Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs (39 page)

Evelyn shoved Fritz aside without apology and dropped into a half crouch before it, caressing the twigs and flowers with reverent fingers.

‘Conrad bought it,’ said Isobel, her eyes alight with malice. ‘Apparently it’s extremely rare. The dealer said he’d only ever seen one in a museum. But we could always ask him to look out for another like it. You never know your luck.’

Evelyn looked up at Conrad. ‘Where did you find it?’

‘In a shop in Kensington Church Street. He gives it the date Seventeen sixty-five. Beautiful, isn’t it?’

‘Bea-u-tiful!’ Bea-
ut
iful!’ Her voice, usually clipped, was mellowed by love. ‘It’s the
love
liest thing I’ve
ever
seen.’

Conrad nodded as though approving her judgement. ‘I should be pleased if you would accept it as an expression of gratitude for the entertainment Fritz and I have received at Shottestone Manor.’

Evelyn’s face, usually so pale and immobile, became the colour of bricks and her mouth worked like an old woman mumbling biscuits sopped in tea. I had never seen her so moved. ‘Me? You don’t mean … oh, it’s
too
generous of you but I couldn’t
po
ssibly … such a valuable piece …’ She shook her head. ‘Of course I can’t accept it.’

‘In Bavaria it is considered a terrible insult to refuse a gift.’

Conrad looked so serious that I was sure he was making this up.

‘Oh, really? Well, in that case …’ Waves of colour flooded Evelyn’s face. ‘It’s
too
wonderful … no one’s ever given me anything so marvellous in my entire life …’ Tears stood in her eyes.

‘What about the needle case I embroidered when I was eight?’ said Isobel. ‘The one with the pink rabbit on it. You said that was the nicest present you’d ever had.’

‘Conrad, I don’t know
how
to thank you.’ Evelyn rose and advanced upon him. He bent his head so she could kiss his cheek. ‘So extraordinarily kind …’ She picked up the chestnut basket with infinite care and cradled it against her chest. ‘The
pièce de résistance
of the collection … I wonder, perhaps the pier table …?’ She drifted from the room as though stepping on air.

‘Conrad!’ Isobel was half amused, half annoyed. ‘Tell me the truth! Did you mean to give it to Mummy all along?’

Conrad smiled and shook his head, which I took to be a refusal to reveal the workings of his mind rather than a denial.

‘Honestly, that’s quite the most shocking case of bribery I’ve ever come across.’ She linked her arm through his and looked
up into his face. ‘How cynical you are! Everyone has their price according to you.’

Conrad picked up the hand she had placed on his arm and caressed the wrist that was decorated by a bracelet of diamonds and emeralds. As I had never seen it before, I had no doubt it was a present from him. ‘I do your mother the justice to be certain that, had I offered her the monetary equivalent of the chestnut basket, she would have flung the notes in my face. Beauty she could not resist, however.’

‘It’s extremely generous of you,’ said Rafe, standing up and jingling the coins in his pockets, with evident discomfiture. ‘I’m not sure my father will approve … the value of the thing so far exceeds any hospitality … and your connection with our family makes it unnecessary—’

‘Don’t be pompous, darling,’ Isobel interrupted. ‘Conrad gives away ten times the cost of that basket every day to people he’s never even met. Besides, poor Daddy’s too gaga to object. And if you think you’d ever be able to persuade Mummy to give it up now she’s got her claws on it, you evidently don’t know her. A crocodile defending its babies would be a baa-lamb by comparison if you tried to take it away now.’

‘Talking of rabbits,’ I had been following my own train of thought, ‘I want to ask you a great favour, Conrad.’

‘Were we talking of rabbits?’ Rafe looked bemused.

‘Isobel mentioned a needle case she’d made embroidered with one.’

‘So she did.’ Rafe came to stand next to me and put one arm round my shoulder. His eyes, the colour of a cloudless sky with that fascinating distinct outline to the irises, were so full of affection that all ideas of breaking off our engagement melted away like lumps of lard in Mrs Peevis’s blackened frying pans. ‘How interestingly your mind works, my darling. I’m sure no one else picked up that little arrow. Certainly not the person it was aimed at.’ He gave me a little squeeze and said in a low voice, ‘Forgive me for being a brute this afternoon?’

‘If you’ll forgive me for making such a muff of things.’ How delightful was the calm after the storm. I felt a resurgence of … was it love or gratitude? Probably both. ‘I
am
constitutionally incapable, I’m afraid. But perhaps I needn’t go out much. And when I do I could take taxis.’

