by Helen Smith
‘We could put an advert somewhere in code so only she would know it was about her baby.’
‘What, put an advert in Bliss or Just Seventeen?—“To the kid who left a baby at the seaside, don’t worry, two older women who live together but are not lesbians have taken the child to fight the forces of evil.” Or maybe we should ask the sand sculptor at Weymouth to spell out a message on the shore. “We’ve taken the baby belonging to the merman and the dying woman in the tower. The baby is safe.”’
‘It’s so annoying when you’re sarcastic, Alison. Anyway, girls these days don’t care whether or not people are lesbians.’
‘They do. If they leave a baby to have a better life than they can give them, they imagine the child in the care of a thirty-something woman with a low, soothing voice, smelling of perfume and married to a gentle man with an important job in the City. They don’t think of us, stoned and bickering, with wind chimes on our roof terrace.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘I like the wind chimes.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘I just think that a disadvantaged teenage mother might not like the wind chimes.’
‘Fuck off.’
We sway together reasonably companionably on Taron’s waterbed for a while. It feels lovely.
‘I want to find Phoebe’s mother,’ I say. ‘And maybe…not tell her about Phoebe in case she tried to take her back, but just…satisfy myself that she’s OK. I can’t imagine anything worse than feeling regret. She must regret leaving Phoebe without knowing what would happen to her.’
‘Phoebe doesn’t have a mother, she came from the sea. She only exists because we dreamed her and made her appear. It’s magic and you’ll spoil it if you analyze it and start looking for a mother. The worst thing for you would be to lose Phoebe, so why do you want to find a mother who will take her away from you? If she had a real mother, she would have told the police by now, and it would be in the papers. She’s a magic baby, so just keep the faith and stay cool.’
Now that Jeff is safe, I’m staying here with Taron so we can both look after Phoebe. I’m frightened of seeing him again after our post-rescue sex. Did I inadvertently seduce him when he was in a state of trauma following his abduction? If so, I’ve probably violated the Geneva Convention. The sex, which was wonderful, changes everything. I blush every time I think of the bruising, searing, beautiful sex and the soft, unprotected words I said to him afterwards. I don’t want to go home and face him in case he’s one of those people who doesn’t respect women that he sleeps with and he casts me aside in favour of the unattainable patent office girl.
I’m not sure if there’s still a place for brittle humour in our relationship. Even so, when I read this morning that ten women from a modern sequence dancing club aged between sixty and eighty were rescued by people from a passing steam train as they sank in a peat bog while on a walking holiday in the North Yorkshire moors, I cut out the story and send it to Jeff on a postcard.
I can work from Taron’s flat when I have to research stuff on the phone, but I leave the baby with her when I have to go undercover into an office temping—‘tempting’, Taron calls it, because she says it’s tempting fate to do such an awful job and one day I’ll wake up and it’ll be my real life. She goes out a lot in the evenings, making contacts and polishing up her friendships with people in her address book.
Looking through the book again when we took it out of the bank vault seems to have had a profound effect on her. I think she thought that life was behind her but when she looked back, she realized how much she enjoyed it. She’s talking about getting together a club night and promoting it to make us some money for Phoebe. Quite why this involves going out every night and dancing until dawn, I’m not sure. She’s going to call the club night ‘Lemon Poppy Seed’ because she says that if you eat lemon poppy seed muffins then your urine will test positively for morphine. Quite what this has to do with anything…well, I’m the same age as Taron, but I think I’m getting too old for all this.
I cook for Taron but she’s often flitting out and can’t stop for a meal, so I’m eating for two at the moment and it’s making me thick waisted. Taron’s vehement about the need for us to rear Phoebe on unprocessed foods but she rarely has the time to prepare it for her, so I do it.
‘Can’t stop now,’ she yells as my food spits sulpherously on the stove. ‘I’m going to check out a new spin doctor.’
