Rosie Meadows Regrets...

by Catherine Alliott

  She sprang round from the stove. ‘Oh, there you are,’ she said, opening the window. ‘He’s been looking everywhere for you.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Upstairs,’ she jerked her head, ‘yellin’ obscenities across the ocean again.’

  ‘Martha, I have to go to London. Are you staying for a while? Would you have Ivo for me?’

  She sighed. ‘Course I will, Rosie. Blimey, you’ve done enough for me.’ She held out her arms and I passed him through to her.

  ‘And listen, do me a favour, don’t tell Joss where I’m going, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ she said doubtfully. ‘You all right then? Not in any more trouble? Not doin’ private espionage or anything?’

  ‘Course not, and I’ll be back this evening, I promise.’ I tiptoed away.

  ‘Well, you be careful,’ she called after me.

  ‘I will!’ I gave her a cheery backward wave as I hopped back in the car, then I sped away down the drive hoping to goodness Joss’s beady eyes weren’t trained on me from an upstairs window. I had absolutely no doubt that he would not approve of this little excursion, but then, it wasn’t his bacon we were saving here, was it? It was mine, and I was damned if it was going to be cured, smoked, chopped up into tiny cubes and flambéed without me doing a single thing about it.

  I roared up the M4 much too fast, the steering wheel shaking violently, the whole car throbbing alarmingly. My poor old Volvo was already well past its prime, poor thing, and recently too many bumpy country lanes had begun to take their toll. It was hissing ominously now and I could tell it was voicing strong objections to me re-enacting Miami Vice on the motorway and playing fast and loose with its rusty old undercarriage. Just don’t break down, I begged under my breath. I don’t mind if bits fly off you, but just don’t break down. I’ll give you a service soon, I promise.

  Happily it held together and eventually I was ploughing my way through the heavy London traffic. I stopped, started, and crawled my way through Fulham, out to the more leafy environs of Wandsworth, and then instinctively swung the car this way and that down to Meryton Road, a route I could almost do in my sleep. Slowly I crawled up my old road and came to a halt outside number 63. I turned the engine off and looked at my watch. Ten to two. I’d made good time and by rights I should have ten minutes alone in the house before my visitor arrived.

  I got out and looked up. My house. Where I’d started my disastrous married life really rather hopefully, if not totally joyfully. The street itself was quiet, empty, as it always was mid-week and in the middle of the day. I opened the little iron gate with its familiar rattle and walked up the path. The tiny front garden was covered with rotten leaves and an old Twix wrapper had blown in and impaled itself on a bare rose bush. It waved mournfully to me in the breeze. I snatched it up, feeling guilty that it was all so neglected now when once I’d laboriously planted the tiny bed, sown the grass, tended our few square feet so religiously and done my wifely duty. I turned the key in the front door. Inside was similarly reproachful. When I’d finally managed to push the front door open against the junk mail that had accumulated behind it, that awful musty, dank smell that uncared for houses have shot up my nostrils. I wanted to rush around opening windows and dusting every piece of furniture in sight, but I limited myself to hastening down the passage to the kitchen and throwing open the back door, letting in a rush of cold, damp, January air.

  As I turned and walked back through the house, it suddenly struck me that perhaps I wasn’t alone. I stood very still and listened, my heart pounding. Perhaps my friend was already here, had jemmied a lock, forced an upstairs window, and was even now waiting for me, crouched behind an armchair, wedged behind a door, poised to jump out.

  My heart hammering now and my hand clenched firmly round the hatpin in my pocket, I crept cautiously from room to room, going upstairs, peering in cupboards, looking under beds like I did when Ivo had had a nightmare, only this time I didn’t feel brave enough to shout, ‘Come out, Mr Grizzly Bear, wherever you are! You’ve got Mummy to contend with now!’

  When I’d peered and prodded extensively, and finally satisfied myself that I was indeed alone, I went downstairs. I bit my thumbnail nervously and looked around. It struck me that considering this place had recently been searched by the police, there really wasn’t a cushion out of place. It made me realize, with a surge of anger, that the devastation at the cottage really had just been for show. Just another way of putting the frighteners on me. The bastards.

