Alarm Call

by Jardine, Quintin

  I felt unsettled as I led Janet back to her tree-house, and for the first time, a little annoyed. I knew, I just knew, that something I did not want or need was about to erupt into my life. And it was my own bloody fault for being soft enough to invite it in.

  Chapter 8

  When I was back indoors, after handing Janet back to Ethel, I went through to the office conservatory. Audrey was there on her own, so I guessed either that Prim was still ‘lying down’ or that Susie had reached the same conclusion as I had, namely that a drink would be more therapeutic.

  There was a new document on my side of the desk. ‘Everett’s movie?’ I asked. Our secretary nodded. I picked it up: it had a project number on the first page, that was all. Industrial espionage is a big part of movie life: clearly the big man knew that much about the business already. For all my wife’s leaning on me, I still wasn’t that keen on the idea, but I picked it up and began to glance through it.

  I looked at the plot outline, then the shooting schedule, and saw right away that my potential part was a wee bit more than a cameo, as it had been described: I was only in around ten per cent of the scenes, but they were all quite lengthy and half of them were at the end.

  I started to read through the script, or at least the sections that were of direct interest to me. It wasn’t exactly Ingmar Bergman, but Everett’s audience were more the action-before-intellect type, and by those standards it read okay. Well, no, that’s not true: it read terribly, but with a bit of imagination, a bit of inflection here and there, backed up by good direction and editing, I reckoned that it would be okay. Whether I was in it or not, I didn’t want my friend’s first venture to be an embarrassment.

  I was into the second scene when the door opened and the former and current Mrs Blackstones came in. They were both carrying tall glasses . . . Susie’s looked like orange juice, but I took a guess that Prim’s was Bacardi and tonic, unless she’d changed her tastes as well as her appearance.

  My wife motioned me to follow, turning on her heel and leading the way from the office across to the conservatory wing on the west side of the house, where the pool is. Afternoon had given way to evening, but it was still warm in there: all the doors to the garden were open and the roof vents too, yet the automatic air-conditioning was still blowing.

  ‘Where’s my drink?’ I grumbled, as the women settled into the wicker seats, set round the glass-topped table.

  ‘In the fridge,’ said Susie, pointing to the big cooler that we keep out there. I opened it, chose a bottle of a Belgian beer known colloquially as ‘wife-beater’, and joined them.

  I looked at Prim. She had changed out of her travel clothes into a light top-and-trousers outfit, city gear rather than country: once again, this was someone I felt I knew only slightly.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, quietly. ‘Let’s hear it.’

  She glanced at the floor, then at the shimmering surface of the pool. Finally she looked across at me. ‘Two years ago,’ she began, ‘well, no, it’ll be a bit more than that now, I met a man.’

  In spite of myself, I grinned. ‘When do we get to the surprise?’ Susie fetched me a look that was the equivalent of a clout round the ear. ‘Sorry, go on.’

  ‘You know that I went back to nursing, after the last time I saw you, that is?’

  I nodded. ‘Dawn told me. She said it was to let you get your head back together, and to recover some of the old family values.’

  A corner of her mouth flickered. ‘Did you believe that?’

  ‘I believed that Dawn believed it, and I even gave you the credit for believing it at the time yourself.’

  ‘But you couldn’t see it lasting?’

  ‘To be honest, no: I reckoned you’d get bored before long and be off on your travels again.’

  ‘Since you’re that bloody clever, it’s a pity you didn’t tell me!’

  ‘We were each other’s keepers for long enough. Plus, we were in the process of getting divorced, remember. So, how long did it take you to get bored out of your scone?’

  She smiled wistfully and scratched her chin. ‘It took a couple of months for me to realise why I’d left the profession in the first place, and another couple before I was going bats. I couldn’t go back home, though. My mum had made a good physical recovery from her cancer, but she was still preoccupied with it emotionally, and she didn’t need to be lumbered with my mid-thirties crisis. As for my father . . . Oz, you know him, you know what he’s like.’

  Yes, I know David Phillips: he’s a very nice, kind man who’s been content to let his wife and daughters rule most of his adult life. He is also from the Planet Zog.

