Seven For a Secret

by Judy Astley

  Delia sat on a thickly padded chair at the highest vantage point on Margot’s terrace and watched groups of people arrive, collect drinks and identify acquaintances to chat to. Kate, she could see, was perched on a low wall by the changing pavilion, drinking a tumbler of something fizzy that could have been Aqua Libra (she’d seen bottles of it on the way through Margot’s kitchen) or could have been the champagne that she herself was enjoying, once the bubbles had settled. She also noticed that Kate was giggly, talking to Margot’s handsome son, but always with her eyes darting just past him as if waiting for someone else.

  ‘Get on very well don’t they?’ Tamsin murmured to Suzy, looking across the pool to Kate and Simon. Suzy felt tortured – why wouldn’t Simon come and gossip about the guests with her? She just knew Kate was simply being talked at, was having to make no effort at all herself simply because, in her tiny little baby dress, she looked too good to have to entertain. She herself, well she could tell Simon all sorts of deliciously malicious things about the village residents. She’d bet a month’s allowance that he hadn’t read the comments in the bus shelter about Lisa Gibson. Lisa was being employed to serve drinks, wearing a white, tight, low-cut top and a skirt that was hardly more than a waistband with a couple of layers of added frill. Suzy watched her going up to men with her champagne bottle, looking impudently into their eyes and asking pertly, ‘Fancy some of this?’ brandishing it at breast-height so they couldn’t miss her best asset. Her heavily lipsticked mouth was pouted into a bored smile and she made sure that when she served the women she poured the drink slightly too fast, sending bubbles splashing carelessly over their hands and wrists. Lisa’s brother Shane was round at the frQnt of the house, supervising the parking arrangements.

  ‘I believe in giving people a fair chance,’ Margot was telling Heather, who had pointed out that with Shane’s record, such a responsibility was just a bit of a risk. ‘If he’s in charge of the cars, he’ll feel too responsible to do any damage, won’t he?’

  ‘Well, it’s one theory,’ Heather told her with a hesitant smile, wishing she shared Margot’s habitual optimism.

  Margot watched the aproned caterers expertly wielding giant barbecue tongs over the children’s hamburgers. ‘Feels like the last supper,’ she confided. ‘From tomorrow, we have to stay out of the way and leave the Great Writer to rattle round this place all by himself now that the actual filming is going to start. I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t said yes, but they were so persuasive.’

  Heather was quietly wondering about the exact size of the cheque they’d been persuasive with, when Margot broke into her thoughts. ‘Of course you must meet him. Absolutely charming. And did you know he’s actually a Sir?’

  Heather took a too-fast gulp of her drink and spluttered instead of replying. Of course she knew. That was something else she’d done wrong, according to her mother. Having disgraced them both (irrevocably) by running off with Iain, she had then failed yet again by completing her divorce just three months before he inherited his title. ‘Could’ve been Lady MacRae if you’d only stuck it out a bit longer. And you wouldn’t have had to drop the title just because the marriage was over, you know,’ Delia had grumbled to her as she finished reading out old Sir Cuthbert MacRae’s obituary from the Telegraph. ‘Then you’d have had something to show for all that trouble.’

  ‘You mean you would!’ Heather had retorted. ‘I can just see you, showing off to all those witches down at the Townswomen’s Guild.’

  Heather was glad they hadn’t arrived early. Plenty of people mingled noisily in Margot’s garden, the film technicians looking completely at home and falling on the food as soon as it was ready. There was no sign yet of Margot’s pet guest. With any luck it would be dark before he appeared. Perhaps, though, she suddenly thought, he was there all the time, as unrecognizable after twenty-five years as she herself hoped she was. She inspected all possible men closely. Iain must be in his mid-fifties by now, the romantically luxuriant hair that had reminded her of a portrait of Shelley might long ago have disappeared down shower plugholes, Heather realized, as she caught herself appraising men who were still years short of a mid-life crisis. He could have run to fat, be wearing glasses, or have lost a leg for all she knew. In spite of his fame, she had never seen him on TV; his wasn’t the kind of literature that rated a South Bank Special. Melvyn Bragg would not salivate over titles like Death Rattle, the cover of which Heather had seen, featuring a half-clothed woman doing something bizarre with a snake.

