(1992) Prophecy (17 page)

The acidity shot straight up her nose and her eyes snapped shut. She coughed the handkerchief out into her hand, staggered to the sink, hung over it and gagged. The taps and the stainless steel basin rolled past her as if they were on castors. She felt Oliver’s hand on her shoulder.

‘What is it, Frannie? What’s happened?’

She looked up at him, trying to speak, but her tongue clogged her mouth and her lips wouldn’t move properly. ‘Wassp,’ she hissed, and closed her eyes. When she opened them again he was holding her face in his hands, examining her mouth.

She tapped her lips then peeled the bottom one back. ‘Wrsspp. Stnnng. In plum.’

‘Wasp? You’ve been stung?’

She nodded feverishly, pointed to two spots on her lips, then her tongue.

‘On your tongue? Oh, God! Did you stumble into a nest?’ His face creased with anxiety and his cornflower-blue eyes seemed to lose their colour.

She breathed in sharply, clenching her eyes shut, then exhaling sharply. Oliver stood it for sixty seconds and then announced, ‘I’m taking you to Casualty. I’ve got some sting-relief stuff upstairs but we can’t put that in your mouth.’ He gently pulled her lips, turning them over, looking inside. He checked the clock on the wall. ‘Actually, no, it might be quicker if I try our doctor, see if he’s in by any chance.’ He picked the phone up.

Frannie opened her eyes. The taste of the vinegar made her gag again and she hung her head over the sink, stared down at potato peelings, the tops of carrots and a teaspoon covered in congealed coffee. The fire in her mouth was getting hotter. She rinsed it out with a glass of cold water and that made it worse.

She caught her reflection in the side of the kettle and tried to examine the marks, but it distorted her face too much to see clearly. She remembered there was a mirror in the hall and went out.

In the dim light, her skin looked pale and lifeless. Mascara ran in black streaks down her left cheek, but she barely registered it. As she leaned closer she was surprised that her lip was hardly swollen at all; just a little puffy. She peeled it back and there were just two tiny red marks that were barely noticeable. She curled up her tongue and could see just a tiny red spot, like an ulcer.

She pressed the handkerchief back in her mouth; the fire cooled just a fraction and the vinegar wrung more tears from her eyes. She wiped them with her sleeve and walked back towards the kitchen, bumping clumsily against the wall, and knocking a couple of pictures.

‘Would you?’ Oliver said into the phone as she came in. ‘She’s really in terrible pain.’

She sat down opposite him. A tear fell on to the front page of the
Mail on Sunday
and spread in a small grey stain. ‘Bush Gets Tough’, said the blurred headline. She wanted to be tough too, was trying to compose herself, to stop crying.

Oliver hung up. ‘He’ll be here in ten minutes – he only lives at Glynde. He says vinegar
is
the best thing.’

She closed her eyes, nodding gratefully.

He looked carefully inside her mouth again. ‘You’re not allergic to wasps?’

She shook her head.

‘Your tongue doesn’t look swollen. You can breathe OK?’

This time she nodded.

He put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed
her firmly; then he kissed the top of her head. ‘I’m so sorry. Horrible. It’s been a bad year with the wasps, we’ve been plagued by them.’

As she looked up at him, she caught him staring back at her, searching her face carefully with a troubled expression. Searching not for stings but for something else, trying to read her mind. Then he switched focus and she turned her head, startled.

Edward struggled in through the door, his wicker basket laden with plums, holding it with both hands, his face red from exertion as he carried it proudly to his father.

‘See how many I got, Daddy!’

‘Frannie’s been stung by a wasp,’ Oliver said starkly.

Edward looked shocked. He dropped the basket on to the floor, ignoring the plums that spilled from it and ran to her. ‘Frannie, no! Wasps! Are you all right?’ He looked at her face, his eyes wide open, so distraught she thought for a moment he was going to cry. ‘Where?’

She stared back at him warily, and pointed at her mouth. Her expression was accusatory.

‘In the plum? In the one I gave you?’

‘Ysh.’

His face crumpled as if it had been deflated and his voice rose into a whine. ‘There wasn’t; there couldn’t have been! Frannie, there couldn’t, I was really careful – I nearly bit one with a wasp in once and I always look. Frannie, I’m sorry, does it hurt a lot?’

She nodded.

