Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs (8 page)

Superficially our relationship had survived the storm. But I had learnt to be guarded. I said almost nothing about my life in Manchester. I played the part of Isobel’s admiring friend, conscious that it behoved me to be generous. Together we celebrated her triumphs, when she was made a school monitor and captain of tennis, when she came top in English, when she was given the role of Jo in
Little Women
. We went shopping for clothes suitable for visiting school friends’ houses, mansions,
chateaux, palazzos, once even a yacht. I listened and marvelled and praised without resentment, for I was going to be a dancer and nothing in the world could compare with the glory of that. First Isobel and then I became old enough to go to proper parties and dances. The best bit about these were the post mortems held in her bedroom when we discussed in minute detail and with tremendous scorn the boys we met there.

When Isobel was sixteen she was sent to school in Switzerland. Eighteen months later I moved to London to join the LBC and the friendship lapsed. I had not seen her for six years. ‘What was Isobel doing before she came home?’ I asked.

‘She finished her course in Fine Arts. Did I tell you that? Then she got a job at Sotheby’s. She sent a message to say how much she was looking forward to seeing you.’

‘That was kind of her.’

‘You were good friends once. I know she could be difficult, but you’re both grownup now … sometimes I think the friendship between women is the most sublime that’s possible between two human beings. Oh, I know the Greeks thought the same about men,’ she dismissed Homer and Plato with a wave and the back wheels skewed as they hit the mound of snow in the middle of the road, ‘but men never really
talk
to each other, do they?’

I felt sure a sweat of terror must be breaking out on my benumbed brow. ‘Being women, can we know that?’

‘What? Oh, I see what you mean. Well, if Tom’s anything to go by, they never admit to anything more self-revealing than their golf handicap or the size of their socks.’

I realized she was being merely illustrative. My father despised golf and had never given a second’s thought to his socks, which my mother always bought for him. ‘The men I know are usually only too ready to invite you into their psyches. But I don’t suppose they’re typical. But neither is Tom, would you say? I’ve often wondered why he chose to do something that requires being nice to people. He’d be much happier locked in a laboratory on his own.’

I was making idle conversation to take my mind off the narrowness of the road and the steepness of the drop as we reached the head of the valley, but I heard a defensiveness in Dimpsie’s reply.

‘That would have been a great loss to the community though, wouldn’t it? I mean, he’s the cleverest doctor for miles around …’

While my mother rambled on in praise of my father’s diagnostic acuity, I indulged in a brief moment of pleasurable nostalgia. This first view of the valley into which we were now descending always moved me by its beauty. At this time of day only the lights of Gaythwaite were visible. Eagleston Crag, the highest point in the circle of hills, was only a darker mass in a sky swollen with inky clouds, but it was so familiar to me that I could have drawn its shape – like a bent old man with a sack on his back – with complete accuracy.

I closed my eyes tightly and tried to think about other things while we whooshed downwards and bounced over the bridge. ‘Nearly there,’ cried Dimpsie, braking hard to negotiate the sharp turn into our drive. What made it dangerous was a sheer drop of twenty feet into the river below the house. I opened my eyes to see the bright lights of another vehicle approaching. We had lost most of our speed by now and just managed to trickle across the path of a large lorry, with inches to spare. Dimpsie accelerated up the steep drive and ran gently into the mattress placed on its side at the back of the garage to act as a buffer.

‘There we are, darling. Home at last!’

Dumbola Lodge was a solid stone house built in the last century. Going into the hall, I was surprised by the vivid familiarity of things not seen or called to mind for several years. The wallpaper with its pattern of ivy leaves had been put up before I was born. The flagstones undulated at thresholds where generations of footsteps, including my own, had worn them away. Opposite the door was a serpentine chest of drawers to which Dimpsie had applied something caustic in the days when stripped pine was all the rage. Evelyn had been cross with her for ruining
a good piece of eighteenth-century mahogany. To the right of it was the longcase clock that had belonged to my maternal grandmother.

