The Four of Us

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘You will have babies,’ Geraldine said positively. ‘You’ll adopt lots and lots of the most adorable babies imaginable.’

  Artemis managed an uncertain smile. ‘Will it be the same, do you think? And I don’t need lots and lots of babies. I’d be over the moon with just one.’

  ‘It will be your baby and you’ll love it and it will love you. And look on the bright side. It won’t have inherited Rupert’s total lack of simpatico. The more I think of it, Artemis, the more I think adoption will be a blessing in disguise.’

  She’d been trying to make Artemis giggle and she succeeded. ‘You’re right, Geraldine,’ she said, looking much cheered. ‘I hadn’t looked at it that way before. And I’ll be able to choose whether I have a boy or a girl, won’t I?’

  ‘Probably. I don’t have a clue about adoption procedures. Now scoot, I have a wedding dress to be fitted – and if you or Primmie run into Kiki, tell her to get over here pretty damn quick.’

  Ten minutes later, standing immobile before a three-way mirror as Antonella adjusted the seams of the Edwardian wedding dress, Geraldine was pondering two things. One was the mystery of why, having gone off on Monday to recover from a viral infection, Simon Lane hadn’t been in touch with Primmie by telephone – and he hadn’t, because, she’d asked. And though Primmie hadn’t indicated that she thought it odd, or a problem, she had been unusually quiet. The other thing occupying her mind was more important. Primmie had said Kiki wasn’t happy at the way Aled Carter was managing her and that she wanted to speak to Francis about it.

  Primmie’s assumption had been that Kiki merely wanted his advice. She, however, wasn’t so sure.

  Kiki had behaved as if it had been the ultimate betrayal when she’d had to find another manager and, now that she and Francis were back from India, she was primed for Kiki suggesting to Francis that he become her manager again.

  And she, Geraldine, didn’t want him to.

  There were many reasons why. One was the drug-ridden lifestyle of the music industry. She’d always been laid back about dope. Cannabis had been a part of her life, and Francis’s, since they’d been teenagers and had never, as far as she could see, done either of them any harm, but that had probably been because their lives hadn’t centred around it. On the hippie trail, things had been different. There had been an uncontrolled abundance of drugs and, though she hadn’t taken any of them, Francis, adopting the attitude that it was all part of the hippie experience, had indulged in them all. On the trail it had all seemed quite normal, because so many other travellers were behaving the same way. Now, however, they were back in London and about to embark on a quite different lifestyle at Cedar Court and she was determined that drugs of the hard variety were going to have no part to play in it.

  Another reason for her not wanting Francis to immerse himself in Kiki’s career again was the amount of time he had given to it. Back then, it hadn’t mattered so much. Now, however, when she had so many plans for Cedar Court, it was very different, because what she was going to do was huge and couldn’t be done alone. She was going to open the house and grounds to the public.

  A rare jewel of an Elizabethan manor house, it would, she was sure, be a great draw. The work, though, would be colossal. The overgrown gardens, though poetically lovely in their wildness, weren’t the kind of gardens the public could be expected to admire. There would have to be vast re-furnishing, too, so that as much of the house as possible was in keeping with its Tudor style. And she and Francis would have to drum up as much Elizabethan family history as possible – and search out mementos of it.

  All in all, it was going to be a colossal amount of work and it was work she and Francis would have to do together and that she passionately wanted them to do together. However unhappy Kiki was with Aled Carter’s management of her career, she would either have to endure it or find someone else. But that someone else was not going to be Francis – of that, she’d made up her mind.

  ‘There, I’m through,’ Antonella said with satisfaction.

  Geraldine looked at her reflection and knew she’d been right in opting to wear her grandmother’s wedding dress instead of a fashionable mini style or a traditional crinoline-style dress. She didn’t weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet and the exquisite handmade lace clung sinuously to her high, small breasts and slender hips, falling arrow-straight to skim her feet and drape into a small train. The coronet of seed pearls and hip-length veil she was to wear with it were the coronet and veil her mother and her grandmother had worn. She wouldn’t look fashionable, but looking fashionable had never been her style. What she would look was distinctive and very, very Geraldine.

