Vacillations of Poppy Carew (2 page)

‘Oh, ho, ho,
ho
! How
lovely
! Ouch!’ Bob Carew let out a rattling shout. His head fell to one side and his hand lay, lifeless, in Poppy’s. He dribbled.

A nurse came up with a rustle and a swish, rattled the curtain round the bed with one hand, felt for the non-existent pulse with the other, frowned at Poppy. ‘Look what you’ve done,’ she hissed. ‘He should have lasted until after visiting hour.’

‘That will do, nurse.’ The ward sister stood now beside Poppy, who looked at her father with wonder.

‘Is he dead?’ He died laughing, she thought with satisfaction, at least I gave him that.

‘Yes, dear.’

‘Don’t you dare call me dear,’ Poppy shouted at the ward sister. ‘I am not your dear. I will not be called dear by you.’ She began to cry loudly, messily, unrestrainedly, her breath coming in angry hiccups. She bent to kiss the dead face, her tears dripping into its open mouth. ‘He wanted me to have this.’ She snatched at a copy of the
Field
topping a stack of magazines on the locker by the bed. ‘Wasn’t it wonderful that he died laughing?’ She shouted, ‘Wasn’t it marvellous? I made him die laughing.’ She stood by her father’s bed, staring at the ward sister until tears blinded her.

‘You’ll upset my other patients.’ Sister had Poppy by the arm, was leading her towards the door.

‘They are not upset. They are loving it. They are still
alive
,’ Poppy shouted.

An old man, destined for the operating theatre (Nil by Mouth) made a thumbs-up sign as the sister pushed Poppy towards the swing doors into the corridor.

‘Nurse, bring Miss Carew a cup of tea in my office.’

‘I don’t want your fucking tea,’ Poppy yelled.

‘Good on you,’ croaked another old man.

The sister pushed Poppy into her office, forced her down on to a chair.

‘Shut up,’ she said. ‘Be quiet.’

Poppy sat. ‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ she said in her normal voice.

A
T ABOUT THE TIME
Bob Carew was dying, Willy Guthrie was crossing the Park to lunch with an old cousin who had offered to buy from him a house he had inherited from his mother who had died the previous year. The capital realised would enormously help the expansion of his present enterprise, relieve him of worry.

As he walked Willy compared the faded London grass with the sweet-smelling turf on his farm and looked forward to the day’s end which would find him back home breathing country smells instead of petrol fumes, hearing country sounds instead of London’s roar. He was a contented man, free—here Willy crossed his fingers—of emotional entanglements, happy with the life he had chosen to lead. Looking down his long Scottish nose at the citizens of London taking their lunchtime break in the park, Willy pitied them and marvelled that he had endured several years of city slog before opting for self-employment and the challenge of running a farm. He felt no regret for the large salary and safe prospects he had chucked in favour of agriculture and was even glad that his present profession was more robust and risky than the lyrical idyll he had falsely imagined it to be when he started. Even his ulcers, should he get them, would be, he felt, of a healthier sort than those of Lombard Street aficionadoes.

His cousin was waiting for him in the bar of his club, a double gin at his elbow.

‘You look very well,’ he said resentfully, eyeing Willy’s sunbrowned face, taking Willy’s hard, brown hand in his pale city paw.

‘What will you drink?’

‘Vodka.’ Willy subsided into a chair beside the old man who thought Willy horribly tall and healthy and that his dark eyes and springy hair made him look a gypsy in this discreet rather academic environment.

‘This is rather an academic club,’ said the cousin hoping to make Willy feel bucolic. It was important to assume the upper hand, he lived in London and was of the opinion that people who lived in the country were less sharp than those in the capital.

‘I wouldn’t have guessed,’ said Willy grinning at his cousin who remembered rather belatedly that Willy’s degree at university had been rather good whereas he in his day had gone down before taking his finals.

‘You have your mother’s eyes,’ said the old man uneasily. ‘Shall we go in to lunch and discuss her house, yours now of course. I had a soft spot for your mother.’

First I’ve heard of it, thought Willy following his host into the dining room and it certainly was not reciprocated. Too late he wondered why he had let himself in for this meeting.

An old waitress handed him the menu.

‘The Irish stew is good today,’ she said persuasively.

To please her—she looked weary—Willy agreed to the stew.

‘The food in this club is disgusting,’ said the cousin, ‘but it’s cheap.’

