Vacillations of Poppy Carew (29 page)

‘But you knew her dad, the one we buried?’

‘Yes, of course. Fergus, I came—’

‘Yes?’ Fergus turned his black eyes on her. ‘Yes?’

‘Nothing. I wasn’t—’

‘Would you like to stay the night, Mother, have Poppy’s room, have supper with me, I’m on my own?’ Give her time to sick up whatever’s bothering her, something is, it must be serious, I’ve never seen her quite like this. ‘You could telephone Henry.’ If my stepfather is ill-treating her I shall have to—

‘No thanks, darling. I’d better get back.’ She took fright.

‘Have another drink, then.’ Loosen her tongue. I must find out what the trouble is. Fergus, sensing his parent’s distress, felt growing concern as he led the way back to the kitchen, poured her another whisky.

‘I really shouldn’t,’ said Ros, taking it. ‘I have miles to drive.’

‘Then stay the night.’

‘No, no.’ The prospect terrified her.

‘Why don’t we sit where it’s comfortable in the sitting room. I’ll light the fire, come along.’ He led the way. Ros followed, panic constricting her throat, why, oh why, had she come? Damn Henry for being right.

‘There, sit there.’ Fergus pushed her into an armchair.

Ros sat, reminded of a rabbit with a stoat, the part of the stoat was being played by Fergus, her only child.

‘Well, now. What’s really worrying you?’ Fergus leant towards her, his elbows on his knees. ‘I don’t see enough of you, Mother.’

Somehow she must get herself out of this ridiculous situation. She took a large swallow of whisky. ‘Henry and I thought, well I thought of it and he agreed, well of course he agreed’ (what he’d actually done was fall about laughing), ‘we—’

‘Yes?’ Fergus leant forward listening, sympathetic, caring, he was really very fond of his mother, no reason not to be.

‘Would you like a coach?’ Ros shot her inspiration out with a rush.

‘A coach?’ Has she gone off her rocker?

‘Yes. I thought for your business it would—I mean with a coach you could—’

‘I’ve got a hearse, Mother.’ He was patient.

‘I know, darling, it’s just this, I thought if I gave you a coach, I saw one advertised in Bath—’

‘It’s very generous of you but what would I want with a coach?’

‘You could do weddings,’ said Ros inspired.

‘Aha! It’s out. You are snobbishly opposed to funerals.’ He felt betrayed.

‘NO!’ She flushed.

‘Yes, you are. You don’t like having a son who’s an undertaker.’

‘No, darling, it’s not—’

‘Or my stepfather doesn’t like having a stepson who’s an undertaker. It lowers the tone. Well, he must bloody put up with it.’ Fergus’s short-fused temper exploded. ‘He can stuff his coach up his fastidious arse. I thought you were embarrassed about something when I came in, had some awful worry you couldn’t bring yourself to talk about. I see it all. You want to bribe me to chuck my business for a fucking coach for weddings.’ Fergus spat out the last word. ‘Well, you can tell him I am not interested in weddings.’

‘I can see that!’ Ros too had a temper.

Ignoring her, Fergus went on, ‘I’ve worked my balls off to get my business off the ground. I’m beginning to do really well. I am not interested in marriages, they always fall apart, look at Victor reduced to killing Penelope—’

‘She’s still alive,’ shouted Ros, infected by Fergus’s rage, choking on her own agitation.

‘I am interested in burials, in death, there’s money in death and I am making it,’ Fergus shouted. He was standing up now, towering above his mother.

‘I am very glad for you,’ Ros too stood up, put down her empty glass, ‘delighted, though you may not believe me, you are so touchy.’

‘I am
not
touchy.’

‘I didn’t come about offering to give you a coach, that was off the top of my head on the spur of the moment, an idea engendered by terror.’

‘What did you come about, then?’ Fergus stood looking down at his mother.

‘Your child,’ said Ros.

‘My
what
?’

‘Your child, Mary Mowbray’s baby.’

Fergus stared at his mother. ‘Mother, you must be mad.’ He spoke very gently. (A good psychiatrist, this looked serious.)

Ros said nothing, watching him.

‘That baby’s father is called Joseph, mother, he’s a Spaniard, in Spain, he’s a waiter or a fisherman or something.’

‘A figment.’

‘You do not suppose I’d—’

‘Yes.’

‘Come on, Mother, you have the wrong end of the stick. She brought it back from Spain, I tell you.’

