Bed of Roses

by Daisy Waugh

  The middle-aged man sitting at the table in front of her looks at his watch. He is embarrassed. He hadn’t realised that Kitty Mozely, who’s not produced a piece of work in nearly seven years, still considers herself one of his clients. Had he realised, of course, he wouldn’t have dreamt of dropping in on her. But this morning, on the third and final day of what was turning out to be quite a lonely driving holiday in the West Country, he had remembered that she lived nearby, and he’d had a flash of her in her golden days, when they’d both been at Oxford and for a month or two – or maybe a fortnight, but anyway it was a bloody good fortnight – Kitty had allowed him to share her bed.

  He’d headed for Fiddleford, stopped at the pub for directions and arrived at her cottage unannounced, brimming with warmth and goodwill. The look of rage she gave him when she came to the door, still in her dressing gown, had almost – very nearly – made him turn on his well-shod heel and run.

  He hadn’t. Actually, he’d taken pity on her. He’d taken her to lunch back at the Fiddleford Arms, and had been listening to her berate him for well over an hour by the time Louis sauntered in.

  ‘Have you, darling boy,’ Kitty is demanding, ‘in your many remunerative years as a ‘bloody agent’, ever heard of such a thing as writers’ block? Have you?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly, Kit,’ he murmurs.

  ‘You were supposed to help me. Not just abandon me to drown in my bloody creative juices. So help me! Help me! Give me a fucking idea!’ She’s drunk, of course. Poor old thing. Seeing him looking so dapper and so bloody prosperous at her front door – it had shaken her up a bit, brought back a lot of unwelcome reminders.

  The agent fiddles with his lighted cigarette and prays to a God he doesn’t believe in, for the bill to arrive. ‘And how is Scarlett?’ he lobs in half-heartedly. ‘Is she thriving?’

  ‘Scarlett’s fine,’ Kitty snaps. ‘Her teacher doesn’t seem to know if she can read or write. Which is a bloody joke. But otherwise she’s fine. Angel, would you mind moving that cigarette? The smoke’s going right up my nose.’

  ‘Doesn’t know?’ He laughs. ‘That’s a bit feeble, isn’t it? She always struck me as a very clever child.’ He envisages her as he saw her last, a few years ago now; with the little lopsided face, the little twisted back, and the big blue watchful eyes…kind of enthralling, in a funny way; that combination of knowingness and vulnerability, in someone so young. Very striking. Very Zeitgeisty, put like that…a tiny, twisted package of human life representing the malaise of a generation, and so on. Someone ought to paint her.

  Suddenly he leans forward. ‘I say, Kitty,’ he begins. ‘D’you have a photograph of her?’

  ‘What? Don’t be idiotic, David. We live together. Of course I don’t.’

  ‘But I take it she’s…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I take it she’s…’ He hunches his shoulders in embarrassment, at a loss as to how to put it.

  ‘What?’ Kitty asks coldly. A rush of savage protectiveness washes over her. It takes her by surprise. She can feel herself blushing. ‘Spit it out, David.’

  ‘Kitty dearest, believe it or not I think I’ve had a serious major brainwave!’

  Louis fails to face down the temptation of that beer in the end (or very close to the beginning) and it’s just as he is ordering a second one, that Kitty glances up from newly animated discussions with her agent and spots Louis at the bar.

  ‘It’s Louis!’ she cries dramatically. ‘He’s come back to us!’

  ‘Excuse me, ma’am?’ Louis laughs, turning round to look at her. ‘Are you talking to me?’

  ‘I certainly am! You may not know me, but we know you! I mean we, not me and him,’ she indicates the agent, not especially respectfully. ‘I mean we – the People of Fiddleford! Come on! Come and join us.’

  Louis has nothing else to do while he downs his second pint, and he’s been half-eavesdropping on their conversation all this time. He’s a little intrigued by her. He picks up his glass and walks over.

  ‘Louis!’ declares Kitty triumphantly. ‘How do you do? Sit down!’ She leans across and drags a chair from the neighbouring table, positioning it absurdly close to her own. ‘Sit down!’ she orders, patting it. ‘I’m Kitty. Kitty Mozely. Author of excellent children’s books, as this gentleman here,’ she indicates the agent again, ‘is duty bound to confirm; and mother to Scarlett.’ She ponders that for a moment. ‘And I do believe that you and I are about to be neighbours. Am I right? Aren’t you moving into Alms Cottages? Next to our gorgeous stripping schoolmarm?’