Willy, who during his banking period had had occasion to learn his cousin’s income and assets, stiffened at this parsimonious remark.

‘Why do you want to buy my mother’s house?’ he asked, leaping to the point of the meeting without preamble.

His cousin flushed. He had prepared what he thought of as his orderly mind for other tactics, a long build up to confuse, ending with an astute offer the country bumpkin Willy would be grateful to accept.

Willy looked round the room while awaiting the Irish stew, listening with half an ear to his cousin who, deciding to ignore Willy’s verbal jolt, set off along the route he had plotted.

The stew arrived.

To please the waitress Willy ate but asked for extra bread to sop up the watery gravy, refused wine, asked for lager. He did not wish to linger longer than the minimum time to register tolerable manners. There was an earlier train than the one he had planned to take. If he was nippy he could catch it.

Meanwhile the old cousin droned on (he was not all that old, years younger than Willy’s mother). He had, Willy knew, a perfectly good house already. Through the verbal screen it became clear from what was left unsaid that the cousin would benefit greatly by moving into Willy’s mother’s house. It was nearer his club, nearer Harrods, nearer the favourite bus routes and the tube, it was SW1 rather than SW14, it would be cheaper to heat (cheap, Willy noticed was a recurring word) needed no money spending on heavy repairs. If he sold his present house (there was an offer in the offing, he hinted) he would make a respectable profit.

As the old man rambled along his chosen course Willy plotted the future of his farm. He would expand, build more piggeries, fence more land eastward under the sheltered lee of the woods, he would pipe more water, increase the number of drinking troughs, build an annexe to the smoke-house, increase the insurance.

‘How are your cows?’ The cousin had noticed Willy’s silence.

‘I keep pigs.’

‘So you do, so you do, I forgot.’ He returned to his dissertation.

Now I come to think of it, Mother couldn’t stand this man, thought Willy buttering his bread, she would hate him to have her house. I should have thought of that before. This stew is really revolting, all water, no dumplings, only one carrot and potatoes I wouldn’t insult my pigs with.

‘Of course the whole house needs redecorating,’ said the cousin brazenly. ‘One must take into account your mother has not touched it for years and Lord knows what I’ll find when I take the carpets up.’

‘Rugs, parquet.’

‘What?’

‘I said parquet.’

‘Oh really, I thought—’

‘Never mind. I wonder, could I have some cheese?’

‘Of course, of course.’ The cousin snapped his fingers towards the waitress.

‘Bring the cheese board. I rather doubt the roof, you know, and the gutters and down pipes are, let’s say, suspect.’

Didn’t he say earlier there was no fear of spending on heavy repairs? Willy helped himself to cheese, a surprisingly beautiful Stilton wrapped as it should be in a damask napkin. ‘What do you suspect the gutters of?’ he asked.

‘Dear boy! Your jokes, ha, ha, ha.’

‘They were all renewed when Mother had a new roof put on three years ago.’

Willy was enjoying the cheese, its bite took away the flaccid taste of stew. There would be no time for coffee if he was to catch the earlier train. He let his eyes rest on the cousin’s face. What an old fraud.

Catching Willy’s thoughtful eye the cousin felt uneasy. Those dark eyes in the boy’s mother had concealed a pretty sharp …

Behind the dark eyes Willy was now calculating just how much he could risk borrowing from the bank, how to spread the improvements to the farm over a longer period—no need to rush. ‘The Stilton’s good,’ he said.

‘Good, good, what about coffee? A brandy?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Are you in a hurry?’

‘I have a train to catch.’

‘Of course you have. Back to the cows.’

‘Pigs.’

‘Pigs of course, how stupid. Now about the price, I was going to suggest—’

‘I think there is a misunderstanding,’ said Willy. ‘I have not decided to sell.’

Leaping into a taxi, speeding towards Paddington Willy hoped he had not been too rude, hoped on the other hand that he had. Then he thought I can use Mother’s house as collateral on the loan, she would far rather I did that than sell to the old cousin. The taxi driver, who enjoyed a joke, slid back the glass partition asking Willy why he was laughing.

‘A near miss,’ said Willy getting his money ready and thrusting it through the partition into the man’s hand. ‘Thanks. If I run I can catch my train—bye.’

Saying goodbye on the steps of the club, crafty enlightenment had lit the old cousin’s eyes.

‘I
see
, the penny’s dropped. You are getting married, want to keep the house. Very wise to have a London base.’ Cousin had looked wonderfully cunning.

