‘Of course not. Where am I likely to find Harry?’
‘Just go in here, kitchen’s second on the left, Lily will know.’
He fell in with her implied assumption that it would all be as easy as winking. Against the smooth crackle of the Merc pulling away, he went into the house. Curiously there had been no attempt made to turn this side door into anything other than a tradesman’s entrance. It was not locked, and opened into an uncarpeted passage. The first door on the left was a cloakroom with a tiled floor, a lavatory with a mahogany seat and a pile of magazines on a whiskery rush stool. David could see a gold disc on the wall – presumably the platinum ones enjoyed a more elevated position elsewhere in the house … In the kitchen, which was large, spotless and Provençale in tone, a young woman in leggings and a long white apron sat at the table reading a fat Penguin classic. She wore half-moon glasses and when David appeared in the doorway she looked over them in his direction in a professorial manner.
‘Good afternoon.’ Her voice had a similar timbre to Simon Acourt’s, freighted with taken-for-granted breeding. What can I do for you?’
‘My name’s David Keating – I was looking for Harry Bailey, and Lindl suggested you might be able to point me in the right direction.’
‘Sure.’ She laid the open book – it was The Brothers Karamazov – face down on the table. ‘He’s in the office, Mr Keating. You go along here to the main hall, left after the staircase, hang a right and it’s at the end on the left. Quite a distance,’ she added with a smile, ‘it’ll take you a couple of minutes.’
‘Thanks.’ He handed her the blackberries. ‘Present for you.’
‘Oh, lovely.’
It was becoming obvious to David as he followed Lily’s instructions, that this upstairs/downstairs social inversion was a thread running right through the household. When he reached the hall he could make out a distant heartbeat of music from the upper reaches, and a burst of laughter somewhere at the back of the house. He remembered the girl in overalls cleaning the helicopter: this wasn’t simply a domestic dwelling, it was a whole community in miniature. Stopping to admire the far-off, ornately decorated ceiling, he noticed the dark eye of a security camera gazing watchfully from a corner. Opposite him was a long, elegant room, opulently furnished in cream, gold and pink. Who had chosen those brocades and velvets and silk rugs? he wondered. Lindl, of the almost-obscene cord jeans and the dirty feet? Chris Harper? Or one of the smooth, top-drawer functionaries who fixed things for them and for whom Sotheby’s was the corner shop?
The office, when he reached it, was not an office in the usual sense at all, but another vast reception room this time with a clubby feel – a billiard table at the far end, and some heavy oxblood leather sofas nearer the door. Against the wall to the right was a computer whose sleekly minimalist outlines declared its cutting edge status. Harry Bailey was perched on the edge of one of the sofas, with a slew of papers on a large teak chest in front of him. He looked up only briefly as he greeted David.
‘Terrific, come on in, Si said you were here.’
‘Thanks. I didn’t mean to disrupt your work. I can’t stay long, she’ll be getting hungry – but we just had a nice walk.’
‘Up the woods?’ Bailey leaned back, rubbing the side of his face with his hand.
‘That’s right.’
‘Nice up there – as far as I can remember.’ He made a wry face. ‘I don’t get out as much as I’d like. Coffee? Cup of tea?’
‘No, I’m fine.’
‘Take the weight off your feet why don’t you. And off your back.’
David slipped the papoose off and took the sleeping Freya out of it. Bailey watched him, leaning back with his hands clasped behind his head.
‘So how’s it going back on the ranch?’
‘Pretty good. I apologise if I was less than hospitable when you called round the other morning, I was in what you might call a period of adjustment. We’re shaking down together now though, I’ll be quite sorry when the nanny takes over.’ This made him think of something. ‘I met Lindl a moment ago – does she employ anyone? I mean to help with the little boy?’
Bailey prodded a thumb at his own chest. ‘You’re looking at him. Informal arrangement, but you know …’ He looked at his watch. Which reminds me I wonder if she’s remembered to go down and pick him up from footie.’
‘She has,’ said David. ‘She mentioned it. And I saw her go.’