  ‘Wow! You look sensational!’ Kiki said, bursting into the room, wearing a black top, black pencil skirt and motorcycle boots, her legs bare.

  ‘Are you back with Ty again?’ Geraldine asked dryly, regarding Kiki’s outfit with a mixture of despair and amusement. ‘All you’re short of is a death’s head motif and an Apache headband!’

  ‘And a Harley!’ Kiki said with a grin, flinging herself down on one of the sofas Antonella provided for clients. ‘I’m just back from Geordie-land. Naked legs and motorcycle boots are the in thing up there.’

  ‘Remove them before Antonella has heart failure. This is a dust-free zone. And while Antonella helps me out of my dress, fill me in with all the gossip. It’s been nine months since I last saw you. What’s new?’

  ‘I’m a star,’ Kiki said with a self-satisfied grin. ‘But then, thanks to Francis, I was a star before you went away. I’ve just done a two-month tour of Australia. I’m off to Italy to do another tour – much shorter – the day after your wedding. Aled Carter sucks and I can’t crack on with an album because we haven’t got our heads together over songs.’

  As she stepped free of her wedding dress and as Antonella, white-gloved, lifted it away from her, Geraldine grinned. ‘Well, if that’s all, I haven’t missed much. Get your Gothic-looking garb off so that Antonella can give your dress a last fitting!’

  ‘Joking apart, Geraldine, we have to work on some more songs,’ Kiki said, tugging her black top over her head to reveal that she was bra-less. ‘Because we haven’t done so, Aled Carter is going to be able to make me go in a studio and record absolute tosh.’

  She yanked off her motorcycle boots and tugged her skirt down. ‘The new tracks Aled’s come up with for my album are about as hard-edged as “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing”.’

  Geraldine stepped into a flower-patterned georgette dress she’d bought in the Chelsea Antique Market and said sympathetically, ‘Poor you. What are you going to do about it?’

  As Antonella slid the grey silk bridesmaid dress over her head, Kiki said, ‘First of all I’m going to pin you down to doing some serious songwriting and secondly I’m going to dump Aled and have Francis as my manager again.’

  Geraldine smoothed the bias-cut skirt of her dress over her hips. ‘That may be what you’d like, Kiki, but you’re going to have to think of other options.’

  As Antonella began her work of tucking and pinning, Kiki’s eyebrows rose nearly into her flame-red hair. ‘Just what do you mean? There are no other options. I need more songs in the style of “White Dress, Silver Slippers” and “Twilight Love” and I need Francis as my manager again.’

  Geraldine slid her feet into a pair of gold sandals. ‘The songs aren’t that much of a problem – or they aren’t if Aled has others in mind for the album you’re about to record. By the time there’s a follow-up album, we’ll have songs for it. Where Francis is concerned, though, the problem isn’t so easily solved.’

  Kiki sucked in her breath, her nostrils whitening. ‘You’d better explain why quickly to me, Geraldine, and it had better be good.

  You’re not dragging him off on another bloody hippie trail, are you, to South America or Tibet?’

  ‘No.’ Geraldine’s beautifully boned face was grave. ‘Francis and I are going to live at Cedar Court after the wedding. You’ve always known that was ou
r plan. And we’re going to open the house and grounds to the public.’

  ‘So?’ Kiki stepped out of reach of Antonella’s ministrations. ‘Just because Francis will be living at Cedar Court instead of in town, doesn’t mean he can’t manage me. He won’t be giving up his flat in town, will he? And if it really comes to it, he could have a helicopter. The parkland at Cedar Court is big enough to land a jumbo jet!’

  Antonella, unable to continue with the fitting, began tapping a foot impatiently.

  Geraldine knew just how she felt.

  ‘There’s no need to fly into a tantrum, Kiki,’ she said, keeping her voice steady with difficulty. ‘Francis never intended being your manager long term. It was just something that it suited him to do at the time. From now on, all his time and energy are going to be taken up with turning Cedar Court into a miniature Penshurst or Hever Castle. It’s something I can’t do on my own. I need him to help me do it.’

  ‘Well, I jolly well need him too!’

