I know, you arseholing creep. One Christmas, she made cherry cake for tea, and we sat by the fire, and she read T.S. Eliot to me.
‘Drop thy still dews of quietness
till all our strivings cease;
take from our souls the strain and stress,
and let our ordered lives confess
the beauty of thy peace.
The beauty of thy peace.’
Edwin, beside him, was singing lustily. Andrew looked down at the flash of emerald in his hair. He had revised upwards his estimation of Edwin’s age. If he was a qualified solicitor he must be around twenty-five. Well come looking to me for a job, you jerk, and you’ll get the bum’s rush.
‘Breathe through the heats of our desire
thy coolness and thy balm;
let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still small voice of calm.
O still small voice of calm.’
They sat down. Edwin had started to snuffle into a large handkerchief. Andrew, thoroughly cried out, just felt murderous.
At the end, they took Ruthie away as the choir sang, ‘The day though gavest, Lord, is ended.’
In the village hall, as the ladies from the Women’s Institute fought with two steaming tea urns, Andrew felt like the fat guy in that musical, West Side Story. Out of place and misunderstood. People were looking at him oddly. They were treating him with the careful consideration they’d show to a man who had come to a funeral dressed in a pink frilly nightie.
A woman in a blue overall handed him a plate of tiny ham sandwiches. A man in a white shirt with a black armband fetched him some tea. A huge tureen of mashed potato was rushed to a trestle table. Jugs of sherry appeared. A woman in a paisley dress gave him a bunch of bright yellow flowers. Andrew felt, in the village hall, that perhaps everyone thought he’d just won the whist-drive.
And still, people kept glancing at him, as if they were waiting for something. And then it hit him. That expectancy.
They were waiting for him to leave.
Edwin detatched himself from the proximity of a lady thumping mashed potato on to paper plates, and came across. He saw the flowers Andrew was awkwardly holding.
‘Rose of Sharon,’ Edwin said. ‘If you make some tea from the leaves, it’ll help your depression.’ As Andrew ground his teeth, Edwin went on, ‘We’ve plenty of time. You won’t want to miss your train.’
In the Jeep, Andrew said to Edwin, ‘I wanted to talk to you about Ruthie’s cottage.’
‘It’s your cottage now,’ Edwin said pedantically.
‘I know it’s my cottage. But I – you know – too many memories. What I thought, Ruthie was very involved with Dartmoor Pony Rescue.’
‘That’s right. You think of them as sturdy little types, but they get ill. They get injured. And no-one’s interested in stumping up for the vet’s bill.’
Andrew sighed impatiently. He’d heard all this from Ruthie.
‘Ruthie told me, you get a lot of tourists coming here now. Walkers. Come to see the ponies. What I wondered, is if, as a solicitor, you could arrange for the cottage to be a sort of hostel, a refuge, somewhere for the walkers to stay. Proceeds, of course, to Pony Rescue.’
Noisily, Edwin changed down a gear as Exeter Station came in sight. ‘That’s a really generous idea, Andrew. The cottage is certainly big enough. I’ll get a deed of agreement drawn up.’
‘I think, Edwin, I can manage that myself.’
‘What? Oh yes. Of course. Stupid of me.’
Andrew’s mind was running ahead. First thing tomorrow, get this black suit cleaned and pressed. Never knew when a client-funeral would crop up. Andrew had also invested in a dark grey cashmere overcoat, invaluable when the bit at the grave went on and on. Patric steadfastly refused to go to funerals, insisting that Paula and the children needed him.
Putting on the handbrake, Edwin said, ‘Long day for you. You’ll be home late.’
I am not some frail elderly aunt, Andrew thought furiously. In a minute he’ll be telling me not to talk to any strangers on the train.
He left the yellow flowers in the Jeep.
*
Over dinner on the train, Andrew allowed his thoughts to drift to Eugenie. She’d been so kind. It hadn’t been what she’d expected. Instead of romance, she’d got his complete disintegration, a man gone uncontrollably to pieces.
Control. What he’d always prided himself on. Always. He had let Eugenie down. Worse, he had let himself down.
