Fruiting Bodies

by Natasha Cooper

  ‘I honestly don’t think he did. Anyway, he’s so busy always that he hasn’t got time to do much with Mary-Jane and he knows she gets lonely when he has to be on these trips to the States and places. In the past she’s kind of brooded about not having any children; it’s been suggested that not minding about people like Alex was George’s reparation for the low sperm count.’

  Jinx suddenly looked almost embarrassed and quickly added: ‘Besides, look at her; she’s so gorgeous, George would forgive her anything. And he’s always known she’d never leave him.’

  ‘Even for Alex?’

  ‘She might have fantasised about it sometimes, but she wouldn’t have done it. George is far too important to her,’ said Jinx definitely. ‘Here are the others. Mrs Worth, this is Susie Hall and Pippa Browning. Girls, this is Willow Worth. She’s just had a baby and she was a friend of poor Alex.’

  ‘Wasn’t it ghastly?’ said Pippa at once. She brushed the front of her dress and Willow saw that she was about seven or eight months pregnant. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do. I know that sounds selfish when he’s actually dead, but he’s done me both times before and he knew all about me and my foibles. I’m appalled at the prospect of going through it all without him.’

  ‘His registrar is pretty good, too,’ said Willow. ‘Not as immediately attractive, but …’

  ‘Registrar?’ Pippa looked puzzled. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘He’s called Kimmeridge,’ said Willow, suddenly realising that Pippa must have been a private patient. She added: ‘I had mine on the NHS.’

  ‘That was fearfully brave,’ said Pippa.

  Willow watched her exchange glances with her two friends. They all looked so surprised that Willow was tempted to laugh and remind them that most women in the United Kingdom still had their babies in National Health Service hospitals. Before she could say anything, four more women appeared in the doorway to the conservatory and eventually, having cut for partners, sat themselves down at the other table.

  ‘We’d better get going,’ said Jinx. ‘Willow and I are going to be partners. We can cut to see who ought to deal.’

  Willow’s concern about her lack of practice soon dwindled. She discovered that her fellow players were almost as interested in gossip as in playing cards and did not seem to have any competitive spirit at all. Whenever they were in any kind of dilemma they would ask each other’s advice, wanting to know what they should be bidding when they had a lot of points and a seven-card suit, or whether their teacher had told them that leading a low card promised a high honour or announced a shortage in the suit. Several times they asked, half-way through a game, which suit was trumps.

  But Willow found to her surprise that she liked them. Their gossip was never cruel, even though they clearly enjoyed passing on stories of the dreadful things that were happening to their friends, and their attitude to bridge was refreshingly unusual. They were wholly unconcerned with etiquette, and bridge jargon sent them all into fits of giggles. They could never remember what they were supposed to do; they changed their minds about cards they had actually played and, provided a card had not been covered, they felt they could pick it up and substitute another; and they never stopped talking.

  By the time Willow had bid and made a small slam in the third game, which provoked squeals of glee from the delighted Jinx and open-mouthed admiration from the other two, she felt well enough established with them to raise the subject of Alexander Ringstead again.

  ‘D’you know when Alex’s funeral is going to be?’ she asked. ‘I’ve been scouring The Times every day, but I haven’t seen anything, and it’s days and days now since it happened.’

  Jinx leaned forwards right across the table, making a face.

  ‘Apparently the police can’t release the body until they know what happened.’

  ‘Don’t his family mind that?’

  ‘Well, his ex-wife certainly doesn’t, although their boys may.’

  ‘How old are the boys? He never mentioned them to me.’ That at least was true.

  ‘Twenties?’

  ‘Not as much, Susie, surely. He was only forty-eight.’

  ‘Well they could be easily in their twenties then if he married at, say, twenty-four. Some people do.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. Not many doctors, though. Funny, he’s the same sort of age as George, but I’ve always thought of him as much younger,’ said Pippa. ‘But no, Willow, I don’t suppose the boys would worry that much about a funeral. One’s in the States and the other’s in Australia, I think, with their mother. I can’t see them agitating for a service, and Alex’s own mother’s in a nursing home somewhere up in Scotland. I don’t think there’s anyone except Mary-Jane and she can hardly organise his funeral.’

