Vacillations of Poppy Carew

‘We work here. We are the grooms,’ said Frances, trying to put Ros at her ease (what a jumpy lady), ‘and the mutes if they are needed. I am Frances and this is Annie.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Ros. ‘I’ve heard all about you.’ He hasn’t told me about them, did he tell me about mutes? I can’t remember. They are pretty girls if they’d give themselves a chance. ‘It’s nice here.’ She looked up at the house.

  ‘Very convenient,’ said Annie.

  ‘Much better than up on the downs,’ said Frances. ‘Why don’t you come in and sit down, he won’t be long.’ Annie waved Ros into the house. ‘We are supposed to be going out but Fergus will be back any minute.’

  ‘Here they come,’ said Frances, relieved, as the boyfriends drove up. ‘Will you be all right if we leave you? We are going to a party.’

  ‘Of course. Have a good time.’ Ros watched the young people go, went into the house, sat on a sofa in the sitting room, got restlessly up, looked at the bookshelves, fingered a pair of field-glasses, remembered Bob Carew wearing them round his neck at Newmarket, missed him, not as a close friend but as someone she had always been pleased to see, always felt the better for meeting. Had he really named his daughter after a racehorse? Had he worried about her as she worried now about her son Fergus?

  She listened to the empty house.

  If I went upstairs I could pretend I’d gone to the lavatory, she thought. With a quick look round I could work out who sleeps in which room, with whom. God, how base! She suppressed her curiosity, resisted the urge to explore, moved to the safer ambience of the kitchen and on out into the yard to talk to the horses.

  ‘Hullo my beauties, hullo.’ She patted necks, stroked noses. ‘And Bolivar, how are you, how do you like it here?’ She caressed the cat who accepted her tribute offhandedly. She wished Fergus would come in, feeling increasingly nervous, remembering her husband. ‘I would hesitate to interfere,’ she had said.

  ‘Which is exactly what you want to do,’ he had answered.

  ‘But I must find out what is going on,’ she had said. ‘I am his mother.’

  ‘All the more reason,’ he had said, ‘not to poke your nose in.’

  ‘Oh Fergus,’ she exclaimed, as Fergus came into the yard with his dogs. ‘Thank God you are back.’

  ‘Why, what’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing. I’ve been here such ages I was beginning to think I’d better come back another time, let you know beforehand, warn you.’ She heard herself being querulous, tried to stop.

  ‘I saw you arrive from up on the hill—’

  ‘Oh, you did? Well, it seemed a long time.’ Ros was defensive.

  Fergus bent to kiss her. ‘I’m back now, come along in and have a drink. Didn’t the girls—’

  ‘They went out, a party or—’

  ‘Of course. Always on the go those two. They chase more boys than I have fingers or toes. Veritable Dianas. Isn’t Mary about? She would look after you.’

  ‘The house seems empty actually. It was about—’

  ‘Well, come on in.’ Fergus put his arm round her shoulders. ‘Have you had supper?’ He reached for the whisky, poured Ros a drink.

  ‘I must get back. Henry will be waiting.’

  ‘And how is my step-papa?’

  ‘Fine, fine. What I came for—was—’

  ‘Yes?’

  Ros, courage evaporating under Fergus’s kindly gaze, procrastinated. ‘Well, I came to see how you are getting on now you’ve moved.’ She sipped her drink. ‘Could I have a little more water in this, it’s very strong?’ Trying to sound normal she succeeded in sounding nervous.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I used to know Bob Carew. Your father and I often met him at the races. This house was his, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. We buried him. I’m renting it from his daughter.’

  Fergus’s face softened at the thought of Poppy, Ros noticed. ‘I saw it on the local television and somebody wrote an article about you which I read in a magazine at the hairdresser’s,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, Victor.’

  ‘Oh, oh yes of course.’ Ros sipped her whisky; it was still much too strong, drinks went straight to her head these days, some sort of bye-blow from the menopause. ‘Of course,’ she said again, ‘it was Victor.’