But she hadn’t left him. All through the night, she held him. She didn’t say a word. How could she offer sympathy for a woman she’d never heard of? But every time he shuddered awake, and felt the tears engulfing him again, Eugenie held on, until it was over, until the next time.
Then, at daybreak, he’d done this awful male thing. He’d fucked her. With none of the finesse he’d been confident of ever since a girl in Athens had spent a week showing him how.
With Eugenie he just went into her body like an animal in need. And she had seemed to understand that, too.
I must make it up to her, Andrew decided. I’ll take her to that new place, that restaurant, on the river at Richmond. A walk by the river. Lunch. Wine. I’ll book a hotel, take her there for the afternoon, and the night.
I’ll make it up to her.
Chapter Eight
Revel looked up from that day’s Mirror and said, ‘Know a pub called Crocodile?’
‘Why?’ It was where Eugenie had gone for her first date with David, when she’d sat on his jacket on the floor and had beer thrown over her pretty dress. She’d chosen Crocodile because he’d remember the name and find it easy to get to.
‘Keeps cropping up in court reports. Kids brawling. Neighbours complaining. And Babs says her daughter’s started hanging out there. Sounds like an odd mix of posh birds and yobs. Babs is worried sick.’
Eugenie had heard quite a lot of this from Babs at Manzi’s. She said warily to Revel, ‘What does Tony say?’
‘He says try telling an eighteen-year-old girl anything. He just leaves it to Babs to lay down the law. Course, he’d crawl across broken glass for Araminta. Come to a toss-up on a sinking ship, who to save, his wife or his daughter, no contest. And Babs knows that perfectly well. No fool, Babs. Anyway, cut along to this Crocodile joint. Check it out. Talk to the landlord. Don’t mean in the evening, of course. Mr Plantagenet wouldn’t approve of that. Go now. It’s half eleven, they’ll just be opening.’
At Crocodile, the cigarette-stained carpet looked even worse in daylight. The door and windows were wide open, but the mingled smells of beer and cigarettes still gagged the air.
An athletic-looking girl was busy polishing glasses and setting out clean metal ashtrays. Eugenie was the only customer. She asked for a gin and tonic.
‘Do you want ice?’
The accent was Australian. Eugenie said pleasantly, ‘Does anyone ever not want ice with a G and T?’
‘No idea. I’ve only been here a week.’
Eugenie slid onto a bar stool. ‘Would you know a girl called Araminta Charles?’
‘Not if she comes in the evening. I only do the day shift.’
Eugenie established that the landlord wouldn’t be in until evening opening. She discovered that the girl was from Sydney, now living in what was beginning to be called Kangaroo Valley, Earls Court. Her name was Becca Simon and what she really wanted was to get into journalism.
When Becca heard that Eugenie worked at Stet, her ozzie enthusiasm knew no bounds. She wasn’t empowered to offer Eugenie a free drink, but instead, she came bouncing up with more ice. Eugenie wondered why the English had such a hang-up about ice. They were unreasonably mean with it. Babs had told her how American fridges made ice themselves, lots and lots of ice that just cascaded out at the turn of a knob.
‘We haven’t any vacancies on Stet,’ Eugenie emphasised. She had been careful not to tell Becca about her Stet ‘stage-name.’
‘I’m just very junior there and we’re just a small outfit. But I do know someone on the Mail. He might be able to get you in. I’ll have a word with him this afternoon.’
Barry Smith was not technically on the Mail, he was what was known as a Casual, someone who was given occasional shifts. Barry often sent in unsolicited pieces to Stet, which Revel spiked and Eugenie then felt it only kind to ring Barry and say something soothing. She knew her script well enough, from the bulging file of rejection letters for Revel’s novel.
Because Barry’s casual shifts were often on the Showbiz desk of the Mail, he had taken to giving a press release a cursory re-write and sending the story to Stet.
‘What the fuck is this?’ Revel exploded. He read:
‘Just finished lensing in LA, Cass Collier’s latest – What the shit is lensing?’
Eugenie didn’t answer, because it was obvious. Pretentious, but obvious. She watched Revel jam the copy firmly on the spike and when Revel had gone for lunch, she rang Barry.
‘Such a near miss, Barry.’
