The Colonel's Daughter (15 page)

‘Oh Guy . . .' Penelope's hands were rammed against her mouth. Guy stared, horrified. For a second, he imagined that neither words nor tears would come gushing out from between the fingers, but blood.

‘Penelope . . .'

‘Don't speak! I can't listen to anything!'

‘It was terribly innocent, Penelope.'

‘Innocent! Don't Guy!
Don't
! You make me want to be sick. You make me want to die!'

The act innocent because so joyful, he thought, yet the inspiration cruel: two people who approach each other, aware of the invisible onlooker, whose torment drives them on. As they enfold each other, there she is in the touch and push of their bodies, there she is tangled in their moist hair, there she is in their breaths. And afterwards – the glorious knowledge that together they had conquered her, where each had failed to conquer alone. As they walk back, they hear it, the click-clack of Penelope's high heels, the clink and trinkle of Mother's bracelets. Perfect, thinks Guy. Perfect, thinks Lorna.

*

The Princesse de Villemorin sat alone by the first fire of September. The London accountant had been and gone, the Paris gallery owner had been and gone. She was left with their sums and her misery.

Maurice announced himself. Penelope sipped at her whisky and didn't turn. A reminder, Madame, says Maurice, only a
reminder
that no one in the château has received any
salaire
this month . . .

She waved him away. Let them all desert her. Nothing mattered any more. Only the plans she made in the golden whisky haze: she would buy bronze in quantities no mortal could dream of owning, she would fill the laundry with bronze, she would lay her head on the vast, unmoving lumps of bronze and let her tears flow onto its darkness.

I know him, she whispers to the spent fire, I know he will trade his Sydney teacher (firm though her breasts are, clever though her damned head has always been) for his own statues. The artist in him will win and without money the artist in him will pine. The mouldering de Villemorin jewels will go. They must all go. And Maurice must realise that no one can be paid now, not till I have wedged that studio with what he calls his ‘substance'. Life drowns and gurgles in the sea of the whisky glass. Life sleeps. I am Sleeping Beauty (‘What a joke, at your age, Mother!') and I refuse to wake up till the prince has picked his way through the briars and grown roses of my daughter's mind and comes crashing down here, his weight as potent as the weight of bronze, to crush me and still me with life.

Guy stayed with Lorna till his money and the summer ran out, then made his way south to the Princesse de Villemorin's château.

On her long flight home to Sydney, Lorna ate none of the food offered her and stayed absolutely still in her seat, talking to no one. Around her parting from Guy, a man who, had she found him before he strayed into a bar one night and met her mother, she believed she might have loved, she concocted an essay subject for her sixth-form students: “What is the function of the creative artist in our materialistic society?” She saw the blackboard where she would write up the title. She saw the thirty or so faces staring at it with anxious frowns. One of the girls raised her hand. ‘Please, miss, I don't understand.'

Words With Marigold

I don't know why me. I don't know why you want to talk to me. I'm no different from anyone. I mean, there are hundreds – thousands – of girls like me, aren't there? Perhaps you're going to talk to us all, are you? Lost Generation, or whatever it is they call us. I've always wondered how they do surveys. I bet they take a tiny sample of people and call it a silent majority. I mean, I bet they can't be bothered to go round asking hundreds of people the same stupid questions. Except I met one on a train once. A survey person. She tried to make me answer things like ‘How frequently do you travel on this train?' I said, that's my business,
dearie
, I said I don't own much, but I own what I do and why I do it. She went puce. I followed her down into First Class and she got this group of men in business suits and they invited her to sit down. I suppose it was a great day for them. I suppose they'd been longing for years for someone to ask them what they were doing on that train! They were drinking whiskies an' that. They travelled on that train every day.