  Fergus looked at his mother over the rim of his glass. What’s the matter with her, has she repented of marrying Henry, is she afraid to tell me she’s made a cock-up, she can come and stay here if she wants to think better of it, get shot of him. ‘What’s the matter, Mother?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing’s the matter.’ Ros gulped her drink. Where’s my sangfroid? Why am I afraid of my own son, my only child? Mind the whisky. ‘How are the dogs?’ (Idiot question, the dogs are fine, sitting round us, wagging their tails, waiting for their dinners, it’s a shame to keep them waiting.) ‘Would you show me round? I’d love to see it all.’ She made a circling motion with her glass.

  ‘Of course. Come round the yard and see the horses.’ Give her time and she’ll tell me what her worry is. I thought she was happy with Henry. In many ways he’s a lot nicer than Father ever was, got more humour, hasn’t got his filthy temper. Fergus frowned as he led the way out to the stables. ‘We had a good funeral a couple of days ago over at Wallop and I’m booked for two more this week,’ he said cheerfully.

  ‘How splendid. Soon you’ll have so much work you—oh, I thought that horse had a white blaze.’

  ‘He does. So does number three. Mary dyes it and their white socks.’

  ‘Oh Mary. Of course I was—’

  ‘Sometimes she dyes her hair at the same time.’ Fergus laughed tolerantly. Ros looked at him sharply. ‘Come along and let me show you the house.’ Ros followed him in and up the stairs. ‘You looked round the ground floor, I take it.’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘I hope the girls haven’t left everything in a mess.’ Fergus led her upstairs, began opening doors. ‘That’s Annie in there, Frances here. Bob Carew’s daily lady comes to us now, she’s quite a dragon, keeps us in order. You must meet her some time, she’s what your mother would have called a treasure.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Good so far.’ Fergus glanced through a doorway. ‘Nobody daring to be untidy. Mary’s in there with Jesu.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Her child—’

  ‘Fergus—’

  ‘And I’m on the next floor out of harm’s way. This room used to be the spare room. Mrs Edwardes—that’s the daily lady—says Bob Carew’s lady visitors used to stay in it; d’you suppose they were his mistresses?’

  ‘I think—’

  ‘Apparently Poppy has reserved it for herself or did before the funeral. I thought if she’d like to use it for weekends she could still have it. A lovely girl, isn’t she?’ Fergus’s voice warmed.

  ‘Never met her.’

  ‘But you knew her dad, the one we buried?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Fergus, I came—’

  ‘Yes?’ Fergus turned his black eyes on her. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Nothing. I wasn’t—’

  ‘Would you like to stay the night, Mother, have Poppy’s room, have supper with me, I’m on my own?’ Give her time to sick up whatever’s bothering her, something is, it must be serious, I’ve never seen her quite like this. ‘You could telephone Henry.’ If my stepfather is ill-treating her I shall have to—

  ‘No thanks, darling. I’d better get back.’ She took fright.

  ‘Have another drink, then.’ Loosen her tongue. I must find out what the trouble is. Fergus, sensing his parent’s distress, felt growing concern as he led the way back to the kitchen, poured her another whisky.

  ‘I really shouldn’t,’ said Ros, taking it. ‘I have miles to drive.’

  ‘Then stay the night.’

  ‘No, no.’ The prospect terrified her.

  ‘Why don’t we sit where it’s comfortable in the sitting room. I’ll light the fire, come along.’ He led the way. Ros followed, panic cons
tricting her throat, why, oh why, had she come? Damn Henry for being right.

  ‘There, sit there.’ Fergus pushed her into an armchair.

  Ros sat, reminded of a rabbit with a stoat, the part of the stoat was being played by Fergus, her only child.

  ‘Well, now. What’s really worrying you?’ Fergus leant towards her, his elbows on his knees. ‘I don’t see enough of you, Mother.’

  Somehow she must get herself out of this ridiculous situation. She took a large swallow of whisky. ‘Henry and I thought, well I thought of it and he agreed, well of course he agreed’ (what he’d actually done was fall about laughing), ‘we—’

  ‘Yes?’ Fergus leant forward listening, sympathetic, caring, he was really very fond of his mother, no reason not to be.

  ‘Would you like a coach?’ Ros shot her inspiration out with a rush.

  ‘A coach?’ Has she gone off her rocker?

  ‘Yes. I thought for your business it would—I mean with a coach you could—’

  ‘I’ve got a hearse, Mother.’ He was patient.

