Rosie Meadows Regrets...

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘At the Claremont Club? You knew about that?’

  ‘I thought I knew about it, Rosie, but I didn’t, because in actual fact they weren’t gambling at all. There was no Claremont Club. No losing at the blackjack table. It was all a cover for something else.’

  My heart slipped a bit. ‘What?’

  ‘For seeing Tim. For going to fancy dress parties at his house.’

  I stared at her. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘They used to go there to dress up, to act out fantasies. You know, Squirrel Nutkin, Fireman Sam, Angel Gabriel, that sort of thing.’

  I stared at her. ‘They’re not gay, are they?’ I breathed.

  ‘I knew you’d say that. And I swear to God I think the answer is no. At least,’ she hesitated, ‘Boffy swears to God the answer is no. He says it was all just a bit of fun that got out of hand.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ I exploded. ‘Angel Gabriel? That’s women’s clothes!’

  ‘I don’t think Angel Gabriel was a woman, Rosie.’

  ‘Well, all right, maybe not, I don’t want a theological debate about it, but we’re still talking white nighties and halos here, aren’t we? I mean I don’t necessarily need my men to play rugby and sink ten pints a night but I quite like them to wear trousers!’

  She sighed. ‘It’s just a way of playing out repressed fantasies that’s all. Lots of Englishmen do it. Look at Lily Savage and Harry Enfield, they’re always strapping themselves into pinnies, doesn’t necessarily mean they’re woofters.’

  ‘Bit dodgy though, isn’t it?’ I said nervously, reaching for the gin. ‘I mean, they’re comedians, doing it for a living, they’re not property developers and solicitors.’

  ‘I know, I know, and believe you me, even by my standards young Tim kept an extremely strange house, stuffed full of exotic young things – and not all boys, incidentally.’

  ‘But what did they do there?’ I squeaked. ‘I mean, what went on? If they’re not gay and they weren’t doing, well, gay things, what were they doing?’

  ‘Apparently it was all rather childish. There was an awful lot of drinking to begin with and everyone got as tight as ticks, and then Tim brought out the fancy dress box and everyone just delved in and took a character. So for instance if you were Fireman Sam you might be in a uniform ringing bells and waving your hosepipe around, or if you were Baby Bunting you could just gurgle away happily in the corner with your dummy. It was that sort of thing.’ She said it as casually as if she’d said they’d just slipped down to the pub for a game of darts.

  ‘Good grief,’ I said faintly. I had a sudden vision of Harry in a nappy with a dummy in his mouth. I felt horribly sick, but also mightily relieved that he was dead and that I didn’t have to deal with this.

  ‘Did Boffy tell you all this?’

  ‘He did because I made him. I knew something was going on and I said if he didn’t tell me I’d leave him. But he’s terrified I’ll say something to someone. He doesn’t know I’m here, of course.’

  ‘No, no, of course,’ I said quickly. ‘What else did he tell you?’

  She shrugged. ‘Not much. Just a bit about the outfits. Apparently Harry quite liked to be Anthea Turner and Boffy was always that blonde woman, Bunny Thingamygig off the Antiques Roadshow. He said he just put on a blond wig and fondled ashtrays, pretended they were antiques and burbled away into an imaginary camera about eighteenth-century rococo gilding. I suppose it’s all pretty innocuous if you think about it.’ She looked at me beseechingly.

  My jaw was down by my chest, my eyes out on stalks. Innocuous!

  ‘Oh, and Boffy liked to be Suzanne Charlton too,’ she rushed on, getting it all out. ‘I think he just sort of stuck cushions in his suit for shoulder pads and spoke in a shrill voice. Tapped weather maps with pointy sticks, apparently.’

  ‘Pointy sticks!’ I echoed faintly, reaching for the bottle again. I poured myself a slug with a shaky hand. ‘And Tim presided over all this?’

  ‘Oh, absolutely. He provided all the equipment, you see, and then he just let them get on with it.’

  ‘Just like playschool,’ I breathed, ‘with a dressing-up box!’

  She nodded. ‘Totally. Small boys playing out their sad, repressed little games. I blame cold mothers and uniformed nannies and boarding school actually, they all had to learn to be “little men” by the time they were about six and they never got to do any of this. Lots of stiff upper lips, no teddies and no crying in the dorm.’ She crossed her legs and brushed some dust off her skirt. ‘And of course it doesn’t come as a complete surprise because Boffy and I do quite a bit of dressing up at home.’ She glanced up at me defensively.

