Strangers in a Garden

by Deanna Maclaren

  Laura thought of something Vi had said. ‘You know, I realised Kay was going downhill when she was pottering round the garden and I popped over with some plum jam I’d made and she said, oh I had such a lovely morning, this nice lady stopped and talked to me, and she was so interested in me and so kind, it was lovely. And of course,’ Vi went on, ‘the nice lady was me. Kay had completely forgotten who I was.’

  Laura said now, ‘Mother, the paper boy has been, the milkman has been, the postman has been. So who are you waiting for?’

  ‘My boyfriend,’ Kay said sadly. ‘He doesn’t come to see me any more.’

  Oh God, it was worse than having a lovesick adolescent about the place. Was I like that, Laura wondered, moping about, waiting for the postman to bring me a letter from Adrian?

  Early in January, Laura followed through on her New Year resolution, and put a notice in the village shop. A week later, six months after she had arrived at Spring Cottage, Laura had bought not her release, but parole.

  Susie was a strapping girl who’d dropped out of nursing training when she got pregnant. One day a fortnight, her mother could look after her little boy, while Susie looked after Mrs James.

  ‘What a good idea,’ Penny said when she phoned on Sunday. ‘You’ll be able to go into Cheltenham. Lots to do there and it’s such an elegant town.’

  Laura had no intention of confining herself to the Georgian restraint of Cheltenham. She had the hots for some big city life. She wanted to go to Richmond Park and sit on the grass and watch the deer. She wanted to see the Punch and Judy show in Covent Garden, smell the cheap leather in the market and mingle with the weirdly dressed throng. She wanted to ride on a red bus, inhale the smell of burning dirt on the tube, spend some gin money luxuriating in the back of a black cab.

  But first, she was longing to lose herself in the rackety glamour of a brash new musical in Shaftesbury Avenue. Because of the timings of the return train to Bristol and the (hopefully) connecting buses, she had to go to a matinee.

  And it was there that she met Hugo.

  Chapter Nine

  He was in the theatre bar, enjoying smoked salmon sandwiches and a bottle of champagne. Laura paused near his table, because he seemed vaguely familiar.

  He looked up and smiled. ‘Hello! Will you join me in a glass of champagne? They make you buy a whole bottle. Bit excessive just for one.’

  By the time he came back with her glass, poured the champagne, and introduced himself, Laura had realised who he was, and where she’d seen him before.

  Hugo Monteith, MP. It was the way he pronounced his Christian name that brought this backbench MP to the attention of the Press. Not ‘Hewgo’ but ‘Whogo’ which of course, if his attendance record slipped, brought waggish headlines WHO GOES WHERE?

  He was in his early forties, thick-set but not overweight, and wore a well-cut suit in Prince of Wales check. Laura would never have described him as good looking, but he had a worldly assurance about him which after six months in the company of women who were mainly either flaky or narrow-minded, Laura responded to.

  ‘Playing hookey this afternoon, then?’ she said.

  He had the sort of smile that’s more of a gleam in the blue eyes than a movement of the mouth. Very English. Rather military, in its way.

  ‘My wife’s a leading light in the local amateur dramatic society. When she’s in town she drags me off to very serious, important plays. Refreshing, she says after the light comedies the local group have to do. But I must say, I do like a good musical.’

  ‘You mean you like a lot of gorgeous girls shimmying about with not much on.’

  He gave her an assessing look, and Laura thought, right, here we go.

  Hugo insisted on changing her cheap, back of stalls ticket so she could join him in the Dress Circle. The show was terrific. Barnstorming numbers, American choreography, dazzling dancing.

  They had more champagne in the interval and Hugo said after the show he had to look in at the House, although he didn’t expect much was happening. It was a quiet day. Perhaps Laura would like to have a bite of supper later?

  She gave a brief rundown of her circumstances, how she had to leave soon to get the train back to look after her mother. ‘Frankly, I can only afford to come up to town once a fortnight, every other Wednesday.’

  ‘In that case, I shall claim your company for Wednesday fortnight. Perhaps you’d like to have lunch at that new place. What’s it called? Poppy’s.’

