Vacillations of Poppy Carew

  42

  ‘WHERE DO YOU WANT to go?’ asked Victor as they got near London. ‘Where are you living these days?’ It made him feel peculiar not to know where Penelope lived, it was embarrassing having to ask.

  Penelope did not answer, perhaps she had not heard, she was probably living with some man she would rather he did not know about. Whoever it was had a lot to answer for, letting her go off by herself to have a lonely accident, he should cherish Penelope better, prevent her risking her life, almost dying of exposure. Penelope’s predicament in the empty farm grew larger in imagination as anger of her imaginary lover’s behaviour stirred his loins, making him bold. ‘Come and have something to eat with me before I drop you off,’ he suggested, ‘or are you expected?’

  ‘I am not expected.’

  ‘So you will come?’

  ‘Yes, I will.’

  ‘Good,’ said Victor, pleased. ‘We will buy something to cook on our way. I haven’t got much in the flat. What would you like?’

  They discussed possibilities and methods of cooking as Victor drove. Penelope was surprised at some of Victor’s suggestions. When they had been married he had been barely capable of boiling an egg unsupervised, but now he was suggesting barbecued lamb chops, veal Marengo, Italian beef, a variety of risottos and several quite sophisticated pastas. Uneasily she wondered whether she had missed some clue on her clandestine visits to the flat, whether there were not, after all, another woman. ‘I think I’d like fish,’ she said, ‘is our fish shop still there? I hanker for shellfish; what about mussels?’

  ‘Of course it is.’ Victor drove through the streets in silence until they reached the fish shop, drew to a stop by the kerb.

  ‘Why,’ cried the fish lady at the sight of Penelope, ‘it’s little Mrs Lucas! How are you, ducks?’ She trotted across the pavement in her white overall and fur boots. ‘Where have you been this long time? Nice to see you.’ She looked through Victor.

  ‘Super,’ said Penelope, ‘lovely to see you. We want something delicious for supper, what do you suggest?’

  Victor was reminded that one of Penelope’s talents was to deceive people into believing that they made decisions for her.

  ‘You did like mussels when you had time to prepare them; have you time? Eating them tonight are you?’ The fish lady ignored Victor sitting at the wheel, leaning into the car, speaking past him at Penelope. ‘I’ve some lovely sole, or there’s halibut.’

  ‘Let’s have mussels. Would you like mussels, Victor?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Victor averting his gaze from the sad black lobsters and the bowls of trout on the marble counter. ‘Yes, I would.’

  ‘I’ve sprained my ankle,’ said Penelope to the fish lady, ‘slipped and twisted it, look it’s all strapped up.’ She raised her foot.

  ‘Shame,’ said the fish lady. ‘You should be more careful, ducks.’ She looked balefully at Victor, blaming him.

  ‘I’d better get out and pay,’ said Victor. ‘Don’t move, darling, rest your foot.’ The fish lady would talk to Penelope all night if allowed.

  ‘Okay,’ said Penelope, ‘buy lots, let’s make pigs of ourselves.’

  Victor followed the fish lady into the shop, watched her weigh the mussels.

  ‘How’s the trout then?’ she asked sotto voce, dropping two final mussels into the scales, ping, ping.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know,’ she kept her voice low, ‘the one that was alive, gave you such a turn, ate it did you?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Victor annoyed. ‘It’s living wild in a stream in Berkshire.’

  The fish lady laughed. Victor had never before seen her laugh. ‘You’re a writer, aren’t you?’ She spoke kindly as though he were mentally retarded. ‘There’s your supper.’ She poured the mussels from the scoop into a plastic bag. ‘Enjoy them.’ She twisted a fastener round the bag’s neck with strong fingers.

  Victor paid.

  Getting back into the car he said, ‘She’s glad to see you, she’s always very offhand with me.’

  ‘She doesn’t like men,’ said Penelope. Victor supposed this was probably true. ‘She seemed to know I write, how the hell does she know?’

  ‘Standing in that shop all day she must get to know everything there is to know about the neighbours.’ Penelope remembered a month or two before, when buying a modest mackerel prior to snooping in Victor’s flat, she had told the fish lady that Victor was writing a novel. ‘We need brown bread and butter, a lemon, parsley and white wine,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve got wine,’ said Victor. ‘If you wait I’ll run to the supermarket. Fend off traffic wardens while I’m gone.’