  I paused in the hall and with my finger wiped the dust from the photograph that stood on the hall table. It was of Ivo’s christening. I picked it up and gazed for a moment at the supposedly happy family group. My mother was at the front looking pleased and proud in eye-searing yellow, and I was next to her looking pink and rather fat, but happy with Ivo in my arms. Daddy was behind, pale as usual, but with a definite smile, and next to him Philly, looking glamorous and chic in cream linen with a navy hat. Beside her was Miles, looking not at the camera but adoringly at Philly, and then Tom, bronzed and beautiful in a pale blue Brooks Brothers shirt, fresh off the flight from LA. Next to him was Alice, the godmother, looking fey but stunning in antique lace with a tapestry jacket, and Michael beside her, very aware of the camera, very slick, very smooth, very man at C&A. Then came Boffy, the godfather, pinstriped and beaming, and Charlotte beside him in a claret suit, and then next to her Uncle Bertram, leering roguishly into the camera. Back along the front row again, and next to me, of course, was Harry. He was fairly busting out of a ten-year-old suit, which must have been an optimistic purchase at the time but which he’d clearly had to be poured into for this occasion. He was florid-faced, probably the worse for a couple of snifters, but he was beaming broadly at Ivo, and obviously as pleased as Punch.

  I stared at the photo. It brought a lump to my throat. Because when all was said and done, and whatever else had happened since, this was undoubtedly a happy group on a happy day. It had certainly, I thought with some surprise, trying hard to be fair and not to over-sentimentalize – yes, it had certainly been one of the happiest days of my life, anyway. My darling son’s christening day.

  The doorbell rang violently. I jumped out of my skin, and as I did, the picture slipped from my grasp, clattered to the stone floor and the glass smashed into a million pieces. For a moment I froze. Then quickly I ran, scuttling into the drawing room, darting behind the curtain at the bay window. I crept along the wall behind it and peered out. My heart was hammering. God, and I’d meant to be so ready, so prepared, so much in a position of advantage, like at an upstairs window perhaps, ready to see whoever it was coming down the street and up the garden path, and now all I could see – I craned my neck – was a red Mercedes parked in the road behind mine. I didn’t recognize it. Inching round the curtain a fraction more I saw on the step the extreme side view of someone. Whoever it was was wearing a long coat, and a brown felt hat, and standing so deliberately close to the front door that I couldn’t make out any more.

  I cringed back into the curtain, panic rising. My throat was dry and I felt very sick. What the hell was I doing here, for God’s sake? Oh Rosie, you fool, why did you come? For a moment it occurred to me to make a run for it. To dash down the passage and go out through the open back door, but then, steeling myself, I crept back through the sitting room and down the hall. Stealthily I tiptoed up to the front door. Wishing to goodness I’d had the nous to invest in one of those little spy holes that Harry had always banged on about, I slowly raised my hand for the knob. As it closed on it, the bell rang again. Urgently, right in my ear.

  ‘Aargh!’ I squealed inadvertently, then ‘I’m coming!’ I bleated in a pathetic little squeak.

  I waited. Nothing. Oh God, how I wished some friendly voice would respond, ‘Jolly good! No rush, only the milkman here with your extra pinta!’ But no. And so my hand went back up again, and this time I turned the knob, opened the door and peered round it. There on the step, in a long black coat, and w
ith an old felt hat pulled down over her eyes, stood Charlotte.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  ‘Charlotte!’ I opened the door wider.

  ‘Hello, Rosie.’

  ‘Good grief!’ I stared at her like a moron, mouth hanging open.

  ‘May I come in?’ she ventured eventually.

  ‘What? Oh! God, yes, of course – sorry, yes, come in! How lovely to see you!’

  I stood aside delightedly. Charlotte! Good heavens, what on earth was she doing mixed up in all this, but crikey, what a blessed relief she was! I mean, she was hardly going to de-bowel me with a Stanley knife or knee-cap me with a Kalashnikov, now was she? As she stepped inside she proffered her cheek. So eager was I to peck it, I tripped and fell against her, damn nearly snogging her.

  ‘Steady,’ she muttered nervously, backing away.

  ‘Sorry!’ I gasped. ‘Tripped over the doormat. Come in, come in! Sorry about the mess, by the way,’ I added as she stepped gingerly over the broken glass. ‘Had a bit of an accident. Here, through here.’ I ushered her into the sitting room, all gushing hospitality now that I knew it wasn’t the mad axeman.

