Vacillations of Poppy Carew

  ‘Who is she?’ cried Poppy embarrassed not to know. ‘She was so kind, she seemed to know my father.’

  ‘Calypso Grant, used to be quite a raver when she was young. Here, jump in.’

  The man in the tweed suit was managing her, putting her into a car beside a wife who smiled a welcome, patting the seat beside her. ‘That was Calypso Grant,’ the man told his wife who said, ‘Oh, Calypso, one’s heard of her of course,’ noncommittally.

  Poppy, half in the car, hesitated, fighting suffocation. I am being killed by kindness, she told herself. She backed out, scrambling away. ‘Please go on,’ she urged. ‘I must just see—I have to speak—do go on up to the house—’ She escaped, doubling back towards Fergus and Victor waiting by the hearse for the cars to move, the road to be free. One of the horses threw up its head and neighed impatiently. People were getting into their cars, slamming doors, starting the engines. Frances and Annie stood at the back of the hearse. Mary was chatting to a group of people she seemed to know.

  ‘You will come back to the house?’ asked Poppy, looking up at Fergus.

  ‘Love to.’

  ‘I must, I’m doubling as waiter,’ Victor said smugly.

  ‘Put your horses in the stables, Victor will show you.’ She needed to keep Fergus near her and Victor too.

  ‘Stables? That’ll be fine,’ said Fergus, surprised.

  ‘Didn’t Victor tell you?’

  ‘Victor did not.’ Fergus shot a suspicious glance at Victor, who looked innocent.

  ‘May I drive back to the house with you?’

  ‘Of course you may, there’s room on the box,’ said Fergus.

  ‘You are the only people I know here.’

  ‘Stay with us then.’ Victor drew closer to her. He would have liked to put an arm round her but not in front of Fergus.

  ‘What I’d really like is to be alone,’ cried Poppy.

  ‘Have to wait a bit,’ said Fergus.

  ‘We’ll stand by,’ said Victor comfortingly.

  Mary came up laughing. ‘At least ten people have asked for your phone number, Fergus. This has been a wonderful advertisement. Half the bookmakers in the south of England are here and lots of the hunting crowd. You are going to be the in thing, Fergus, if you are not snowed in,’ she teased, ‘but no fun then.’

  Fergus snapped ‘Do shut up, Mary,’ glared and muttered.

  ‘What does she mean, snowed in?’ Poppy looked up at the weather, set fair.

  ‘My father rented him a pup,’ said Mary and sketched the trap Fergus might find himself in.

  ‘Don’t let it bother you.’ Fergus indicated the hearse. ‘Jump up.’

  Poppy scrambled up in her beautiful dress, showing a lot of leg in the view of the verger who was waiting to close the church and get home to his tea, not that he objected to legs but not at funerals …

  Annie and Frances sat in a row with Mary, swinging her legs in the back of the hearse. ‘Walk on, gee up,’ cried Fergus cracking the whip.

  The Dow Jones threw up their heads and lurched forward. Fergus drove through the village at a smart trot. People returning to their homes looked amused or disapproving at Poppy in her multicoloured dress sitting on the box between Fergus and Victor.

  ‘They don’t look too pleased,’ commented Victor.

  ‘How else am I supposed to get home?’ cried Poppy. ‘I was offered a lift but it was with strangers.’

  Victor and Fergus felt jointly pleased not to be so considered.

  ‘Why don’t you rent my stables as winter quarters,’ suggested Poppy when they arrived, speaking as though the idea had just occurred to her. ‘I’ll introduce you to my solicitor, you can fix it up with him. I shan’t be here much,’ she added, dashing Fergus’s spirits. ‘Do the place good to be used,’ she said. ‘You may have the house too, if you want it. Let us get this dreadful wake over.’ She must play host to all the people who had known Dad and very likely Life’s Dividends too. It pleased her to think that it was Life’s Dividends who were paying for the party, forking out for the champagne.

  16

  AS THE DOW JONES CLATTERED round to the stable yard Victor acknowledged a shout from Julia Wake who, having parked her car, was heading towards the house in the company of Sean Connor.

  ‘Who are they?’ Poppy asked but who cares, she thought, the church had been full, strange faces outnumbering the familiar ten to one. With the funeral ordeal over came euphoria, sparked off by the novelty of the drive from the cemetery. High on the box between Fergus and Victor she was exhilarated by the horses tossing their heads, black plumes dancing, bits jangling, the snortings, the pounding hooves on the road, the eager canter quickly repressed by Fergus. ‘Whoa there, steady.’

