Vacillations of Poppy Carew (8 page)

At this moment Annie and Frances joined them. Both girls now smelled of shampoo. Frances looked extraordinary, which was her intention, in a skin-tight mini-skirt which barely covered her pubic region, an immensely baggy black jersey worn under a man’s string vest, on her wrists a jingling collection of silver bracelets. Annie, demure in a flowing black dress, bare feet, plethora of earrings, red caste mark between her eyes, a diamond clipped to one nostril, had not succeeded in disguising her Sloane Rangership. ‘Coming to the disco?’ they asked Mary. ‘Help us sort out the local boys?’

‘All right,’ Mary was obliging. ‘I’ll come as I am,’ she said. ‘You do look an old-fashioned pair.’ She eyed Annie. ‘Are you from the Bazaar or the Souk?’ Annie laughed. ‘You won’t mind baby-sitting Barnaby, will you?’ She held the baby out to Fergus.

‘No fear,’ said Fergus, ‘you can take your carrier bag with you.’ He started walking back to the cottage.

‘We can’t squash three on to the Yamaha,’ Annie was plaintive, ‘
and
a baby.’

‘Take us in your car,’ cried Frances to Fergus, ‘be a devil.’

Fergus went into the cottage and slammed the door, locking himself in with his dogs. He wanted his supper. Fetching some chops from the larder, he watched from the window as the three girls wedged themselves on to the motorbicycle, and proceeded slowly down the track. They would return in the small hours in some local boy’s car, noisy, part-drunk, happy.

‘Such nice girls,’ Fergus said to the cat Bolivar who wove silently through the casement window to sit, paws together, preparing to terrorise the dogs with basilisk stare and, hopefully, lick the frying pan when Fergus had finished with it. The dogs shifted uneasily on their hunkers, casting sidelong glances at the cat, licking their lips, unable, since he was a favourite of Fergus’s, to attack as they would have liked. Fergus gave Bolivar a snippet of raw meat, respecting the cat, an entire tom, for having shown guile and agility in escaping the vet on the day of his intended emasculation. Something about Bolivar set him thinking of Poppy Carew’s father, wondering whether there was any similarity. I must not make a cock-up of this funeral, ruminated Fergus, frying his chops. That’s a lovely girl, she shall have what her dad wanted, and who knows, he thought optimistically, it may lead to other work. Eating his supper, Fergus thought about Poppy and was a mite uneasy of the feelings she engendered. For, like Mary, he had a penchant for independence.

Having eaten, Fergus spent a session on the telephone. Then, plans made, he whistled his dogs and walked up the valley to the downs. Bolivar came too for the first quarter mile, spoiling the dogs’ joy by his sinister presence. Since he had found the hearse mouldering in a barn in France, he had put his savings and everything he could borrow into his business, bought the horses, their harness, the vehicles. Rented the yard and the cottage from Mary’s father and was only now, deeply in debt, ready to start in independent practice.

Overheads are terrible, Fergus shuddered, thinking of the pile of bills, the monthly payments, the rising bank interest. Treading the springy turf, he blamed himself for being so unsuspicious of Mary’s father who had, long ago, trained horses here, out of sight of snoopers. He reached the top of the valley and looked along the stretch of downland where the horses had galloped. There was no evidence now, on the short turf grazed by sheep, of the unsound animals dosed with anabolic steroids, innocent collaborators who had displayed their paces to potential buyers. Standing on the sweet turf, hearing the ghostly breath and drumming hooves of horses long gone, Fergus felt lonely, afraid, vulnerable.

Mary’s father now farmed in East Anglia, growing surplus grain for the EEC. He had not been specifically warned, but hinted, out of the racing world. The old boy network had netted him and, humiliatingly, let him go, as too small to fry. He saw me coming, thought Fergus ruefully, remembering Mary’s introduction followed by the helpful offer at low rent of the cottage and stables.

‘Any friend of Mary’s … glad to help an enterprising chap … wonderful to be your own master … bound to make a success.’ At this rate, I am bound to the bank, nothing belongs to me, my Dow Jones are in peril. Fergus stooped to peer in the fading light at a harebell still in flower in late September, and was glad that his landlord was too mean to spray and spread fertiliser, kill the harebells, thyme and Shepherd’s Purse. He felt sorry for Mary having such a treacherous father; he forgave her her careless typing and arrogance, guessing that she was warning him to be careful of her father by telling him what could happen when it snowed. Winter, after all, is the dying time, the boom time for undertakers. Had she not told Frances, a notorious blabbermouth, about the anabolic steroids and the end of her father’s interest in horses? In Ireland buying horses, she had been invaluable, spotting defects he might have overlooked. He had been puzzled, at the time, by her esoteric knowledge.

