He trudged downstairs again, paused outside the sitting-room, dismayed to hear a babble of voices discussing Pippa and her problems – was she malingering, or sulking, or genuinely disturbed, and wouldn’t it be wiser to take a stronger line with her and insist that she came down? It was only his presence which had stopped them prattling earlier, for the minute he walked in, the conversation died away and several of the faces looked shifty or embarrassed.
Katie broke the awkward silence by standing on the pouffe and yelling, ‘Can I blow Pippa’s candles out? It’s my birthday in July, so I’m the next birthday-girl.’
‘Well, it doesn’t seem quite fair,’ Penny said reluctantly, clearly opposed to the idea. ‘It’s Pippa’s special cake, you see, and anyway you’ll only be eight, so you shouldn’t really blow out thirteen candles.’
‘Oh, go on, Pen!’ urged Lindsay, championing her daughter’s cause. ‘Tell you what – let Beth and Katie do it together. Beth will be five in August, and eight and five make thirteen, which is just exactly right.’
‘Good thinking!’ said her husband, and some of the others nodded their approval, obviously relieved to have been offered a solution.
‘Okay then, Sis?’ asked Lindsay.
‘I’m still not sure. I mean, Pippa may object, or think we’re trying to exclude her.’
‘But if she won’t blow the candles out herself, she can hardly make a fuss if another child wants to do it for her. That’s just dog in the manger, Pen.’
Daniel stood in tetchy silence as Penny gave a final grudging assent. The hostess had been overruled; the host not even consulted. Though if Lindsay had used her wiles on him instead, he would have given her short shrift. This was Pippa’s cake, made in honour of her oldest toy – the furry frog which had accompanied her to Paris. She had always shown an interest in frogs, and now owned a whole collection: frogs in felt and porcelain, paper frogs and bronze frogs. So why should Lindsay’s daughter or that spoilt-rotten little Beth oust her from her position centre-stage?
Yet the two girls were already hovering by the cake; the other children crowding round excitedly; Lindsay rushing off to fetch matches and a cake-knife, while Brian restrained an ever-frantic Arthur.
Daniel eased the knife from Lindsay’s hand with as much grace as he could muster. She might have won her point, but he’d be damned if he’d allow her to usurp his role as host – or his brother-in-law Fergus, come to that. Fergus was lighting the candles, but had managed only three so far, burning his fingers in the process and dripping hot wax on the cake. Daniel took over, asking Kay to draw the curtains, to provide a more dramatic atmosphere. At least this little ritual would bring the party to a close, after which (with any luck) the guests might trickle off. So it was clearly in his interest to conduct it with some ceremony, so that everyone could leave feeling something had been salvaged from an otherwise abortive afternoon. He composed his face into a smile, moved the cake a little nearer to the children, and instructed Beth and Katie to give the biggest puff they could.
There was a spontaneous burst of applause as every small flame died, then one uncertain voice struck up ‘Happy Birthday’. Other voices gradually joined in, increasing in both confidence and volume until they reached what should have been ‘dear Pippa’. There were various permutations – ‘dear Beth’, ‘dear Katie’, ‘dear everyone’ – though both the grandmas and Penny stuck loyally to ‘dear Pippa’. Daniel wasn’t singing at all. ‘Dear Juliet,’ he was thinking with a surge of hungry remorse, transforming the thirteen candles into forty-one tall gold ones: bewitching, tasteful candles, always strangely cool, despite the passionate heat of their flames. He could feel those flames scorching his bare body, shrivelling his marriage vows, his more recent vow to stay away from fire.
He drew in his breath as deeply and emphatically as he had directed the two girls to do, then snuffed out all forty-one candles, in a single violent blast.
Chapter Eleven
Daniel sat at the desk in his study, eyeing his last Polo. He was uncomfortably aware that there was something faintly comical about a rational and intelligent man being mesmerized by a peppermint. He was wasting vital energies on the life-and-death decision as to whether to consume it now, or save it for the night. It was too late to venture out to the shops and buy a whole crate of mints, plus a ton or so of chewing-gum. The shops were shut, their owners fast asleep. He envied them their beds; would be lying in his own if only Kay and Fergus and Alison weren’t still nattering in the kitchen with an apparently tireless Penny. Fergus had left hours ago, in fact – driven Jo home with the baby and the dog, but he’d breezed in again at ten o’clock to take Kay back to Lewisham. Penny had offered him a coffee and a snack, and they had evidently embarked on a second, smaller party, before the debris of the first was cleared away.