  ‘That’s Julia Wake, she edits the magazine I told you about.’ (Had he told her?) ‘The man with her is Sean Connor, he’s in publishing, he is very interested in my novel.’ Victor hoped Poppy had been as distrait as she looked during the ceremony, had not noticed the photographers, not being sure how well she would receive his article when it got into print.

  ‘A novel? How exciting. Are they coming to your party?’

  ‘Your party,’ Victor corrected her.

  ‘I hardly feel it’s mine, it’s been organised by you. Shall you rush ahead and pop the bottles?’ Poppy jumped down from the box as Fergus drew up in the stable yard. ‘Run on,’ she said to Victor, ‘all these people will be dying for a drink.’ She waved towards the house. ‘I’ll follow in a minute,’ she said, quashing his desire to linger.

  Victor, hoist perforce in his role as caterer, went reluctantly ahead to the house.

  ‘Now,’ Poppy switched to Fergus, ‘let me show you the stables.’

  They left the horses to Frances and Annie and toured the yard. Fergus, expecting shabby desolation, was astonished as he looked into loose-boxes, tack room and coach-house. ‘It’s in good nick, all it needs is a lick of paint and a few repairs.’

  ‘Dad would have liked to have horses here, it would have been one of his dreams. Like to rent them, what do you say?’ She looked at Fergus.

  Fergus said, ‘It would be a bloody miracle. You’ve no idea of the terror that’s gripped me since that bitch planted the fear of snow. If I were snowed in I’d go bankrupt.’

  ‘Her father took you for a ride; why?’

  ‘He wants to muck up Mary’s life, wants her to be respectable.’

  ‘Fathers do,’ said Poppy dryly.

  ‘He was getting at her through me. If I go bust she’d lose her job.’

  ‘Charming.’ Perhaps I was lucky with Dad, he only talked, she thought. ‘I’ll introduce you to Anthony Green, he’ll be in the house. Rent it for a year and see how things go,’ she suggested. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed as Fergus hugged her. ‘Ah!’ she said as he kissed her mouth.

  ‘Sealed with a kiss.’ Fergus kissed her again. ‘More?’ he suggested, enjoying himself.

  ‘Well,’ said Poppy. She had not been kissed by anyone other than Edmund since she could remember, not like this. Fatherly pecks on the cheek by Dad, avuncular cheek-touching by Anthony Green, certainly nothing of this sort. ‘Well.’ She felt cheerful and, to her surprise, roused. She smoothed her dress, shook out her hair. ‘No more,’ she said, laughing. Fergus desisted.

  Poppy watched while the girls took the horses out of their traces and loosened their bits. They brought haybags from a Land Rover. Mary watched also, holding the infant Barnaby who had materialised with the haybags. He held out plump arms to Fergus and said, ‘Dada, Dada.’

  ‘I’m not your bloody Dada,’ said Fergus. ‘Wait till you are of age, I’ll sue you for slander.’

  Mary looked down her nose.

  ‘Dada,’ insisted Barnaby, bubbling spittle. Poppy felt happy, with Fergus and the girls watching the horses chump their hay, swish their tails, sigh gustily, break wind, phut, phut, phut of sweet smelling gas. She was in no hurry to go into the house.

  ‘There will be no booze left if you don’t come in,’ Victor sh
outed jealously from the kitchen door.

  ‘Okay, we’ll come.’ Poppy led Fergus and the girls towards the back door.

  They were met by a wall of sound from the sitting room, hall and overflow into the garden.

  Friends from the village and neighbourhood raised their voices in competition with Dad’s friends from the outer world. Bookmakers, gypsies, racing men, smart suited in tweed and pinstripe, shiny-shoed, boomed and bellowed while their wives and mistresses yelped and trebled as they snatched and nibbled at the Indian eats, gulped and swilled champagne, greedy for the life from which Bob Carew had so recently absented himself.

  Poppy strained to hear snatches of conversation, hoping to piece together a picture of Dad through his friends.

  ‘The last race at Doncaster was when—’

  ‘Cast a plate at Plumpton so the second favourite won.’

  ‘You marinate it in white wine. Try it.’

  ‘Man cannot live by bread alone, he needs butter.’