Throughout my childhood I had held this clock in special affection. Above the dial were painted billowing clouds and gilded stars surrounding a cut-out semicircle in which the moon, the size of an orange, appeared according to its phases. It had small, kite-shaped eyes above fat cheeks, with lips curved up into a smile, but as a child I had discovered that when I was sad the moon’s smile became a grimace of sorrow. On the day the letter came offering me a place at Brackenbury Lodge, his bright little eyes had flashed with triumph. I was too old now to believe in the existence of a secret ally. It was my guilty conscience that made me imagine a hint of reproof in the moon’s expression. I sniffed the instantly recognizable smell of wet plaster, rubber mackintoshes and the fainter scent of medicated soap from the downstairs cloakroom.

‘Let me look at you.’ Dimpsie pulled off her red tam-o’-shanter and slung it in the direction of the hat stand. ‘
Fab
ulous coat, darling. Evelyn’s always said that you had all the beauty in the family.’

‘How unkind of her. Also untrue. You have remarkable eyes.’

They were large, light brown and transparent with good nature.

‘Unkind? Evelyn? Darling, how can you say that when she’s been so good to you?’ My mother looked hurt.

‘Oh well … all I meant was that you’re still attractive.’ I released one of her dangling silver earrings, which had become hooked on a ringlet that had once been brown and was now greyish.

Dimpsie peered into the mirror above the chest of drawers and pulled a face. ‘Evelyn ticked me off the other day for letting myself go. She said she’d pay for me to go to her hairdresser but I don’t know that I ought … she says I should use makeup but mascara always makes my eyes puff up … and who’s going to notice anyway?’

Dimpsie had been my age, twenty-two, when she married my father. He had been in his final year at medical school. Kate’s imminent arrival had been responsible for this catastrophic mistake. The immediate need for money put paid to his plan of specializing in epidemiology. Instead they moved to Northumberland where he went into general practice. My mother suddenly found herself with a hardworking husband, a house and a baby to look after and no idea how to do any of it. In a spirit of noblesse oblige, Evelyn had invited the new GP and his wife to dinner and my mother had wasted no time in pouring out her feelings of loneliness and helplessness.

This much I had been told by Dimpsie. I guessed that Evelyn might also have been lonely. She liked to rule and the women who stood high enough in the world to be Evelyn’s friends for that reason declined to be bossed. Dimpsie’s unbounded admiration for Evelyn’s beauty, style, strength of character and knowledge of the world must have been flattering. She was thrilled to be asked to fill out invitations, lick stamps and make telephone calls. But I knew that Dimpsie was more than an unpaid secretary. That mysterious chemistry which dictates true friendship operated in their case. Dimpsie was incapable of deceit, she always said exactly what she thought, and I guessed that Evelyn enjoyed being able to do the same without fear of competition or criticism.

‘Never mind.’ Dimpsie did some alternate nostril breathing to dispel negative thinking. ‘There are lots of things more important than one’s appearance … being true to one’s inner being … expanding one’s consciousness …’

When Dimpsie was in her early thirties, some hippies had formed a commune in the ruined farm on the hill behind our house. The local people had complained of drugs, loud music, uncontrolled livestock and neglected children. Dimpsie alone had been enchanted by them. While Evelyn was busy sacking headmasters, reprimanding matrons for dusty windowsills and sending wife-beaters to jail, Dimpsie used to go up to the commune and
sit on mattresses covered with Indian bedspreads, smoke joints, eat beans, and have long conversations about the significance of the
Tibetan Book of the Dead
. It was a sort of kindergarten, with nothing to do but be self-indulgent, and Dimpsie loved it. For the first time in her life she had found people who accepted her without wanting to change her. The hashish made everyone affectionate and giggly, which must have been in strong contrast to home.

It was a cause of great sadness when the hippies tired of emptying bucket lavatories and collecting firewood to burn under the pots of beans. One by one they drifted away into advertising and accountancy. The ruined farm was untenanted now but for feral kittens, descendants of the original cats brought by the flower children.

‘Oh, blast!’ Dimpsie had picked up the notepad from beside the telephone. ‘Your father’s had to go out on a call. Vanessa Trumball
again
.’

‘Who’s Vanessa Trumball?’

‘She moved here about a year ago. She lives up at Roughsike Fell. She must be terribly lonely there on her own – her husband’s left her; such a shame. I thought he was a nice man. Your father has to go up there at least twice a week. It’s lucky for her he’s so dedicated to his profession.’

