by Fiona Walker
‘Simon likes dusky beauties,’ one of the onlookers pointed out. ‘I think that’s a footballer. Doesn’t John Terry have a GT?’
‘Jesus!’ Byrne laughed, pulling away from her lips. ‘I’m definitely selling the car. Fink might approve of dogging, but it’s not my thing.’
‘Boats are much more private,’ Legs couldn’t wait to get aboard. ‘There’s only sea-life to watch us once we’re in open water.’
‘And Fink.’
‘He’ll be far too busy dog-fishing,’ Legs pointed out, throwing open her door. ‘Let’s go straight below deck and get naked.’
‘You can make a start on that while I tell the harbour master we’re here.’ Smiling up politely at their audience, he got out too before turning back to Legs. ‘I expect you ship-shape and Bristol fashion by my return.’
‘I’ll be waiting, bristols flashing.’ She blew him a kiss over the top of the car.
‘She’s the big cruising yacht called Chastity. She should be unlocked by now,’ Byrne told her then loped off to the marina office, Fink at his heels.
Still admiring the Bentley, the two onlookers crossed their arms in front of their chests, one of them breathing: ‘Did he just say Chastity? You know what they say about her.’
‘Owned by drug smugglers,’ the other confirmed in a nervous whisper.
‘I’ve already seen someone go on board today. They must be planning a run.’
Chastity was not exactly the glossy-white Cannes harbour dream Legs had envisaged while making her steamy seduction plans in the car, but she had a vintage sex appeal nonetheless. She was the forty foot grande dame of the marina, bobbing at the far end of a pontoon, with peeling powder blue paint and faded woodwork. Legs raced on board.
Clanking below deck, she started to undress hurriedly, ripping off borrowed clothes, eager for the fantasy to keep distracting her from reality. She knew Byrne felt exactly the same way. Sex was the easiest, happiest place to escape to right now, along with crazy daydreams of setting sail. Down to her underwear, she shook out her hair and ran her hands up the back of her hot neck to scoop it up from her shoulders and roll the tension from her spine.
‘Hello Allegra,’ a figure walked through from the main berth. ‘You’ve put on weight.’ It was Poppy.
‘What are you doing here?’ Legs yelped in alarm, hands still on her head as though being held at gunpoint.
‘I could ask you the same thing.’ She squinted short-sightedly at her. ‘Is that a tattoo on your neck? Who on earth is “Graham”?’
Chapter 52
‘I got a taxi here,’ Poppy was shaking with nerves. ‘I had to wear my eye mask throughout the journey. I’ve had two Valium.’
She’d commandeered the only dry, upholstered bench in Chastity’s main deck, which she was stretched out upon like a patient on a psychiatrist’s couch with a snoring Fink squeezed in alongside her.
Legs and Byrne were sharing the lid of a damp storage chest.
Byrne had been livid to find his mother on board waiting for them, but Legs had to admire her guts. Poppy hadn’t left Farcombe in over five years as far as she was aware, apart from one brief recent visit to a hospital under Hector’s escort.
For once she wasn’t wearing her turban and smock, her deep red hair liberated in a surprisingly neat bob, her narrow frame layered in a long blue cashmere cardigan, matching polo neck and slim white jeans. She looked unexpectedly stylish and normal, but equally unstable as she fished a hipflask out of a cavernous handbag and helped herself to a large tot, watching with huge, turbulent dark eyes as Byrne paced around the confined space like Odysseus waiting for the tide to turn, clearly longing to set sail.
‘You could have suggested somewhere closer to Farcombe to meet, Jamie,’ she complained. ‘This is decidedly Ancient Mariner.’
Chastity was a salty, seafaring vessel with few home comforts. Outside, masts were clanking, waves lapping and gulls calling.
‘We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow morning.’ He shot Legs an apologetic look. She returned an anxious smile, biting back a repost that she hadn’t been expecting Poppy at all. She only hoped he wasn’t planning on taking his mother with them to Costa Rica.
‘I knew I had to get here as soon as I received your call,’ Poppy’s smoky voice almost as low as her son’s.