Ros sat down again. ‘And I tell you, Fergus, that that child is the spitting image of you as a baby. I should know, I am your mother. It was a great shock when I saw him the other day. I can show you photographs of yourself when you were his age which could have been taken yesterday of that child and—’ She held up a hand as Fergus tried to speak. ‘I can also show you photographs of your father at the same age. Same thing, identical. The Furnival genes are mighty strong.’

Leaving the house, Ros passed Bolivar on the doorstep sitting in the dusk, whiskers twitching in anticipation of the night’s business. She kicked his flank.

‘That’s not like you, Mother,’ Fergus cried desperately.

‘But that baby
is
like you.’ Ros jumped into her car and drove off.

‘You will have an accident if you drive like that,’ Fergus yelled after the departing car. ‘You are insane.’ He shivered, feeling very cold.

W
HEN EDMUND SAW VENETIA
tripping towards him he was amazed.

The hospital ward was long and airy, the beds widely spaced, his bed the last in the row. As Venetia advanced the heads of the bodies in the other beds turned to watch her progress. He had time to wonder whether the Muslim patients would be shocked by Venetia’s dress of fine cotton speckled with minute yellow flowers, semitransparent, so that as she approached, with the light behind her, it was possible not only to see her legs but her whole silhouette. As her breasts bounced in time with her stride Edmund was pleasurably stirred.

‘Edmund.’ She took his hand in hers. ‘I came as soon as I could.’

‘Venetia.’ He watched tears gush, roll down her cheeks, drip on to his hands. ‘How marvellous, darling, don’t cry.’

‘I can’t help it.’

‘I love to see you cry but do stop.’ He reached up to kiss her wet face. ‘Sit down, he’s offering you a chair. How did you find me?’

The young doctor who had escorted her was indeed offering a chair. Venetia thanked him profusely, sat. Her tears ceased. She tossed back her yellow hair. She looked like the Primavera in the Uffizi, beautiful, radiant.

‘How did it happen?’

‘How did you get here?’ They spoke in unison.

‘I had an accident.’

‘I got your message, caught the first plane.’ Edmund held her hands while she took stock of his predicament. His leg, heavily plastered, slung upwards in a sling, rendered him immobile.

‘Is it painful?’

‘Not now.’

‘How brave. Was it a car crash?’

‘Not exactly.’

The young doctor who had escorted her said something in Arabic, repeated it in English, ‘I screen.’

‘Not at the moment, thanks all the same. Oh I see, misunderstanding.’

Venetia laughed and Edmund too as the doctor drew a screen round the bed, creating a zone of privacy before leaving them.

‘Well?’ She looked at Edmund. ‘What happened? Tell.’

Edmund stroked her hands, watched her face, he loved her yellow hair, such a definite colour compared with Poppy’s mouse. Her eyes were not as pale as he remembered. ‘Are your feet cold?’

‘Of course. I am adapted to a warm climate. Come on, tell me what happened. Was it something disreputable?’ She was not to be sidestepped into a discussion about the temperature of her feet.

Edmund looked past Venetia at the North African sky, the storm was over, the palms in the hospital garden still, in the distance a glimpse of quiet sea. He was trapped. ‘It’s a long story, rather boring.’ He was guarded.

‘Not to me,’ said Venetia. ‘The sooner you start the better. I didn’t come all this way for a silent sulk. Shall I fill you in about me?’

Edmund nodded.

‘Right. You go off with this girl Poppy. You bring her here instead of me. I was really looking forward to this trip, Edmund. Anyway, this is no time for reproaches, she must have had some sort of hold over you.’ (Oh she had, she had, cried a private part of Edmund. What have I lost?) ‘So I won’t nag, not now, my love. Days pass. I get an impertinent postcard from the girl, nothing from you. Then two or three days later a message which merely says “Broken leg” and the hospital address, signed Edmund. I take it you sent it?’

‘No.’

‘She did, Poppy?’

‘Must have.’ Edmund looked anguished.

‘And where is she?’ Venetia looked round as though to repulse Poppy should she appear round the hospital screen.

‘Buggered off.’

‘Oh my. You’d better begin at the beginning, take it slowly, I have all the time in the world.’ Venetia wriggled, settling her haunches in the hospital chair. For no reason Edmund remembered a French tourist remarking to his friend ‘
en voilà des belles fesses
’. He had been disgusted at the time but now—‘I’m still pretty confused,’ he said.

‘Don’t prevaricate.’

‘You won’t like it.’

‘Oh come on, Edmund, don’t be stupid. If we are getting married we can’t have secrets. I know some people do but I like things clear cut.’

