‘Did Poppy go with you?’
‘I thought it better to leave her behind. I needed to concentrate on work.’
‘What did she do?’
‘Amused herself, I suppose. There was a pool at the hotel.’ No need to mention its emptiness.
‘That must have been when she bought the postcard.’
‘What postcard?’
‘Never mind, go on.’
‘Well, I dealt with the tourist officials and got the picture, where they will have a Cabana complex, what hotels there are, where they are building more, the stadium, how many tours they will accommodate at a time, and so on. What hotel are you staying at, by the way?’
‘I came straight here from the airport, I was so worried about you.’
‘My darling, thank you.’ Edmund held her hand. ‘I’d better get you into one of the older hotels. The one they put us, me, I mean, in is not really finished, smells a bit of wet cement—’
Venetia laughed. ‘Go on, don’t bother about my hotel, get to the drama.’
‘The drama, as you put it, is really very small.’ Indeed as he talked, holding Venetia’s firm hand, gaining confidence from her presence, the hell of the preceding days was shrinking. ‘After we had finished our business, Mustafa took me out with some friends.’
‘Where was Poppy?’
‘She wasn’t feeling well, tummy upset, that sort of thing. The trots.’ (How am I doing?) ‘We did a round of the bars to get the local colour. I’m afraid the Arak round here is pretty potent.’
‘You got pissed.’
‘You could say that. Yes, not to put too fine a point on it, I drank too much.’
‘Yes?’ Venetia remembered somebody, who was it? Of course, Penelope in Harrods. ‘Yes, go on.’
‘Well then—’ Edmund lowered his voice, pulled Venetia closer. ‘It was rather, well very embarrassing.’
‘Go on.’
‘Mustafa’s friends—come close, I don’t want the whole world to hear.’
‘I don’t suppose they understand English.’
‘Even so. His friends, these two—’ Edmund searched for a word, unwilling to call the boys boys. ‘These two chaps started making advances to me.’
‘Were they pretty?’
‘Darling! They were boys.’ Hell, it had slipped out.
‘What did they do? Did they fondle your cock?’
‘Venetia!’ Edmund closed his eyes, remembering the shocked delight, the caressing, the smell of musk (surely people only smelt like that in pornographic books), the light brown skins, lovely, yes lovely black loosely waving hair. ‘No, of course not.’
‘Did you like it?’ She seemed to be enjoying this.
‘Of course I didn’t.’
‘Lots of people would.’
‘I hope you don’t take me for one of them.’ Edmund genuinely huffy, caught Venetia’s eye, saw she was laughing. ‘Because I’m not.’ He dismissed the experience to the realm of non-event. If in future years there were moments of sexual nostalgia or plain reminiscent lust he would be able to handle them.
‘So what happened?’ Venetia felt vaguely disappointed.
‘I am afraid when I got back to the hotel I simply passed out.’
‘Was Poppy better by then? Stopped trotting, no more squitters?’
‘She was asleep. She was quite all right next day. We spent the day together, swam, went out to the oasis, picnicked, that sort of thing.’ (Made love.)
‘Was that when you had the accident?’
‘No. It’s pretty idiotic. I broke it falling over a chair, Poppy—’ Edmund stopped. This was too painful.
‘Poppy what?’ Venetia pressed him, ‘Did she get drunk or what?’
‘I don’t think I—I don’t like to—’
‘Come on, darling, she’s gone, left you in the lurch, tell me what happened. She got drunk and then what? No need to protect her to me.’
Edmund drew a deep breath. If anybody ever needed protecting it had been Poppy. ‘She was throwing herself about, making a scene, she abused me for leaving her alone while I did my job.’ He supposed this sounded all right to anybody who did not know Poppy.
‘You couldn’t help that.’ Venetia was indignant for him. ‘So what did she do? She must have known you were here to work.’
‘Well,’ Edmund passed a hand across his eyes, brushed back his fine fair hair, ‘I tried to calm her. She got hold of a chair and I tripped over it and my leg snapped. I heard the bone go.’
‘Oh poor you. She hit you with it.’
