Margot's carpet. I wonder what they've done with all her stuff?'

Kate had been bubbling over with her day of stardom through the whole of dinner. Delia had given the stir-fried chicken and vegetables a hard and meaningful look, as if food cooked that fast couldn't possibly be all right, but Heather had decided to ignore it. She was too old for all this. Perhaps, she thought, as she added the raspberries to the fruit salad, she should tell her mother all about Tom, the
real
Tom. She could march her into the sitting-room, or even the study to make it seem more serious, and astound her with the probability that at this exact moment, and she checked the kitchen clock as she opened the fridge to get cream, at this moment Tom was as likely as not having his penis nibbled by a comely airline steward. The steward, Hughie, Heather assumed, would look exactly like the sort of neatly suited good-boy types who had got clerking jobs in banks straight from school when she was a teenager.

In Staines High Street, Delia had frequently pointed one out and said something like ‘Now
that's
what I call a nice-looking boy,' as if informing Heather what husband-material she could have chosen instead of Iain. Delia had never much approved of Tom – she'd have preferred someone much closer to Heather's own age so that he could be somehow moulded into the perfect, dutiful son-in-law and grow up into agreement about the advantages of spongeable vinyl wallpaper and British-made cars. Tom had come too ready-finished for her liking. He didn't need her ever-ready opinions on mortgages, career-moves, pension schemes or how to make the most of the National Savings scheme. One day, Heather remembered, she had mentioned an airline black-tie event they were going to, and Delia had later telephoned Tom to tell him she'd compiled a list of places where dinner suits could be hired. Tom had told her politely that he'd owned one for years and it was at that point, Heather was certain, that Delia had finally conceded defeat: even she recognized that it was a sign of a fully mature grown-up to have one's own dinner jacket. Unfortunately fully mature grown-ups also arrived with their sexual quirks more or less sorted out too, Heather thought glumly.