  ‘Haw, haw, haw.’

  ‘Knew Furnival’s mother, very pretty girl Ros. I shall book him for my exit.’

  ‘Don’t you think it was in rather dubious taste?’

  ‘Oh come on, makes a change from the usual humdrum do.’

  ‘Apprenticed himself to an undertaker, they say, rather enterprising.’

  ‘Went to France, found the equipage there—’

  ‘Why France?’

  ‘Why not—’

  ‘A papist contraption—’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Search me. Search la femme. Any more of that bubbly?’

  ‘That chap over there drowned his wife.’

  ‘Victor something—’

  ‘That’s right. Writes. Wish I could drown mine. Victor Lucas, that’s it.’

  ‘I keep forgetting names.’

  ‘Too much alimony. It’s old age creeping up on you.’

  ‘Ha, ha, ha. You too.’

  ‘Isn’t that girl Mary Mowbray, Nicholas Mowbray’s daughter?’

  ‘It’s said she had a baby by a wog. That must be it. I say! Anything goes these days.’ (Mary was observed sitting on the stairs suckling Barnaby, glass of wine in hand, legs apart.) ‘Looks like one of those Virgins and Child in the National Gallery.’

  ‘Don’t be profane, darling.’

  ‘The ones in the Gallery wore longer skirts.’

  ‘Something funny in her breeding, her grandfather is supposed to have slept with Tallulah Bankhead.’

  ‘Who’s Tallulah Bankhead?’

  ‘Oh come on. Yes please, just one more.’

  ‘No, no I mustn’t, I’m driving.’

  ‘It’s got a cough, been scratched.’

  ‘What about that horse he backed at Ascot? Wasn’t it fifty to one?’

  ‘You mean Epsom, funny thing that, Stewards’ Inquiry as near as dammit.’

  ‘Steroids?’

  ‘Well—one doesn’t—’

  ‘Beating about the bush—’

  ‘What bush, whose?’

  ‘Haw, haw, haw.’

  ‘No, I mustn’t drink any more or my wife will insist on driving.’

  ‘Splint.’

  ‘There’s always York.’

  ‘It wasn’t a splint, it was—’

  Hemmed in, Poppy looked round. She was trapped among the loud voices. She felt as invisible as her parent so rapidly forgotten by his friends.

  Across the room an old woman plastered in pancake make-up with blue eyelids waved. She recognised Esmé looking like a man in drag. She had no wish to speak to Esmé, felt safer where she was.

  Jane Edwardes shuffled to and fro through the crowd hospitably. ‘Let me refill your glass.’ She knew everybody. She laughed and chatted, she was enjoying herself wearing her black.

  Victor, a tray of empty glasses in his hand, was pinned against a wall nearby. Poppy edged towards him. Near Victor, Julia and her friend Sean were shouting. (Impossible not to shout in this uproar.) Poppy strained to hear. Sean was giving Victor his opinion of the novel. Soon Victor would be known, up and coming, acclaimed. Julia shouted Sean down to give Victor a witty resumé of the characters in the book (surely he knows his own book, thought Poppy). Sean recaptured Victor’s attention, dousing Julia. ‘I like it, I like it,’ he said. ‘A lot more than your first efforts. Come and see me next week, come to lunch, I’d like to publish, there are just a few things of course that need—’

  ‘Such as?’ asked Victor, hackles anxiously rising, glass halfway to his mouth.

  ‘Nothing much. Well—er—once again as in the first book you’ve failed to check your foreign bits.’

  ‘Which?’ queried Victor suspiciously.

  ‘I’m no linguist of course but if Urdu or Armenian are hard to check the same isn’t true of French.’

  ‘Oh, what—’ hackles rising.

  ‘Well, just glancing through of course, I noticed for instance “compotes” which takes a circumflex neither in French nor in English. And “comme il faut” with two intrusive hyphens, “marché noir” with two erroneous capitals.’

  ‘Aah—’ Victor gargled.

  ‘“Tiree à quatre épingles” written as it shouldn’t be in the masculine and “vieux jeu” in the plural whereas that idiom always takes the singular, “ceci n’empêche cela” the “pas” left out—true, skipping the “pas” sometimes gives the distinguished touch but where you use it it gives a false note and “femme d’un certain âge” with the circumflex missing.’

  ‘Oh,’ whispered Victor, outraged.

