The Queen's Margarine (5 page)

‘Are you Claire Henderson?' he asked.

‘Er, yes.'

‘Good! I was instructed to give you these in person.'

Barely had he handed them over, when he turned tail and sprinted down the path, then continued along the street, as if on fire.

‘Wait!' she called, but he was already out of sight, and she could hardly hurtle after him in bare feet and a dressing-gown.

The flowers felt heavy in her arms, and weren't wrapped in any sort of paper. Water was dripping from their stems, making damp spots on her night-clothes. Stumbling into the kitchen, she laid them on the table, torn between elation and anxiety. It was obvious who they were from, but how could she explain to her family so extravagant a gift? Tied to one of the tulip stems was a small white envelope. Scarcely able to contain herself, she tore it open and read the note inside.

‘
Ravish
' her! Blood rushed to her cheeks as she read the words again. Things were going far too fast – her own stupid fault for leading him on. Deliberately, she hadn't told him she was married. Why bore him with tedious tales of married life, when it seemed imperative to charm him, impress him with her research skills, play the role of poet's Muse? Three glasses of wine had clearly turned her head, and the exhilaration of being with so beguiling a man – not to mention a much younger one: a zingy twenty-nine to her own fading forty-four.

So what did she do now? Phone him, as he had ordered so peremptorily? Out of the question. Never, in twenty years of marriage, had she cheated on her husband, and didn't intend to start. Or should she simply chuck the tulips in the dustbin and pretend they'd never arrived?

Equally impossible. It would be sacrilege to destroy such expensive and unusual flowers – the exact tulips of his dream. How on earth could he have afforded them? The pittance he earned from
teaching would hardly fund such largesse. Even more inexplicable, how had he managed to track them down, when she herself had failed, despite checking literally hundreds of varieties in books and specialist catalogues, and on every site online? The sheer range of different species was astounding, and she could barely spell their complicated names:
tulipa kaufmanniana, tulipa taihangshanica, tulipa grengiolensis
. Some of the English names, in contrast, had fired her imagination, expressing, as they did, her own churning sense of danger and excitement: Eros, Bacchus, Queen of Sheba, Virtuoso, Brilliant Fire.

And these particular tulips – not just pictures on a page or screen, but vibrantly substantial – made her feel a further bond with Fergus, as if she were living through another of his dreams. Uncatalogued, unclassified, they seemed to hail from some unfathomable realm beyond the scope of flower-shops or the reach of normal suppliers. And that enigmatic stranger entrusted to deliver them, was he a mystic messenger or just a casual errand boy? All she had really registered was that he was short and plain and pale – hardly any match for the spectacular bouquet. Typical of Fergus, of course, to do things to excess. Even in the bar, he'd wolfed half-a-dozen packets of cheese-and-onion crisps, one after the other, scarcely bothering to chew.

‘I haven't eaten for
days
, Claire. When I'm writing well, that takes precedence, and everything else – food, drink, sleep, fresh air – is more or less irrelevant.'

Her own regime of regular, well-balanced meals seemed dull in the extreme, and she longed to share his all-consuming passion for an art. In fact, sitting with him in that dim and intimate corner of the bar, she had lost all track of time, and hadn't even cared that her family at home were still waiting for their supper (and doubtless wondering where the hell she was). Had it been a mere eight days ago? Centuries seemed to have passed – not days – and, in fact, she'd become increasingly depressed, assuming he must have forgotten all about her. Yet how magical to think that he had spent that time ferreting out so incredible a present.

Suddenly, she heard footsteps on the stairs. Rodney, or the kids! She dived towards the table to gather up the tulips and hide them somewhere safe. Too late.

‘Good Lord!' her husband exclaimed, shambling into the kitchen in his old-fashioned stripy pyjamas. ‘How the hell did
those
get here?'

She stared at them, unspeaking, racking her brains for a reply. ‘That … that woman sent them.'

‘Which woman?'

‘You know – the one I've been helping, who's doing a book on tulips.'

‘She must be made of money. That's a heck of a lot of flowers!'

