Friends for Life

by Carol Smith

  Time went by and, with a little help from his father-in-law, Oliver grew more successful as a fashionable stockbroker in the fast lane, notching up success after success. Then he received an offer he could not ignore from the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank and reluctantly traded in market mobility for the greater rewards of solidity, respectability, and wealth. They moved from Chelsea to this Victorian villa in The Boltons, which had rooms enough for any number of nannies or whatever and a whole floor that would convert very nicely into nursery and playroom.

  Vivienne had always had a flair for design and now she threw herself into creating the home of her dreams. The house was vast, with so many rooms whole armies of nannies and their support teams could have been lost in it. When she had finished the drawing room, the dining room, and the spectacular conservatory, Vivienne and her squad of decorators moved upward to the bedroom floors. She had set aside the largest suite on the second floor as a future nursery for their baby, whenever it came along.

  Then fun had beckoned and they were off to Argentina for the polo season, and somehow they simply never got round to it. It was always something they could talk about tomorrow. Money had never been a problem and Vivienne was in tip-top health. These days it was marvelous what modern medicine could achieve and people were having babies well into their forties and beyond. The truth, which she hated to admit even to herself, was that Vivienne had been scared of ruining her figure. And now it was too late. Her selfishness had deprived her of her child, a companion who could have been here now, helping to fill these lonely hours when the whole of London except her was out enjoying itself.

  Time for a drink, not that Vivienne waited anymore for the sun to be over the yardarm. She wandered down to the kitchen for ice and poured herself a massive Bloody Mary, then took it and the cats back upstairs to the bedroom. This was where she spent most of her time these days, more welcoming than the sterility of the reception rooms below. Before her stretched an entire day with nothing at all to do. There was nothing on the television, just some slushy musical she’d seen a million times before, full of nuns and things, and she simply hadn’t the energy to go through her extensive video collection.

  What she craved for more than anything was human company, but where did you find it on a holiday weekend when your husband was away? There was always church, but she couldn’t be bothered and besides, by now the service would already be under way. What did single people do at times like this? With a sudden nostalgia, Vivienne thought back to her stay in the hospital—at the time such a nightmare—and realized she was missing the easy to-and-fro of shared conversations and jokes. She missed the other women; it was an eye-opener that stunned her.

  She looked at Ferdinand and Isabella, lying together under the radiator, content in each other’s company. Even they had each other, while she had no one. But that gave her an idea. Catherine Palmer was not the brightest of company but she was reliable, and since their shared experience at St. Anthony’s they had struck up a sort of friendship.

  I bet she’s not doing anything, thought Vivienne, as she leafed through her address book. Then, just as she was working up the courage to phone, she remembered her mother. Eleanor Palmer was a legend and they had all been fascinated to discover that Catherine was her daughter. Even in her depleted state, Catherine had raised the energy, once she was through with surgery, to tell them tales of her mother’s horrendous doings that had kept them all amused. Oddly enough, they brought out the best in Catherine. When recounting yet another dreadful story, a sparkle would come into her flat eyes and a faint flush to her cheeks that gave life to her passive face and a hint of the prettiness she must once have had. Maybe one day, if they kept in touch, Vivienne would get a chance to meet the old girl and judge for herself. But now was not the time. Not in her current bleak mood.

  Thinking of Catherine reminded her of Beth, and there she did feel a slight pang of regret. Beth had seemed so lively and outgoing, so overflowing with life and zest, that Vivienne had instinctively warmed to her and made a secret resolve to turn her into a friend. She admired women who had made their own way in life and built up a successful career without the apparent support, emotional or financial, of any particular man. Yet, Beth had that attentive ex-husband and the rather charming daughter but, from what she had been able to fathom, he was only a part-time parent and didn’t even normally live in this country. Beth was all the things Vivienne might once have wanted to be, had life dealt her a different hand. She was gutsy, optimistic, and fun, with a charm so powerful it acted like a magnet to practically everyone around her.