  ‘Next to Fanny,’ Louis corrects her. ‘She’s not a stripping schoolmarm.’

  ‘No, of course.’ Kitty tips her head. ‘Next to the ravishing Fanny Flynn. Louis, may I introduce you to my—’ Suddenly she stops, half-closes her panda eyes and gurgles with delicious laughter. ‘I was going to say “my-fucking-agent”. Because that, frankly,’ she turns to David, ‘is all I’ve been calling you for years. But now it turns out you’re not a fucking-agent after all. But a marvellous-agent, with a marvellous idea. And now it’s completely thrown me, and I can’t for the life of me remember your actual name!’

  David smiles thinly. ‘Don’t be a bore, Kitty. You know perfectly well what my name is. In fact,’ he smirks, ‘I remember nights when you used to shriek it so loud the whole of bloody Oxford had to wear earmuffs…Don’t you remember that?’

  ‘So I did!’ she says, as if she’d quite forgotten (which, to be fair, she may have done). She looks at him and chuckles, leans across the table and affectionately pinches his cheek. ‘But I was only pretending. You know that. Now Louis,’ she says, dropping the cheek and turning abruptly away, ‘tell-me-tell-me. Tell me everything! I want to know everything there is to know about you…’

  The two men both catch her musky scent, her recklessness, her magnetic wickedness and both – to their own slight irritation – feel a surge of desire.

  21

  Robert’s been pacing across the back of his classroom ever since Louis left. His students, as is often the way, are sitting quietly in front of Are We Being Served? An Overview of Service Industries in the West Midlands. Robert has said he’s going to test them on it this time; he’s told them the winner will get to go home five minutes early. Which is pointless, because nobody will be there to pick them up, and they won’t have any friends to play with while they’re waiting. But the children are making a good-natured show of taking the competition seriously – because he can be quite snappy when he wants to be, Mr White. So they’re bored, but they’re very used to that.

  It leaves him free to pace, and to think about Louis. Arriving at Fanny’s at four. Robert’s stomach lurches, imagining their reunion; imagining their beautiful limbs, later tonight, coiling round each other in ecstasy. Robert is distracted by the sound of a car grinding abruptly to a halt outside. He frowns. Dangerous driver, especially so near a school. He hears the car door slam, and then the playground gate squeak open and closed. Nervously, he hurries to the front of the class and turns down the television.

  ‘Shhh!’ He holds up a finger.

  Fanny spoke to him only yesterday about what she unreasonably called his ‘dependence’ on videos in lessons. She wouldn’t be pleased to see him using them again so soon. But she hardly ever arrives in a car, and the individual walking up the path…has a limp. He turns the television’s volume up again and returns to the back of the room.

  Timing, he thinks. It’s all about timing…Somehow he needs to prevent Fanny from going home until well after four. Until after Louis’s been and gone. Or failing that, he needs to go home with her, and somehow be there to sabotage the moment when Louis turns up. But how—

  A knock on the door. Fanny’s head appears from around it. Robert jumps.

  ‘Robert,’ she says, very coldly. Her eyes are all puffy. ‘Could I have a quick word?’

  She’s furious about the video – and justifiably, perhaps. But there are a lot of other reasons, that afternoon, whi
ch lead her to react as strongly as she does, and she doesn’t manage the confrontation well. She is very rude to him. ‘…And I swear,’ she says, well, she shouts, she yells at him, ‘if you use that video machine again, believe me, I will fire you. Do you get that? D’you understand that?’

  Robert shivers. She’s so beautiful when she’s angry. Right now, what he’d like to do to her…He’d like to—

  ‘Wipe that fucking smirk off your face! I just asked you a question.’

  Robert’s smirk becomes a little more entrenched. He crosses his arms over his chest and looks down at her. A long, awkward pause follows, during which Fanny, in an unwelcome flash of self-awareness, pictures herself as she stands there, throbbing foot, angry face, craning neck. She flushes. Robert spots it. ‘Hmm,’ he says pertly. ‘Are you quite finished?’

  ‘I imagine,’ she says, with a little wry grace, ‘that I’ve made myself pretty clear.’

