Vacillations of Poppy Carew (6 page)

‘No, you must not. Push off, use it later, can’t you see I’m doing business? This isn’t a madhouse.’

‘Not a bad imitation.’ Frances retreated in a waft of shampoo.

Fergus shouted after her through the open door, ‘When will you learn to wait for the boys to ring you? You frighten them away by your pursuit, you’ll never have a lasting relationship this way.’

Out of sight Frances riposted, ‘Your love life’s not all that brilliant, and it’s the telephone bill you fear for, not my single state.’

Fergus closed the intervening door.

‘That’s better. Now then. Time. Place. Four horses, you said. Wreaths? Mutes? Would you like a special coffin for your father, or to have whatever he’s in draped with a pall? I have a fine black velvet I found in Stroud, or would you prefer purple?’

‘Black,’ Poppy whispered beginning to shake.

‘Black it shall be, and where did you say your dad is now?’

Poppy began to cry again, more from the onslaught of whisky than grief. (It’s not Dad I’m weeping for, it’s Edmund.)

‘Butter her a scone, Victor,’ said Fergus; then, as Victor did so, he said gently, ‘I suppose he’s stuck in the hospital morgue.’ Poppy nodded. ‘We can fetch him from there, you know, Poppy; would you like to have him at home until the funeral? We can arrange that too, he could lie in state.’

‘At home,’ said Poppy in a low voice. ‘Please.’

‘Right, I’ll fix all that presently on the phone. Eat your scone now.’

Victor handed Poppy a scone, ready buttered, which she obediently ate.

‘Drink some hot tea, try.’ Victor was solicitous, pushing the cup towards her.

‘All right.’ She drank the scalding tea.

The two men watched her with concern. Fergus ruffled his thick black hair. ‘I have so little experience,’ he apologised. ‘I know the rules and all that, but not how to behave to clients. We’ve only done two funerals. One was a pop person, bit of a shambles that, and the other—’

‘Anthony Green, Dad’s—I mean, my—solicitor said it was an IRA, he said—’

‘No, no. It was a vagrant. We wanted a practice run. The poor devil had been sleeping rough. We gave him the works, it annoyed the Council who had to pay, it was not exactly the pauper’s funeral they intended.’

‘He was a wino,’ said Victor, ‘Mary said.’

‘What if he was? He was entitled to something,’ Fergus was aggressive, ‘man in the image of God and so on.’

‘Oh!’ exclaimed Poppy. ‘Oh!’ She mourned for the vagrant, for her father, for the girl Mary and her baby, for Edmund, for the two men watching her, their expressions kind. ‘I’m not usually lachrymose,’ she cried, ‘I feel so guilty, I hardly knew him. I never paid any attention to what he wanted unless to do the opposite. Oh,’ she snuffled.

Wisely Victor and Fergus let her cry.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said presently, ‘it’s a whole lot of things, it’s …’

‘I apologise for clowning,’ said Fergus hoping to console.

‘Me too,’ said Victor. ‘I am fundamentally serious.’

‘Everybody feels guilty when someone dies.’ He sat beside Poppy and offered a kitchen tissue. ‘Mop.’

‘What about your mum, is she … ?’ Victor asked.

‘Died when I was a baby.’ Poppy wiped her eyes on the tissue.

‘So you can’t feel bad about her.’

‘I suppose not.’ Poppy smiled weakly and blew her nose.

‘That’s better.’ Fergus grew brisk. ‘Now we plan. Come on.’ He reached for a notebook. ‘Name, address, hospital, parson or priest, church? Let’s get the forms filled in.’

Poppy supplied the information, signed where told to sign, drank her tea, watched Fergus fill in forms.

‘That’s about it.’ Fergus stood up. ‘The rest I’ll do on the telephone. Now come and meet the Dow Jones.’

‘The who?’

‘The average horses. It’s a joke, you are supposed to laugh.’

Poppy obliged. ‘I’ve met them,’ she said.

‘Come and meet them again. They are what shops call “seconds”, not good enough to get into the Horse Guards or Police, but good enough for Furnival’s.’

‘What about eats?’ asked Victor, following them out of the cottage. ‘After the service people expect a binge.’

‘Do they?’ Poppy was appalled. ‘I’ve never been to a funeral, I don’t know what’s—’

‘Like me to help?’ Victor offered eagerly.

‘Would you?’

‘Love to. Will there be lots of relations, dozens of friends?’

‘I don’t know.’ Poppy thought of the providers of Life’s Dividends, presumably dead. ‘Not many friends,’ she said, ‘and no relations, we had no relations.’

