Vacillations of Poppy Carew

  Fergus wrote three names, three addresses and telephone numbers on a sheet of paper and waited for Anthony to finish his conversation.

  Anthony replaced the receiver rather flushed. How dare the girl who had sat on his knee as a small child (well, if she hadn’t, she could have) be so peremptory. She had brushed aside his rearguard action, almost ordered—‘She seems quite anxious to rent you her premises,’ he said cautiously. Fergus said ‘Good,’ keeping his eyes on his sheet of paper. ‘These are my references.’ He pushed it across the desk.

  Anthony, still ruffled by the tone Poppy had seen fit to use, took the paper. The names of Fergus’s references leapt from the page. ‘These are?’ he asked keeping his voice in neutral.

  ‘My stepfather, my godfather, my uncle. Should you require others—’

  ‘These will do very well, I dare say.’ On no account, Anthony told himself, admit that you had not guessed Fergus was one of those Furnivals. How could one possibly be expected to connect an undertaker with such—well, not to put too fine a point on it—exalted people. God help poor old Brightson’s, he whispered to himself. ‘Well now, suppose I make you a lease for a year and we review it at the end of that time with the prospect of renewal. Would that suit you, Mr Furnival?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fergus. ‘Fine. How long will that take?’

  ‘Let’s say a week since you are in a hurry.’

  Fergus extended his hand. ‘Thanks, I’d like to move in pretty soon.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Anthony, generous in defeat. ‘May I wish you every success in your enterprise. I dare say you will make your fortune—’

  Standing up, a head taller than Anthony, Fergus said, ‘Success isn’t just money Mr G. Bob Carew’s funeral meant his daughter felt better because she gave her father something he had wanted. She felt guilty about him. Taking the trouble to have me and my horses goes a little way to assuage the guilt.’

  ‘Guilt?’ Anthony frowned.

  ‘Didn’t you feel guilty when your parents died?’

  ‘No,’ said Anthony, who had never crossed his parents.

  ‘How unusual, lucky you.’ Fergus looked at him with interest. ‘We could have a fascinating conversation on the subject of guilt but I won’t waste your time. I must be off. Goodbye.’

  Watching Fergus go, Anthony thought that after all connivance had been the right word to use in that context; it would have been wrong to manoeuvre Poppy into selling her house. He would see to that lease right away.

  He rang for his clerk.

  Crossing the street to a telephone box with the intention of alerting his parent of the probable requests for references so that she, with her charm, could warn his stepfather, godfather and uncle, Fergus thought, What did Poppy mean implying that her soul was wintry? Was he imagining a hint of desolation in her voice, had he been optimistic in thinking that the funeral had cheered her? He remembered kissing her and wished he could do so again soon. He dialled her number but the telephone rang in an empty flat. ‘Going away,’ she had said, ‘lucky to catch me.’ Where? She had said nothing at the funeral of any such plan. He considered telephoning Victor and asking him, since he was in London, to go round and find out but dropped the idea feeling jealous. Victor had kissed her too, would be only too ready—He dialled his mother’s number. ‘Hullo, darling,’ she said, ‘we were all thrilled to see you on television, all my friends are determined to have you when their turn comes.’

  ‘Not too soon, one hopes.’

  ‘Someone has to start or you’ll go broke.’

  ‘Are you offering?’ he asked laughing.

  ‘Not yet, but it makes one think. Bob Carew wasn’t that old, he drank of course and had a dicky heart.’

  ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘Anyone who went to the races over the last twenty years would know him. He had a pretty daughter, I believe.’

  ‘Yes, Poppy.’

  ‘Is that her name?’ His mother’s interest quickened. Fergus would have liked to discuss Poppy with his mother but he ran out of change.

  By the time he had got more change and reconnected himself with his mother he no longer wished to discuss Poppy, she was as yet too fragile an idea to discuss with his parent whom he quite erroneously considered robust. He therefore confined himself to the matter of references. His mother laughed and promised results. Thoughtfully replacing the receiver, she prayed that Fergus would not get hurt. Was he aware that Bob Carew’s girl lived with that rather awful young man Edmund Platt? If not, it was not for her to volunteer the information.

