The Four of Us

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘Or room for you!’ Kiki shot back instantly. ‘Why this assumption that if anyone is going to leave here it’s going to be me?’

  ‘Because I’m working on the old trade union principle of last in, first out.’ Geraldine opened her eyes again. ‘And because for you to stay here when the children are here would mean your sharing a room with me and I’m not prepared to do that, Kiki. I’m being civil towards you for Primmie’s sake, but I’m not going to be that civil.’

  Primmie, who had made a pot of tea for herself, poured a cup and said, ‘In the old days, Kiki and I always shared a room. If you move out of the guest room into my room, Geraldine, Kiki and I can move into the guest room. Problem solved.’

  Kiki flashed Primmie a face-splitting grin. ‘Wicked,’ she said, momentarily forgetting her reason for being in Cornwall.

  Primmie grinned back at her, glad that another potential crisis had been avoided. ‘You speak like my daughter Lucy. Everything is “wicked” or “cool”.’

  Kiki took another deep swallow of whisky. ‘So tell me about your kids, Primmie. How old are they? Where are they? What are their names?’

  Primmie paused for a moment, struggling not to make eye contact with Geraldine, well aware that Geraldine would know how heart-stoppingly difficult it was going to be for her not to speak Destiny’s name.

  She took a steadying breath. ‘Joanne is twenty-three. She’s office manager at D. P. International, a London advertising agency, and is married to one of the agency’s account directors. Millie is thirteen months younger and married as well – though doesn’t always remember it – and lives in London. Josh is twenty and single and a bit of a Romeo. Lucy is nineteen and is travelling in Australia.’

  ‘No grandchildren?’

  Primmie shook her head.

  Kiki shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose it matters, does it? They’ve all still got acres of time. Do they visit you a lot? Are they the “children” you and Geraldine keep mentioning?’

  ‘No.’ Primmie sat a little more comfortably on the floor and hugged her knees. ‘My aunt – who left Ruthven to me – gave holidays to groups of children who are in care. In an arrangement left over from last year, five of them are due to arrive in nine days’ time.’

  ‘Cool.’ There was no real enthusiasm in Kiki’s voice. Children had never been of any great interest to her – unless they bought her records.

  ‘And you still haven’t told us what brought you to Cornwall, Kiki,’ Primmie continued, full of curiosity. ‘Have you been appearing at a rock festival? And how did you get here? Where’s your car?’

  ‘And why is your dog in such a disgraceful, uncared-for condition?’ Geraldine said from the sofa, her eyes again closed. ‘He doesn’t look as if he’s ever been brushed in his life, let alone bathed.’

  The lines of Kiki’s jaw tensed. It would be easy to make up a reason for being in Cornwall that would enable Primmie to keep her illusions about her. For a second she was tempted to say that she’d arrived by helicopter and that in a couple of day‘s time she would be whirling off again, back to London and then on to New York, to a flash, rock-star-style apartment in the Dakota. Primmie would believe every word, but she doubted Geraldine would.

  Geraldine had always been far too sharp for comfort. When people had money – real money – they could smell it on someone a mile away. And it was obvious that Geraldine had real money by looking at her Ferrari. Geraldine would know that she was flat broke and her lying about it would only make her look pathetic. Besides, she’d finished with all the humiliating business of pretending to be something she wasn’t – and of enduring the knowing, contemptuous looks when she hadn’t quite pulled off the deception. Her determination to be done with all that was why she was en route to the highest cliff she could find.

  ‘The dog isn’t mine,’ she said, taking the easiest question first. ‘My car broke down on the motorway and I hitched a lift to Helston. The dog belonged to the truck-driver who stopped for me. He and the dog didn’t get on.’

  ‘But what about your car?’ Primmie asked, perplexed. ‘Is someone bringing it down here for you, when it’s fixed? Your agent, or manager, or minder …?’

  ‘Agents and managers don’t act as gofers, Primmie, and minders are for rock stars who need them to keep the fans at bay.’ Still sitting cross-legged, her hands resting on her knees, she paused, gazing at Primmie and Geraldine defiantly. ‘And I no longer need to keep fans at bay,’ she said at last, bitterly. ‘I’m a has-been. My career is over. Finished.’

  It was the first time she had ever put the fact into words.

