Vacillations of Poppy Carew

  How had he appeared to the ladies who had lain in this bed? As friend? Lover? Companion? What were they like? Were they old? Arthritic? Horsey women with tinted hair and windblown complexions? Had they and Dad lain here? There was no echo of their voices, she would never know them.

  She got off the bed and prowled the room. The cupboards were empty, the chest of drawers also. Life’s Dividends had left no trace.

  Her overnight bag looked out of place, ready to take off elsewhere.

  If Life’s Dividends were not here, nor was Dad, it was too late now to give him joy, she must get used to permanent regret.

  Another regret, not, she told herself, of much importance, was Victor—re-absorbed by Penelope—who might, if she had handled their first meeting differently, have been more than a friend. He had certainly given that impression. But that opportunity, if opportunity it was, was past. Penelope had him back, would keep him.

  I would have liked to have slept with Victor, it would have been an experience, thought Poppy, even though he is too thin, not exactly my type. But there is still Fergus, Fergus would be good for a gallop. Wasn’t that one of Dad’s expressions? So-and-so and so-and-so had ‘a gallop’ or, if the affair had been on the mild side, ‘a canter’. There would always be echoes of Dad in her mind even if he had vacated the house. Sleepily considering the prospect of a gallop, canter or even a trot with Fergus, she decided that presently she would bath and change, go down looking her best to dally with him. His invitation at the wake had been extremely plain, plainer, she persuaded herself, than Victor’s.

  Amused by the prospect, Poppy listened drowsily to the new sounds which had taken over the house; Mary singing to her child, Barnaby answering with sharp chortling shouts, the back door opening, Mary calling ‘Bolivar, come boy, dinner’, answered by a growling miauling; the neigh of a horse, a hoof stamped in the stables.

  Only the sparrows chirping in the eaves and the jackdaws clacking were familiar. During her absence the house had changed gear; it answered now to Mary who sang in the kitchen. She would decide what windows would open, what doors close, what cooking smells would pervade the house, she was the mistress now. I am on holiday, Poppy decided sleepily, on holiday after the trauma of Edmund, I deserve a holiday, a respite.

  She woke to the sound of engines, Fergus’s voice answered by Annie and Frances, the sound of ramps crashing down from horse-boxes, the clatter of hooves on wood, then hooves on the road passing the house, the rumble of the hearse manhandled off its lorry, shouts of ‘Mind the gate, keep to your left, steady’ as it was wheeled to the coach house. Fergus calling to the girls, their high voices answering, fading away round the house, then footsteps returning, the starting up of the lorry and the Land Rovers towing the horse-boxes to move them away out of earshot.

  There was a harsh note to Fergus’s voice, a lack of cheer, which made her unwilling to hurry down and present himself. The jokes, the atmosphere of frivolity and hairwashing which she remembered when she had visited Furnival’s Fine Funerals that first time was noticeable by its absence. They must all be tired to be so cheerless, perhaps the funeral had gone off badly, leaving unsatisfied customers. Funerals could not all reach the high standard of Dad’s.

  She heard the back door slam, Fergus’s voice ordering abruptly, ‘See they put them all away okay. Right? I’m going to have a bath.’

  Mary made an inaudible reply.

  Fergus’s tread on the stairs, pausing on the landing, an aggressive shout, ‘Have you fed Bolivar?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mary exasperated.

  ‘He says not.’ Fergus’s footsteps moving up the next flight. ‘Come on, my puss.’ A throaty yowl, footsteps diminishing, the sound of taps being turned on in the bathroom, rushing water.

  Remembering the capacity of her father’s hot water tank, Poppy hopped off the bed and turned on the hot tap in the visitors’ bathroom, immediately decreasing the flow into the bath above.

  Fergus swore as the hot water diminished. ‘Who the hell is taking all my hot water? It will run cold, blast you. Have you been washing your hair?’ he shouted down the stairs.

  ‘I told you, you have a visitor.’ Mary, irritatingly patient, called up from the hall.

  Poppy, aware of the exact capacity of the tank, turned off her hot tap, added cold, stepped into the bath. (Fergus sounded just as selfish as Edmund.)