  ‘That’s just a few I noticed as I whizzed through.’ Sean took a long swallow of champagne. ‘I must read it more thoroughly before we—’

  ‘Just a few. No linguist,’ breathed Victor, mortified, flushed.

  ‘But I love it. It fits nicely into our spring list,’ insisted Sean extending his empty glass to Mrs Edwardes passing with her tray, taking a full one. ‘I love your book.’ He looked tenderly at Victor as though unaware of the pain he was inflicting.

  ‘I—’ began Victor, choking with spleen.

  ‘And of course,’ Sean gulped wine, ‘it’s the funniest book I’ve read for years. The way you’ve disguised the black humour with obvious sentimentality, pretending it’s a tragedy is masterly.’

  ‘Aah—’ It was hard to tell whether Victor was mortally wounded or exalted to the spheres. ‘Aah,’ he breathed deeply. ‘So glad you latched on to the hilarity,’ he said, almost choking on his bile.

  With detached insight Poppy decided Victor was about to hit Sean, ruin his literary career, remain a writer manqué for the rest of his days. She flung her arms around Victor’s neck. ‘Kiss me, don’t hit him,’ she said in his ear, ‘quick.’

  Victor obliged, pressing his mouth hard on to hers. ‘This is because I once called him a poof,’ he said, catching his breath, ‘he’s getting his own back.’ He kissed Poppy again.

  ‘And is he?’ She came up for air.

  ‘Both, my darling, both hetero and homo.’ Victor kissed her yet again.

  Fergus, watching from across the room, thought bloody hell, there goes the march I stole on him, and began to shoulder his way across the room.

  ‘Artful little bitch,’ said Sean to Julia. ‘Doesn’t miss a trick, does she? Who is she?’

  ‘Our hostess,’ said Julia. ‘You’ve had too much to drink, nearly lost yourself an author.’

  ‘I couldn’t resist a small tease. I abhor the ignorant use of Franglais.’

  ‘You are a snob because your mother was French,’ said Julia, laughing.

  Poppy was interested to find how much she enjoyed kissing Victor, quite as much as Fergus who had a different technique. She was after all enjoying Dad’s party.

  Fighting his way through the throng Fergus reached Poppy. ‘What about that introduction to your solicitor?’ He put his arm round her waist.

  ‘Of course.’ Poppy disengaged herself and led him towards Anthony Green who had found an armchair in a safe corner of the room.
‘Anthony, this is Fergus Furnival. I want him to rent the stables for his business, and the house, too, perhaps.’

  Anthony struggled to his feet. ‘I say, I see. Is that wise?’ he asked, peering cautiously at Fergus, reaching into his breast pocket for his spectacles.

  ‘The stables are empty. They will go to ruin. My father would like Fergus to use them, so would I.’

  ‘We can of course go into it.’

  ‘Go into it tomorrow.’ He is going to delay, prevaricate, make difficulties. ‘Just work out a fair rent and lease the stables to Fergus for a year, then if we are both happy with the arrangement he can renew the lease.’

  ‘I shall have to—’

  ‘Look sharp.’ Poppy finished Anthony’s sentence for him in a mode he would never have used. ‘I want him to have them so make out a simple lease, dear Anthony, or shall we go to another solicitor? You do do leases, I take it?’ Poppy sized Anthony up with her green eyes, looking, had she known it, exactly like her father Bob Carew at his most obstinate.

  ‘We can make an appointment. There is no rush, I take it.’

  ‘There is a great rush, it may snow.’

  ‘I can pay the rent in advance,’ suggested Fergus, remembering Poppy’s cheque lodged in his bank, not yet spent.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Poppy. ‘You’ll be quick about it, won’t you, Anthony? I want the horses in the stables as soon as possible. Cut the red tape or I’ll put them in rent free without a lease.’ She put a daughterly arm round Anthony’s neck and kissed him, aiming the kiss close to his mouth. Anthony squeezed her waist in a not quite avuncular way which made his wife, who was watching, decide that it was time to go home and that it would be safer if she drove.

  Poppy helped herself to another glass of champagne from a passing tray and found she liked the party even better than a few minutes earlier. It seemed a pity that Dad, who was responsible for this happening, should not be here but no matter. Drink up, she could almost hear his voice.

  She continued to enjoy the party until Edmund, coming unexpectedly from nowhere, took her roughly by the arm and dragged her away.