  ‘Isn’t it sad?’ said Jinx. ‘Although obviously he had friends. Well, like you, Willow.’

  Feeling guilty all over again for pretending to have known him well, Willow shrugged.

  ‘We weren’t exactly close,’ she said. ‘But I’d come to depend on him, and I owe him a lot. It was frightening having a first baby at forty-four …’

  ‘You’re not,’ said Susie, open mouthed again.

  ‘I am and you’ve all been making me feel my years today.’

  ‘We’re not that much younger,’ said Pippa, looking mockingly at Susie. ‘In fact we were all forty last year. And in spite of what everyone said would happen we’re all still pretty sane.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Jinx. ‘You got pregnant again, Mary-Jane kicked over the traces with Alex, and I …’

  ‘Yes, Jinxy, come on, out with it. I dare you.’

  Blushing furiously, she shook her head. Willow, intensely curious, thought that she would soon be told. From what she had already heard, it was clear that these women positively longed to tell anything they knew about anyone – even themselves. Sure enough, after a little more teasing, Jinx admitted that she had started an Open University course in computing.

  ‘Good for you!’ said Willow, amused that the only thing that had made any of them blush was an attempt to get a degree.

  ‘Great! Here’s lunch,’ said Jinx, obviously glad to be distracted from her particular form of mid-life madness. ‘Willow, it’s only sandwiches, buns and a bottle of wine. We generally eat it here and then carry on playing for another hour or so.’

  ‘That sounds great, but the fountain is making my stretched bladder …’

  ‘Poor old you,’ said Pippa at once. Heaving herself up from her chair, she went on: ‘I’ll take you up to Mary-Jane’s bathroom. I wouldn’t mind a pee myself.’

  By the time they returned, the cards had been removed and a plain white tablecloth laid over the green baize. An oval salver of sandwiches sat in the middle of the table. Willow thought they looked quite as good as any of Mrs Rusham’s. As she was sitting back in her comfortable chair, Mary-Jane Roguely appeared with two bottles of white wine and eight glasses.

  ‘Any problems?’ she asked from the doorway.

  ‘None at all,’ said Jinx, getting up to take one bottle and some of the glasses. Willow noticed that the women at the other table were still playing. Mary-Jane put their bottle and glasses on the deep shelf that ran about two feet from the ground all round the conservatory. Pots of flowering plants were grouped at intervals along it, but there was plenty of space for the wine.

  ‘They seem very keen.’

  ‘They do, don’t they?’ Pippa peered over her shoulder and then hissed at Willow: ‘Perhaps they’re just better than us. I don’t think I’ve seen any of them before. That one on the far side looks pretty terrifying, don’t you think?’

  She certainly stood out from the other three, who looked as though they, too, might have been at school with Mary-Jane Roguely. Probably nearer sixty than forty, she was a big woman, handsome and well-dressed, but sharing none of the gaiety of Willow’s table. In fact she looked thoroughly discontented and sighed audibly as her partner led what she clearly considered to be the wrong card.
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br />   ‘I’m glad we haven’t got her here,’ Pippa said. ‘She looks positively ferocious.’

  ‘Doesn’t she just? Who is she?’

  Pippa shrugged. ‘God knows. Oh, I know. I’ll just get us some water,’ she said, standing up again. ‘I don’t want my child to be born with foetal alcohol syndrome.’

  ‘I think you need rather more than a glass of wine for that,’ Willow said, but Pippa had already gone.

  The others had started their sandwiches by the time she came back with a bottle of Badoit and she announced that if they had eaten all the smoked salmon she would be seriously angry. They had not and she chattered away about sandwich fillings until the other table finished their game. In the clatter of chairs being pushed back and plates being laid, she whispered to Willow that Mary-Jane had said the irritable older woman was a recently retired member of George Roguely’s staff called Petra Cunningon. She was trying to build some kind of social life for her retirement and finding it hard, having done almost nothing but work since she was eighteen. George had asked his wife to include her in as many events as possible and she was doing her best, but it was hard to make the woman enjoy anything and Mary-Jane was beginning to lose patience with her.