‘We must talk,’ he sighed. ‘I guess tonight’s as good as tomorrow. Let’s get it over with.’
Suddenly Legs realised what Byrne had meant when he said he was taking her advice; he was going to tell his mother the truth about Gordon Lapis after all. She wanted to whoop, cheer and kiss him all over, but suspected audience participation would probably be unwelcome at this precise moment, as would any desire to kiss him repeatedly.
‘I might go for a run,’ she said tactfully, eager to give them some privacy.
‘No, stay!’ Byrne reached out for her hand.
As ever, Poppy approached any frank and open discussion with the defensive tactic of a dramatic monologue, employing her deepest and throatiest emotional tenor: ‘I only found out that Brooke was Kizzy’s father when Mummy died – Goblin Granny as the family knew her. I’d guessed at it, of course, but I had no proof. Mummy never told another soul, but she did write it all in her diaries, in code. I started to read them when I was clearing her house. They were easy to decipher. That’s also when I learned that Liz and I have the same father.’
Byrne let out a cry of surprise. ‘Liz Delamere is your sister?’
‘Yes. Isn’t it ghastly? Mummy was Liz’s godmother, just as I am Kizzy’s. How many notes we could have compared! Can you imagine being godmother to one’s husband’s illegitimate offspring? It’s a wonder the fonts didn’t boil. Of course Liz was a total force of nature from the start. It’s amazing she survived to adulthood, frankly, although hardly surprising that she was promiscuous. She’s very like our mutual father, so over-dramatic and impetuous, and a terrible parent like him. She had no interest in poor little Kizzy until recently.
‘When those death-threats started arriving at Farcombe, I guessed it was her,’ she said in a shaky tenor. ‘I thought she was going to try to kill me for interfering in Kizzy’s life, but it turns out she was just trying to impress you, Legs. God knows why. Nobody can have told her you’d lost your job at the literary agency; we’d have been spared a great deal of upset if they had. Darling Kizzy never tells her anything, but one can hardly blame her, and it was far too late by the time she realised what was going on. Liz is utterly wilful when she gets going, as we all bore witness that night. She’s lucky she wasn’t arrested, frankly. But she wrote me a very charming letter afterwards; we’re going to meet for lunch. I think she has a rather fanciful idea of appearing at the festival to read from some book she’s written. Trying to prove she’s one of us, no doubt.’
Legs cleared her throat and glanced at Byrne, but his face was a mask.
‘Didn’t you ever think Kizzy had a right to know who her father was?’ he asked.
Poppy looked surprised. ‘I never saw what possible use he could be to her unless she wanted to learn to ride. The Hawkes have given her every love and care a child could want. Brooke can only hurt her.’
Legs watched Byrne in alarm, certain he was going to explode, but to her surprise he shook his head with a rueful smile, sitting beside Poppy and taking her hand tenderly in his. ‘She deserves to get to know her father. It might even straighten her out a bit.’
‘Oh she’ll never be straight, darling. That really was always the greatest flaw in matching her with Francis, who quite frankly would take a beagle as a girlfriend as long as she looked at him adoringly and listened to his endless opinions. So like his father.’ She shuddered and shot Legs a steely look before carrying on: ‘Darling Kizzy’s heart has been quite lost on another throughout.’
Legs let out a sigh of recognition. ‘Édith.’
‘How do you know that?’ Poppy looked astonished.
‘Nothing gets past Julie Ocean,’ Byrne reached
out to take her hand, his own icy cold, betraying the tension he was feeling as yet more home truths were revealed.
‘I suppose Julie Ocean’s one of the arty crowd that used to gather at the Book Inn,’ Poppy was saying. ‘Kizzy and Édith were a part of it. Last year they had a very passionate affair which ended very unhappily. I guessed at it at the time, but thought it was just a phase, like Virginia Woolf. Kizzy did try to make a go of it with Francis, poor girl,’ Poppy sighed, ‘and I know that she would do anything for me, but frankly it was torture to watch in the end. If anything Francis pushed her further in the direction of Sapphic love. He takes so much looking after.’ She let out a deep sigh. ‘I do wish you’d reconsider him, Legs. You’re so good for him.’