  Primmie stared at her. ‘But how can it be? In April, in St Austell, I saw posters of a rock festival you were appearing at.’

  ‘Ah, the great Easter Rock Revival Concert!’ Kiki breathed in hard. The St Austell gig had been good – mainly because two old buddies, Marty Wilde and Eric Burden, had flown over from the States to be onboard for it. It had been her swan song, though. For a long, ghastly period before the St Austell gig she’d had no work to speak of, and after it there had only been the death she had died at Grantley. ‘Yeah, well. That was a one-off, Primmie,’ she said, her voice weary. ‘Despite anything you may have read to the contrary, I’ve been on the skids for at least a decade.’

  There was a long silence.

  Geraldine, well aware of how much the admission must have cost Kiki, was conscious of a flicker of respect for her. In the overall scheme of things, it wasn’t much, but it made a decided change from the loathing and contempt she’d been nursing for the last thirty-one years.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Primmie said at last, inadequately. ‘I hadn’t realized …’

  ‘Why should you?’ Kiki managed to sound almost philosophical. ‘I don’t suppose anyone’s life is all it seems to be, is it?’

  ‘No, indeed.’ It was said with a wealth of feeling as, with great effort, Geraldine summoned the strength to push herself up against the cushions on the sofa.

  Primmie looked towards her – and saw that bruises were beginning to show on Geraldine’s arms. ‘What on earth have you done to yourself?’ she asked, concerned. ‘Those bruises were not there this morning!’

  Geraldine tugged the sleeves of her cinnamon-silk shirt down as far as they would go. ‘No, they weren’t. Don’t worry about them, Primmie. They’ll soon fade.’

  ‘I have some arnica tablets somewhere. I’ll find them for you. You shouldn’t bruise so quickly and so easily, Geraldine. You must be anaemic.’

  Geraldine shot her a strained smile. ‘Very probably.’

  Kiki, uninterested in Geraldine’s bruises and not wanting the conversation to return to the subject of her dead career, said, ‘Neither of you has said a word about Artemis. Has she stayed here yet? That snobbish prick she married couldn’t father children, could he? What was his name? Richard? Robert? What did they do? Did they adopt?’

  ‘His name is Rupert,’ Geraldine said smoothly, saving Primmie from having to answer. ‘And yes, they did adopt. Primmie thinks they have two boys – though they won’t be boys now. They’ll be in their late-teens or early twenties.’

  Kiki shifted her position to give the dog a little more room on the rug. ‘What do you mean, Primmie “thinks”? You didn’t both lose touch with her, did you?’

  ‘I didn’t stay in touch with her for the same reason I didn’t stay in touch with Primmie. And Primmie …’ Geraldine gave Primmie a swift glance, saw that she was still struggling to control her feelings, and said, ‘Primmie’s life with Ted and the children was very different from Artemis’s way of life. They drifted apart. It happens.’

  ‘Geraldine and I tried to make contact with her yesterday.’ Primmie, her thoughts full of Destiny, kept her voice steady with difficulty. ‘She and Rupert have separated. According to him, they’re getting divorced. Last night, when Geraldine spoke to him, he said Artemis had gone on a cruise, that he didn’t know when she would be returning to England and that he didn’t have a mobile number for her.’<
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  ‘I bet he was lying.’ Kiki slid her arm round the dog’s neck. ‘He must have a mobile number for her. He just doesn’t want her old friends telling her how much she should be squeezing out of him in a divorce settlement. Wasn’t the house a huge old rectory in the Cotswolds and didn’t he have a string of polo ponies? If he was loaded thirty-odd years ago, when she married him, he must be really rolling in it now. If Artemis plays her cards right, she should come out of the divorce a wealthy woman.’

  ‘You’re telling me I can’t have the house?’ Artemis’s voice rose in hysterical disbelief. ‘But why not? I’m not the one breaking our marriage up! You’re the one who is being unfaithful! You’re the one who wants to leave!’

  She was facing Rupert in the drawing room of their home, still wearing the floral silk print dress and jacket she’d travelled from Southampton in. Her handbag and travelling make-up box were at her feet and the rest of her luggage, which the taxi-driver had brought indoors for her, was standing in the large square entrance hall.