‘Late, I bet – she can’t be doing with the other mums. Doesn’t bother me, but then I’m not coming from the same place she is.’
‘No.’ David had never been comfortable with this laddish kind of talk, which reminded him of Doug Border. ‘I can understand her point, though. I expect she feels watched – talked about.’
‘She should be so lucky. Pretty ladies no longer getting work need all the talk they can get.’
This struck David as unnecessarily harsh, especially when addressed to a comparative stranger. He changed tack. ‘ She says Jay likes school – so he doesn’t get teased or anything?’
Bailey shook his head. ‘No way. In the blackboard jungle, money can buy you love. Slightest sign of trouble I take the little bastards for a Happy Meal in the Roller and it’s cool.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Anyway, who am I kidding? I love it.’
‘It’s still a chastening thought.’
‘Not really. They’re just more honest than we are. You wait till the pool’s up and running, Jay’ll be Mr Big then all right.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘Want to look around?’
‘If you’ve got time.’
‘I’ve got the time if you’ve got the inclination!’ Suddenly energetic again, Bailey slapped his knees and jumped up. ‘Let’s go.’ At the door he said. ‘ I need a breath of air, I’ll show you the pool first. Blokes aren’t there this arvo.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Waiting for materials.’ Though David had said nothing, he added: ‘Yeah, I know, tell me about it, but you want a pool that looks like a Roman bathhouse you pay for it. And you wait. And the longer you wait the more you pay.’
With David carrying Freya they went back into the hall, and turned right, past the long sweep of the staircase, towards the back of the house.
‘I can’t imagine,’ said David, ‘that your boss would easily allow himself to be ripped off.’
‘Oh, he won’t. We keep a log, it’s all on disk. There won’t be much fuss till they’ve finished, then we’ll take them to the cleaner’s.’
The pool was situated in the right angle formed by the back of the house and the stable block. For now it was untidily covered with a kind of thatch of scaffolding and green plastic, but as Bailey explained it was destined to have a retractable roof, solar panels and daylight lighting, so the position was more for planning reasons than any other. The plastic meant there was a dim, green light, like being under water. Along one side were a row of changing rooms with arched doorways, decorated with a vaguely Roman pattern of intertwined laurel wreaths; at the end a shallow platform almost like a low stage, with built-in rostra, cylindrical and rectangular, presumably for sitting and eating. In the empty pool the Roman theme continued – shallow steps led down into different levels, separated by islands and promontories, and a large, fiercely-spined, turquoise fish with glaring eyes adorned the floor, surrounded by an ever-thinning shoal of smaller fish in bright colours.
David peered at the fish admiringly. ‘That looks like mosaic.’
‘Because it is. All Italian marble and mosaic, no messing. Look and weep.’
‘It’s going to be quite magnificent.’
‘But OTT is what you’re thinking.’ Bailey cast him a knowing look. ‘I mean come on, how much of this is going to be reflected in the price of the house when he sells it? Not that he’s going to, but supposing he might.’
‘Quite a lot. A pool, especially one with all-year use, is a huge selling feature.’
Bailey was over the other side now, he
raised his voice slightly. ‘Yeah, but you could get a terrific family pool with all the trimmings for a fraction of what this poncey lot is costing.’
‘It depends who you’re selling to,’ David pointed out. Not knowing how much would get back, he didn’t wish to be lured into discussions of taste.
Bailey pointed at the bottom. ‘Want to go down and take a proper look? It may be a waste of money but it’s shit-hot work.’
‘I wouldn’t mind.’
‘Here,’ Bailey walked round the other side of the pool to join him. ‘My chance to hold the princess.’
‘Are you sure? Thanks.’
David handed him Freya, and started down the nearest steps. It was strange to be down there with the steep sides of the pool all around him, like being a spider in the bath. Thre was a click and light flooded round his ankles.
Bailey called: ‘Take your time. Your daughter likes me.’
