Singled Out (21 page)

‘Glares. I think it’s his natural expression.’

‘You’re a fine one to talk! You both look and sound like a tragedy queen – Lady Macbeth to the life – but it seems to work on the men OK.’

‘Dante’s too young, and I don’t really think he’s interested in me like that despite the other night. In fact, he seems to disapprove of me, my works and everything I do. And I don’t know how to go about seducing anyone anyway. I’m out of the habit of going out with other men … I mean, I always meant to be faithful to Max, but he lied to me all the way along the line.’

‘That was always perfectly obvious, but it was pointless saying anything when you were so under his thumb.’

I shuddered. ‘I nearly was again – there’s something almost hypnotic about Max when he really starts to work on me. You know, if it hadn’t been for that stupid beard I might just have weakened!’

‘No, I think you’re beyond that, and that beard is pretty stupid. Besides, maybe you didn’t notice, but when Dante was standing next to Max, the contrast really struck you, because he is so big, and dark and
virile,
and Max looked thin, and dry and older and well-preserved, I suppose, and sophisticated.’

‘I did notice,’ I admitted. ‘But I’m no spring chicken either! If I felt shy with Max after only a few months apart, think what I’d be like trying to get off with a total stranger! And how could I bare this forty-four-year-old body to a new lover?’

‘What about the other night? And you have a wonderful figure!’

‘The other night I was drunk and – well, let’s not go into that. And we both have wonderful figures, as in big busty ones, but it’s not fashionable to be shaped like a woman, is it? Only anorexic boyish types need apply.’

‘I think you’d better abandon any hopes of pregnancy by anything other than divine intervention then, since clearly you’ll never come near enough to another man again to make it happen. How about a nice dog?’

‘What?’

‘You absolutely drooled over the Saluki hounds when we were watching Crufts on my TV. Why don’t you have one of those instead?’

‘It’s hardly the same thing, Orla!’

‘Much less trouble though! It’s not life-threatening, figure-threatening, wallet-threatening, doesn’t involve having random sex with strangers or turning friends into lovers…’

Maybe she had something. But the urge to procreate is a powerful one, and it wasn’t prepared to lie down and die quite yet.

‘How’s your other offspring, your latest book, coming along?’ she asked.

‘Oh, the characters are all off doing their own thing, now I’ve made Keturah’s dead lover come back as something not quite human. And then there’s this ancient family vampire that lives in the local hall that she finds quite attractive.’

‘You’re not going to do anything particularly revolting to him at the end, are you?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘I always get to kind of identify with someone half bad and half good in your novels, and then you do something awful to them!’

‘Of course I am! Don’t I always? But it won’t be
me
but my heroine Keturah. She might eat him during the sex act, like a spider, since she is half-vampire, half—’

‘Oh God!’ exclaimed Orla. ‘Ugh! Don’t tell me any more. How can you sleep at night?’

‘I don’t, I’m too busy writing.’ I sighed. ‘After this, I think I’ll write a literary novel under an assumed name, and call it
Dante’s Compendium
or
Dante’s Goldfish
or something.’

‘You are joking, aren’t you?’ she said suspiciously.

*   *   *

I woke Charles yet again with my phone calls. I really must learn to check the time before I call people.

He never seems to mind, but he is not a young man and needs his beauty sleep. Another thing to feel guilty about.

I brought him up to date on Rosemary’s letter, and how I’d made her suffer all these years, and how guilty I felt, and about Max now seeming a worthless thing to have swapped for my self-respect.

‘And Charles, I had an absolutely horrible thought: did I choose Max simply because he was older and very charismatic, like Pa? (Only sane.) Or like Pa was, before he took to drink.’

‘You were simply desperate for love, Cass my dear: leave the psychoanalysis to specialists. As to the rest: yes, it is a heavy weight to bear on your conscience, but if you are truly sorry, God will forgive you.’

‘Actually, I feel more worried about me ever forgiving me at the moment. And it was a bit shattering to discover that the minute the path is apparently clear for Max and I to be together, Rosemary is always going to be blocking the way.’

‘Does Max accept that the affair is finished?’