  ‘Okay.’ Penelope watched Victor run, his thin legs streaking down the street.

  The fish lady crossed the pavement, leaving a customer to wait. ‘Never told you how he bought a live trout, did I? He tells me it’s alive and well in a stream in Berkshire.’

  ‘I know it is,’ said Penelope.

  ‘Oh,’ said the fish lady, disappointed.

  ‘You’ve got customers waiting,’ said Penelope repressively and sat waiting for Victor’s return from the supermarket. But as they drove away she waved and the fish lady waved back.

  Victor helped Penelope up the stairs, his free arm round her waist, their parcels gripped under his other arm. Reaching the top floor he released her, fumbled for his key. ‘Same old flat,’ he said, standing aside to let her pass.

  ‘That tap still drips.’ Penelope hobbled across the hallway into the bathroom to give it a twist.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Victor.

  ‘I rather like it,’ said Penelope standing with her back to him.

  Victor smiled to himself, tipped the mussels into the sink in the kitchen and started scrubbing them.

  Penelope came out of the bathroom, pulled the kitchen stool to the sink, perched on it to ease her ankle and joined in the scrubbing of mussels.

  ‘If I had a carrot, an onion and garlic we could have them Marinières, I’ve got bay and thyme, I’ve run low on veg, should have thought of it in the supermarket.’ He had raced round the shelves, hurried through the checkout, fearful that left alone Penelope would take the opportunity to scarper.

  ‘Do you know how to cook Moules Marinières?’ Penelope looked at Victor quizzically.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Been giving dinner parties?’ Who had he been cooking Moules Marinières for or with, who had taught him all these new dishes? Penelope jerked the plug out of the sink to change the water before Victor was ready. He dropped the knife he was using and, searching for it among the mussels, managed to slice his finger. ‘Sorry,’ said Penelope, watching him suck it.

  Victor, sucking his finger, considered whether to say no he never gave parties or yes he often did, neither reply being exactly true although in a sense he was giving a dinner party tapping it on to his typewriter. He had not thought to give his characters either Moules à la Béchamel which they were preparing now or Moules Marinières. It was an idea he must consider. The problem had been whether Penelope, who in the book was tentatively called Louise, should be murdered before or after dinner.

  ‘You will have to make the sauce,’ he said, ‘unless you want my blood in it. Sauce Béchamel tinged with blood.’

  Penelope limped round the kitchen finding the ingredients. Victor put a large pan on the stove, adding a cupful of water, transferred the mussels into the pan. While they opened in the heat (poor things, what a way to die) he drew the cork from a bottle of wine, poured a glass for Penelope and one for himself.

  ‘Penelope,’ he toasted her.

  ‘Victor,’ at one time she would have added darling. ‘For God’s sake, put an Elastoplast on it,’ she said.

  They concentrated on their cooking, eating the mussels straight from the stove. Penelope’s sauce was delicious. ‘I read your article about that funeral,’ she said, ‘it was very good. It made the affair moving and dignified when it could have sounded way out and funny. I thought it gave Fergus a
jolly good puff without a hint of vulgarity.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Victor watched his ex-wife, comparing her with Poppy who had since the funeral occupied the forefront of his mind, had even twice wandered into his dreams. ‘I took part,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I was a mute, I helped shoulder the coffin, and afterwards I organised the food. I got it from Singh in Shepherds Bush. Do you remember him? I got lashings of champagne on sale or return for booze. I don’t think there was much left over to return, it was quite a party.’

  ‘I haven’t seen Singh for ages.’ Penelope reached for the bottle to refill her glass. ‘Saw him in the street once.’ (‘What do you want to leave Victor for, silly girl?’) ‘Tell me more. What part does that girl who strapped my ankle up play in Fergus’s outfit, is she or are all those girls his mistresses?’

  ‘I think they just look after the horses. I got the impression—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That Fergus was interested in Poppy—’ said Victor reluctantly.

  ‘The corpse’s daughter?’