  Laura was impressed. Even in the wilds of the Wye Valley she had heard about Poppy Field’s new restaurant. It wasn’t trying to be a hacienda or a Greek taverna or French. The tables were covered in pretty red cloths and lit by flattering lamplight. It had real, old fashioned English food. The restaurant critics had raved over lamb with mint and roast beef with horseradish!

  ‘Won’t it be difficult to get a table?’

  The blue eyes gleamed. ‘Oh, I doubt it.’

  In Chepstow library, Laura asked for a copy of ‘Who’s Who’.

  She discovered that Hugh Henry Monteith had been educated at Eton and Oxford, established a career in the City and married Dinah Pauncefort-Pons.

  What a mouthful. And Laura had never in her life liked anyone called Dinah. She boiled the Pauncefort-Pons thing down to Diddly om Pom Pom and that was the name that always stuck in her mind.

  Hugo and Dinah had a son, now in his twenties and a daughter who had died aged five. He’d become an MP fifteen years ago, securing a safe Home Counties constituency and his sole listed hobby was ‘family life.’

  On her way to Poppy’s, Laura raced into Dickins and Jones department store, ditched her baggy trousers and shamelessly spent two weeks of her mother’s pension money on a short black skirt with an interesting side slit. With it, she had on a plain cream top and a tailored black Jaeger jacket that Penny had sent at Christmas.

  Hugo was waiting at the table. He stood up and shook hands. The waitress brought a bottle of red wine and a very stiff, very welcome and utterly delicious gin and tonic.

  ‘You didn’t seem the sort of woman who liked weak drinks,’ Hugo said, raising his glass of Sablet. She was being tanked up, obviously. But so what?

  All the waitresses at Poppy’s had red hair and wore low-cut green dresses. When they had ordered, Hugo asked, with polite consideration, ‘How is your mother?’

  Laura had made a policy decision not to drone on about the latest episode, which had involved the hairdresser flouncing out and Laura having to invest valuable gin money bribing her back to finish her mother’s shampoo and set.

  Instead, she concentrated on the funny side of living with a confused person. Like the time mother made a pot of tea and then, when she wanted a second cup, she couldn’t remember where she’d put the teapot. Laura looked in all the obvious places. The kitchen, the dresser. Not there. She looked in the bathroom, outside the kitchen door, in the dustbin. Not there.

  ‘In the end, you realise there is a strange logic in what she does,’ Laura told Hugo. ‘I found the teapot on the sofa, covered with a cushion, to keep the pot warm.’

  ‘I do know what you’re going through,’ he said. ‘My wife’s going through it with her 85-year-old father. He’s in a home and she’s very good, visits every week and phones every single day. And every time she talks to him he tells her the registration numbers of every car he’s ever owned.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about your situation,’ Hugo went on, as Laura sucked the excellent hollandaise from the tips of the asparagus. Where on earth did they get asparagus in February? ‘I think I may be able to help. I’m chairing a committee looking into the problems of the elderly, and we have a little money available to pay people like yourself. People who can supply us with grass roots information on what it’s like when you’re the only carer. Obviously, we get reports from the welfare officials, but what’s really telling are the day to day facts from people like you.’

  For Laura, he had ordered a white Sablet. One of the few wines, he remark
ed, that was as good in the white as the red. Taking a heavenly sip, Laura said it was very understanding of the committee to realise that payment would be greatly appreciated.

  ‘It was my wife’s idea. She said look, you’ve got to give them incentive. Full time carers don’t have time to sit and write it all down. And they’re so sick of the whole scene they’d rather watch some sloppy old movie on TV than regurgitate their daily horrors for your boring committee.’

  Good for you Diddley om Pom Pom, Laura thought.

  ‘There’s not a fortune in it,’ Hugo said. ‘Enough to keep you in black stockings.’

  So he’d clocked the skirt, the side slit, and the lacy stocking tops. Where do we go from here, Laura wondered. She was out of practice at all this. But receptive to a relearning programme.