  Whether to instal a larger hot water tank or manage with what there was had been a question which Dad had debated with monotonous regularity over the years. Now that she was Fergus’s landlord it behoved her to consider the problem, it was no longer academic. Washing her ears, she decided to discuss the matter with Anthony Green. ‘A larger tank would ultimately add to the value of the house,’ she would say. Anthony would prevaricate, she visualised herself quashing his objections, he would be sure to object to her spending the money. That was what solicitors were for.

  Poppy got out of the bath and dressed.

  Someone, Penelope perhaps, had put the multicoloured dress into her bag. She put it aside and dressed in clean jeans and shirt. The dress held too many associations. She thrust it back in the bag feeling, as she did so, that it was not the dress she was pushing out of sight, not her father, not even Edmund, but Willy and she did not propose to think of Willy now, she was going downstairs to meet Fergus.

  She zipped up the bag, pushed it out of sight under the bed and left the room.

  Downstairs Annie was laying the table, clattering knives, forks, spoons into careless position. Mary stood by the stove.

  ‘Do you mind eating in the kitchen?’

  ‘Of course not. What’s for supper? Smells great.’

  There was an atmosphere of constraint. Poppy wondered whether she was unwelcome among the girls, tried to appear natural and friendly. ‘How have you all settled in?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh fine, fine. We love it here, it’s brilliant.’ Annie glanced up as Frances came into the room. ‘Shall we get some booze from the pub?’ she asked Mary. ‘Got any money?’

  ‘There’s plenty here, Dad had quite a good cellar, I’ll go and get a bottle or two.’ Glad of something to do, Poppy left the room. It would be a friendly act, soften the stiff atmosphere if she contributed wine to the meal.

  Coming up from the cellar carrying bottles, she met Fergus.

  ‘Hullo, Fergus.’

  ‘Hullo. Nice to see you. Hope you are comfortable. That for us? It’s very kind of you—’ His voice had changed, he sounded older, he did not seem particularly pleased to see her, there was no trace of the letching look in the eye she remembered.

  ‘I hope I am not a nuisance. I won’t stay long. It’s just that I have to discuss a few things with Anthony Green. I hope he hasn’t bothered you.’

  ‘He’s been very helpful, actually, thinks my stepfather’s reference makes me respectable.’

  ‘I could easily have stayed in the pub.’ Poppy excused her presence, embarrassed by she knew not what.

  ‘Don’t be silly, it’s your house.’ Fergus frowned and glanced across the kitchen at Mary, who stood at the stove stirring something which smelt delicious with a long spoon.

  Mary lifted one shoulder in a curiously defensive gesture.

  ‘You people ready to eat?’ she asked. ‘Find a corkscrew, Frances, give it to Fergus.’ She pointed at the bottles with her chin as Poppy put them on the table.

  ‘Right.’ Fergus took the corkscrew handed him by Frances and drew the corks. ‘This is very good of you.’ He poured the wine.

  Mary dished up, heaping rice on to plates, adding generous portions of chicken.

  ‘What’s this, Coq Au Vin?’

  ‘Cock.’ Mary helped herself last, sat beside Poppy. ‘There were some telephone calls for you,’ she said to Fergus. ‘I wrote them down, they are on your desk.’

  Dad’s desk—

  ‘Thanks. Any orders?’

  ‘Two definite funerals for next week, various queries. I said you’d ring tomorrow early.’

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; ‘Thanks.’ Fergus ate hungrily. ‘Any callers?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Anybody come to the house?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where’s Barnaby?’

  ‘Asleep.’

  ‘Oh. He all right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh.’ Fergus turned to Poppy and began talking to her, enquiring where she had been, had she enjoyed herself, was it a good trip, what was North Africa like, spacing his questions between mouthfuls of food, barely listening to her replies.

  Nettled, Poppy said, ‘We spent a few days in Purgatory.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Fergus swallowing some wine. ‘What was the food like?’

  Annie and Frances smirked.

  Mary laughed outright. ‘Haha! Hoho!’

  Fergus looked round the table, surprised.

  ‘Did I say something amusing?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Mary, ‘not at all, of course not.’

