‘No, that’s too ridiculous.’
‘And you, Cookie, are too conservative. I must insist on eating with you at your hotel.’
‘Have you ever eaten here before?’
‘No.’
‘Then that may explain your enthusiasm.’
‘I’ll not be put off. I’ll see you at seven, and if you like, I’ll cook something and bring it with me, just enough for the two of us. All you need supply is the china, cutlery, table and chairs.’
‘Too bizarre, even for the House of Heron. Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll find something to eat, since you insist.’
She came at six, not seven, and they had drinks in the lounge bar which looked bare without curtains. Pauline smiled sweetly at Alicia and said that if she had known she was coming she’d have cooked something less conventional than roast lamb and roast potatoes. Alicia told her that she loved being conventional once in a while, that she had come to sample the hotel cuisine for that very reason. Pauline and Joey ate in the kitchen, while Cookie and Alicia ate alone in the dining-room. At first it was cold and somewhat cheerless, so Cookie got two electric fires and placed one on each side of their table. After the soup Alicia turned off all lights except one, so that the absence of other guests would be less conspicuous.
‘Now all we need is a candle and an empty brandy bottle, or a fiasco if you can find one,’ she suggested.
He couldn’t lay hands on a fiasco, but he found a blessed candle in Gulban’s room which he put standing in a brandy bottle in the centre of the table.
‘Isn’t this romantic, Cookie?’ She touched his sleeve. ‘Don’t you just love it? Mother would be jealous if she knew.’
She was wearing a light blue shirt with a white wing collar and black dicky bow, which made her look even younger than her years. She was in a flippant mood, slightly scatter-brained; she kept jumping from one topic to another without exhausting any of them. From time to time she teased him, but he did not mind. He was so happy that he wanted dinner to go on for ever.
‘As you sit here in this empty room, don’t you feel gloriously remote from the life outside the hotel gates? Think of Old Gildea in his cottage, sitting before the fire with both hands on his stick. Is this headland his or is it yours?’
‘I wouldn’t like to say. He’s rich in imagination, is Old Gildea.’
‘Almost every penny earned here finds its way into one of your tills. You sit on this rise looking down on the farmers in their fields and the fishermen on the sea making the money that will enable you to remain remote.’
‘I also look down on Fort Knox which draws its sustenance from neither farmer nor fisherman, and I tell myself that you are more remote than remote.’
‘I know we have the edge on you there. It’s our six-foot wall that does it, as Joey will tell you if he’s honest. It obviously excites his imagination. Last summer I found him skulking in our garden early one morning.’
‘Perhaps he came to brush up his croquet.’
‘He was sitting on the summer seat behind the rhododendrons, looking at my swing like a man transfixed. Then he got up and set the swing in motion. He sat down on the seat again and watched it till it stopped.’
‘What was he up to?’
‘Perhaps he saw my swing as a kind of pendulum. He may have been trying to find out if it swung with a constant period.’
‘His interest was more personal than scientific, I imagine.’
‘He never saw me. After twenty minutes he shinned up the wall and was gone. Somehow I felt excited. I couldn’t account for it. It was the kind of excitement you feel standing still and observing a fox close up.’
‘He’s still obsessed with Jack. He always envied him and now his envy has been preserved in a glass jar for all of us to look at. He told me once that he’d give ten years of his life to play Jack for a day.’
‘I never thought Jack was to be envied. How could a girl like Pauline have loved him? Do you think she was just making the best of a wrong, wrong world?’
‘She still hasn’t recovered from his death.’
‘Mother has, you will be pleased to hear. She’s very resilient, is Mother.’
She gave a ringing laugh to which Cookie did not respond. It reminded him of her mother’s gaudy ormolu table.
‘I detect in Mother a nascent obsession with you and Joey, and possibly with Father Bosco too. She said this morning: “One redhead in any family is enough. Two is excessive and three is extravagant.” I took care to remind her that you’re not all equally red. “No,” she said. “Joey is redder than red. He’s so red that he shrieks at you.” I think she may be planning to invite the three of you to Fort Knox for one of her tests. I suspect she’s out to prove that reddest is hottest. Would you be willing to put your finer feelings on one side and undergo a controlled experiment?’