  She was not particularly glamorous, though her skin was good, and could do with losing quite a lot of weight. Yet things like that didn’t appear to faze Beth in any way. She laughed and joked and told risqué stories that kept the nurses, and the patients too, in fits of laughter. She was also extremely kind. Vivienne still remembered the soft voice from the other side of the cubicle curtain just when, consumed with terror, she thought she was facing her ordeal alone. And the thoughtfulness toward everyone on the ward, and the generosity too, passing around boxes of homemade biscuits whenever her rather dowdy sidekick came to visit. Yes, she was a professional caterer, but that was no reason to be quite so openhanded toward strangers. If she acted like that in the general course of things, she would rapidly go out of business.

  No, in Vivienne’s book Beth was all right, which was why she still felt hurt and slightly puzzled by the casual way the other woman had appeared to shrug off any suggestion of an ongoing friendship. It was rather odd and Vivienne was still trying to work it out. They had all got on well enough, apart from that spiky American who was always whining, and Beth had definitely given her phone number to both the younger women and probably Catherine too. Yet when it came to saying good-bye to Vivienne she had simply shaken her hand, wished her luck, and looked, if anything, a little embarrassed.

  For a fleeting moment, Vivienne wondered if it might be a class thing but then dismissed it. Despite her northern background and the slight trace of Nottingham still in her voice, Beth was far too sensible—and successful—to take any notice of possible class divisions, not in this day and age. She might be a full-time worker, entirely responsible for herself and her kid, but she was not the type to be intimidated by someone just because they had a posher accent and lived at a fancy address. If anything, Beth ought really to have been encouraging Vivienne, as she could have been a source of business with all her rich and influential friends, not to mention a husband in the City with a stratospheric career. In fact, the thought had already occurred to Vivienne as she lay in her hospital bed, and she had derived a quiet satisfaction from all the good connections she could give to Beth, starting with Betty, who was constantly organizing fund-raising lunches for all sorts of charities.

  In the end, though, she hadn’t had the chance. Amid a bluster of cheery good-byes, her handsome ex-husband there to carry her case and some of the potted plants that had smothered her part of the ward, Beth had simply waved and vanished from her life. Vivienne did know how to locate her—she was well signposted in the phone book—but felt reluctant to make the connection for fear of being snubbed. Now there was an admission; Vivienne felt quite startled. Never in her life, and certainly not since her marriage to Oliver, had such a thought popped into her mind. As a child, Vivienne had always been the popular one, the one whose birthday parties the whole class wanted to attend. And later, in her dating days, the hordes of suitors that had constantly besieged her flat had ensured a continuing popularity with the girls as well. Even Sukey Portillo had come around in the end and they still occasionally lunched when Sukey, poor thing, could slip away from her drab husband and brood of tedious children and make it into town for the dentist or a timid shopping spree.

  No, Beth Hardy was a mystery but one Vivienne felt too despondent to try to crack. She returned to the kitchen and helped herself to another drink and a slice of Stilton from the fridge, then went back upstairs to lie on the bed
for yet another run-through of Terms of Endearment. Oliver hated these sentimental movies so this was the perfect time to indulge herself. She didn’t know where he was exactly or when he would show up, and right now she really didn’t care. Let him come home when he was good and ready and they would doubtless have a row or, more likely, an icy impasse and spend the rest of the weekend not communicating, eating out at Oliver’s club or the Connaught because Vivienne had made no preparations for the weekend and couldn’t be bothered to cook.

  Thinking about Beth had soured her mood. Vivienne immersed herself in the movie and tried to obviate the nagging hurt by ignoring it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Catherine was surprised when Sally called. She hadn’t felt they had made any real connection but then she had to admit she had hardly been at her best in the hospital.

  “Just thought I’d check and see how you were,” said the friendly colonial voice, and Catherine felt a foolish blush of pleasure sweep up her neck.

  “I’m much better, thank you,” she faltered, slightly tongue-tied, which was silly, yet unable to help herself. “Still in a bit of pain but that’s only to be expected. And I’m sleeping better at night. How about you?”

  “Are you back at work?”

