Seven For a Secret (15 page)

‘I'll ask her,' Heather conceded. ‘And now I really must go. I'll collect you later. What about the dog?'

‘Oh I can't have him here dear, you take him with you – he'll enjoy a run in your friend's garden. And don't worry about me, I'll arrange for a taxi home. I shall like that.' She patted Heather's arm, then gave her a small but forceful push before turning back to Edward.

Heather felt as if she'd been sent out to play. Oh good grief, she thought, how did I get stuck with the awful Jasper? He sat panting eagerly on the back seat waiting to be praised for having caused no plant-damage. In spite of having left all the windows open, she opened the car door to a newly resident smell, non-specific but definitely of dog – a mixture of Jasper's foul breath and flatulence. More of the qualities of ageing, Heather thought with depression. She felt superstitiously that her daughters should be kept safely away from the dying old man, as if decay was catching. It wasn't as if Edward had something that could be usefully warned against, as if he'd been a sixty-a-day smoker brought to premature decay by his own foolishness. Then she could have said to them after a dispiriting visit, ‘There, now you know what happens if you smoke', and let it stand as a warning. In his case, all she could say would be, ‘There, that's what happens if you're lucky enough to have a long life.' Better to let them believe in immortal youth.

Suzy knew who had been in the garden the night before. She knew even before she found his Zippo lighter on the grass by the dock. When Jasper started barking in the middle of the night, her light had been the first to go on, almost as if she had been waiting for Simon. She'd caught just the briefest sighting of him in his delicious leather jacket, sprinting down the lawn, past the paddock until he'd disappeared by the willows. For just one fleeting, thrilled, half-awake moment, she had imagined that he'd come for her. Now, in the midday heat she led her hot and dusty pony into the shade of the paddock oak tree and started to give him a thorough brushing. She worked hard, trying to eliminate by sheer mind-numbing physical effort the hopeless stupidity she'd felt after that blissful millisecond, when she realized exactly who Simon had come looking for. When, oh when, she pleaded to the guardian angels of adolescent girls, would she get a body like Kate's? Surely Kate, at very nearly fourteen, hadn't looked so like a juvenile stick-insect? Suzy leaned her head against the pony's chunky withers and wished she could weep dramatically. However hard she squeezed her eyelids and thought of the Ginger's death scene from Black Beauty, she couldn't manage to cry unless something physically hurt. She still easily howled for a grazed knee or banged elbow, but really creative crying, the sort where sad tears trickled down a perfectly still and beautiful face, this was beyond her. Perhaps if she could produce these instant magic tears, then Simon would just happen to come looking for his lighter, and find her, and comfort her . . .

‘What on earth are you doing?' Tamsin's strident voice startled the pony, and his head bounced up, knocking Suzy off-balance.

‘Bluebell! You stupid animal!' she yelled at him as she stumbled against the tree, grazing her arm. Tears did threaten then, just when she didn't want them.

‘Thump him. They have to learn,' Tamsin advised from a safe distance, leaning against the paddock fence.

‘No, he didn't mean it. You frightened him,' Suzy said, recovering quickly and stroking the pony calm again. His eyes were wary of Tamsin, who wore discomfiting fuchsia pink. ‘He's probably worried someone might want him to go out for a ride. He thinks it's too hot, and he doesn't want to run about or carry anyone.'

‘He's a bit small for carrying anyone over six,' Tamsin said scornfully. ‘How do you know what he's thinking anyway?
Do
they think?'

‘Bluebell does,' Suzy told her defiantly, continuing gently with her brushing. She felt as if Tamsin was insulting a favourite teddy bear, laughing at love for an outgrown toy. He was so comfortingly soft to lean on when she felt miserable, the least she could do was defend him.

Tamsin idly adjusted her bra strap, a habit that Suzy had more than once bravely told her was really annoying. The black elastic pinged against her chubby pink shoulder and she said, ‘Ouch that hurt. This thing is getting really
tight.
' Suzy went on brushing, too miserable to rise to the showing off. ‘You should have stayed over with me last night,' Tamsin started saying, getting on with the point of her visit, ‘Shane got
really
friendly.' She perched on top of the fence to get a good view of Suzy's reactions.