‘Stupid isn’t it, actually she—’
‘What a vicious thing to do, break your leg.’ Venetia sat holding Edmund’s hand. ‘What a vile bitch,’ she exclaimed.
Edmund squeezed her fingers, she squeezed his back.
Edmund felt drained, exhausted.
Let it rest there, what did it matter now, she was gone, wasn’t she, whatever he said would twist on his tongue.
‘I don’t see why you should linger here.’ Venetia switched her mind to more immediate matters. ‘I am sure I can get you home on a stretcher or in a wheelchair. I take it your company insured you?’
‘Oh yes.’ Edmund lay now with his eyes closed. If Venetia could swallow the leg-breaking episode, absorb the boys, what were a few lies on an insurance form?
‘Leave it all to me, I’ll get us home in no time.’ She sounded incredibly competent. But Edmund still felt a niggle of fear.
‘What I told you, the—er—party with Mustafa, the Arak and—’
‘Don’t worry, love. I don’t mind boys, it shows you have a rounded personality. Getting pissed released your nascent inhibitions, it was healthy to seduce the little catamites.’
‘But I—’ Was a trap yawning?
‘We’ll keep it between you and me, it would not have happened if Poppy hadn’t kidnapped you, forced you to bring her here and broken your leg—’
Edmund could not but admire Venetia, she was so sincere, sitting there in that lovely dress, fixing him with those baby blue eyes, holding his hand between both of hers, those hands which had Superglued the flies of all his trousers. No mention of that, he observed ironically. She was still talking: ‘It was all that bloody girl—anything that happened—not your fault at all.’ She absolved him.
Edmund was glad to have the ordeal over.
In future years the tale of the broken leg would be perfected by Venetia, dined out on. His slight rather arcane limp which added so much to his attraction would be blamed on Poppy, boost his reputation.
41
POPPY WAKING SAW WILLY standing with his back to her staring out of the window, his attitude one of leashed energy.
‘Are you fretting to get back to your pigs?’ She sat up pulling his cardigan round her shoulders.
Willy turned round. Earlier he had watched her asleep, calculated the length of the eyelashes which shaded her bruised eye, minimising by their length the damage. The backs of her hands which had been purple had faded to green blotched with yellow. She no longer seemed to feel her injured collarbone.
‘I was watching the harbour.’
‘Thinking of your pigs.’
‘Yes,’ said Willy, ‘among other things.’
‘We must find out when we can get seats on a plane then. The storm is over, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, all over.’ Willy looked down at placid water mirroring the ships and boats barely rocking, a group of resting seagulls. We are no longer prisoners, he thought regretfully. ‘I went down earlier, the streets are drying up, we could look round the town when we’ve found a plane, booked our seats,’ he said.
‘Why not?’
Without the storm to pen them in there was constraint between them. Willy felt resentful. While sleeping she had distanced herself from him, as though forgetting their shared delight.
They went down the stairs to the lobby—the lifts were still out of order—and joined the people clamouring round a harassed airways official attempting to make himself heard above a polyglo
t hubbub.
‘Nothing will get sorted out for ages, let’s find a café.’ He drew her out into the street.
From a stall Willy bought figs. ‘We can eat these with our breakfast. You like figs?’
‘Yes.’ She remembered the figs she had eaten that first morning while Mustafa watched her, waiting for Edmund to appear in the half-made garden by the empty pool of that cement-stinking hotel.
They found a café, sat at a table in the sun. Willy ordered coffee and rolls. Poppy put on her dark glasses.
Willy peeled the figs, Poppy watched his fingers, very different from Edmund’s, which were strong and hairy even though he was such a fair man. For so dark a man Willy, apart from his thick hair, was remarkably hairless. She remembered her father’s voice, ‘Can’t stand hirsute men.’ He had been referring to Edmund though he had not said so specifically. Willy looked up, caught her eye, smiled.
‘I was thinking of my father.’
‘Tell me about him.’ Willy shared out the figs, putting the ripest on her plate, wondering whether, were he a painter, he would be able to capture the nuances between the peeled fruit and her bruised hands.
‘I know so little about him.’
‘You loved him?’ Willy remembered her at the funeral, solitary in the front pew beside the coffin.
