Vacillations of Poppy Carew

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought so.’ Penelope held out a finger which Barnaby snatched and held in his tight infant grip. ‘Are you being irritating on purpose?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Penelope laughed and waggled her finger in Barnaby’s fist. He stopped sucking Mary’s nipple and tried to stuff Penelope’s finger in his mouth. Penelope snatched the finger away.

  ‘You’d better come in.’ Mary pulled the door wider, jerked her head towards the kitchen. ‘We aren’t settled in yet, we only moved the day before yesterday, Fergus and the girls are doing a funeral near Wallop.’

  ‘Oh.’ Penelope followed Mary to the kitchen.

  ‘Sit down.’ Mary nodded at a chair.

  ‘Thanks.’ Penelope sat. An old dog got to his feet, came across the room to sniff and wag, retreated to lie by the stove.

  ‘So you are looking for Victor,’ said Mary. ‘He lives in London.’

  ‘Of course he does. It’s a friend of his who—’ Who? What? Who is this friend I am so het up about whose existence is hinted at by Venetia. Venetia never meant good. Must I ask this rude girl as Fergus is not here? Penelope regretted her impulsive journey. ‘If Fergus is out I can telephone or come another time—’

  ‘Didn’t you go for a spin with Fergus?’ Mary’s eye, though not dark and round like her child’s, was more penetrating.

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Screw, didn’t you screw with Fergus?’

  ‘Well, really I—’ Penelope got to her feet.

  ‘Yes or no?’

  ‘Well, yes—um—what business is it of yours what I—er—we. It wasn’t for long.’

  Mary grinned. ‘Just placing you. Sit down, have some coffee.’ To Penelope there was something menacing about the offer.

  ‘I—I ought to go.’

  ‘Oh come on, you can’t come all this way for nothing.’ Mary put Barnaby on the floor, filled the kettle. ‘What do you want poor old Victor for, what’s his friend to do with you?’ As she spooned Nescafé into mugs Mary sized Penelope up. ‘I bet Victor never really tried to drown you,’ she said, looking at Penelope, amused.

  ‘Of course he did,’ Penelope said defensively.

  ‘And this friend?’ asked Mary. ‘What’s your interest?’

  ‘Nothing, it’s nothing.’ Penelope was harassed. ‘Just something Venetia said when we met the other day.’

  ‘I know Venetia.’ Mary handed Penelope her mug. ‘Sugar? Milk?’

  ‘Just milk please. I thought Fergus’s place was more isolated.’ Penelope took stock.

  ‘It was. He’s rented this from Poppy Carew. He did her father’s funeral. You read about it?’

  ‘Yes. I did. Victor’s article and—’

  ‘Poppaea has disappeared with Venetia’s new man—’ Mary chanted. ‘Poppaea!’ mocking the name.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘This man is Poppaea’s old man, he left her, I guess, an educated guess, for Venetia.’

  ‘Gosh.’

  Mary sipped her coffee watching Barnaby crawl across the floor to join the dog who licked his head. ‘There’s an interesting connection if you are interested in Victor.’ She switched her eyes back to Penelope. ‘Both Fergus and Victor have their sights on Poppaea. They do seem to like the same girls those two, you, Julia and now Poppaea, funny isn’t it?’

  Penelope put down her mug. ‘Then what the hell is Victor doing installing some old trout in Berkshire?’

  ‘Is that what Venetia told you?’ Mary looked enchanted.

  ‘Yes it is.’ Penelope was outraged. What business had this girl to pry? Why had she let slip Venetia’s mischief? That she was herself prying did not bother her at all.

  ‘And you think Fergus can tell you where to look?’ asked Mary, deceptively mild.

  ‘That was the idea,’ said Penelope stiffly.

  ‘Are you jealous, do you want him back or just dog in the manger?’ Mary teased.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Penelope hotly.

  ‘You go up the road a few miles, take the fourth turning on your left, the second on your right, follow that road until you get to a humpback bridge and a track which goes up into the hills beside the stream. It’s possible you will find what you are looking for.’