‘I’m not sure that I quite accept it yet, Charles: I mean, I didn’t know how I would feel about him until I saw him again, and then we just argued, and then he tried to be nice and get round me, and then he went huffy again and left … so it all seems a bit like it’s inconclusively petered out rather than ended.’

‘So you haven’t actually told him?’

‘I think he got the idea, but no, I haven’t actually come right out with it in so many words. I might have, except he was so much more like the old Max I loved towards the end of the visit – apart from the vile beard.’

‘The beard?’

‘Surely you noticed, at the pub on Friday? It was disgusting – sort of shaved at the sides. There’s no telling what might have happened if he hadn’t turned up with facial hair, but I’m glad now that he did, because it made me take a good hard objective look at him and decide to end it all. I must. I
must
finish it.’

‘You will feel much better when you do, Cass: but in your own time. God has infinite patience, and infinite love.’

‘It’s just as well, Charles,’ I said, before replacing the receiver.

Chapter 14: Mad Max

… and we knew Dante was no good.

Samuel Butler:
Note Books

Found myself idly thumbing through the
Dictionary of Quotations,
where there were lots of good Dante ones but, I was extremely aggrieved to find, no Cassandra ones.

Maybe there’s a male and female version of the Dictionary and I’ve got the wrong one? I mean, it’s not like she didn’t have an interesting life:
someone
must have mentioned her.

Mind you, she is a striking example of what can happen to a woman when she reneges on a promise. Keturah should bear it in mind, although in her case it isn’t a lot of petulant gods who are about to become the thingummy in the machine.

Tried to discuss this with Jason when he popped in at lunchtime to share a pizza, for he is not unintelligent, although he has stopped thinking deeply about anything much since he settled here.

All he said was that I was cute when I talked mythological, and then
I
said I hoped he choked on his black olive.

Such childish depths are, I’m afraid, our usual comfortable mode of conversation when he is not fancying himself in love with me.

Later I popped into the Haunted Well B&B, where Orla was fully occupied with a party of Australian family-tree researchers. The house seemed to be covered in people poring over vast photocopies, and Orla was quite distracted.

She said the only Cassandra she’d ever come across before me was Mama Cass, who was a striking example to us all.

I agreed, but afterwards wondered quite what sort of example?

*   *   *

An almost incoherent phone call from Max, who had been ‘taken in for questioning’ by the American police the moment he stepped off the plane in sunny California.

‘Incompetence!’ he spluttered. ‘They already know I’m innocent of anything to do with Rosemary’s death, and whatever Kyra says she did had nothing to do with me!’

‘Kyra, as in your personal trainer?’ I asked, my heart sinking. ‘What
did
she do?’

‘Only confessed that she was responsible for Rosemary’s death! They had an argument which ended with Kyra giving the wheelchair an almighty shove and walking off. Afterwards, she realised Rosemary hadn’t been able to stop it and gone over the edge, but she was too frightened to say anything even though it was an accident.’

‘So why is she saying anything now?’

‘Goodness knows!’

‘And why did the police want to question you again, if you weren’t there at the time?’ I pondered aloud.

‘Some busybody – that home-help we had to fire for incompetence, probably – told them that Kyra was getting a bit … well, frankly, she had a crush on me,’ he hedged. ‘Rosemary told me the day before she died that she’d had enough of Kyra trying to flirt with me under her nose and she would have to go, so that’s probably what the argument was about.’

‘You were having an affair with her, weren’t you?’ I asked bluntly, a lot of long-suppressed suspicions bobbing up to the surface, all thanks to Rosemary.

‘How can you even suggest that, Cassy, when you know how I feel about you?’ he said, sounding deeply wounded. ‘Of course I wasn’t, and in the end the police just let me go home, because clearly I had absolutely nothing to do with it. Only now the university has asked me not go in until further notice, and I feel I’m being unfairly punished and harassed for poor Rosemary’s tragic death, which was little more than an accident anyway, as it turns out.’

I think Rosemary might have described it a little differently – and there was definitely some subplot there that he wasn’t telling me about.

‘So what will happen to Kyra?’