‘Yes, I suppose I did. I think I love him now. Before, I had such awful guilt.’
‘Oh?’
‘He could not stand Edmund Platt.’
(So that’s the bastard’s name.)
Poppy bit into a fig, swallowed. ‘Delicious, much nicer peeled. I raked the flesh from the skin with my teeth before. Dad so disliked Edmund that whenever we met we either quarrelled or we talked of things that didn’t matter to either of us. If I’d known—’
‘Yes?’
‘If I’d known Dad was such a gambler I could have learned a lot from him. He was always away when I was small. I realise now he was at the races. He sent me postcards from Brighton, Chepstow, Newcastle, York, Liverpool, Epsom; he was racing mad. I am called after a horse which won the Oaks, Poppaea.’
Willy laughed.
Poppy grinned.
‘My favourite pig is called Mrs Future; some damn fool knowbester told me, “There’s no future in pig farming,”’ said Willy.
‘Good for you.’ Poppy took another fig, helped herself to coffee. ‘I would like to know who Dad went to the races with,’ she said.
‘Why particularly?’ Willy took the fruit from her and peeled it.
‘He seems to have had friends who left him money when they died. Women.’
‘Ah.’
‘They must have been old, older than him, because women live longer than men and a number of these ladies made—’
‘Wills in his favour?’
‘They remembered him. He called them Life’s Dividends. His solicitor, Anthony Green, let that slip or the bank manager, I forget which now. What I wondered was whether—’
‘He slept with them?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘Does it matter? Is that to do with your feeling guilt?’
‘No, no. I feel guilt because I never talked to him properly, because I excluded him from my life, was not interested in his, because I refused to listen to him when he was right.’ (So she agrees he was right.) ‘Because if I had not been so pig-headed and selfish I could have known him, been friends with him, loved him.’
‘You might even have gone to the races with him.’ Willy, laughing now, watched her.
‘Exactly,’ Poppy put down her cup, ‘even if he didn’t take me racing I could have known him. At his funeral complete strangers came up to me, said they loved him, met him at the races, or that he used to take their aunt or someone they knew racing. I’d never met any of these people, hadn’t the remotest notion who they were, didn’t know their names, was too embarrassed to ask. I felt a fool, a stranger, me, his daughter. That girl with the funny hair who works for Fergus Furnival knew him, was fond of him, said he marked her card for her at the races and even an old lady who lent me her coat knew him.’
‘My aunt Calypso.’
‘Of course. She is your aunt.’ Poppy looked at Willy as though he might turn suddenly into his aunt. ‘She knew Dad. She’d advised him when he bought my dress. She guessed that I wondered about all those ladies, she said something to the effect of not being in that league—’
‘She wouldn’t be. If she can’t have my uncle Hector she doesn’t want anybody.’ And if I can’t have this girl I don’t want anybody, Willy thought savagely. ‘I do not feel you have more reason than most to feel guilty,’ he watched her covertly.
‘Well, I do. I would like things to have been different.’
‘Vain regrets.’
‘I would like this minute to hear him say “I told you so”,’ she exclaimed.
‘Retrospective generosity.’
‘You are mocking my guilt.’
‘My aunt could probably tell you about your father, she would give a fair picture.’
Poppy swallowed the last of her coffee, looked across the pavement at the passing traffic, did not answer. Would it or would it not be a good thing to know Dad? ‘He left me a letter,’ she said, ‘more of a note really.’
Willy did not enquire its contents.
‘You are anxious to get back to Mrs Future.’ Poppy turned towards him. ‘We had better see about a plane.’ She stood up, putting an end to the conversation.
Willy paid the bill. ‘And where will you go?’ he asked. ‘Your flat or your father’s house?’
‘Neither,’ Poppy exclaimed before she could stop herself. The thought of the flat she had shared with Edmund horrified her. ‘I have rented Dad’s house to Fergus Furnival,’ she said, ‘I can’t go there.’
‘Job?’
‘I chucked it when Dad died.’