He turned to Oliver. ‘I picked it, Daddy, specially for Frannie.’ A tear ran down his cheek, and in spite of her pain Frannie suddenly felt a heel for her attitude. ‘I did,’ he said.

She reached her arm around him and hugged him. Then she buried her face in her free hand as the pain once more became unbearable.

The doctor examined each of the stings diligently and, with profuse sympathy, asked her if she had any allergies, then gave her an injection of hydrocortisone. He told her the pain might continue for a while and to take aspirin.

She spent the rest of the morning in a lounger beside the swimming-pool that was secluded from the prying eyes of visitors by a topiaried yew hedge. Edward stayed close to her as if he had personally taken charge of her recovery, lapsing into long periods of silent concentration on his Game Boy, to Frannie’s relief, enabling her to read the papers.

A page of the
Sunday Times
on the ground beside her lifted in the breeze and rolled over with a crackle. She looked up and watched Edward, bent intently over his machine, biting his lower lip in concentration and pushing the buttons. She heard the faint tones of the synthetic music and the muffled explosions, and continued to watch him, as if she could somehow understand him by doing so. She needed to solve the enigma of how he could be so warm and alert at times, then suddenly switch off completely, seeming to be elsewhere. It was disturbing. Despite her earlier resolve, she hadn’t liked to raise it with Oliver, because she sensed that she might be treading on forbidden territory.

Maybe there was nothing sinister about it. Maybe it was his mother’s death that had caused it. The trauma of seeing his mother decapitated. She wondered how she would have reacted in the same circumstances. Perhaps Oliver was fortunate the child had kept his sanity at all.

She replayed in her mind the moment when Edward had picked and handed her the plum. Saw again the innocence in his face. Tried to compare it to the innocence of his expression on the boat yesterday.

He glanced at her suddenly, and she lowered her eyes to the pool. She watched the pipe that stretched beneath the surface, and the automatic cleaner working its way busily up and down. An unappetizing scum of froth and dead flies had gathered in one corner.

I hope you’re not planning to sleep with my daddy
.

Her unease was growing.

Edward was regarding her with his warm brown eyes. ‘How are you feeling now, Frannie?’

‘A little better,’ she said.

‘Would you like to have a go with my Game Boy?’

‘Sure.’

‘I’m going to kill every wasp I ever see,’ he said.

She smiled. ‘You don’t have to do that.’

‘I’m going to,’ he said darkly. ‘You’re my friend. They’re going to be sorry for what they did to you.’

The sun went behind a cloud, and she shivered as a sudden sense of fear swamped her. She remembered the beetle from a few hours ago. And the words Edward had used as he opened the matchbox.
This is my new friend
.

She remembered how he had parted company with it.

They had lunch in the courtyard. The sun shone intermittently between increasing spells of cloud. Oliver had cooked the chicken well, it was moist and lightly flavoured with tarragon, but eating was painful for Frannie and instead she drank too much of the ice-cold
rosé
. Edward waged a relentless war against the wasps, somewhat to Oliver’s irritation, trapping them beneath upturned glasses, crushing them with his fork, and drowning one in his glass of Coke. Then he put down his knife and fork, leaving his food almost untouched.

‘This chicken tastes funny, Daddy. What have you put in it?’

‘A herb called tarragon.’

Edward screwed up his face. ‘You always muck things up when you
gourmet
them.’ He turned to Frannie.

Frannie smiled and saw that Oliver looked rather crestfallen. She wondered if his wife had been a good cook.

‘There’s gratitude!’ he said. ‘Back home for twenty-four hours and he’s already criticizing my cooking.’ He glared at his son with a mock-fierce expression. ‘OK, Paul Bocuse junior, why don’t you rustle us up something next time?’

Edward looked back at him seriously. ‘Can’t we just have things cooked normally? Like Mrs Beakbane does?’ He turned to Frannie. ‘He reads too many recipe books.’

Before she could speak in Oliver’s defence, a man
and a boy of about Edward’s age came into the courtyard. The man was tall and sturdy and looked a little younger than Oliver; he had a pleasant face with a healthy outdoors complexion, hair bleached by the sun, and was wearing grubby jeans and an old shirt. The boy had a round, rather watery face, with an impish grin, a high forehead and thin blond hair brushed vaguely flat – apart from one lock which stood defiantly upright. He was wearing a yellow Mickey Mouse T-shirt, clean but creased trousers, and trainers.