He made a move to get up. If he’d had his way, he would have tidied up the sitting-room, washed the dirty dishes and restored the house to some semblance of order. But Penny had objected, saying it was rude to start fuss-potting about before the guests had gone. But would they ever go, he wondered, subsiding in his chair again and sorting through the papers on his desk. At least his study was unscathed – his own private sanctum where no one had intruded save the puppy. He looked with satisfaction at the sparsely furnished room, uncluttered and well-organized. It was here he kept his African mementoes: masks on the wall, his mother’s wooden sculpture on a low shelf in the corner, photos of his Kenyan children grinning from their frames. And he tried to contain his memories of Africa within these four white walls, unwilling to reveal to Penny how much he missed his trips there; missed the spaciousness, the solitude, the huge dramatic skyscapes and fiercely brilliant light.
He chewed the end of his paper-knife, realizing with a certain shock that he had turned the room into a bachelor domain. There were no photos of his wife around, no souvenirs of family holidays, and even Pippa’s desk-tidy had landed up in the kitchen, rather than its intended destination. Yet for the last few weeks his daughter had been constantly on his mind, so that whenever he tried to settle down to work, his anxiety about her would distract him from statistics or accounts.
He had been up to see her ten minutes ago, and she appeared to be asleep, though he feared it was only pretence; her closed lids another barrier against him. Last night, when he was lying awake, craving both a cigarette and Juliet, he had heard her moving around in her room. If she started missing sleep as well as school, then things would get really serious. Perhaps he should go up again; check on both the children. Alison’s obnoxious son was sleeping in the spare room with a scaly orange dinosaur as his bed-mate.
He stepped into the hall, colliding with Penny, who was on her way to prise him from his study.
‘What on earth are you doing, Daniel? Mum says you’re as bad as Pippa, shutting yourself away like this. And Fergus has been complaining that he’s hardly exchanged two words with you the whole of the afternoon.’
‘I was … just finishing something for work tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow’s Sunday.’
‘Oh, is it? It feels like Sunday now.’
‘You’re hopeless, darling, honestly. Come and have a glass of wine. It’ll help you relax.’
‘I’d rather have a coffee, to stop me nodding off.’
‘Shh! They’ll hear you. And whatever you do, don’t mention work to Fergus. He’s been threatened with redundancy. He’s only just come out with it, and he’s obviously quite shaken.’
‘Okay,’ said Daniel glumly. He felt sorry for his brother-in-law – a well-meaning, inoffensive sort of chap, who believed in Christian charity and wouldn’t hear an unkind word against his wife, his friends, the MCC, or God. Which didn’t make for incisive conversation. In fact, all they normally talked about was their respective jobs and holidays, so now half their conversational fodder had disappeared at a stroke.
‘If you ask me,’ Kay remarked, giving Daniel a withering look as he followed Penny into the kitchen, ‘Pippa’s
only started this recluse business because of the example of her stepfather.’
He winced at the word. He had once looked up ‘step’ in the dictionary and found it was related to the Old English word for bereaved. The definition pained him by its poignancy. Pippa was bereaved in the sense of her real father being absent, if not strictly dead. She no longer even used his surname. Perhaps it had been insensitive to change her name to Hughson, though he had done it with the best of intentions.
He was suddenly aware of the silence in the room; realized Kay was still looking at him accusingly. ‘Oh, come on, mother-in-law,’ he said, adopting a jokey tone. ‘I’ve been a paragon today – the life and soul of the party. I’ve almost lost my voice again from chattering so much.’
‘I can’t say I’ve noticed.’
‘More coffee, anyone?’ Penny filled the kettle – his tactful wife, endeavouring, as always, to keep the peace.