‘Oh yeah? So what happened?' Suzy asked.

‘Well, Dopey Darren was going off home with Loopy Lisa, and said to Shane “Are you coming?” and I looked at Shane and he looked at me and said “No not yet.”'

‘And? What then?'

‘Oh he had some more drinks and I asked him if he fancied a midnight swim, but he said he couldn't, he hadn't brought his stuff, so I said he could borrow Simon's, but really I thought we could just skinny-dip – Mum and Dad had gone indoors to start on the gin, and then he said no thanks again and went home. I think he took a couple of bottles of champagne with him, but don't tell Dad.'

‘Is that
it
?' Suzy put the brush away in her grooming kit and wiped her hands down her T-shirt. ‘Nothing else? No snogging in your changing hut?'

Tamsin looked a bit disconsolate. ‘Well no, not yet.' She grinned, recovering. ‘That'll be next time. When we go camping on the island.'

‘They don't like other dogs,' Julia greeted Heather before she'd even stepped out of the Renault. The two black labradors bounded around the car, sizing up Delia's shaggy terrier like a pair of swaggering teenage boys spoiling for a fight.

‘I'll put him on a lead and tie him to your fence under the tree then,' Heather said, fearful for her car seats as much as for the dog suffocating in the heat. She climbed out and hauled the nervous Jasper after her. It was clear that because she was actually paying for Heather's presence that day, Julia was going to be slow to treat her to the usual courtesies of friendship. It was the price of getting your hands dirty, Heather thought, knowing that if she was being employed to choose wallpaper (though not to hang it) or to advise on a revamped wardrobe (though not to sew up a hem) both she and Jasper would be immediately offered a cooling drink.

Julia was carrying a trug and was dressed for the kind of ladylike gardening that she preferred: deadheading the marguerites, collecting sprigs of mint for sauce, in a faded print frock which Heather knew Kate would kill for if she'd spotted it at the Scouts' jumble sale. ‘They won't need much attention will they?' Julia asked anxiously, as Heather lugged the plants out of the back of the car.

‘Practically none at all,' Heather reassured her. ‘Like anything in a pot, water and feeding are obviously important, but other than that,' and she paused, eyeing the trug full of dead petals and feeling irony creeping on, ‘these won't even need dead-heading. Now where are the pots and the compost?'

‘I had the garden centre boy take them straight through to the courtyard,' Julia said, leading Heather through her kitchen to a pair of French doors at the side of the house. Beyond was a small sheltered terrace, walled-in and cool, and furnished with five large terracotta pots and several plastic sacks of ericaceous compost.

‘Oh good, they sent the right stuff,' Heather said. ‘Nigel did explain they wouldn't grow in the chalky earth?'

‘Oh yes. But I wanted them here by the kitchen,' Julia said rather dreamily, ‘where I can see them and think of Italy.'

‘Italy?' Heather started splitting open the first bag of compost, unavoidably picturing Julia engaged in sex that was too debauched simply to require thinking of England.

‘Lake Maggiore. Charles and I used to go in the spring to see the camellias on Isola Bella. It's amazing how much you miss them.'

‘Camellias?'

‘No, husbands. Cup of tea?' Julia, at last remembering her manners, dashed around the kitchen filling the kettle and assembling crockery. ‘He's been dead four years now and there are still little things I can't quite do, like give his old spectacles to the Oxfam shop. They're always asking for them for short-sighted Africans. I keep them in a drawer by his side of the bed.'

Heather managed, just, not to ask if she meant myopic Africans. ‘I imagine that must happen to everyone,' she told her. ‘I'm sure there'd be loads of things of Tom's that I couldn't bear to get rid of if he suddenly died.' Heather stopped pouring compost into the third pot and thought for a moment. What
would
she find impossible to part with? Most of Tom's personal bits and pieces disappeared with him on such a regular basis that if the police came round and asked her to identify him from only his luggage (assuming some awful mishap where his body was distressingly unseeable) she'd probably be quite shamefully unsure of what was his. Even his watches changed frequently, as he picked up irresistible bargains in the world's best duty-free markets.