‘Well I just thought – trying to use the tiny brain, you know – but I thought, Stet doesn’t have a showbiz column.’
‘No, well Revel likes to think of it as a literary and political magazine. I tell you what we are lacking, Barry. Do you know anything about gardening?’
‘Yeah. Lots.’
‘Barry, you live in a Pimlico bedsit.’
‘Pimlico’s an up-and-coming area. Like Fulham. Like, er, Battersea.’
‘Barry, we’re not looking for property predictions. Gardening. How can you know anything about gardening when you live in a Pimlico bedsit and you haven’t even got a windowbox?’
‘No, but it’s easy, I’ve seen the Mail guy tapping it out. He tries to look the part. Wears cords. Says his name’s Jim Meadows. I said to him, if your name’s Jim Meadows, mine’s Jim Khana. Same old stuff every year. Autumn leaves, bonfire. In Winter we put the garden to bed. February, and the joy of the first snowdrops! Summer, our herbaceous border –’
‘All right, Barry, I get the drift.’
‘I thought Barbara Charles was the Gardening Correspondent.’
‘Yes, but it’s difficult. She and Sir Anthony are away so much. They have a yacht. If you want to have a crack at it, Barry, I’ll make sure the copy gets right in front of Revel. You won’t have to join a queue.’
‘Hey, Evie, appreciate that. Owe you a drink.’
‘Raincheck. But someone you could buy a drink for works days at a pub called Crocodile. Bit of a rough-house in the evening, but she works days. Not much to do until the office girls call in lunchtime for their schooner of sherry. And that’s easy because sherry doesn’t waste the precious pub ice.’
‘What? Look, this bird. She a looker?’
‘She’s a looker. Her name is Becca Simon.’ And she’s got thighs, Barry. Get those round your neck and -
‘Think she’ll come across?’
‘She wants to work in journalism. Get the tiny brain in action, Barry. Work it out.’
Revel reeled back just after four. He and Tony had been in Soho, at the Coach and Horses, which of course was always known as the French. Jeff had been in.
Jeff was Jeffrey Barnard, regarded by men as a terrific wit, and by women as a lecherous old bore.
‘Got one for the Wailing Wall. Jeff told me. He was reading from the Express about a guy who’d choked on his own vomit. Well, said Jeff, he’d hardly be choking on someone else’s vomit, would he? God, he’s a laugh that Jeff. But I sort of capped it. The number of times you read, And he walked into the police station and gave himself up. Well how else would he get into the police station? Would he hop? Would he break in through a window? Well, big crowd in the French by now and they were laughing fit to bust. We got ‘em going, Jeff and me. What a guy he is. And you should see him put it away. Don’t know how he stays upright. Well, he doesn’t, of course. Trouble is, all the taxi drivers know him, and won’t take him.’
‘Do you get any food at the French?’
‘What? Don’t be daft. Norman wouldn’t do food. It would depress him. Doesn’t take much to depress old Norman. Hardly the jovial pub landlord. No, you get a choice of crisps. Plain or cheese and onion.’
*
‘I wonder if I should get this place done over,’ Andrew said, as they lay in bed. ‘I haven’t touched it since I moved in. What do you think it needs, Eugenie?’
Eugenie thought this was a line. One he used on all the girls.
She watched Andrew put on a me-helpless-male look as he said, ‘I don’t know about these things. Do you think I need some curtains? I saw some the other day with splashy sunflowers and lavender. Quite cheery, don’t you think?’
It was a line. And the girl, flattered, would give the matter her serious attention, while wondering if she could actually live with gigantic sunflowers and lavender.
Eugenie reached to the side of the bed for the pink champagne. ‘As a matter of fact, I know someone who does this sort of thing for a living. You’d just have to watch she doesn’t paint the whole place grey.’
She had played it very, very carefully with Andrew. Fridays she told him she had to work late. Saturdays, she said she had her housework to do. In fact, the caretaker’s wife cleaned on Fridays, leaving Eugenie all day Saturday to get herself ready for Andrew. The salon, waxing, facial, massage. Then hair. Home to choose outfit. Choose different outfit. Experiment with shoes, belts and skirt length. Decide on first outfit.
