Seven For a Secret (27 page)

‘Whose idea was it about you being in it? Did Margot fix it?'

‘No, course not. She'd rather be with her dogs. No, Iain just rang and told me. You could come too, if you like, he said.'

Heather made a face. ‘I'd probably be discarded by the director for being too old and wrinkly – I can't face that much humiliation! You go and do it by yourself, I'm sure you'll have a wonderful time. But be careful.'

Kate, who had been halfway up the stairs, stopped and came back down a couple of steps. ‘What is there to be careful of?' she asked.

Heather wasn't sure what of, but was sure she had to say it. Just in case. ‘Oh you know, anything really.' She laughed lightly at her own lack of articulation. ‘Careful of the casting couch, I suppose.'

‘Oh Mum!' Kate, laughing scornfully, took the stairs three at a time and disappeared into her room.

When Kate arrived at the rectory, she was more nervous than she'd expected to be. She hovered by the doorway, watching everyone else rushing about as if they all had terribly important jobs and knew exactly what they should be doing. When Brian noticed her and sent her to the right room, all the crowd of actors in it seemed to know each other. She was fascinated that they all ‘darlinged' and air-kissed, just like people did on television when they were
acting
at being actors. She started to feel very grand, being ushered along to Make-up, a coach parked at the side of the house under the leafiest trees, presumably to try to cool the stifling effect of all the lightbulbs. The make-up girl, who looked so young Kate suspected she might be doing Work Experience, didn't given her much attention, just briskly brushing her cheeks and eyelids with choking clouds of various powders and frowning at her in the mirror as if she felt it was beneath her considerable dignity to waste her time on ‘Support' actors when there were stars to be cosseted. Wardrobe was even more disappointing. She joined a line of chain-smoking chatty women, loudly reminiscing about
Four Weddings
and was eventually handed, after the briefest up-and-down look at her body for size, a slinky black lycra dress with translucent sleeves – a better version of which she had lying scrunched up under her own bed. It was decided that her own shoes, her favourite black ones with a dolly bar, would ‘just about do'. ‘Give them a quick rub with your sleeve dear,' she was ordered. All around her she could hear busy gossip that included phrases like ‘getting into character', ‘God-awful
per diems
' and ‘No smoked salmon, can you believe it?' from the gaggle of professionals, but nobody spoke to her.

Where's Iain? she wondered, wishing a friendly face, especially his, would turn up so that she could be taken care of. She also wanted to show this over-confident, gabbling crew that she might not know them but she
did
know people who mattered. Just for once it was an enormous relief to see Simon. She caught sight of him, dressed as a waiter with his hair slicked back, and immediately burst into giggles. The dab-chick was all got up as a flunky, in a dinky white bow tie and trying to put on a face like Stephen Fry playing Jeeves. How, she wondered, could someone so scrupulously clean put up with having such thickly greased hair?

‘Jeez, you do look funny,' she told him.

‘You don't. You look amazing,' he said before he could stop himself.

Kate felt her face going pink under the powder. She wondered if it showed, as a blush now bloomed on Simon, though perhaps they didn't smother the men quite so much in cosmetics. ‘What have you got to do?' she asked. ‘Do you have to say anything?'

‘Definitely not, they'd never let me. I have to wander round with a tray of drinks and look busy. Shame I've not been cast as another guest, then we could talk to each other.'

‘True. Though I could be one of those women who runs off with the butler.'

‘Talking of parties . . .' Simon started, seeing an opportunity that might not come again, along with Kate in a good, almost flirty mood, ‘there's going to be an outdoor one on the island, probably on Friday, we thought, if it's a really hot night. Would you like to come? Loads of people will be there, I mean even kids, so it's no big deal, but it might be fun. I thought you'd want to be invited. I mean, it's not as if there's much to
do
round here.' He shrugged dismissively as if he didn't care one way or the other, just thought he'd let her know then she wouldn't feel left out.

‘Yeah. I'll come,' she told him, watching out of the corner of her eye the cast of extras being assembled for their scene. ‘Though on one of the days I've got this funeral to go to. I'll need cheering up after that.'