  Willow let the others talk while she watched Petra over Jinx’s head. Her tightened lips and air of barely controlled fury made it clear that she thought not only her partner but also their opponents too stupid for words. Eventually she managed to exchange civilities of a sort over the sandwiches and wine, but it was not until she pushed back her chair, saying loudly that she was going to wash, that the rest of her table relaxed. As soon as she had gone, two of them started to laugh and the noise level rose significantly.

  Willow waited a little while and then, full of curiosity, followed her back upstairs to Mary-Jane’s bedroom. To Willow’s delight she found that there was a queue for the lavatory. Sitting down on the enormous double bed beside Petra Cunningon, Willow was surprised to notice that she was wearing an exotically heavy scent. It seemed unsuitable both for the time of day and for such a sensible-looking woman.

  Willow smiled politely at her and, fanning herself with her hand, murmured something about the unseasonable heat.

  ‘The conservatory is cool enough,’ said Petra Cunningon.

  ‘I know. Marvellous, isn’t it? And so wonderfully planted; I do think Lady Roguely is brilliant. Most glasshouses are deserts of dullness and discomfort. Hers is paradise. What sort of standard is your table?’

  ‘Childish.’

  ‘Oh, dear. But I gather none of them here have been playing for very long.’

  As the bathroom door opened and the woman at the head of the queue moved forwards, Petra Cunningon said: ‘You can learn a great deal in a short time if you concentrate. Unfortunately none of these women seems able to keep her mind on anything at all for more than a few minutes at a time. I can’t think why not, since none of them has anything else to do. They haven’t any idea of the most fundamental principles of the game, let alone the conventions. When my partner bid four no-trumps, naturally I assumed she was calling for aces. I bid five clubs and she passed. We hadn’t even got six clubs between us. Afterwards, when I asked what she thought she’d been doing, she said she’d forgotten that you only need three no-trumps for game and thought she ought to be in game because she had two aces. I ask you! And then she actually blushed and said: “Oh, I know what you mean; you thought I was doing rolling gerbils.”’

  ‘“Gerbils”? Oh, I see; Rolling Gerber. And four no-trumps is Blackwood anyway. How irritating for you,’ said Willow, unable to suppress a smile. ‘What a good thing we’re not playing for money.’

  Petra Cunningon blew like a spouting whale and then laughed, looking friendly for the first time.

  ‘What an appalling idea! I hadn’t thought anything could be worse than this morning, but now I see that I just lack imagination.’

  ‘Or perhaps you’re an optimist,’ suggested Willow.

  ‘Hardly that,’ she answered, looking bleak rather than disapproving. ‘If I ever was, what’s happened recently has cured me for good and all. I wish we’d been playing together, although I suppose we would have wiped the floor with the rest of them.’

  ‘Perhaps. Tell me: how do you come to be here? Are you connected with Dowting’s in some way?’

  ‘No. I’m an old friend of George Roguely’s – we used to work together – and when he heard that I had time hanging heavily on my hands since I retired he suggested that I should give his wife a little help with her charities. And you?’

  ‘I had a baby in Dowting’s and was so grateful to them that I felt I ought to contribute in some way. This seemed an attractive way of helping the fundraising effort. I must say that I’m enjoying myself.’

  ‘Lucky you.’

  ‘Oh, dear. Is it really that bad?’

  ‘Almost,’ said Petra with another gleam of humour. ‘I don’t think George can have had any idea of what he was letting me in for. I feel as though I’ve been sent back to the nursery.’

  The last woman in the queue before Petra took her turn in the bathroom, leaving them alone.

  ‘Well,’ said Willow, smiling as she tried to build on the suggestion of complicity between them. ‘I don’t suppose he’s ever around in the daytime to see the circles his wife moves in.’

  ‘Exactly. Poor man.’

  ‘In what way? He sounds remarkably fortunate from all I’ve heard.’