‘Charles, hi!’ Oliver said, standing to introduce them. ‘This is – ah – Frannie Monsanto – my brother Charles, and my nephew Tristram.’

‘How do you do,’ his brother said rather shyly, shaking Frannie’s hand with a strong grip and looking down awkwardly at the ground. Frannie could see the family resemblance in their features.

‘Tristram,’ Edward said, ‘would you like to see my new Game Boy cassette?’

The boy’s eyes lit up. ‘Yes!’

‘Got time for a drink?’ Oliver asked his brother.

‘No – er – thanks, ought to get going; I’ve got to pick some stuff up from the vet on the way.’

‘When’s the homeopathic chap coming?’

‘Tomorrow morning.’

Oliver suddenly shouted at the boys, who were scampering off. ‘Hey, where are you going?’

‘Tristram wants to play with my Game Boy.’

‘Another time. Uncle Charles wants to get going.’

Charles scratched his head and looked at Frannie. ‘Do you – er – know – er – this part of the world?’

‘No, hardly at all.’

‘Ah; right.’ He looked down at the ground again as if trying to think of something to say.

‘You’ve got problems with your cattle, I gather?’ she said. The pain of the stings was being anaesthetized by the wine, but her lip still felt swollen and she wondered if she looked strange.

He dug his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and addressed the ground again. ‘Yes, one or two, I’m afraid.’ He looked at Oliver, at his watch, then back at her. ‘Nice to meet you – excuse us dashing. The children are all being taken off somewhere for a mystery picnic and the mother was very insistent they should arrive on time.’

‘Nice to meet you, too.’

‘Don’t forget the present,’ Oliver said to Edward.

‘Do I have to give Jamie Middleton a present, Daddy?’

‘Yes, of course you do, it’s his birthday.’

‘I’d much rather give it to Tristram.’

His cousin’s eyes lit up. ‘Yes, please!’

Frannie felt a sense of freedom as Charles and his mud-caked Land Rover disappeared beyond the far end of the facade; the same way she used to feel as a teenager when her parents had gone out. It was exciting to have Oliver to herself for a few hours. She took his hand and squeezed it hard. Oliver took her other hand and kissed her lightly on the forehead. ‘Feeling better?’

‘Lots.’ She looked into his eyes, seeking reassurance; reassurance that his son had not deliberately given her a plum with a wasp in it.

They lay on loungers by the pool, in the sun. Then, after a while, they went into the wooden changing-hut and made love on the hard, dusty floor. Rays of sunlight played above their heads like the beams of cinema projectors. And the stifling air contained the rubbery smell of some old swimsuits hung up and forgotten.

Afterwards they lay in silence. Frannie held his wrist, pulled his hand to her face and gently nibbled his forefinger. Then she caressed him lightly, feeling the warm, spent air of his breath on her face. Perspiration ran down her forehead and her cheeks, down her neck, and her hair was matted to her head. She watched a spider hover warily above them on its glinting thread. The pain was returning again now, so she sucked in cooling air through clenched teeth and after a few moments the burning subsided a little.

Oliver rolled on to his side, propped himself on his elbow and moved his face closer to hers. ‘I’m sorry that you got stung,’ he said.

‘Do you think Edward could be a little jealous of me?’

Her words seemed to strike him like an electrical current. She detected the sudden change instantly; it was as if he were bristling. ‘What do you mean?’ He pulled away from her and the warmth left his eyes.

‘Nothing,’ she said, scared by his reaction.

‘You think he did it deliberately?’

‘No – not deliberately; not maliciously. I just wonder if there’s a part of him that’s – you know – that he’s not even aware of – that resents me; or anyone you go out with.’

‘You really think Edward would deliberately have given you a plum with a wasp in it?’ His voice was cold; a stranger’s. He sat up, morosely hunched over his knees.

Frannie watched the spider winding itself back up its thread, and was afraid to look at Oliver. ‘No. No, I don’t mean that.’ Then immediately she was angry at herself, because she did mean it. It was exactly what she meant.

*

They swam in the pool separately, like two strangers, Oliver doing bursts of two lengths at a time in a powerful crawl, then lying back against the side, regaining his breath. Frannie meandered up and down in her steady breast-stroke. Each time she stopped, Oliver lunged off again.