The Four of Us

by Margaret Pemberton

  The waiter approached their table again and served them with their first course.

  Ignoring it, as Simon ignored his, Primmie said, ‘But Kiki isn’t going to have problems about our becoming engaged. She’s the most liberated person I know. She’s … she’s …’ she struggled as to how best to convey to him that where sexual relationships were concerned, his daughter was an ‘anything goes’liberal whose sex life was promiscuously free-wheeling. It wasn’t something that could be said without causing him a great deal of hurt.

  She said instead, ‘Kiki is a major pop star – and pop stars aren’t conventional and they don’t have old-style values. When you tell her about us she’ll simply roll her eyes to heaven and ask if we want her to sing at the reception.’

  He gave a faint smile. ‘I wish I could believe that, sweetheart, but I don’t. I know you’re her friend, but I’m her father. I know a side to her you’ve never seen. Behind her couldn’t-careless attitude to life, Kiki is deeply insecure and, for reasons I don’t understand, I’m responsible for that. She was deeply traumatized when Eva set up home with Jenny Reece and, unlike you, I think there’s a chance our news will affect her the same way.’

  Primmie pressed her lips together tightly. Even as a teenager she had never been able to understand why he took so much upon himself where Kiki was concerned. And he was wrong in thinking Kiki had been traumatized over her mother’s relationship with Jenny Reece. Kiki had been shocked – not an easy thing to achieve – but it had been a shock she had soon come to terms with. Spelling this all out to him would, though, be pointless. He simply wouldn’t believe her and they would end up having an argument that would distress them both.

  Knowing that unless she took their conversation on to dangerous ground she was going to have to accept the decision he had made, she said, ‘And you’ll tell her immediately after the wedding?’

  Hearing the flicker of fear in her voice he leaned across the table towards her. ‘Immediately,’ he said reassuringly. ‘I love you, Primmie. I want to marry you and spend the rest of my life with you. Never doubt that. Promise?’

  ‘I promise.’ Her voice was thick with emotion. ‘And I love you with all my heart, Simon.’

  A shadow fell across them. ‘Excuse me, sir.’ The waiter looked concerned. ‘Your soup is all right, yes? There isn’t a problem?’

  Primmie felt a near hysterical giggle rise in her throat.

  ‘Everything is fine.’ Simon’s eyes held hers. ‘I and my fiancée are just taking our time over things, that’s all.’

  It was the first time he had ever acknowledged their relationship in public.

  Primmie’s cheeks flushed rosily, all her anxieties quelled. She had waited two years from first knowing she was in love with him to their becoming lovers. A further two weeks of secrecy until their engagement was announced was going to make no difference to their life together. Free of any sense of impending catastrophe, she turned her attention to her wild cherry soup.

  The next morning she was sick. Hoping she wasn’t about to go down with gastric flu or a viral infection, she drank a glass of lemon barley water and hurried off to work.

  ‘Buses up the creek as usual?’ Howard said sympathetically as she made an entrance at the agency, twenty minutes late.

  ‘No. Tummy bug. Nothing to worry about.’

  Throwing her jacket over the back of her chair, she glanced down at her diary. ‘Is everything in place for this morning’s eleven o’clock meeting in the conference room, or is it still to do?’

  ‘It’s all in place, but it won’t do any harm to give everything a once-over – and check that Creative have got their act together. I’d like Steve to run his story board past me one more time before I do the pitch to the client – and make sure that when Bayers arrive there’s lashings of hot coffee.’

  Later, once again at her own desk, she studied the list she had made for herself the night before and began on the most urgent of her phone calls. She had just finished chasing Production for proofs she was waiting for when the phone rang.

  ‘Yes?’ she said peremptorily, hoping to goodness the Production boys weren’t phoning to say that the proofs were lost.

  ‘Primmie, thank God I’ve made contact with you!’ It was Artemis, and as Artemis tended to be theatrical Primmie didn’t immediately assume that there was a disaster. ‘I was petrified you wouldn’t be in the agency,’ Artemis continued as if it was an absolute miracle that she was even in the country. ‘I thought you’d be out, wining and dining a client.’