‘You do too much tidying up after they've gone,' Julia was saying, bringing tea out to Heather. ‘You arrange it so you can manage alone and then find you've overestimated what they actually
did
, because you know mostly when they get older they just sit about in a chair, trying to look important, with a large newspaper. When you've realized that then you have to find things to keep yourself busy.'

‘Like the Parish Council. You do a lot for that.'

Julia smiled. ‘It was my way of getting back into being social. People are very kind at first, they invite you everywhere and after a while, when you can face it, you invite them back. But really you are much preferred if you are half a couple.' She laughed. ‘The English are embarrassed about the solitary ones, in case they need something emotional that partners are supposed to give each other hidden away in privacy. Now I'm part of a committee instead of half of a pair, I've regained more or less a safe position.'

Heather dug and planted and thought about how Julia tended to call for jumble or donations at drinks time. Loneliness, she should have realized. Another time she would try not to see her as a nuisance. ‘What about marrying again?' she asked.

‘Impertinence!' Julia said with a grin. ‘And how many men in their sixties or thereabouts do you imagine are left freely available for more than ten minutes in this county? Or any county come to that?'

‘There's that writer staying with Margot,' Heather suggested disingenuously, turning her reddening face down and concentrating on heeling in the third of the plants.

‘Oh him. I've heard about him. Doesn't look at anything over twenty. That's the trouble with men,' Julia said in disgust, crashing her tea-cup into the sink. ‘
One
of the troubles, I should say. Now come out to the back and look at my garden.'

Heather could see what Julia had meant earlier about leaving herself too little to do. Her garden was planted and planned strictly for minimal maintenance, with well-controlled shrubs and large clumps of old-fashioned, sweet-smelling roses that needed little pruning. Where earth showed, a mulch of pulverised bark smothered any possible weeds which saved both time and Julia's ageing knees.

‘There's not that much to do, you see. I used to have a boy for mowing, but then I bought one of those hover things so at least there's that,' Julia said with a slight sigh.

‘Vegetables?' Heather suggested, looking at a rather sparse west-facing bed that cried out for bean poles and cabbages.

‘Dogs,' Julia explained, glancing back to where the pair of labradors lolled on the terrace, ensuring Jasper didn't dare make free with their territory.

Heather tidied the little patio, tied pale green name tags to the plants, collected her tools and Jasper, and prepared to leave Julia to think of how to fill the rest of the day.

‘I chose those plants very carefully you know. Things that meant something,' Julia told her as Heather loaded her car. ‘That one called “Charles Michael”, that was his name of course, so lucky to find a camellia called that. And “Coppelia”, we were very fond of the ballet.'

‘What about “Donation”?' Heather asked as she closed the boot. ‘Was that because of doing charity work?'

Julia chuckled. ‘Only in a manner of speaking. It was my little joke, Charles would have appreciated it. When he died it was very sudden, lots of bits of him were still in working order, so rather than waste them, someone out there has got a kidney, and the corneas went too. Donation, you see.'

As Tom loaded his bag into the car boot, hung his jacket from the rail over the back seat and settled himself in the car, he felt home life slipping away and work life taking over. The outside shell of home-Tom, the man who lolled about drinking beer in the afternoons, made comfortable love to a warm woman and generally pottered about in an unthinking way, taking for granted an easy family life, was being sloughed off like a snakeskin as he started the car's engine. Work-Tom took over. His clean pink hands on the steering wheel looked as antiseptic as those of a scrubbed-up surgeon just about to perform an appendectomy. He was already thinking ahead to the other life, weeks of conditioned air instead of fresh summer garden smells, dull flavourless mineral water instead of fragrant heady wine, but there could also be the rough sexual thrill of a wiry man's body to compensate for the lack of Heather. Hughie might or might not be on the crew this time. Half of him hoped he wouldn't be, but only the half that was frightened of aircraft and still wishing he didn't have to leave Oxfordshire. The other half of him, the bit that thought kerosene on the wind was a better perfume than Chanel No 5, was already mentally in a Singapore Sheraton pretending that he was engaged in nothing more devious than a spot of assisted wanking.