  She stepped inside and stood uncertainly in the middle of the room, looking about her, hands in pockets. One hand shot up to fiddle with her silk scarf and I realized, with surprise, that she was nervous, an emotion I hitherto would not have associated with Charlotte.

  ‘Here, let me take your coat and hat.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she muttered. She quickly slipped out of them and handed them to me. She smoothed down her navy blue skirt and touched her pearls.

  ‘Drink?’ I offered. ‘Or, if it’s too early, a coffee or tea or –’

  ‘No, I’d like a drink. A gin and tonic, please,’ she added, her eyes going quickly to the sideboard, clearly in piteous need.

  I rushed around getting flat tonic and gin and no ice because the freezer had been defrosted, and no lemon, and apologizing all the time, but actually very glad to have something to do. Something to say.

  ‘Gosh, I can’t tell you how pleased I am to see you, Charlotte,’ I burbled on while I rattled bottles. ‘You’ve no idea how worried I was. I thought some balaclavaed maniac was going to force his way in here and drag me bound and gagged to the cellar and do God knows what to me with blunt instruments. I really wish you’d signed that letter though, it would have saved me an awful lot of angst.’

  ‘Sorry, it was a bit cloak and dagger, but I couldn’t be sure if I did that that you wouldn’t tell someone. The police maybe.’

  I glanced at her quickly. So she hadn’t wanted the police. Well, that was one thing I’d been wrong about then. I handed her a drink and took a seat opposite her, watching as she sipped it quickly. She was beautifully dressed as usual, all navy-blue pleats and cashmere, but much thinner than I recalled. She’d always been a well-built girl with whacking great thighs, but her skirt was almost falling off her now and her cheeks looked sunken, falling away from the bones and making her eyes look dark and tired. She was also heavily made-up, which was unusual for her during the day. It occurred to me that Charlotte and I had never actually been on our own together like this. She’d always been at the helm of a loud and intimidating gang and we generally only met round the dinner table, having always had a tacit agreement that we weren’t exactly one another’s cup of tea during daylight hours. I felt distinctly encouraged to be doing this on my patch, and with her clearly ill-at-ease.

  ‘So,’ I said cheerfully, brushing down my jeans as I crossed my legs jauntily. ‘Tim McWerther. I’m all ears.’

  She regarded me over her gin for a moment, then set her glass down. ‘I wouldn’t look so eager, Rosie. You’re not necessarily going to like this.’

  ‘Try me.’ I smiled, but suddenly I felt much less gung-ho.

  ‘Well, frankly, I’m amazed you don’t know all this already. I thought that’s why you killed Harry. I remember being totally shocked when it happened but quietly very impressed. I thought, my God, that girl’s got guts. Who’d have thought she’d have had the balls to see old Harry off.’

  I stared at her. ‘Well, you’re quite right,’ I said slowly. ‘I wouldn’t have had the balls to see him off. Which is why I didn’t. So come on, Charlotte, stop casting aspersions and just spill the beans, okay?’

  She pursed her lips for a moment. Then she looked up with a brisk, defensive air. ‘You didn’t come with us the weekend we all went away to the Camerons’, did you? I think you were about to have Ivo.’

  I blinked, wrong-footed. The Camerons? Who the hell were the Camerons, for heaven’s sake? I quickly slung my mind back to when I was pregnant with Ivo. God, in those days there’d been so many grand house parties that Harry had eagerly scurried off to, his Barbour in one hand, his Purdey in the other, and I’d been so preoccupied with morning sickness and tiredness that I’d been glad to see him go. One less meal to cook, as far as I was concerned. Where he’d actually gone and the names of the people he was staying with had all rather gone over my head. This one certainly didn’t ring a bell.

  ‘No, I don’t remember them. I know Harry went away for the weekend when I was practically in labour, which didn’t over-impress me, but I can’t think where.’

  She nodded. ‘That was to the Camerons’. They live up at Alsworthy Hall, in Shropshire. I don’t know if you know Shropshire, Rosie, but not a great deal happens there. Lots of grass, lots of sheep, lots of hunting, but that’s about it. Consequently people tend to make their own entertainment, create their own brand of fun.’ She smiled ruefully and lit a cigarette. ‘And they’re a wild bunch, those Camerons,’ she said softly, exhaling the smoke in a thin line. ‘All six of them. The youngest, Mickey, is the worst of the lot. A totally mad bastard. He was about nineteen then and he was down from Oxford that weekend, brought some of his Piers Gaveston club pals with him. One of them was young Tim.’