Taron’s friends rarely come round here but I don’t mind too much. If you get a room full of them together, you can see where statisticians get their facts and figures. One in five is gay, one in eight has had a brush with the law, 97 percent are on drugs (the other 3 percent are lying). I don’t mind staying in to look after Phoebe, but I feel lonely sometimes. I can’t do anything spontaneous, like going to the pictures or meeting up for a drink with friends, and it makes me feel frustrated and powerless. I might just as well be standing at the window watching for my husband again.
It feels as if some of the joy has gone out of my life, but also as if it doesn’t matter because what’s disappeared is the superficial, selfish kind of happiness that you get from going out or getting drunk and that’s been replaced by a greater, deeper feeling of joy because I have Phoebe and I love her very intensely. Aside from decorating Phoebe’s cot with garlic, keys and red ribbons to keep her safe from the other world, Taron appears to be losing interest in Phoebe. I let her tie ribbons under Phoebe’s cot—not on the bars, in case she gets tangled in them—but I won’t let her tie them on Phoebe’s clothes anymore because she looks too much like an AIDS fashion statement. I get my way with things like that because I spend so much time with Phoebe. I like looking after her, rocking her till she goes to sleep, watching her sleep, bathing her, playing with her. I never realized before that taking care of someone else makes you love them more than when they take care of you.
I mentioned that a gift I have been given by the gods is that my makeup stays on all night no matter what I get up to. Maybe I should be thanking Boots No. 17 and Maybelline, rather than my sponsors in the heavens. But I have another, more powerful gift, which is the ability to change other people’s mood. So if someone is feeling sad I can make them happy. Unfortunately, like any gift from the gods it’s difficult to control, so when someone is happy, I try to make them unhappy. This is what’s happening with Taron. She doesn’t really need me anymore. She’s sorted, she’s content, she’s secure. I spend my time trying to undermine this whenever she comes home. I don’t mean to do it but I can’t help myself. The other night I came close to sabotaging her four-leaf clover factory. This piece of whimsy is another stage in Taron’s plan to beautify and improve the world. It involves leaving four-leaved clovers between the pages of books in WH Smith and Waterstones to cheer up the people who find them. She takes a lot of care selecting the books, and as you would expect, she tends to favour the self-help sections of the bookstores. As it’s very difficult and time-consuming to look for four-leaved clovers, she collects ordinary three-leaved clovers, puts them in her flower press, then cannibalizes some of them, sticking on the fourth leaf.
I don’t know if she even notices when I’m feeling destructive, as her head is full of her new boyfriend.
When I ask her what he’s like she gives me a foxy look and sings the same song, over and over. It’s a version of ‘My Boyfriend’s Back’ but she changes the words to reflect the fact that her boyfriend is black and he’s Denzel Washington’s double.
Chapter Thirty-One: Flower’s Wife
Flower has a very large, light office with a view over the river. Flower’s military background has left him with minimalist tastes in furnishings. Unencumbered by obstacles, there is enough room in his office for him to turn several cartwheels if he cares to do so. He doesn’t care for gymnastics. Instead, he takes advantage of the space to practice his dance steps. Flower has a dream. He’d like to invent some new dance steps and surprise his wife with them on their anniversary.
Step right,
shuffle, turn. Flower’s eyes are closed in concentration, his fair hair untidy, his face relaxed and unlined as he retreats inside himself to compose the dance he will dedicate to his wife. He holds his arms out, loosely enclosing the place his wife would take if she were here with him.
The phone rings, interrupting his reverie.
‘Flower? It’s Bird. Do you have a moment? I need to talk to you about this damn genetic fiasco.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Every lead I turn up is a dud. Feels like I’m shooting blanks.’
‘What about Alison Temple’s friend Jeff? The one I told you about.’
‘I asked the boy a few questions but he didn’t seem know anything. I was just about to start warming him up when I learned from my source that Alison Temple was on her way to get him. It’s just as well, I wanted to use him to get information from her but she has nothing of value. Saved me the job of rowing him back down the river, I suppose.’
‘Why are you so sure she has no information?’
‘That’s why I’m calling you. The names, the symbols. They’re a red herring. None of those people have been anywhere near any of the test sites. I’ve been through all the records at passport control. There’s no link. The address book didn’t even belong to Alison Temple. She isn’t the key to all this.’