Driving over to Nigel's nursery that afternoon, Heather's thoughts were concentrated determinedly on plants for shady areas. She drove out of the village behind the council estate and thought of hellebores and polygonatums and tellimas. Martagon lilies could be good, she thought, as long as the client was interested enough to check for lily beetle, otherwise the plants would be a complete waste of time. Her mind ran on to violas and hostas and euphorbias, and possible colour combinations. Delia sat quietly by her side, now feeling slightly concerned that her new hat still wasn't grand enough to rival the glorious lime green straw cartwheel that Clarissa had been wearing at Margot's barbecue. For all its ribbons and roses that she had been so thrilled with, it somehow wasn't
magnificent
compared with the careless flamboyance of Nigel's mother. All her life Delia had aspired to discreet good taste only to discover that there were social circles in which this was simply prissy gentility. It was all to do with class, she concluded, sighing to herself. She was, though, very much looking forward to the promised tour of Clarissa's famous rose garden and some tips on the eradication of black spot. In Putney she had a small row of hybrid teas out in the small garden at the back of the flat.

‘Do you think Clarissa will be able to tell me, without actually seeing them, whether I'm over-pruning? My roses do seem to end up a bit on the scraggy side,' she asked Heather anxiously.

‘
I
can tell you that – you
are
over-pruning. But you have also got some varieties that really aren't going to get very big, anyway. Why not intersperse with the odd shrub rose, plus a climber or two along the wall behind them? Then you'd have a wonderful display, much more extensive. And think of the heavenly scent.'

‘Hmm, perhaps. I'll see what Clarissa thinks.'

Heather smiled to herself and understood the subtext: her mother couldn't believe that Heather
really
knew about plants, especially roses: that was for her own generation, and best of all it was for
men
, preferably the sort who grew exhibition standard onions and the sort of long, pale, flawless carrots that always made her think of underused penises. It would go well against the grain to acknowledge that Heather actually knew something that Delia didn't. Delia wasn't sure about rambling roses either, Heather recalled from the days when, as a young and self-conscious teenager, she'd been uncomfortably certain that the creepy man next door was always fiddling with his marrows whenever she went out to sunbathe in her bikini. She'd crossly suggested to her mother that trellis and a good thick and thorny climbing rose might keep the man's prying eyes away from her. Delia had said that climbers were untidy things and got out of control. Heather had argued that it was the man next door who needed controlling and Delia had told her not to be so silly, he was perfectly respectable, an executive in Local Government and a member of the Round Table, so he couldn't be spying on her, could he? ‘And besides, if you will go making an exhibition of yourself . . .' had closed the conversation on rambling roses.

They'd reached the far side of the village, out beyond the estate and the green, when Heather's phone rang. Delia tutted and muttered something about concentrating on one thing at a time as Heather fumbled with the aerial.

‘Don't you ever look in your rear-view mirror?' Iain's voice, jaunty with amusement, purred down the line to her. Heather's right hand twitched on the steering wheel as she glanced into the mirror, trying to look indifferent through her soaring blood pressure. The scarlet Mercedes was following her round a slow bend at a discreet but unnerving distance, and she felt in danger of driving into a ditch.

‘Yes Kate, I'll be home for supper, no problem,' she heard herself saying, sure that her nose was growing from telling lies.

Iain laughed softly. ‘How about having supper with me? We could go out somewhere, go to London if you like.'

Heather could feel Delia listening hard and wondered if her hearing was still so sharp that she'd be able to make out that this was a man's voice, nothing like Kate's. She jammed the phone hard against her ear, just in case, and thought how out of practice at this sort of thing she was – she should have pretended it was the plumber. It would have been better not to do any pretending at all, but she felt it wouldn't be half as much fun.

‘Er . . . no. Well not tonight anyway,' she replied rather squeakily, hoping she wouldn't giggle.

‘Another night? There's something I really need to talk to you about,' Iain persisted, clearly enjoying her predicament.

‘Maybe, I'm not sure – we'll talk about it later. Oh and be an angel and get the spaghetti out of the freezer for me would you please?' Heather felt quite delighted with her inventiveness, but instantly realized there would be no defrosting pasta sitting on the kitchen worktop when they got back. Delia would notice, no question. Kate would be told off and not know what on earth was the problem, and so the web of falsehoods would weave itself in awful knots.