  ‘I know, darling, it’s just this, I thought if I gave you a coach, I saw one advertised in Bath—’

  ‘It’s very generous of you but what would I want with a coach?’

  ‘You could do weddings,’ said Ros inspired.

  ‘Aha! It’s out. You are snobbishly opposed to funerals.’ He felt betrayed.

  ‘NO!’ She flushed.

  ‘Yes, you are. You don’t like having a son who’s an undertaker.’

  ‘No, darling, it’s not—’

  ‘Or my stepfather doesn’t like having a stepson who’s an undertaker. It lowers the tone. Well, he must bloody put up with it.’ Fergus’s short-fused temper exploded. ‘He can stuff his coach up his fastidious arse. I thought you were embarrassed about something when I came in, had some awful worry you couldn’t bring yourself to talk about. I see it all. You want to bribe me to chuck my business for a fucking coach for weddings.’ Fergus spat out the last word. ‘Well, you can tell him I am not interested in weddings.’

  ‘I can see that!’ Ros too had a temper.

  Ignoring her, Fergus went on, ‘I’ve worked my balls off to get my business off the ground. I’m beginning to do really well. I am not interested in marriages, they always fall apart, look at Victor reduced to killing Penelope—’

  ‘She’s still alive,’ shouted Ros, infected by Fergus’s rage, choking on her own agitation.

  ‘I am interested in burials, in death, there’s money in death and I am making it,’ Fergus shouted. He was standing up now, towering above his mother.

  ‘I am very glad for you,’ Ros too stood up, put down her empty glass, ‘delighted, though you may not believe me, you are so touchy.’

  ‘I am not touchy.’

  ‘I didn’t come about offering to give you a coach, that was off the top of my head on the spur of the moment, an idea engendered by terror.’

  ‘What did you come about, then?’ Fergus stood looking down at his mother.

  ‘Your child,’ said Ros.

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Your child, Mary Mowbray’s baby.’

  Fergus stared at his mother. ‘Mother, you must be mad.’ He spoke very gently. (A good psychiatrist, this looked serious.)

  Ros said nothing, watching him.

  ‘That baby’s father is called Joseph, mother, he’s a Spaniard, in Spain, he’s a waiter or a fisherman or something.’

  ‘A figment.’

  ‘You do not suppose I’d—’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Come on, Mother, you have the wrong end of the stick. She brought it back from Spain, I tell you.’

  Ros sat down again. ‘And I tell you, Fergus, that that child is the spitting image of you as a baby. I should know, I am your mother. It was a great shock when I saw him the other day. I can show you photographs of yourself when you were his age which could have been taken yesterday of that child and—’ She held up a hand as Fergus tried to speak. ‘I can also show you photographs of your father at the same age. Same thing, identical. The Furnival genes are mighty strong.’

  Leaving the house, Ros passed Bolivar on the doorstep sitting in the dusk, whiskers twitching in anticipation of the night’s business. She kicked his flank.

  ‘That’s not like you, Mother,’ Fergus cried desperately.

  ‘But that baby is like you.’ Ros jumped into her car and drove off.

  ‘You will have an accident if you drive like that,’ Fergus yelled after the departing car. ‘You are insane.’ He shivered, feeling very cold.

  40

  WHEN EDMUND SAW VENETIA tripping towards him he was amazed.

  The hospital ward was long and airy, the beds widely spaced, his bed the last in the row. As Venetia advanced the heads of the bodies in the other beds turned to watch her progress. He had time to wonder whether the Muslim patients would be shocked by Venetia’s dress of fine cotton speckled with minute yellow flowers, semitransparent, so that as she approached, with the light behind her, it was possible not only to see her legs but her whole silhouette. As her breasts bounced in time with her stride Edmund was pleasurably stirred.

  ‘Edmund.’ She took his hand in hers. ‘I came as soon as I could.’

  ‘Venetia.’ He watched tears gush, roll down her cheeks, drip on to his hands. ‘How marvellous, darling, don’t cry.’

  ‘I can’t help it.’

  ‘I love to see you cry but do stop.’ He reached up to kiss her wet face. ‘Sit down, he’s offering you a chair. How did you find me?’

