Two Loves (16 page)

‘I'll have to tell Rosamund,' Dora told herself. ‘I'll just have to tell her. Oh my God, why was I the person who had to involve her in this mess?'

*   *   *

At three the next afternoon, Dora arrived alone at the schoolhouse.

‘But where's Erica?' Rosamund asked her, after they'd kissed.

‘I called for her, but she didn't feel well enough to come. Oh, that isn't true. Darling, I went to see her and explained that this was not a convenient time for her to visit you and she quite understood and sent you her love and sympathy.'

Rosamund suddenly noticed how pale Dora was under her heavy make-up. ‘Dora, I don't understand. What are you trying to tell me?'

They went into the kitchen and Dora broke the news to her stepdaughter and sat with her while she struggled to accept it.

‘I don't believe it. I simply can't believe it.'

‘It's terrible. I can't tell you how sorry I am.'

‘But it was only a fortnight ago that I met him. Yes, he seemed thin and shabby, but perfectly well. He couldn't have been a drug addict. I'd have noticed something.'

‘But darling, that's why he didn't meet you the next day. I'm sure he wanted to, but his mind wasn't functioning – either because he'd had heroin or because he needed it.'

‘He's on heroin?'

‘Yes. A known heroin addict.'

‘That's why he was playing his violin in the Underground.'

‘Is that how you met him? You didn't tell me that.'

‘I didn't think it was important. He told me he didn't have any money or even a place of his own any more, but I didn't take much notice. I've never thought money was very important.'

She thought of his bony face, his dark eyes, the way his smile made him look sad rather than happy; more than anything of the power he'd held over her when she was at art school. When she'd finally realised that he was going to leave without any further attempt at seeing her, it was as though she had nothing further to hope for. And what she'd done over the next years had been of no consequence.

‘That's because you've always had money, darling.'

‘Just enough to live on. I don't live extravagantly, you know that.'

‘Perhaps you should try to forget him. You only met again by chance. You don't owe him anything.'

‘I know you don't mean that, Dora, so I'll forgive you.'

‘Oh Rosie, you think your love can save him, don't you?'

‘Yes.' There was a moment's silence. ‘I know it will be difficult,' she said afterwards, ‘but I have to believe it.'

‘So what are you going to do?'

Rosamund sat for a few moments rubbing her eyelids and trying to relax her shoulders. ‘Well, I'm going to have to leave Joss with my mother again, take a bedsitting room near wherever Daniel lives, and try to get him to move in with me.'

‘You're going to try and rescue him single-handed?'

‘No, I'll take all the help I can get. But I'm going to rescue him, yes.' She opened her eyes. ‘Would you like a sandwich?'

‘Do you have any whisky?'

*   *   *

Even with a large whisky – and then another – inside her, Dora couldn't accept that Rosamund intended to plunge into a life so fraught with disappointment and pain.

Her stepdaughter looked so young and beautiful, her hair bleached by the sun and her skin lightly tanned. She looked very like Paul, but whereas disillusion and cynicism showed in his eyes and the cut of his mouth, Rosamund seemed so blithe, so pure somehow, so vulnerable.

Dora lay back on the sofa feeling old and bitter. ‘You know there's a choice involved here, don't you?' she said, her voice harsh. ‘Between Daniel on the one hand, and the rest of your life, including Joss, on the other. If you decide on Daniel, it'll mean you won't be able to devote anything like the same amount of love and care to—'

‘I won't have that sort of talk, Dora. I intend to bring Daniel back here as soon as I can and then we'll all be happy together. At first people will have to understand that he's a sick man, but that shouldn't be too difficult, should it?'

‘I don't know. I think perhaps it—'

‘Please be positive about it, Dora. You're the one who's always believed in me. You were the one who told me I was wise enough and mature enough to make the right decision about my future. Dora, don't let me down. Say you're happy for me.'

‘I can't.'