I'm not extraordinary though. I suppose it's considered extraordinary to have a termination at sixteen, but I can tell you it isn't, if that's what you're thinking. I mean, it's no more extraordinary than having a fuck. In fact, that's all it is, if you think about it. A screw. With consequences. No one worries about anyone having a screw, less they're real actual kids or something. But try getting a termination at sixteen. I mean the stuff you have to put up with. Fine till they suss your age. I mean, perfectly okay an' that, but then they start on at you. They start implying your whole life could be fucked, like you've screwed your whole personality and your whole chances and you're psychologically damaged. They want to make you start believing these things or they wouldn't just act like that, would they? And the stuff about your parents. They imply your Mum's to blame or something because you're too young to think for yourself. They say things like, ‘Was your Mother aware of your relationship?' So I said, no love, my Mum's not aware of any sodding thing these days. She's out of her mind most of the time on Special Brew. And her eyes are going as well – disappearing inside her flesh. She's put on three stone since last year.

But actually that is when things started to get bad. I'd have said I was quite alright, like you know, quite happy till that all began. I was working for my O-levels. Biology was my best subject. Biology and Art, but they said you can't take Art. I was okay at Maths. Not fantastic, you know, but okay. I could have got something like a C or something. Eddie used to help me with Maths. I mean quite a lot. Not just five minutes to get you through your homework, but he'd sit down with me when Mum was getting tea and he used to say, Marigold, you've got this tendency to think in straight lines and what I've got to do is to help you think in circles or spirals. He had a name for this kind of thinking. He was very interesting about it and it really started to help me because I'd tended to think there was always one way of doing something and this was the
meant
way. Because at school they never noticed things like how you were thinking, I mean they didn't have time, did they, but Eddie said he'd make time and he did.

I really enjoyed Maths homework after Eddie started to help me. I'd bring extra work home and you could just hear the teachers thinking God, Marigold Rickards taking extra Maths to do at home! But my results got better. It was terrific seeing the results get good. I mean, let's not exaggerate. I'd never be a mathematician or anything, like I could be a painter probably if I could get into art school and get my technique better. I still think I could be a painter. I mean I haven't lost hope, have I, and I know about one of the medical aspects of people in depressions is they lose hope. They just look into the future and see black or brown or something, just some dark colour and nothing in it. But I don't. I mean, I even write letters to people asking them for money to help me get through art college. I don't get any money back, but I keep writing, don't I, so that must be a good sign. I wrote to Lady Falkender. Someone told me she was a patron of the arts or whatever. Do you think she'll write back or send me something? I mean, I don't know. I can't really imagine how Lady Falkender lives, can you? I don't know if she'd write to someone like me.

I've thought of writing to Eddie, except neither of us – my Mum nor me – know his address. And I bet it wouldn't do any good to write. But it did all start then, when I think about it. Till Eddie left our house I think we were alright. They'd have rows, Eddie and my Mum, but not terrible ones. He never hit her. I mean, don't get me wrong, he wasn't at all a violent person. He liked jokes. He'd make jokes the minute he woke up. Sometimes his jokes got on my wick, but other times I'd think, he kind of keeps us all going and if he weren't here or something we'd probably have nothing to laugh at and we'd just go quiet like I suppose we must have been before. I suppose when I think about it, I dreaded the idea of Eddie leaving us. I mean I knew my Mum would just go to bits, because you could tell what he was to her. There was nothing she wouldn't do for him. He got the works. Best food she could afford, terrific ironing, thermos washed up, cufflinks and stuff at Christmas . . .

It was the age difference, I think. They were about the same age about, but she looked older. I don't blame him. He was with us for seven years and that's quite long, isn't it? I mean, I was nine or nearly nine when he came. And he never said, I don't think he said Marigold's a fucking nuisance and got me palmed off with neighbours. He just accepted me and treated me like his own kid. I mean, better than some fathers are to their kids. Quite a bit better. Like helping me with my Maths I told you about. And other things. They used to go on outings to London and he'd always say, let's take Marigold, she should have the chance to see the big city an' that. His favourite thing in London was the Science Museum. He knew masses about some of the old compasses and chronometers. There was this man who invented a type of chronometer and he was a kind of hero for Eddie. Harrison. I don't know which century he was. Before Nelson, probably.