  Eyes blazing, Kiki yanked the dress up and over her head with such carelessness that Antonella shouted in horror and rushed forward to lift it away from her.

  ‘Everything in my life is going haywire at the moment,’ Kiki continued explosively, dragging on her skirt. ‘I have to record an album and do you give a shit that there are no decent songs for it?’ She pulled her black top any old how over her already tousled hair. ‘No. You couldn’t care less. As for Francis …’ She thrust her feet into the motorcycle boots. ‘Cedar Court is your obsession, Geraldine, not his. Francis loved being in the music business. He loved being my manager. And he wants to be my manager again.’

  She stormed across to the door and yanked it open. ‘And do you know how I know?’ she demanded. ‘I know because I’ve already asked him and he’s already said there’s nothing he’d like better!’

  The door slammed behind her with such force the whole room seemed to rock.

  After a long, embarrassed silence, Antonella cleared her throat. ‘The dress,’ she said, Kiki’s bridesmaid dress still in her arms. ‘I’d hardly begun the fitting …’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ White-lipped, Geraldine picked up her handbag. ‘Kiki will come back so that you can fit it properly or, if she doesn’t, and if the dress isn’t perfect, it will be her fault, Antonella, not yours.’

  She didn’t drive back to the flat. Instead, she headed out of London, towards Sussex and Cedar Court. At Horsham she drew up near a telephone box and phoned Primmie.

  ‘Kiki and I have just had words,’ she said, knowing it was an understatement but wanting to keep it brief. ‘I’ve got a million and one wedding plans to verify and check and as it will be easier to do it all from Cedar Court, that’s where I’m going. Bye, God Bless.’

  Ringing off before Primmie could ask what the angry words had been over, she rang Francis at his Chelsea flat, which was where she had left him. There was no reply.

  With a headache of major proportions beginning to build up behind her eyes, she returned to her car and continued driving towards Sussex, well aware that she had a problem of major proportions on her hands.

  Kiki’s temper had always been explosive, but she could never remember ever having had such a nasty exchange with her. Even worse, the issue they were over had been serious, because Kiki had been right when she’d said that Francis had loved the music business and being a part of it as her manager. Rubbing shoulders with rock stars like The Stones and The Beatles had given him an enormous buzz, and when it had come to launching Kiki’s solo career he’d shown a natural talent for promotion and networking. But that wasn’t what she wanted. All their lives she’d either kept Francis out of trouble or got him out of it, and with instinct she trusted implicitly she knew that the music industry – and the hard drugs so freely available in it – was no place for Francis to be.

  Once at Cedar Court, where her uncle, knee-deep in the wedding preparations her mother was frantically making on her behalf, was deeply relieved to see her, she rang Francis again.

  Again, there was no reply.

  ‘Why would he be at his flat?’ her Uncle Piers asked, mystified. ‘I know he spent last night there, but that was because you’d both landed at Heathrow disgustingly late. I haven’t seen the wretched boy for nine months and I expected him to be here by now. Where the devil is he?’

  If Kiki really had asked him to be her manager again, then she could only have done so that morning. Had he, instead of either remaining at the flat so that they could meet up after her visit to the dressmakers, or driving down ahead of her to Cedar Court, arranged to meet up with Kiki so that they could talk things over further? And if he had, was he going to be so hyper at the thought of being part of the rock world again that talking him out of it was going to be a real problem?

  With a level of anxiety that was completely foreign to her, she rang the Kensington flat.

  Primmie answered the phone.

  ‘Hi, Prim. Is Kiki with you?’

  ‘No. Are things seriously wrong between you and her?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ It was, Geraldine reflected, the stark truth. ‘Is anything wrong your end, Prim? You’re voice sounds odd and I’ve never known you be as quiet as you were this morning when your dress was being fitted.’

  There was a slight pause and then Primmie said, echoing her, ‘I’m not sure. It’s just that Simon still hasn’t returned home. He phoned me last night to say that he’s not going to be back until the wedding.’

  ‘My wedding, or his and yours?’ Geraldine said, making the effort to put a bit of their usual banter into the conversation.