  They fell silent, looked at their plates.

  Outside a robin started singing in a lilac bush. Bolivar jumped up to the windowsill and out in a long flowing movement.

  ‘Well.’ Fergus finished his meal, pushed his plate aside. ‘You two girls coming to the pub with me?’

  ‘Well,’ Frances hesitated.

  ‘Well,’ said Annie, also hesitant.

  ‘Come on, then.’ Fergus pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘I expect you are tired,’ he said to Poppy.

  ‘I will help Mary clear the table,’ said Poppy.

  ‘Sure you won’t come?’ asked Fergus, as though he had invited her.

  ‘Yes,’ said Poppy, already gathering plates. ‘I must get you a new dishwasher,’ she said to Mary, ‘and another thing, I think you need a larger hot water supply. My father had been thinking of it for years, it just never got done.’

  ‘Too busy picking the winners. Don’t bother for my sake,’ said Mary vaguely as she watched Fergus go out, followed by Annie and Frances.

  ‘What’s the matter with him?’ asked Poppy, unable to stop herself.

  ‘Just a mood.’ Mary sounded unconvincing. ‘I have put a lot of things away,’ she said, ‘things that might get broken. Some of your parents’ things.’

  ‘Oh, thank you. I should have done it myself.’ (There had been no time.)

  ‘Your solicitor thought it would be a good thing, he sent a man to make an inventory.’

  ‘That wasn’t necessary.’ Poppy flushed.

  ‘I asked him to,’ said Mary. ‘We have so much clutter, hats, boots, bits of harness, Fergus’s gun,’ she glanced up at the chimney breast, ‘books, cat basket, dogs. The girls make a lot of mess, too.’

  Poppy helped Mary tidy the kitchen then, excusing herself, went to her father’s study, sat at his desk to make a list of matters she must discuss with Anthony. It was high time she showed herself more capable than scatterbrained. She felt the need to do something practical to dispel the shock of Fergus’s snub, for what was it if not a snub?

  Her fantasy of a gallop, canter or trot with Fergus was as much pie in the sky as her whirl with Victor.

  She could hear Mary moving about the house, answering the telephone, talking to Barnaby in the bedroom upstairs, singing a lullaby as she put him to bed, then talking to the old dog and to Bolivar. She watched her walk past the window to pick flowers in the garden, her pale hair in sharp contrast to the brilliant zinnias she gathered. Dad had always grown these flowers, admiring their vigour and vulgarity. Mary, thought Poppy, watching her, belonged to the house and the house knew it.

  When the telephone started to ring she jumped up and left the house. She needed to walk and sort her thoughts. There was the risk that the caller might be Willy Guthrie; she could not bring herself to talk to him. She crossed the field behind the house. The cat Bolivar kept her company for fifty yards before disappearing under a gate.

  She had begun the day believing she could use Victor and Fergus as buffers between herself and Willy, it was plain now that she was bufferless. They would have worked too as a salve to cure the wound left by Edmund.

  Taking the route she had always taken with her father she set to walk off her resentment. She climbed up behind the house to the stand of beech and on on to the downs to turn, catch her breath and look down on the village snaking along the chalk stream, the village hall, the pub, the church, the garage, her father’s house, the post office.

  The church clock struck the hour; the pub would soon close, spilling out Fergus and the girls. She had no wish to meet Fergus again that night, having so nearly made a fool of herself. She broke into a trot.

  Trot, she thought as she jogged down the hill, any trotting must be done alone.

  A hundred yards from the house she heard Fergus’s voice. He was shouting. She slowed to a walk and approached the house cautiously.

  In the kitchen Mary stood with her back to the stove. Annie and Frances stood on either side of the table, Fergus was in the doorway from the hall. The kitchen was brightly lit and the door open into the yard.

  Poppy, fascinated, watched unseen. There was no problem about hearing, both Fergus shouting and Mary speaking quietly enunciated clearly.

  The row was in full swing.

  ‘Deceitful, sly, crafty, selfish, abominable. No man in his senses would endure such a trick.’

  Mary, very quiet and cold, ‘Who told you?’

