Vacillations of Poppy Carew

  ‘To come back to the hymns,’ said the vicar, retreating to safer ground, ‘it’s a bit difficult, it’s—’

  ‘No jolly hymns? Nothing suitable?’ This vicar was eminently teasable.

  ‘Suppose our organist, if I can get Mr Ottway to play—he’s really very good—suppose we do away with hymns and ask Mr Ottway to play a lot of Bach.’

  ‘Brilliant idea.’

  ‘Oh good, then suppose, Miss Carew—’

  ‘Poppy, please.’

  ‘Thank you. Suppose I come round tomorrow and we make the final arrangements. I can get details and fix times with Brightson’s.’

  ‘Not Brightson’s.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My father wished to have a firm called Furnival’s.’

  ‘Oh.’ The vicar’s voice dipped. ‘I see.’

  ‘I saw them this afternoon. They will be in touch with you, Vicar.’

  ‘Oh.’ The vicar sounded alarmed. ‘I see—’

  ‘And I hope you will come back to the house afterwards.’

  ‘Thank you.’ On the other end of the line the vicar gathered strength. ‘Do I really understand that—’

  ‘Yes, not Brightson’s, Furnival’s, it’s perfectly legit, Vicar.’

  ‘Yes, yes of course. I’ll telephone tomorrow.’ He sounded apprehensive on the verge of protest.

  ‘Thank you very much. Goodbye.’ Poppy waited for the vicar to ring off and presently telephoned The Times, the Daily Telegraph, and the local paper asking them to put in a notice of her father’s funeral, spelling the name Furnival, making sure they got it right.

  Left alone, Poppy walked about her father’s garden, trying to visualise him as he used to be when she was a child. Mowing the lawn, sweeping up leaves, weeding. But she could not see him. Here behind the lilacs she and Edmund had kissed. Here, out of sight of the house, they had lain on the grass on hot summer evenings, their bodies touching. Dad, where are you Dad? The leaves on the lilacs were now turned yellow, a hesitant breeze testing the quiet autumn air rustled the bushes, bringing back that moment when, sheltered from observant eyes by scented lilac and philadelphus, Edmund had pulled her down on to the grass, kissing her mouth, holding her body against his, hard, heavy urgent; had penetrated so that astonished she had whispered, ‘Go on, do that, don’t stop,’ in her first exultant sexual success, ‘go on, don’t stop, don’t stop,’ with the selfishness of satisfied joy, and as it waned leaving her gloriously spent her father had called from the house and Edmund had frustratedly called her ‘you fool, you fool, you put me off’ and then ‘damn your fucking father’.

  The breeze dropped as quickly as it had risen, a leaf from the lilac drifted crisply to the ground. Dryly Poppy thought that never again had Edmund admitted her need before his own.

  She bent down brushing the grass with her palm where this, her first sexual experience, had happened. Then the grass had been short dense deep green, springing, today it felt dry, brittle, rather dusty.

  Poppy went back to the house. She would leave Edmund in the garden; the scenes she remembered were old anyway, seven, eight years old, an age of ignorance. She wandered through the empty rooms seeking her father, thinking now of the unhappy girl Mary, with spiky hair and the beautiful baby.

  When the telephone rang it was Fergus.

  ‘They will bring your father early,’ his voice was kind reassuring, ‘tomorrow.’

  ‘Thank you. What time?’

  ‘Nineish or even before.’

  Perhaps with Dad actually in the house it would be easier to find him. She felt very tired. Climbing the stairs to bed, she decided she would sleep in the visitors’ room. Edmund, so disliked by Dad, haunted her room. Poppy dismissed her fanciful thoughts. Dad was in his coffin and would be brought here tomorrow. Edmund would now be tucked up snug with Venetia in Venetia’s flat after eating one of her delicious dinners. She was an impossibly good cook, spent lavishly on food.

  As she was getting into bed the telephone rang in Dad’s room across the landing.

  ‘Hullo.’ She stood in her nightdress and bare feet.

  ‘It’s me again I’m afraid.’ It was the vicar. ‘Sorry to bother you.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I just wondered thinking about the service on Saturday and your wish for a cheerful hymn whether you had thought of any particular one so that I can apprise the organist. It is usual to have at least one hymn.’ The voice was gently insistent.