  ‘Firstly, I appreciate how much you obviously care about your students’ welfare and progress. You’re overreacting; getting emotional about something which really doesn’t merit it. But in my view that only illustrates your level of dedication to the job and I approve, OK? You have my respect for that.’

  ‘I…What?’

  ‘However,’ he continues, and now he smiles (because in love or out of love Robert will always know his Rights), ‘I don’t believe, Fanny, that you can give a member of teaching staff a formal warning simply for using a very well established and respected teaching aid.’

  ‘That’s not the—’

  ‘If this is a formal warning, Fanny, then I would appreciate it in writing, please, and I can proceed as per the union’s advice. Is this a formal warning?’

  She hesitates. Robert waits, crossing one sandalled foot over the other, tilting the head to one side, raising an eyebrow, smiling.

  He nods. ‘Secondly,’ he says, ‘and much more importantly. What’s wrong with your foot?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I notice you were limping. Are you hurt?’

  ‘No.’

  He frowns. ‘You’ve got to take better care of yourself, Fanny. Charging around the place. Doing those emergency stops in that little car of yours. Did you have any lunch today? I bet you didn’t. It’s no wonder you get so overwrought.’

  ‘I am not – remotely – overwrought,’ she snaps. ‘Switch the video off, Robert. And start doing some bloody teaching.’ She limps away, furious, and he stands there, watching her. ‘By the way,’ she turns back, unable to resist it, ‘did anyone – I don’t suppose anyone came calling for me while I was out?’

  ‘Calling for you?’ Robert looks masterfully blank.

  ‘No? I just thought I saw a friend of mine…Oh, God, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Expecting someone special?’

  She sighs. ‘It’s none of your business, Robert. I’ll see you later.’

  ‘Geraldine. Kitty here. I’m in the pub. You’ll never guess who came to call on me this morning! David Prick-Like-a-Twiglet Watson. Remember him?’

  Geraldine’s in her office with nothing to do. She’s spent the morning in school. It’s her second morning doing her reading-with-the-kids, and she’s already feeling a bit resentful about it. Because she doesn’t feel, with her brain and qualifications, that her time at the school is being fully exploited. She could be doing so much more. And this morning, listening to a girl called Heather struggle drearily through another Adventure with Biff she found her eyelids very heavy. So heavy, in fact, that when Heather paused to clear her throat it made Geraldine jump. Heather didn’t realise it, thankfully, but Geraldine had fallen asleep. So. Geraldine’s husband is sitting opposite her, head bent over the leasehold details of someone’s market stall, and Geraldine’s feeling pretty listless, pretty disappointed, pretty gloomy. ‘Hello, Kitty,’ she says wearily. ‘David who?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Geraldine. Didn’t you fuck him at Oxford?’

  ‘No, Kitty—’

  ‘I certainly did. Yuck! Prick-Like-a-Twiglet Watson. AKA my-fucking-agent…Drives a Jaguar now,’ she adds as an afterthought. ‘The little shit. Just waved him off in it. It’s powder blue. So now of course I’m wondering if he’s queer…’

  ‘Oh, David Watson!’ Geraldine smiles. She can’t quite put a face to the name, and no, she did not fuck him, but she knows who Kitty is talking about. She and Kitty had both been at university with him, and suddenly she feels unreasonably hurt that he didn’t come and call on her as well. He must have known she and Kitty lived in the same village. ‘You should have brought him to see me. I would have loved to see him.’

  ‘No you wouldn’t. Anyway, the point is he’s come up with a brainwave. As a result of which, my lovely friend, I am probably going to be even richer than you are! Imagine that!’

  ‘Jolly good,’ says Geraldine brightly. She hates it when Kitty starts talking about money. She strongly believes that their financial disparity issue should be left well alone. It’s a can of worms. But Kitty’s obviously drunk. ‘So? Are you going to tell me what it is?’ she asks.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The brainwave.’

  ‘Hmm? Oh, no. It’s a secret. Actually, I’m not sure you’ll approve. Anyway, next piece of news. Guess which Deity of Masculine Perfection has been buying me drinks in the Fiddleford Arms this happy afternoon?’

  ‘Can’t,’ says Geraldine, sighing. The conversation is beginning to annoy her. ‘Kitty, I’m trying to work.’