  ‘So you packed a bag, quit your job and disappeared into the night?’ I prompted.

  She scrunched up her eyebrows, as if she was pinching back more tears. ‘I should have, months before I actually did, that is. I should have gone off to Africa or the US or wherever ... And yet even now when I say that I don’t mean it.’

  I decided to push things along a bit, before she unravelled again. ‘Where did you meet him?’

  ‘You reckon you know me that well?’ she shot back, bitterly. ‘You just assume it was a man. Primavera’s in trouble, so the cause has to be some bloke’s pants hanging on the bedroom door. Is it that easy to diagnose?’

  ‘You said that you met a man. Where did that happen?’

  ‘Gleneagles Hotel,’ she answered, her short-lived feistiness going out of her with a great sigh. ‘After a couple of years, I decided that I had to see my parents again. So I quit my job, and headed north. It was good for a while, but all they did was hang about the house all day, so in the evenings I’d go along to Gleneagles for a drink. I went on my own, but the staff knew who I was, so they didn’t worry that I was a high-class hooker or anything.’

  ‘Did anyone else think that?’

  ‘Gleneagles isn’t that sort of place, Oz. Most of the time I just sat, read the magazines in the lounge and people-watched. Occasionally there would be a man there on his own, and we’d say hello to each other, but it was always very proper. Even when I met him, it was all above board.’

  ‘Name of?’

  ‘Wallinger; Paul Wallinger, bastard that he is.’

  There was so much pure hatred in her tone that even Susie was startled. I try to listen to both sides of an argument before taking sides, but I knew right then that I didn’t like Mr Wallinger.

  ‘What was his story?’

  ‘We met in the cocktail bar, my usual hang-out: I was on my third Bacardi, and just getting nicely relaxed, when he came in from the dining room, tall, dark-haired, tanned, clean-cut.’

  My wife glanced at me. ‘I know someone else who answers that description.’

  Prim went slightly pink. ‘To tell you the truth, that’s what made me give him more than just one glance; he does have a passing resemblance to Oz. He didn’t as much as look my way, though. He sat down at another table and ordered a Macallan, then he picked up one of the posh magazines and started to read it. Still he never even looked in my direction. That must have stirred my vanity, for when he glanced around to catch the waiter’s eye, I made damn sure that mine got in the way too.’

  I knew that scene. ‘So you pulled him,’ I suggested, ‘not the other way around.’

  ‘Oz,’ said Susie, from the side, ‘just shut up, will you?’ Prim shook her head. ‘No, it has to be admitted, I pulled him, or at least I started the pulling. I brought it all down on my own empty bloody head.’ She drained her glass.

  My wife glanced at it, and at her own, by way of instruction: so I went off and refilled them. ‘Thanks,’ said Prim, as she took her fairly heavily iced-up Bacardi and tonic. (I didn’t want her getting too drunk and maudlin.) ‘I never thought I’d see you house-trained.’

  ‘And I never thought I’d see you crying into your cocktails, so tell me how it happened.’

  ‘Okay. That was how we met, casually, two respectable, lonely strangers in a very respectable place. He moved over to my table and we s
tarted to talk. He told me that he was American, a stockbroker working in London, and that he was in Scotland playing some classic golf courses. I told him that I was a nurse, and that I was visiting my parents, who lived locally.’

  ‘No more than that?’

  ‘Not at first; that night we just talked about Gleneagles, about Scotland, about the courses he was playing.’

  ‘All about him?’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose. I might have said a few things about my job, but that was all.’

  ‘So you didn’t tell him you were a millionaire divorcee, just to get his interest.’

  ‘No! I told you.’ She turned on me. ‘Listen, if you’re going to interrogate me like this I’ll stop right now.’

  ‘No, you won’t: it’s why you’re here. But I’ll shut up, if it makes it easier for you.’

  ‘It will. I’ve been bottling this up for a while: you’re the first people I’ve told about it, so just let it come out, please.’

  ‘Okay, I promise.’