  ‘If you’d stayed in England, instead of haring off in a fit of pique on a cruise to the West Indies, you would have known from the beginning that this was the arrangement that was going to be made.’ Rupert’s eyes flicked beyond her to the open door leading into the hall.

  Wildly, Artemis wondered if he thought the taxi driver was still waiting to be paid and was about to walk in on them.

  ‘And in the eyes of the law,’ he continued, standing completely at ease with his hands in the pockets of his chinos, ‘you’re the one who has left the marital home.’

  ‘Me?’ Her voice rose to a disbelieving squeak. ‘Me? How? When?’

  ‘When you walked out of here with your bags and baggage six weeks ago.’ There was dry satisfaction in his voice. ‘I informed both my solicitor and yours of your action.’

  ‘I didn’t walk out!’ Artemis felt as if she were struggling in treacle. ‘I went on a cruise because I was so distressed I was ill. I hoped that by the time I got back you’d have become bored with the Serena creature just like you did with all the others. I hoped that we could sort things out and …’

  ‘And that you could continue being a middle-aged, fifteen-stone dead weight around Ru’s neck for a little longer?’ an unmistakable Chelsea-set voice said from behind her.

  Artemis spun round.

  With pert, bra-less breasts pushing against a crimson silk shirt and wearing nothing else, apart from black silk panties, the Serena creature stood at the foot of the stairs, leaning against the mahogany newel-post, her waist-length hair mussed and tumbled as if she had just got out of bed.

  Artemis sucked in her breath, her eyes bulging in disbelief.

  Serena smiled. ‘You moved out, and I moved in,’ she said with a fait accompli shrug.

  Artemis whirled back to face Rupert. ‘You’ve had her living in my house?’ she gasped. ‘Sleeping in my bed?’

  His high-boned face looked weary beyond belief. ‘We are in the throes of a divorce, Artemis. You left the marital home, and as I shall be marrying Serena at the earliest opportunity, yes, she has been … is … living here and sleeping in the bed you mistakenly refer to as still being yours.’

  Artemis had never been violent in her life, but she didn’t hesitate. She clenched her fist and, putting all the weight of her fifteen stone into the punch, went for gold, making thumping contact with his jaw.

  Taken totally by surprise, he went ricocheting backwards, flying off his feet – and, when he landed, he didn’t move.

  Artemis didn’t care.

  Hoping she’d killed him, she scooped up her handbag and make-up box and, without even deigning to look at Serena, stormed past her, out of her defiled home.

  Her car was in the double garage and the keys were in her handbag. Uncaring about her luggage, uncaring that she was leaving without any personal items – items Orlando or Sholto would have to collect for her – she unlocked the car door and yanked it open. Then, hunched behind the wheel, finally accepting that her marriage was over beyond all possible doubt, not knowing where she was going to go, or what she was going to do, she sobbed and sobbed until she could sob no more.

  The next morning, when Primmie returned to the house after milking Maybelline and failing to milk Black-Hearted Alice, only Geraldine was up and dressed. Unlike the cinnamon shirt she’d been wearing yesterday, the white shirt she was wearing with grey flannel slacks and a soft grey Shetland sweater was fastened tightly at the wrists.

  ‘I don’t suppose we’ll see Kiki for hours yet,’ she said as Primmie put the pail of frothing milk down. ‘This is probably the time of day she usually rolls home after partying or clubbing. How did you get on with Alice? Was she cooperative?’

  ‘No. She glared at me. Those yellow eyes are like something out of a horror film. And she’s too close to the ground to milk. I just couldn’t figure out how to do it.’ She lifted the chrome lid on one of the Aga’s hotplates and set a frying pan on it. ‘I think maybe she was cross at sleeping tethered and out in the open. With luck Matt will be round this morning to tell me how I should house her and feed her.’

  ‘And milk her?’ Geraldine asked, amused.

  ‘And milk her. Do you like mushrooms, Geraldine? I picked these myself.’

  ‘As long as they’re safe to eat, I love them.’ Geraldine seated herself at one of the large deal tables. ‘I’ve been thinking about your kitchen garden, Primmie, and have a couple of suggestions to make.’

  ‘What kind of suggestions?’ Primmie drizzled oil into the frying pan.

  ‘I’ve been thinking that you could grow just as much veg in a far prettier way if you made a classical French potager.’