‘Oh, no, darling. You’ll find it’ll come after a while.’ He beamed at me, impervious to the message in my beseeching eyes. ‘Now what about pouring the tea?’

I looked at Isobel.

‘Go ahead,’ she shrugged. ‘I’ve practically flown the coop. You’re the one who’ll assume the mantle of chestnut-basket dusting, eventually. I’m awfully glad. I should hate the responsibility.’

‘Oh, well … perhaps we ought to give it back to you and Conrad when … later on.’

Isobel laughed. ‘You mean when Mummy’s dead. I hope you won’t find yourself anticipating that event too eagerly.’

‘Isobel!’ Rafe frowned at her.

‘Why shouldn’t I say what’s true? Mummy’s a fiend to live with and you know it. Marigold’ll be bossed about from first light until her head hits the pillow. And you won’t stand up for her, will you, my dearest dear?’ She looked up at her brother, her expression challenging.

Uneasiness percolated through the room.

‘Please, I should like a piece of cake,’ said Fritz. ‘Ve haf a hasty lunch had at a not good restaurant.’

‘Oh what an excellent idea,’ I said quickly. ‘Isobel, are you going to cut it?’

When she continued to stare at Rafe without replying, I picked up the knife and proceeded to hack it about rather in my agitation. No one could say that being with Isobel was dull. I poured the tea and handed round cups.

‘Marigold, you wished me to do something for you?’ said Conrad.

‘Oh, yes. You know the terrace below the drawing room that
leads off the kitchen – the one overgrown with grass. You said you didn’t want to use chemicals to spray the weeds because of the birds, but you thought it looked untidy—’

‘I know the one,’ replied Conrad gravely.

‘Well, my poor rabbit’s been housebound for months ever since I got here and he badly needs fresh air. I bring him handfuls of grass every day but it isn’t the same as tugging it up for himself. We’ve got a fox living at the bottom of the garden so it’s no use making a pen or anything.’

‘You’ve got a rabbit?’ Isobel looked incredulous. ‘But Marigold, what on earth for? I had some once, do you remember? A dead loss, really. They just sat in their hutch and moped and got diarrhoea periodically from eating too much lettuce. And they needed cleaning out about every five minutes.’

‘Yes, I remember. The black one was called Fred and the white one was called Ginger. That puzzled me for ages but I didn’t like to ask why. I thought they were adorable, so gentle and soft.’

‘Adorable perhaps, but hopeless as pets. What can you do with a rabbit? You can’t ride it or train it or take it for walks. We gave them away in the end. You cried for days when I told you Jebb had wrung their necks and Mrs Capstick had put them in a pie.’

The memory returned sharply though I had not thought of it for years – the pain of imagining those two much-loved little creatures struggling helplessly in the horny hands of Jebb, the Preston gardener in those days, a gruff-voiced tattooed ex-prisoner whom I had hated and feared … I felt tears well.

‘For heaven’s sake.’ Isobel was inconveniently eagle-eyed as always. ‘You’re not going to cry
now
? I was teasing you, you fathead. Of
course
Mummy wouldn’t have let Jebb wring their necks! She gave them to Mrs Capstick’s niece.’

‘I knew that.’ It was a lie. I hadn’t known. I felt a slight but welcome diminution of the burden of sadness I carried always with me on behalf of the vulnerable and mistreated, human and animal.

‘Marigold’s rabbit is not adorable in the least,’ said Conrad. ‘He is a limb of Satan who likes the sweet young flesh of infants—’

Our eyes met and I saw in them a flash of awareness that he had put his foot in it before he turned to look out at the garden again.

‘How do you know?’ Isobel stared at the back of his head.

‘I’ve already bored Conrad with a description of Siggy’s very bad habits,’ I said.

I was confident that Conrad would guess I intended to save him from the necessity of lying as he was always so fussed about the need to be transparent and speak pure truths and so on. My soul was already deep-dyed in deceit so a little more tinkering with the facts wouldn’t matter much.

‘I’m so glad you like animals, darling,’ said Rafe as we took Buster for a run in the garden after tea. ‘It’s another thing we have in common. I couldn’t imagine life without dogs and horses.’

