Slightly Foxed (10 page)

worldly-wise it sometimes felt as though she were the adult

and I were the child. A little time to be me would be welcome.

"Wow." Florence looked stunned. She'd obviously thought

she'd have to put up more of an argument than that. "That's

great! Thanks, Mum. Oh and you don't have to worry about

spending money, 'cause Dad's already said he'll let me have a

grand. For clothes and stuff."

Florence skipped out of the room, leaving her dirty plate

on the table and me with a flare of resentment firing off in my

chest. Maybe I was wrong, telling Alasdair that I wanted no

money from him, and if he wanted to give Florence something

that was between them. Okay, so it ensured that she never

went without school uniform or riding lessons or anything else

it entered her head to ask for, but was it giving her a sense of

values? A thousand pounds, just for a couple of weeks in

London? I swallowed the knot of bitterness in my throat.

Perhaps she could lend me a tenner.

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Slightly Foxed

by Jane Lovering

I went back to work, and Jace and I settled back into our

usual pattern of bitching about Simon during his absences

and working conspicuously hard when he was present. The

book group met, Mrs. Searle's book choice proving to be a

romantic novel which Simon refused to stock and I'd had to

borrow from the library where they'd only had the large-print

version. I'd read it in one evening and it was like being

shouted at by Barbara Cartland.

Leo hadn't rung. Maybe it had been one of those Brief

Encounter things.

"What I am not understanding is"—Jacinta heaved a huge

box of books across the floor—"why you are not asking him

about his wife?" She slit the cardboard side of the box and

books spilled out. "Maybe he is hating her and is hiring a

missionary to kill her."

"Mercenary." I sorted through the tumbled books which lay

like stunned pigeons over the matting. "And it's not really the

sort of thing you can come out with, is it? 'Oh, sorry your wife

was tragically killed, did you love her at all? And, by the way,

how would you say I compare in the looks stakes?' Urgh, no.

After all, what would I have done if he'd spent the next hour

telling me how gorgeous and wonderful she was and how

much he missed her?"

"Helped him to miss her a little less?"

"He's not really like that, Jace." I clasped a rather dog-

eared Keats to my sweater. "He's shy and kind of hidden.

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Keeps everything under cover. If I hadn't read his poetry I'd

probably think he was a bit cold, but he's so much more than

that underneath."

"Then you must get underneath him." Jace started ticking

books off the packing list.

"If only it was that easy," I began, but she looked at me

sternly.

"Alys, I know a lot about men, and this I know, they do

not tell you things that you
need
to know, they tell you that

which they are
wishing to say
. And if you are being serious

over this man, you are needing to be talking much with him

over things which are not said. They are the important things,

Alys, the things which are in the head."

"But he hasn't rung me, so how can I talk to him? Maybe

he wasn't really that keen on me." I remembered the kiss in

the stable. "Or at least, maybe he didn't feel the same way

after I'd left."

"Are you thinking seriously about him?" Jace handed me

the book list.

"I'm not sure."

"What he looks like?"

"Oh, about six foot, dark hair, needs a good cut, green

eyes. Nice face, he's got the whole cheekbones thing going

on. Long legs, good body, I mean—whew, yes, good body. He

looks a bit unkempt, a bit slept in. Oh, and he bites his nails."

"Alys, if you want this man you must show him that you

are wanting him! If you
really
want him then you will find a

way."

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All the way home on the bus, I thought about Jacinta's

words and by the time I'd arrived I was determined. Okay, so

I didn't have his number, but he ran a commercial business.

He wasn't going to be Mr. Elusive, was he? It was obvious—

he doesn't ring me, so I ring him. Would he think I was

chasing him? But, did it matter?
If you
really
want him
,

Jacinta had said, and I did really want him, didn't I?

As I went through the front door, I became aware that the

flat smelled strange. But I ignored it, desperate to carry out

my plan before Florence got home and started asking

awkward questions. I found a directory service, got the

number for Charlton Hawsell Stud, and was halfway through

dialling when my foot found the source of the odd smell.

"Grainger!" I bellowed, my toes squishing about in a

puddle of semisolid coldness. "You complete
bastard
."

Grainger half raised a bleary eyelid as he lay in his current

comatosery, a basket of clean but unironed washing. "What

do you think your litter tray is
for
?" I hopped off across the

floor, berating the cat all the while, although he had long

since furled his eyelid back down like a blind, proclaiming him

to be a cat Seriously Asleep.

While I was standing poised on one leg with the other foot

in the sink like an inferior Degas painting, Florence came

bustling through. She was laden with bags and carrying a

bunch of flowers which had definitely gone past their best.

She poked them individually into the tops of the glass jars

and bottles awaiting their visit to the recycling bin.

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"I'm not even going to ask," she said, watching me

perched less-than-athletically, sponging off my offending foot

under the tap.

"Well, I am. What on earth are you doing with those

flowers?"

A superannuated lupin drooped pathetically from the neck

of a milk bottle and Florence dreamily tried to re-erect it.

"They'd been left next door with Mr. Roberts last week. But

he had to go down to Sheffield because his mother had had

another fall, and he completely forgot that he'd got them.

When he saw me coming up the stairs he gave them to me.

There's a card."

I found it, sticking wetly to the stem of a white carnation.