  Petra grimaced. ‘I think it’s always difficult for a very clever man who falls in love with a silly woman; and when he’s both rich and busy it’s even worse. George adores Mary-Jane as much as he did twenty years ago, and yet they have virtually nothing in common. He gives her everything she could possibly want to make her happy and then has to face the fact that she’s still discontented. To be quite frank, I think he gives her too much.’ Her fleshy face took on an expression of considerable harshness. ‘She’d be better for a dose of reality and then she might treat him decently.’

  The sound of the bathroom door opening made Petra clamp her lips together. Willow looked at her face, settling back into its familiar lines, and said gently: ‘Perhaps his busyness explains both her discontent and his continuing generosity. He might be trying to make up for not being able to give her the kind of ordinary companionship less preoccupied spouses can offer.’

  Petra heaved herself to her feet without saying anything and Willow watched her walk over the thick, silky carpet towards the bathroom, leaving heavy footprints in its sheen. Willow could not help wishing that she had had slightly longer to break down the other woman’s reserve and pump her for information about Sir George and his ideas about his wife. It crossed Willow’s mind that he might have sent Petra to the bridge lunch as a kind of spy, but then she regretfully dropped the idea. No spy was going to make herself as conspicuous as Petra’s bad temper had done.

  Reaching the bathroom, she looked back and nodded to Willow.

  ‘You could be right at that. If he’d had more time with her he might have seen her for what she is and been disillusioned. He might have been happier, too. Some of us tried to tell him how badly they were suited, but he’s always been stubborn.’

  She went on into the bathroom and locked the door. Willow stared at its blank white panels, wondering about Petra’s partisanship of Sir George Roguely. Willow had always detested the assumption that every single woman over the age of about twenty-five must be suffering from unrequited love for some man who had barely noticed her existence, but the bitterness of Petra’s contempt for Mary-Jane suggested that her feelings for Sir George were pretty intense.

  The telephone beside the bed started to ring. Certain that it must be Mrs Rusham at the other end, Willow picked it up without even remembering that she was in someone else’s house.

  ‘Hello?’ she said. ‘Mrs Rusham, is that you? What’s happened?’

  ‘This is Sir George Roguely’s secretary here,’ said a voice Willow recognised all too easily. ‘To whom a
m I speaking?’

  ‘My name’s King,’ said Willow as crisply as possible, feeling thoroughly ashamed of herself. ‘Shall I fetch Lady Roguely?’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs King.’

  Much embarrassed Willow went in search of her hostess, who covered her surprise efficiently.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Willow very directly. ‘I can’t imagine what came over me to answer your telephone. I think it’s just that I’m so worried about my baby that I assumed the call was for me.’

  ‘Don’t fret about it,’ said Mary-Jane, putting a hand on Willow’s arm. ‘This won’t take long. Come with me and you can ring your nanny as soon as I’ve finished.’

  Together they went back upstairs. There was no sign of Petra and the bathroom door was open. Mary-Jane picked up the telephone receiver.

  ‘Yes, Miss Wilmingson?’

  There was a pause, during which Willow saw an expression of supreme fury distort Mary-Jane’s attractive face. But when she spoke her voice sounded distantly polite:

  ‘It is quite unnecessary for you to have bothered, Miss Wilmingson. My husband has already told me that he will be back on this evening’s Concorde. Goodbye.’

  She banged down the receiver, hissing through clenched teeth.

  ‘What cheek! “Just calling to make sure that you’ve remembered Sir George is due home tonight. He’ll be very tired when he gets in and probably hungry. You know he doesn’t like eating during a flight.” What does she expect? That I’ll starve him or haul him off to an all-night discothèque? Sour, stupid, interfering … I am sorry, but what a woman!’

  ‘Goodness!’ said Willow. ‘She sounds absolutely awful.’

  ‘Not really.’ Mary-Jane was beginning to calm down. ‘I shouldn’t have got so angry. Do please forget it, won’t you? She’s worked for him for years and is a wonderful secretary for a busy man. This is merely part of her technique of smoothing his path around the world and making sure he has everything he needs without having to ask. The fact that I’m his wife rather than a hotel receptionist doesn’t seem to have occurred to her.’