Bed of Roses

by Daisy Waugh

  She looks at him. Never mind the painting, he’s drenched. With a sigh she stands back. ‘Come in, then. I’ll make you some coffee. But be quiet, though. Louis’s upstairs, sleeping.’

  ‘Ah yes. Louis,’ he says. ‘The photographer.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  A silence. She can feel him watching her as she turns away to switch the kettle on. ‘Sit down,’ she says.

  Solomon doesn’t walk, he prowls: three long steps from front door to sitting area. He stretches himself out on her small sofa, his large frame and that aura of power which surrounds it, making her sitting room feel suddenly uncomfortably small. ‘I don’t suppose you could drop a bit of whisky in that coffee, could you? It’s bloody cold outside.’

  ‘I could forget the coffee and give you straight whisky if you prefer.’

  ‘No, no, no.’ A flicker of a smile. ‘That would be disgusting.’

  She hands him his cup and stands beside him, feeling awkward in her own house. There’s nowhere left to sit except the floor cushions – and somehow she doesn’t like the idea of sitting at his feet. ‘Anyway, look, enjoy the coffee,’ she says, watching him gulp it down, ‘and it’s nice to meet you at last. But to be honest with you, Solomon, as far as your painting’s concerned I’m not sure that there’s really a hell of a lot to discuss. I can’t accept it and that’s that. Thank you very, very much. And everything. Really. I mean it was beautiful—’

  ‘It still is beautiful, Fanny. Or rather, it was.’ He halfprops himself up, pulls back the sodden dustbin bag with a surprising delicacy. ‘Before you left it to rot in a fucking puddle. Let’s have a look…’

  A silence between them as he holds out the painting and watches her gazing wistfully at it. It is still beautiful – more beautiful, she thinks, than it had been even half an hour ago. A tiny, regretful sigh escapes her and he laughs.

  ‘The children said you and she were alike,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘Look…’ He leans forward and casually traces a finger over the tiny frown line between her eyebrows. ‘It’s uncanny…I dare say she would have left the bloody painting in a puddle too.’

  Fanny, not expecting to be touched, rears backwards. She bumps her head on one of her wretched Mexican lanterns and sends it crashing to the floor.

  ‘Oops,’ says Solomon, taking another slug of coffee and settling back on to the sofa again. ‘Anyway, it’s all yours. I shall probably sell it if you don’t take it. But to be frank with you, Fanny, it’s more of a bother putting it up for sale than leaving it here with you. So for Christ’s sake, take it. As Grey McShane would say,’ he adds, watching her through dark, half-closed eyes, ‘“Don’t be so fuckin’ prissy.”’

  She laughs out loud. ‘That was pretty good.’

  ‘It was, wasn’t it?’ He takes another gulp of the coffee, winces slightly. ‘I couldn’t have a touch more whisky in this? I loathe the taste of neat coffee first thing in the morning.’

  ‘You know what,’ Fanny says, ‘I’m feeling hungover enough. I might even join you.’

  ‘Hair of the dog that bit you,’ drawls a familiar voice, and Louis strolls into the room, bed ruffled, sleepy, having pulled on boxer shorts and a T-shirt. ‘Always works. Hey, there,’ he adds pleasantly to Solomon, reaching automatically for his cigarette pouch, on the counter behind them. ‘Bit early for visitors, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’d have thought so,’ agrees Solomon. ‘But your girlfriend has already been out calling this morning. Leaving this painting in a large puddle on my doorstep.’

  ‘There wasn’t a puddle when I left it there,’ Fanny says again.

  ‘Hard to believe,’ drawls Solomon, who often doesn’t sleep, ‘since it’s been raining hard all night.’

  ‘Louis,’ Fanny says pointedly, ‘Solomon and I are drinking whisky for some reason. Do you want some?’

  Louis shrugs. Looks at Solomon. ‘Sure. Why not?’

  ‘Do you two know each other?’ asks Fanny. ‘Louis, this is—’

  ‘Yeah, I know. Hi, Solomon.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘We’ve met a couple of times in the pub,’ Louis explains.

  ‘With La Mozely,’ adds Solomon. ‘Since your Adonis-like boyfriend arrived, Fanny, I’ve been let off very lightly. It’s wonderful…I no longer have to put on a fucking flak jacket every time I feel like going to the pub.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Louis smiles. ‘She’s not so bad. She can be very funny.’

  Solomon nods. ‘True.’

