Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman

Chapter Twenty

My energy returned. I cleaned Lakey Street from top to bottom. I went through my desk on the landing and threw out every bit of unnecessary paper. I climbed into the attic and sorted through a suitcase of my old clothes, scooping up the too-short skirt, the little knitted dress that had to be worn without a bra, the figure-hugging blouse – clothes that belonged to the past – carried them out to the car and drove them to the charity shop.

I even ventured into the garden with the intention of doing something and, after a few hours, an old pleasure reclaimed me. The rabbit-out-of-a-hat magic. I was at home here, and the rules did not change. It was too late in the season to do any serious repair work on the uncared-for plants but this was reassuring: ‘It’s good to know you’re needed,’ I informed Vee, ‘even if it is the garden.’

Vee groaned. ‘What I would do not to be needed?’

For twenty-five years high summer had meant Cornwall but not this one. Perhaps never again, because I could not see myself returning without Nathan.

The idea cast a shadow over my present tranquillity – and I was on my guard against shadows – so I phoned Sam and drove down to Bath for a weekend. Alice was away on a brainstorming conference so we took ourselves off into the country and walked. Sam endeavoured to explain his frustration and bewilderment at how little progress the affair was making.

After a while, it struck me that Sam still talked about Alice with an unhealthy reverence that I considered should have been levelling out by now. Alice’s abilities were, no doubt, awe-inspiring but not superhuman. Then I concluded that he was suffering from an overdose of tragic, courtly love, perhaps not so unusual at his age.

I dared to ask, ‘You don’t think it’s time to move on?’

He shook his head and – so like his father – his stubborn look closed down his face. ‘No.’ We were negotiating a barbed-wire fence. Sam pushed down the top strand and I manoeuvred myself over it. ‘You know, I hate to give up.’ A thought struck him. ‘Are you saying you don’t like Alice?’

‘I was just wondering if you’d had enough of feeling miserable about it and if it was time to give yourself a breathing space.’ Sam’s trousers were hooked up on the wire and I bent to free him. ‘Have you spoken to your father?’

‘Dad?’

‘Who else is your father?’

‘He seemed all right. He was just off to Greece, but he was asking about you.’

We slithered down a dry slope to a field at the bottom and filed along the bank of a stream. A clump of chestnuts had thrown their branches across it, and the water was cool and mysteriously dappled. There was the flash of a dragonfly, the undulating flutter of a cabbage white, and clouds of flies swarming over cowpats.

‘I think Dad feels cut in half with guilt, and he worries about you.’ Sam came to a halt on the stone bridge between fields and leant on the parapet.

‘Worries about me? I’m worried about him.’ I stood beside him and observed the dragonflies skimming the water. ‘Sam… it seems wasteful to cause such an upheaval then feel cut up with guilt.’

Sam shot me a look. ‘I went to see them, you know.’ He scratched at a patch of moss on the stone, which made his fingernail black. ‘I can’t help feeling that Dad is busy convincing himself’

‘Don’t.’

He scratched at more moss, and tiny parings slithered down the stone. ‘Sometimes I think I hate her because she has such a hold on me,’ he exploded. ‘Does that make sense?’

He meant Alice. ‘Perfectly,’ I said.

We walked back across the field to the car. ‘Actually, I’m worried about Ianthe and Poppy. Ianthe is so stubborn sometimes, and she won’t tell me what’s going on. Except that the doctor is keeping a weather eye on her.

‘Like mother, like daughter,’ said Sam.

‘As for Poppy… we don’t know anything useful about Richard or why she suddenly decided to get married,’ I said.

Sam bent down to pick a blade a grass and sucked at the pulpy stalk. ‘Poppy always lands on her feet. When’s she due back?’

‘That’s just it. I don’t know’ I bit my lip. ‘I wish I did. I wish I knew how she was.’

Sam’s hand on my shoulder was infinitely comforting.

Just as I was leaving Alice arrived back from her conference. ‘So sorry I wasn’t here,’ she said, and kissed me, ‘but I’ll make Sam invite you more often.’ I was surprised because I thought she meant it. Without pausing, she dumped her bag by the door, carried her laptop into the sitting room and unzipped it. ‘I’m sure you two had a lovely time.’ She flipped up the screen. ‘Sorry, just have to do one thing.’ She looked at me. ‘Have you got a job yet, Rose?’

Back in London, there was a letter waiting from Neil Skinner, who had, as he predicted, been shifted to the arts ministry, asking me if I was at liberty to do a couple of weeks’ research work for him. The PS read, ‘Not terrific pay, I’m afraid.’ I contacted him, and he explained that he wanted some facts and figures, plus a toe-in-the-water assessment of how public opinion would react to raising the rates of the Public Lending Right, which was currently under review.

I spent two exhausting but enjoyable weeks trawling through reports and statistics, and making phone calls to people who were always on holiday. One was to Timon – What the hell? I thought – who, to his credit, came on the line. ‘Ah, Rose,’ he said. ‘A bird told me that you’re looking well. Are you well?’

I informed Timon that, all things considered, I had never been better, and outlined my questions: did he think there would be support in the press for the case? Would he give it space in the paper? Timon did not hesitate. ‘I don’t think anyone, least of all in the press, would care a monkey’s if an author got an extra tenpence on his earnings. Or not. I wouldn’t waste more than a paragraph on it.’