  ‘Oh, I—’ Poppy stood barefoot holding the receiver ‘Um—I—’ she searched her mind: ‘The race that long in darkness—?’ ‘How dark was the stable?’ ‘There’s a home for little children—’ Dad was no child for Christ’s sake! ‘Colours of day’? ‘The King of Love—’? ‘Oh Vicar, I can’t.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ the vicar’s voice was mild, ‘perhaps you could leave it to me?’

  ‘Please. If that’s—’

  ‘Nothing lugubrious, nothing mundane, nothing the Bishop would take exception to.’

  ‘The Bishop? What’s he got to do with—’

  The laugh was both deprecating and dismissive. ‘His job to criticise, Poppy.’

  ‘I see.’ I don’t see, all I see is Edmund in Venetia’s arms. Does he explore her teeth for stoppings with his tongue as he did mine? The vicar was still talking.

  ‘—so if you leave it to me I will make sure you have something your father would like.’

  ‘Leave it to you?’ First Fergus, then Victor, now the vicar. There is nothing left for me to do. ‘Do you know what Dad would like?’ She felt doubtful.

  ‘Certainly I do,’ said the vicar.

  ‘All right, Vicar. If you are sure I will.’

  ‘Good.’ He did not ring off, waited for her to thank him, end the conversation.

  ‘Is there anything else?’ he asked.

  ‘No, no, nothing else. Thank you. I am sure you will make a suitable choice.’ The vicar laughed again in an affectionate way. ‘You have been so kind.’

  ‘—my job.’

  ‘Well good night, and thank you again.’

  Has Venetia found out yet how he picks his teeth?

  10

  LATE IN THE AFTERNOON, Mary, baby on hip, came up to Fergus. ‘Now you can pay the rent. And the feed bill.’ Her tone was sarcastic.

  ‘In part perhaps—’

  ‘Father didn’t rent you this place for free.’

  ‘I wish your father would take a—’

  ‘Running jump,’ said Mary. ‘I’m with you there.’ Her tone was quite hearty.

  ‘Really?’ Fergus was surprised.

  She watched Fergus. ‘Have you thought about this place in winter?’

  ‘Winter?’ Her voice implied a catch.

  ‘It gets snowed in. You won’t find your business possible without a snow plough. Father’s known it cut off for weeks, months, in some winters.’ She waited for Fergus’s reaction with relish.

  ‘So that’s why he rented it so cheap, the crafty bastard.’ Fergus thought of Nicholas Mowbray’s weather-beaten face, expansive gestures, fruity voice.

  ‘He thinks I’ll get over my horsey phase if I am frozen and uncomfortable.’

  ‘You can nip back to Spain to warm up in Joseph’s arms,’ Fergus suggested.

  Mary ignored this gibe. ‘He thinks you’re a sucker. He doesn’t mind if you go bankrupt; all he thinks is that I might decide to try a job he would consider sensible if this one packs up.’

  ‘Like secretary to an oil mogul?’

  ‘I wouldn’t last long.’ Mary let off a peal of laughter. ‘You should have checked the advertisement before posting it,’ she jeered. ‘You are not competent. You know I can hardly type.’

  Fergus eyed her without animosity: her typing error had brought him Poppy’s father. I am a simpleton, he thought. I rather took to Mary’s father and his bonhomie: he is using me, I shan’t pay the rent, there are far more urgent bills. Ruefully he considered the pile of buff envelopes on the kitchen mantelshelf.

  Forget
ting Mary, he stood looking down the valley, seeing all too clearly how cut off he could be. He thought, I could get the horses out, but where would I take them? His enthusiasm for his project had led him to jump at the cheap rent suggested by Nicholas Mowbray. He flinched, thinking of the monthly payments on horse-boxes, Land Rovers and the lorry. The horses are mine, he thought, seeking comfort, the tack and the hearse are mine. He looked round the yard for reassurance from the horses, as they watched from their loose-boxes. I refuse to be defeated, he thought, I must make a success of this. He said nastily, ‘What a bloody little Cassandra you are. There’s no necessity,’ he cried angrily, ‘for your single parent situation. I understand Joseph would like to make an honest woman of you, why don’t … ?’

  ‘Do you want to get shot of me?’ Her voice quavered upwards in thin defiance.

  Fergus ignored the question. ‘Wouldn’t it be better for Barnaby?’

  ‘Why are you so keen on marriage for me? You steer clear of it. You are as bad as my father, you want to see me pegged down.’

