Vacillations of Poppy Carew

  Back at the picnic site the Minister excused himself. ‘Eat your lunch,’ he said, ‘enjoy the al fresco.’ Mustafa would be his host, he himself had urgent business, it had been a pleasure but now alas … He drove away in his Porsche.

  ‘Now eat,’ said Mustafa.

  The kid was delicious, tender, redolent of herbs. Not far off one of the men milked its mother. ‘You would not like milk to drink,’ said Mustafa, ‘the vessel is filthy, these are ignorant men.’

  ‘Oh, ah, I—’

  ‘I have brought you something else.’ Mustafa produced a bottle of wine and glasses from the Mercedes. ‘They can make us coffee,’ he said, ‘we have work to do.’

  ‘So has the Minister, urgent business.’

  ‘If you call it business.’ Mustafa took off his glasses and stared at Edmund. ‘You look better,’ he said looking away.

  ‘I was not ill.’ Edmund defended himself boldly, holding out his glass for a refill. ‘I take it the Minister has a beautiful wife,’ he said. One must not let these fellows get the upper hand.

  ‘Very beautiful.’ Mustafa laughed, crinkling up his eyes. ‘You understand it all.’

  ‘Well,’ said Edmund, pleased, ‘one does—’

  ‘Now coffee.’ Mustafa handed him a tiny cup of gritty coffee. ‘Then we drive back, inspect the sites for the Cabana complexes, visit the hotels we have already built, the site for the golf course, the tennis courts and the stadium. I will show you the plans for the stadium.’

  ‘You never mentioned a stadium.’ Edmund felt he might wilt. ‘Won’t tomorrow do?’

  ‘Of course. Have some more wine, finish the bottle.’

  ‘I think I have,’ said Edmund, surprised. ‘I rather like you without your glasses,’ he said, not guarding his tongue.

  ‘So, to work.’ Mustafa let Edmund’s remark drop. ‘And when we have done our work I will show you a private bar where you will—’

  ‘What?’ Mustafa’s tone made Edmund suspicious. ‘What will I?’

  ‘Nothing important. They have a pastis like in France, you will enjoy it in the cool of the evening. Arak.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Edmund watching Mustafa’s curious velvety eyes. ‘Put your glasses on,’ he said roughly, ‘and let’s get on with it.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ said Mustafa, gently mindful of his grandmother.

  26

  ‘ARE YOU LISTENING, WILLY?’ said Calypso on the telephone.

  ‘Yes, Aunt.’

  ‘Then take this down. I have the name of the country, the town and the hotel they are at. Shall I start?’

  ‘Please.’ Willy wrote rapidly as Calypso dictated.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘You are a perfect marvel.’

  ‘You fly from Gatwick, there are three flights a week, there may be one tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll soon find out.’ Then, ‘I thought,’ said Willy, ‘that they were entirely into oil in that country. This must be something new.’

  ‘They are enterprising people, they look ahead. When the oil runs out there will still be tourism to net the dollars.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘What about Fergus and Victor? What are they doing? Were they not in the hunt? Perhaps they are not really serious,’ suggested Calypso.

  ‘I checked. Fergus is moving his business into Poppy’s stables, he wants to get settled before a rush of orders bogs him down.’

  ‘Is he expecting a flu epidemic or Legionnaires’ Disease, or does he rely on anno domini?’

  Willy laughed. ‘He’s of sanguine disposition, he feels after the press and television coverage of Bob Carew, business will perk up. Did you read Victor Lucas’s article in Julia Wake’s magazine? There’s mention too in Horse and Hound and Country Life.’

  ‘I did and Lord Hatchet’s letter to The Times, objecting, is a marvellous advertisement. I wonder who put him up to it.’ Calypso chuckled. ‘And what of Victor?’

  ‘He’s bogged down by his editor who wants a mass of alterations to his novel done immediately so that the book can get into the spring list.’

  ‘Have you made friends with those two that you know so much?’ Calypso was curious.

  ‘No, no. I gave Mrs Edwardes, Bob Carew’s daily lady, a ham, one of Mrs Future’s nephews actually.’