Fergus straightened up as his dogs lit off in sudden noisy pursuit of a hare. He watched the hunt vanish over the hill, racing towards the moonrise, and waited for their panting, shamed return; standing on top of the quiet downs, watching the lights of distant cars on the main road and the sparkle of the town where Mary, Frances and Annie danced in the disco, almost he wished himself with them.

He knew Mary well enough to guess that Barnaby would be disposed of somewhere safe. And another thing, he thought, to Mary’s credit. She had not tried to father the infant on him. It would have been possible, he would not have been able to disprove it. He had been galled and at a loss when shortly after Ireland she had vanished abroad without warning.

Many months later when searching for suitable stables he had run into her in Newbury. She had suggested her father as landlord. It had seemed natural to ask her to work with him again, she had brought with her Annie and Frances (to himself Fergus admitted that without Mary it was doubtful his venture would have got off the ground).

Watching the lights in the distance Fergus found himself hoping that it would be a long while before her love of travelling light inspired her to disappear a second time. A replacement would be difficult, well nigh impossible to find.

He recalled her hair had been long and thick-plaited like a corn dolly, oat coloured. Fergus winced at the thought of it now chopped short, often tinted an ugly black. He remembered the feel of the plait in his hand the temptation to yank it like a bell pull. She had been more approachable then, less abrasive, perhaps less competent?

She did not speak of her year in Spain; what meagre information he possessed was gained from Frances and Annie’s idle gossip, gossip which Mary made no attempt to elaborate, lurking behind her habitual reserve, a reserve which bordered on the inimical tinged with not unfriendly mockery. Cheered by thinking better of Mary than he normally did, and by the exhausted return of his dogs, Fergus ran back down the track to the stable. As he ran, his eye caught a glint of moonlight on the pool in the stream in the orchard, where, that afternoon, he and Victor had loosed the trout. He peered into the water, fearing to see it floating dead on the surface (as well it might after its vicissitudes) but, noting Bolivar sitting still and enigmatic, watching the water, he assumed its survival and went to bed, to sleep and forget his anxieties. It was only when the girls returned in the small hours, with Barnaby yelling and their boyfriends shouting raucous good nights, that he woke to worry as to whether Victor, going off as he had with Poppy, had stolen a march on him. Damn Victor, he thought, and damn those bloody girls.

‘Shut up,’ Fergus flung open his window, ‘shut bloody up.’ The laughter trailed away then broke out again into bubbles of high spirits. Slamming his window shut, cracking a pane, Fergus thought they will wake the dead and the dead are my métier, as he drew the covers over his head to deaden the sound.

E
ARLY THE NEXT MORNING,
deserted by fickle sleep, Poppy lay in the visitors’ bedroom thinking of her father. Although he had spoilt her as a child, never been angry, impatient or unkind, he had been much away leaving her with Esmé.

There had been between Dad and Esmé, a handsome woman referred to behind her back as ‘The Spirit of Rectitude’ an uneasy truce. She insisted on brushed hair and washed hands, had been known to tell Dad to change his gardening clothes before sitting down to tea. Childhood had been punctuated by sharp commands: ‘wipe your feet’, ‘clean your teeth’, ‘go and have a bath’, ‘don’t bring that filthy thing into my kitchen, take it out at once’. ‘Your mother’ or ‘Mrs Carew’ (depending on which of them she was addressing) ‘would not like that’. When Esmé called on his wife’s name for support Dad would laugh and say, ‘She wouldn’t mind, Esmé. You are inventing her, building her in the image of past glories.’ (Esmé had once been Nanny to a diplomat’s children and was not averse to putting the Carews down a peg. Poppy had never been sure whether Esmé had actually known her mother, her own memories of her were hazy. There were the photographs in Dad’s room, the recollection, vague, of Mum leaving on a trip abroad, of time passing and the eventual realisation that she was not coming back. That somehow she had been negligent, had died. Life had carried on, orderly, rather dull, with Dad constantly away. ‘Another card for you.’ Esmé would sort the post, picking through it with suspicion, sniffing at bills and appeals. Where were those postcards now? Restless, Poppy got out of bed, crossed the landing to her old bedroom, crouched down by the chest-of-drawers and began to search. What a lot of rubbish, old letters, broken toys, odd socks, snapshots of cats and dogs, school groups, junk jewellery and snaps of Edmund. Oh Edmund, did you really have your hair cut like that? And oh, I’d forgotten you tried to grow a moustache (it had been unkind of Dad to laugh). And the postcards, bundles of them, the message always the same, ‘Love from Dad, see you soon.’ Poppy turned them over, looking at the postmarks. Cheltenham, Plumpton, Newcastle, York, Worcester, Wincanton, Newton Abbot, Chepstow, Brighton, Liverpool, Ascot. A litany of racetracks. He had been with those mystery ladies who dealt out Life’s Dividends. Poppy sniffed the cards. Were the ladies beautiful, witty, sexy? Had Esmé known as she sifted the post what he was up to? Where was Esmé now? Alive? Dead? Esmé had liked Edmund, unlike Dad who had taken his instant dislike. She had encouraged Edmund, making him welcome, laying another place at the table (no trouble at all). She never did that for anyone else (can’t have just anyone popping in without so much as a by your leave). Crouching by the drawer full of junk and memories, Poppy remembered Esmé’s expression. She had been defiant, annoying Dad on purpose, getting a kick out of it. ‘Edmund will do you good,’ she had said. What had she meant by that? Had she meant Edmund will hurt you which was Dad’s fear? I believe, thought Poppy, putting the postcards back in the drawer, I believe she fancied Edmund, how repulsive, eugh.