I wanted to ask if she was young and pretty but I was afraid of causing pain.

‘Never mind.’ Dimpsie hung up our coats, then twirled on the spot with her knee bent and her foot stuck out behind her, a characteristic movement which I had forgotten. ‘We won’t wait for him. Let’s have supper.’

‘I must feed Siggy first and let him have a run. He’s been cooped up all day.’

‘Siggy?’ My mother looked vaguely about the hall.

‘My rabbit.’ I indicated the cage on the flagstones.

‘A rabbit? Oh, how sweet!’

‘Don’t do that!’ I cried just in time to prevent bloodshed, as
she bent down, finger poised to stroke him through the bars. ‘He has the meanest temper. I’ll take him upstairs and shut him in my room so he can run about.’

‘But what will your father say?’

Tom hated animals.

‘Need he know?’

‘I suppose not. Not telling isn’t the same as lying, is it? Shall I get him some lettuce?’

I understood that she meant Siggy.

‘He’d rather have meat. Preferably raw.’

It took a while to set Siggy up with a bowl of water, some scraps of chicken breast and a litter tray. Because of being incarcerated all day, he refused to have anything to do with me and sulked among my old shoes in the bottom of my wardrobe. By the time I hobbled downstairs to the kitchen my mother had supper on the table.

‘Lentil soup, darling. And homemade bread.’

I remembered the bread. Dimpsie made it herself from wholemeal flour ground by the watermill in the next valley. It required strong teeth and a stalwart colon. It was, in its own way, delicious. I had a second helping of the soup to gratify Dimpsie. My father considered food a boring necessity, which must have been discouraging for an anxious cook.

‘Lovely,’ I said. ‘Just what I needed after such a long journey.’

‘Poor darling.’ She opened the Aga door and brought out a large pie. ‘This’ll set you up. Cabbage and Jerusalem artichokes with a layer of cheesy mashed potato on top.’

‘Oh goodness! I hadn’t realized there’d be anything else. I don’t think I can …’ I saw her face fall. ‘All right, because it looks so tempting, I’d love just a little.’

While my mother spooned the explosive mixture on to my plate, I looked fondly at the kitchen. The walls had been stencilled with vegetables. I knew they were vegetables because I had helped Dimpsie cut them out years ago. We had had much trouble with the bulb of garlic. However we trimmed it and
shaped it, it had continued to remind us of the horribly swollen scrotum my father kept in formaldehyde in his study.

‘Now, darling,’ said Dimpsie when I had eaten as much of the vegetable hotpot as I possibly could, ‘I’ll make some coffee and we can have a lovely cosy chat before Tom comes in.’

I answered her questions about my leg with vague reassurances, then I told her about my flat and
Giselle
and Lizzie and Bella and the other members of the company. Dimpsie rested her cheek on her hand and looked at me with dreaming eyes.

‘It all sounds such
heaven
. Now tell me about the
men
in your life.’ A note of wistfulness crept into her voice. ‘I’m in the mood for a little vicarious romance.’

‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but there isn’t anyone particular.’ The decision not to tell her about Sebastian was made in a moment, before I had a chance to reflect. Dimpsie was the most broad-minded mother in the world but suddenly I couldn’t bear even the thought of him. ‘I don’t really have time for men at the moment.’ I yawned extravagantly. ‘I’m shattered. I must go to bed. I’ll see Tom at breakfast.’ I saw the disappointment in her eyes. ‘But before I go up you must tell me about Kate.’

Dimpsie’s face brightened. She poured us both more coffee and popped a piece of halva into her mouth. ‘Well, darling, it’s really
rather
fascinating … I went to see her just before Christmas. You remember Dougall always made us take our shoes off in the porch? Well, now you have to put on plastic things like bath hats over your feet …’

I was anxious to look my best for dinner at Shottestone Manor. Luckily I had brought my best dress with me. Like many of my clothes it was a cast-off from Wardrobe. It came originally from a production of
Ondine
, Ashton’s ballet about a water nymph. Now, unless you looked closely, you couldn’t see the bad tear under the arm which I had spent hours mending, because the dress was made from several layers of chiffon in different shades of aquamarine and jade with a hem cut into long strips to shimmer like water. It had a high waist bound with silver braid which ran up over the narrow straps. Unfortunately the plaster cast, already quite grubby round the edges, and the black sock I wore over it to cover my bare toes seriously impaired the glamour lent me by the dress. While waiting for inspiration to effect some improvement, I wrapped a blanket round my naked shoulders and sat on my bedroom window seat to admire the view across the valley.