  ‘So,’ Louis says pleasantly, ‘excited by this whisky idea…’

  With a glass of whisky in her hand – and a third person in the room – Fanny feels more comfortable about the floor cushions. She and Louis take one each, on either side of the painting, and the three of them lie back, turn their eyes to the ceiling. They sip on their whisky-coffees, listen to the rain – and chat happily, lazily, for an hour or maybe two. It’s an oddly intimate occasion. They get a little drunk as the rain thunders down outside, and tell each other things they might not have done if the sun had been shining, or if they’d been properly dressed, or if they hadn’t been drunk and it wasn’t so early in the morning.

  ‘In all my thirty-seven years,’ Solomon says after a small, thoughtful pause, and apropos of nothing much. ‘I’ve never been in love…Strange, don’t you think?’

  ‘Really?’ asks Fanny. ‘What about Macklan’s mother?’

  ‘Macklan’s mother was my art teacher at school. Macklan’s mother bloody nearly put me off women for life.’

  ‘Oh…OK,’ says Fanny. ‘Well, what about your ex-wife? Weren’t you ever in love with her?’

  ‘Christina…’ He smiles. He thinks about it for a while. ‘No. Never. And what about you two?’ he asks abruptly, turning his laser-like gaze on Fanny. ‘Are you in love?’

  ‘Oh—’ Fanny hears herself laughing. ‘Louis falls in love about once every couple of months, don’t you, Louis? He can’t help himself.’

  ‘True,’ Louis agrees, tilting himself forward to reach the whisky bottle. ‘But this time it’s different.’

  Fanny rolls her eyes, chuckles.

  ‘And what about you, Fanny?’ Solomon asks. He hasn’t taken his eyes off her. ‘I gather you were married before.’

  ‘You do?’ Fanny asks. Less warm suddenly. ‘How did you gather that, I wonder?’

  ‘Well—’ He notices Louis isn’t looking at him. Louis has his eyes fixed on his cigarette end. ‘Grey,’ Solomon says smoothly. ‘Grey McShane told me, I think.’

  ‘He did, did he?’ Fanny mutters. ‘Well, I wish he wouldn’t.’

  ‘“Och,”’ says Solomon, his Scottish accent slightly rougher this time, after the whisky, ‘“don’t be so fuckin’ prissy!” We’ve all been married before. What’s the big deal?’

  Fanny frowns. ‘Strange, though. I don’t remember telling him.’

  ‘’Cause you were popped, I imagine,’ says Louis lightly. ‘It’s happened before, Fan.’

  ‘Seriously. I thought no one in Fiddleford knew anything about it.’

  Solomon snorts. ‘Everyone knows everything about everyone’s business in this village. And if they don’t, they invent it. Hadn’t you worked that out? In fact, I probably know more about you than you know yourself. And vice versa.’

  Fanny looks ready to argue.

  ‘One word,’ he says, holding up a hand. ‘Mafioso.’

  She smiles. ‘Oh, yes. But—’

  ‘I rest my case. So. Go on. Were you in love with him? Was he in love with you? He must have been. Louis, I’m not being tactless?’ he asks, though he knows the answer. The first time he and Louis met, Louis was goodnaturedly regaling half the Fiddleford Arms with the story of Fanny’s ex-husband.

  ‘Of course not,’ Louis says. ‘Lived through most of it first hand, didn’t I, Fan? That is,’ he adds, ‘as long as Fanny doesn’t mind talking about him. You don’t, do you, Fan?’

  Fanny shakes her head. It feels odd to be talking about him to a stranger: odd, an
d oddly comforting. ‘Well,’ she begins slowly. ‘He was a teacher. Like me. A few years older…Taught PE and Latin.’ She pauses, remembering him; remembering the moment they met, and then immediately fast-forwarding, as she always does, to the flight to Vegas, when she’d had her first moment of doubt. Their first argument. For nothing. For no reason. Because she’d been looking at an air steward. She should have realised then. ‘He was a teacher, like me,’ she says again. ‘And yes. For a short time I was in love with him. But we used to fight. God, but we used to fight.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Oh – anything. Everything. He was very jealous. Insanely jealous. Obsessive. He used to call me up twenty-thirty times a day just to – impose himself, really. It became—Anyway.’ She laughs. ‘The whole thing only lasted a couple of months. Got a bit nasty in the end, didn’t it, Louis?’

  ‘Certainly did,’ agrees Louis, propping himself up on one elbow to roll himself another cigarette, this one with grass in it.