  ‘I should have thought Barnaby quite a peg.’ Fergus met the baby’s eye. Barnaby smiled gummily.

  ‘I can travel with him; a child is a carrier bag, a husband is a trunk.’

  ‘You wish to travel light?’

  ‘For the present.’ Keeping her options open, Mary shifted the child from one hip to the other with a sensuous movement. Fergus appeared to have erased from his memory the horse-buying trip to Ireland when, for months, she had shared his bed. From Ireland, she had gone to Spain and returned with Barnaby. She stood looking down the valley, bleakly considering her options. She was glad she had planted the seed of unease in Fergus: he’s too bloody pleased with himself, she thought, remembering him in Ireland. And, before Ireland, Fergus had had something going with Victor’s ex-wife Penelope and, later, with the magazine editor Julia. ‘You and Victor are pretty close friends, aren’t you?’ she said with sweet malice. ‘Great sharers, keep your girls in the family.’

  ‘So, so.’ Fergus was not to be drawn. He was remembering Poppy’s slip; circuses, he consoled himself, have winter quarters—so?

  Standing beside him, baby on hip, Mary shied away from the thought of the extended family ready with its octopus arms to gather her in, coddle her in its expansive bosom. I can’t live in Spain, she thought, I could never get used to that crowd. I shall get no help from Fergus. Despairingly she looked at her child who looked back at her with his father’s eyes. ‘Oh!’ Mary yelled in frustration. ‘Oh!’

  At this moment Annie and Frances joined them. Both girls now smelled of shampoo. Frances looked extraordinary, which was her intention, in a skin-tight mini-skirt which barely covered her pubic region, an immensely baggy black jersey worn under a man’s string vest, on her wrists a jingling collection of silver bracelets. Annie, demure in a flowing black dress, bare feet, plethora of earrings, red caste mark between her eyes, a diamond clipped to one nostril, had not succeeded in disguising her Sloane Rangership. ‘Coming to the disco?’ they asked Mary. ‘Help us sort out the local boys?’

  ‘All right,’ Mary was obliging. ‘I’ll come as I am,’ she said. ‘You do look an old-fashioned pair.’ She eyed Annie. ‘Are you from the Bazaar or the Souk?’ Annie laughed. ‘You won’t mind baby-sitting Barnaby, will you?’ She held the baby out to Fergus.

  ‘No fear,’ said Fergus, ‘you can take your carrier bag with you.’ He started walking back to the cottage.

  ‘We can’t squash three on to the Yamaha,’ Annie was plaintive, ‘and a baby.’

  ‘Take us in your car,’ cried Frances to Fergus, ‘be a devil.’

  Fergus went into the cottage and slammed the door, locking himself in with his dogs. He wanted his supper. Fetching some chops from the larder, he watched from the window as the three girls wedged themselves on to the motorbicycle, and proceeded slowly down the track. They would return in the small hours in some local boy’s car, noisy, part-drunk, happy.

  ‘Such nice girls,’ Fergus said to the cat Bolivar who wove silently through the casement window to sit, paws together, preparing to terrorise the dogs with basilisk stare and, hopefully, lick the frying pan when Fergus had finished with it. The dogs shifted uneasily on their hunkers, casting sidelong glances at the cat, licking their lips, unable, since he was a favourite of Fergus’s, to attack as they would have liked. Fergus gave Bolivar a snippet of raw meat, respecting the cat, an entire tom, for having shown guile and agility in escaping the vet on the day of his intended emasculation. Something about Bolivar set him thinking of Poppy Carew’s father, wondering whether there was any similarity. I must not make a cock-up of this funeral, ruminated Fergus, frying his chops. That’s a lovely girl, she shall have what her dad wanted, and who knows, he thought optimistically, it may lead to other work. Eating his supper, Fergus thought about Poppy and was a mite uneasy of the feelings she engendered. For, like Mary, he had a penchant for independence.

  Having eaten, Fergus spent a session on the telephone. Then, plans made, he whistled his dogs and walked up the valley to the downs. Bolivar came too for the first quarter mile, spoiling the dogs’ joy by his sinister presence. Since he had found the hearse mouldering in a barn in France, he had put his savings and everything he could borrow into his business, bought the horses, their harness, the vehicles. Rented the yard and the cottage from Mary’s father and was only now, deeply in debt, ready to start in independent practice.