‘She will not reconsider,’ Byrne thundered.
‘Hector is terribly disenchanted by all this. He’s desperate for grandchildren. He always thought Édith was going through a stage and would settle down eventually to have babies, but this latest development rather refutes that – and now you and Francis look unlikely to reconcile, Legs, he’ll have to stop practising lullabies on the bassoon, poor darling.’ She let out a long, soulful sigh, but if she expected to garner any sympathy on board Chastity, she was mistaken. ‘He’s hugely disapproving of Édith taking up with Kizzy,’ she went on. ‘He only tolerated Jax because she was so practical to have around the house and looked rather like a chap. He says decorative women like Kizzy and Édith should never take up together because it limits the high end heterosexual market, leaving only poor quality goods available. He’s such a corporate reactionary in some ways – my darling caveman.’ She shuddered, but this time from pleasure as a smile spread across her face. The idea of a limited heterosexual market available to Hector clearly pleased her a great deal. ‘He’s even threatening to boot Édith out of the London house, but I suspect that’s only as an excuse to sell it. He’s convinced the only way to secure a knighthood is to bung another few million to charitable causes, and we’re stupidly hard up.’
‘Can’t he stage a few more art thefts and claim them on insurance?’ muttered Byrne.
‘Oh that’s just Hector being silly,’ Poppy dismissed, as though it was no more than a mislaid cufflink.
‘He can’t really believe I took that painting deliberately?’ Legs asked nervously, reluctant to reveal the full truth about how Hector’s love token came into her possession.
‘Well he’s certainly been shouting down the phone and annoying the police a lot. They even seem to be taking him seriously, which is quite amazing given Liz’s death threats turned out to be harmless creative over-enthusiasm, although I suppose the fact you ended up hanging upside-down from a cliff in front of witnesses added some weight to his argument, Legs. Then of course you ran off with that painting, and focus shifted from malicious threats to art theft. It’s insured for a hundred thousand, which would have come in jolly handy.’
‘Oh God, he’ll have me banged up,’ she groaned.
‘I’m sure all will be forgiven if you come back to Francis,’ Poppy gave her a knowing look.
‘I can’t do that!’ she yelped, looking at Byrne whose dark eyes glowered furiously.
Poppy folded her long fingers together in front of her nose and crossed her eyes as she regarded her large, brightly coloured glass rings before glancing across at Legs. ‘Nobody will arrest you over that dreadful geegaw, Legs. Quite honestly you did us a favour getting rid of it. Hector and I always argue about it because he once told Francis it was a Freud, showing off as usual, and now he can’t bring himself to admit that he painted it himself as a young man. Now that it’s been recovered, it’s bound to be authenticated, and of course the truth will come out. It’s actually a portrait of one of the waitresses at the Fitzroy Club. Hector told me he had an affair with her while Ella was pregnant with Francis, but I don’t think it will help to tell him that right now.’
‘Probably not,’ Legs agreed shakily.
‘The man’s shameless!’ Byrne exploded at his mother. ‘How can you bear to take him back?’
Poppy looked at him levelly. ‘For all his considerable sins, I love him a great deal,’ she sighed. ‘It’s such bliss to have him in the house again, I feel reborn. It’s been so deathly quiet without him. He’s my music, my conversation and my laughter. I know he’s terribly wayward, more so than ever these days, and he probably should be taught a lesson, but with the festival so close at hand, I need him to stay strong for all our sakes.’
‘I’ll happily teach him a fucking lesson,’ Byrne raged.
‘Please don’t hate him, Jamie. I know you two haven’t got off to the best of starts, but Hector really terribly charming once you—’
‘Never!’
‘Oh, what a mess,’ Poppy let out a deep sigh, pressing a fingertip between her eyes to relieve the pressure of a headache there. ‘Everything surrounding the festival is very fragile this year, including the house. Thank goodness for Gordon Lapis. He is Farcombe’s saviour.’
‘You think so?’ Byrne asked darkly.
Legs watched him anxiously. There was a muscle pounding in his cheek.