  ‘Yes,’ murmurs Solomon. ‘Grey – said you wound up in hospital.’

  ‘He did? Well, how the hell—? What did he say? I’m certain I wouldn’t have…I’m certain.’

  ‘Fan, you always underestimate,’ Louis stretches across to run an affectionate hand down her arm, ‘how much you like to blab when you’ve drunk a bit. Besides,’ he grins at her, ‘I always think I come out of it very well.’

  She turns to Solomon. ‘But what did Grey say, exactly?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Solomon looks more impatient than embarrassed. ‘That Louis found you in a terrible state – and that you haven’t seen him since. Honestly can’t remember the details. Probably because there weren’t any. Is it true?’

  ‘He damn nearly killed her,’ says Louis. ‘Didn’t he, Fan?’

  ‘But did Grey say I told him?’

  Solomon shrugs. ‘I don’t think I asked. Does he have a name, this geezer? What happened to him?’

  ‘Nick something,’ Louis says helpfully. ‘And the funny thing is I can never remember…’ He frowns in concentration. ‘Nick…’ He waves a hand in front of his head, snaps his fingers. ‘Surname…gone! Hopeless, isn’t it? Not even an initial.’

  ‘It’s the spliff, Louis,’ Fanny says blandly. ‘Your memory’s fucked, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘Surely you can remember, Fanny,’ persists Solomon. A lean smile. ‘If I’m to send one of my “mafioso” people out to hunt him down I shall need a name.’

  ‘His name,’ says Fanny, ‘was Nicholas Faraday. Nick Faraday.’ She shudders. ‘And you can keep your “people” out of it, Solomon. Thanks.’ She glances at him, and her own subdued smile dies on her lips. His long arms and legs are still crossed, just as they were, his head and shoulders are still propped against the sofa, just as they had been. But the languid, sexy, early-morning affability has vanished, replaced by something else, an air of watchful attention. She laughs unsteadily. ‘God knows if you’re actually joking. But I’d prefer to forget all about him…Thank you.’

  ‘Nick Faraday, you say?’ Fanny catches a hint of an accent in his voice. South London. It surprises her.

  ‘Nick Faraday!’ cries Louis. ‘That’s the one. God! How could I forget? Poor old Fan,’ he turns to Solomon. ‘She thinks he’s started telephoning her.’

  ‘Nick Faraday’s been telephoning you?’ repeats Solomon. He has propped himself up, the better to look at her. ‘When, exactly?’

  She shrugs. ‘Last week. And then again a couple of nights ago. He didn’t say anything. But it was him.’

  ‘And you tried 1471?’

  ‘Of course I did. Number withheld. Always is.’

  Solomon collapses back on to the sofa and slowly, as if he’s trying to fight it but can’t, his face breaks into a broad grin.

  ‘I wasn’t trying to be funny,’ she says coldly.

  Louis stands up. ‘I’m starving. Is there any bread in the house?’

  ‘But Fanny, darling,’ says Solomon, ‘you’re a very attractive woman.’ He pauses. Squints at her. ‘I mean, in a way. And you’re knocking around the world, dropping anchor wherever the whim takes you. Flashing your tits in village halls and so on. Being photographed in newspapers in your underwear. You’re bound to get a few crank admirers. For heaven’s sake, I shouldn’t have to tell you that. It comes with the territory.’ He stops again and then adds, after a brief gurgle of laughter, ‘Nicholas Faraday! What on earth makes you think it was him?’

  ‘Because he’s done it before!’ she snaps, feeling stupid, vulnerable, intensely regretful of ever having confided in him. ‘And it’s not funny. You have no idea, Solomon. You have no fucking idea…’

  ‘Take it easy, Fan,’ mutters Louis, from the far end of the room, his nose inside a half-empty box of Shreddies.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Solomon holds up a hand. ‘It’s not funny. Of course it’s not funny. Only if somebody calls,’ once again his face breaks into an unwilling grin, ‘and doesn’t say anything and withholds his number, then how on earth can you know—’

  ‘These are a bit stale,’ Louis says. ‘I think I have Corn Pops next door. I’ll be back in a sec.’

  ‘I know,’ shouts Fanny, ‘because he’s done it before! I mean, he’s done things. Other things. He’s sent me things. Stupid cards…horrible cards. He left me Brute – my dog, Brute – three years ago. I came back to my flat one day and found Brute on the doorstep.’ To her horror, she finds her chin trembling. ‘And Brute even smelt of him. That’s why I called him Brute. Poor little thing.’ It’s that – the naming of Brute – which finally tips her over the edge. She drops her head and begins, very quietly, to cry.

