Bed of Roses (31 page)

Clive and Geraldine have distanced themselves very smoothly from what they refer to now as ‘the Kitty Incident’; they have rung Atlas Radio, thanked them for not broadcasting the dreaded interview, and apologised fulsomely on Kitty’s behalf. (Stephen Knightly the news editor had sounded shifty. Having that morning taken delivery of Solomon Creasey’s thick brown envelope of fifties, he couldn’t wait to get Geraldine Adams off the telephone.) The Adamses have also, in spite of all Jo’s initial anger, succeeded in parting company with Maxwell McDonald PR on the most civilised terms, sending Jo a magnum of Bollinger as a peace token.

‘Now. We’re
absolutely
clear on this, aren’t we?’ says Clive slowly, having handed over their entire new batch of presents. ‘This is not going to cost you a penny, Mrs Guppy. Not a halfpenny! OK?’

Mr and Mrs Adams are back beneath the crumbling porch at Mrs Guppy’s house, and though she has melted sufficiently to release her tight hold of the front door, she is still a long way from inviting them inside. She stands before them, a wall of suspicion and inhospitality, with a bank of cuddly toys, flower paintings, milk chocolates, earthenware
crockery and TV theme books behind her. (Mr and Mrs Adams have learnt from their mistakes.)

‘Not even a quarter of a penny,’ Clive reiterates, one more time. ‘All our – considerable – expertise, and absolutely, one hundred per cent FREE!’

Mrs Guppy nods, her beady eyes fixed on him. ‘That’s right,’ she agrees.

‘That’s right…’ Clive eyes her nervously.

‘And so what we need now, Mrs Guppy,’ picks up Geraldine – she laughs, as if it were quite the silliest-bittiest thing in the world – ‘is a
signature
.’

Mrs Guppy shakes her head. ‘You’re not getting that.’

‘Yes. That is, yes and no,’ chuckles Clive. ‘
Yes
, I can understand your concern.
Of course
. And no, we—’

‘You’re not getting that.’

The Adamses finally agree to pay the Guppys cash. In exchange for which the Guppys will allow them to defend their son against the school free of charge, and for as long as it takes, and they will also give an interview to a local TV station, expressing their outrage at his treatment.

‘Oh, my crumbling Mondays,’ says Mrs Guppy, holding a fat hand to her mouth.

‘Don’t you worry, Mrs Guppy,’ assures Geraldine. ‘I’m going to coach you! We won’t let those TV cameras anywhere near you, not until you’re good and ready!’

It takes every molecule of her ambition and courage, but at the end of the meeting Geraldine leans forward, her head crossing the threshold of the Guppy home for the first time, and she pecks Mrs Guppy on her cheek.

It makes Mrs Guppy blush.

‘And when all this is over,’ says Geraldine, barely missing a beat, ‘you must come and have dinner with us at the Rectory. Maybe a little barbecue or something. Wouldn’t
that be fun? Come early. So the boys can have a little splash. Or maybe all of us—’ But then the image of Mrs Guppy in her bathers, having a splash, comes to her unbidden, and strikes Geraldine dumb. Dumb. It is left to Clive to finish the sentence.

Uncle Russell is in his wheelchair in front of the television when Tracey and Macklan come to call. There’s an advertisement playing, very loud, for a ‘lift-firming’ face cream, rich in antioxidants.

‘TV’s mended, then!’ shouts Tracey, smiling nervously over the volume. ‘That’s good! I called the electrician again yesterday. He said he’d drop by, but you know what they’re like!’

Uncle Russell’s eyes remain bonded to the screen.

‘How are you, then?’ she shouts, putting her bag down on the cellophane-covered sofa. She knows better than to wait for a reply. ‘I brought you some Pot Noodles,’ she continues. ‘And I put a chicken in the fridge. I’ll cook it Sunday.’

Still, he doesn’t bother to acknowledge her.

‘This is
Macklan
,’ she continues. ‘Uncle Russell? I’ve brought my boyfriend to see you. Do you want to say hello?’