  ‘Oh! Really? Gosh, how strange. So …’ I frowned. ‘Hang on, you mean Harry met him too? He met Tim?’

  ‘Oh, we all met Tim. And we all took to him too. This crazy, beautiful, angelic-looking boy with the big blue eyes and the floppy blond hair, oh yes, we all fell for Tim. And we all played his games too. Up to a point.’

  ‘What games?’

  ‘Oh, you know. After-dinner games. You must remember how stupid we all were, Rosie, couldn’t wait to get pissed and take our clothes off, throw bread rolls, dance on the table – all that immature sort of stuff. I remember your eyes over the dinner table, bored and censorious. I seem to remember you usually went up to bed at that point.’

  ‘Ah yes. Well, maybe I was a bit of a kill-joy but I’m afraid it just wasn’t me.’

  She gave a wry smile. ‘Unlike me, eh? Everyone knows what I’m like, don’t they? Good old Charlotte. Game for anything. Won’t catch her being a party-pooper, oh no.’ She took a great slug of her drink. ‘Yes, good old Charlotte,’ she said softly. She glanced at me. ‘Well, I’m afraid even I couldn’t put on a brave face for some of the entertainment young Tim dreamed up.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, let’s just say that it wasn’t enough for Tim to get everyone stark bollock naked with strip poker. He had to see them perform too.’

  ‘Blimey.’ My eyes boggled. ‘You mean –’

  ‘So I excused myself and went up to bed,’ she went on, ‘and missed out on all the fun, no doubt.’ She gave me a beady look. ‘I’m a great believer in what the eye doesn’t see, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, I woke up the next morning to find that Boffy wasn’t in my bed so out I stumbled, bleary-eyed, down the corridor to find him. I went next door to Harry’s room to see if he’d crashed out in there, but it was empty, so I opened the door opposite, which happened to be Tim’s room, and there they all were. Half the house party, in bed together. So sweet.’

  ‘You mean –’

  ‘Tim, Boffy, Harry, two Cameron sisters and Lavinia.’

  ‘Good God. Harry! And Lavinia! Golly, I always thought she was so prudish!’

&n
bsp; ‘Didn’t look very prudish with a peacock feather stuffed up her backside, I can tell you.’

  ‘You mean they were naked?’

  ‘Not exactly. In various stages of ridiculous undress really. Anything from women’s underwear to lampshades to jock straps to bunches of grapes and feather boas. All very grey and unshaven and all fast asleep and spread-eagled, mouths wide open, gin bottles everywhere.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘When they saw me, they came to in an incredibly sheepish manner. Boffy staggered out in a pink nightie and stumbled down the corridor after me, swearing blind it had been totally innocuous, hilarious but innocent horseplay. He insisted nothing had happened and was absolutely lamb-like in his contrition. He was so earnest and distraught and so sweet to me for days afterwards that eventually I gave in and forgave him. I decided that it probably had just been a one-off and obviously under the influence of drink and God knows what else, so I decided to forget about it, although privately I vowed that we wouldn’t be visiting the Camerons again for some time.’

  ‘But I thought you liked all that. The high jinks, the silly dressing-up games. Actually, I thought you instigated most of it.’

  ‘Did you? Just goes to show, doesn’t it?’ she said ruefully. ‘I obviously played my part pretty well. No, I didn’t much care for it in public, but Boffy adored it and he loved me to join in, to be one of the lads. He always said he felt sorry for Harry because you wouldn’t. He didn’t know I respected you for it.’

  ‘But you were always so down on me, so patronizing!’

  She shrugged. ‘Because I was jealous that you didn’t have to lower yourself, I suppose, and I did. I mean, I’m quite happy to have a lark in the privacy of my own home but I don’t actually enjoy making an exhibition of myself.’ Blimey, you could have fooled me, I thought. She sighed. ‘Anyway, after that we didn’t go out for some time. We kept ourselves to ourselves, had a few quiet bridge suppers and that was the end of it. Or so I thought.’ She stubbed out her cigarette and lit another one immediately. ‘But then the gambling started.’