‘I know it,’ Poppy seemed greatly cheered by the thought of Gordon as she reached for her hip flask again. ‘Such a talented chap. Do you know I’m probably the reason he asked to make his debut appearance at Farcombe? I wrote to him once in appreciation of his work (I’m sure the poor man hardly ever gets a letter from anybody with a decent education) and had a charming reply from his PA saying how gratified he was. I can’t wait to meet him. I think we might have rather a lot in common, he and I.’ She checked her reflection in the flask’s silver side, its convex curves widening her cheekbones to flattering Marianne Faithfull proportions.
Byrne’s brows lowered over his furnace eyes. ‘The man’s a selfish bastard. He’ll let you down, trust me.’
‘Do you know him then?’
‘Intimately.’
‘How thrilling! I had no idea you were bisexual.’
Byrne was looking up at the cabin’s wooden roof in frustration. Then a wry smile touched his tight lips. ‘Poppy, I am Gordon Lapis.’
Her hands flew to her face again, huge eyes gazing at him over her fingers, her voice muffled as she gasped: ‘Would you mind saying that again?’
Sitting down at her side, he took her hand in his and told her about his writing alter ego as calmly and simply as he could.
Afterwards, she kissed his hand like a fervent disciple kissing the Ring of Fishermen, ‘You are so clever and so brilliant and so unique and so – rich! And you are about to be so, so famous.’
‘I don’t want to be famous.’
She gaped at him in horror, almost more shocked by this bombshell than the news that he was Gordon. ‘Why ever not?’
He stared across at Legs. ‘I want to marry the woman I love and have a huge family, ride horses and write new books. I don’t want that life to be in any way public. Gordon’s done a fantastic thing, but now it’s time for him to retire.’
‘Nonsense! You have no idea what influence such notoriety has. It’s power to do so much good. What I wouldn’t have given for this opportunity. Admittedly you are very populist, but that has its plus sides. And your books are so terribly clever, I have no doubt they will outlive you by many generations. You could do so much for the arts as a patron and spokesperson. You must see this as your duty!’ She was positively evangelical. ‘My son! My clever, clever son.’ She sprang towards him in a rare, affectionate embrace.
Crushed in her bony crab grip, he admitted mournfully. ‘I have absolutely no desire to do it.’
‘You have no choice. What else are you going to do? Trawl this old boat out of harbour and set sail across the oceans?’ She released him from the hug.
‘Something like that.’ He looked to Legs for reassurance, jumping as his mother slammed her ringed finger down on the narrow galley table in front of them.
‘You mustn’t! Think of the millions of fans you’re letting down.’
‘I’ve already done that. I killed Ptolemy.’
‘And I was very, very angry about that at first too,’ Poppy admitted, ‘but I’ve reread the book and it’s obvious that you’ve put down markers for his resurrection, Purple’s abilities in necromancy for a start, and the ghost narrative in the mid section. In fact the whole series is littered with references which could be tied together to create a quite overwhelming sequel to Raven’s Curse.’
‘You know the books better than I do,’ he laughed sadly. ‘But you’re not going to change my mind.’
She looked terribly sad, her dreams of more Ptolemy Finch adventures shattered. ‘Do you really hate writing them that much?’
He shook his head. ‘I enjoy writing them. Ptolemy’s world is so real to me now I can escape there simply by closing my eyes. I’ve even written something new in this past week.’
‘You are writing another!’ she cried, hopes reigniting as she demanded excitedly. ‘Can I read it?’
‘It’s not a sequel. It’s an apology of sorts.’
She grasped his arm determinedly. ‘You will read it aloud at the festival even if I have to take you hostage tonight. This is your duty, Jamie!’ She turned to Legs, ‘Tell him he must do this. It’s entirely selfish of you both to want to set sail, not to mention cruel to the dog.’
Legs had to admit that life on the high seas was starting to lose its appeal. Just bobbing about in the harbour was making her feel quite sick, and Fink certainly looked pretty queasy too, but she remained staunchly loyal, brimming with such love and pride that she’d set sail across oceans in a two-man barrel if he asked her to. ‘I will go wherever Byrne goes.’