He gives Macklan a quick up and down and turns back to the screen, moved on from skin-care products now to the local news.

‘Solomon Creasey’s boy, you are,’ Uncle Russell informs him.

‘That’s right, Mr Guppy,’ agrees Macklan warmly (keen for the meeting to go well). ‘Solomon’s eldest. Not much younger than he is, in fact! More like a brother, really. Though don’t tell him I told you that!’

‘Must be wealthy, then.’

Macklan flushes, opens his mouth, but Tracey quickly shakes her head, nudges him not to rise.

Uncle Russell sees it, as he sees everything. He smiles slyly to himself.

‘Must be very wealthy,’ he says again, for the hell of it, and quickly dissolves into one of his coughing fits.

…
Angry parents Marian and Ian Guppy…
They hear the names belching out of the television over Russell Guppy’s rasping. They glance up at the screen simultaneously, all of them, to see Tracey’s mother and father, barely recognisable in their grimacing, smiling Sunday best, wedged together on a sofa.

‘That’s Mum’s sofa!’ Tracey cries.

Uncle Russell stops mid-cough, something he hasn’t managed to do for a long time.

‘Look, Macklan!’ she exclaims. ‘Mum’s got lipstick on! See? Doesn’t she look gorgeous!’

‘
It’s hard enough for youngsters these days, what with all the crime and drugs on the streets
,’ recites Mrs Guppy, her oddly coloured lips stretched into a disconcerting smile.

Tracey giggles. ‘Don’t sound like her!’

‘Shut your face, Tracey,’ snaps Uncle Russell. ‘I can’t hear what she’s saying.’

‘
They deserve nurture-to-go, and also support from the educational arena, not ostracisation…
’ Mrs Guppy pitches from one unfeasible sound bite to another, until finally, lost in a maze of meaninglessness, she grinds to a random halt.

Ian pitches in. He is small beside her, and throttled in the
jersey. ‘
We’re totally disgusted
,’ he says. ‘
It makes us physically sick
.’

‘
But Dane’s a good boy,
’ his wife adds suddenly. ‘
He’s a good boy
.’ A pause. The camera turns. Suddenly she drops her head, so that a full two-thirds of the screen is taken with nothing but the grey roots and thick, black strands of her talcum-powdered hair. A snuffle, and then another. Beside her, tiny, wiry Mr Guppy, rigid with embarrassment, stares straight ahead, and the camera continues to turn. ‘
I love my little boy
,’ Mrs Guppy mutters, not looking up. ‘
Just like I loved all of ’em
.’ Ian Guppy glances at her, eyes wide in alarm. ‘
And I know I haven’t always done the best for them, and that’s what people are going to say…
’ Ian looks at her in shock, undisguised. She’s off script. Never mind that; in forty years of marriage he’s never heard her speak like this. ‘
And now it’s Dane they’re going after
,’ Mrs Guppy continues, ‘
and it’s not his fault. I reckon it’s a witch-hunt. It’s a Guppy witch-hunt.
’ She swallows, shakes the head, finally looks up. ‘
And – no
,’ she declares, tears streaming, ‘
say what you want about us. But I’m not having it. Not with the youngest one. It’s just not fair.
’

The piece is followed by a brief interview with Fanny, looking spaced out and unnaturally scruffy, but sounding nice; not too trenchant, agreeing that she will do all she can to avoid the expense of a court case, or in any way risk the future of the school, but emphasising that the other pupils’ safety has to be considered too. The interviewer finishes with a cheeky reference to Fanny’s limbo striptease, which leaves Fanny scowling and without the opportunity to respond.

Next comes a statement from Clive Adams, unnaturally neat. He lays out the Dane Guppy case with a succinctness and elegance which complements Mrs Guppy’s emotional explosion and contrasts very well, very professionally, with Fanny’s woolliness.