  I boggled. ‘You do?’

  ‘Well, in the privacy of our own bedroom, of course. As married couples do, you know.’

  ‘Oh! Oh, yes, of course.’ I stared at her, fascinated. ‘Er … as what?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘What d’you dress up as?’

  ‘Oh, nothing madly original. Just, you know, rabbits, with bits of cotton wool stuffed here and there. Chickens perhaps.’

  ‘Chickens!’ I breathed. I dug my nails into my hand to stop myself guffawing and nodded knowingly. ‘Oh yeah, right. Chickens.’

  ‘I mean, it’s not unusual, is it?’

  ‘Heavens, no!’

  ‘It’s just we’ve never actually,’ she hesitated, ‘crossed gender before.’ She frowned into her glass.

  ‘Not even as chickens?’

  ‘Oh no, I always laid the eggs.’

  I fought hard with mounting hysteria, in serious trouble now. When I’d finally gulped it down, I gave a bright smile. Gosh, it was a relief to give those face muscles an airing.

  ‘Well, to be perfectly honest, Charlotte, if I were you I wouldn’t worry about this one little bit! In fact, I’d throw myself right into it!’

  ‘Really?’ She looked up doubtfully.

  ‘Absolutely! Be Hugh Scully to his Bunny Whatserface, be Michael Fish to his Suzanne Charlton! Golly, if you can lay eggs, I’m sure you can get used to a few bits of old porcelain lying about the bedroom and the odd weather map being pulled out from under the bed.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Lord, yes, it’ll be a breeze! Gosh, before you know it, you’ll be tickling his rain clouds with your isobars and rubbing your warm fronts against his ridge of high pressure!’

  She glared at me. ‘We’re not kinky, you know, Rosie,’ she snapped.

  ‘Oh no!’ I said hastily. ‘No, of course you’re not! Sorry, it was just a suggestion, got a bit – carried away.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ she said huffily. She reached across and helped herself to more gin. We were silent for a moment. She, no doubt, contemplating a new wardrobe full of pinstriped suits, boxer shorts and ties, and me contemplating my erstwhile marriage. It made me feel sick to the stomach to think of Harry in women’s clothes or bunny suits, but at least, I thought with some relief, our marital liaisons had finished long before then. There’d been virtually no hanky-panky after Ivo was born, so at least he wasn’t coming back to me after he’d been nibbling carrots with the other Flopsy Bunnies. I shivered. That would really have made my skin creep, and I wondered it didn’t Charlotte’s. I looked across at her now. She looked sad, Savile Row perhaps having lost its appeal.

  ‘Of course you never had my problem, did you?’ she said sadly.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Well, you never really loved Harry, did you?’

  I thought this over. ‘In the beginning perhaps, but … no. Not later on.’

  ‘That makes it so much harder.’

  ‘I can see that,’ I said quietly.

  She sank into her gin again. Another thought struck me.

  ‘So, I suppose they had to pay for all this then?’

  ‘Hmmm?’ she came back.

  ‘This fancy dress malarkey.’

  ‘Oh yes. More and more, that’s the whole point. You see, it got to the stage where Tim would double the price
at each session, and then he’d start to charge them if they missed a week. And then when there was no money left and Boffy and Harry had both drained their accounts dry and remortgaged their houses and stopped going, he charged them anyway.’

  ‘For not going?’

  ‘For him keeping quiet. For not sending the photographs he’d taken of them in drag to Boffy’s family, to his partners at the law firm, to me, to you, to Uncle Bertram.’

  ‘Blackmail,’ I breathed.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So …’ I thought back quickly. ‘So that time when Tim came here, befriended me in the supermarket, carried my bags home, that was a trick to get into my house, wasn’t it? Yes, of course,’ I went on slowly, my thoughts keeping track with my words, ‘he came here to leave the note. The one the police found. “I won’t go quietly, my love … we’re in too deep …” Yes, that’s it, he ran upstairs while I was answering the phone and tucked it not under my pillow but under Harry’s!’

  ‘What note?’ She frowned, but I was well away, my mind racing.