  Most of the men in Margot’s garden she recognized from around the village: the young harassed husbands who lived behind the High Street, the improbably red-haired short one who ran ‘Inside Story’, the cricket team, Nigel from the nursery who had brought his beautiful, artfully tousled wife with him. There seemed to be an entire cross-section of the village population, probably because Russell and Margot were somehow unclassable. The impoverished land-owning régime, who enviously trashed them as swanky and vulgar, were not too proud to accept the chance to be so generously catered for, and everyone else was thrilled with the opportunity to drool over their decor. Julia Merriman happily accepted a third glass of champagne from the convivial Russell and then just as happily whispered to her companion that it was rather de trop to serve The Real Thing at an informal barbecue. ‘Not sure about you,’ she then commented to Heather, ‘but I find barbecued food quite frightfully sticky.’

  Heather smiled. ‘But don’t you just love licking all the gloopy bits off your fingers without it being considered appalling manners?’ she asked. Julia frowned and looked uncertain. Heather grinned to show she was teasing, but Julia was looking at her as if she suspected finger-licking to be highly pornographic.

  ‘Come and get some food,’ Tom said to Heather, appearing suddenly after an agreeable maligning of the England selectors with a computer analyst from the new estate. ‘I thought you might need rescuing from Julia. I could see her revving up to ask you whether she should prune in March or October. It must be like being a doctor where people think it’s all right just to ask a quick one about an iffy bladder.’ They made their way past the pool’s diving board to the pavilion, where the buffet and barbecue were spread under a yellow-and-white striped awning. Small children were leaping in and out of the water, shrieking at top volume to each other.

  ‘They’ll get cramp, swimming so soon after eating,’ Tom remarked. He could see a gasping six-year-old with deflating arm bands struggling to the steps at the shallow end, swimming along with his mouth open in the way Tom imagined whales ingest plankton. ‘Is no-one watching them? Where are their parents?’ he wondered aloud, feeling that he’d done his stint as a diligent lifeguard when Suzy and Kate were little, and that he should be let off responsibility duties now.

  ‘Oh around. And I don’t expect they’ve eaten much anyway. They were probably all thoroughly fed before they came out. You know what people are like, a whole evening can be blighted if they get to a party and the only thing picky little Tarquin is tempted by is the dreaded forbidden Mad Cowburger,’ Heather replied, relieved that someone at last was hauling the child from the water and wrapping his shivery tiny body in a huge Snoopy towel. ‘Don’t forget how it was when ours were little: somehow you’re keeping an eye on them, even when no-one thinks you are.’

  ‘Even blind drunk?’ Tom said, helping himself to spare ribs, chicken, salad and garlic bread.

  Heather watched Lisa shimmy past, with her arms precariously full of empty bottles, on her way in to the kitchen. Her older brother Darren was trailing sullenly behind her, unhelpfully burdened by just one bottle, as if afraid to compromise his cool-rating. The girl smiled at Tom, a smile full of habitual promise, even if it was only that he would be next when she brought another supply of full bottles out. He backed away, nervous of her décolletage and rounded hips. Heather’s were slim and bony, and contrarily she’d always wished for a pert, rounded bottom. She watched men watching Lisa wiggle her way through the throng and up the steps towards t
he house, and thought how sad it was that Lisa had probably already been conditioned into watching her weight and honing away her captivating curves.

  She could see Delia sitting up on the higher part of the terrace, under a hanging basket planted in shades of cream and yellow, surveying the scene like the queen on a state visit to somewhere interestingly primitive. She looked as if she was relishing a display of tribal dancing. Next to her was sitting a woman who could easily have passed for well over a hundred – Heather wondered if it was a trick of the fading light, or if her deeply tanned skin really was practically reptilian. She wore a magnificent lime green cartwheel straw hat tied under her chin with a scarlet chiffon scarf. Delia had on a soft crocheted beret in apologetic beige and was probably, Heather guessed, deeply suspicious of the other woman’s panache.