Looking forward to seeing you again. Regards, Leo.
I grasped

the damp square of cardboard as though it was a message

from the gods. He'd sent me flowers! But—I regarded the

senior citizens of the bouquet world slumped in the assorted

glassware—that had been last week and he still hadn't rung. I

mean, he'd had his chance, hadn't he?

Oh, what the hell. I could at least ring to say thank-you for

the flowers.

"Charlton Hawsell Stud, Leo Forrester speaking."

"Horny. I mean, hello. Hello, Leo, it's Alys. Alys Hunter?"

"Yes, Alys, I know who you are. It's so lovely to hear from

you."

Well, he sounded genuinely pleased. I thanked him for the

flowers and he apologised for not having rung me yet, but

explained that, "I've been blue-arsed fly busy here." There

was a bit of a pause after that, long enough for me to think

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that he didn't really want to speak to me at all. Then he

cleared his throat. "Um, Alys, look." Here it came, the big

brush-off speech. "I'm really crappy on the phone. I can come

up to York, leave my stud manager in charge of the place for

a couple of days. I wondered, would next Tuesday be all

right?"

"Oh! Next Tuesday is my birthday."

"Sorry, is that a problem?"

So, did I come out and admit that I was such a miserable

old sod that my birthday evening was to have been spent

admiring Johnny Depp's very
particular
walk in
Pirates of the

Caribbean
, possibly after a swift gin and tonic in the Ha-Ha

bar with Jace? And Mrs. Treadgold had made me a cake.

Coffee Victoria sponge, my favourite. "Well, I had been

intending to catch a gig at the jazz club, but I can easily give

that a miss. Maybe we could go for dinner."

"Meet you at the station at eightish? The best train for me

to catch is due in York at seven forty-five. Look, sorry Alys,

but I really have to rush off now."

"I'll see you next Tuesday." But I was talking to a dead

line, he'd already gone. I hugged myself in an over-rush of

silent glee, seizing a senile gypsophilia stem and whirling it

over my head. "She shoots, she scores. And the crowd goes

mad!"

"They're not the only ones. Have you gone completely off

your elderly trolley, Mother?" Florence had her entire

wardrobe spread over the floor in the living room and was

piecing together outfits which looked more like piece than

outfit.

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"Oh Lord. You're off tomorrow, aren't you? Piers not here,

helping you to pack?"

"Nah, he's busy looking at flats."

Piers currently lived in a self-contained flat attached to

Alasdair and Tamar's house. I wasn't surprised he wanted to

move. It must be tricky having a constant procession of

girlfriends pass by right under your mother's eye. It would be

like permanently having sex in public. Unless that was what

turned him on. Eww, I did
not
want that thought. "You'll miss

him when he's not there every time you go over."

Florence stuffed another pair of micro-knickers into her

bag. "Yeah. Piers is cool. Oh, by the way Mum, before I

forget." She pulled a long, heavy-looking parcel from

underneath the bag. "Happy birthday for next Tuesday. You

can open it now, if you want."

"Oh, thank you, darling." I tried to pretend surprise but I

could feel the glass weight in my hand. It felt as though she'd

already framed the photographs. "Oh. What a lovely—

chopping board."

"Yeah, well, I noticed the worktop's getting a bit scratched.

Oh, and there's a card."

This one bore a joke at which I guffawed appreciatively

and silently swore to get Jacinta to explain to me. Maybe the

photographs hadn't come out as well as Florrie had hoped.

She was self-indulgently vain, in the way that only a beautiful

sixteen-year-old girl could be.

I went to bed and left her to her packing, so that I could

lie under the deep gaze of Theo Wood. Better take that down

before next Tuesday, I thought to myself. Not many men like

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having an oversized version of their own faces criticising their

seduction techniques.

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88

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by Jane Lovering

Next morning I waved Florence off on the early London

train, in company with Tina, Keisha's mother, both of us

looking as though we were sending a couple of five-year-olds

off on their first day of school. "They'll be fine," Tina

reassured me. "Lex has turned into a sensible girl now she's

got the baby and Stevie to look after. What's Florence most

keen to do down in London?"

"She wants to spend loads of cash, obviously, and her

Dad's decided to indulge that particular whim so..."

Tina sighed in sympathy, having brought up her three girls

with the minimum of paternal contribution, although hers had

been the result of a decamping husband rather than a moral

stand. "You're from London, right, Alys? Is she going to visit

any relatives while she's there?"

Now it was my turn to sigh. "No. My parents died when I

was at university, I've no relatives there any more. She'll be

quite happy to go along with whatever Keisha wants to do, I

should think."

Tina and I glanced at each other nervously, full of

memories of what we had wanted to do when we were

sixteen, and imaginings of what we would have done if let

loose with pockets full of money and only a twenty-two-year-

old sister in charge. "They're sensible girls," Tina said

hopefully. "They'll have fun."

Yeah, I thought miserably as I caught the bus to take me

from the station to Webbe's. They'll have fun and sex and

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booze and dancing and boys and wild nights, and it's not fair!

I was going to miss having Florence and, by extension, Piers

around the flat. She might be a grumpy, uncommunicative

devourer of all the biscuits, but she was
my
grumpy,

uncommunicative devourer.

"Wish I was going to London with not a care in the world,"

I muttered to Jace as I slumped over the till.

"But then you would not be seeing your lovely man," she

pointed out. "You cannot have everybody's life, Alys."

"I know, I know. Take no notice of me, I'm just feeling