‘What a mercy,’ muttered Fergus enviously.

‘I suppose the village will come. I live in London, I hardly know … we didn’t meet often. I think his best friends are dead.’ I wonder who they were, she thought; clever old Dad.

Victor and Fergus exchanged puzzled looks.

‘Tell you what,’ said Victor. ‘Now you’ve fixed everything with Fergus, suppose I follow you home and suss the situation, then I can arrange the catering. What did your father like?’

‘Champagne.’ Certainly champagne. Had champagne celebrated all those winning horses? Poppy visualised Dad in company with shadowy ladies at candlelit tables in intimate restaurants.

‘I see.’

‘And spicy Indian food, or Chinese.’ The memory of a lunch with Dad, and Dad shying away from the subject of Edmund as he bit into a particularly fierce chilli. He was so lovable in retrospect, she had hated him at the time.

‘Tell you what,’ said Victor again. ‘I’ll fix it all. The booze at least we can get on sale or return. I don’t suppose your father’s friends are great drinkers.’

What makes you suppose that, thought Poppy. It was drink that caused Dad’s coronaries. ‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said evasively.

Fergus noticed Poppy’s expression. So her pa was a boozer.

‘That’s fixed then.’ Victor assumed Poppy’s compliance. ‘I have an Indian chum in Shepherd’s Bush who does a super take-away.’

‘Come and meet the horses,’ interrupted Fergus, furious with Victor. How dare he plot to go off with the girl, leaving him to slave. Spitefully, he wished he had not given the trout house room.

‘I’m coming too.’ Victor jumped up. ‘I’m already brewing a superb article for Julia’s mag, she won’t be able to resist it, she might even come to the funeral.’ He visualised a double spread, illustrated; he must alert a good photographer, and why not TV while he was about it or was that going too far?

Poppy, beginning to wonder whose funeral this really was, accompanied Fergus to the stable yard. Annie, Frances and Mary were filling haybags, removing dung and carrying buckets of water, watched by baby Barnaby propped against a bale of hay. Sparrows chirped, swallows swooped, a portable radio blared, bantams pecked round the stable doors. There was a smell of horse and saddle soap. The girls sang to the radio and called to one another in cheerful voices.

Fergus led Poppy round the yard, naming each horse. ‘This one has a white blaze and two of them have white socks. We dye those bits black for the occasion. Mary’s got the dye. She’s a natural blonde,’ he stroked an equine nose, ‘gets carried away and dyes her own.’

‘I see,’ said Poppy. ‘That accounts for her white skin. How thorough you are. Dad will—would—love this.’ She looked again at the hearse, the tack room and the splendid harness, the sombre ostrich plumes. ‘Do you muffle their hooves?’ she asked, remembering something she had read, was it Sir John Moore after Corunna?

‘No,’ said Fergus, who had never thought to do so. ‘That makes the scene a bit macabre.’

‘How do you get to the, er …’

‘Location?’

‘Yes.’

‘I have horse-boxes and a lorry for the hearse. We get ourselves sorted out and hitched up half a mile or so from the pick-up or the church.’

‘Like a circus,’ said Poppy, giving mortal offence.

‘If you say so,’ Fergus answered stiffly. Observing this, Poppy felt irritation: whose father is having this funeral, who is paying for this jamboree? She felt furious: who is hiring Furnival’s Fine Rococo Funerals? ‘I expect you would like a cheque in advance,’ she suggested, putting Fergus in his place (I bet Brightson’s wait months).

‘Spot on,’ said Mary who was crossing the yard, baby on hip. She smiled brilliantly at Poppy, her previously hostile expression gone. Poppy caught a glimpse of the merry girl who had become entangled on the Costa.

‘Certainly not!’ exclaimed Fergus loftily. ‘Payment when the customer is satisfied.’

‘Ha, ha,’ said Mary, walking away, ‘ha, ha, ha,’ on a rising note.

Fergus exploded. ‘She’s impossible since she had that child. Pretends to be unemployed. Draws single-parent benefit, knows all the dodges.’

Poppy did not respond.

‘That poor man is dying to marry her, writes to her every day, utterly lovelorn. What it must cost him in stamps—telephones. Fellow’s a fisherman. But she’s too grand, says the county would never accept him. You wouldn’t take her for county would you?’

‘I—’

‘Her pa’s probably one of your father’s friends, he’s my landlord, actually used to train racehorses here, gives her a colossal allowance, sent her to Westonbirt or Roedean I forget which—’

‘Neither,’ shouted Mary, still in earshot.

‘She enjoys slumming and playing the Gypsy Queen. I wish I’d never taken her on.’

