Then I see the buttocks of a statue of Diana, her hunting bow slung gracefully over her shoulder, and I know where we are. A broad walk runs across our path, its middle divided by an old stone watercourse down which cool spring water trickles over cleansing moss. We make a right, head slightly downhill and come to the bathing pool. The haven.
It’s not large; certainly not a swimming pool. Circular, maybe three metres across all told, buried in the heart of the wood, surrounded by a lawn of moss and creeping thyme that crushes beneath the feet and fills the air with somnolent perfume, walls of rhododendron screening it from the rest of the world. I don’t think anyone has used it apart from us since the big pool was built in the old orangery back in the forties. In the spring the gardeners come down and drain it back, clear it of the previous autumn’s leaves, scrub down the grey stones that line it and reopen the watercourse that feeds it. And then they leave it to the murmur of blackbirds and the rustle of peaceful growth.
Henry, after a bit of sniffing and a couple of prowls, finds a stone bench in a shaft of sunlight and settles down to pretend to be a statue. Conserving energy for tonight’s violence, when he will deposit three adolescent rabbits and a thrush on the Kennels doorstep. We shed our clothes in the stone-built changing-hut sunk in the bank that hides the spot from the park, and, leaving them neatly piled on the floor, run starkers across the lawn and shallow-jump into the water. It is only five feet deep, but, shaded by trees, the water is cold enough to wrest a scream from my lungs as I surface. My nipples go bullet-like, like pink icing rosettes on a wedding cake. I flail, gasp and wait until my body adjusts. By the time it’s done so, Harriet is already gently backstroking from side to side, face to the sky, composed and relaxed. My heart stops hammering. I drop onto my back and frog lazily back and forth. ‘Aah,’ I say eventually.
Harriet, floating, raises her head. ‘Better?’
‘Mmm.’
She executes a lazy crawl over to one of the seats let into the wall, spreads her arms along the top, smiles.
‘I always feel better when I swim here,’ I say from the middle, bobbing.
‘I know,’ she replies. Squints up at the sun. ‘Everyone feels better when they swim here. It’s a known fact. I wish Gerald would come here occasionally: then he might not walk around like he’s got a stick up his arse the whole time.’
‘Takes a lot to wash a stick out of your arse,’ I say.
‘Yes, but you have to start somewhere.’
Then we don’t say anything for a bit. Henry does his long, thin sausage-cat thing, lets out a single yow and potters off into the bushes to bully the local insect life. Once he’s gone, a blackbird tentatively starts up a song. Harriet runs water down the length of her arms, watching the hairs rise and fall with the temperature changes. I just float, and feel free, tension lifting for the first time in weeks from my shoulders and arms, stretching calf-muscles that have been encased in lead.
‘You know,’ says Harriet, ‘they all hated her here. That’s the grand irony of all this fuss and niceness now, that they couldn’t find a nice word to say about her then.’
Godiva used to come down here as well, play at water-nymphs; that’s how Harriet developed the habit. I think she mostly only brought Harriet down here when boredom, or the cold shoulders of the family, drove her to find solace and entertainment in her daughter, but the place has that magical property of happy memory for Harriet nonetheless. While everyone else was mixing gin and tonics and waiting for the cubbing season to begin, Godiva and Harriet would be splashing blondely about in the pool, the odd ones out.
‘Even Daddy went sour once she’d left. I mean, I can’t blame him, what with the stuff she said and everything, but I get really angry with these people who pretend they were her friend now. I mean, it was as if my relationship to her didn’t exist. I guess that’s how it works with the Moresby blood: the incomers simply don’t matter. It was just extraordinary. She’d get up after lunch and say, “I’m going for a walk. Then you can all talk about me,” and the minute she left the room they’d start in.’
Harriet slips suddenly into the accent of her forebears: an accent so exaggerated that no cockney comedian would attempt it. ‘“I sumplih daren’t knare, Gerald,” they’d say, “wuh yer wur thinking abar.”’ Gerald was Harriet’s father’s name; the Moresbys have shown little by way of imagination in the last couple of hundred years. ‘Or, “Air pleease. Wut un arth does the thank she lurks like tuday?”’