  19

  LOOKING DOWN AT THE clouds from her corner seat, Poppy absented herself from Edmund sitting in the gangway seat which allowed him to stretch his legs as he sat half turned away reading the evening paper. The clouds did not look like cotton wool or whipped cream, just layers of cloud turning pink in the sunset. It had been raining when they left London, it would be raining still. ‘Il pleut dans mon coeur—’ how did it go? Her mind wandered in search of poet and poem, she was too apathetic to concentrate. Victor would know or Sean Connor with his knowing superiority. She would certainly not ask Edmund, sitting beside her in his new suit. Was it ‘pleur dans mon coeur?’ For a moment she conjured Victor with his thin face, jackdaw eyes. How could anyone be so slender without appearing scraggy? She glanced sidelong at Edmund’s muscular legs. Victor merged into Fergus, black-eyed, burly, flat-stomached. Until he stood up one didn’t see Edmund’s slightly convex stomach, a convexity which worried him and was the cause of the jogging before breakfast.

  Got it, it was ‘pleut’ not ‘pleur’. Cry, cry! Cry for what? I cried for Edmund, she thought, and here he is, here we are, I have him, snitched back from Venetia. Poppy’s lips twitched as she looked down on the clouds. Venetia had no inhibitions, no false restraint. I never glued up his flies, she thought, I just let him go and wept for him. But here he is. She turned further away from Edmund, laying her head back, pretending to sleep. She would feel safer when Edmund put down the paper and buried himself in his Dick Francis. I paid for that too. She peeped under her lashes as Edmund folded the paper and reached for his paperback, cracking its spine in his strong fingers. I paid for the suit, the book and practically everything in his suitcase. He even bought new sunglasses, the French kind one is supposed to be able to stamp on with impunity (I must try it).

  When he had spoken the expected words, ‘Will you lend me some money?’, not ‘can’ or ‘would you mind’, but ‘will’, expecting her to say yes which she (immediately, almost apologetically) had she felt she had regained along with her lover her identity. Or, she thought, as Edmund turned the first page of his thriller, almost, almost regained, for never before would she have had the cheque book ready and pen in hand. Always before she would have believed the words ‘I’ll pay you back of course’, carried credibility.

  To be fair, she thought, glancing at his well-clad legs, sometimes he repaid her, sometimes he didn’t, but this time she had not listened not bothered, just written the cheque.

  He thinks he owns me and everything that is mine, she thought resentfully, suiting her miserable mood to the thrum, thrum sound of the aeroplane. Yet, she thought, conscious of the man beside her, I suppose I love him.

  A stewardess pushing a trolley along the aisle stopped. Edmund ordered a large whisky, jogged her elbow. ‘Drink, darling?’ She kept her eyes shut. ‘I think she’s asleep.’ Edmund reached for the wallet in his hip pocket. The smell of whisky, the desire to sneeze. She suppressed the sneeze with an effort. Who was it Dad had told her who maintained an orgasm was a sneeze, no more. Peter Quennell, that was who. What could he mean? How come Dad knew Peter Quennell; writers were not his line at all. Used he perhaps to go racing? With Dad gone it was too late to ask. I rate my orgasms higher than a sneeze, thought Poppy.

  Edmund read his book, drank his whisky in measured gulps. A beautiful man, Poppy thought. It was not just the wonderful legs in the new trousers, the magnificent torso, the muscled arms, the thick neck (
did I say thick?), the handsome face, the golden hair (ears a bit too small but one should not quibble), the whole man was marvellous, had he not been in the Olympic team, well not quite, almost, spare man or something. I love him, I’ve got him back, what am I to do now, she asked herself in misery.

  Beside her Edmund snapped his fingers for attention, ordered another drink.

  So indifferent had she been, she had not even asked exactly where they were going. ‘A place in Africa’ might mean anything. Leaning back, feigning sleep, listening to the thrum of the engines, Poppy let her mind play back the last forty-eight hours.

  She had been too astonished at Edmund’s appearance at the funeral party, his whisking her away in Venetia’s car to be either pleased or sorry. Edmund had never before been impetuous. She had been a little drunk, on the defensive. She perversely enjoyed the dinner at Luigi’s, felt much the better for it, resolving in future never to order fewer than a dozen oysters.

  On the way to Venetia’s flat to return the car and collect Edmund’s clothes, she had decided to leave him. Get shot.

  The drive across London had been long enough for her to compose what she saw as a firm but unhurtful paragraph (she would later put it in writing to make doubly sure) of parting, civilised, definite, kind, final.

  The parting words remained unspoken. Venetia’s revenge put a strange gloss on the situation. She had felt sorry for Edmund, protective even, her instinct had been to comfort and console. In no time they had found themselves back in the flat they had shared for so long, lying in the bed which sagged in the middle, doing what they always did.