Rosamund's voice changed. ‘Say you're happy for me!' she repeated, descending on her, putting a cushion over her face and tickling her. ‘Say you're happy for me. Say it Dora, say it!'

She took away the cushion, pulled Dora up to a sitting position and kissed her rather wildly, desperate for her approval.

‘I can't,' Dora said again, even more sadly. ‘Playing the violin in the Underground can't be giving him anything like the money he needs, but if you turn up he'll feel saved and he'll bleed you dry.'

‘Why should he think I've got money? I haven't. And if he thought I had, why didn't he turn up the other week when he promised to?'

‘I don't know. But I do know that if you get together, he'll take every penny you've got. That's probably why his American girlfriend left him. You said they'd been together for several years. Well, she probably couldn't bear seeing him go from bad to worse, having to sell everything, unable even to go on painting. Rosamund, he's now living in some sort of squat.'

‘Well, people do. I don't suppose they want to, but they have to. What else can people do when they can't afford anywhere to live; I can at least give him somewhere to stay and somewhere to work, can't I – offer him a new start? I'm not saying we'll get married or that we'll be perfectly and utterly happy, but at least he can come here and share this studio.'

‘Oh yes, it could work if he was simply a down-and-out. If he'd just come out of prison, for instance – yes, I'd be worried, but I'd feel you had the right to try to rescue him. But heroin addiction is something completely different; it's something no one except the person involved can do anything about. I've seen horrifying programmes on the television; families desperately trying to help but failing completely.'

‘I accept that I may fail completely,' Rosamund said after a moment's silence. ‘But I won't accept that I can't try.'

Dora got up and helped herself to another whisky.

*   *   *

‘Will you be all right with Granny and Brian for another week or so?' Rosamund asked Joss when he got in. ‘You see, I have to go to London again.'

‘Oh, not again.'

‘But I'll be back very soon.'

‘Will you be back for my birthday?'

‘Definitely. With a very good present. Not a baby brother because you know as well as I do how much time that takes. But something very unusual and exciting. And I'll ring you every night. OK?'

‘OK. Can I go now? Harry's got a new computer game.'

*   *   *

‘What about Erica's book?' Dora asked later that night. ‘I know you can't give it much thought at the moment, but I promised to let her know how you felt about it.'

Rosamund showed her the letter she'd received from Molly's solicitor, getting angry about it all over again. ‘I'm certainly not going to let Molly frighten her out of publishing the book. When I talked to Erica a couple of days ago, I suggested that we should write it together, but now I'm obviously not going to have any time.'

‘You own the copyright of all her poems?'

‘They're technically mine, but they're really hers, aren't they, whatever anyone says. All the same I'm not against asking for a share of the money because I'm going to need it. And as soon as possible too. Perhaps Ingrid can contact Ben to get him onto it again. I can't say I liked Ben, but I don't suppose that's relevant.'

‘Have you any idea what sort of money is involved?'

‘Not the slightest. But Ingrid felt that even Ben's share was going to be quite considerable, otherwise he wouldn't have been so surly about losing the job. In fact, he didn't lose it, but backed out when he thought the poems couldn't be included in the book, which meant it wouldn't make the sort of money he was after.'

‘If he backed out, then surely he forfeits any rights he had in the project?'

‘I suppose so. Yes … Perhaps Ingrid would like to take it over. She's a journalist as well, though she says she's not in the same class as he is.'

‘But if he's dumped her and gone off in a huff, she'd find it rather pleasing, wouldn't she, to be offered his job? And the money he was so loath to lose?'

‘Dora, you've got a wicked gleam in your eye.'

‘So have you, darling.'

*   *   *

‘I'd better phone Paul,' Dora said, as they were getting ready for bed.

‘What will you tell him?' Rosamund asked.

‘Not very much. He doesn't care to be informed of the sad trivia of everyday life.'