  ‘Thanks. Right, where were we? Yes, talking that first night. As I said, it was all very bland, and after a while, I said I had to go. He thanked me for my company, as a gentleman would, then he asked if I came to Gleneagles often. When I told him that I did, he asked if I’d like to have dinner with him the next night, and I told him that would be nice.’

  She took a sip of her weak Bacardi and made a face. ‘As it happened it was nice. We had a very pleasant evening, and I’m sure that he never asked me a single thing about myself, until right at the end when, out of the blue, he said, “Why do you stay here?” I asked him what he meant, and he replied, “Don’t think me presumptuous, but obviously you’re bored here, just filling in time.” That took me completely by surprise. I suppose I protested a bit, but in the end I had to admit that he was right. It was then that I told him that I’d just been divorced, and that I’d come home to reassess, as I put it. I still didn’t mention your name, though, and he didn’t ask me anything about you. Instead he told me that he’d just gone through the same experience, and was having difficulty coming out the other side. Next thing I knew, I was sympathising with him, telling him that there was a life afterwards and that it would all work out okay.’

  ‘Did you . . . ?’ I began, in spite of myself.

  She cut me off short. ‘I didn’t prove it to him there and then, if that’s what you were going to ask, but the next evening we had dinner again. I stayed for a bit after that, and all the next night. He was due to leave that morning: I suppose I would have said, “Thanks and goodbye,” and given him a page in my scrap-book, but it didn’t work out that way. Instead he asked me if I’d like to do something impulsive, and go with him to London, there and then, for a couple of weeks, to see how it worked out. He caught me at just the right moment. I thought about Auchterarder with him gone, that big barn of a house and my preoccupied parents, and I said, “Why the hell not?” So I went home, packed, said my farewells to Mum and Dad, without telling them where I was going, then went back to Gleneagles and to Paul. He had a hire car to take back to Edinburgh: I got a seat on his flight and by that evening we were in his place in Kensington.’

  She paused for breath and Bacardi. ‘Only it wasn’t his place: it was a serviced apartment in a block that catered for business clients, the sort of accommodation you might take if you were coming into town for a few weeks’ work. None of the people I met there were British; they were a mixture of Americans, Germans, Japanese and Chinese. He told me that his wife had taken him to the cleaners in the settlement, and he’d taken it on as a short-term measure till he got back on his feet. But it didn’t really matter as far as I was concerned. I was in London, it was exciting, Paul was considerate and charming and I had my life back.’

  ‘Doing what?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s a good question,’ Prim admitted. ‘Now that I look back on it, I was doing nothing. Paul would go to work every day, Monday to Friday, and I’d shop. Either I’d walk down to Harrods, or I’d take a taxi up to the West End. Occasionally I’d do something cultural for the sake of it, maybe the National Gallery, or the British Museum, but mostly I hung out in Selfridges, or I’d take the Tube up to Liverpool Street and meet Paul for lunch in a wine bar. The couple of weeks grew into a month, and it all sort of went on from there.’

  She smiled, wryly. ‘We stayed in the flat for three months, enough time for me to realise how poky it was and to want something better. When I said this to Paul, he made a face, and said he couldn’t afford it. I remember laughing, and telling him not to worry, that I could. That was when I told him who I’d been married to and how much I’d got in the settlement. So we went house-hunting and found a nice two-bedroom flat in Battersea, a riverside development near Chelsea Bridge that looks up towards Westminster. All my money was invested at that stage, but I bought it on a mortgage till I could free some up. We moved in straight away, and it was wonderful. I was back on track, I had a nice, kind, loving man, a great lifestyle in an exciting city. What more could I want?’

  ‘More of everything?’

  ‘Once upon a time that might have been true.’

  ‘So what changed you?’

  ‘Your daughter did.’ She looked at Susie. ‘Remember that day I came to visit you, just after she was born?’

  ‘Will I ever forget?’ my wife murmured.