  The young doctor who had escorted her was indeed offering a chair. Venetia thanked him profusely, sat. Her tears ceased. She tossed back her yellow hair. She looked like the Primavera in the Uffizi, beautiful, radiant.

  ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘How did you get here?’ They spoke in unison.

  ‘I had an accident.’

  ‘I got your message, caught the first plane.’ Edmund held her hands while she took stock of his predicament. His leg, heavily plastered, slung upwards in a sling, rendered him immobile.

  ‘Is it painful?’

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘How brave. Was it a car crash?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  The young doctor who had escorted her said something in Arabic, repeated it in English, ‘I screen.’

  ‘Not at the moment, thanks all the same. Oh I see, misunderstanding.’

  Venetia laughed and Edmund too as the doctor drew a screen round the bed, creating a zone of privacy before leaving them.

  ‘Well?’ She looked at Edmund. ‘What happened? Tell.’

  Edmund stroked her hands, watched her face, he loved her yellow hair, such a definite colour compared with Poppy’s mouse. Her eyes were not as pale as he remembered. ‘Are your feet cold?’

  ‘Of course. I am adapted to a warm climate. Come on, tell me what happened. Was it something disreputable?’ She was not to be sidestepped into a discussion about the temperature of her feet.

  Edmund looked past Venetia at the North African sky, the storm was over, the palms in the hospital garden still, in the distance a glimpse of quiet sea. He was trapped. ‘It’s a long story, rather boring.’ He was guarded.

  ‘Not to me,’ said Venetia. ‘The sooner you start the better. I didn’t come all this way for a silent sulk. Shall I fill you in about me?’

  Edmund nodded.

  ‘Right. You go off with this girl Poppy. You bring her here instead of me. I was really looking forward to this trip, Edmund. Anyway, this is no time for reproaches, she must have had some sort of hold over you.’ (Oh she had, she had, cried a private part of Edmund. What have I lost?) ‘So I won’t nag, not now, my love. Days pass. I get an impertinent postcard from the girl, nothing from you. Then two or three days later a message which merely says “Broken leg” and the hospital address, signed Edmund. I take it you sent it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She did, Poppy?’

  ‘Must have.’ Edmund lo
oked anguished.

  ‘And where is she?’ Venetia looked round as though to repulse Poppy should she appear round the hospital screen.

  ‘Buggered off.’

  ‘Oh my. You’d better begin at the beginning, take it slowly, I have all the time in the world.’ Venetia wriggled, settling her haunches in the hospital chair. For no reason Edmund remembered a French tourist remarking to his friend ‘en voilà des belles fesses’. He had been disgusted at the time but now—‘I’m still pretty confused,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t prevaricate.’

  ‘You won’t like it.’

  ‘Oh come on, Edmund, don’t be stupid. If we are getting married we can’t have secrets. I know some people do but I like things clear cut.’

  ‘You may not want to marry me when I’ve told you.’ (Did a still voice whisper, ‘Make a bid for freedom’?)

  ‘Let me decide that.’

  ‘You’re a bully.’ Poppy had never bullied or badgered, it was not her style.

  ‘I am.’ She accepted his tribute. ‘I’m lots of things. I was captain of hockey at school. I have cold feet. I cry easily but I am as hard as the nose cone of a rocket, so begin.’

  ‘Ah.’ Edmund squeezed her hand. He’d been pretty lonely lying here since Mustafa brought him in the ambulance. ‘I love you,’ he said. It was probably true, he thought, he had loved, perhaps still loved, Poppy but there were so many no-go areas in the girl, so much privacy, so much from which he had been excluded. Venetia on the other hand was much easier to love. She might be hard compared with Poppy but she was as clear as a bell, an open book (any more clichés? whispered Poppy’s vanished persona).

  ‘Tell all, don’t edit.’ Venetia jerked him back into her orbit.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Edmund, who proposed to do precisely that. ‘I’ll start.’

  ‘Right.’ She was alert.

  ‘You know about the job? Yes. Well, it went quite well, very well allowing for the fact that I’ve never dealt with non-Europeans. My opposite number here is called Mustafa, very friendly fellow, you’ll like him. I got the hang of the set-up, what the Tourist Board’s proposals are. The Minister took me out to lunch and a swim by the Roman city. You might like him, he makes a good impression.’