A soft mist was rising from the damp lawns and paths as the air grew moist with impending rain. Sweeping down to the elaborate stone fountain in the rose garden was a hedge of double pink hawthorn, the tiny flowers like iced gems, a kind of biscuit Isobel and I had once had a passion for but which Evelyn had disapproved of. She considered all cakes, biscuits and jams bought from a shop to be vulgar.

‘I do like animals but I don’t know much about them. I’ve always been too busy to have a cat or a dog.’

‘Well, that’s going to change now. You’ll have plenty of time to look after them. When you aren’t looking after our children, that is.’ He took my hand and tucked it under his arm. ‘I hope we’ll have six, at least.’

‘Six!’ I expect I sounded as horrified as I felt. My response was automatic. Babies were nearly always bad news for dancers.

He said, with a little pique in his tone, ‘You want children, surely?’

‘Well, I suppose … eventually.’

‘Darling.’ He stopped, put one arm round me and lifted my chin so I had to look straight into his eyes. ‘You’re not having second thoughts, are you?’

Speak! I urged myself. Tell him you’re fonder of him than of any man on earth but even that isn’t enough. Tell him you want to dance. I looked into his face, saw his forehead pleated in perplexity, remembered his fragile self-confidence, Dimpsie’s happiness, Evelyn’s happiness.

‘I thought perhaps
you
were. Having second thoughts,’ was the best I could do, and hated myself for my weakness. ‘I’m so stupid about so many things. I’ll never be able to run the house as well as Evelyn does. The garden will go to pot, I’ll offend all the local big cheeses, my flower arrangements will give rise to scandal and my dress sense will be the subject of letters to the
Northumbrian Gazette
. And I shall never learn to drive.’

‘Oh, sweetheart, you make me feel so guilty! Tomorrow I’ll book you some lessons with a qualified driving instructor. I’m thoroughly ashamed of myself for losing my temper. You’re such a sweet forgiving soul that I’m inclined to take advantage of you. Oh darling,’ he held me tighter until my nose was buried in his jersey, which smelt deliciously of
Roger et Gallet
and Buster. ‘I don’t deserve you, I know. If you did have second thoughts I’d have no grounds for complaint. I’m taking your marvellous youth and adorable innocence and spoiling it with a second-hand love—’

I fought my way out of the jersey. ‘Second-hand? What do you mean?’

‘Oh, ah! … what
do
I mean?’ He gazed into the mid-distance over my head. ‘I suppose, the fact is that you aren’t my first love … and you ought to be—’

‘Oh, never mind about that!’ I said quickly, with a rush of guilt as I remembered that I still had not told him about Sebastian and all those others who had cynically availed themselves of my adorable innocence.

Experience had taught me that the hearts of men (Sebastian’s excepted) were softened immediately after sex, so I had decided to undeceive Rafe the next time we were in bed together. But here circumstances had conspired against me, as they seemed only too ready to do. Rafe did not feel relaxed about making love at Shottestone, which I completely understood. Kingsley had taken to wandering all over the house at odd hours in order to make sure none of the rooms was missing. If any of the doors was locked he rattled the handle and bellowed in distress. He had already upset Mrs Capstick by getting into bed with her at two in the morning.

I don’t think Dimpsie would have minded in the least if we had slept together at Dumbola Lodge, but neither my little boat bed nor Kate’s bus would have accommodated Rafe’s large frame. A few days ago he had booked a room for the night at the only decent hotel within twenty miles, to find that the receptionist was the wife of one of the tenant farmers. Our waitress, the daughter of Banks the builder, had practically curtsied when Rafe walked into the dining room. Rafe and I had had what was nearly a row over the soup and roast lamb. I had said I did not mind anyone knowing that we had slept together before getting married and that most people would assume we had anyway. Rafe said that it was important that the estate workers looked up to me. I had said I’d prefer them to like me. Rafe had said I was being childish and I had become indignant. The unpleasantness was not helped by having to pretend, each time the waitress brought the breadbasket or topped up our glasses, that we were having a lovely time.

I hate rows so I had given in before pudding and apologized. After dinner we had tried to find another hotel. Rafe, who was miles fussier than me, had rejected them all as being ‘impossible’, so we had ended up having what would pass for sex in anatomical terms in the back of the car. The experience had been cold and uncomfortable and thoroughly unromantic, good only for taking the edge from the frustration Rafe said he was
feeling. It had not seemed the right moment to tell him that I had bartered my body for my career.

‘I honestly don’t mind about the women in your past,’ I said, ‘as long as they stay past. I don’t think I’d like to share.’