She smiled at him with coldly dancing eyes, and he wondered what on earth she expected him to say.
‘Joey, as you know, is our resident scientist. In anything to do with the laboratory he’s bound to have the edge on me.’
After dinner he took her up to Gulban’s room to show her one of her father’s paintings. The room was quiet. The night light was on above the bed.
‘Father, are you awake? I’d like you to meet Alicia.’
His father did not move. The colourless face was turned away, the mouth slack, and the once bulbous nose a naked bone with a tuft of moss at its tip.
‘Can that have been done by my father?’
She gazed up at a painting of four fishermen in the public bar sprawled about like odd articles of clothing that had been discarded by real fishermen before putting to sea.
‘They’re supposed to be drunk,’ he explained.
‘Those heavy browns and crude slashes of black and yellow. It was Father who was drunk, I imagine.’
‘You must come back tomorrow and view it in proper light.’
‘There’s no need, I can see it all.’
Nonplussed, he followed her to the door.
‘Who’s that?’ his father asked.
‘It’s Cookie. I’d like you to meet Alicia.’
‘Alicia who?’
‘Alicia Bugler. I invited her up to see her father’s painting.’
‘Bring me my nose, Cookie. I must have left it on the chair. I can’t see anything without my nose.’
‘You mean your specs. They don’t seem to be here.’
‘Don’t worry now. Come back tomorrow and I’ll view you both in proper light.’
‘He’s lost.’ She clung to him when they were alone in the corridor. ‘Seeing him like that makes me anxious and afraid.’
‘Come to my room, I’ve got something to give you before you go.’
He wrote her a cheque for £5,000 while she sat on the bed protesting that she would never be able to repay him.
‘You must have it, I insist. I want you to be independent for a year. I want you to take off alone into the wind.’
‘Don’t you want me to come back to you?’ She gave him a sly little smile.
‘You must feel free. It’s a gift. I’ve never had such pleasure in writing a cheque before.’
She kissed his signature without blotting it and put the cheque in a little red purse which she carried in her handbag.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘I want you to make love to me.’
‘I couldn’t do that, not now.’
‘Do you mean not yet?’
‘The cheque is a gift, there’s no obligation.’
‘It is you who is under obligation. No gentleman ever refused a lady in need.’
‘It’s too deliberate, not spontaneous.’
‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do: we’ll go to bed. That in itself is innocent enough. Nothing may happen, or next to nothing. All we can do is find out.’
She switched off the light. He heard the rustle of her falling clothes in the dark. He sat on the edge of the bed and unlaced his shoes. The mattress heaved beneath him as she got in
.
‘Your bed is damp. No wonder you don’t attract guests in winter.’
He stripped to his vest and underpants, wondering if it was all a practical joke, half-expecting to find her fully clothed between the sheets.
‘Hurry up and make me warm. My teeth are beginning to chatter.’
He got in beside her. She clung to him naked with her head under his chin. She was shivering, so he held her close and ran his hand down her back, feeling the jutting vertebrae under the smooth skin.
‘Why are you all buttoned up, swaddled like a piece of porcelain packed for transport?’
She pulled off his underpants and put her left leg between his thighs, because, she said, it was a better conductor of heat than her right.
‘You talk too much,’ he complained.
‘Far be it from me to distract you. I’ll say no more.’
They lay quietly waiting for the bedclothes to warm. He kissed her and stroked the back of her neck. She pulled the coverlet over her shoulders and he thought of her as a wary child in a strange place who’d been hurt once and could easily be hurt again. The thought of Jack and the gross of French letters at the bottom of the wardrobe kept pestering him. The wardrobe was at the other end of the room. The packet was at the back of the bottom drawer. It would be a long journey across the square of carpet in the cold. She kissed him warmly and sweetly. She removed her leg from between his thighs.