The hillside opposite was steep and thickly wooded. At this time of year the façade of Shottestone Manor could clearly be seen among the branches, though the distance was too great for its inhabitants to be more than moving dots. Like Dumbola Lodge it was built of grey stone but it had an altogether superior air. Two projecting wings made it an impressive size, a third
storey with steep gables gave it an imposing height, and a pillared portico added gracefulness.

Isobel’s bedroom had been on the top floor. As children we had sometimes signalled to each other by arrangement. You could just make out an energetically waved pillowcase as a fleck of white. Isobel had got into hot water when one had blown out of her hand and into the trees below, never to be seen again. For a brief period we had sent messages with torches using Morse code. I had swotted up all the dots and dashes, hoping to impress Rafe with my prowess. I dreamed that he might send me messages of love flashing in beams of light above the treetops, but of course it never happened. My exchanges with Isobel were laborious because she did not have the same incentive to learn the alphabet, so there were long intervals between letters while she looked them up. Also, having spent the day together there wasn’t much to say.

Rafe’s bedroom had been on the first floor. Once I had borrowed my father’s telescope and trained it on Rafe’s window for hours, hoping for a glimpse of my idol. I had been rewarded when he had leaned on the sill for a whole five minutes wearing an unbuttoned shirt and smoking a cigarette. I drank in the sight of his godlike head and manly chest, my heart thumping with excitement while the barrel of the telescope became damp from my perspiring fingers.

Evelyn’s bedroom was on the floor below and took up three windows above the portico. Isobel had told me her parents slept in separate rooms. Even as a small child I had perceived that Kingsley worshipped Evelyn whereas my father barely tolerated my mother, yet they slept in the same bed and even shared bath water. At the time this had puzzled me.

A knock interrupted these reminiscences. Dimpsie came in.

‘Just wanted to see how you were getting on. Hello, Siegfried poppet.’ Siggy, who had been lying with every appearance of content on the rug beside my bed, dashed into the wardrobe as though in terror. I did not believe this for a moment.
Fear was an emotion unknown to Siggy, but he liked to be interesting.

I stood up, threw off the blanket and twirled, or rather, stomped in a circle, so she could see how I looked.

‘Fabulous, darling! I
love
that dress! The sock does detract rather …’

‘Perhaps bare toes would be better. But my nails are still growing out their bruises.’

Dancers feet are always ugly, with bunions, calluses, crooked toes, peeling bloody skin and discoloured nails.

‘I’ll paint them for you.’ Dimpsie went away and reappeared a minute later with a box of acrylic paints. She sat on the carpet and worked away with dedication. On four nails she drew glittering stripes of gold and silver. On my big toe she managed a just recognizable Mona Lisa.

‘You
are
clever!’ I examined my foot approvingly.

‘What a pity Tom’s had to go out again. Poor Vanessa Trumball is worried about her blood pressure. You look so stunning. He’d be proud of you.’

My mother liked to maintain the fiction that my father entertained paternal feelings towards his daughters. He and I had met at breakfast that morning, not a good time for either of us. I was still tired after the journey and had slept badly. My bed was a converted paddle steamer from a derelict merry-go-round that Dimpsie had discovered long ago in a salvage yard. She had bought a little wooden bus for Kate and had converted them into beds by replacing the seats with boards and mattresses. She had painted them in bright colours and decorated our rooms to match. I had blue waves below the dado, sky and seagulls above. Kate had hedges and houses and Belisha beacons on her walls. These unusual sleeping quarters had been the envy of all our friends, but now the boat was too short and the high wooden sides delivered agonizing blows to my knees whenever I turned over. The plaster cast made things worse. A further cause of discomfort had been the turbulence caused by
the gaseous vegetables. I had gone down to breakfast feeling tense and exhausted.

My father had looked up from the newspaper he was reading. ‘Hello, Marigold. To what do we owe this unlooked-for condescension? If it’s money I’m sorry to tell you that there’s none to spare.’