  ‘Don’t, Willy! I must have my hams anonymous. How is Mrs Future?’

  ‘Terrific. So clever too, she gauged her last litter exactly a piglet to each teat.’

  ‘The result of hormones?’

  ‘You know I don’t give them hormones, she just is the perfect sow.’ Willy enthused.

  ‘Who are you leaving in charge, Arthur?’

  ‘Yes, he copes well if I have to go away.’

  ‘Will he control the smell?’

  ‘Of course he will. Don’t tease.’

  ‘Take plenty of money. Are you okay for money?’

  ‘Yes, thanks. I can’t thank you enough. I am eternally grateful. How, by the way, did you get all this information. Did you extract somebody’s teeth by torture?’ Willy was curious.

  ‘I telephoned Venetia Colyer as I promised. She volunteered it.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ Willy whistled.

  ‘She’s no slouch when she wants something. She wants Edmund Platt back.’

  ‘Good Lord!’

  ‘One wonders what she means, almost one feels sorry for him.’

  ‘Good Lord!’

  ‘Don’t keep saying “Good Lord”, Willy, try a bit of variety.’

  ‘Sorry, it’s hard to grasp this aspect—’

  ‘According to Venetia this Edmund of Poppy’s, although not a particularly nice character—who is when it comes to that and you really look among the débris—is very attractive. Girls would like to have had him rather in the way antique dealers like to have a collector’s piece in their shop window.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Venetia says Poppy’s had the monopoly for far too long and she, Venetia, wants him before he goes off.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Some girls are like that.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Not Poppy of course.’ Was Calypso making fun of him? ‘So Venetia’s not averse to getting him back, says she knows it’s perverse but she would not mind keeping him permanently.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Don’t keep saying “Oh”, Willy, you’ve no idea how irritating you sound.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘When shall you go?’

  ‘Tonight.’

  ‘Let’s hope she’s still there.’

  ‘That’s a risk I have to take.’

  Willy’s tone reminded her of Hector. ‘God speed,’ she said, replacing the receiver. ‘I hope I’ve done the right thing, not buggered up his life,’ she murmured to her dog who, wagging his tail and rolling his eyes towards the door, indicated that a walk in the wood at twilight would be the right thing for a dog.

  Following her dog through the wood, it occurred to Calypso that by aiding Willy she was guilty of hindering Fergus.

  When Fergus’s mother Ros, a friend of years, had heard that she intended going to the Carew funeral Calypso had agreed to report on Fergus’s enterprise.

  ‘If you are going to this do will you let me know whether Fergus is going to make a success of his crazy idea, or a fool of himself? I am worried sick for him. I can’t interfere, he is so touchy, all I can do is stand by and pray,’ Ros had vented her maternal anxiety. Calypso had agreed; the request was simple enough. I went to say farewell to Bob, she thought irritably. I can tell her the horses were beautiful, the turn-out impeccable, the hearse dignified, the service moving, that, as funerals go, it was a success. I can tell her it’s the sort of thing Hector would have liked, that will reassure her. One does not anticipate the undertaker falling in love with the chief mourner or one’s nephew, level headed and sensible, to fall arse over tip for the same girl. I shall censor the news of Poppy, give her a glowing report, stick to the hearse and horses. ‘What she’s really worried about is all those pret
ty stable girls,’ said Calypso aloud to the dog.

  The dog thrust his head up under her hand, nudging for a caress.

  27

  AS SOON AS EDMUND and Mustafa had gone Poppy felt regret. She should have been nicer to Edmund, told him about the cockroaches, told him why she had changed rooms, why she was not there when he came to bed, enlisted his sympathy, he was after all supposed to love her. But no, she told herself robustly, he had gone off on a round of the bars with Mustafa, he was never loving or sympathetic when drunk, he had looked pretty poached when he turned up this morning.

  So how to occupy her day?

  She looked beyond the empty pool and the half-made garden to the sea, choppy and uninviting, and decided to change some money, explore the town.