‘Perhaps it’s a bluff? Perhaps it’s more elaborate than we think. Who is the key?’
‘There is no key. No conspiracy. Fitzgerald’s brief was to investigate one of the test sites, not to sabotage the whole bloody lot of them. If it’s a question of monitoring the information flow, I can keep track of her reports easily enough through my contact in Fitzgerald’s agency. No, there’s no conspiracy. We worked out the significance of the zodiac signs.’ Bird is spitting with fury. ‘Horoscopes. Plain as the nose on your face. Damn silly woman was recording her friends’ birthdays.’
Flower thinks of the nose on Bird’s face. It’s always reminded him of a beak. He imagines Bird’s face on the other end of the line, blurred with anger. ‘If there’s no conspiracy, it means the project is secure. Look at it this way, Bird—it makes our life easier.’
Bird is incensed. Flower always looks on the bright side. Who wants an easy life, anyway, except a lazy arse like Flower? If he weren’t a military man, trained in the control of his emotions, Bird would walk round there now and punch Flower on the nose.
Even if Bird gave in to his baser instincts and went to find him and fight him, Flower wouldn’t be there. He’s left the office to pick out a spray of his wife’s favourite blooms to take home to her. He’s blissfully unaware of his part in causing distress to the women and young girls who tend and pick the flowers in Colombia.
Flower, thinking of his wife, is already smiling before he reaches his front door.
‘Lilian,’ he calls as he pulls his key from the lock and walks into the hallway, not too loudly in case he startles her. ‘Lilian.’ There’s no response. Flower worries sometimes about what would happen to her if he weren’t there to take care of her. He left behind the snipers and ambushes that are the hazards of the peacekeeping role played by a modern army and took this job so he’d have the freedom to spend more time with her, and so he could keep a promise he made early in their married life. She told him he looked like an angel when he was asleep and begged him not to let anyone else see him in that unguarded state. It’s a difficult promise for a chap to keep on active military service.
Without moving from the hallway, he turns his head and looks through the picture window in the music room and into the garden, in case she’s there. There’s no sign of her. The garden swing sways slightly on the thick ropes he fixed to the biggest tree last year. The movement could be a sign of interrupted play, or it could be the wind bending the branches.
He tenses, hearing a soft sound nearby. Very carefully, moving only his arm, he sets down the bouquet on the telephone table in the hall and in a smooth, practiced movement he whirls and reaches out in the direction of the sound. The tips of his fingers brush clothing but he’s not quick enough. She runs away from him, exploding in giggles at the childish game.
‘Lilian,’ he calls, laughing. Her shoulder-length unbrushed hair is as blonde as his, bright as a flash of rabbit’s tail as she escapes. She wears a loose, shapeless dress, like a child playing in a secret garden in her nightdress. He catches her hand, clasps it strongly, then turns and runs so she can catch him. He’s taller and heavier than his wife and it slows him down. Sometimes he comes home to find she’s hidden soft obstacles in his way so he’ll be easier to catch. She leads him past piles of cashmere sweaters, hoping he’ll tangle his feet, or bombards him with feather pillows. She takes care not to trip him with anything that will hurt him.
When they tire of the game, they sit down together and have a drink so they can talk about their day. They never depart from the ritual. She brings crystal glasses on coasters on a little black wooden tray inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Flower mixes the drinks. ‘Do you have enough tonic water, Lilian?’ he’ll say. ‘Will you have a slice of lime, my darling?’ Always the same questions.
‘Did you go in the garden today, Lilian?’ He knows how much she loves flowers. Sometimes he worries that she only married him because of his name. Her beauty makes him catch his breath. She looks as young as she did when they married. The only time he’s ever seen her cry was on their honeymoon nine years ago, when she saw that he’d put rose petals in their bed. She collected every petal as if he’d spilled them accidentally, and she put them in a dish by the side of their bed.
Flower went to a boys’ school. Fair haired, fair skinned, he made a rather good Ophelia in the school play in his final year. Some of the mothers wept at his performance. Perhaps his ability to empathize with women characters, formed during his early years of dramatic training, has helped him to care for Lilian.