I felt a violent return of all the old feelings.

‘Don’t be silly, Tom,’ Dimpsie said before I could reply. ‘I told you she’d broken her foot.’

My father glanced down at my leg. His hair, the exact colour of mine, was grizzled at the temples. Mine was straight as a pencil but his was curly and stood up in a shock above his white face, which now had a faint blush across the cheekbones where veins had broken. His once dramatic red and whiteness was merging to a generalized pink. His eyes, sharp with intelligence, looked at me through rimless hexagonally framed spectacles. ‘What sort of fracture is it?’

‘Comminuted.’

‘I suppose you continued to walk on it after you broke it?’

‘I didn’t know I had. Broken it, I mean.’

He snorted and returned his eye to the page.

‘What are you going to do today, darling?’ Dimpsie had plopped two poached eggs on top of the wholemeal brick on my plate. ‘Perhaps you ought to have a nap this afternoon so as to be sparkling for dinner with Evelyn. You can ring me when you’re ready to come home. I shan’t mind waiting up. I’ve some paperwork to do for the craft shop.’

‘Aren’t you coming?’

‘Oh no. Evelyn said I’d find her guests too stuffy and conventional. She said they bore her to tears but she feels she has a duty to entertain the county and, besides, Kingsley likes them. She’s always so unselfish.’

‘Rubbish!’ My father folded his paper neatly as he spoke, matching the edges precisely. ‘The county could get on perfectly well without being patronized by Evelyn. What she means is,
you aren’t smart enough. Evelyn’s a snob, but in this case I can hardly blame her. A fat, middle-aged hippy clinging to her Bohemian past, babbling about astrology and runes … you look and sound ridiculous.’

Though I ought to have known better, I was unable to suppress my indignation. ‘How
can
you be so unkind—’

‘Of course we all know what a kind daughter you are.’ My father stood up, brushing toast crumbs from his trousers. ‘When did you last visit? Was it at Christmas when your mother went down with flu? Oh, no, you were too busy. When was it? Let me see … perhaps two years ago when your grandmother was dying and your mother had to drive fifty miles each way to the hospital to see her? And of course the funeral wasn’t sufficiently important to stop you going to New York—’

‘I admit I’m a selfish beast. But that’s no reason why you should be so nasty—’

‘Please!’ Dimpsie clasped a slotted spoon to her bosom and looked agitated. ‘Don’t let’s quarrel on Marigold’s first morning home. Love and peace, that’s what matters.’

‘I’m going to make a couple of house calls.’ Tom went to the back door, took his scarf from a peg and wound it round his neck, smoothing the ends across his chest before putting on his overcoat. ‘Surgery’s at ten. Don’t be late.’

‘Oh!’ Dimpsie looked anxious. ‘But I made an appointment for Mrs Giddy at half-past nine. And Mr Honeybun at a quarter to. Yesterday you said you were starting at nine thirty—’

‘They can wait.’ Tom checked his appearance in the mirror, pulling back his lips to examine his teeth. I knew that women found my father peculiarly attractive, though he was not handsome, not to my eyes anyway. Perhaps it was his unassailable confidence they liked. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that ghastly woman that a little less gin won’t cure. As for Honeybun, he’s a ridiculous creature, puffed up with self-importance. And last week he refused to increase my overdraft. It’ll serve him right to have to kick his heels in the waiting room and be coughed
over by the pestilence-ridden until I’m ready to see him.’ He grinned at his own reflection and went out, allowing the door to bang behind him.

I looked at Dimpsie. ‘I’m sorry. I ought to have come home more. I ought to have been more help to you.’

‘Nonsense, darling. You’ve got your own life. Your father likes to tease. He’s devoted to all of us, really.’

I frowned, finding this impossible to believe.

‘Tell you what, ‘Dimpsie’s face brightened. ‘Let’s have some hot chocolate. That was always your favourite, wasn’t it?’ I nodded to please her, though in fact I was already feeling full from the eggs and toast. ‘And I know! Let’s see how this evening’s going to turn out.’ From the shelf by the Aga she fetched a book and three two-pence pieces. ‘We’ll cast the
I Ching
.’