‘Yes please,’ said Fergus, passing her his mug. He was small and rather wispy, with an over-eager smile and eyes which seemed uncertain whether they were grey or smudgy blue.
Daniel sat down between him and Alison, having first removed a lump of soft green squidgy icing from the chair – the last remnants of the birthday cake. He had never got a piece himself. By the time he’d saved the head for Pippa and then served all the guests, there was nothing left but crumbs.
‘Jo tells me you’ve given up smoking,’ Fergus beamed. ‘Well done! I really do admire your …’
Whatever quality he admired was eclipsed by Kay’s rejoinder. ‘And about time too!’ she barked. ‘I’ve always said it was a dreadful habit. Are you sure you didn’t sneak off just now for a quick puff on your own?’
‘That’s defamation of character!’ Daniel objected, still in bantering style. ‘Hell, I even managed to resist a Polo. I’m down to my last one.’
‘Here, have these,’ said Alison, scrabbling in her bag. She produced a mini-pack of peppermint creams, which she slipped into his hand. ‘I nicked them from a restaurant. We were having a long working lunch at the Grosvenor Hotel, and I was far too full to eat them with my coffee, so I took them home instead.’
‘Talking of hotels,’ said Fergus, turning back to Daniel, ‘where are you off to this year? Prague, Athens, Oslo, Lisbon – or are you willing to settle for a week in Broadstairs, like the rest of us poor mortals?’
Penny laughed, started refilling all the mugs. It had become a standing joke that Daniel swept her off each summer to some famous foreign capital, to compensate for her previous lack of travel.
‘Well, actually,’ said Daniel, ‘we haven’t got round to booking anything yet. We had hoped to go to Rome, but what with Pippa being unwell …’ He could hardly add that his reluctance to go abroad this year had more to do with Juliet than Pippa. Until two days ago, he had refused even to contemplate being parted from his mistress, especially for as long as three weeks. And it seemed wrong to go to Rome with Penny, when Juliet would appreciate it on a deeper level altogether, be au fait with all the galleries and churches, whisk him off to concerts and museums.
‘The child needs a proper rest,’ said Kay. ‘She still looks awfully peaky. Why not take her to the seaside?’
‘Or a farm,’ suggested Fergus. ‘We stayed on one last year and had a whale of a time. And you know how Pip loves animals.’
‘She also likes going abroad,’ Daniel countered irritably, suppressing the image of a whale floundering along amidst a herd of dairy cattle, spurting water through its blow-hole. ‘And she’s keen to learn Italian.’
‘Come off it,’ Alison said. ‘It’s meant to be a break for her, not another dose of school. And Rome’s not exactly restful. I was there last year and the traffic was appalling. You risk life and limb every time you cross the road. And the heat was overpowering – a hundred in the shade at times.’
Daniel took a biscuit, rammed it in his mouth. If only Penny’s friends and family wouldn’t interfere. It was a good six weeks before they’d need to leave for any holiday, and Pippa would be better by then. After all, the doctor had said she was merely going through a phase, and though the easy cliché had annoyed him at the time, perhaps he had been too critical. GPs saw scores of adolescent girls, so they must know something about them – more than he did, anyway. Steadman had also told them that a change might do her good, and Rome would certainly be a change. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he felt that Rome would suit them all. If he concentrated on teaching Pippa Italian, it would encourage her to speak, as well as creating a new bond between them. It would also put nine hundred miles between him and Juliet. And he owed it to Penny, after his recent bad behaviour, to introduce her to another capital city; try to make the holiday as special as he could.
‘Hey!’ said Alison, banging down her coffee-mug excitedly. ‘I know where you ought to go. There’s this healer chap in Wales, a sort of modern miracle-worker – or so the locals say. I’ve only just remembered him. I was in Wales myself at Easter, working on a commission for the Landmark Trust, and I stayed on for the weekend with some friends. We drove out to the wilds and …’
‘We are not going to Wales,’ said Daniel, voice rising on the ‘not’. His boarding-school had been in Wales and he’d vowed never to return there – hadn’t weakened yet in twenty years.