  ‘And then by the time I got upstairs, he’d already planted it, and was back in the bathroom busy putting Badedas in the cupboard, and then –’ my hand flew up to my mouth – ‘Oh God, yes! Then Harry came back!’

  ‘What are you talking about, Rosie?’ Charlotte leaned forward.

  ‘Yes, Harry came back and – oh God, I remember now! The look of absolute horror on his face! I thought it was because he’d caught me with a man in our bedroom, but it was because it was Tim! And Tim went into some ridiculous charade about pretending to be a plumber or something, but all the time he must have been laughing up his sleeve at Harry. Because in a way it was even more effective to be seen talking to his wife in his bedroom, wasn’t it? Because, how much had he told me? The threat was so implicit, wasn’t it? How much had he divulged? How much did I know? Harry went very pale, I remember that, and Tim said, “Haven’t we met before?” Oh Lord, he was teasing him, playing with him. God, he must have loved it. And when Tim had gone, Harry accused me of having an affair with him, but all the time, yes, all the time he must have been worried sick, wondering how much I knew.’

  ‘And that very day,’ said Charlotte, catching on suddenly, ‘you threatened to divorce him, didn’t you? It was that day, wasn’t it, Rosie? Boffy said you were on your way to your parents’ house.’

  I stared at her. ‘Yes, that’s right, but – that was just a coincidence. I’d been planning that for ages, that just happened to be the day I snapped.’

  ‘Yes, but Harry didn’t know that, did he?’ she said eagerly. ‘He’d just interrupted you having a cosy chat with Tim and he wasn’t to know Tim had just popped in to leave an unpleasant note under his pillow. For all he knew, Tim had spilled the entire can of worms! Because suddenly, here you were, apropos of absolutely nothing, demanding a divorce. What was he to think?’ She narrowed her eyes and stared beyond me. ‘And so his life and his reputation must have trickled away before his very eyes. He saw a messy, vindictive divorce with pictures of himself dressed as a fairy godmother all over the tabloids –’

  ‘I wouldn’t have done that!’

  ‘– and everyone finally seeing him for what he really was. A sad, mixed-up fat boy who liked to wear funny clothes.’ Her eyes swung back to me. ‘And how would he cope with that, Rosie? Someone like Harry? You know how he was, reputation was everything to him, wasn’t it? What would they say at the club? At the royal enclosure? At his shooting parties? More to the point, what would Uncle Bertram say? That hot-blooded old heterosexual? Well, he’d be changing his will pretty damn sharpish, wouldn’t he? So let’s see what Harry’s lost, shall we?’ She held up her hand and ticked off her fingers. ‘He’s already lost all his money to Tim, but now he’s lost his wife, his son, his reputation, his friends, his social life and, finally, his inheritance. Knowing Harry as you do, Rosie, is his life worth living?’

  I stared at her for a long moment. ‘He committed suicide,’ I breathed.

  She nodded. ‘I’d say that’s a pretty shrewd assumption.’

  We gazed at each other for a while, then I slumped back in my chair, my eyes still fixed on her. ‘He slipped the dodgy mushroom in.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘But he asked me to check them, Charlotte. Why bother if he knew he was going to add one himself?’

  She shrugged. ‘Who knows? A final act of vengeance to implicate you perhaps, or maybe just to cover his tracks. He didn’t want people to know he’d committed suicide, did he? He didn’t want that final stain on his character, that’s why he didn’t leave a note. He wanted it to look like an accident, or perhaps murder, but certainly not suicide.’

  I gazed at her. ‘But how can I prove all this?’ I said slowly. ‘The police still think I did it.’ I sat up. ‘You’re the only person who can help me, Charlotte. You must go to them, you must tell them all this!’

  ‘I can’t!’ she said, recoiling in horror. ‘You know I can’t. Tell them about Tim’s house, the dodgy dressing-up sessions? Boffy would lose everything if it all came out! He’s a solicitor, for God’s sake, he’d never work again! His family would cut him off and, God, he’d never forgive me, that’s for sure.’ She got up and paced about, shaking her head vehemently. ‘Oh no. No, I can’t do it, Rosie.’ Suddenly she turned, sat down again. ‘And it’s not just because of us,’ she went on in a low voice, ‘there are other people involved too, other people who went there.’