  ‘A potager?’ Primmie began peeling the mushrooms. ‘Do you mean vegetables in small beds edged with box?’

  ‘It does. The beds are called carrés. Instead of growing vegetables in boring long lines, they’re planted out in chequerboard patterns and by colour. Jade-green carrot leaves next to the red of beetroot leaves, for instance. And golden-green celery next to the blue of Solaise leeks.’

  ‘And the icy green of lettuce next to orange pumpkins, and purple cabbage with tomatoes?’

  ‘That’s it. You’ve got the idea. And we can bring flowers into the equation, too, by edging the beds with contrasting colour. Scarlet begonias with the green of salad crops, for instance.’

  Primmie dropped the mushrooms into the frying pan and swirled them round to coat them with oil. ‘And beds of pumpkin with orange rudbeckia.’

  They grinned across at each other, full of enthusiasm for a shared project that would be truly creative.

  ‘We’ll need to make sure that we plant vegetables together that crop at the same time. With really careful planning we should be able to get two different crops from each bed every year.’

  She cracked two eggs into the sizzling pan.

  ‘And can we grow fruit, too?’

  There was no reply.

  With more energy and zest than she’d felt for months, Geraldine had left the kitchen in search of pen and paper so that she could start planning out an ornamental kitchen garden as aesthetically pleasing as her flower garden in Paris; a garden worthy of a Renaissance château or a medieval monastery.

  When Kiki eventually emerged from her comfortable cocoon in the pin-neat bedroom she was sharing with Primmie, it was lunchtime. The sound of Eva Cassidy filled the house with mellow music. The table with the vase of wild flowers on it was set for four. Primmie was standing at the Aga, stirring soup in a saucepan, and Geraldine was standing with her back against the sink, one foot crossing the other at the ankle, a mug of coffee cupped in her hands. By her side was a rugged-looking man wearing a bulky jersey and jeans.

  ‘You’re just in time for lunch,’ Primmie said with a beaming smile, for all the world as if Kiki had just come in after a hard morning’s work. ‘Matt is dying to meet you. Matt, Kiki Lane. Kiki, Matt Trevose.’

  Unused to such polite introductions so early in her day,
Kiki summoned up the manners to shake his proffered hand. It was a strong handshake and to her vast relief he didn’t gush about how thrilled he was to meet a seventies/ eighties rock star and to lyingly say, as most people did, that he had every record she’d ever recorded. All he did was look a little bemused and say that he was pleased to meet her.

  ‘Matt is a neighbour and a good friend,’ Primmie said, still stirring the soup. ‘Ever since I arrived at Ruthven he’s helped me with absolutely everything. Would you like a coffee? You look as if you’re gasping for one. There is lashings in the pot.’

  ‘And so it didn’t matter about Black-Hearted Alice being left out of doors last night?’ Geraldine said to Matt, ignoring Kiki completely. ‘Primmie thought she might have been unhappy about it.’

  ‘Not in the warm weather we’re having at the moment. In the winter she’ll need housing, though. Goats don’t like cold and they hate rain.’

  Kiki poured herself a coffee, not adding milk or sugar to it. She’d spent most of her life waking up in strange beds and strange places, having to fight off hangovers and get to grips with where the hell she was – and whom she was with. This morning, with no hangover and no unwelcome bed mate, was, though, the most disorientating morning she could remember.

  For one thing, she was in a lovingly cherished home, not a hotel room or her littered London flat. For another, both Primmie and Geraldine were with her. It was almost like the days decades ago, when, with Artemis, they’d all lived together in Kensington. And last, but not least, there was the conversation. Goats? Goats? Who cared whether they didn’t like cold and rain? And where was the dog? It had gone to sleep on the rug beside her bed, but was now nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Rags is enjoying the September sun,’ Primmie said, opening a door of the Aga to check on the fish she was baking. ‘The hens aren’t too keen on him, but he’s leaving them well alone.’

  ‘Rags?’ Kiki took a deep drink of coffee. ‘Who named him Rags?’

  ‘I did, because of his liking for the rugs.’ Primmie closed the Aga’s door again and, from another of the its generous compartments, took out a soup tureen that had been warming. ‘I’m quite happy for you to re-christen him, if you want to. He is your dog, after all.’