‘Hold on a minute, Daniel, this might actually help Pippa. I know it sounds way-out, but you said your doctor was useless.’
‘I didn’t say any such thing.’
‘Yes you did!’
‘Stop bickering, you two,’ said Penny. ‘At least let Alison finish, darling. The guy sounds rather intriguing.’
‘Where was I?’ Alison asked, mopping up her spilt coffee with a piece of kitchen towel.
‘In the wilds of Wales,’ grinned Kay.
‘You can say that again! It was bloody miles from anywhere.’
‘In North Wales, was it?’ Fergus asked, shaking back his limp toffee-coloured hair.
‘No, the bit right in the middle – it’s like a no-man’s-land. There were all these abandoned mines and rather creepy ghost-towns. Anyway, we stopped for a drink once we reached civilization – well, hardly civilization, just a village with a decent pub. We got chatting to the landlord, who was a friendly sort of chap, not one of those sour Taffies who hate the English on sight. We stayed for simply ages, buying him drinks and generally putting the world to rights, and eventually he told us about this strange man in the next valley who says he’s descended from Merlin …’
‘Come off it, Alison,’ Daniel interrupted. ‘You don’t expect us to believe that, do you?’
‘I expect you to shut up and do me the courtesy of listening. Why pour scorn on something when you haven’t even heard the facts?’
‘Miracles aren’t facts.’
‘We haven’t got to the miracles yet,’ Kay observed tartly. ‘And we’re not likely to, at this rate, if you keep on putting your oar in. Go on, Alison, tell us more.’
‘Yes, it sounds really fascinating,’ Fergus enthused, placing his palms together as if he were about to say a prayer. ‘Is it like another Lourdes or something?’
‘No, I don’t think the guy’s religious. And the landlord didn’t mention any sightings of the Blessed Virgin.’
‘What a pity,’ Daniel jeered. ‘Naturally, we’d change our plans if we could be assured of a few visions on top of all the miracles.’
‘Darling, what’s got into you?’ Penny tried to catch his eye, but he looked obstinately down at the table. Okay, so he was overreacting, but Wales was no-man’s-land for him in a quite different sense from Alison’s. He’d be damned if he’d spend his precious summer holiday in a place tainted by dark memories. His school had been in central Wales, and, as far as he was concerned, it had cast a far greater blight on the countryside than any number of derelict mines.
‘All the fellow claims,’ said Alison, ‘is that he’s got some special gift which has been handed on through generations, and ultimately fro
m Merlin.’
‘That’s just plain ridiculous! If you’re as gullible as that, then …’
‘Will you kindly stop insulting me, and also stop interrupting. Maybe the others would like to hear about him, even if you’re determined not to.’
‘Yes,’ said Kay. ‘Quite right. Anyway, I’d rather see my granddaughter enjoying the peace and quiet of Wales than trailing around museums in the heat.’
‘You’ve got a point,’ said Fergus, with his maddeningly placatory smile. ‘In fact, you could forget about the miracle-worker and just go to Wales for a gentle little potter around the countryside. I mean, you wouldn’t have the hassle of a flight, then. You know what airports are like in the middle of the summer – packed to the gunwales and absolute chaos! And if Pippa needs a rest, I must admit I tend to agree with Alison – most big foreign cities are pretty hellish in August, and you often come home again more frazzled than when you left.’
‘And wasn’t it Rome they had those bombings?’ Kay put in anxiously.
‘No, Milan,’ said Penny. ‘And you can stop fretting about Rome, Mum, because we’re not going there in any case.’
‘Who said?’ Daniel snapped.
‘You did, darling – about two weeks ago.’
‘That’s not true. I merely mentioned that we ought to keep our options open, in case Pippa was still unwell.’
‘You ought to keep your mind open,’ Alison retorted. ‘Pippa is still unwell. And this man might have the skills to make her better, if only you weren’t too prejudiced to consider the idea. Okay, I can understand your attitude. He does sound like a crank, and I pooh-poohed it all myself at first, until the other people in the pub started chiming in as well. Without exception, they all backed up the story, and some of them even trotted out the details of amazing things he’s done.’
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