‘You may not want to marry me when I’ve told you.’ (Did a still voice whisper, ‘Make a bid for freedom’?)

‘Let me decide that.’

‘You’re a bully.’ Poppy had never bullied or badgered, it was not her style.

‘I am.’ She accepted his tribute. ‘I’m lots of things. I was captain of hockey at school. I have cold feet. I cry easily but I am as hard as the nose cone of a rocket, so begin.’

‘Ah.’ Edmund squeezed her hand. He’d been pretty lonely lying here since Mustafa brought him in the ambulance. ‘I love you,’ he said. It was probably true, he thought, he had loved, perhaps still loved, Poppy but there were so many no-go areas in the girl, so much privacy, so much from which he had been excluded. Venetia on the other hand was much easier to love. She might be hard compared with Poppy but she was as clear as a bell, an open book (any more clichés? whispered Poppy’s vanished persona).

‘Tell all, don’t edit.’ Venetia jerked him back into her orbit.

‘Of course not,’ said Edmund, who proposed to do precisely that. ‘I’ll start.’

‘Right.’ She was alert.

‘You know about the job? Yes. Well, it went quite well, very well allowing for the fact that I’ve never dealt with non-Europeans. My opposite number here is called Mustafa, very friendly fellow, you’ll like him. I got the hang of the set-up, what the Tourist Board’s proposals are. The Minister took me out to lunch and a swim by the Roman city. You might like him, he makes a good impression.’

‘Did Poppy go with you?’

‘I thought it better to leave her behind. I needed to concentrate on work.’

‘What did she do?’

‘Amused herself, I suppose. There was a pool at the hotel.’ No need to mention its emptiness.

‘That must have been when she bought the postcard.’

‘What postcard?’

‘Never mind, go on.’

‘Well, I dealt with the tourist officials and got the picture, where they will have a Cabana complex, what hotels there are, where they are building more, the stadium, how many tours they will accommodate at a time, and so on. What hotel are you staying at, by the way?’

‘I came straight here from the airport, I was so worried about you.’

‘My darling, thank you.’ Edmund held her hand. ‘I’d better get you into one of the older hotels. The one they put us, me, I mean, in is not really finished, smells a bit of wet cement—’

Venetia laughed. ‘Go on, don’t bother about my hotel, get to the drama.’

‘The drama, as you put it, is really very small.’ Indeed as he talked, holding Venetia’s firm hand, gaining confidence from her presence, the hell of the preceding days was shrinking. ‘After we had finished our business, Mustafa took me out with some friends.’

‘Where was Poppy?’

‘She wasn’t feeling well, tummy upset, that sort of thing. The trots.’ (How am I doing?) ‘We did a round of the bars to get the local colour. I’m afraid the Arak round here is pretty potent.’

‘You got pissed.’

‘You could say that. Yes, not to put too fine a point on it, I drank too much.’

‘Yes?’ Venetia remembered somebody, who was it? Of course, Penelope in Harrods. ‘Yes, go on.’

‘Well then—’ Edmund lowered his voice, pulled Venetia closer. ‘It was rather, well very embarrassing.’

‘Go on.’

‘Mustafa’s friends—come close, I don’t want the whole world to hear.’

‘I don’t suppose they understand English.’

‘Even so. His friends, these two—’ Edmund searched for a word, unwilling to call the boys boys. ‘These two chaps started making advances to me.’

‘Were they pretty?’

‘Darling! They were boys.’ Hell, it had slipped out.

‘What did they do? Did they fondle your cock?’

‘Venetia!’ Edmund closed his eyes, remembering the shocked delight, the caressing, the smell of musk (surely people only smelt like that in pornographic books), the light brown skins, lovely, yes lovely black loosely waving hair. ‘No, of course not.’

‘Did you like it?’ She seemed to be enjoying this.

‘Of course I didn’t.’

‘Lots of people would.’

‘I hope you don’t take me for one of them.’ Edmund genuinely huffy, caught Venetia’s eye, saw she was laughing. ‘Because I’m not.’ He dismissed the experience to the realm of non-event. If in future years there were moments of sexual nostalgia or plain reminiscent lust he would be able to handle them.

‘So what happened?’ Venetia felt vaguely disappointed.

‘I am afraid when I got back to the hotel I simply passed out.’

‘Was Poppy better by then? Stopped trotting, no more squitters?’

‘She was asleep. She was quite all right next day. We spent the day together, swam, went out to the oasis, picnicked, that sort of thing.’ (Made love.)

‘Was that when you had the accident?’