‘
Well
,’ exclaims Macklan, breaking the stunned silence, putting an arm round Tracey. ‘Well, I never! She’s either a bloody good actress,’ he says, ‘or she’s nicer than she likes to let on. That was sweet…wasn’t it, Trace?’

Uncle Russell switches off the television with an angry grunt which quickly turns into a cough. But Tracey says nothing. She shakes her head, unable to respond. Like her mother, she has tears streaming down her cheeks.

‘You see?’ she mutters, more to herself. ‘
You see?
She’s not all bad.’

Uncle Russell doesn’t see. Doesn’t want to see. He pushes the electronic lever on the arm of his wheelchair and begins to reverse away.

‘Wait there, Mr Guppy! Wait!’ cries Macklan. ‘Trace and I came to see you. We’ve got something to tell you, haven’t we, Trace?’

Uncle Russell continues as if Macklan hadn’t spoken, spinning beadily across the shiny carpet towards the next room.

‘Hey!’ says Macklan, letting go of Tracey, striding across the floor to catch up with him. He puts himself between Uncle Russell and the door to Uncle Russell’s bedroom, blocking his exit. ‘Mr Guppy,’ he says sternly, ‘didn’t your mum ever tell you it’s rude to disappear in your bedroom when visitors come round?’

‘No one told me anything,’ says Uncle Russell bitterly.

‘Well. It is.’

Uncle Russell pushes his lever and the chair lurches. Macklan stays put, preventing it from moving forward, and the room is filled with an angry electric whirring until Uncle Russell releases the lever, and the noise stops.

‘Thank you,’ says Macklan. ‘Tracey?’ He glances across at her standing there hugging her belly, lost in a world of her own. ‘Come on, angel. Over here. Do you want to tell him or shall I?’

‘Mmm?’ she says, blinking. ‘Oh. No, Macklan. I’ll tell him.’ She crosses the room to stand beside Macklan. ‘Uncle Russell,’ she says boldly, with a brave smile as if she believes he’ll be pleased for her, ‘Macklan and I have decided to get married…’

Russell Guppy stares at her, waiting.

‘So I’ll be moving in to live with him at the cottage. But I’ll be up visiting. All the time. OK? Checking up on you! Honestly, you won’t be able to get rid of me!’

‘Getting married?’ he says at last.

‘That’s right!’ she says brightly, much too brightly. ‘He asked me yesterday. We’re ever so happy. Aren’t we, Macklan?’

Uncle Russell lowers his gaze to her belly. And keeps it there. ‘Anything else?’ he asks pointedly.

‘What?’ Tracey blushes.

‘Anything else you got to tell me, Tracey?’

‘What? No!’ She steps away from him.

Macklan laughs. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

‘
That
,’ says Uncle Russell with a crafty smile, ‘is something
you’ll
have to decide, Creasey boy. When she lets you. Eh, Tracey? Something the Creasey boy will have to decide for hisself. When he gets the chance to…When you’re kind enough to tell him.’ He chuckles and immediately creases into another series of body-contorting coughs. ‘So,’ he gasps impatiently, still coughing, but unwilling to take the time to recover, ‘you haven’t told him then? ’Course not. Don’t blame you. It’s not a very nice thing to tell.’

‘Tracey?’ Macklan turns to her. ‘Told me what?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Told me
what?
’

‘Want me to tell him?’ asks Uncle Russell, smiling.

‘
Tell me WHAT?
’

‘Nothing. It’s none of your damn business.’ She backs
away from them. When Macklan moves towards her, she jumps. ‘LEAVE ME!’ she yells, and runs out of the sitting room, through the kitchen, slamming the back door behind her.

Macklan turns to the old man, sitting there watching it all from his wheelchair, a look of sour contemplation on his face.

‘What just happened there? What did you just do?’

Russell Guppy doesn’t reply. He tips his head to one side and smiles. ‘I want you to get something for me from the shed, Creasey boy,’ he says. ‘And then you can push me down the hill. I need to pay someone a visit. All right?’

Macklan laughs. ‘No. Not all right.’