  ‘My mother, no less. I have to have my nose rubbed in it by an interfering parent whom I have hitherto loved, trusted and respected. I didn’t believe her, of course, what she said was too utterly preposterous.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes? It’s not yes. It’s true! What my mother says is true. I thought it was her wishful thinking, her imagination.’ Fergus gasped for breath. ‘She’s always wanted me to have—’

  Frances caught Annie’s eye and jerked her head, indicating ‘Let’s get out of this.’

  ‘You stay where you are,’ shouted Fergus, ‘you are my witnesses, don’t you dare move,’ he threatened.

  Frances and Annie froze.

  ‘Oh,’ said Mary, cool but whitefaced. ‘So?’

  ‘So she cast my genes in my teeth.’

  ‘Who? What?’

  ‘My bloody mother. I told you. My genes.’

  ‘Genes?’

  ‘Yes, genes, fucking genes. She said it looked exactly like—’

  ‘He.’

  ‘Okay. He looked exactly like me as a baby and even worse my bloody filthy-tempered father. Genes, she said, don’t lie.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So I have my witnesses. I take them out to the pub, ply them with drink several boring nights running, quiz them about the holiday you spent in Spain after leaving me, ask crafty questions about your boyfriend, Joseph the father, we are led to suppose—who telephones constantly we are led to believe. Funny that it’s always you who answers the telephone—Where was I? I’ve lost the thread. Oh, got it. This boyfriend Joseph who is the father of infant Jesus—’

  ‘Barnaby.’

  ‘Oh-bloody-kay, Barnaby, and I am not even consulted about his name.’ Fergus yelling now.

  ‘What’s his name got to do with it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Fergus screamed. ‘Call the little bastard anything you like.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘So I make them drunk, don’t I? Out pop the indiscretions. I make a few simple passes at these nitwits—thrilled, they were. Oh, yes you were. A grown man at last not a boy from the disco. They regale me with the goings-on on the Costa where they met you. There were no goings-on! Saint Joseph, it turns out, is no beautiful Spanish fisher lad, he’s a rather old, very fat, heavily married Swede, with a wife he adores and a grown-up family, the manager and owner of the hotel. Don’t laugh!’

  ‘I am not laughing.’

  ‘And this Saint Joseph, this Swedish gent is fair, has almost white hair and so have all his sons and daughters and grandchildren. Grandchildren!’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And so have you. Very fair
hair. You used to wear it long in a pigtail like a bellrope. Why did you cut it off?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So this is where the genes come in, where you slip up in your evil deception. It’s not possible for two very fair people to have a very dark baby.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So I am very dark, my father was very dark. My mother meets Barnaby, puts two and two together and tells me I am his father.’ Fergus loomed over Mary standing backed against the stove with her hands gripping the stove rail. She pushed herself away from it.

  ‘It will not take me long to pack.’ She walked past Fergus and left the room. They heard her run lightly up the stairs.

  Fergus slumped down on a chair by the table.

  Frances and Annie edged towards the door. Poppy, ashamed of greedily listening, came forward into the light.

  Nobody spoke.

  After a few minutes Mary appeared carrying Barnaby wrapped sleepy in a shawl. She walked past Fergus without looking at him, snatched a bunch of car keys from the dresser and walked on through the house and out.

  Poppy, Annie and Frances followed her on to the porch.

  ‘She can’t,’ said Annie.

  ‘She will,’ said Frances.

  Mary settled Barnaby in a basket cot on the back seat, got in behind the wheel and started the car. She was turning it in the road when Fergus pushed the girls roughly aside and shouted, ‘Don’t!’

  Mary paid no attention.

  Fergus rushed back into the house.

  ‘Is he drunk?’ asked Annie.

  ‘No,’ said Frances, ‘he didn’t drink a thing, it was we who were drinking.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Annie, ‘Oh God.’ She moaned. Both girls were crying.

  Mary was finishing a three-point turn and putting the car into gear when Fergus reappeared with his gun.

  Annie and Frances shrieked.

  Fergus fired.

  Mary’s car slewed sideways into a flowerbed.

  Fergus fired again. The car stopped.

  In the ensuing pause Mary said, ‘Damn you.’