  ‘Bob Carew, whose funeral it was, his daughter, yes,’ said Victor coolly. His ex-wife’s nomenclature, though technically correct, seemed rather offensive.

  ‘So you are interested in Poppy, too.’ With feline agility Penelope made the deduction.

  ‘I hardly know her,’ said Victor who was out of practice with Penelope.

  ‘You sound as if you did.’ Penelope wiped her plate with a piece of bread.

  ‘Have you finished with Fergus?’ asked Victor catching up, rather enjoying this.

  ‘Oh, Fergus was just a hop, skip and a jump,’ said Penelope, dismissing Fergus. ‘We never ate enough of these things.’ She dipped her bread into the last of the sauce. ‘Did we?’

  Victor got up and peered out of the window along the parapet. It had grown dark while they had supper, Penelope had switched on the lamp. ‘They roost here now,’ he stretched his neck to catch a glimpse of the pigeons, ‘I rather like it.’

  Penelope remembered being waked by the birds’ mating calls all year round, pigeons’ sex life, similar to humans, is not restricted to the spring.

  ‘I am writing a novel,’ said Victor.

  ‘I heard that you had one accepted,’ said Penelope. ‘Congratulations. Which one is it? I was afraid to ask.’

  ‘The one about us.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘In the one I am working on now I murder you.’

  ‘Should I be flattered? Are you getting a good advance? Who is your publisher?’

  ‘Sean Connor.’

  ‘Julia’s beau? Are they getting married? You and she finished your little trot together?’

  ‘What a lot you know,’ said Victor, wondering whether Poppy Carew gathered gossip as Penelope did almost with the speed of light. ‘I am going to wash the dishes,’ he said. ‘I can’t stand getting up to a mess in the morning, it puts me off work. Why don’t you rest your foot?’

  ‘Thanks, I will.’ She watched Victor collect the used plates; he had become positively old-maidish under somebody’s influence or was it living alone? Limping, she went to the bathroom to wash her sticky fingers and then into the bedroom to look out of the back window at the anonymous backs of the houses in the next street. There had been times when it was possible to catch glimpses of other people’s lives. Truncated from the waist, women rinsed their tights to hang them over the bath, men shaving in the early morning, shadows of both sexes running past landing windows down to the street. Once they had had to complain to the police during a noisy three-night-long party, on another they had listened to ghastly screams and been too shy to do anything. On hot summer nights, there had been radios blaring from competing stations. She shut the window, bent to examine Victor’s bedside books. Dylan Thomas, Graham Greene, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alice Walker. A notebook full of scribbled ideas, many crossed out and How to Cheat at Cooking by Delia Smith, much thumbed. Penelope smiled widely. Maybe, possibly, she would give him One is Fun by the same author.

  When Victor had finished the dishes and put everything away, he took two glasses and the bottle of brandy given him the previous Christmas by an uncle and never used. They could finish the evening on the sofa watching the box.

  But Penelope was not on the sofa. She was in the bedroom, in the bed.

  ‘I’ve moved your clothes back to your side of the cupboard,’ she said.

  Victor put the brandy and glasses on the bedside table and undressed in silence.

  I shall pretend she is Poppy Carew, he told himself, as he pulled his shirt over his head and dropped his trousers. I can use this situation in my novel, he thought, feeling rather agitated as he pulled off his socks.

  Or, he can kill his wife Louise, then sleep with Poppy Carew, he thought as desire made him lusty. I still don’t know what colour her bush is, but for the moment—he got into bed—this discovery (‘Move over a bit, darling or I’ll hurt your ankle,’) must wait.

  ‘Oh dear God,’ said Victor, ‘I am home.’

  43

  FROM THE TOP OF the hill Calypso looked down on the house she and Hector had restored. Faded pink brick striping through the wisteria leaves, yellow now after an early frost, a fit background for climbing roses, and the magnolia which still drenched the evening with the perfume of its flowers, its scent mingling with that of nicotiana planted under the windows. From the yard pigeons flew up with a clap to circle over the garden, then settle on the tiled roof, a variegated flock, the original too perfect white having long since mixed with wood pigeons.