‘She … she just wanted to say thank you for all the time I spent.'

‘Well, I wish she'd waited till a bit later in the day. It's a bit of a cheek, isn't it, waking us at this ungodly hour?
And
at the weekend.'

‘Oh, she didn't come herself.'

‘Who did, then?'

Again, she cast around for inspiration. ‘Er, Interflora.'

‘In that case, I'm getting on the phone to them immediately. They've no right to make deliveries so early.'

She tried to calm him down. He was never good in the mornings and, deprived of his Saturday lie-in, became tetchy in the extreme. ‘It's not worth it, Rodney, honestly. If you work yourself into a state, you'll never get back to sleep, and we're out late tonight, remember.'

‘I was out late
last
night, Claire, which is why I object to—'

‘Mum!' Susanna shouted from the landing. ‘What's going on? Do you
have
to wake the whole house?'

‘Sorry, darling,' she muttered, as Susanna came pounding down the stairs, wearing nothing but a frown and an elongated T-shirt. ‘Someone sent some flowers and—'

‘Flowers? Fantastic! That must be Joe. We had this massive argument last Sunday, so he must have decided to make up.'

‘You didn't say you'd had a row. I'm sorry, love. I know how much he—'

‘Mum, you've been in your own world these last few days. None of us could get through to you. If I told you I'd won two million on the lottery, I doubt that you'd have heard.'

Claire sank into a chair, the mass of flowers reproaching her. She'd not only neglected her daughter, she'd also betrayed her husband – in thought, if not in deed.

‘They're not yours, Susanna,' Rodney told her peevishly. ‘They're Mum's. Sent by some crazy woman who doesn't realize that working people try to catch up on their sleep at the weekends. So I suggest we all go back to bed before Daniel wakes and—'

‘I
am
awake,' called a truculent voice from just outside the door. ‘And it's all your fault for shouting.'

Claire glanced from the tulips to the faces of her family: all resentful and annoyed. Yet, however guilty she might feel, that dangerous, wicked, titillating phrase, ‘ravish you among the tulips', was exploding through her body like a firework, and she was whooshing up to the stratosphere in great rocket-showers of orangey-yellow flame.

‘Those flowers were duds,' Susanna said disparagingly, gesturing to the vase in the centre of the supper-table. ‘Look at them, Mum, drooping after just four days. I bet that woman got them on the cheap.'

Claire said nothing. In contrast to her daughter, she was intrigued by the way the tulips had changed from prim, upstanding Puritans to abandoned, sexy sluts. Their formerly rigid stalks were now lithe and wild and supple; bending in all directions, reaching out, as if desperate to be touched. The petals, too, had opened up, revealing their most private parts: pistils, stamens, intimate pink streaks, while even the leaves seemed lasciviously moist and fleshy.

‘Mind if I get on with my coursework now?' Susanna asked, finishing her last spoonful of dessert. ‘Miss Barrett said I should have added a bibliography and several more quotations, to back up what I've said.'

‘No, go ahead. I'll wash up and Daniel can wipe.'

‘That's not fair! Why is it always me?'

‘Because you haven't got exams,' his sister retorted, pushing back her chair and flouncing out of the room.

‘I've got coursework, though, just the same as her. Mum, let me off tonight – go on!'

‘All right.'

‘Want
me
to help?' asked Rodney, unconvincingly. He, too, had left the table, but was already headed for the sofa, with his wineglass and
The Times
.

Claire shook her head, relieved to be alone, in fact, so that she could fix her mind on Fergus. She'd been hoping – indeed praying, despite her lack of any fixed belief – that he'd show up at the library again, but his continued absence posed a real dilemma. If she phoned him, as he'd asked, she might give the impression of being ready (indeed eager) to be ‘ravished', yet if she didn't ring, he might well feel rejected, or offended by her rudeness in failing to thank him for the flowers. And those flowers were omnipresent. They had filled four separate vases, so she seemed to be confronted by him everywhere she went. Even in the kitchen, their once
tight-furled
leaves leaned eagerly towards her, as she began the washing-up, as if to say, ‘Take a risk. Take a chance. What have you to lose?'