My Mum wasn't too interested in chronometers, actually. But I don't think it was that. I mean, you wouldn't leave someone because they weren't interested in something, would you? I think it was definitely the other girl he met. She was some sort of secretary at the engineering works where he worked. I only saw her once, but I think she was quite kind of posh an' spoke all terrific an' wore skirts with linings in them. Know the type I mean? She wasn't specially pretty or anything. Not that I could see. But she was lots younger than my Mum. I'd say she was twenty-eight or nine. And I think she hypnotised Eddie by being this different kind of person and he'd come home and start correcting my Mum's grammar. And my Mum got scared. I mean, this was the pitiful thing. She got frightened she'd say things wrong. She
wanted
her grammar to be better, to please Eddie. And food. He bought my Mum a book called French Cooking Explained. She tried to do things from it for a bit till she sussed the flippin' insult in all that. Then she put the book in the oven and the oven caught fire and that was the first time I ever saw Eddie really angry with her. I heard him yelling at her and I came down and the kitchen was covered with white stuff from the fire extinguisher, and then my Mum rushed past me and up to the toilet and sicked up. I think she knew that was the end with Eddie. I don't think she'd heard about the girl at work by then. But she knew it was all over for her. I mean, you do, I think. Don't you think? One minute you don't know and then another one minute passes and that's the crucial one, like going into a ghost train, know what I mean? Like this one minute is much longer than even longer, darker things like ghost trains. D'you get it? I got it there and then. I could see that was the crucial minute and our lives wouldn't go on like they were.

My Mum blames Eddie. She thinks she's finished now. She's only forty-four. Eddie left some socks and things behind and she burned these in the yard. I started going off her when she did this. Up till then, I'd felt really sorry for her. I'd hear her crying through the wall. I used to make a tray of tea and go and sit on her bed. Waste of time though. She'd just snivel about ‘getting even' and I went off her when she'd start on this. 'Cos it's Eddie's life as well as hers, isn't it? Like in my case it's Alan's life as well as mine. Least, that's what I've had to tell myself. No one's got control. You can be a king of somewhere or the head of a billion-pound corporation or whatever and still get clobbered. Only thing is you've got money if you're a king or something or the head of a billion-pound whatsit. So you can go to art college. Providing they'll take you. You don't have to write begging letters to people. And you've got O-levels.

My Maths got terrible. I'd relied on Eddie, hadn't I? I couldn't get myself to think in spirals or whatever. I lost the knack. So I knew I wouldn't get Maths O. Not even a C or something. I could have got biology because my drawings were good, I mean they looked professional and the drawings are half of it with biology: cross-section of the broad bean, mucor heads, habitat of the brown water beetle . . . I don't know about Eng Lit. I might have got it.
As You Like It
we did. Alan told me
As You Like It
is quite an important play, but I kept thinking, I don't know what they're doing exactly.

I think I'm attracted to people who want to help me. Or they're attracted to me. Alan wanted to help me. I went to get my Mum out of the pub one night, 'cos she couldn't move. She was sitting in a corner, sweating. She used to dribble when she got to this state. Dribble and burp and sometimes sick up. Now I can't stand to see a person drunk. Specially her. I run a mile. I can't go near them or touch them. Alan helped me out with her. I got her to bed and Alan stayed. I don't mean he forced himself on me. I mean, what I did was talk. Like I'm talking to you, but better, because I was deeply attracted to Alan. I mean I'd had some boys, Badger Reid from school and Billy Tansley who thought he was Don Juan 'cos he'd got a second-hand Suzuki! But they were for laughs. Rubbish! Alan was older, see. I mean he was a mature man.

He had this cottage. It's called Green End. It's down a track, miles from anything. He thinks the world of it. He says if he lived in town, he'd wind up killing someone. I don't think he likes people. He likes women. He's a very attractive man.