Soon after Edmund had become established as a fact, welcome or not, Esmé had retired, gone to live with her sister, showing no emotion at parting. Poppy remembered Esmé’s voice, its rasping timbre. ‘My sister wants me. You are old enough to look after your father. I’ve arranged for Mrs Edwardes to come in and clean, she will do for you well enough.’ Esmé’s voice had been contemptuous. Had the contempt been for the Carews or Mrs Edwardes? For us, thought Poppy, shutting the drawer, nobody could despise Jane Edwardes. At the time she had been shocked, realising that Esmé did not mind leaving, she and Dad had been a job, no more, she had wasted no emotion on them.

She didn’t love us, thought Poppy, and to be honest we did not love her. Dad had suggested lunching out on the day of Esmé’s departure. They had lunched in Newbury. Dad had raised his glass and said, ‘Let’s drink goodbye to Rectitude.’ After another drink or two he had said, ‘I hope Mrs Edwardes won’t moralise or encourage followers,’ a dig at poor Edmund. (Why do I pity him, the swine, tucked up with Venetia.) Briefly Poppy considered finding Esmé, asking her what she knew of Dad’s life. Impossible. As impossible as to ask Mr Poole or Anthony Green exactly when the various dollops of dividends had appeared and in what quantities. It was extraordinary to have lived in the same house as Dad and not know what he was really like, shameful to have shown so little interest and to let him die a stranger. Am I too late? Poppy asked herself. Perhaps he did not mind, she thought hopefully, but if Dad had not minded he would not have been so inimical towards Edmund filling her life for ten years.

And now Venetia. ‘I hope she chokes him.’

Poppy re-routed her search into Dad’s bedroom. It was rather eerie going through his drawers and cupboards. Orderly, neat, smelling faintly of Dad. Shoes, socks, underclothes, suits, shirts, photographs of Mum smiling and one very sad and beautiful by his bed. She searched the dressing-table drawers. Indigestion pills, heart tablets, cufflinks, nothing to introduce or betray. Downstairs she searched his desk, fingering receipts, bank statements, (might be a clue or two there, but the only ones kept were recent). A catalogue of a country house sale, writing paper, pens, paperclips, old indiarubbers, TV licence, dog licence (old Buster dead last year), racing calendars, snapshots of herself at school, on the lawn with her rabbit, in her bath (what a fat baby), none of herself with Edmund, Dad had not wanted any. (I don’t need reminding.) Several drawers were empty. He must have tidied up, known he might die. Of course he had known. At another lunch—when, a year, two years ago?—he had said, ‘I might go any time, not to worry, it’s the only certainty and I’ve enjoyed my life, I only grumble about one thing and that is beginning not to bother me.’ At the time she had thought he is coming round to Edmund, beginning to accept him. Now she realised, sitting back on her heels, feeling chilly in her nightdress, that what made Dad feel better were the first signs of Edmund’s impending desertion. Clever Dad, you noticed before I did. Was it then you wrote me your letter and put it in the bank to wait?

And now for the locked drawer, the drawer Edmund had prized open with his neat bit of plastic, the drawer full of old letters.