Vacillations of Poppy Carew

‘Ah.’

  ‘And Poppy’s solicitor who is arranging the lease for Fergus—he’s renting her house and stables by the way—’

  ‘Swift work.’

  ‘Yes, very. Well, the solicitor hasn’t got her address, bit annoyed about it Mrs Edwardes says, complains of being rushed.’

  ‘It’s good for solicitors to be rushed.’ Calypso offered fruit.

  ‘No thanks.’ His appetite blunted, Willy sat looking glum.

  Thoughtfully Calypso peeled a peach.

  Willy burst out. ‘I must find her. I’ve got to. Please don’t laugh.’

  ‘I am not laughing,’ said Calypso as sharply as she could with a mouthful of peach. She swallowed. ‘It’s not funny.’ It’s quite possibly sad, she thought. He sits there reminding me of Hector behaving in this painfully old-fashioned way. Why me, why must he drag me into this? I am old, I manage to keep my equilibrium. Why should I be bothered with Willy in love?

  ‘What about the man who swept her off, her lover?’ she asked, conscious of her brutality.

  ‘I don’t think he matters,’ said Willy.

  ‘She went away with him, you told me. You told me he burst in on the party and dragged her away.’

  ‘I don’t think she went willingly.’

  ‘If she did not want to go she could have called for help, made a scene.’

  ‘Perhaps she felt embarrassed—’

  ‘Come off it, Willy.’

  ‘There may have been a reason for going with him. I’m sure she didn’t want to.’

  ‘What makes you think that? You weren’t there.’

  ‘A gut feeling.’

  ‘Now we have guts. Extra-sensory perception next.’

  ‘Look, Aunt, if I had been there I would have stopped her. Victor and Fergus who could have stopped her were otherwise occupied, the one coping with the solicitor the other with a publisher—he’s written a novel, I gather—it all happened very fast. If I had been there—’ Willy looked distraught.

  ‘So now you blame me for making you drive me home when you wanted to stay—’

  ‘Not that. You needed to get home. You sent me back. I was too late, that’s all, but I feel there was a reason to make her go with him.’

  ‘I can only think of one reason if she is not in love with him,’ said Calypso laughing. ‘She went with him to prevent another girl getting him.’

  ‘Aunt!’ Willy was shocked.

  ‘It doesn’t mean she has feet of clay, it would be a very normal reaction, the sort of thing I’d have done at her age.’ Calypso chuckled.

  ‘Oh.’ Willy was thoughtful, not sure he wanted Poppy to resemble his aunt when young.

  ‘Coffee?’ suggested Calypso.

  ‘Please.’

  They were silent while Calypso made coffee. She was surprised to find herself anxious for her nephew, Hector’s nephew, she corrected herself, it being her habit, of which she was proud, of letting others, particularly the young, make their own mess without interference. ‘How sure are you,’ she asked quietly, ‘that it’s love?’

  ‘As certain as I could ever be about anything.’

  ‘But you don’t know her.’

  ‘Did you know much about Hector? Did he know you?’

  ‘What has that got to do with it?’

  ‘Just that I want to spend the rest of my life with Poppy. Uncle Hector must have felt the same about you.’

  ‘I didn’t realise it at the time.’

  ‘But you did later. You said you did. Poppy can’t realise it either. We haven’t even spoken to each other or rather I said something about taking your coat back and she smiled. I didn’t hear what she said.’

  Calypso stared at Willy whose voice as he spoke of Poppy waxed lyrical.

  ‘She isn’t a virgin; I was,’ she said, hoping to bring him to earth.

  ‘You may have been a virgin but—’ Willy flushed, hesitated, fell silent.

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Oh you know, the catty things people say about you being a—er—man eater. All those old women and—’

  ‘The old men?’

  Willy laughed. ‘The old men all wish they’d been in my uncle’s shoes.’ He watched his aunt, they regarded each other smiling.

  ‘So you are certain?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Very well. I think I can find out where she’s gone.’

  ‘You can?’ Willy’s voice whooped up exultant.

  ‘Not that it matters.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you will be lying in wait for her when she comes back.’

  ‘Oh no I won’t. Wherever she is I shall go and find her.’