‘No.’

‘But you want to keep the house for—er—girls. Of course! There aren’t many who’d want to dally on a pig farm. You did say pigs?’

‘No girls.’

‘Ha, ha, no girls?’ The rather pleased disbelieving expression on cousin’s face had delighted Willy. ‘Boys?’ he suggested, lowering his voice.

‘No boys either. I am free, free, free.’ Willy had laughed as he said goodbye.

‘Famous last words!’ shouted the old cousin as the taxi left the kerb.

‘Y
ES,’ SAID THE VOICE
, ‘Saturday’s okay, can do.’

‘Thanks,’ said Poppy.

‘Do you want four horses or two?’ asked the voice. ‘One could make do with two.’

‘Oh no, he wants, I mean I want, the lot.’

‘That’s the spirit,’ said the voice. ‘Black and gold, or silver and black? Mutes? What coffin do you fancy? Oak? Black lacquer or red, tricked out in brass or plate? Loops?’

‘Loops?’ There was nothing about loops in the advertisement.

‘Silk ropes, nylon actually. We do a good line in a sort of frogging round the box—the coffin I should say. You can choose from the catalogue when it reaches you: it suits military gents.’

‘He is not—was not—military. I gave you my London address, but I’m in the country in my father’s house.’

‘Ah, not so easy then. Shall I send another?’

‘I could come and choose for myself, then I would know he was getting what he asked for. You are not very far away.’

‘Fine. You do that. Pass the time until Saturday. Any particular flowers?’

‘I will decide when I see you.’

‘We do a good line in laurel wreaths.’

‘He is not—was not …’ was not the stuff of laurel leaves. ‘I’ll come tomorrow.’ She put the receiver down and looked dubiously at the advertisement her father had ringed in red biro. (Get me this) ‘Furnival’s Fun Rococo Funerals.’ Dad, what have you let me in for? Why rococo in death when, in life, his taste had run to restrained eighteenth century?

Time to get ready for Anthony Green, her father’s solicitor, hers now, she supposed. She must change her clothes, have a reviving bath. She had not slept since leaving the hospital, had not slept the night before. She felt light, as though levitating, as she went up the stairs.

The house was full of her father’s presence: she related to him in a way she had never managed in life.

Avoiding her old bedroom, she took her bag into a room reserved for visitors, which held no special associations of childhood. She ran a bath, found clean clothes, laid out black shirt and sweater, sensible skirt, clean tights. She must impress Anthony Green as sober and responsible. They had not met for years, although he was one of her father’s oldest friends, had known her mother.

The visitors’ bathroom was equipped with large towels, expensive soaps. Who had been her father’s visitors during the last years when they had met only in London, in restaurants, agreeing not to quarrel, not to cause an irreparable breech? The breech, she thought as she soaked in the bath, wedged open by Edmund.

Enough of that. She left the bath, dried herself and went to dress. Picking up her discarded clothes, she looked for a laundry basket. One of her father’s foibles had been that unwashed clothes should be out of sight until whisked into the washing machine. Seeing no basket, she braved her father’s room, dumping her clothes into his basket.

There were signs of hasty packing for the departure to the hospital, drawers half shut, cupboard doors ajar. Illness had come like a thief. Moving to shut a cupboard, Poppy saw a parcel in festive wrapping labelled, ‘Happy Birthday, Poppy’. My birthday, Saturday, on Saturday … She untied the ribbon, held up a dress, put it on, viewed her reflection in the glass, wondering where he bought this marvellous garment, composed of a multitude of triangles in bright colours. She brushed her hair, saw that the dress suited her, felt elation.

Outside the house a car crunched on the gravel, stopped, the door clunked shut. She ran down to meet Anthony Green as he let himself into the house.

‘I see you found your father’s present.’ He bent to peck her cheek. ‘He bought it in Milan. It suits you.’

When had he been to Milan? She had not known her father’s movements, nor he hers, carefully kept secret.

‘Come in. Would you like tea or a drink?’

‘Tea, please.’ Anthony followed her to the kitchen. ‘Feels odd,’ he said in his pleasant voice, ‘without your father.’

‘I feel closer to him than ever before.’ Poppy filled the kettle. ‘Don’t mind me,’ she added, noticing Anthony’s raised eyebrows, ‘I’m not fey or anything, just short of sleep.’