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘Oh, you know, civil servants, company directors, the odd Cabinet minister even.’ She gave a hollow laugh. ‘My godfather apparently, the one who’s a High Sheriff – or Maid Marian, as Boffy tells me he’s known at Tim’s house. Tim’s very well-connected, you know, his uncle is a duke. The press would have an absolute field day if all these names came out, he runs a very upmarket establishment.’

  ‘Good grief. And he works in Sainsbury’s during the day?’

  ‘Well, he’s got to do something in the daylight hours. He doesn’t need to work at all, of course, he’s loaded, but it’s quite a good cover and it probably gives him a thrill to see the wives of all his clients squeezing the grapefruits when he knows what their husbands will be squeezing later.’

  ‘What a bastard.’

  ‘Who, Tim or the husbands? I don’t think you can really blame Tim, Rosie, he’s just providing a service. He’s clearly getting something out of their emotionally crippled systems which might otherwise be taken out on people like us, their wives.’

  ‘There’s nothing very attractive about blackmail though.’

  ‘True, and that was his big mistake. He got greedy, and it may well be his downfall. Harry topped himself. Tim’s got blood on his hands now and he’s also being questioned by the police, although I suspect they’re not getting very far because he hasn’t been charged yet. I imagine he must be very nervous though.’

  ‘Which explains why he’s been so keen to pin it on me,’ I said slowly. ‘To convince the police that he and I were the ones having the affair, to pretend that the note was to me, to pretend he was simply a young guy having an affair with an older woman he met in Sainsbury’s, a woman who got too involved and killed her husband in order to be with her lover. He’s claiming all this to take the heat off him.’

  ‘No doubt. And from what you say, it seems to be working.’

  I stared at her as gradually everything began to slot into place. ‘Oh God, Charlotte, it all makes perfect sense now! You’ve got to help me, you’ve just got to! And you must have intended to, otherwise why come here? Why ask me to meet you here? Why not just keep quiet and hope that –’

  The doorbell rang, stopping me in my tracks. We both leapt to our feet.

  ‘Who is it?’ Charlotte gasped. ‘Is it the police, did you tell them you were coming here?’

  ‘No, of course not!’

  ‘Well, who is it then?’

  It rang again. Two short beeps, then a long, chilling, insistent ring. We gazed a
t each other in horror.

  ‘It is the police,’ she muttered. ‘I’m going out the back way, through the garden.’

  As she made to go, I caught her arm. ‘Don’t be silly,’ I hissed. ‘If it is them they’ll probably have someone posted round the back and you don’t want to be caught running away, do you? For heaven’s sake, just sit down and act perfectly naturally. Good grief, this is still my house, why shouldn’t I have a friend round for a drink?’

  Her face was very pale as she stared at me. ‘Okay,’ she whispered, ‘but don’t let me down, Rosie. Promise me you won’t say a word!’

  I swallowed hard. God, it would be so easy, wouldn’t it? And why should I promise?

  ‘I promise,’ I muttered finally, praying fervently it wasn’t the police, because if it was, I might be sorely tempted to point the finger at her and Boffy and subject them to the shame and ignominy of the tabloids and thereby save myself from the gallows.

  I went slowly through to the hall. Oh, let it not be the police, I prayed as I got to the door. The grim reaper, yes, Tim with the Flopsy Bunnies and Angel Gabriel in tow, fine, but please God not the police or I might just fall into temptation and deliver myself from evil.

  I reached for the doorknob, took a deep breath, swung it back and – oh, thank you, God, thank you, Thou art an absolute star. It was Joss and Alice.

  Chapter Thirty

  ‘Oh, how marvellous,’ I gasped. ‘I thought you were the filth!’

  ‘Filth?’ Joss frowned.

  ‘Pigs, coppers, you know, that’s how us fugitives tend to refer to them.’ I glanced hastily up and down the street to check all was clear. ‘Come in,’ I hissed, dragging them into the hall, ‘but quickly. How did you know I was here?’

  ‘I put Martha on the rack and tortured it out of her,’ said Joss, stepping inside.

  ‘She promised not to say!’

  ‘And very heroic she was too. I shone bright lights in her eyes and pulled her fingernails out and she wouldn’t budge an inch. Then I threatened to lock her in the house so she wouldn’t be able to slip home and get her dad some tea. She sang like a canary.’