  ‘At ten in the morning? And only account directors get to do the wining and dining bit – though I had lunch in Soho yesterday, with Simon.’

  ‘Simon?’ Artemis sounded bewildered. ‘Kiki’s father?’

  ‘The same.’ Primmie kept her voice light, determined not to become irritated just because Artemis hadn’t reacted as she would have liked on hearing Simon’s name.

  ‘That was very sweet of you,’ Artemis said, as if having lunch with Simon was an act of kindness. ‘Is he retired now?’

  Primmie’s good intentions went to the wind. ‘No,’ she said vehemently, ‘Simon is not retired. He’s only forty-two and he’s a very attractive man.’

  ‘Oh!’ Disconcerted by her reaction, Artemis’s bewilderment deepened. ‘Well, yes,’ she said uncertainly, quite obviously trying to be placating. ‘If you say so, Primmie.’

  Primmie bit back another sharp retort and, signing off a set of proofs, said, ‘What’s the emergency? I haven’t much time to chat, Artemis.’ She tossed the proofs into her out-tray and turned her attention to some artwork for her cosmetic account.

  ‘Geraldine’s mother rang me this morning to say that my matron of honour dress and Kiki’s and your bridesmaids’dresses are ready for their final fitting. She knows how difficult it is for you to get time off work and so has arranged that we all three go to the dressmakers together, on Saturday afternoon.’

  ‘Kiki doesn’t get back from Australia till Saturday morning. And what is going to happen to fittings for the wedding dress? Geraldine isn’t back till some time next week.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Artemis said dryly. ‘How she can leave all the wedding preparations to her mother is beyond my understanding. It isn’t as if it’s going to be a small wedding. It’s going to be huge.’ She paused slightly. ‘Even bigger than my wedding was.’

  Dutifully Primmie came in on cue. ‘Nothing could be bigger than that, Artemis. Or more beautiful.’

  ‘It was beautiful, wasn’t it?’ she said dreamily. ‘And the bridesmaids’dresses were so much prettier than the ones Geraldine has chosen for us. I know Geraldine has unusual taste when it comes to clothes – but narrow-skirted gowns in gun-metal grey silk aren’t very bridal.’

  Primmie grinned. The dresses she, Kiki and Geraldine had worn at Artemis’s wedding at St Margaret’s, Westminster had been confections of layer after layer of pale peach organdie sprigged with tiny embroidered roses and seed pearls, the crinoline skirts so wide it had been all they could do to squeeze down the aisle. Persuading Kiki into hers had been a major achievement.

  ‘I must go, Artemis,’ she said, catching sight of Howard pointing frantically to his watch. ‘I’ll see you Saturday. Should we go to the dressmakers separately or meet up first?’

  ‘We’ll meet up first. I’ll pick you up at the flat.’

  ‘Fine. Bye.’ Hastily she tossed proofs and artwork she hadn’t yet checked back into her in-tray and left her desk, heading off in Howard’s wake towards the conference room. Artemis wasn’t often right about things, but she had a point where the bridesmaids’dresses were concerned. Gun-metal grey was an unusual choice of colour – but Geraldine’s sense of style was unerring and their silver-grey dresses, set off by posies of white roses, would, she was sure, look sensational.

  When Artemis arrived at the flat early Saturday afternoon she looked as washed-out as Primmie felt.

  ‘What’s the matter,’ she asked as Artemis put the MG into g
ear, heading for Kensington High Street. ‘Have you got a touch of gastric flu as well?’

  ‘Flu?’ The car veered slightly. ‘No, of course I haven’t. And what do you mean “as well”? You’re not ill, are you, Primmie?’

  ‘No. I’m not ill. I just keep feeling a little queasy.’

  Artemis, who was usually full of concern if people were even the teeniest bit under the weather, didn’t respond. Primmie looked across at her. Artemis was, as always, immaculately made-up, but, as well as looking ill, she looked as if she had been crying.

  Waiting until the nightmare of the traffic in Kensington High Street was behind them and they were in the marginally less congested area of Fulham, she said hesitantly, ‘Are you sure you’re OK, Artemis? There’s nothing wrong, is there?’