There was nothing aggressive in his love-making; there was a tenderness verging on self-effacement that came from his sense of trespassing in a secret garden. She was open and soft, and more feminine than any girl he’d known. She left him slack-limbed and full of heavenly ease, aware of the hush in the night when a high wind has just fallen.
‘We’ll sleep now,’ she said. ‘Put your arms round me and keep my shoulders covered. They always get cold in the small hours.’
She turned her back to him, and he buried his face in her hair and held her close.
‘Tell me about Pauline,’ she said after a while.
‘What is there to tell? She’s efficient and practical. Her passion for pot plants is her only indulgence. She treats them as little children, bending over them, talking to them and feeding them liquid from a bottle. She is so caring that she will not take a leaf between her fingers; she will only touch the edge with the palm of her hand. I once asked her what she sees in them. “They’re so relaxing,” she said, “like the sound of water falling or waves breaking over pebbles. I can be myself with plants, they never make demands I can’t satisfy.”’
‘I didn’t mean Pauline and plants, I meant Pauline and you.’
‘We hit it off well enough. She feels I’m not cut out for business, though. To me it’s drudgery; to her it’s meat, drink and emotional fulfilment.’
‘Have you ever been in love with her?’
‘Only as a boy. She was more precocious than I was, she lost interest in me at fourteen.’
He hugged her more closely. She felt so small in his arms, a child that needed sheltering from everything that pierced and stung. He began stroking her belly with his hand.
‘What are you doing to me?’
‘I’m palpating your tummy, feeling the movements of your inner organs.’
‘You’re a romantic with a difference.’
‘I thought that as an ex-med you might know all about palpation.’
‘I’ve heard the word before, not in the medical faculty but at Fort Knox.’
Her shoulders began to heave.
‘What’s wrong?’
He realised that she was sobbing and trying hard to stop.
‘I read something yesterday I wasn’t meant to see.’
He waited for her to regain her breath.
‘I found a bundle of letters in the loft, in an old suitcase belonging to my mother. They were all to a man she called Grizzly Bear, they were written in her hand and signed “Your Darling Kittykins”. There were several references to a little time bomb ticking and kicking in Kittykins’s belly. You know what that means. I’m not my father’s daughter.’
‘Your father was often away from home. Your mother may have written the letters to him.’
‘He always called her Katy, she told me so herself. And she used to call him El Grego. He was a lightly built man, to judge by his photos. It would have been absurd to call him Grizzly Bear.’
‘Think of Robin Hood’s Little John.’
‘I loved my father – I mean Gregory Bugler. The only thing I remember about him now is that he wore a white suit. I was too young to understand when he was taken away. He died in a mental hospital and never knew how much I cared.’
‘I think you may be jumping to conclusions.’
‘My mother’s a slut, and I have lost a father. My real father could have been any one of a dozen men.’
‘Have you spoken to your mother?’
‘There’s no point. She’s been to bed with so many men that she lost count long ago. Poor Gregory Bugler should have been a damsel-fly. As Joey will tell you, the male has a special kind of penis that sucks out any sperm left in the female by a previous male before he inserts his own. Now, if dear old El Grego had been equipped with one of those, I might have been his daughter.’
‘Alicia, how can you say such a thing?’
‘I’m a stranger to life. No matter where I go I’m in the wrong place.’
‘You must talk to your mother. It’s for your own good. You mustn’t allow yourself to think such thoughts. At your age you should be celebrating everything that grows under the sun.’
‘You don’t know what it’s like to have a father taken away from you. I’d give anything for a father, even an old dotard who needs mothering and asks you to bring him his nose. If you have a father, you’re never lost. You can sleep and forget, you can accept yourself as you are.’
She turned towards him in the bed and put her leg over his thigh.
‘You can have me again, any way you like. Mother is always saying that she can satisfy any man. Put me to the test. I’m not my father’s daughter. Prove to me that I am my mother’s.’