  “Not really. Not full-time. I don’t seem to have the strength somehow. I just do the odd day to fill in when the other receptionist can’t make it.”

  “Me? Can’t complain. I’m fit as a fiddle—but then I always was.”

  There was a pause while Catherine sought wildly for something else to say, but Sally was in there, burbling away as if they were old friends well used to chatting about nothing in particular and not merely passing acquaintances with not a thing in the world in common.

  And even that knocks me out for the rest of the week, thought Catherine grimly.

  “Only I thought perhaps I’d drop by and see you. You work for a vet, don’t you, and I really love animals.”

  How kind, thought Catherine, alarmed at the idea of this wild unpredictable girl invading the surgery yet moved nonetheless by the unexpected thoughtfulness.

  “Who is it?” shouted Eleanor petulantly from the other room. It was getting near suppertime and she wanted her sherry.

  “Just someone,” said Catherine with her hand over the mouthpiece. “A friend. I’ve got to go now,” she said nervously to Sally. If her mother came to investigate there was no telling what might happen. Catherine could not risk it; she had far too few friends as it was.

  “It was good of you to call.”

  “Hang on a sec,” said Sally. “I’m not through yet.”

  What now? thought Catherine wearily, feeling a familiar wave of exhaustion sweep over her as she heard the ominous sound of Eleanor’s chair scraping back.

  “Don’t hang up. What do you say to me coming over sometime for a glass of something or a cup of tea? A few laughs, talk about old times—nothing fancy.”

  Catherine paused. The girl sounded genuinely concerned, as if she really cared and wanted to make sure for herself that all was well. She was moved by the gesture and felt her resolution weaken.

  “I’d like that,” she said in a lower voice, searching for escape yet reluctant to end the connection. “We could meet at Barkers, perhaps, or somewhere else in the High Street and have a cup of tea.”

  “No sweat,” said Sally cheerfully. “I got your address from the hospital. Why don’t I just drop round sometime when I’m not too busy and take potluck? I’d really like to meet your ma after all those stories you told us, she sounds a game old buzzard. Now you take care and don’t go overdoing things. You still sound a bit crook to me.”

  She had gone before Catherine could protest, and in any case Eleanor was descending, pulling her Spanish shawl around her ample shoulders and demanding to know who could possibly be bothering them at Easter.

  “What do you mean—a friend? What sort of friend telephones on Easter Sunday? Don’t they know that this is a sacred time and that I have to rest my voice for next week’s recital?”

  She retreated, muttering, leaving Catherine to cope with the sherry. She was the one who was officially sick but her mother seemed impervious to that, or to the fact that the hospital had expressly told her to take things easy for a week or so. After a lifetime of being waited on hand and foot, her daughter’s illness was merely another irritation to Eleanor, a personal inconvenience which she took in her stride in her usual way, by ignoring it. The child had always been on the sickly side. That was their fault, she supposed, for being too indulgent. There was that time, twenty years ago, when she’d nearly cracked up altogether; very inconvenient and also very thoughtless. Eleanor’s memory was good for her age but it was also selective. She was a master at editing her own scripts and remembering only that which was personally palatable.

  • • •

  Catherine lay in bed and thought of Tom Harvey. At no time during the past twenty years had he been very far from her mind but just lately something seemed to have happened to intensify his image and make him more vivid, as though he had just stepped out of the room for a moment and was likely to return.

  She had only to close her eyes to see his image in sharp relief and could still hear his voice—that light, musical, vibrant voice—just beyond the borders of her consciousness. She found it strangely reassuring, as though he had never really left her.

  These days, instead of dreading the night, Catherine longed for it to be bedtime and was thankful for the excuse of doctor’s orders to leave her mother to her own devices at an increasingly early hour and slip away to the blessed privacy of her own room, to indulge in her secret store of memories and dreams. Wrapped in her flannel nightgown, fresh from the bath and smelling of Vaseline and Johnson’s baby lotion, she would climb into the high wooden bed that had been hers since childhood, with her hot-water bottle in its faded woolen cover and a glass of water, and curl up like a child waiting for sleep. She no longer read in bed, she hadn’t the strength, but sank into a blissful cave of memory the moment she turned off the light. On the old-fashioned dressing table her china dogs and glass animals were still ranged and she also had all her childhood books—E. Nesbit, Alice, and The Wind in the Willows—lined up in their ancient bindings on the bedside table.