  ‘Yours.’ Unusually for her, Primmie didn’t giggle. ‘He says whatever the bug that’s laid him low, it’s left him feeling whacked and he doesn’t want to put himself back into circulation too quickly. And he says that when he comes back there are lots of things he wants to talk to me about.’

  ‘Well, yes. I suppose there will be. Wedding preparations can be pretty hectic. I don’t know how I would have managed if it hadn’t been for my mother doing everything for me whilst I was away.’

  There was no chirpy response.

  ‘Is there something else, Primmie?’ she said at last. ‘Something you’re not telling me?’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t mean to break the news like this – before I’ve even told Simon – but I’m pregnant, Geraldine.’

  Geraldine sucked in her breath sharply and Primmie said hurriedly, ‘It isn’t a problem, Geraldine. I’m happy about it – in fact, I’m overjoyed about it, but it has happened at a bad time. It isn’t news I want to break to Simon over the phone – and I’d much rather not be telling him until he’s spoken to Kiki and set his mind at rest that she’s going to be happy for us. Then there’s Artemis. How can I tell Artemis that I’m having a baby when she’s so distraught about not being able to have one of her own?’

  It was a question Geraldine didn’t have an answer for. She was too busy trying to get her head round the fact that Primmie’s baby would be Kiki’s half-sister.

  The sound of Francis’s sports car, speeding towards the house through the parkland, brought her concentration smartly back to her own problems.

  ‘I must go, Prim. I can hear Francis’s car. I’ll ring you again this evening. Love you. Bye.’

  ‘Not before time, boy,’ her Uncle Piers said minutes later, striding out of the house ahead of her, to greet his only child. ‘It’s a miracle to me you didn’t come to grief in the Khyber Pass, or the Himalayas, or whatever other godforsaken place it is you’ve been to – and I suppose I’ve Geraldine to thank for the fact you haven’t!’ He hugged Francis tightly. ‘And why is your hair on your shoulders?’ he demanded irascibly. ‘You can’t get married looking like that. You’ll be mistaken for the bride!’

  ‘Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll be wearing it in a ponytail on the great day.’ He winked at Geraldine. ‘I knew you’d be here, Ger. I came as soon as poss.’

  Geraldine walked across to them and slid her arm round Francis’s waist.
‘Have you been having a meeting with Kiki?’ she asked, not allowing a trace of tension to show in her voice.

  ‘You’re a witch. How did you guess?’

  His father was now stomping back into the house and, with his arm round her shoulders and hers still round his waist, Francis began walking her across the courtyard towards the gardens and the parkland that lay beyond them.

  ‘She told me she’d spoken to you when I saw her at the dressmakers this morning.’ For the first time in her life, Geraldine found that keeping her voice casual was an enormous effort.

  ‘And so it’s not going to come as too much of a shock to you when I tell you that I’m going to be managing her again?’ He was looking down at her as he spoke, and he was smiling.

  They had only reached the grey and white garden – but Geraldine came to an abrupt halt.

  ‘She did tell me, but I didn’t believe her.’

  ‘Because it clashes with our plans for Cedar Court?’

  ‘Because it isn’t what we’d planned.’

  He made an awkward grimace. ‘It won’t make too much difference. I won’t be managing a whole stable of singers and bands. It will only be Kiki. And she’s good, Geraldine. Aled Carter is trying to present her as an all-round family entertainer, and for Kiki that’s the kiss of death. Wholesomeness isn’t what she’s about. She’s a British Janis Joplin. A hard-edged, badass chick!’

  Geraldine bit back a tart response with difficulty.

  His grey eyes pleaded for her understanding. ‘My managing Kiki and your organizing things here at Cedar Court could be run in tandem. And think of the pop parties we could have. If we started the organizing now we could hold a huge pop festival here next spring. The Duke of Bedford’s Festival of the Flower Children at Woburn attracted twenty-five thousand people. Even if entry was kept down to a pound apiece, the sums are magic.’

  At the thought of thousands of hippies, out of their brains on dope, ploughing up Cedar Court’s gardens and parkland and trashing them into a quagmire, Geraldine went paper white.