‘No.’
‘Why not? Give me one good reason.’
‘I’m not ready … and I think you’re trying to defile what we’ve found together. I know you’re spoofing, you’re not really like this at all.’
‘I know why you refuse. You’re half-afraid I may be your half-sister. Gulban was a bulky man, he could easily have been Grizzly Bear.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘Take me, then. Prove to me that I’m not your father’s daughter.’
‘You say these things to provoke me.’
‘I’ve been wasting my time. I’d planned a night till morning, ending in revulsion and exhaustion. I mustn’t keep you from your beauty sleep any longer.’
She got out of bed and began dressing in the dark. He found the light switch and embraced her in her slip.
‘Please don’t go, stay till morning. I’ll set the alarm and you can leave before any of the others get up.’
‘You’re too conventional to make a happy-go-lucky hippy. You’ll never write a line of poetry. You’ll end up rich and in middle age you’ll play tennis in braces.’
He followed her into the raw night full of needles from sadistic stars.
‘Shall I see you tomorrow?’ he asked as she unlocked the car door.
‘Not tomorrow, but don’t let it worry you. Think of it this way: you’ve had the most expensive ride in the history of the headland, and you refused a second because you didn’t want to halve the unit cost. You may not be a businessman but you’re a record-breaker.’
She handed him a flat parcel from the back of the car.
‘I’m a rule-breaker, as you will see from my painting of you. I hope you’ll like it.’
She gave him an unbalancing hug and kissed him warmly on the mouth. Then she got into the car and started the engine. He followed her down the driveway. At the gate she hardly slowed to see if the
road was clear. She turned left, not right, and accelerated up the hill.
‘Alicia, where are you going?’ he called. ‘Alicia, that isn’t the road home.’
‘I’ve had enough. I need time to think,’ she shouted back.
He returned to his bedroom and put the oil painting standing on the writing table. It showed a tall, awkward-looking tree holding a book in one of its branches. Beneath it was a table with a loaf of bread, a jug of wine and a little bird singing. The upper branches were cleverly arranged to make a face which clearly resembled his own. He laughed at the absurdity of it, but when he studied it more carefully he felt pained by its cold, unfeeling precision. She had reduced him, not to a tree but to a not-very-difficult crossword puzzle.
In bed he kept thinking of her. He could not sleep. He told himself that she was capricious and excitable, demanding and unpredictable. The man she married would have to devote himself twenty-four hours a day to making her happy. It would be a do-or-die occupation, there was no middle course. Life with her would be impossible, but an impossible life was better than a dormant life, than half a life or no life at all.
He had meant to say to her: ‘Let’s go away, just the two of us. We’ll find a place with no hotel, no Fort Knox, no island and no hill – a private place with no associations where we’ll live simply, drawing sustenance only from each other.’
‘You want to make me into an ordinary woman.’ He could hear her dismissive laugh. ‘I’ll bet you’ve got grandiose plans for yourself. How do you see my painting? Is it as tedious to you as your Richardson and Fielding are to me? Do you see it as you see Pauline’s pot plants, another crutch to be thrown away when the patient takes up his bed and walks?’
‘I want you to be a great artist,’ he would assure her. ‘I want you to burgeon and blossom, to feel joy and warmth, not just misery and cold. I want you to glorify life – paint the sky with larks so lively that their singing will put real larks to shame.’
Before he fell asleep, he resolved to telephone her first thing in the morning.
Chapter 21
Cookie got up early and had a bath before breakfast. The day was bright and cold. The wind had fallen. The landscape looked sullen and still. As he sat at the kitchen table finishing his fruit juice, he suddenly felt a tingle of excitement. He would suggest to her that they both go to Dublin for a week. They would stay at a good hotel, see plays, films, exhibitions, and eat well. They would go to art galleries and make plans. A bright morning was a wonderful fillip, and even the most difficult things seemed possible after a hearty breakfast.
The Red Men Page 18