  When she walked down through the wood she would find the flagged terrace warm in the autumn sun, sit and plan for another year for the wood and garden, more bulbs, more flowers, more scented shrubs. Used now to living alone, she relished an uninterrupted evening. Before returning to the house she used field glasses to scan the wood, note where a tree ailed which might be replaced, where it would be politic to thin. Beyond the wood on the far side of a meadow between the trees and the road she would plant a triple line of lombardy poplars to reinforce her privacy. ‘I can live to see them started,’ she said to her dog, conscious of the slight stroke she had suffered three years before which left her limping a little when tired but otherwise unimpaired. The warning stroke had not been repeated. She thought of it only when one of her contemporaries died or at older friends’ funerals. She had been aware of it during Bob Carew’s service, he being much younger than she, and decided to miss the party after (a decision she now regretted) and then been distracted from morbid thought by Willy’s entrancement with Poppy.

  Swinging round to scan the wood towards the farm Calypso remembered with amusement that her son Hamish, summoned from the Highlands, had believed her dying but Willy, smuggling a tiny Mrs Future into the ward under his jacket, had mocked his older cousin saying ‘Death blew her a kiss’, making her laugh before being discovered by a nurse and sent packing.

  ‘No sign,’ said Calypso to the dog as she adjusted her binoculars to watch Willy’s stockman going about his work with the pigs, ‘no sign yet of the lovers.’ She put away the field glasses, went down through the wood to lie on her garden chair, soak up the last of the sun’s warmth beating up from the stone-flagged terrace, listen to the pigeons and the distant sound of Willy’s bantam cocks crowing from the farm. She was none too pleased when, comfortably settled, eyes closed, face lifted to the sun, she heard a car arrive on the far side of the house.

  I shall not answer the bell, she told herself, but the dog, giving her away, rushed barking into the house and out to the front to greet the visitor rapturously.

  ‘Bloody animal.’ Calypso lay still, hearing the bell ring, keeping her eyes closed, hoping whoever it was, seeing nobody but the dog, would, with luck, go away.

  ‘Calypso?’ a woman called. ‘Are you there?’

  Calypso did not answer.

  ‘Your dog betrayed you.’ Ros Lawrence came out on to the terrace through the French windows. ‘Am I dist
urbing you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Calypso, ‘you are.’

  ‘You are not doing anything,’ said Ros, confirming some people’s opinion that she was not all that bright. ‘I’m sorry,’ she pulled up a chair, ‘I have come to you for help. For help,’ she repeated distractedly, ‘help.’

  ‘You should know that I am the most unhelpful person of your acquaintance.’ Calypso stressed the last word, lay looking up at her visitor who, although seated, gave the uncomfortable impression of hovering above her.

  ‘And your advice.’ Ros looked down at Calypso, irritatingly reposeful. ‘Your advice.’

  ‘I never give advice.’

  ‘I know. Most people volunteer, press it, that’s why I have come to you.’

  ‘Oh Lord.’ Calypso swung her legs off her long chair. ‘Come indoors.’ She did not wish to share the loveliness of her terrace. Ros followed her into the drawing room. Relieved of her weight, the wicker chair on which she had briefly sat creaked in relief.

  ‘Sit down if you can find a clean space.’ Calypso waved at chairs and sofa. ‘Dog hairs everywhere, mud, pig mess—’

  ‘Shall I go away?’ Ros drooped. She looked round Calypso’s beautiful speckless room, no trace of dog hair anywhere. ‘I can see I’m not wanted, not welcome.’ She accepted the hint, refused to take it.

  ‘I’ll get you a drink, sit down.’

  Calypso left the room, followed by the dog. ‘I shall send you to the Lost Dogs Home,’ she hissed at the wagging animal. ‘You may like uninvited guests, casual droppers-in, I don’t. I shall send you back to Hamish, he had no business to give you to me. He knows I don’t like dogs. Why must he interfere? I don’t need guarding, I don’t need protection, you are too soppy anyway. I never had all these people charging in before you came. I lay doggo until they went away.’ Resentfully Calypso put the whisky decanter and glasses on a tray, filled a jug of water, plopped in ice. She carried it back to the drawing room where Ros sat perched on the edge of an armchair in woeful silence.

  ‘Strong or weak?’ Calypso asked.