  Artemis made an odd sound in her throat and Primmie wasn’t sure if it was a cough or a stifled sob.

  A motorbike veered in front of them and Artemis avoided running into him – but only just.

  ‘Is it the bridesmaids’dresses?’ Primmie persisted, knowing that with Artemis, anything was possible. ‘You’re not seriously upset about having to wear grey, are you?’

  This time there was no mistaking the sound that Artemis made. It was definitely a stifled sob.

  ‘It’s Rupert!’ she said, tears beginning to run down her face. ‘I so want a baby and he told me last night that I mustn’t keep on about wanting to be pregnant.’

  ‘Well, you have only been married for a year. I suppose he thinks it’s a bit soon …’

  ‘No. No, it’s not that, Primmie. It’s …’ Uncaring of the right of way of the traffic around her, she cut across the busy inside lane and brought the sports car to an abrupt halt on a No Parking spot. ‘It’s because he says I can’t become pregnant!’ She was sobbing in earnest now, her words coming in gasps. ‘He had mumumps when he was twenty-one and ever since he’s been ste-sterile – and he didn’t tell me! He ma-married me and didn’t tell me that I wouldn’t be able to have children! Can you believe that, Primmie? Can you believe it?’

  Chapter Thirteen

  May 1972

  Kiki looked out of the plane window and viewed the hotch-potch of green fields and scatterings of red-brick houses with relief. Ten more minutes and she’d be on the tarmac at Heathrow. She stared down at what, at a rough guess, was the outskirts of Slough.

  Part of her couldn’t wait to be back in the Kensington flat with Primmie – but there were going to be problems. Primmie hadn’t a clue about the kind of lifestyle led by people in the music business. She’d never been happy about having marijuana in the flat. A bathroom cabinet full of uppers and downers would cause huge ructions. As for cocaine … cocaine would be a complete no-no. She chewed the corner of her lip. She could book into a hotel and look round London for a flat of her own, but living on her own held no appeal whatsoever. After two months on the road, she needed her friends around her – and Primmie was a friend in the very fullest sense of the word, as were Artemis and Geraldine.

  Artemis, although no longer living in the flat, regularly stayed overnight when making a trip up from the Cotswolds to shop at her favourite boutiques. As for Geraldine … Geraldine was due back from India any day, and until her wedding at the end of the month she, too, would be living at the flat.

  Though it was a domestic situation that suited her, it incensed her present manager, Aled Carter. ‘Sharing a flat with three old school friends is not a pop star lifestyle,’ he’d ranted at her time and time again. ‘It doesn’t project the right image, Kiki.’

  Well, maybe it didn’t, but it was what she wanted. It was what felt right. As for darling Primmie … where the coke was concerned, she’d have to be discreet, that was all. It wasn’t as if she snorted lines of it morning, noon and night. Coke was for when she was too exhausted to give a performance without a bit of help, or for when she was partying. It wasn’t something Primmie would ever have to know about.

  They were coming in to land now and she scooped her distinctive hair beneath a baker-boy beret and slipped a pair of dark glasses on. She wasn’t expecting to be met by fans or members of the press, but it was always a possibility and she wasn’t in the mood.

  She thought with relief of the chauffeured white limo that would be waiting for her. It was a touch Aled insisted upon, irrespective of whether or not members of the press were there to see it.

  ‘Behave like a star, think like a star, and you’ll be a star,’ was his mantra and it had brought him success with a whole gamut of pop groups and solo artists.

  The first single she’d recorded under his aegis had stayed in the charts for thirteen weeks. Success like that was one of the up sides of having him as her manager. A down side was that he was a slave driver who planned her weeks down to the last minute. Sometimes she would be up at six in the morning and be singing by nine – and this was after not getting home from a gig until the early hours. There were no such things as weekends off. Even though she’d just flown in from Australia, she knew he would have a full day planned for her for tomorrow.