Harriet grins. ‘I think the best one was Vif, when I was about twelve and she was about eighteen. Mummy had been down to visit and I was hiding on a window seat in the white drawing room, reading behind a curtain where they couldn’t find me because I didn’t want to say goodbye to her and I knew that the minute she went someone would come and try to make me go and do some exercise, so I don’t think she knew I was there. But she burst in with Aird – ’ Aird is Edward Sewell, a second cousin whom Vif married when she was twenty-five – ‘and they were laughing fit to bust. And you won’t believe what they were going on about.’
‘What?’ I’ve floated over to the wall and am lying with my chin on my hands.
Harriet starts to laugh. Half bitter, half entertained. ‘Aird goes, “Blurry ’all, earld gull. Did you see the size of thet dimund?” and Vif goes, “Air, I knair. End my deah, thet bairgas ecksunt.”’
I laugh. ‘How the hell did you manage not to end up like them?’ It’s always a wonder to me.
‘Because, thank God,’ says Harriet, ‘half of me doesn’t belong to them. Since she died, they’ve been busy covering up where she came from, pretending she was one of them, but she brought a bit of healthy blood into the family and that’s what I’ve got. I think I’m the first half-Moresby since the Industrial Revolution.’
We’re quiet again for a bit. I pluck some strands of moss and build a little pile by my hand. There’s a certain irony in the fact that the blood that saved Harriet from her hare-lipped fate should have come from someone with such obvious flaws of her own. But you know, maybe Harriet did get her ability to reinvent herself from her mother: after all, if anyone showed pluck and imagination on that score, it was Godiva.
‘What I’m saying, though,’ begins Harriet again, ‘is that it doesn’t matter where you came from.’
‘I know,’ I reply. I’m not stupid. Obviously she brought me here to give me a talking-to.
‘’Cause that’s what Godiva did. They may not have liked what she was, but at least she was a figment of her own imagination.’
I nod.
‘It doesn’t matter, you know,’ says Harriet. ‘I know you’ve had a shock, but you’d already stopped being what you’d been meant to be years ago. It’s still the same.’
I feel tears pricking at the back of my eyes again. ‘I know, Har,’ I say.
‘She’s only telling you now because she wants to hurt you. She thought she could control you, and she can’t stand it. But you don’t have to do what she wants you to do now, any more than you did before. You don’t have to be anything anyone tells you to be. You’re doing fine as you are, you know.’
I quickly dip my head beneath the water, as the tears are starting to spill again. When I resurface, I say, ‘I know. Thanks.’
‘Thanks, arse,’ says Sweary Mary. ‘Fuck ’em, that’s what I say.’ She pushes off and splashes to the middle of the pool. ‘I don’t live here,’ she says, then shouts it out. ‘I don’t fucking LIVE HERE and I never will!’ Kicks water into my face so that the only thing I can do in response is start laughing again and kick back.
A strident, confident voice interrupts our shrieks and pushes us both beneath the water, where we crouch and look up. Three figures tower over us, dressed identically in Driza-bones, flowerpot hats and walking sticks. ‘’Scyurze me,’ says the voice, ‘you do knur that thus us priver prupty, daren’t yuh?’
‘Oh,’ says Harriet, swimming to the edge. ‘Hello, Cair. How are you?’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
‘What did you say your name was again?’
‘Geraldine West.’
‘Geraldine, eh? And how old did you say you were?’
Geraldine, now an ex-Pigg, recites the magic formula that Kiki has given her. ‘I’m twenty-one, Mr Flowers.’
Rodney Flowers considers his latest applicant with narrowed eyes, says ‘Are you sure about that, Geraldine? You look younger. What’s your date of birth?’
She’s been practising this one all night. ‘Fourth of April, 1938, Mr Flowers.’
Rodney nods, pleased with the response. ‘Very good, my dear. Convincing. Now, you know, don’t you, that you have to be twenty-one to work here, or in any establishment like this?’
‘Oh, yes, Mr Flowers, I certainly do. I’ve been wanting to break into interpretive dancing for years now, so it’s been terrible having to wait.’
