The Four of Us (51 page)

Artemis put her empty cocoa mug on the coffee table, rose to her feet and stretched, myriad lace ruffles rippling down her arms. ‘No disrespect, Primmie, but I can't quite see Kiki hitting it off with a retired friend of Matt's.'

Primmie was about to correct Artemis's assumption that Brett was of pensionable age and then decided against it. It would do for another day. For the moment, it was too late and she was too tired.

She did wonder, though, as she went to bed, if she'd been a little naive in assuming that Kiki and Brett had met up for a drink for no other reason than to chat about a mutual love of rock and roll – and when, much later, the sound of the front door being opened woke her and she saw by the clock that stood next to her photograph of Destiny, that it was ten past three, she was almost a hundred per cent sure she had been naive.

The next morning, at breakfast, no one brought up the subject of Kiki's evening out with Brett Kenwyn. Kiki, much to everyone's surprise, was with them for breakfast, looking incredibly sparky in a mint-green T-shirt, faded jeans and Cuban-heeled boots.

‘Nice to see you've got your luggage back, Tem,' she said as Artemis appeared wearing a matronly cream silk dress and jacket ensemble. ‘But there's no garden party in Calleloe today. If all your clothes are as unsuitable as that Queen Elizabeth-style outfit then I suggest you hit the shops in Truro. And if you don't want to go as far as Truro, there's always the Oxfam shop in Helston.'

Artemis gave a ladylike shudder. ‘
You
may be able to get away with shopping at Oxfam. You're only a size ten. I couldn't. Not even if I wanted to, which I don't. I didn't look good in jeans when I was sixteen and I certainly wouldn't look good in them now. I shall find out where the nearest Jaeger, stockist is and buy myself a whole new wardrobe of classic country clothes.'

‘Well, don't go by yourself or the chances are you'll still end up looking like an aged member of the Royal family.' Kiki helped herself to a slice of toast from the toaster and began slathering it with honey. ‘Take Geraldine or me with you.'

‘I notice you don't suggest I go with her,' Primmie said in pretended umbrage as she spooned scrambled eggs on to plates. ‘Is that because you don't think much of my dress sense either?'

Kiki eyed Primmie's aged Marks & Spencer pleated skirt, well-worn sweater and flat shoes, and grinned. ‘You're not exactly cutting edge, Prim.'

‘No, but I'm comfy. Does anyone want more scrambled egg? There's still lots left.'

‘Not for me.' Geraldine poured herself a black coffee. ‘Is it Brett Kenwyn I can hear in the yard? He's nice and early.'

‘He is considering he had such a late night,' Primmie said with an impish look towards Kiki

Kiki didn't rise to the bait. Still eating toast, she walked across the kitchen to the door leading into the porch, Rags at her heels. ‘I'm going to walk Rags,' she said laconically, ‘and then I may try my hand at a bit of building work.'

The instant the porch door closed behind her, they all three left the table and crossed to the window.

Straight as an arrow, Kiki walked over to where Brett was unloading bags of cement from the back of a van.

‘I know what you're both thinking,' Artemis said in shocked tones, ‘but you can't be right. He's young enough to be her son.'

‘So he is, at a pinch,' Geraldine said dryly. ‘It won't weigh with Kiki, though. I never thought the day would come when I would say this, but I do have a sneaking admiration for her.'

‘Mine isn't sneaking,' Primmie said as Brett's handsome face lit up at the sight of Kiki's approach. ‘It's boundless.'

As the days passed and it became accepted that Kiki and Brett were a romantic item, Primmie's bemused admiration grew. It was the fact that Kiki and Brett managed to look like a regular couple, not a bizarre oddity, that most impressed her. She wasn't sure, but she thought it was because Kiki's emotional and mental development had, in many respects, been set in stone when she was a teenager. Whatever it was, it was keeping tongues in Calleloe happily wagging.

‘Kiki's twenty feet high on a rafter, nails between her teeth, a workman's tool belt slung around her hips and a hammer in her hand,' Artemis said, as, the goat shed completed, Brett began work on the barn. ‘Do you think she's a help to him, or a hindrance?'

‘God knows.' Geraldine gave a Gallic shrug of her shoulders. ‘But at least she'll be out of our hair tomorrow, when the children arrive. And at least we don't have to worry about where she's going to sleep whilst they're here.'