  ‘Oh.’ Penelope got to her feet. ‘Thanks,’ she said grudgingly.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Mary, picking baby Barnaby out of the dog basket, walking with Penelope towards the door. ‘If when you are there you should see a large tabby cat please catch him and bring him here, Fergus is frantic, misses him terribly. He was out hunting when we moved, Fergus has been back to look three times already, he loves that animal.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Surely you can catch a cat.’

  ‘I doubt it.’ Penelope loathed cats, longed to refuse, was afraid to.

  ‘He’ll be starving by now. Fergus will be eternally grateful.’ Mary spoke with enjoyment.

  ‘I don’t think—’ protested Penelope.

  ‘I’ll give you a tin of sardines to entice him; not allergic are you?’ Mary turned back to find sardines, opened a tin. ‘There, lure him into your car, keep the windows shut as you drive or he’ll jump out.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about cats,’ protested Penelope weakly.

  ‘Then now’s your chance to find out.’ Mary was propelling her out of the house. ‘You may also find out a lot about Victor, the great softie.’

  ‘I—’ Penelope was out of the house and in her car.

  ‘Fourth turning on the left,’ Mary pointed. ‘Then follow the track into the hills after the humpback bridge.’ She put the tin of sardines on the seat beside Penelope. ‘His name is Bolivar,’ she said. ‘Let me know about Victor’s friend when you come back. I would be interested to hear your opinion.’

  Mary’s mocking tone so infuriated Penelope that she leant out of the car window and shouted, ‘I’m not going to bother about a bloody cat, Fergus can catch it for himself.’

  ‘Oho, what spirit!’ Penelope’s tormentor leaned in through the car window to stare at Penelope at close quarters; from her arms Barnaby reached in to stroke Penelope’s face. ‘Pitty, pitty.’ Mary snatched his hand away. Penelope flushed.

  ‘You bitch. Why are you so bloody?’ The two women glared at each other across the baby’s head. Barnaby crowed, reaching pudgy hands towards Penelope.

  ‘He likes me.’ Penelope pursed her lips, blowing a kiss towards the baby. ‘Is it Fergus’s child?’ she asked. ‘Those eyes—’ Mary stared at her, stony faced. ‘And something about the mouth—’ Penelope persisted dangerously. ‘When one’s—well, you know what I mean obviously—one sees people from a different angle when one’s—’

  ‘Jesus,’ murmured Mary holding the baby against her face, staring down at Penelope. ‘Christ.’

  ‘Who are you anyway, what’s your role around here?’ Penelope felt a sadistic desire to wound this woman who would not let her touch her child.

  ‘I’m part of the scenery.’ Mary was recovering fast.

  ‘I didn’t know Fergus was fond of scenery, that’s not a side of him I know.’ Penelope reached back for the safety belt. ‘Is your baby teething?’ she asked, looking up at Barnaby from whose open mouth trickled a stream of saliva. With her arm stretched up behind her, her hand fumbling for the buckle, she showed in her open shirt a pretty cleavage.

  Mary dipped Barnaby forward so that his spittle dropped between Penelope’s breasts. ‘You don’t see much scenery when you’re flat on your back,’ she said. ‘Mind you remember the cat,’ she called over her shoulder as she moved back into the house.

  Penelope started the engine, put the car in gear and drove off. As she drove she composed apt rejoinders, tart replies, crushing last words she might have inflicted on the girl with the baby had she been fast enough on the rejoinder.

  32

  VICTOR, WAITING TO BE served, watched a hurried spectacled youth buy mackerel, next a thickset woman hesitate between halibut and Dover sole
, making vocal allusion to her husband, his penchant for shrimps or oysters with or without cream in the sauce. Victor costed her silk shirt, cashmere sweater, St Laurent jeans, gold bracelets, double row of pearls. How many advances for novels would pay for all that? Shifting his shopping basket from one hand to the next, he exercised his mental arithmetic.

  The fish lady, apparently patient, ran a sardonic eye over the marble slab. The loquacious customer changed her mind, decided her husband would enjoy ray au beurre noir which, with out of season asparagus miraculously grown in Israel and new potatoes ditto, might deceive him now in October to believe it spring.

  ‘Spring,’ said the fish lady, slapping the ray on the scales, naming the price, wrapping the fish. ‘Spring,’ she said with lofty contempt for the seasons, looking past the customer’s head at the street and its passers-by.