‘Well, your audition piece certainly showed a high degree of ambition,’ he replies. He smiles, the smile of a well-oiled gecko, swirls the brandy round his bucket-sized snifter before inhaling deeply of the bouquet. It is ten in the morning and he feels that the day is about to go well. The tiny figure standing before him wrapped in a towel is just the sort of girl his customers – and he himself – have a particular taste for: blonde, stacked in the chest department, round of buttock and very, very young – seventeen, eighteen at the most. And she’s hungry.
‘So, Geraldine,’ he says, ‘tell me a little about yourself. What about your family? What do they think of your chosen career?’
‘I’m an orphan, Mr Flowers. I’ve been an orphan since I was six-years old.’ Geraldine affects a little pout, looks up at him speculatively through her thick eyelashes. Very pretty, thinks Rodney Flowers, very talented.
‘I’m sorry to hear that, my dear. How did it happen?’
‘My mother was killed in the Blitz when I was two-years old. A buzz-bomb. They found me unharmed in my cot beside her body.’
‘All too common a story,’ says Rodney Flowers, ‘I’m sad to say.’
‘Father was an officer in the army. He died in a prison camp in the Far East a year before VJ day.’
‘Mmm. Mmm. And who raised you?’
‘Neither of my parents had any family,’ she announces confidently. ‘I was raised in a government orphanage until I was old enough to look after myself.’
A likely story, he thinks. No government orphanage I’ve ever heard of pays for the kind of elocution lessons this one’s had. Her voice still bears a slight trace of a Northern accent, but no doubt that’s something that will iron itself out in time. ‘And all this time,’ he asks, ‘you’ve wanted to be a dancer?’
‘Oh yes,’ she announces. ‘All I’ve ever wanted to do was come to London and take to the West End stage.’
He puts his glass down, smiles again. ‘And what better place to start? Why, you’ll be right in the heart of the West End working here. You do understand, though, don’t you, that the job requires more than simply dancing? We have some very friendly gentlemen through these doors, many of them distinguished in their own right, and they are looking for more than just a performance on stage. They will be wanting you to socialise with them as well. If you know what I mean.’
Not a hesitation. ‘Yes, Mr Flowers. I know what you mean. And I think you’ll find that I can be very – sociable.’
He throws an arm over the back of his chair, relaxes, all formalities taken care of. ‘Well, I’d say that you might well fit in here. We like a nice sociable girl in this club. It’s what we’re famous for. There’s just one thing …’
She leans forward in interest, and a curve of bosom reveals itself elegantly before him. A practised little minx, he thinks. She’s spent years in front of the bedroom mirror getting that one right.
‘The name, Geraldine. It’s hardly the name of a West End star, is it?’
Geraldine looks reluctant, then certain. ‘No, I suppose not. I don’t mind changing it. I’ll do anything to get this job. What do you think I should call myself?’
‘Well,’ he considers his latest acquisition. Very nice. Very nice indeed. ‘We generally like to give our girls names that are as close as possible to their original ones as we can. Saves confusion.’
‘Absolutely, Mr Flowers.’
‘Let’s see – ’ he looks away from her, as if to pluck inspiration from thin air. His eye runs down the rows of bottles behind the bar, lights on the gin section. He has thirty brands of gin, from the obscure to the tawdry. And in the middle, a flask of Geneva Spirit.
‘That’s it,’ he says. ‘Geneva. That’s nice. Has a ring to it. Classy. Geneva, like Jennifer, only not. How does that suit you?’
Geneva squeals with pleasure. ‘Why, it’s wonderful, Mr Flowers! I love it! Geneva West! Couldn’t be better!’
‘Well, Geneva it is,’ he smiles again. Picks up the snifter once more, breathes deeply through the nose and sits back.
‘So, Geneva,’ he says, ‘what would you do to get this job?’
He sees her make little fists with her fingers, sees her eye his belly, his old man’s chicken legs, breathe in the aroma of dinner jacket worn night after night in a cloud of cigar smoke. Then he sees her breathe in and plaster a beautiful, angelic, willing smile across her face as she replies, ‘Why I’d do anything, Mr Flowers. Anything at all.’
‘Anything?’
‘Yes, Mr Flowers,’ she says firmly. ‘Anything.’