‘Why don’t you,’ Willy kept his voice level, walking back towards the hotel, ‘stay with my aunt. It’s just an idea, while you make up your mind. She will like to have you.’ (She will because she is fond of me.) Then, as Poppy said nothing, he said, ‘Stupid of me, you must have dozens of people you can go to, endless friends.’
‘No, no I haven’t.’ Poppy stopped at a street corner as though she was interested in the people thronging the pavement, milling about them, crossing and recrossing the street, dodging the cars and carts, shouting, arguing, bargaining, jostling them as they stood, an alien pair. ‘Edmund was clever at keeping me to himself,’ she said. ‘I liked it in a way but it means I have no intimate friends. I can’t really tell you about Edmund but I’ll try,’ she said, standing close to Willy now, looking up in his face. ‘I was in love with Edmund and I lived with him for years.’ A fat man in a hurry bumped into her so that Willy put his arms round her to keep her balanced. ‘Edmund drank too much.’ Poppy spoke in a flat voice. ‘Only on occasion but when he was on a bender he got rough. Why am I telling you this?’ she cried sharply, then, not expecting an answer, went on. ‘He started before we left London and he drank on the plane. When we arrived he carried on drinking. He went off without me on the first evening with Mustafa. That was when I met the cockroaches and after we’d run over the dog; it was lame. Then the next day he went off again, he was doing his job of course, he is an ambitious man, a beautiful man too. I said no I would not go with him, actually I don’t think he asked me to, that was when the men were hanged—’ Poppy clenched her fists on Willy’s chest. ‘They were strung up, literally strung up on the branch of a plane tree, I shall never—I couldn’t speak of it to Edmund. It was too—Then afterwards the next day we tried or I tried, perhaps we both did, to have a day together but I’ve never felt so apart from anybody. Poor Edmund, it was a pretty awful day for him, he was hungover and stuffed to the eyeballs with shock at what he had done the night before. He had buggered two Arab boys—I know, when in Rome, but you don’t know Edmund, he’s pure, he was terribly shocked. Well, I did not mind because by that time I knew what I’d really known for ages, tha
t anything with Edmund was over, that I didn’t love him, that I’d only come to North Africa to annoy Venetia, so why should I mind? Of course when he first left me for Venetia I was mortified, humiliated but by then I’d realised I’d been freed. But Edmund felt so guilty, so ashamed, he wallowed in shame like a born-again Baptist. He’d enjoyed himself, these Arab boys are lovely, look around you. That evening he got drunk again and rough—well, violent. That’s how I got my black eye and so on, my heel had been trodden on earlier in the crush at the hanging. Where was I? Oh yes, he was quite anxious to kill me and I was frightened, he’s big.’ Poppy paused, looking up into Willy’s face, oblivious of the crowd about them scurrying about their business like ants or strolling slowly, in discussion. ‘He was coming at me again so I grabbed a chair to put it between us and he fell over it. His leg cracked like a whip. That’s what happened. I did not intend to break his leg. He screamed, I sent for a doctor, an ambulance and for Mustafa. They got him to hospital. I sent a cable to Venetia. She really wants him. I packed my bag and caught the first plane out. Oh Willy, I would so dearly love to tell this to Dad, it would have made him so happy!’ She looked round at the crowded pavement. ‘What a place to tell you, how extraordinary. I bet Mrs Future would never do anything so foolish.’ She tried to laugh.
Willy started her walking. Keep calm, keep sane, he told himself. Put off the garroting until you have nothing else to do. ‘We had better get you on to the plane,’ he said, ‘I am taking you to stay with Calypso.’ He led her back to the hotel. Some day, if she wanted to, she could elucidate the little matters of cockroaches, lame dogs, hangings, what mattered was that she had unbottled, let it come pouring out. They went up to their room in the lift which was working again.
As they crowded into the lift Poppy said, ‘I was boasting when I told you before that I broke Edmund’s leg, actually I was scared stiff, just trying to fend him off. The first way I told you made me sound quite brave and aggressive. I wasn’t.’
‘Of course not,’ said Willy, amused by the expressions of their fellow travellers pretending not to listen. ‘I think if your father were alive and you were a racehorse he would put his shirt on you,’ he said.