‘Made it!’ breathed Dimpsie.

It was our third attempt to get up the hill. The lights of Shottestone Manor glittered on the thick ice resulting from the falling temperature. Someone opened the passenger door.

‘Marigold! You’re an angel to come!’ I recognized Isobel’s voice, though in the darkness I had only an impression of a pale face and an arm half inside the car. ‘Hello, Dimpsie. Sweet of you to bring her. I’ll get someone to drive her home.’

‘Oh, it’s all right. I don’t mind turning out—’

‘Don’t argue. I’m freezing to death.’ She laughed, a sound I hadn’t heard for years. But it was so familiar that my skin tingled faintly with the pleasure of recognition. ‘I’m practically naked to the waist. Buck up, Marigold, or I’ll shatter into a thousand pieces.’

‘You go in. I can’t hurry because of my leg.’

But Isobel insisted on helping me. By the time we had reached the hall door she was shuddering with cold, though I had hobbled as quickly as the cast allowed and had nearly fallen over twice.

‘For God’s sake, don’t break the other one. Not before you’ve had dinner, anyway. I asked for Charlotte Malakoff for pud, specially for you. It always used to be your favourite.’

‘You didn’t? Not really? But how truly kind! Fancy you remembering that.’

‘It
was
thoughtful of me, wasn’t it! Now stop a minute and stand under the light and let me look at you.’

The hall was still the brilliant shade of Chinese Emperor yellow I had always admired. Isobel and I paused beneath the brass lantern and stared at each other. I was quite as curious as she. Isobel was taller than me by four inches and her frame was much bigger than mine. She was not fat but curvy, with a pronounced bosom I envied. Her movements were sinuous, so the overall impression was one of litheness, like a well-fed cat. Her thick fair hair was bobbed at her shoulders and framed a long Grecian nose, delicately arched brows and slanting grey eyes. It was a lovely face. She used to complain that her lips were too thin and her chin too small. As her face was rarely still, these defects, if they existed, were insignificant. This particular evening she was looking tremendously chic in a strapless dress of dark green moiré. Round her neck was a string of green stones cut into large cubes and linked by gold threads. I felt suddenly conscious that my dress was second-hand and mended, my pearls fake and my leg wrapped in plaster.

‘You delicious little creature!’ She seized my earlobe and pinched it hard. ‘I’ve a good mind to send you straight home. Everyone’s going to be looking at
you
instead of me.’

She took my crutches from me and rested them against the massive hall table. I got that tingling feeling again when I saw it. Once Isobel and I had pretended to feed jam tarts to the lions that propped up the marble top, and there had been a row as apparently the table was by someone important called William Sussex. Or was it William Kent? Apparently it had taken Evelyn two hours and a packet of cotton buds to remove the jam.

‘Where did you get this gorgeous coat?’ Isobel helped me out of it. The hall was chilly despite a log fire. It had never been possible to heat Shottestone Manor adequately. I tried not to shiver too obviously.

‘I borrowed it from a friend. You’re looking wonderful.’

‘Oh, this old thing. It does for Mummy’s dreary dinners. But really, Marigold, it’s too annoying. How dare you make your old friends feel shabby by dropping down among us, wearing something that makes you look a spirit briefly visiting earth? Honestly, is that a fair return for my unselfishness about the pudding? You know I hate black cherries.’

‘Do you really think it will do? It’s only an old thing from Wardrobe. I had to steep the bits under the arms in Omo to get the sweat stains out.’

This was true. But I heard the old placatory tone in my voice.

‘It’s perfect. Come into the drawing room and meet the others.’ She lowered her voice as she handed back the crutches. ‘Did Dimpsie tell you about Rafe?’

I nodded.

‘He’s been so good. You’d hardly know he’s been through unimaginable hell. He was completely deaf for a while but thank God his hearing’s come back. Don’t mention wars or people dying if you can help it. He’s as brave as a lion but anyone would be knocked off their perch by something like that.’

‘Of course.’

‘As for Daddy, just smile and pretend everything’s fine. Oh Lord, it doesn’t sound as if it’s going to be much fun, does it? And the others are such bores … Never mind, we’ll be able to have a good talk while the men are sitting over their port. I’ve got masses to tell you. Come on.’