She left the choice of restaurant to him, and was glad to find he liked the same unfussy food as herself. On Sundays they were sated with passion, incapable of getting up early.
‘We’re worse than teenagers,’ Eugenie said. ‘Babs says when she gives a big family lunch, when her two kids finally appear, everyone stands up and cheers.’
Andrew always cooked bacon and egg late on Sunday morning. He said it was all he could cook and this, of course, made Eugenie smile, thinking how at first, David had been exactly the same.
‘Where is Mr Plantagenet?’ Revel had asked, on Friday.
‘He’s trying to get into China. The paperwork is taking ages.’
When she and Andrew had read the Sunday papers, they got what was hardly fresh air in fuel-fumed London by walking round the corner to the Renoir cinema. It was often showing a filthy film. Andrew and Eugenie rarely stayed to the end, since they were both of the opinion that they did it better.
After they’d made love, yet again, Eugenie didn’t allow herself to linger. She would have liked to but she said to him, resolutely, work tomorrow, big day, interview to prepare.
Andrew always got dressed and walked with her to the garage where he could be sure of getting her a taxi. The first time, he had tried to give her money for her fare. She had slapped his hand away.
‘Don’t you ever dare do that again!’
He never had.
Eugenie was now earning £100 a month. Every time Revel announced an increment, it was obvious he expected her to fall on her knees with gratitude. The irony was, and something he never knew, she didn’t need to work at all.
Her mother had left her very well provided for, and regularly topped up Eugenie’s bank balance. The guest wing in Cape Town was finished and Marisa’s letters were full of concern about what colour guest towels Eugenie would prefer.
‘I got hold of that girl you recommended, Shelagh, to do the flat,’ Andrew told Eugenie down the phone. ‘She’s coming along Saturday to see it. Trouble is, I have to go to New York for three weeks. Could you come along and supervise?’
‘You might come back and find I agreed she should paint the whole place purple.’
‘I won’t because I trust you. I’ll leave the key with the porter.’
*
‘What’s he like?’ Shelagh demanded, as soon as they reached his flat.
Eugenie had obtained from the Telegraph morgue an old cutting from the Financial Times announcing Andrew Millard’s partnership with Patric Ry
an. She showed it to Shelagh. The photo showed two tall, dark men, the older on the right, shaking hands with ‘Andrew. That’s Andrew.’
‘Is it indeed,’ said Shelagh. ‘Lucky you.’
Her hair today was blue and plaited. She had rouged her cheeks to make her resemble a Dutch doll. Briskly, the designer got down to business.
‘But this place! It’s so pokey.’
‘I appreciate it’s not what you’re used to.’
Lady Barbara had passed on Shelagh’s name, with the result that Shelagh was now the fashionable society decorator. ‘I call myself a decorator, not interior designer. When I turn up and meet the staff, decorator means they’re not intimidated. They give me the inside gaff. Especially about the husbands. Who can’t stand chintz in the bedroom and who wants a dark blue hall carpet. Fatal, that one. Shows every speck and needs Hoovering three times a day. Most of all, husbands hate those tinkly- bells windchime things near the garden door. And no man, no man can ever stand a bowl of pot pourri in what they call the karzi.’
She was inspecting Andrew’s flat, making quite a pantomime of crashing into walls.
‘Why has he got that round table in the window?’
‘So he can see the view.’
‘There isn’t a view. If you lean out far enough you can see Russell Square. I hardly call that a vista. So. First thing,’ she had a clipboard ‘we ditch that table. How many people does he need to seat?’
‘He doesn’t do dinner parties. So there’d be just him and – a friend.’
‘I get it. Well, he doesn’t need those four chairs. We’ll put one in the hall and ditch the rest.’
‘But where’s he to eat? And he brings work home, he’s a lawyer, of course he brings work home.’
Shelagh was scribbling on her clipboard with an oversized pink biro that matched the pink rouge on her cheeks. ‘We get a small, but good-sized rectangular table and put it in the corner. Then for seating, we edge the table with a banquette. Something comfortable, but manly and wide enough for a big guy with long legs. Dark tobacco leather would be ideal.’
She moved across to the shabby sofa. She sat down and winced.
In Bed with Mr. Plantagenet Page 14