He didn’t sound too concerned: ‘There were no witnesses, but with any luck it will be brought in as an unfortunate accident. It certainly wasn’t premeditated – she had no reason to want her dead, as she told the police – and everyone knows Rosemary was a quarrelsome woman.’

‘Was she? I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned that.’ It was strange how I was getting to know Rosemary after her death.

‘There’s no one else I can talk to about the whole sorry affair except you, Cassy – you understand me like no one else does.’

I think he meant that I was blind to all his faults, but hasn’t realised Rosemary has ripped the blinkers off, leaving me squirming in the light of day.

‘And I’m sorry if I was unreasonable when I came to see you, and that we argued, but I really wasn’t myself after the funeral and everything. I’ll make it up to you when I get back darling: marriage, babies – anything you want.’

I muttered something non-committal, not wanting to be the straw that broke the camel’s back, but longing to tell him that the magic had not only worn off our relationship but the base metal was beginning to tarnish.

Charles is so right: when the right time comes and I can tell Max that I never want to see him again it is going to feel such a release. Guilt has been dragging me like an anchor, and soon I will be able to serenely sail away into the seas of desiccated spinsterhood.

Portsmouth, 19th March.

Dear Sis,

Docked. See you soon on way to my duty-visit to Ma and Pa, Pa says Jane’s staying with you, and I’m to take her home with me. No bloody fear! Rather be tied to an alligator than cooped up in a car with Jane for hours.

Boz and Foxy and me are going poultry-farm hunting after that, but don’t tell Ma and Pa yet.

Love, Jamie.

Ps. is that yummy blonde friend of yours still single? Give her my best!

Belgravia, 19th March.

Dear Jane,

tried to phone you the other day, but Gerald informs me you are staying with Cassandra and completely incommunicado. I’m surprised you should want to stay with Cassandra in her hideously uncomfortable little hovel when you could stay with us, which is why I was calling: Phily’s had a spot of her old trouble, and the court case comes up next week.

Unfortunately I have to be away for several days then, so could you possibly come and keep an eye on Phily and support her, and all that? Her doctor will be giving evidence of course, so there will be no problem. It is ridiculous to put her through this when she cannot help herself, as I know you understand.

Let me know as soon as you can if you will be able to come,

George.

‘Do you know what Phily’s “old trouble” is, Eddie?’ I asked, frowning over Jane’s letter. I’ve started opening all her mail, since she’s been gone days now and no word on yurts. No word at all, in fact.

Eddie shook his blond dreadlocks and carried on eating peanut butter with a spoon straight from the jar.

‘Well, whatever it is, she will have to cope on her own, because I don’t know the address of Jason’s yurt in Cornwall. If yurts have addresses?’

‘The peanut butter’s gone,’ he said, smiling vaguely at me as he put the jar down.

Hello, Planet Eddie. Are you receiving me?

‘There are four more jars on the shelf behind you.’

‘I know Clint Atwood,’ he suddenly announced, to my astonishment. ‘Crap painter, weird bloke. Nice yurt.’

I stared at him, astounded. ‘You never said. And what do you mean, weird?’

I mean, if Eddie thinks he is weird, then there is something seriously off-centre about Jane’s lover.

Eddie just shrugged. ‘Dunno.’

‘Do you know the address of this yurt?’

‘No, but I could find it.’

‘Well, that’s a fat lot of good. Eddie, Jamie is calling in sometime on his way home. He thinks Jane is here – everyone thinks Jane is here, not cavorting in Cornwall with her lover.’

‘Well, it’ll be good to see old Jamie again,’ Eddie said amiably, filling the kettle and plugging it in. ‘Have you seen my bong?’

‘No, and you know I won’t let you smoke that stuff in the cottage – it smells vile.’

‘I know, but I’ve put it down somewhere.’

He wandered round the kitchen, lifting things up as though the pipe might be playing a game of hide and seek with him. I had a sudden strange vision of Eddie as the next TV chef: ‘Naked Stoned Old Hippie in the Kitchen’, perhaps? Buy his new cookbook now:
Fifty Fun Ways With Weed.
Not so much a recipe book, more a way of life.