He crouched down by the great fish, astounded by the level of workmanship, each tiny piece blending with and completing its neighbour, the melding of colours, the breathtaking detail – the irises of the fish’s great eyes were striped and mottled like a girl’s, each of its huge sail-like fins was patterned with a web of veins, hundreds of scales overlapped and seemed to shimmer in the light. On the walls the smaller fish glowed dark and bright as jewels.
Fascinated, he must have been down there for ten minutes, perhaps longer. When he started up the steps again the plastic tent seemed dark after the bright light at the bottom of the pool. He was slightly disorientated, and couldn’t see Bailey anywhere. Hearing voices – low, conversational, laughing – he headed for the open side, where the sheeting was looped back.
What he saw was a sort of family group – parents and child – heads together, the man holding the baby, the woman kissing it. It would have been an affecting tableau had not the man and the woman been Bailey and Annet.
‘Here he is,’ said Bailey to Annet. And then to him: ‘Your missus turned up.’
Annet, still smiling about whatever it was, came to meet him and gave him a peck on the cheek. ‘Hello darl, fancy seeing you here.’
Annet made various suggestions – if he could hang on for a while, or he could leave Freya and the car-seat with her … But she must have known none of them were practical, Freya was now wide awake and needed her bottle. And besides David was on his dignity.
How weird, she said, she’d decided to leave work an hour early and check out the gym, and see the pool, and it had just happened to be at the same time as he was here. Two minds with but a single thought, she said, two hearts, etcetera. He had found it impossible to share her amusement at the coincidence.
On the way up the drive he met the violet Merc coming the other way. As they passed each other at a sedate pace Lindl gave him her come-day-go-day faint smile and raised her hand from the steering wheel for a second.
Jay, on the other side of his mother, dragged down his cheeks and tugged his mouth with his fingers, like a gargoyle.
At home, he noticed inconsequentially that the pram was standing inside the garden doors. He clearly remembered taking Freya out of the pram, in its present position. And he recalled putting the pram out on the terrace while he went upstairs – looking out of the studio window to check on Freya.
What he could not for the life of him recall was bringing it back in. But there it was, so he supposed he must have done.
Chapter Eleven
The proposed visit to his sister-in-law’s in Chichester the following day helped to dispel the slight shadow cast by David’s visit to Stoneyhaye.
When Annet returned home only an hour after him, she had seemed unaffected, laughed again about the coincidence of it all and whisked Freya off to bed, suggesting he go and fetch a takeaway instead of slaving over a hot stove. His response to this had been less than gracious, and he’d wound up cutting off his nose to spite his face, producing a less than successful risotto but not allowing Annet to say it wasn’t as bad as he made out.
‘Watch it,’ she teased him, ‘you’re turning into a housewife again.’
‘Not on the strength of this,’ he replied, prodding the risotto with his fork.
‘I’m not talking about the cooking.’
He was stung. ‘What then?’
‘Never mind.’ She reached out and took his hand. ‘ I didn’t mean it.’
But he knew she had, and was right. If even then he’d been able to mention how troubled he’d been by seeing her with Bailey – how confused and vulnerable, how sick to his stomach – if he’d been able to do that he might still have dispelled some of his anxiety. But though fiercely real to him he feared that to her it would seem only foolish, and so he’d kept silent, and suffered. When that night she’d caressed him amorously he was once again unable to respond and she had snuggled philosophically beneath his shoulder and fallen asleep quickly, without asking for more.
With Mags the shadows were well and truly beaten back. Not it had to be said because she herself was all sunshine and light. When David and Freya arrived at eleven-thirty hers had already been a trying day.
‘You simply would not believe the havoc that can be caused by a child mislaying something,’ she declared, kissing David’s cheek and automatically taking Freya from him before heading for the kitchen. ‘Quite apart from the general inconvenience there’s also this attitude that it’s bound by definition to be my fault. “Where did you put my” are the words I dread most around here, they always seem to herald hours of unseemly wrangling and shouting. And the trouble is if I find it, which as we speak I haven’t, that’s always taken to prove the point! Talk about a no-win situation – coffee?’