  The man at the desk explained in halting English that there were as yet no facilities to change travellers’ cheques in the hotel. She would have to find a bank, the hotel was not yet geared for tourists. Poppy thanked him, looking round the empty hall, wondering whether she and Edmund were the only guests. The emptiness was a little eerie.

  ‘Three months,’ said the desk clerk, holding up three fingers. ‘Finish in three months, drei Monaten.’ This explained perhaps the smell of wet cement, the desultory work being done in the garden, the empty pool. Perhaps there had been a pause in the building of the hotel during which the cockroaches had moved in.

  ‘Taxi?’ suggested the desk clerk.

  ‘Thanks, I’ll walk,’ said Poppy.

  Settling her sunglasses on her nose, she set off for the town. She had all day, she would do what tourists do, explore, buy postcards, find a museum perhaps, sit in a café.

  Arriving in the dark the night before, she had not noticed the environs. Outside what was to be the hotel garden there was an expanse of ground where there had been buildings. Bulldozers were at work levelling the ground, earth-moving machines scooped and scraped, lorries churned up dust with their enormous wheels turning the landscape barren. She looked back at the hotel and guessed that in the near future there would be other shoebox hotels, swimming pools, bars, all the complex thought necessary for travellers, but we are not travellers, she thought, we are tourists, packaged into manageable parties by people like Edmund and Mustafa. She picked her way across the waste ground to the road leading into the town and eventually found herself in a large square surrounded by municipal buildings, offices and banks.

  The population did not seem very large. There was little traffic but armed men stood in groups at the street corners and as she looked about for a Bureau de Change a dozen army trucks drove through the square. In the trucks soldiers looked at her with lack-lustre eyes over the tops of their weapons. As she stood watching, several busloads of tourists passed the army trucks, overtaking them and driving out in the direction of the sea. Poppy surmised they were heading for the Roman city and congratulated herself on resisting Mustafa’s plan to herd her with them. She located a bank and went in past an armed policeman to change her traveller’s cheques. The clerk who attended to her asked whether she wished to change Deutschmarks or dollars and let his face fall when she admitted to pounds. He rallied however when she spoke to him in Italian and asked her where she was staying. When she told him he exclaimed and said that the hotel when it was complete would be the most magnificent on the North African coast. Poppy felt it would be unfair to complain of the smell of cement, the empty pool and the insect lodgers. He wished her a happy holiday and, slightly cheered by this brief human contact, she left the bank and its armed guard to buy picture postcards and find a café where she chose a table in the shade from where she could watch the passers-by.

  Waiting for the waiter to bring her coffee she was conscious that people at other tables in the café stared at her with interested disdain. She became aware of being a woman alone; such women as there were in the café were old, caring for children, the majority of the customers male. Pretending not to notice Poppy addressed her postcards, sipped her coffee, taking her time to write a postcard to Jane Edwardes, another to a girl she was not particularly friendly with at her late job. There had been no camels for Venetia Colyer, a psychedelic view of a sunset with palm trees would have to suit. There was no possible message for the woman who had stolen your lover when you had got him back. She stared down at the blank card pondering this conundrum, wrote one word. Quickly she scribbled a card to Mary, care of Furnival’s Fine Funerals, adding ‘much love to infant Barnaby’ remembering his lollipop eyes. It crossed her mind that it would be fun to be here with Dad even though they would squabble about Edmund. They had never been abroad together, she had made an excuse the only time he had suggested it, inviting her, she remembered with a pang, to the races in Paris. If he were here would she be able to tell him what she now felt about Edmund (and what may that be, asked her inner self), would she feel tempted to ask his advice? The very idea amused her, she finished her coffee, paid and tipped the waiter. The clientele had stopped staring at her and were watching the people in the street who were all drifting in one direction, taking a street which led out of the square. One by one the men in the café got up, joined the crowd, drifted away with it.