The lazy lizard smirk reappears, and his tongue flicks ever so lightly across his lips. ‘Call me Rodney,’ he says.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Theory of Relativity: Alternative Version
Life at Belhaven has a surreal quality as it is. And yet we always make the mistake of getting wasted before we enter the fray, which makes things totally wild and woolly. There was no chance, once the Inbreeds uncovered our presence, that Gerald wouldn’t bring a couple of retrievers down to bully Henry, and take the opportunity to issue a three-line whip on dinner. Sadly, he did it after Harriet produced a Tupperware box of hash brownies that Shahin cooked up for us as a bon voyage present. So by the time we actually make it to the two-hour pre-dinner drinks, neither of us is really able to communicate at all, which is not such a bad thing, as neither are our hosts.
As we’re staying at the Kennels, we enter Belhaven Great House through the kitchen door, so it’s not until we’re actually going in to dinner that Harriet notices that the chinoiserie cachepots in the hall seem to have sprouted a pair of Swiss cheese plants. Even I notice them, and I’m practically impervious, having grown up in surroundings whose appearance was dictated by practicality, to these obscenities of style that put others’ teeth on edge. This doesn’t look like a Geraldism to me: it’s rather more the style of Sofe, his wife. Sofe, after all, once tried to carpet the long gallery.
We’re all following each other in a large group, and everyone apart from me is bellowing with hilarity at a story a man called Neil is telling about an encounter with a group of anti-foxhunting demonstrators in Newbury, so I’m the only one to notice the slight hiss as Harriet spots the offending plant-life. She develops a sudden and exaggerated limp, hops along a couple of paces and then drops to her knee beside the first cachepot. ‘Sorry,’ she says to Roof, who scarcely notices, ‘stone in shoe. Have to get rid.’ The more time Harriet spends around her relations, the fewer words she uses. It starts with the pronouns and works its way down through adverbs and adjectives until pretty much all that comes from her mouth is a jumble of nouns peppered with minimal verbs and the odd conjunction. ‘Gin, tonic, fag,’ she’ll say, ‘and bed.’ ‘Walk, lake; take dog?’
I kick her ankle as I pass, which has no effect at all, glance over my shoulder as we go into the dining room and see that her hand is deep in her bag. Poor old Swiss cheese plant. We will never see your like again.
It’s a relatively small dinner party for the size of the table; twelve of us strung down the sides with Gerald at the top and
Sofe hanging off the end like a good hostess. There’s me, Harriet, the Inbreeds and Aird, the Master of Foxhounds and his wife and a pair of men who go round in a Range Rover with Gerald, shooting things. My ears are adjusting gradually, tuning in to a world without consonants, so it only takes me a couple of seconds to translate and reply when one of the shooting buddies, the one who’s not Neil, turns to me as we take slices of bread and butter for our smoked trout and says, ‘Wurra view cu’fra thea’?’
‘London,’ I say, ‘I share a house with Harriet.’
He looks at me. ‘Lyki’ there?’
I think for a second, weigh it up and say, ‘Yes, I do, actually. It’s—’
But he’s barked out his own judgment – ‘Burry awfore place’ – and turned his back to engage the MFH’s wife in conversation. I squeeze a mingy slice of lemon over my trout and settle back to another Belhaven dinner. Shooting buddy is booming, ‘Marvlus day. Fifteen brace a head, nobody hit a beater, had to plough the lot under or we would’ve knocked the bottom out of the game market up that way.’
‘Fantastic,’ says Mrs MFH. ‘Not too much trouble with the Krauts, then?’
‘Five thousand pound a head I think I’ll put up with a bit of trouble,’ says Shootist, and they both collapse in laughter.
Other Shooter, next to Harriet, is shouting up the table. ‘Good trout, Gerald. Come from the estate?’
Gerald laughs. ‘Marks and Sparks,’ he replies. ‘No point in using fish from here when we can package it up with the crest and sell it at double the going rate. You won’t believe what people will pay for a bit of packaging.’
‘Associative glamour,’ interjects Harriet, but her words fall on deaf ears.
‘Very good,’ Shooting friend says. ‘You’ve got a good business brain there, Gerald.’
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