  ‘That’s my ancient mother,’ Nigel declared, arriving next to her with a newly opened bottle of champagne, which Heather assumed he had easily charmed away from Lisa. ‘Yours doesn’t seem to be listening,’ he observed, taking note of Delia’s bird-like darting eyes as he refilled Heather’s glass.

  ‘No, well she’s watching, that’s why. In the morning she’ll be able to re-run this party like a video, telling me who said what to whom, and knowing exactly who disappeared into Margot’s orchard with someone they hadn’t arrived with.’

  Nigel laughed. ‘Yours might be the more eagle-eyed,’ he conceded, ‘but mine has got by far the best hat.’

  ‘I can’t argue with that,’ Heather agreed. ‘It’s a colonial masterpiece. She looks as if she’s just come back from ruling Burma.’

  ‘That’s the single advantage of having skin like a tortoise – it gives an impression of imperialism. That’s from a lifetime of hunting seasons and pruning roses in the midday sun, much as she’d love it to have been from running a tea-plantation.’

  Just then Kate emerged from the kitchen and stopped to talk to the pair of old ladies. She was lit from behind and her golden hair shone, Heather thought suddenly, like the aura on the picture of Archangel Michael that she remembered pasting into her Sunday School attendance book when she was about six. Immediately she could smell the dusty room above the vicarage and the stale mustiness of the piled-up, spidery jumble ready for the next bout of fund-raising. She wondered if Delia would want to go to the local church while she stayed with them, and if she would complain about the vicar’s wife accompanying the hymns with her jolly banjo.

  Kate was no longer talking to her grandmother, Heather then realized, but was standing, staring at one of the guests who had walked past her down the steps towards the pool. Heather watched him, too, curious to see what interested Kate about him. Behind him, the two old ladies had their heads bent together for intense conspiratorial whispering. Like Kate, they were looking at the man who by now was being accosted by Lisa with her drink supply. Heather’s insides took a very uncomfortable lurch as he moved out into the light of one of Russell’s row of garden flares. She recognized him. His hair was still intact, as she should have guessed it would be, and he walked with the same confident lope she had found hard to keep pace with all those years ago. She moved gently backwards to the far side of Nigel, relieved that Iain was striding along the far side of the pool towards the pavilion. It was quite dark now and she felt sudden enormous gratitude that her mother preferred early nights and would provide an excuse to leave soon.

  Kate also recognized the man, Iain she remembered his name was, the one with Margot, who had said he hoped she would be at the party. He must have seen her, but had walked straight past, which irked her. She decided that she’d wander down the garden and lure him into conversation about the film – surely he would be able to secure a part in it for her. It was tempting to stop on the way and think of something sensational to say to Darren. He’d finished helping Lisa on bottle-duty and was now leaning on the low wall by the barbecue, looking bored and scruffily out of place, and pulling tiny plants out of the cracks. He looked as if he needed cheering up. Kate had drunk several glasses of champagne and was feeling whirly in the head. She also felt brave and adventurous, and in need of being thoroughly noticed. Lisa, now off-duty, was strutting her high-heeled stuff by the pool and also heading for the man, probably with the same career prospects in mind that Kate had. She was walking, Kate thought, like one of the girls she’d seen during the time-outs on American boxing matches on TV. She should have been carrying a placard, ‘Round 3.’ One stone, two birds, Kate decided, casually missing her footing and tumbling into the softly floodlit water.

  ‘Oh God, it’s Kate,’ Tom said to Heather. ‘Do you think she’s pissed?’

  Kate was swimming elegantly to the pool’s edge, close to where Darren was opening a bottle of beer with a piece of the wall he sat on. Just too late, but mindful of priorities, he carefully balanced his beer between an anthemis and an aster, and got up to offer a rescuing hand to Kate. He was too slow. Instead she was hauled out of the water with gallant strength by her alternative quarry. Iain, still protectively holding on to her hand, even though she was now out of the pool, was among many who admired the way her dress had collapsed off one tanned shoulder and clung over the contours of her body. She looked, Heather thought, like one of those dreadful wet T-shirt competitors, and she pushed her way through the throng to cover her with Suzy’s damp towel.

  ‘What on earth are you playing at? Can’t you even walk straight?’ she hissed crossly to her daughter who stood casually wringing out her long hair and smiling triumphantly at Lisa.