‘Thanks.’ He took Freya back while Mags filled the kettle. ‘So what’s gone missing?’
She flapped a hand. ‘Oh, some form James needs to fill in for his hockey trip, I’m perfectly certain I’ve never seen it and it will be lurking in the bottom of some disgusting bag with lots of other things he’d far rather I didn’t see, but his attitude is “I gave it to you, I said it had to be done by Friday, what the hell have you done with it?” And if I start looking for it in any of the obvious places then of course I’m invading his privacy.’
David said, before she could: ‘I suppose I’ve got all this to look forward to.’
She smiled tensely. ‘ Not necessarily, girls are so much easier in most ways. Until puberty,’ she added.
At least this grim warning provided an opportunity to change the subject. ‘Where’s Sadie? All go well at the dentist?’
‘Fine, only a check-up, we were in and out in a flash so I insisted on school I’m afraid. Another example of mother as wrecker of lives.’
This was so unlike the breezy, advice-dispensing Mags of a few weeks ago that David had to laugh. ‘Poor Mags. If it’s any consolation I think you do an amazing job.’
She put the coffee on a tray. ‘I hate to say this David but you speak from a position of ignorance. Come through.’
They went to sit in the family room which adjoined the kitchen. David sat Freya in her seat and Mags got down heavily on to the floor next to her. She was about the same age as Annet but her figure was fast becoming matronly. They were almost a different species from one another. His wife was unmistakeably a sexual being; Mags, increasingly, a domestic one.
‘Tim OK?’ he asked.
‘Actually he’s coming home for lunch, almost unheard of, but maybe he thought we’d be up to no good!’ She chortled. ‘No, things are quiet at work at the moment and he’d like to see you.’
‘Good, that’ll be nice.’
Mags unstrapped Freya and laid her on the floor. ‘Do you mind? It’s good for them to kick.’
‘Be my guest.’
‘It’s only cold for lunch, I thought then you could go ahead with feeds and whatever and not worry.’
‘Thanks. She usually has a bottle around twelve and then sleeps, but as she’s slept all the way in the car that may not happen.’
‘No
,’ agreed Mags, ‘you could be right there, but she is so adorable. We might take her for a walk this afternoon. In fact what would really make Sadie’s day would be if we took her to the school gate so she can push back, then you can jump straight in the car if that’s what you want.’
‘Sounds fine. Yes, I’d like to see the kids.’
She pulled a face. ‘Up to a point Lord Copper. You don’t want to see James, take my word for it, especially when he’s in major recrimination mode. It’s not a pretty sight.’
‘The form will turn up, surely.’
‘Yes, indeed it will, and if he finds it it will simply appear on the kitchen table without explanation or apology.’
Conversation moved on to the imminent arrival of the nanny, and Mags’s intention (declared as David recalled at fairly regular intervals over the past three to four years) of getting a job. As his sister-in-law ran through the modest range of options he noticed for the first time that she was not at ease. This might have been simply due to the irritations of the day, or seeing her in her own home, or because over the past few days he himself had become sensitised to the currents and pressures of a different sort of life. He had always regarded Mags, not without affection, as a kind of necessary evil, his brother’s helpmeet and the competent parent of his nephews and nieces. She was a woman who simply forged ahead along her chosen path in an unquestioning manner which, though slightly blinkered, was curiously comforting to the rest of them. Good old Mags, she was bossy and annoying and quick on the draw with the advice, but then that was all she had to think about. Also, if the truth were known, David had never really been able to understand what his younger brother saw in her. Even at the wedding where he had been best man she had seemed to be a young woman entirely without mystery, and consequently without allure.
All that might or might not have been true of her: he’d certainly believed it. Now he wasn’t so sure. As she played with Freya and nattered on about earning some ‘pin-money’ – surely one of the last women of her age and class to think in such a way – he suspected for the first time that there was more being left unsaid than said, and the suspicion made him feel more warmly towards her. It also inhibited him. The terms of their relationship had shifted slightly where he was concerned and would have to be reconsidered.
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