  ‘Oh my!’ Calypso admired his spirit, refrained from asking whether this was wise.

  ‘So how can you find out where she is?’ To Willy it seemed wildly improbable that his old aunt could help him.

  ‘By talking to the girl Poppy snitched him from.’

  Willy gaped.

  ‘She was in the church with Edmund, she’s called Venetia Colyer.’

  24

  WHEN EDMUND FOUND POPPY on the terrace overlooking the swimming pool she had finished her breakfast and sat talking to Mustafa who was making himself agreeable.

  Edmund felt at a gross disadvantage as they turned towards him, eyeing him through their dark glasses. Taking his own sunglasses from his shirt pocket, blotting out his hungover eyes, Edmund regretted encouraging Poppy to buy such dark ones, he could not see her eyes, her mouth gave nothing away.

  Mustafa called out ‘Hi’, smiling and, ‘Have you had breakfast?’ snapping his fingers at a hovering waiter. ‘Refresh the tray.’

  ‘Just coffee please.’ Edmund sat beside Poppy. ‘Black.’

  ‘Delicious figs,’ said Poppy in neutral tone, pointing to bits of bruised fruit skin on her plate, bearing, Edmund saw with a pang, the marks of her teeth.

  Mustafa called out ‘Coffee’ and something in Arabic.

  Edmund wondered whether Mustafa knew they had slept in separate rooms, did he perhaps know where Poppy had spent the night, there had been neither hide nor hair of her when he had surfaced. He was not going to ask Poppy where the hell she had been or what she thought she was up to, in front of Mustafa. He felt betrayed and bitterly resentful, he had had a terrible fright waking to find her gone, she might at least have left a note. He felt choked with whisky-fumed self-pity and love.

  ‘I was suggesting Miss Poppy might like an expedition to the Roman amphitheatre while we do business today. There will be parties going in buses from the other hotels, easy to arrange. The amphitheatre and the theatre are interesting if you like that sort of thing.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ said Poppy politely.

  ‘The archaeologists who worked for our government were partially British.’

  ‘How partial?’ asked Poppy gravely.

  ‘From Cambridge,’ said Mustafa.

  ‘Not Oxford?’ (So that’s how she’s going to be, thought Edmund, little bitch.)

  ‘A bit of both, no matter.’ Mustafa was careless of universities. He was aware from the servants of this girl making a fuss the night before, she had not mentioned the matter to him, it would be indelicate if he brought it up. The servants had been cringing but with a hint of mockery describing the scene. The girl had made a fuss over a few immigrating locusts, the servants said, calling them cockroaches. Mustafa realised that the offending insects probably were cockroaches yet preferred, as the servants did, to think of them as locusts. Clever beasts to get into such a new hotel, though in truth it had stood half built for a long time. Edmund had slept in the room too drunk to notice the girl’s absence. The information on this score was reliable. If Edmund and Poppy represented what one must expect of the new wave of European tourists and their women it would be as well to make it clear once and for all that in this country visitors were expected to make use only of the room they had booked, not move around as the girl had done. Not that it mattered. Edmund was guest of the State and the ho
tel still empty, incomplete. The girl was talking, projecting her remarks at a point between himself and Edmund. Mustafa jerked to attention.

  ‘Such extraordinary camber,’ she was saying. ‘That road we came along from the airport last night, so steeply cambered it was not like the roads you see in most countries, was it an old road?’ She turned towards Mustafa, ‘Pot holes too.’

  A servant brought coffee for Edmund, collected Poppy’s used cup and plates.

  ‘Yes, an old road. The new road is under repair,’ said Mustafa, ‘it will soon be open again.’ That sounded all right, he told himself, no need to tell her the main road had been cleared for troop transport hurrying to take up station at the airport. These things happened, it was unfortunate but not necessary to inform visitors of every slight disturbance. Their currency was too welcome.

  ‘And so crowded,’ continued Poppy, ‘so many people and animals at that time of night. Camels and donkeys and—’

  ‘Travelling in the cool of the night,’ said Edmund, breaking into the chat, fearing mention of the lame dog; he remembered it lame.