  “S’OK Mum,’ Kate said with her best smile and her eyes shining. ‘Just slipped.’

  ‘This lady is your mother?’ Iain said, looking at Heather for the first time. It was too late for Heather to get away. Iain was now gazing intently at her face and she cursed herself for hoping that he had become short-sighted enough not to be counting her wrinkles. ‘Hello Feather,’ he said very quietly. ‘Such a very long time.’

  Chapter Seven

  A quick getaway from Iain and the party was easy; Tom was flying the next afternoon and getting tetchy for the want of a forbidden drink, and of course there was the need to take Kate home and get her warmed up. Margot quite understood that there would be nothing she could offer from her own extensive wardrobe that would come close to what Kate would deign to be seen alive in. Walking along the road to home, Heather decided it was time to tell all to Tom. It was just a matter of choosing the right words, perhaps jokey ones as they climbed into bed. She thought about her underwear – beneath the big shirt she wore an uninspiring plain white body, chosen with the intention of minimalising Visible Panty Line rather than for the purpose of fun and games. She linked her arm comfortably through Tom’s and mentally rifled through her knickers drawer, choosing something more sensuous to put on for bed. Tom had an erotic fondness for silky textures, which he attributed to the comforting nightly stroking of the pink satin eiderdown which had covered his childhood bed. Heather, when she first discovered this, had realized she was very fortunate Tom’s mother hadn’t been a devotee of candlewick, and that she hadn’t had to mail-order a collection of tufted knickers in carbuncle-pink. The two of them were trailing the dripping but delighted Kate, followed by a complaining Suzy (‘Why can’t I stay the night? Why?’) and tired-out, slightly muzzy-headed Delia.

  ‘I’ll go straight up to bed dear,’ Delia said as soon as Heather unlocked the front door, allowing Jasper to rush out and do some urgent leg-lifting against the terracotta pots. ‘All that excitement, and tomorrow I must go and see Edward again.’ Delia hovered in the hallway. ‘Come on Jasper,’ she called to the scuffling dog, ‘that’s surely enough for now.’ She wouldn’t look at Kate, whom she strongly suspected of showing off.

  Heather recognized the pointed Ignoring of Drawing Attention Ploy, and wished her mother was the type of woman who would have conveniently forgotten everything by the morning.

  Miraculously on the walk home, neither Tom nor Kate had mentioned Iain the gallant rescuer. Leaving the party, neithe
r of them had piped up with ‘Who was that man? How does he know you?’ Being as totally self-absorbed as only a teenager could be, Kate had probably not even been listening. Heather had dreaded either of them talking about him in front of Delia. If his name had just chanced to slip out, Delia might possibly have gone into a faint, or even, it occurred to Heather, dropped dead. Now that would have been the ultimate in Drawing Attention, she thought. As she got undressed it also occurred to her that her mother’s instant (painless of course) death would make her own life a whole lot simpler. She touched wood, crossed herself and blushed with sickening guilt at the sinful thought.

  Tom was saving his opinions for the privacy of their bedroom. ‘So who was that oily creep? The one who pulled Kate out of the pool and then stood there oozing lechery at her?’ Tom’s reference to ‘oily’ reminded Heather of Uncle Edward; that poor man seemed to have had all his own oil sapped from every pore to the point of crispness. The TV adverts for the reputedly healthier sorts of cooking fat sprang to mind as she cleaned off her make-up: great colanders full of French fries having their grease shaken off. Perhaps we are all simply chips sizzling in the great deep fat fryer of life, just waiting our turn to be scooped out and drained . . . I must be drunk, she decided, her train of thought making her feel queasy, but she carefully dolloped a double measure of lubricating moisturiser on to her face to stave off the awful fate.

  ‘Old enough to know better, gruesome old goat.’ Tom was rattling on half to himself as he padded around the room. ‘Dribbling at a young girl like Kate.’ Heather regarded him calmly. Somehow his attitude didn’t make her feel he would be terrifically interested in her scarlet frilled underwear – clearly it was hardly worth opening the drawer. ‘And he seemed to know you. Where would you have met a jerk like that?’