‘You do know that the whole of Calleloe knows who she is and that she's moving into Brett's caravan with him, don't you?' This time Artemis spoke directly to Primmie. It was late afternoon and the three of them were sitting in the garden, enjoying a bottle of Chardonnay. ‘It'll be in the local papers soon and I can't help wondering how she'll feel about that.'

‘It will depend on whether they use the word “has-been” about her, or not,' Primmie said sagely.

‘Well, if they do and she copes with it, a great corner will have been turned.' Geraldine stretched out to put her wine glass back on the garden table, fresh bruises showing on skin that was deathly pale. ‘Shall we get on with adding to the list of what we're going to do for the children's entertainment? Artemis's idea of a sandcastle competition is a good idea, but we'll have to make sure we have plenty of buckets and spades.'

Later in the afternoon Geraldine zoomed off in her Ferrari into Calleloe to buy buckets and spades, taking Artemis with her. Artemis, who had initially intended moving into a hotel when the children arrived and who, instead, had accepted Hugo's suggestion that she move into the spacious, unoccupied flat above his art gallery, wanted to shop for bits and pieces of household items she felt the handsomely equipped kitchen lacked.

Primmie baked. Tomorrow her home would be full of children and she was looking forward to their arrival with great expectancy. It would be just like twenty years ago, when Ted's and her little house in Rotherhithe was full of their children's chatter and laughter.

‘The kids are on their way!' Kiki shouted just after four o'clock the next day, from her vantage point with Brett high on the barn's roof. ‘There's a minibus heading down the lane towards the gates!'

Primmie left the house and began walking down the track towards the double gates, full of happy anticipation. Buoyantly she opened the gates as the minibus creaked into view, a radiant smile on her face. ‘Welcome to Cornwall!' she called out to the children. ‘Welcome to Ruthven!'

Minutes later the children were scrambling from the minibus into the yard and the plump, rosy-cheeked young woman who had been driving was trying to marshal them into some sort of order, saying to Primmie as she did so, ‘I'm Rose Hudson. It's very kind of you to give children from Claybourne a holiday, Mrs Dove. I did think they'd be tired by now, but I obviously underestimated them!'

‘Please call me Primmie,' Primmie said, as a little boy with glasses and a very bad squint said indignantly, ‘Where's the sea, then? I thought we were staying by the sea.'

‘It's over there, where you can't see any more land, silly,' a freckled-faced girl said and then, smiling winningly up at Primmie, ‘I'm Daisy and he's Jimmy. That's Jimmy's friend, Frankie.' She pointed towards a skinny boy, tall for his age. ‘And that's Marlon.'

Marlon was black and was looking around him a trifle apprehensively.

‘And I'm Ellie,' another little girl said forthcomingly, a battered teddy bear in her arms.

‘Thank you, Daisy and Ellie,' Rose Hudson said as Primmie led the way into the house and then, to Primmie, ‘Goodness, but you've made some changes here! I came last year with a group of ten-year-olds and the decor is much nicer now.'

‘I'm glad you like the changes I've made.' Primmie took hold of a little hand that had slid into hers. ‘I have some introductions to make, too,' she said, glancing down and seeing that her newfound friend was Daisy. ‘Artemis is going to be here every day helping me with the cooking and the housework, and Geraldine is living here with me.'

As Artemis moved forward away from the Aga, a vision in cream silk and pearls, Rose Hudson's jaw dropped. Primmie, well aware that Artemis looked nothing like anyone's idea of household help, suppressed a giggle. ‘And this is Geraldine, she said, as Geraldine strolled through the maelstrom of children towards them. ‘Geraldine is living here with me, and so you'll be seeing a lot of her.'

Rose Hudson's jaw dropped even further. If Artemis was bizarrely overdressed, Geraldine, wearing a scarlet linen dress by Chanel, her hair twisted into a loose knot held in place by a tortoiseshell comb, was mind-bogglingly elegant.

‘Where's our rooms?' Jimmy demanded, as Geraldine shook Rose's hand. ‘Where are we sleeping? Me, Frankie and Marlon ain't sleeping wiv the girls, are we?'

‘I'll show you where you are sleeping.' Primmie began leading the way out of the kitchen into the hallway just as Kiki and Brett tramped into the kitchen from the porch.

‘We thought we'd bring the luggage in from the bus,' Brett said, a suitcase in either hand and one tucked under his arm.