  ‘The weather isn’t hot,’ said Poppy. ‘I’m wearing a jersey and what seemed rather funny was they were all travelling away from the town, it looked like the flight from Egypt.’

  ‘Your sense of direction!’ exclaimed Edmund in sarcastic contradiction.

  ‘You usually say how good it is,’ said Poppy saccharine sweet.

  ‘Ah,’ said Mustafa lightly. ‘There is a tribal caravan trek at this time of year. Simple people, they move out to an oasis.’ The girl was likely to be ignorant of local geography and the explanation was in part true.

  ‘Really,’ said Poppy. ‘I see.’ Politely sceptical.

  ‘Forgive me a moment while I telephone,’ said Mustafa rising. ‘Then perhaps we start on our tour of the town, the beaches, the Cabana complex to be starting with, the Office of Tourism? You meet the Minister.’ Edmund should be impressed.

  ‘Certainly,’ said Edmund. ‘I am ready.’ He was gratified.

  ‘And you,’ said Mustafa to Poppy, ‘you like to join the bus to the Roman antiquities?’ He was sure she would.

  ‘I think I’ll just fan about in the garden.’ She leant back smiling.

  Mustafa went to the telephone.

  ‘Garden,’ said Poppy with a laugh, ‘great piles of cement. The garden,’ she stressed the word contemptuously, ‘the garden isn’t half made, the whole place reeks of wet cement. I bet the workmen pee in it.’

  ‘Shall you bathe?’ asked Edmund. ‘The pool looks nice.’ Would Venetia have been more helpful?

  ‘Very nice. If you weren’t so pi-eyed you’d see it’s empty.’

  ‘It will all be finished very soon.’ Edmund ignored the gibe. It was true, if he had looked he would have noticed the emptiness of the pool. He looked at it now. There was a suspicious-looking thing like ordure in the far end. ‘Soon all this will be peopled by tourists.’

  ‘Cockroaches.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘It would help me if you went to the Roman sights and let me know what they are like.’ It was as close as he could come to an appeal.

  ‘I think I’ll stay in the garden or I may explore the town.’

  Edmund swallowed his resentment. At least she had not brought up the squashed dog, he did not feel up to that just yet. They sat uneasily silent until Mustafa came down the steps from the hotel. He had missed the chance to find out what had happened to Poppy the night before. If he had not been so heavy on the booze there would have been no problem, no mystery.

  ‘Well then,’ Mustafa rubbed his hands together, ‘everything arranged. We drive along the coast after visiting the Minister of Tourism.’

  ‘Oh, the Minister,’ said Poppy. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Will you be all right?’ On his feet now, preparing to leave with Mustafa, Edmund lingered by Poppy. If only she’d take off those bloody glasses.

  ‘She will be all right,’ said Mustafa pleased with his telephone call. The airport was quiet now, they said, excitement over, arrests made. The road was clear, everything under control. We’ll keep an eye on the girl, they said, there is nothing to see.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to see the Roman ant—’ began Edmund.

  ‘You know how I hate conducted tours,’ snapped Poppy.

  ‘Well—’ Edmund stood hesitating looking down at her lolling in the garden chair, her long legs crossed at the ankle. ‘Is there anything I can get you before I go?’

  Poppy shook her head.

  Edmund walked away with Mustafa. ‘Goodbye then,’ he called over his shoulder, hurt. She watched them go down the steps to the road, get into a car and be driven off. She wiped a tear with a finger before it could roll down her cheek.

  25

  EDMUND, INTRODUCED TO THE Minister of Tourism, took a violent dislike to him, loathing his thick greying hair, macho moustache, red lips, even teeth and above all his extremely healthy general appearance. Not having jogged for several days Edmund was pervaded by guilt. This emotion generated a sort of second wind which cleared his mind to such an extent that he was able to conduct his business with zeal, efficiency and dispatch, surprising the Minister whose information relayed from Mustafa via his secretary prior to their meeting had been to the effect that Edmund was to all intents and purposes a pushover.