  So, thought Poppy, as the aeroplane bore them through the night towards Africa, the wounds in the fabric of their relationship were mended, the holes cobbled together, preparations for the trip planned for Venetia (not that Edmund would have admitted it) kept them busy. Edmund borrowed the money, bought his new clothes, rushed her to the doctor for the necessary injections, made sure she too had the right clothes, took her to Boots to buy anti-diarrhoea pills and suncream, to Hatchards for a supply of holiday books. He was as attentive and caring as one could wish a lover to be.

  Perhaps, thought Poppy, I am being ungenerous in thinking he is suppressing the things he would like to say, his objections to the funeral service, the horse-drawn hearse, the oddity of Dad’s friends, the multicoloured dress, the dawn chorus, Fergus and Victor.

  Just one small sentence muttered under his breath had escaped as he made love to her. ‘That will teach you to kiss those yobboes,’ gasped as he reached his climax long before she was ready for hers.

  Was he going to order another drink? Yes, he was, and the intelligent stewardess was ignoring him. Shortly there would be a plastic meal on a plastic tray, he would order wine. Poppy hoped the flannel disguised as bread would absorb the alcohol. Possibly she would pretend to wake, make herself agreeable. One providential thing, she thought behind her closed eyes, was that he had been in the lavatory when Fergus telephoned, had not heard her tell Anthony to lease Fergus the stables and the house.

  Edmund jogged her elbow, put a hand on her knee.

  ‘Wake up, darling, dinner.’

  She opened her eyes, kept silent.

  ‘Might as well eat it, shall I order a bottle of wine?’

  He ordered a bottle of wine.

  He looks beautiful, poor fellow, when he has had a few drinks, she thought, carefree, pink.

  The stewardess brought the plastic trays with plastic food in plastic packets. Poppy buttered a roll and handed it to Edmund who accepted it, munched.

  The stewardess brought the wine, poured it into their plastic mugs.

  The engines went thrum, thrum. Around them fellow passengers, keeping their elbows close to their sides, picked with urgent fingers at packets of butter, examined the secret parcels of food disguised as meat, cheese or whatonearthcanthisbe.

  ‘I thought,’ Edmund gulped the wine, spoke close to her ear, ‘that when we are married I’d call myself Platt-Carew.’

  ‘What?’ The wine halfway to her mouth rippled in its beaker.

  ‘There’s nothing to stop us now your father is dead.’

  ‘God,’ she murmured. (Threat? Exclamation? Prayer?) She swallowed some wine.

  ‘You never liked my surname any more than I do, lots of people take their wife’s name. You have a pretty name and will probably like to keep it.’

  ‘I shall.’

  ‘Good, that’s settled, glad you agree.’ Edmund picked at one of the mystery packages and uncovered what appeared to be a wodge of beef.

  ‘It’s not.’

  ‘What?’ Edmund half turned towards her.

  ‘You never asked me to marry you.’

  Poppy bit on a roll, put it back on the plastic dish, buttered it and tried again adding some St Ivel cheese, could not swallow, gave up, spitting it into her paper napkin.

  ‘Love! I took it for granted. You can’t expect me down on one knee in a plane.’ Edmund laughed, drank his wine. ‘Shall we order another bottle, they have a way of shutting the bar.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No more wine? Come on.’ Edmund drank.

  ‘No.’

  I can’t think what I am doing on this plane, thought Poppy. I can stop loving Edmund if I want to, it’s not obligatory. Perhaps I only stuck to him because of Dad’s objections, now that Dad is dead I am free. If Dad had died sooner I might have stopped loving Edmund long ago. Yet he is a very beautiful man, she thought weakly, turning towards Edmund, looking him over. Perhaps I can teach him to be less selfish. I must think this over, keep a clear head, wait until I am less tired.

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said.

  ‘That’s settled then.’ Edmund kissed her cheek, ‘Eat your dinner, darling.’

  Poppy pushed the tray away, feeling forlorn. She felt a longing to talk to another woman, found herself thinking of Mary and baby Barnaby, wishing she knew her better. Normally she feared other women in case they might rob her of Edmund and Edmund for his part distrusted her female friends, subtly denigrating them so that she was more isolated than most women of her age.

  That is not how I wanted to do it, thought Edmund, drinking his wine, but, he reassured himself, it will be all right. I hope I appeared more confident than I am. Better the girl that one knows, I dare say. Time has proven that I love her. He turned to take Poppy’s hand in his, to hold it reassuringly but she had stuffed both hands in her pockets.

