Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs (40 page)

‘Coo-ee!’ Isobel was standing on the terrace, calling down to us. ‘Conrad, Fritz and I are going to the Castle for dinner. Want to come?’

‘No, thanks,’ Rafe shouted back. ‘Marigold’s had enough of cars for today. We’ll have something here.’

‘All right. Tootle-pip.’ She blew a kiss and went indoors.

‘With them it’s a hectic round of gaiety,’ he said, staring after her. ‘It makes one wonder if they actually enjoy just being together.’ He glanced down at me. ‘I’m glad you’re not the sort of girl who wants to go out every evening.’ I smiled agreement, though in fact I had just been thinking that I would have liked to have gone to the Castle with them. ‘You’re looking cold. We must go in.’ He fastened the buttons of my coat protectively and we began to walk back to the house. ‘What were we talking about?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘I can. I was telling you that you’re a wonderful girl and you make me the happiest of men.’ He kissed me again and looked at me expectantly.

‘Mm. You make me happy too.’

So there we were, our love affirmed, our troth replighted with renewed exchanges of confidence, yet not two hours ago I had decided that, whatever the cost to our mothers and to ourselves, I must break off our engagement. Life among sensible, properly grown-up people was utterly baffling, I decided. It was evident that I was unfit to dwell among them.

‘Am I allowed to see what you’re painting?’ I asked as he held open the conservatory door.

‘If you like.’ He turned the easel round. ‘Yet another view of the hills, I’m afraid. I’ve taken a leaf out of Monet’s book and I’m doing a series of the same prospect to explore the effect
of light and shadow from dawn to dusk. This morning the sun was sending shafts through the clouds like beams of enlightenment from on high.’

I examined the watercolour. It was lovely but bleak: blues, greys, browns and shades of white. It struck me as odd that the brilliant fresh greens in which the countryside was clothed these days had made no appearance. Was this because Rafe’s inner landscape was bleak? Was he telling the truth when he said I made him the happiest of men? Was I in fact not the only practised liar within our small circle?

‘Hello. Lovely day, isn’t it?’ I said briskly, when Jode came into the kitchen the following morning.

I was not surprised to see him at Dumbola Lodge at this early hour. I had been kept awake long into the night by shrill cries and moans from Dimpsie and the occasional bass groan of ecstasy. Finally I had tied two pillows to my head with a scarf, but poor Siggy, whose grey velvet ears were of the upright variety, had been condemned to eavesdrop.

‘Can I help you find anything?’ I asked, seeing him looking around in a vague embarrassed way.

‘’Tis a bottle for Harrison Ford I’m after making. He’s in bed with Dimpsie.’ Then a slow purple tide rose from inside his shirt collar to his eyebrows.

‘I’ll put the kettle on. Can I make you some breakfast? Bacon and eggs?’

‘Thank ye but I don’t eat meat.’ Tis my intention not to cause pain to any living creature so long as I may live.’ He looked severe.

‘I do agree! But it’s so hard to live in the way you know you ought,’ I said, perhaps a little gushingly. ‘I always find myself weakly giving in to temptation, don’t you?’

‘No. I can’t say that I do.’

* * *

‘He made this solemn vow while he was in prison,’ explained Dimpsie. She, Harrison Ford and I were enjoying the warmth of the kitchen while, outside in the driving rain, Jode double-dug the last segment of the garden that had not already been subject to his excavations. Now and again, through the misted panes, I saw clumps of earth fly past as he prepared the brassica bed. He had explained the importance of crop rotation and I had hung onto his every word for fear that this scarred giant might take it into his head to beat it into me. There was about him an aura of violence that made me fearful for my mother.

‘He was in prison?’

‘He nearly strangled his wife’s lover. Luckily when he saw the man’s face turn blue he came to his senses and let go. Jode has terrifically high principles but he was goaded beyond bearing. Also in those days he drank. The boyfriend pressed charges and Jode spent eighteen months inside for assault. His wife put Nan into care and ran away to Spain with her lover. That was ten years ago. He left Ireland and came to live here. Since then he hasn’t touched alcohol, tobacco or animal flesh, or raised his voice in anger.’