  An occasional gust of wind swept through the square stirring bits of paper, billowing out the robes worn by the older men. Poppy noticed that what women there were about were hurrying against the tide of men, dragging children with them. In casual search of a postbox she let herself be carried along with the crowd which, funnelling out of the square into a long colonnaded street, seemed to grow thicker by the minute. As she walked down the street on the look-out for a postbox she was puzzled that shopkeepers were putting up their shutters; was it perhaps a holiday or siesta time or was everyone going to a football match? All round her men spoke in low muttering voices or walked silently so that the street was filled with the shuffling slapping sound of feet. Far ahead there was the sound of shouting; the crowd hurried forward. Poppy began to wish herself elsewhere, having a claustrophobic fear of being hemmed in, suffocated by numbers. She tried to keep close to the side against the shop fronts, closed up now so that it was no longer possible to go into one and take refuge.

  Suddenly noisily with shouts, hooting and cries two armoured cars forced their way through the crowds who were pressed and heaved against Poppy. She held on tight to her bag which held her freshly changed money and her passport. If I lose it, she thought, Edmund will be furious but at least he has my return ticket. A man trod on her heel, pressing up against her in haste. The pain as his foot scraped down her Achilles tendon was acute. She threw herself against the wall to get out of his way.

  The street ended abruptly, opening into an open space with rising ground on the far side and a vista of palm trees on a road leading away to open country down which swayed what looked like the procession of the night before, women, children, dogs, donkeys, camels, the poor of the city on the move. On the corner of the street as it debouched on the open space was an iron pillar against the wall. Poppy held on to it while the crowd surged past her.

  In the middle of the space under a plane tree, surrounded by the crowd, were army trucks, armed soldiers faced the crowd which murmured and muttered repeating a sort of groan which grew to a demanding rhythmic shout. The breath of the multitude stank and Poppy found herself taking quick shallow breaths, denying her lungs the odour of anger.

  Quite suddenly the crowd hushed. In the silence from behind the trucks two men were hoisted up: ropes put round their necks thrown over the branch of the plane tree, they were pulled strangling up.

  The noise the crowd then made was terrifying.

  Stifled by the sour smell of the people, Poppy turned towards the wall, her clothes drenching with sweat, she began to claw her way through the crowd. As she fought her way inch by inch part of her noticed the postbox she had been looking for. She stopped, opened her bag, took out the postcards, dropped them into the box, struggled on.

  Later she was running along the water’s edge on the beach, her thin shoes soaking in th
e shallow waves.

  A flight of weary swallows came in low from Europe to pause and recoup before continuing their journey across the Sahara.

  Poppy tripped, stumbled, sat by the water’s edge trembling, exhausted.

  She bathed her sore heel as the sea advanced and receded over her feet.

  She pushed her hair back, congratulated herself that she had not lost her bag, found a comb, combed her hair, remembered that she had written no message on Venetia’s postcard beyond the one word, wondered what Venetia would think when she received it, wondered how long it would be before Edmund found her.

  Time to get back to the hotel. She stood up, straightened her dress, looked about, found her bearings, walked limping along the beach until she reached the town. Here she climbed up to the road which circled the harbour. It forked and led her back into the town and into the square where long ago she had found the bank and cashed her traveller’s cheques. In the square was a newspaper kiosk she had not noticed that morning. It sold foreign papers. She bought a New York Herald Tribune, went and sat in the café she had visited earlier in the day, ordered a brandy. People looked at her curiously as she lifted the glass with hands that shook. She felt better when she had drunk it. She stopped trembling and ordered another.

  She opened the paper, found what she was searching for, an unimportant paragraph on an inner page.

  An unknown sect had thrown a bomb. The airport had been occupied by troops in case of trouble. People from the desert in the town for the celebrations (what celebrations?) had evacuated by night, taking their livestock and goods with them, their camels—the dog, there was no mention of the dog—the main road into the town from the airport had been closed by the army, the old road was heavily congested. A few arrests had been made, everything was now calm, riots slight, no panic.

  A few arrests.

  A few hangings.

  Poppy folded the paper carefully and sipped her brandy.

  Sipping her brandy, steadying her nerve, she discussed with herself why she was more afraid here than she would have been at home. There are after all kidnappers, hijackers, rioters, terrorists everywhere these days, all sorts of innocent and ignorant people mixed up with such things. Don’t be so silly, she told herself.