Every night he combs and smoothes her hair until it shines like a piece of polished army kit and each strand lies in place next to the other. At night she musses her hair as she moves her head on the pillow with her dreams, and the next day she runs around the house like a scarecrow until he comes home to take care of her again.
Chapter Thirty-Two: Phoebe’s Ceremony
We visit Taron’s mother in Kent. She’s the only person we know who’s had a baby whom we can trust with the secret of Phoebe’s heritage.
I’ve stocked up on sweets from Woolworth’s for the journey to Kent, but my treasure trove of reminders of our youth has mixed results. Taron’s delighted with the Giant Love Hearts, those fizzy sweets in pastel colours that say things like ‘Kiss Me’ and ‘Lover Boy’ on them. She’s disappointed by the Giant Parma Violets, unfortunately. I love the purple sweets with their delicate, artificial flavour of cheap perfume. It turns out, owing to a miscommunication between us, that Taron was expecting me to pass her a Giant Karma Violet from the packet in my hand. The taste of the sweets can transport you fleetingly back to the seventies but they cannot influence your destiny, hence her disappointment.
I’m not in the least surprised to discover Taron’s mother lives in a comfortable semi-detached house, rather than the lighthouse Taron described when she first told me about her. When she lets us in, I catch the warm smell of milky coffee on her breath. She switches off the TV and tucks her feet under her on the sofa as she listens to our story. Taron wants her to name Phoebe or welcome her into the world in some sort of witchy ceremony.
She lights the fire in the grate. ‘Warm hearth, warm heart,’ she says to me. We unwrap Phoebe until she wears only her vest and nappy and put her on a blanket on the floor. Taron’s mother scatters petals around the place as Phoebe gurgles. She loosely ties a tinkling silver bell on each of Phoebe’s ankles.
‘Let the bells chime with your soul, Phoebe
Child of the world
Child of the sea
Petals bring you beauty from the flowers
Feathers bring you freedom from the birds
Bells bring magic from me,
’
she says.
‘You work with Ella Fitzgerald, don’t you?’ she asks me as we’re about to leave. I prepare myself for a cheap joke—I’ve heard a few of them since I started working at the agency. Instead, I get a shock. ‘I know her brother, Clive. Be very careful of him. He’s a dangerous man. He’s a disappointed man. He has no hope, that’s what makes him dangerous.’
‘Oh him. Taron and I always say he’s so creepy that you watch his shadow, as if you might see it move independently. How do you know him?’
‘I’ve come across him trying to get in touch with the spirit world. He wanted to use the power for his own ends. He used to try and use spirit guides for cheap card tricks. He’s a traitor, he’s evil. I won’t have anything to do with him. I suggest you do the same.’
Chapter Thirty-Three: The Ace of Clubs
Mrs. Fitzgerald sits alone in the office, her hands over her eyes to stop the tears. She looks like the symbolic representation of someone who sees no evil. It is too late. Mrs. Fitzgerald has seen evidence of evil here, on her own premises. Mrs. Fitzgerald’s heart is very heavy. She has been betrayed. She would have liked to talk to Alison but she sees very little of her now she works from home to take care of the baby. She would have liked to call Dick and talk to him, but he might think she was mad. There is nowhere she can turn for comfort. She hasn’t even seen the fox for the last few nights as she watched out of her window at home. Perhaps it has lost its struggle with the hazards of modern life.
When Mrs. Fitzgerald sat down at her desk this morning to listen to her voicemail, her foot touched against something on the floor. It was the Ace of Clubs. As she picked it up and turned it over in her hands, its significance was inescapable and brought Mrs. Fitzgerald’s own fragile house of cards tumbling down. The playing card was unwelcome evidence that Clive, the king of card tricks, had been sitting here the night before, had probably been sitting here many nights before. It was he who took the call from Alison to say she was going to find her neighbour, Jeff. He and she were the only ones who knew about the mission, and yet Bird knew, too. Clive must have been the one to tip off Bird, her sworn enemy. What other information must he have given them, sifting through her papers, taking her phone calls, whispering with her enemies late at night?