  ‘LOUIS, OF COURSE!’ Kitty bawls. ‘Come on, Geraldine. Wakey-wakey! And Christ, he’s sexy, you know…I mean…Christ—’ She hiccups. ‘Ought to whisper, really,’ she adds, doing nothing of the kind. ‘He’s only gone to the lav.’

  Geraldine giggles. She can’t help it. ‘You’re pissed.’

  ‘Oh. And I did a teeny bit of trouble stirring, I’m afraid,’ she adds proudly.

  ‘Oh, God, Kitty. What have you said?’

  ‘Well, it’s only that General Maxwell McDonald was asking a couple of days ago whether Fanny Flynn was—’

  ‘You were at the Manor?’ It spews out before Geraldine can stop herself. She’s never been invited to the Manor, not once in all the time she’s been in Fiddleford. She’s had Jo and Charlie and the General to dinner twice, now. Twice. Kitty hasn’t. So what’s Geraldine doing wrong that Kitty’s obviously getting so right?

  ‘Calm down,’ chortles Kitty. ‘I saw him in the post office. Mad as a tree, I think. But then, who isn’t? And getting madder every day. He was asking if Fanny Flynn – who, let’s face it, Geraldine, may be many things, but she’s certainly not unattractive – he was asking if Fanny Flynn was having it off with that disgusting little teacher man, what’s-his-name? Who taught Ollie last year. He had a bit of a thing for you…’

  ‘Robert White? General Maxwell McDonald stood in the post office in front of Mrs Hooper, and asked if Fanny and Robert were having it off?’

  Kitty creases up with laughter. ‘Did I say that? God! If only. He may have said “stepping out” or something. But anyway, that was the gist. He bumped into Fanny at the Classic in Lamsbury last Friday night. Claiming she was on her own, he said. And then he spied that ghastly man skulking just around the corner.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Geraldine. ‘That is interesting.’

  ‘So obviously I assured the General he was absolutely right.’

  Geraldine snorts.

  ‘Only now of course I’ve told Louis. Well I didn’t tell him, exactly. Didn’t quite dare go that far. I sort of hinted at it…Funny?’ She suddenly doesn’t sound quite so sure.

  ‘Kitty!’ But then Geraldine’s mind flicks back to the time she walked in on Robert and Fanny together up in Fanny’s office. She remembers how weird and jumpy they had been. ‘Mind you,’ she says, ‘the old General may actually be on to something. Because now I come to think about it…’

  ‘What? Geraldine?’

  ‘Well…’

  Kitty almost gags on her curiosity. ‘WHAT?’ She hiccups, and
it turns into a belch. ‘WHAT? Oh, Christ. Got to go. He’s coming back.’

  Geraldine giggles again. ‘I think you should go home, have a strong cup of black coffee and a cold bath and maybe you can come round for dinner later. Are you up to anything this evening?’

  ‘Well, that all depends…’

  ‘Of course. I’ll see you later, then.’ Geraldine says goodbye, still with half a smile on her face. But the clunk of her telephone receiver returns her at once to her own humdrum surroundings. She looks across at her industrious husband, diligent as ever, and then down at her desk, at her own afternoon’s work. She has written a list of people to call. They are people who have all contacted the practice once, with an initial enquiry, but who have never followed it up; people who she has already called a couple of times, to no avail. She sighs. Boredom.

  Boredom.

  Boredom.

  Kitty’s life is a mess, she thinks. And in many ways, disgraceful. But at least she’s living it. At least Kitty gets highs and lows. She and Clive, meanwhile, are slowly withering to death. By Boredom.

  ‘Clive…’

  All the years of working so hard, all the years of gyming and juggling, and it has come to—

  ‘Cli-ii-ive?’

  Boredom. She needs more in her life. More meaning. More excitement. Either or both.

  ‘Clive!’ she says it more sharply.

  ‘Hmm?’ He looks up, startled.

  ‘Are we happy here? In this office? Doing all this?’

  ‘Doing all…what?’

  ‘Are we?’ she asks again.

  ‘Well.’ He lays down his pen. ‘I’m happy, being here with you,’ he says carefully. ‘I’m happy that things aren’t as frantic as they used to be in London. And I’m happy…that Ollie is happy.’ He looks down at the work on his desk. He’s taken aback by the question. Unprepared. They’ve been being stoical for so long, the two of them, he’s finding it very hard to switch gear. ‘Of course, the – money – thing. We’re going to have to earn some more money at some point…’