  I shall get to know Mary, Poppy thought, and then it occurred to her that, improbable though it might seem, it might be fun to get to know Venetia.

  20

  EDMUND HAD NOT BEEN the only person in the church to concentrate on Poppy.

  While most of the men in the congregation let their eyes stray discreetly, recognising friends they wished to buttonhole after the service while their wives took stock of their neighbours’ clothes, state of health, stage of decrepitude, Calypso Grant’s nephew Willy Guthrie, having sighted Poppy, was unable to take his eyes off her.

  It was not, he thought, that she was particularly pretty, it was the general ensemble, even the imperfections which struck a chord in his heart. He had a full face view as she came up the aisle and a long stare at her profile during the service. He was pleased that his aunt had deputed him to retrieve her coat when the service was over.

  ‘Once Bob’s in his grave she will feel warmer.’ What exactly did she mean? ‘You can ask for it back, for by then it is I who will be feeling the chill.’ An old person being fanciful.

  Willy looked forward to introducing himself, asking for the coat, finding something felicitous to say. He believed in the impact of words. He hoped she would smile at whatever he said and that later at the drinks party it would be possible to chat and pave the way for future meetings à deux.

  He was therefore aghast when Calypso, on leaving the graveside, asked him to fetch the coat saying that she was cold as she had predicted she would be, tired and more than ready to go home. ‘You don’t wi
sh to go to an awful drinks party, do you?’

  Willy made a faint unspoken protest, his aunt appeared impervious. ‘Think of all the noise, all those hearty men heehawing and their wives screeching. I am too old for that sort of thing, and champagne, for if it’s anything to do with Bob Carew it will be champagne, upsets my stomach at this hour. Run for the coat, dear Willy, I shall wait in the car.’

  Forgetting his felicitous phrase, Willy mutinously went to get the coat. He was rewarded by Poppy’s smile and a grateful flash from her green eyes which in the church he had thought to be brown. As he carried the coat, still warm from her body, back to his aunt Willy decided that what was always said about her was right, she was an utterly selfish old woman who had never been anything else. He started the engine of the car and drove off stifling his disappointment.

  ‘An attractive girl.’ Calypso settled in the seat beside him.

  ‘Was she?’ Childishly Willy attempted to hide his chagrin.

  When they arrived at his aunt’s house Calypso stepped out of the car and slammed the door. ‘If you drive fast,’ she said, looking in at Willy, ‘the party will still be going on, the most boring people will have left, the fun beginning. Have a good time.’

  ‘But—’ said Willy.

  ‘I wanted to come home, you wanted to go to the party. Hurry.’ She was mocking him.

  ‘How—’

  ‘Go on, Willy, off you go and tell me about it later.’

  ‘Are you—’

  ‘I am all right. I shall change my clothes, then take the dog for a walk. Off you go.’ Even with her face close to his so that he could count the wrinkles, he could see what people meant when they said she had been a lovely girl. ‘Not as selfish as all that.’ She was laughing now, teasing him.

  ‘Thank you.’ Willy turned the car and drove back towards Poppy Carew. As he drove he whistled a Bach Cantata and allowed himself to hope that in some neat way things would work out so that, the party over, he would be able to take Poppy out to dinner and who knows—or if this was too fanciful a scenario he would be on such terms that it would be natural, in a day or two, to telephone, fix a date, carry on from there. He forgot that a few short days before he had boasted of his freedom. As he drove he composed felicitous phrases and congratulated himself that there would be no overlap: his long affair with his late girl Sarah had ended not with a bang or even on a sour note, it had unstitched like a seam no longer able to hold together. He felt perfectly friendly towards Sarah, a very nice girl, but in retrospect surprised that he had ever felt desire. He felt the same towards several other girls who had occupied his time and his heart. Was it heart though, Willy wondered, searching, as he drove, for felicitous phrases, or merely sex? The sensations both mental and physical aroused by Poppy were utterly different. It is different each time, he told himself, but heretofore I have found things to say while now even imagining myself faced with the girl, hoping to impress, I am struck dumb, can’t think of a thing and I have yet to speak to her. It was rather ridiculous, thought Willy, to feel like this when all he had to go on was her appearance, he had not even heard her voice properly. That at least, thought Willy, driving fast, can be rectified. What if she has a voice which grates on the nerves? Willy scotched the idea, it was too awful.