‘Just for the ride,’ shouted Mary mockingly. ‘The ride.’

Not thinking Fergus’s relations with Mary her business, Poppy said, ‘All the same, if you don’t mind, I would rather give you a cheque now. Let’s say half. How much?’

Without hesitation Fergus named a hefty sum. Poppy gave a mental whistle but, fishing her cheque book from her bag, wrote a cheque. It had better be good, she thought, underlining her signature. She handed the cheque to Fergus who pushed it quickly into his hip pocket.

Victor, breaking a thoughtful silence, suggested that it was now time they left.

‘May I come with you in your car, I’ve run out of petrol?’

Poppy nodded.

As they drove away Victor looked back to see Fergus study the cheque, then wave it as though it had burned his fingers.

‘He expects it to bounce,’ he told Poppy; or perhaps, he thought, he’s waving it in triumph.

‘It won’t bounce.’ Poppy stopped the car. ‘You haven’t run out of petrol, have you?’

‘Just thought I’d try.’

‘Pretty feeble,’ said Poppy. ‘Run back for your car. I’ll wait, and you can follow.’ She had recovered her cool and wondered why she had wept; she blamed the alcohol.

‘Okay.’ Victor got out of the car unprotesting.

‘I take it Furnival’s Funerals are short of trade.’ Poppy surprised Victor by her shrewdness.

‘You could say that.’ He reassessed her.

‘M-m-m.’ She drummed her fingers on the driving wheel. ‘What are you waiting for?’

‘Sorry.’ Victor ran back to his car, the old Ford Poppy had seen when she arrived. While she waited, she thought of Edmund, the soul of convention, and how horrified he would be by the planned funeral, how he would have insisted on Brightson’s, how he would, if asked, have prevented Dad lying, for his last days above ground, in his own house, how he would have implied this to be somehow insanitary. Oh Edmund, she thought, weakening, recollecting the feel of his body, the bristly hairs round his navel. Oh Edmund, impregnated with tact for all seasons, no wonder Dad did not like you. ‘This is Dad’s funeral, not yours,’ she said out loud.

Catching sight in the driving mirror of Victor’s car coming down the track, she put the car into gear, released the brake and drove on. How one wishes it were Venetia to feed the worms, she thought with venom; what a pity murder is illegal. She pressed her foot on the accelerator, deciding to wear Dad’s festive dress in his honour. I am torn between the dead and the lost, she told herself histrionically.

D
RIVING HER FATHER’S CAR
up to the front door of her home (she must get used to owning it) Poppy regretted her show of emotion. It had been ridiculous to cry on a strange man’s chest, to give way to grief for Edmund. Naturally the two men thought her tears were for her father; it made her behaviour the more absurd. She decided to be businesslike with Victor, discuss the comestibles, show him the general layout of the house and nothing more. In decency she supposed she would have to offer him a drink. It occurred to her that if she searched carefully among her father’s effects she might find some clues to his persona which now he was dead belatedly aroused her curiosity.

Victor, who had hoped to increase his knowledge of Poppy, found himself shown the ground floor of the house, the sitting room with the French windows opening on to the garden, the kitchen where he would assemble what he called the eats, the cloakroom, and that was all.

Poppy offered Victor a drink. He accepted a vodka and tonic, and was put out when Poppy did not join him but stood plainly waiting for him to leave.

Victor took a swallow of vodka. ‘So,’ he said, ‘I will see about the drinks. Are you sure you want champagne?’ If they discussed alternatives he could elongate the conversation.

‘Sure,’ said Poppy. ‘Quite.’

‘Right,’ said Victor, ‘champagne it shall be. You have shown me your fridge.’

‘Yes.’

‘I had better hire glasses, you may not have enough.’

‘As you wish.’

‘The food I can get from my take-away friend in Shepherd’s Bush. Will you leave it to me to make a choice of little eats?’

‘Of course.’ Her flat tone indicated that they had been into all this already, no need to recap.

Victor sipped his vodka, spinning it out; she might not offer him another. He would have to leave if he put down an empty glass.

‘If the weather’s fine as it is today your guests can overflow into the garden.’

‘Yes.’ What guests? Who would come other than Dad’s daily lady, Mrs Edwardes, a few curious from the village, local bores. She had invited Mr and Mrs Poole and Anthony Green. What a dreary party! She would have to invite the vicar. She tried to remember whether of late years Dad ever went to church. Had he not claimed to be quasi-agnostic? Was she doing right to have a church service? Oh Dad, look what you’ve let me in for.

‘What about parking?’ Victor sipped his drink letting it run back through his teeth into the glass.