  Overheads are terrible, Fergus shuddered, thinking of the pile of bills, the monthly payments, the rising bank interest. Treading the springy turf, he blamed himself for being so unsuspicious of Mary’s father who had, long ago, trained horses here, out of sight of snoopers. He reached the top of the valley and looked along the stretch of downland where the horses had galloped. There was no evidence now, on the short turf grazed by sheep, of the unsound animals dosed with anabolic steroids, innocent collaborators who had displayed their paces to potential buyers. Standing on the sweet turf, hearing the ghostly breath and drumming hooves of horses long gone, Fergus felt lonely, afraid, vulnerable.

  Mary’s father now farmed in East Anglia, growing surplus grain for the EEC. He had not been specifically warned, but hinted, out of the racing world. The old boy network had netted him and, humiliatingly, let him go, as too small to fry. He saw me coming, thought Fergus ruefully, remembering Mary’s introduction followed by the helpful offer at low rent of the cottage and stables.

  ‘Any friend of Mary’s … glad to help an enterprising chap … wonderful to be your own master … bound to make a success.’ At this rate, I am bound to the bank, nothing belongs to me, my Dow Jones are in peril. Fergus stooped to peer in the fading light at a harebell still in flower in late September, and was glad that his landlord was too mean to spray and spread fertiliser, kill the harebells, thyme and Shepherd’s Purse. He felt sorry for Mary having such a treacherous father; he forgave her her careless typing and arrogance, guessing that she was warning him to be careful of her father by telling him what could happen when it snowed. Winter, after all, is the dying time, the boom time for undertakers. Had she not told Frances, a notorious blabbermouth, about the anabolic steroids and the end of her father’s interest in horses? In Ireland buying horses, she had been invaluable, spotting defects he might have overlooked. He had been puzzled, at the time, by her esoteric knowledge.

  Fergus straightened up as his dogs lit off in sudden noisy pursuit of a hare. He watched the hunt vanish over the hill, racing towards the moonrise, and waited for their panting, shamed return; standing on top of the quiet downs, watching the lights of distant cars on the main road and the sparkle of the town where Mary, Frances and Annie danced in the disco, almost he wished himself with them.

  He knew Mary well enough to guess that Barnaby would be disposed of somewhere safe. And another thing, he thought, to Mary’s credit. She had not tried to father the infant on him. It would have been possible, he would not have been able to disprove it. He had been galled and at a loss when short
ly after Ireland she had vanished abroad without warning.

  Many months later when searching for suitable stables he had run into her in Newbury. She had suggested her father as landlord. It had seemed natural to ask her to work with him again, she had brought with her Annie and Frances (to himself Fergus admitted that without Mary it was doubtful his venture would have got off the ground).

  Watching the lights in the distance Fergus found himself hoping that it would be a long while before her love of travelling light inspired her to disappear a second time. A replacement would be difficult, well nigh impossible to find.

  He recalled her hair had been long and thick-plaited like a corn dolly, oat coloured. Fergus winced at the thought of it now chopped short, often tinted an ugly black. He remembered the feel of the plait in his hand the temptation to yank it like a bell pull. She had been more approachable then, less abrasive, perhaps less competent?

  She did not speak of her year in Spain; what meagre information he possessed was gained from Frances and Annie’s idle gossip, gossip which Mary made no attempt to elaborate, lurking behind her habitual reserve, a reserve which bordered on the inimical tinged with not unfriendly mockery. Cheered by thinking better of Mary than he normally did, and by the exhausted return of his dogs, Fergus ran back down the track to the stable. As he ran, his eye caught a glint of moonlight on the pool in the stream in the orchard, where, that afternoon, he and Victor had loosed the trout. He peered into the water, fearing to see it floating dead on the surface (as well it might after its vicissitudes) but, noting Bolivar sitting still and enigmatic, watching the water, he assumed its survival and went to bed, to sleep and forget his anxieties. It was only when the girls returned in the small hours, with Barnaby yelling and their boyfriends shouting raucous good nights, that he woke to worry as to whether Victor, going off as he had with Poppy, had stolen a march on him. Damn Victor, he thought, and damn those bloody girls.

  ‘Shut up,’ Fergus flung open his window, ‘shut bloody up.’ The laughter trailed away then broke out again into bubbles of high spirits. Slamming his window shut, cracking a pane, Fergus thought they will wake the dead and the dead are my métier, as he drew the covers over his head to deaden the sound.