‘Don’t you want to know what’s up with Tracey?’ he wheedles. ‘If you help me—’

‘I’ll ask Tracey, thank you very much.’

Uncle Russell cocks his head. ‘And if she don’t tell you?’

‘She will.’ Macklan turns his back, heading for the door Tracey just left by. ‘She will if I ask her.’

‘
Mr Creasey…Please!
’

The words make Macklan stop. Uncle Russell looks back at him, his frail chest rising-falling, rising-falling, his fragile, legless body dwarfed by the state-of-the-art wheelchair. He is begging. ‘Just let me down to the road,’ he says. ‘If you please. There’s a little green sweater…in the shed. On the ground. Only the ruddy chair won’t go over the grass…’

Macklan finds the little green sweater, bumps Russell Guppy ungraciously down the garden path to the village road and prepares to leave him there. He hesitates. ‘How’ll you get yourself back again?’ he finds himself asking.

‘Ahh…’ Pride somehow recovered, now that he’s on the move, Russell Guppy’s relish sounds out through the usual wheezes. ‘You tell young Tracey I knows what I knows – as she very well knows.’

‘Huh? I said how will you—’

‘You tell her I want her here at ten o’clock.’ He presses the lever and lurches forward. ‘She knows what I knows…She knows where she’s needed.’

Fanny spent the first half of the evening at the LEA offices in Lamsbury, discussing possible legal concerns regarding Dane Guppy. This was before Mr and Mrs Guppy appeared on television but even so, there had been several veiled remarks, so that Fanny came away with the clear understanding, as she was meant to do, that a court case would be out of the question. Fiddleford Primary School, whether it was improving or not, was on the cusp of extinction. After all the trouble of the fire, anything, the slightest added cost or disturbance, might push it over the edge.

Nevertheless, when Louis calls she is at her kitchen table planning next week’s lessons. She and Louis haven’t spent an evening together since his churchyard escapade and it’s becoming pretty obvious now that he’s avoiding her. Even so, when she hears his voice talking into her answer machine, she doesn’t jump to take the call. Actually, she feels a little thud of guilt and misery, and stays exactly where she is.

‘Hey, Fan,’ she hears him saying. She knows him so well. She can hear, even in those two syllables, that he’s hedging, that the next thing he says is unlikely to involve much truth. ‘I’m – ah. I’m in a place called Bishops Lydeard. In Somerset.
Don’t ask me why. There’s a nurse who’s been given some kind of frigging award…’ He laughs. ‘Hold the front page, huh? Still. It’s a job…Anyway, so I’m not going to make it back tonight. At least not till late…And I guess once I’m done I’ll head straight back to mine. I know you’ve got a lot going on…So…I’ll catch you tomorrow…OK…? Goodnight, Fan.’ It sounds sad. Fanny almost picks up then. ‘Goodnight, sweetheart. I love you…I do.’ And he does. And she loves him. It’s nobody’s fault, she thinks despondently. Or maybe it is. Maybe it’s just that she and Louis are the kind of people who are better off alone…

She looks at the telephone, silent now, and it reminds her, as telephones tend to at the moment, about calling Solomon. She should call him. She should apologise. Now she knows it was Louis and not Solomon who told Kitty about her dead marriage. She should call Solomon and apologise.

She should.

She lights a cigarette.

Why, she asks herself, almost as if she hasn’t guessed, why is she making such heavy weather of this? She should pick up the telephone…
and dial
. Hello, Solomon. Hi! Hi, it’s Fanny here. Fanny Flynn…

She pours herself a glass of wine, paces around the small table…Hello, Solomon. Hi! Hi, it’s Fanny here. Fanny Flynn…Yeah-but-no-but-yeah-but…
sorry…
It would be so much simpler – it would seem so much more natural – if she could just say it when she bumped into him. In the pub, for example. Or at his croquet and darts party next weekend. Or in the village street. Fanny returns to the pile of unmarked exercise books.

Fuck it. She can’t face it. She’ll call him later or something.