Chapter Fifteen

Dora and Rosamund arrived in Fulham soon after eleven the next day. After a quick coffee Dora went back to work, and soon afterwards Rosamund took a tube to Seven Sisters where Daniel lived. She found the area, even the actual street, but decided to get herself a bedsitting room – now called a studio flat – before doing anything else. Dora had told her that she'd need a month's rental and a roughly equal sum for a bond against damage or non-payment, so she'd already transferred all her savings into her current account so as to be able to meet the incredibly large sums her stepmother had mentioned.

Unfortunately it still didn't prove easy. She went to three letting agencies, but in all three she was informed that she couldn't rent any property without having job security. In spite of her unblushing insistence that she was not only solvent but an internationally-known artist with pictures in every famous gallery, in their eyes she was unemployed and therefore not eligible to rent even the cheapest property. ‘So what do unemployed people do when they come to London?' she asked at the third agency. As though she didn't know.

She had a feeling that Ingrid would know what to do. She phoned and found her in. ‘I'm trying to find somewhere to live but nobody'll have me.'

‘Come round,' Ingrid said. ‘We'll have some lunch and then we'll talk. I've got no work, so I'll come out with you later on, give you a reference and an employer's address and so forth. You have to lie and cheat in this jungle.'

‘Of course you could stay with me,' Ingrid said as soon as she opened the door. ‘Ben hasn't been back so I'd be really pleased to have help with the rent.'

‘The thing is, I've discovered Daniel's whereabouts and I'm looking for a place big enough for the two of us.'

When she told Ingrid about Daniel's predicament, her reaction was exactly as Rosamund had expected: she was throwing away her money and wasting her time and energy on someone she didn't even know properly.

‘Perhaps I am,' Rosamund said wearily, ‘but it's what I've decided on. I'm in love with him and I'm going to try to cure him.'

‘Unfortunately love doesn't cure addiction. In fact, it often makes it worse. Junkies don't want the added guilt of letting people down. That's why they're happier with other junkies.'

‘It may not work out, but I'll have tried.'

‘Why haven't you been to see him? To see how he is? I'd have thought it would be the first thing you'd have wanted to do.'

‘I was frightened.'

‘Good. At least you're being realistic. I'll come with you when you decide to go.'

‘No, I'll have to go on my own. But I thought it might be easier if I had a place to bring him back to. Obviously I can't expect him to come home with me straight away. He'll have things to sort out; I understand that. I wish I knew more about these things.'

‘Ben wrote an article on drug addiction a couple of years back, did a lot of research for it. He'd help you if he was around. Or he might not. You could never tell with Ben.'

‘Hasn't he been back at all?'

Ingrid sighed. ‘Yes. He came when I was out, took all his things, didn't even leave me a note. That's why I went to see Erica Underhill. Thought she'd have an address for him, but she didn't. Or if she did she wasn't prepared to divulge it.'

‘She probably didn't have it. He backed out of the job when he found that she didn't own the copyright of the poems and couldn't publish without the estate's permission. That's why he was furious with me. He thought I was involved, but in fact it was Molly's solicitor who'd written to her. I'd had nothing to do with it.'

Ingrid was looking at her, but her mind was on other things. ‘Anyway, I think I'm getting over Ben. He's treated me pretty badly but at least I'm fully aware of it. Not that that's any guarantee of recovery.' She sighed again. ‘All the same, I have the odd five minutes now when I'm not thinking about him.'

Rosamund gave this her full consideration. ‘You told me that work was the answer,' she said. ‘Are you working?'

‘No.'

‘Would you like some work? Would you like to take over Ben's job? It seems that I own the copyright of Erica's poems and I'm going to give her permission to publish them in spite of Molly. I shall ask her for a certain share of what she's likely to make, but I feel sure she'll agree. So how about it?'

‘My God, that would be burning my boats, wouldn't it!'

‘Well, it would serve him right. Bastard. Coming in here taking all his things away without even a by your leave or thank you for having me. What did you do? When you found out?'

‘Had the locks changed.'

‘Good for you. So you've burned your boats already.'