  The woman took a notecase from her Hermès bag. Victor goggled at a wad of fifty pound notes; he opined that the metier of mugging would show greater dividends (always supposing one had the nerve) than writing.

  Unmoved, the fish lady took the money, gave her customer change, handed her her fish, turned to the next customer. ‘Yes?’ Victor had watched this man when in the early halcyon days of their marriage he had shopped with Penelope, unable to bear her out of his sight, carrying their shopping in the very basket he now held. The man now being served invariably bought lobsters, taking his time, discussing the particulars of each crustacean as the fish lady lifted them for his inspection, their bound claws forlornly semaphoring. Penelope had voiced the opinion that the man was homosexual, Victor thought not but in those early days rarely contradicted his wife.

  The present loneliness of shopping sharpened his powers of observation so that he took note of people’s dress and mannerisms in case they might fit into some brief paragraph of a future work.

  ‘Yes?’ said the fish lady, jerking him out of his reverie. ‘Yes?’ Contempt in her voice.

  ‘Oh! Half of unshelled prawns please.’

  Why should I be humbled, he thought indignantly. Not all of us can afford lobster and sole. Prawns with brown bread and butter make an excellent lunch with salad. ‘The salmon looks nice,’ he said for the sake of saying something. The salmon wore a leering expression and had an undershot jaw. ‘Cock,’ said Victor to illustrate that he wasn’t a complete fool, could tell the sex of salmon, hopefully insult the fish lady.

  The fish lady did not answer but weighed the prawns indifferently.

  ‘All girls,’ said Victor, listening to the prawns tinkling frozen into the scales. ‘All the prawns I buy have eggs.’

  ‘Scotch,’ said the fish lady, referring to the salmon. ‘Iceland,’ she handed Victor his prawns, took the money he proffered. ‘Wait a minute,’ she paused by the till. ‘Or Greenland.’

  ‘I gave you the exact money,’ said Victor defensively.

  ‘Your change,’ said the fish lady, handing Victor some coins.

  ‘Oh?’ Victor was at a loss. ‘Why?’

  ‘You neglected your change,’ said the fish lady, turning towards the next customer, ‘when you bought your trout,’ she tossed over her shoulder. ‘Yes sir?’ She was already in spirit with another.

  The old bitch, thought Victor morosely as he turned towards home. She used to call Penelope ‘ducks’, now she pretends not to know me, doesn’t call me anything. Feeling excluded from the human race he made for home, for his desk, to lose himself in his work.

  As usual Victor approached his novel at an angle hoping to take it by surprise, to be at work on it before he or the novel became aware. He ate his lunch, buttering brown bread, sipping a glass of lager, peeling the prawns, crunching them, swallowing a lot of the shell as he ate. Penelope had said the roughage was good for him, she never bothered to peel her prawns thoroughly, sucked the contents of the heads, then licked her fingers.

  Victor, eating his prawns, listening to the lunchtime news, thought of Penelope’s fingers and other more delectable parts. By writing about her it was his intention to expunge her from his system so that he could the better concentrate on Poppy Carew. Finishing his lunch he tossed the débris into the pedal bin, washed his hands and went to the telephone where he dialled Poppy’s London number. There was not, as there had not been for days, any answer. ‘Still away.’ Victor sat down at his desk. ‘Not back yet.’

  He read: ‘The day I decided to drown my wife dawned crystal clear.’

  He tore the paper from the typewriter, crushed it between both hands, tossed it towards the grate. He would answer his mother’s letter lying in its envelope on top of the pile. The very act of typing would lead him smoothly into the novel by artful trickery.

  Re-reading his mother’s letter Victor felt mounting annoyance. What right had she to criticise, not for her to find Penelope irritating, not for her to denigrate her ex-daughter-in-law. Even though their divorce was several years old, Victor still had difficulty in thinking of Penelope as ex-anything. I shall exorcise her by writing about her, Victor told himself.