‘He’s a model of good behaviour. I feel the terrible burden of my wickedness in his presence.’

Dimpsie beamed. ‘It’s inspiring, isn’t it? He’s so hard-working and self-disciplined and responsible. And kind. Last night he insisted on washing up the supper things while I rested on the sofa in the sitting room because he thought I looked a little tired. After a bit I came and dried up because I was getting bored on my own. It was as I was reaching up to put away some plates and he took them from me that we kissed for the first time.’ Twinkly stars appeared in Dimpsie’s eyes as she recalled the scene. ‘Then we couldn’t stop and I dragged him upstairs to my room and into my bed.’

I began to get a little fearful at this point, for Dimpsie enjoyed talking about the details of sex more than I did. ‘How lovely
for you both. Look, Harrison Ford’s falling asleep.’ Dimpsie removed the rubber teat from the baby’s milky lips and shifted her arm slightly so that his head could flop back against her shoulder. Tiny veins like navy silk threads straggled lids that drooped over eyes as blue as the sea on a summer’s day. His head was covered with pale yellow down.

‘He’s such a darling,’ Dimpsie said fondly.

‘And very handsome.’ This was true. Not every baby would look good dressed in woollen coat and leggings of a hideous shade of salmon trimmed with ox-blood red crochet.

‘Jode is so gentle with him. He has the most wonderfully sensitive hands.’ Dimpsie took a deep breath and let it out slowly as she looked reflective. ‘When he touches you it’s like being brushed by swansdown. Every nerve-ending comes alive. I can feel my skin rippling beneath his fingers. Every part of me sings with pleasure—’

‘Oh, good.’ I stood up. ‘That’s excellent. Perhaps I ought to wash up the breakfast things. “He that is filthy, let him be filthy still,” as it says in the Bible, apparently. The rector quoted it in his sermon last week. I’ve no idea what he was talking about as my brain had pretty well shut down by then and I was wondering what we were going to have for lunch, but that little sentence struck my ear unkindly.’

‘I never knew before what a sensuous organ the ear is.’ Dimpsie’s eyes became dewy. ‘Your father has never once in twenty-five years of marriage licked my ears.’

‘I’ll just give Siggy these crusts. I don’t like the way he’s eyeing Harrison Ford’s toes.’

‘It just shows that fidelity isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. I always believed Tom was a good lover because he told me he was. But actually it isn’t true. I had simply no idea what I was missing.’

‘Oh, you’re such a fussy rabbit! All right, I’ll put a little Marmite on them.’

‘Do you realize last night was my first proper orgasm? I used
to get excited with your father but he’d always had his before mine came to anything.’

‘He doesn’t seem to like Marmite this morning. I know, there’s some fish-paste in the fridge.’

‘I must have been a worm-hearted fool to put up with being treated so badly for all those years. All that misery, the loneliness, my self-confidence shrinking to non-existence … the
tort
ures of jealousy … Well, I’ve seen the light. Last night was the most wonderful experience I’ve ever had – apart from you children, of course but that’s quite different – and I shall expect nothing less from now on. No more taps on the shoulder just as I’m drifting off to sleep, hauling up of nightdresses, plunging straight in without so much as a kiss, a few thrusts before dropping like a ton weight—’