  ‘I don’t suppose you will, given that I was still married to Oz, and you’d just had his kid. I’m sorry, if it annoyed you, me doing that, but my head really was messed up then, nearly as badly as it is now. I arrived at your place full of bitterness and resentment against you,’ she jerked a thumb in my direction, ‘and him. Then I saw Janet, and something happened; she just melted me, she was so beautiful. And so did you in a way, because you were so happy. It came home to me, how badly I’d messed up and how generally stupid and selfish I’d been in my attitude to life, marriage and everything else.’

  Out of the blue, a lump seemed to form in my throat: as I saw my daughter being born I’d felt exactly the same way. For the first time that day, I began to empathise with Prim, and to feel more sorry for her than angry with her.

  ‘As my relationship with Paul developed, and we settled into the new house, I knew what I wanted to happen next. And it did. I got pregnant.’ I should have guessed: that’s where the enhanced bust must have come from.

  ‘Was it planned?’ asked Susie. Sure as hell, Janet wasn’t.

  ‘It was by me; I suppose I should have discussed it with Paul, but I didn’t. I just stopped taking the pill.’

  ‘Was that when he turned into a bastard? When he found out?’

  ‘No, not at all. I was a bit apprehensive when I told him, but he couldn’t have been more delighted. All through my pregnancy he fussed over me. He wouldn’t let me do anything, or get stressed out in any way. He insisted that he take over my financial management, and, him being an expert and everything, I let him.’

  I’d guessed from the start that something like this was coming, and I could see from her frown that Susie had too, but neither of us said anything.

  ‘When Tom was born . . . that’s what we called him, Tom ... Paul was the perfect new father. He was as delighted as I was, just too chuffed to have been faking it. We did all the new mum and dad things, like putting him in his buggy and walking across the bridge for Sunday brunch, taking him to the park ...’

  I had to interrupt. ‘Showing him off to his grandparents?’ ‘No. I kept putting that off. I hadn’t spoken to Mum and Dad, or to Dawn, since I left with Paul. When I went back with my new baby I wanted it to be a real surprise. I’d planned to do it last Christmas, to drive up there and just turn up on the doorstep, but Paul came down with something, so we decided not to expose Tom to his bugs all the way up there in a car. We decided that we’d wait till Easter, but a couple of weeks before that, he told me he’d have to go to the US on business, so that got shelved. After all, there was plenty of time. Oh, yes,’ she said, in a tone that was suddenly hard and bitter, �
�all the time in the fucking world.’

  She faltered, staring up at the drapes that shaded the glass roof, blinking hard and biting her lip.

  ‘Or so I thought,’ she went on quietly. ‘So the stupid, doe-eyed, earth mother Primavera thought.’

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘It was just another Saturday, Oz, a couple of months ago. We had a routine on Saturdays: we’d go food shopping, all three of us. If the weather was bad we’d take a taxi to Putney, but if it was nice we’d walk across the bridge to Waitrose on the King’s Road, get what we needed, have a coffee, then cab it back with the bags. I was all ready to go, but Paul said that he thought Tom was still a bit sleepy and to be honest so was he, so why didn’t I just leave the guys together and go on my own? I took him at his word: I suppose if I’m being totally honest, I was quite pleased. Tom had been getting to be quite a handful. It was a nice warm spring day, and the sun was shining, so I walked. I took my time over it, got quite a lot of stuff, locked it in one of those safe deposit things in the supermarket, had a coffee, walked down the King’s Road and bought a nice outfit, then picked up my shopping and took a taxi back home. And when I got there he was gone.’

  She paused for another slug of Bacardi. ‘I walked in, as usual, expecting the happy smile and the hug, as usual, but all I got was silence. I thought nothing of it at first: I just supposed that he’d decided to take Tom to the park. So I put the food away, and went to try on my new trouser suit again. When I went into the bedroom, I saw that Paul’s wardrobe was open and empty. I didn’t know what to do. I just sat down on the bed and started shaking. And then the quietness got to me, and I realised what had happened.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The quietness, Oz, the absence of noise: when there’s a baby in a house there’s always something going on, or he’s asleep. Tom never sleeps at midday any more. I ran through to the nursery . . . I still remember my heart hammering in my chest as I did . . . but it was empty too. The cot was there, and some of his toys, but all the rest, and his clothes, they were all gone.’