  Edmund’s success with the Minister did Mustafa no good but no harm either since he was the nephew by marriage of the Minister’s wife. He was amused by Edmund’s transformation since it proved his grandmother’s theory (she was partly French) that no Englishman was to be trusted. With this in mind he excused himself and went into the outer office where he arranged for a message to be transmitted to the Minister to the effect that it would be as well to take Edmund out of the town for a few hours, visit the Roman city perhaps, be usefully occupied a hundred kilometres away while the troop transports returned from the airport, one never knew with such perfidious people what interpretation they might put on what they saw. There was no need for Edmund to hear of yesterday’s unrest. He returned to the Minister’s office in time to watch him receive the message on his office telephone, accepting it with understanding calm.

  Mustafa thought if the opportunity arose it would be amusing to test another theory his grandmother held about the English. Taking off his dark glasses he flashed an enigmatic smile at Edmund. Edmund remained expressionless, not wishing to show pleasure at having scored, from his employers’ point of view, a variety of vital concessions. He was not bothered that Mustafa signalled that he was aware of his success, it was up to Mustafa to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, he was that sort of wog. Thinking these thoughts he relented and returned Mustafa’s smile.

  The Minister was now suggesting that their official business over, minor points conceded on both sides thus showing a proper spirit hopeful for the future of tourism, it would be a pleasure and a joy if Edmund allowed him to drive him to the Roman antiquities, the city, the theatre, the amphitheatre, only a few kilometres along the coast by the sea; a few hours off from affairs of State would do no harm. Edmund found himself sitting beside the Minister in his Porsche, driving at speed along a road parallel to the sea while Mustafa followed at a more sedate pace in the Mercedes. Too late Edmund thought that it would have been possible to bring Poppy, then consoled himself that she had had the chance and refused. He set himself to listen to the Minister’s description of the Roman city they were to visit, excavated, he assured Edmund, by archaeologists from London University. Edmund thought briefly of Poppy’s earlier tease about Oxbridge.

  The Roman city impressed Edmund enormously, it was so large it had swallowed up several busloads of Scandinavian tourists with their guides. The buses were parked, silent, glinting in the sun, while their drivers gossiped with a group of herdsmen who were building a fire of driftwood on a slight elevation on the dunes overlooking the ruins. They had with them several disappointed looking donkeys and some flop-ea
red goats whose charming little kids with enormous knees attracted Edmund’s eye. Poppy would have loved them. He made himself listen to the Minister’s historical dissertation on the city, its rise, its prosperity, its fall. Having eaten no breakfast and nothing since his meal on the plane, his attention flagged, hunger vied with intellectual interest. Would it be eventually possible, he suggested by way of a diplomatic hint, a good thing even, an encouragement to tourism if the Minister’s government built a restaurant near the ruins where hungry tourists would spend their pounds, dollars, Deutschmarks, nothing vulgar naturally.

  ‘Hungry are you?’ asked the Minister who had spent a long time in England and was familiar with the expression ‘cut the cackle’. ‘You English march on your stomach like Napoleon?’

  ‘He was French.’ Edmund disliked the Minister more than ever. ‘A Corsican actually.’

  ‘Look.’ The Minister pointed towards the car park.

  ‘I see. The buses are driving away.’

  ‘Not that. See, there is Mustafa. I sent him to arrange a desert meal in your honour. Can you see him?’

  ‘Yes.’ Edmund followed the pointing finger in time to see one of the men hold up a kid by its legs while another man slit its throat.

  ‘Delicious,’ said the Minister, ‘roasted with herbs over the open fire, you will never have tasted anything like it.’

  ‘I dare say not.’ Edmund’s throat was dry. Thank God Poppy had not come with him.

  ‘So while the lunch cooks we swim,’ said the Minister. ‘Work up an appetite.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Edmund cravenly turning his gaze towards the sea.

  ‘You don’t have to eat its eyes,’ said the Minister, evilly mischievous.

  Edmund said nothing.

  They reached the beach, a deserted expanse of sand beaten by creaming rollers.

  ‘Race you to the water.’ The Minister dropped his trousers, Edmund followed suit, running into the sea, diving under so that the water would drown the sound of the startled bleat, the vision of the exposed throat. It would be nice to catch the Minister by the foot, pull him under, drown him, but curse him, he swam like a porpoise.