  As she disembarked she reflected on how different it had been when Francis had been her manager. Then, every gig had been fun and there had never been acrimonious disputes about what she should or shouldn’t record. Acrimonious disputes with Aled were, unfortunately, plentiful. The current dispute was over material for her new album. Aled wanted it to be composed mainly of songs written by Geraldine and herself – which was understandable considering how big a hit ‘White Dress, Silver Slippers’and another song she’d co-written with Geraldine, ‘Twilight Love’, had been.

  The problem was, Geraldine hadn’t been around to write songs with. For the past nine months she’d been on the hippie trail with Francis, seeking nirvana in India and Tibet.

  Once out of baggage reclaim she pushed her trolley into the arrivals hall, seeing with a mixture of relief and disgruntlement that there were no members of the press waiting to greet her, only Albert, Aled’s driver.

  ‘Aled says welcome back and he’ll meet up with you later today,’ he said, dealing manfully with her luggage.

  ‘Yeah. Well. He will if he can get me out of bed.’

  She flung herself into the limo, knowing why Aled was impatient to see her. He wanted to know what the timing was going to be on the delivery of new songs, and until she met up with Geraldine she couldn’t tell him.

  She frowned, aware that even when Geraldine hit base again there was going to be little opportunity for her to put in the kind of time needed for an album. From now until her wedding day Geraldine’s life was going to be one hectic whirl – a whirl that would have no time in it for lyric writing.

  ‘Put a music station on, Albert,’ she said, wanting distraction.

  A second later the sound of The New Seekers’ ‘I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing’filled the limo. It was a sharp reminder of the kind of lightweight pop numbers Aled might drum up for the album if she failed to come up with anything herself.

  ‘Dear God,’ she said devoutly. ‘That was number one in January. I can’t believe it’s still being given airtime. What’s at the top of this week’s charts?’

  ‘”Amazing Grace” by the Pipes and Drums and Military Band of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards.’

  ‘You’re kidding me?’

  ‘Nope. There ain’t been anything decent in the number one slot for ages, apart from T Rex’s “Telegram Sam”.’

  Kiki said a rude word and lapsed into silence. The nitty-gritty of the problem was that of all the things she had written only the songs co-written with Geraldine had ever been real successes – and motivating Geraldine into songwriting was hard work, because Geraldine only ever did something if it amused her to do so. During the time Francis had been enthusiastically involved in the pop world, Geraldine had amused herself by being a stylist for a photographer friend, and, when the amusement of being a stylist had waned, by doing an antiques appreciation course at Sotheby’s. In between times she had occasionally co-written s
ongs with her and then, when the antiques appreciation course had come to an end, she had decided that Francis and she had delayed their trip to India for long enough – and the next thing she, Kiki, had known, was that Francis was off on the hippie trail and she was without a manager.

  She chewed the corner of her lip again, still not knowing quite how she felt about it all. As it had happened, Aled had taken over managing her career and no great harm had been done, but the outcome might have been very different and, if it had been, Geraldine would have had a lot to answer for.

  They were speeding through Chiswick now and she glanced down at her watch. It was five past three and for the first time it occurred to her that, as it was a weekday, Primmie wouldn’t be at the flat to welcome her home.

  ‘Mr Carter has left a schedule for you to look over,’ Albert said, breaking in on her thoughts. ‘It’s tucked in the rear seat-pocket.’

  With bad grace, Kiki removed the large white envelope, not bothering to open it. There’d be time enough later, when she was in a scented hot bath and not feeling so grumpy.

  She tried to remember if she’d ever felt grumpy about any of the things Francis had ever arranged for her, and couldn’t. She and Francis had got along famously and though he’d been brand new to the business he’d launched her solo career with all the expertise of an old pro. Her anger when he’d told her he was going off to India had been monumental.

  ‘India can wait! India’s always going to be there!’ she’d raged. ‘Building up my career can’t wait! And how can I write more songs with Geraldine if she’s meditating with Tibetan monks or sunning herself in Kathmandu?’

  Raging had made not the slightest bit of difference. To her stunned disbelief, once Geraldine had decided that she’d waited long enough to hit the hippie trail, Francis hadn’t even put up a fight about it.