  Time had barely touched this room; its contents had followed her parents around the world, like a time capsule. This was Catherine’s private territory; the only place she felt really safe. Here she was free to dream her private dreams and reinvent the past, safe from the mocking laughter of her erstwhile friends and her mother’s withering scorn. For, as it turned out, Nancy’s cynicism had not been misplaced. Tom hadn’t loved her at all.

  So many references were made by Tom to Catherine’s background, and the possibility of one day going to Vienna to visit her folks, that when her father rang in July to say they would be over for Glyndebourne, her heart leaped at the chance of making the introductions as painlessly as possible. Brown’s Hotel would be neutral ground and, with so many other commitments to cram into her short visit, there was little chance of Mama wanting to meet Tom more than once, which was a relief. So a date was duly fixed and Tom and Catherine presented themselves at the Palmers’ suite for predinner cocktails.

  In a panic of nerves, Catherine rooted through her wardrobe and chose a demure Laura Ashley dress, boat-necked and tied with bows at the elbows, in pale lilac sprigged with white. Mama, of course, would be done up to the nines but Catherine had learned from an early age never to try to compete. Not that her mother could ever consider her daughter any sort of competition, despite her youth. She was, Catherine was all too aware, in her mother’s eyes beneath contempt, having inherited her milksop meekness from her father. Tom, for once, was surprisingly presentable in his one good suit and a shirt that was not too frayed. Catherine sensed he was quite keyed up about this meeting; maybe he really did have something dramatic up his sleeve.

  Sir Nicholas greeted them in the drawing room, looking shockingly older si
nce Christmas, thinner and altogether more frail. He kissed his daughter and shook Tom’s hand, then set about mixing the drinks. There was no sign of Mama other than a distant warble from the bathroom which kept Tom’s eyes glued to the door, waiting for her entrance.

  Which indeed she made, only twenty minutes late, dressed as if for an audience at the Palace in violet satin with a triple choker of pearls and a neckline down to her knees. She proffered a cheek for Catherine to kiss, then swept straight past her to hold out her hand to Tom, palm down in queenly fashion, as if inviting him to kiss it. Really, she was such an inordinate ham; Catherine felt her cheeks beginning to burn, but Tom was quite clearly bewitched. He placed himself next to her, gazing into the compelling eyes, dramatically outlined in kohl, and gave himself up to blatant adoration.

  To Catherine’s surprise, he revealed quite a depth of knowledge of opera. Either he’d boned up on the subject specially, which was entirely possible, or else he really knew his stuff; whatever, he was able to talk quite fluently about some of her greatest performances, which was exactly the way to handle Eleanor Palmer. Catherine watched in admiration as her mother purred and smiled at him benevolently. But she would have been shaken had she known what was going on inside the well-coiffed head.

  Sexy, Eleanor was thinking, but an utter little toady. And she was concerned to observe, as the evening progressed, that her daughter was already clearly quite horribly smitten.

  The thing about Eleanor Palmer was that she was not entirely what she appeared. She had learned to play the grande dame early on, during years spent suppressing her humble Hastings origins while scrabbling up the incredibly slippery pole which leads to glory and success in international opera, a world as ruthless and dirty as any other where great reputations and vast sums of money are involved. But for all her superficial toughness and a history of broken hearts and scattered favors, deep down she was as frightened as the next person, which was why, when she thought her magnificent voice might be losing its power, she had opted for marriage to a decent but slightly dull diplomat. Catherine had been born when Eleanor was thirty-nine; she had been working out her frustrations on her ever since. But that didn’t mean Eleanor didn’t care. She despaired of her daughter ever developing any guts, but when she saw the hopeless way she was mooning over this brash and patently insincere young man, her mother-tiger instincts leaped to the fore.