Her family, for one thing. If she involved herself with Fergus, the affair was bound to be discovered, and she might land up in the divorce court, branded an unfit wife and mother. Yet, if she held back for the children's sake, those children would soon fly the nest – Susanna to university; Daniel to some job or other. No one left but her and Rodney, repeating the same tired platitudes in a now half-empty house.

All at once, she strode back to the living-room, dish-mop still in hand. Rodney was lying on the sofa, his paunch all too apparent as he sprawled against the cushions. Only since meeting Fergus, had she noticed just how old he seemed – indeed, older than his
fifty-five
years. The frown lines on his forehead appeared to have bred and multiplied in just the last few days, and his once robust hair was now thinning so pathetically, patches of his freckled scalp were visible beneath.

‘Rodney,' she said, ‘let's go out.'

‘Go out?' he repeated, turning round to stare at her. ‘What now, you mean?'

‘Yes, why not? We never do anything spontaneous. The kids are old enough to manage on their own, yet we're always stuck indoors, glued to some stupid soap.'

‘We went out on Saturday.'

‘Only to that ghastly do. Where's the fun in sitting still for hours, listening to dreary speeches?'

‘Claire, you know perfectly well we have to support Drugscope,
if only out of duty. It may mean a few dull evenings, but that's a small price to pay for the marvellous work they do.'

‘But they're all such stuffed shirts – worthy and po-faced. I almost died of boredom.'

‘What's got into you, for heaven's sake? Those people are really decent – unselfish and committed and—'

‘OK, keep your hair on! But, reverting to this evening, why don't we go dancing? It's ages since we—'

‘Because I'm shattered, Claire – that's why. I couldn't dance if you paid me.'

Fergus could dance. She could see him in her mind, frisking among the tulips; dancing with
her
– all day and all night, without flagging – leaping and cavorting until they collapsed, not from exhaustion but because they were desperate to make love. Instinctively, she knew it would be special (passionate and fierce, as if they were running on adrenaline), and that he'd use his range of poetic skills – imagination, inspiration, creative ingenuity – to try out wild positions and do astounding things. Rodney had a dodgy back and had to move with caution, for fear of further damage. And he'd become nervous, of late, about getting an erection, so the whole bedroom thing was increasingly fraught. How could she relax, when he was either wincing in pain, or casting anxious glances at his equipment, as if he feared it might let him down – again?

Having slouched back to the sink, she took out her annoyance on a grease-encrusted pan, only to be interrupted by Daniel, who came to find her in the kitchen, maths book in his hand.

‘Mum, I need some help. I just don't get this algebra.'

‘OK,' she said, rinsing the last few plates. ‘Sit there at the table and I'll be with you in a tick.'

No problem with maths. She was in remarkably good practice now, from constantly adding up the minutes since she had last laid eyes on Fergus, and – far more enthralling – totting up the countless times he would ravish her and ravish her among those rapturous tulips.

Claire switched off
Gone With The Wind
. She had no desire to watch a rampant Rhett Butler making love to Scarlett O'Hara,
when everything inside her was screaming to join in. Yet the silence seemed oppressive once the screen had gone dead and there were no more gasps of passion. Mooching into the hall, she removed Susanna's scarf from the banisters and idly straightened a picture. Without her usual chores – cooking supper, washing-up, helping out with homework, chauffeuring Daniel back and forth to football training or five-a-side or swimming club – a surge of unused energy was throbbing through her body, with no outlet, no fulfilment. It was rare for all the family to be out on the same evening, but Rodney had gone to Rotary, Daniel was staying over with a school-friend, and Susanna was at a play rehearsal. She ought to use the time to catch up with the ironing, or make a cake for Drugscope's Easter fête, yet her thoughts were very far removed from any aspect of good works. She was preoccupied by one thing only: the fact that Fergus hadn't made any further move. Could she really blame him, though? By totally ignoring his note, turning down his challenge, she must have hurt his pride. Poets were highly sensitive, so, for all she knew, he could feel deeply wounded.