  ‘Dear Mother,’ he wrote. ‘Thanks for yours. Are you coming up for the Horticultural Show or the exhibish at the Hayward? We might have a bite and go together. So glad you are glad about my book’ (two ‘glads’ in a sentence but never mind, this is only a letter, she’s lucky to get it). Victor tapped a little more about his novel, the advance he was to receive from Sean Connor, Sean’s connection with Julia. His mother deplored Julia whom she had once accused of hooking him, did she know what a hooker was? Poor mother, he thought, as he typed, spacing the lines widely to fill the page, recommending a new novel she would enjoy (get it from the library), giving her a pungent piece of family news which might not yet have reached Somerset of a second cousin twice removed discovered in buggery. She would enjoy the use of the word ‘buggery’, feel ‘with it’, an expression she was fond of. I must telephone her soon, thought Victor as he typed ‘with much love as always—’ Poor old thing, she wishes me to be happy, she always says ‘how lovely to hear your voice’, she has no bloody business to find Penelope irritating, it’s not for her—Victor tore the letter out of the typewriter, signed it, folded it, crammed it into an envelope, licked the envelope, addressed it. Now for the novel.

  ‘The day I decided to drown my wife dawned clear and sweet—’ Oh God what bilge.

  How sweet had been Penelope in those far-off days when they decided to go to bed after lunch, take the phone off the hook—oh God, he was thirsty, those prawns, so salt. Victor left his desk and went into the kitchen for a glass of water, gulped it down as he looked out between the fat little pillars of the parapet at what they had laughingly called ‘our view’, a view constricted to a piece of pavement at the corner by the pillar-box outside the paper shop. Often and often Victor had waited for Penelope to come into view, stand hesitating, looking left and right at the traffic before stepping off the pavement and out of sight. And Penelope had done the same. Lovers watching.

  On the parapet the pigeons strutted and cooed. Victor flung the window up. ‘Fuck off,’ he shouted. ‘Fuck off.’ He slammed the window shut, drank another glass of water, felt even less like working, gave up. Hoping to expunge Penelope in another way, he ran down to the street, got into his car and drove.

  As he drove Victor made slighting comparisons between his ex-wife and Poppy, hands, feet, fingers, noses, hair, eyes, teeth, arms, legs. The trouble was he had never seen Poppy naked so that comparisons stopped short. Were her tits brown or pink, was her bush mouse like her hair, or astonishingly dark and secret like Penelope’s, darker than the hair on her head, or even her eyelashes? Penelope, who had not bothered him seriously for weeks or even months, imposed herself between him and Poppy.

  When he got around to drowning her in his novel would she cease to torment him?

  33

  WILLY WALKED WITH POPPY to the airport bus carrying her bag with his own. She walked stiffly, holding her head high, her shoulders unnaturally straight. He stood aside to let her climb on to the bus, blocki
ng the way to the other passengers so that she need not hurry, then he followed her to where she settled in a seat next to the window, stood between her and their fellow travellers while he heaved the bags on to the rack, then inserted his bulk into the seat beside her. The torrential rain streaming down the window made it impossible for anyone looking in to see Poppy; within the bus he shielded her with his body. Her bruised face, dishevelled hair, the way she sat ravelled into herself reminded him of the rabbits dying of myxomatosis he had seen as a child, too stupefied, too blind to get out of the rain. Then he had joined his father in awful retching sorties to shoot or club the miserable animals, putting them out of their misery. Sitting with Poppy in the bus Willy experienced the rage of pity and fury he had had as a child magnified tenfold.

  It was clear Poppy had not been in a car accident.

  The passengers all seated, luggage stowed, the driver brought to an end an altercation he had been having with somebody out of sight, climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine. The bus trundled slowly through the downpour out of the airport, crawling through wind and flood towards Algiers. After a quarter of a mile the bus stopped to take on board a policeman whose cape and boots streamed water on to the floor of the bus. The policeman shouted and gesticulated at the driver who yelled back, released the handbrake and jerked onwards. The policeman continued to shout to make himself heard above the noise of the engine and the roar of the storm, the driver constantly taking his eyes off the road to confront the policeman, yelled back.

  In the bus the passengers sat glum, barely exchanging a word, lighting nervous cigarettes, their collective breaths steaming up the windows.

  Beside Willy Poppy made a small desperate movement, glancing up at the window.

  ‘Want some air?’

  She nodded.

  Willy stood up, swaying with the movement of the bus, leant across her and forced a window open. In rushed wind and rain, there was a stormy protest from the seats behind in nasal American.