  Solomon sits up, leans forward. ‘Fanny, angel,’ he says tenderly, wrapping an arm around her. ‘You may well have smelt Nicholas Faraday on your poor dog on the day you found him. You may well have done. All I’m saying—’ he stops. Starts again. ‘All I’m saying, sweetheart, is that Faraday can’t have had anything to do with it, because three years ago he was already dead.’

  44

  Solomon is very sweet after that; says almost nothing, in fact, just sits there, waiting to be questioned, watching her curiously, trying to match her with the pathetic, angry junkie he’d known in jail. Nick Faraday, one-time Latin teacher, had used to lie there, limp, on his thin grey bunk and talk about a girl he’d met in Buxton, a teacher called Fanny; and though nobody said so exactly, it was obvious he was dying. One afternoon he slipped into a coma. Somebody called for help and they carted Faraday off to hospital for the last time. A few months later they came and took away his things. It was how Solomon and the rest of them learnt he was dead.

  She wants to know how he died – of course – but Solomon doesn’t know how to tell her.

  ‘But did he have any friends in jail?’ she keeps asking. ‘Were you his friend when he was ill?’

  Solomon shrugs. ‘It’s not really how it—I wasn’t not his friend. But I mean—’

  ‘So he was all alone?’

  ‘Well,’ he hesitates. ‘I mean, of course he was, Fanny. He was bloody well dying.’

  ‘But why did he die? How did he die? What was wrong with him?’

  Again, Solomon shrugs. ‘They didn’t tell me.’ But it was obvious. Everybody knew. ‘Fanny, how long ago did you, er—How many years ago is it since – you were married?’

  Which is when Louis comes back from next door, with his bowl of Corn Pops. He sees Fanny, face shocked colourless. ‘Fan?’ he says.

  ‘Nick’s dead,’ she says dully. ‘Died in jail, seven years ago. Which means Brute…All the times…and the telephone calls…’ She falls silent. Louis plonks the Corn Pops on to the nearest surface and rushes to take her in his arms.

  ‘Sorry, Fanny,’ mumbles Solomon. ‘I’m so sorry. Stupid of me to—I might have broken it to you more gently, I suppose. But it’s such a peculiar coincidence. And I couldn’t quite believe—I don’t understand why somebody didn’t tell you.’

  Louis shoots him a look o
ver Fanny’s shoulder, indicating that Solomon ought to leave. ‘And maybe you should take the painting, yeah?’ He glances at Fanny. ‘Right, Fan?’ She doesn’t reply. Louis gives an amiable, apologetic smile. ‘Sorry, Solomon. I know it was well meant, but—’

  ‘Of course.’ Solomon, remorseful, keen to do the right thing – and yet unwilling to leave Fanny still in this numb state – lingers awkwardly for a moment. ‘I really am sorry, Fanny. Anything I can do. Any questions you may want to ask – any time at all. Whenever you’re ready…’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ says Fanny, offering him a mechanical smile. ‘Thanks, Solomon. Thanks for everything.’

  He pats her on the back, beneath Louis’s protective arm, and she feels its warmth, catches the smell of sandalwood and lavender. ‘See you soon, Fanny.’ He picks up the painting without even bothering to wrap it, and prowls unhappily back out into the rain.

  Fanny doesn’t cry for long. In fact, soon after Solomon leaves, she appears to rally completely. Perhaps she is a little vaguer than usual but beyond that she behaves as if nothing has changed. Louis misinterprets it. He congratulates her on taking the news so well, when she hasn’t actually taken it in at all, and spends the rest of the day calling her ‘Widow Flynn’ in what is meant to be an amusing medieval accent. Each time it makes her wince, and yet she can never quite summon the energy to object to it.

  Later the following day she announces she wants to question Solomon more about the circumstances of the death. She is on the point of leaving when Louis, lying on her sofa reading a Patrick O’Brian, persuades her to think again. Fanny couldn’t hear, or wouldn’t hear, what Solomon had been trying to tell her, but Louis, having heard from Fanny all that Solomon told her, clearly understands what killed Nicholas Faraday. Fanny will work it out in her own time, of course, but in the mean time, rightly or wrongly, Louis instinctively wants to protect her. He suggests, with feigned carelessness, without even looking up from his book, that she should spend time getting used to what she’s already learnt before going after the details. ‘You’ve got to ease yourself into this,’ he says.