‘Certainly, no problem. I'll be the
perfect
angel,' Iain said, and then rang off.

‘Was that Kate? I thought she'd gone off filming,' Delia said with a disapproving sniff.

‘Hmm. Yes, just wanted to know, er, if I'd be back later. I expect she wants to borrow money or something. Perhaps she's going out with Annabelle.'

They'd reached the nursery by now. Delia stepped out and looked across the Renault roof at Heather. It was a look of deeply speculative suspicion, one Heather, with her life of more or less tedious respectability, hadn't seen for years. It told her that her mother thought she was Up To No Good, and it made her feel quite sparky inside. About time I had some fun, she thought as she returned her mother's frown with a wide and uncontrollable smile.

She was wrong if she thought she'd heard the last of Iain for that day. Delia was dispatched to Nigel's ancestral home for her rose-garden tour and a cream tea, while Heather went into the unusually spruce coach-house office to meet her new client. ‘Nigel, you've tidied up,' she commented as she sat down next to the window and stroked his enormous cat.

‘Did it for you. Didn't want this chap to be put off
you
by the appalling state of
me
. I want him to want you to buy
everything
I've got out here.' He waved his arm in the direction of the greenhouses and poly-tunnels beyond the stable yard. ‘Then I can sell up and get rid of the whole sodding lot. I quite fancy a gallery next . . .' Nigel was off into dreamland, and Heather glanced out of the window. The cherry Mercedes slid round the corner and pulled up across the yard with Iain's hand waving gently to her out of the window. The car then circled with hardly a sound and drove away, back towards the road. She stifled a giggle. The awful man was following her, surreptitiously chasing her, blatantly amusing himself. How much more fun Iain was as a new secret than as the old one. She was feeling just as she had when he had boldly driven the E-type into the staff car park at school, blocking everyone's exit, and waited for her Latin class to finish on Wednesday lunch-times. Then he'd whisked her to the pub, sometimes cramming a friend or two into the seat with her, her white PVC mac covering her uniform, and her tie stuffed in its pocket.

While Nigel ranted on about the awfulness of trade and the despicable tendency of plants to die on him, she realized that if she got the opportunity she would definitely take the chance of a night of passion with Iain. If Tom was about to leave her, she no longer had anyone who cared whether she did or not. She counted up in her head the number of men she'd slept with in her life. Only five (three of them eager but hopeless boys from college) seemed a minute collection for someone who'd been part of the free-love end of the sixties. Iain wouldn't even add to the total, and besides, surely one's very own ex-husband didn't count?

Delia really felt she could have done justice to a house like Clarissa's. It was Palladian and golden, with parterres and rose gardens, and plenty of sheltered sunny niches for outdoor tea with cakes she would neither have made herself nor bought in Safeway. You had to have servants, a cook, staff to enable you to rise above the mundane and to glory in the architecture, the vista, the sumptuousness – although what Delia could see of the curtains seemed to be shockingly faded. But there was a certain nobility about the rotting away of grand things, she thought. Polyester/cotton velvet falling to shreds could only look tawdry, ancient silk velvet could not. She could have adapted to this sort of thing very easily, had life's cards been differently dealt. She could have locked the door of the Putney flat and walked away without ever once looking back if she'd had somewhere glorious like this to move on to. Perhaps if Heather had only . . . but that was long ago, and in Scotland, and only the damp and the chill and the loneliness had made any impact on her. What a silly child she'd been, stupidly impulsive and with neither staying power nor sense of history. For now, Delia was content to sit on the upper terrace, looking across the fancy iron balustrade towards Clarissa's magnificent roses, waiting for tea and enjoying the certainty that her new hat from Oxford was, after all her trepidation in the car,
just right
. Clarissa, who was wearing a straw hat so ragged Delia at first thought it was a piece of old sacking, had actually been impressed enough to make just the right admiring comments before disappearing into the house to organize tea. Delia trusted she had done this by pulling on a bell-rope of age-matted
petit point
, as in a historical TV costume drama.