‘
No!
’ I may have spoken rather sharply. I turned from the open fridge door with a jar of
Porter’s Pilchard Pâté ‘Paradise
in a Pot
’ in my hand to see Dimpsie’s eyebrows raised in surprise. ‘Absolutely not. That is … you mustn’t swap one kind of slavery for another. Sex isn’t everything.’ I warmed to my theme as Dimpsie looked disbelieving. ‘I really do believe it’s rubbish that women need a man to be happy. Women need a proper job to do which gives them a sense of self-worth and achievement – the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them and do it better next time, whether it’s being a ballerina or a fishmonger.’ Absent-mindedly I stuck my finger in the jar and licked it, then shuddered. If this was Paradise in a Pot give me Purgatory in a Pitcher, Hell in a … I couldn’t think of a vessel that began with H. Luckily I was not a slogan writer. ‘Much more important than sex, there’s thinking and experimenting and creating and achieving. We’ve got the vote and equality in the workplace and all that but still women are doing most of the housework and laundry and looking after the children. I do agree Jode is an exception, but the majority of men would rather live in a slum and let the children tumble up anyhow than take the trouble. I say to hell with men!’

‘But darling,’ Dimpsie looked troubled, ‘have you forgotten you’re engaged to be married to one?’

‘Come in, petal.’ Mrs Peevis eased her bulk into the old moquette-covered armchair which was propped on bricks so she could stir things on the stove without getting up. Her feet rested on a stack of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
. A grease-caked saucepan shot out a jet of steam that filled the Singing Swan kitchen with the smell of mouldy hay. ‘Yer late but it doosn’t matter. There’s ernly been one customer aal day.’

It was just after two o’clock, and I was still glowing from an extra hard work-out in the study. Usually I did my lunchtime exercises in the hall because there was a largeish mirror there but, as it was within earshot of the kitchen and Jode was lunching at Dumbola Lodge, accompanied by Harrison Ford, Petula the Magpie and Nell the sheepdog, I had moved to the study in case he and my mother should feel moved by the presence of so much animate nature to indulge in ear-licking or other biological urges. Also there was Siggy to be considered. He thought himself above such company and had made himself a nest in my father’s chair and closed his marvellous marmalade eyes in disgust.

‘Sorry.’

‘Tha’s the shop bell.’ She put the frying pan over a flame. ‘See if ye can persuade them te tek a bite o’ blood puddin’. Aa’ve a half a ring tha’ll be off by temorrow.’

I put on my apron and went into the café. A man, a woman and two children were on the point of going out again.

‘Good afternoon,’ I said cheerily, ‘can I help you?’

‘No, thank you,’ said the woman coldly. ‘We’ve decided not to stop …’ She threw a contemptuous glance at the tables draped with plastic tablecloths that curled up at the edges like so many miniature pagodas, on which stood lamps with shades speckled like thrush eggs with fly droppings, and ginger-beer bottles in which bundles of dried flowers listed to port or starboard.

The man looked me up and down. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Maisie.’ He walked back into the room and smiled at me with all his teeth. ‘You were just saying how desperate you were for a cuppa.’ He winked at me, turning away his head so that his wife could not see.

‘Tea? Certainly. What would the children like?’

‘Coca-Cola,’ said the little boy promptly.

‘You’ll have milk,’ said his mother sourly as she flipped with her scarf at the crumbs and smears of butter on her seat. She sat down, her nose wrinkled and nostrils flared. I wondered if she could smell the bleach Mrs Peevis was always pouring down the lav in a vain attempt to get the brown stains off the bowl.

‘Could I tempt you to a little black pudding?’

‘Black pudding?’ echoed the woman in amazement.

‘Likely it’s a local kind of cake,’ suggested the man. ‘We’re from the South,’ he explained in a friendly way. ‘It’s our first visit up North.’

‘Lovely scenery, isn’t it?’ I said conversationally.

‘Not the only thing that’s lovely,’ he muttered with another covert wink. ‘I’ll try some black pudding if you recommend it.’

‘With chips and red cabbage?’ I smiled to conceal my embarrassment at this strange offering.

‘E-uch!’ said the woman. ‘You’re joking, I
do
hope.’