  Where they went from there was to a bit of Poppy celebrity spotting. They saw a famous footballer with a blonde TV presenter who Kay James had always bewilderingly described as ‘no better than she should be.’ At the next table to them sat the disgraced husband of a rich heiress who’d recently been exposed for frequenting seedy massage parlours. Two of the masseurs had gone to town in the Sunday papers with inevitable tales of ‘sex romps,’ ‘three on the massage bed’, and ‘no holds barred.’

  ‘So stupid,’ Hugo said. ‘Why can’t these men learn to be discreet? It’s perfectly possible to enjoy yourself, have an affair whatever, without causing havoc at home.’

  ‘What would your wife do if she caught you having an affair?’

  ‘She wouldn’t catch me. She hasn’t so far.’

  Laura laid down her fork. She didn’t want to miss a word of this.

  ‘I’ve had a mistress for over five years,’ Hugo said, tackling with gusto an alarming dish that looked like raw cow. ‘If my wife had heard a whisper, I’d certainly know about it.’

  Another woman. Damn. It hadn’t occurred to Laura that there’d be someone else in the frame.

  And mistress indeed. Not tottie, or girlfriend, or bit on the side. Mistress was so Hugo, so old-fashioned. Mistress spoke of a relationship, steady financial support, reliable visits, an understanding of his needs.

  ‘How did you meet her? Your mistress.’

  ‘Same way I met you.’

  Of course. Two sure-fire places to meet lonely women. In church or at a theatre matinee.

  ‘How often do you see her?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not at all now. She got to forty and decided she wanted to be married. No chance of that with me, she knew that, so she got herself an American. Last I heard, they were in Boston.’

  Laura was finishing her Dover sole and the wonderful Sablet. Tomorrow it would be hunt the teapot time while mother messed with meals-on-wheels mash.

  ‘Tell me how you got away with it,’ she invited.

  ‘Well for a start, you take care to pick the right woman. She must be discreet. Not hysterical. Not the type to rock the boat.’

  Since Hugo didn’t seem the sort to relish being argued with, Laura didn’t point out that she couldn’t see how these mistress qualities showed straight off. Passion, lust, love could turn the most prosaic woman into a virago.

  ‘And then you have to be careful about how and when you rendezvous. I know so many chaps, colleagues at the House, who’ve got caught out using their pied a terre, borrowing a friend’s flat. It’s fatal. The phone rings, the wrong person can walk in, the Press can have the place staked out. So much can go wrong.’

  ‘Where do you go then?’

  ‘A hotel. Choose a large, impersonal place that always has a room. Check in under an assumed name. Always pay cash.’

  ‘But you’re an MP. You’re famous.’

  ‘I’m not a minister. I’m not often on TV. You might think, as you did, that man’s vaguely familiar, but I’m not really a face people can be sure of. And it’s not as if I’m arriving with some buxom blonde. I arrive alone. I leave alone. All hotels care about is that you pay the bill and don’t trash the room. It did happen once that a strange woman came up in the hotel lobby and said excuse me, aren’t you Hugo Monteith and I said no, he was my cousin and would she like me to ask him to contact her.’

  He finished his wine and ordered two brandies. ‘The worst thing about my job, frankly, is dealing with the constituents. Bloody bore. My lot are quite affluent. They think this entitles them to have views, opinions. You spend your day either trying to persuade people to agree to something, or trying to fend off people who want you to agree. Your whole life is one long round of dealing with other people.’

  ‘So a bit of relaxation doesn’t go amiss?’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘So tell me how it all works at the hotel. You arrive first…’

  ‘I arrive first. I pay for the room, take the key and go up. The woman arrives separately and goes straight to the room. That way she’s saved any embarrassment at the reception desk.’

  ‘How does she know the number of the room?’

  ‘I book ahead. Always insist on the same room.’

  Hugo went on, matter of factly, ‘Would you like me to show you?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Why not?’

  They walked north, up Bond Street and picked up a taxi. He asked the driver to drop Laura in St John’s Wood. ‘The hotel’s just near Hampstead. I’ll go straight there. You follow in about twenty minutes. Then come in by the underground car park, and take the lift to room 421.’ He pressed a fiver into her hand. In all the time she knew Hugo, he would never let her pay for anything, not her train fare, not even an evening paper.