Primmie paused, aware that further introductions were necessary. ‘Brett is converting a barn into sleeping accommodation and Kiki, who lives here with me and has moved out temporarily while the children are here, is helping him,' she said as Brett flashed Rose a smile that must have left her weak kneed.

With a brief ‘Hi'to Rose, Kiki ploughed past them towards the foot of the stairs, as laden as Brett.

Ellie scurried after her.

‘One of those bags is mine,' she could be heard saying as she followed Kiki upstairs, Primmie, Brett, Rose and the other children in her wake. ‘You look like someone I've seen on the telly. Are you famous?'

In the kitchen, Artemis's eyes met Geraldine's.

‘No,' they heard Kiki say. ‘I used to be, but I'm not now. Which room do you and your friend want to have? A pink one, a blue one or a lilac one?'

Artemis reached for a pair of oven gloves. ‘Whatever Kiki's state of mind when she drove down here, I think she's beginning to come to terms with her situation, don't you?' she said, taking the scones from the Aga. ‘Perhaps having a new young lover has helped.'

‘A new lover of any age is always a help.'

Artemis looked startled, not knowing whether Geraldine was teasing her or not.

To show that she wasn't, Geraldine said, ‘And you should take a leaf out of Kiki's book, Artemis. Hugo is obviously besotted with you. Why don't you go for it? He has all the right qualifications. He's a giant of a man and so you'll always look femininely fragile in comparison. He's a bachelor. He's intelligent and cultured. He's kind and caring. He dresses with wonderful aplomb. Nothing seems to faze him. If I were in your shoes, I'd be leading him into the nearest bedroom as fast as light.'

Artemis flushed scarlet. ‘That's because you've a whole lot more expertise in the bed department, Geraldine. I wouldn't know how to start going about having an affair. I can't begin to imagine taking my clothes off in front of anyone other than Rupert.'

‘Well, it's about time you did.' There came the sound of several pairs of feet clattering back down the stairs. ‘Time to butter the scones,' she said, pleased that Artemis hadn't indignantly said that she didn't fancy Hugo, for it meant that she did – which, if she'd judged Hugo correctly, meant that the chances of Artemis's life being turned round in the near future were very, very high.

The next day Rose Hudson, accompanied by Primmie, took the children down to the cove. Artemis spent the day learning the ropes of reception work at the art gallery. Kiki spent the day with Brett.

The day afterwards, on Monday, Matt took Rose and the children out on his boat.

On Tuesday Rose and Primmie took them for a picnic to Lizard Point and, when they came back, Brett told them stories about the nineteenth-century smugglers who used to live in Calleloe.

On Wednesday they sperit the day at Ruthven, helping Primmie feed the hens, collect eggs and play in the grazing pasture, giving Black-Hearted Alice a wide berth as they did so.

‘Why ain't there no swings round here?' Jimmy, always the spokesman, asked Kiki.

Kiki, who hadn't gone out of her way to spend time with him, or any of the other children, ignored him. Half an hour later, though, Geraldine saw her wrestling old car tyres out of the back of Brett's van and towards a far corner of the pasture where a couple of oak trees gave shade to Maybelline on hot days. Five minutes later she was back at the van, hauling a heavy coil of rope and a tool bag from it.

Bemused, she strolled out to the pasture to see what was going on.

‘I'm hanging the tyres from the trees,' Kiki said, sweat beading her forehead as she swung a weighted rope up and over the branch of a tree, ‘so that the children can swing on them.'

It was an effort that met with great success. Marlon, who had been apprehensive about the countryside, especially his introduction to the hens and to Maybelline, lost the last of his reserve, whooping and yelling like a banshee as he, Jimmy and Frankie had bets as to who could swing the highest and the furthest and Rags barked dementedly, egging them on.

‘And tomorrow I want you to take me to buy a donkey.'

It was mid-afternoon and Primmie was lying in post-coital comfiness with Matt, in his brass-headed bed in Calleloe.

‘Excuse me?' He rolled over, lying on one elbow, looking down at her with comic disbelief.

She giggled, her fingers playing slowly across his well-muscled chest and down towards his stomach. ‘I want you to take me to buy a donkey. Jimmy said this morning at breakfast, “Ain't you got nuffink to ride here, missus?” and I had to admit that I hadn. I also agree with him that I should have.'