The man looked less than enthusiastic. ‘Well … if you really think …’

‘Don’t be silly, Bert!’ said his wife, handing me the ashtray to take away before wiping her fingers fastidiously on a paper handkerchief. ‘You’ve only just had lunch. We’ll have four scones –’ she pronounced it to rhyme with thrones – ‘with strawberry preserve. Children, go and wash your hands. Chips indeed! At twenty-five-past two in the afternoon.’

She looked at me with frank dislike. I walked gracefully into the kitchen then, as soon as the door swung shut behind me, I threw off my apron and put on my coat. ‘Put the kettle on,’ I said. ‘I’m going to Belinda’s Buns for scones.’

‘No blood puddin’?’ said Mrs Peevis in disappointed tones to my departing back. ‘Looks like yer in luck, Jelly.’ Jelly was Mrs Peevis’s cat, a friendly tabby shaped like a zeppelin.

I zoomed down the street and over the road to the bakery and managed to buy the last four scones. Belinda herself was serving. Her generous figure had given rise to many quips in connection with the shop’s name.

‘These scones are stale,’ said Maisie when I brought them breathlessly to the table.

‘Made this morning,’ I lied for the second time in half an hour, thought of Conrad, banished him from my mind. I was well aware that Belinda made batches of scones once a month, then froze and unfroze them at frequent intervals according to her wild calculations of demand, which had given them the texture of Harrison Ford’s matinée coats.

‘And this is jam, not preserve.’

‘I didn’t know there was a difference.’ This rare moment of truth was immediately undone. ‘It’s homemade.’ Actually the Singing Swan jam came from an enormous tin from which I had earlier fished out three dead flies and a quantity of Jelly’s hairs. It had dyed the plastic spoon a sinister dark purple.

‘Mum, we couldn’t flush the toilet and there wasn’t any paper,’ said the little boy returning to the table. ‘Someone’s had diarrhoea in there. It stinks!’

‘Oh dear, how horrible!’ I said. ‘I
am
sorry.’

Mrs Peevis was always complaining that her digestive system was giving trouble – what she called ‘the skittors’ – no doubt because she ate her own food. I had a terrible vision of ex-customers crouching in agony in lavatories throughout West Northumberland. Perhaps there were people lying in hospital wards taking tearful leave of their families … research scientists examining unheard-of bacteria under microscopes …

‘We saw a big mouse,’ said the little girl.

‘Don’t be a looby,’ said the little boy, ‘it was a rat.’

‘That does it!’ Maisie spat out her mouthful of scone and
stood up, glaring at her husband. ‘You can stay and ogle that girl, who I dare say isn’t a bit better than she should be, but me and the children are leaving. She looked at me. ‘I’m reporting you to the environmental health inspector.’

‘Sorry about that.’ Bert grimaced apologetically and put two pound coins on the table. ‘I thought the scones were A1.’

I allowed him to pat my bottom without protest because he had had so little return for his money.

Mrs Peevis’s mouth drooped as I recounted the disaster. I spared her none of the details because I had a plan.

‘If tha’ bloomin’ health man cooms round agin, Aa’m for it.’ Her rust-coloured eyes filled with tears.

‘Mrs Peevis,’ I said. ‘I think I may be able to help. But you must promise to do exactly as I say and not argue with me because we haven’t much time. I’m quite sure that beastly woman will be as good as her word. She’s the sort that’s only happy when high on a cloud of righteous indignation.’

‘On a what, pet?’ Mrs Peevis looked confused.

‘Never mind,’ I said, and went to turn the notice on the door to CLOSED before beginning to outline my scheme.

Nan sat down at the Dumbola Lodge kitchen table and slumped wearily forward, her chin propped on one hand. There were dark circles under her lovely grey eyes and her hair hung in limp hanks. ‘Who’da t’ought hairdressin’d be worse t’an school? Bossed about from mornin’ till night, sweepin’ floors, washin’ basins, and now me skin’s had an allorgic reaction to t’e perms and dyes. Look!’ She displayed her hands that were covered with pink weals. ‘’Tis ever so sore.’