  She was in St John’s Wood. Laura had never felt any affinity with this area. There was none of the sprawling amiability of Hampstead, where residents and tourists rubbed along in a relaxed way, sunning themselves at a pavement café, cruising the pubs or walking the dogs across the Heath. Further down the hill, St John’s Wood spoke of privilege. This was the territory of discreet private hospitals and exclusive boutiques. The St John’s Wood ‘look’ was one of anxiety but you had no way of knowing whether the sour woman slamming into her convertible had discovered she’d only got weeks to live, or that the monstrous price of the dress she wanted was likely to send her husband ballistic.

  Laura was looking anxious because she was late and in a lather. All the taxis seemed to be heading south and none of them appeared willing to turn round.

  Finally, at the large, anonymous hotel, she took the lift to the fourth floor and ran along to room 421.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Hugo demanded, ushering her swiftly in. He’d taken off his jacket and tie. To her relief he was not wearing braces.

  ‘Now come and relax and have some fizz.’ The chilled Moet was on the dressing table. As he eased off the cork he said, in a kindly, almost fatherly way, ‘Now you can’t drink champagne wearing clothes. It’s not allowed. Would you like to go to the bathroom and slip them off?’

  Yes she would. She was so sticky, she needed a wash. Then she undressed and walked back into the room wearing just black knickers, stockings and suspenders.

  His eyes gleamed.

  She had assumed they would go to bed, but he pulled out a chair in front of the dressing table mirror. When she sat down, her bottom in the skimpy panties was in direct contact with the harsh cane of the seat.

  ‘Sit back.’ He had his hands on her bare shoulders. ‘Push your bottom back.’

  Her derrière pressed through the oval of the chairback. Her thighs scraped against the cane. Hugo passed her a glass of champagne and, as she drank, he kept his hands lightly on her shoulders and his eyes on the mirror, on her reflected breasts.

  I’ve put on weight, Laura thought. It’s all those pies. Chepstow didn’t seem to sell anything else but pies.

  ‘A lot of women don’t like having their breasts touched.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I thought you might. I noticed in the restaurant. When we were talking about that footballer, your nipples went hard.’

  He took her glass, topped it
up and placed it on the dressing table. ‘Drink.’

  As she reached for the drink, he lowered his hands to support her breasts and pulled her back into the chair. She raised the glass to her lips and he pinched her nipples so hard the champagne splashed over her breasts. Hugo was breathing hard, not nastily, just as people do when they are concentrating.

  His long, strong fingers held her, three under each breast, the forefinger and thumb gripping her nipples, pinching and pulling until they were huge, swollen and yearning.

  Still controlling her breasts, he ordered, ‘Open your legs. Wide.’ With his right hand he pushed her shoulders forward, trapping her bottom in the oval of the chairback. With his left hand holding her left breast, he used his right to pull her panties into the crease of her bottom, exposing both cheeks to him.

  He made her hold on to the champagne glass, drink, while he tormented her left nipple to a bright rose and ran his long fingers over her bottom and along the silky black of her panties.

  Held at the breast, confined on the chair, the constraints excited her.

  ‘Fuck me.’

  ‘No. And you’re not to touch yourself, until I give permission.’

  Frantic, she ground against the cane seat. He watched her intently, until she came.

  Then he released her, undressed and took a glass of champagne to the big bed. He had a good body, well kept.

  Laura stood up to follow him, but he said, ‘No. Kneel down.’

  She knelt.

  ‘Get on all fours.’

  She did it.

  ‘Now come here.’

  Chapter Ten

  ‘I’ll make some tea for elevensis.’

  ‘Just half a cup. You fill it too full. Do it like Susie. She knows.’

  In the kitchen, Laura conducted her daily check for leaks and damp. The rain was sheeting down. She settled an embroidered cloth on the tray and laid it with the Royal Albert china. In the fridge were two pies for lunch. Vi had told Laura how to make gravy.

  ‘You just need Bisto, Worcestershire sauce, and a good slug of mustard.’