‘So that means the government can do more or less as it likes?’

‘Rose, do you imagine that the press has any effect on what the government thinks?’ We laughed, and he added, ‘It’s not fair that it’s not a sexy subject, but there we are.’

‘That’s what I needed to know. Thank you.’

‘Rose, since we’re talking, was it always your decision as to what the lead title should be each week?’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Who else?’

‘Have you been keeping an eye on the pages?’

‘No, I haven’t. Should I? Are they not up to scratch?’

‘I’m not going to answer that. But sometimes experience counts.’

‘Don’t tempt me to say something unwise.’

‘Sounds interesting. Would you like to come and have lunch?’

I was startled. ‘In the office?’

‘Don’t be witless. At a restaurant of your choice.’

‘No, thank you.’

Timon chuckled. ‘See you at the Caprice.’

Neil was pleased with the work I submitted and invited me to the House of Commons for dinner. To my astonishment, I enjoyed listening to political gossip and afterwards he took me down to the bar for a nightcap. ‘There’s someone here you might like to meet. Charles, can I introduce Rose Lloyd? She’s been doing some work for me. Rose, this is Charles Madder.’

‘This is my wife, Rose,’ Nathan used to say, keeping his hand lightly and possessively on my arm. After the children had grown up, that is, and he had decided he could be proud of my job. ‘She’s a literary editor.’

A tall, dark man was propping up the bar. ‘Hallo, Neil.’ He was whippet thin and his face was creased and unutterably sad. It was not the face of a man whom anyone might imagine kept a mistress with exotic tastes. ‘I’m sorry about your wife,’ I said.

He examined the contents of his glass. ‘So am I.’

‘I hope the children are… coping.’ He looked at me as if to suggest that we might as well dispense with the anodyne comments because only the truth had any point: the children would not cope for a long time. ‘I’ve thought about your family for a particular reason,’ I continued, ‘because at the time I worked for the Vistemax Group. Many of us felt some responsibility.’

The thin nostrils flared with disdain and weariness. ‘You know that Flora went to them in the first place? That’s how they got on to the story.’

I looked round the bar. It was a masculine place, with puffed leather furniture, large ashtrays and a miasma of smoke. ‘I didn’t know.’

He peered into my face. ‘You look too nice to have worked for Vistemax.’

‘It’s not a question of niceness. There are a lot of nice, right-thinking people who work for it. For any paper.’

‘That’s a free press.’

We were touching on several issues, and here was a man who had been badly hurt in his private and public life. I said gently, ‘It’s a press that relies on personal stories to flesh out its pages. In that respect, they were doing their job.’

Neil touched me on the arm. ‘I’m just going to have a word with someone over there,’ he said. ‘Back soon.’

I said to Charles Madder, ‘I sometimes question if the free press results in exactly the opposite because everyone is too frightened of being exposed to do or say anything honestly. Our honest thoughts don’t bear examination in the press or they become hostages to fortune. Or, the honesty is interpreted so wrongly that it becomes a lie.’

Charles Madder lit a cigarette and sucked at it as if he had only just taken up smoking. ‘The joke is, Flora got the best of them. You’ve heard of policemen who shoot an armed suspect and it turns out to have been the victim’s elaborate method of committing suicide? That was Flora. She provoked the press into pushing her to kill herself.’ He took another drag. ‘I know she did.’ He looked up as the smoke drifted to the ceiling. ‘She got her wish in almost everything. She died a wronged wife, the object of compassion and pity.’ He shrugged. ‘She died.’ He stopped, then continued. ‘Flora was clever in that way and disguised quite how mad she was, and she saw to it that the press made sure that no one ever realized it.’

He meant to jolt me, and he succeeded. I thought about the line stretching between appearance and the truth, and how easily I had tripped over it. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Are you married?’

‘I’m not sure. In between. My husband has left me for a younger woman, but at least it wasn’t blazoned all over the papers.’

There was a spark of interest in the dark eyes. ‘Ah, that explains why Neil…’

I looked at Charles Madder’s hurt, weary face and my sympathy stirred. ‘Neil is a married minister, with ambitions.’

Charles Madder understood perfectly. He smiled at me, and I could see that he had been an attractive man. ‘So was I, once. So was I.’

Hal’s publicist rang me. ‘Is it OK if I give your number to Hal Thorne? He’s very insistent but I thought I’d better check.’ Her tone implied that I would be mad to pass up the opportunity.

‘That sounds like Hal.’

Her tone altered. ‘Oh, you know him.’

I looked out of the window. Summer was on the turn. The evenings were cooler, darker. The garden had lost its airy white innocence, and was now fretted by the orange, red and deep blue of autumn. ‘Yes, you can give Hal my number,’ I said slowly.

I decided to make a cake for Mr Sears. Cake-making had not figured in my routine for a long time and, as I struggled to line the tin with greaseproof paper, I remembered why.

When I bore the result over to him, he was listening to the football. Routinely I picked my way into the kitchen and began operations on a tomato-ketchup-encrusted plate. I carried tea and cake in to Mr Sears.

He eyed the vanilla concoction. ‘You must be perking up.’

I passed him a slice. ‘Have some tea with it. I’ll bring you a lasagne tomorrow.’

Mr Sears ate hungrily. ‘Don’t like foreign muck.’

I knew this game. ‘I needn’t bring any.’

‘I didn’t say I didn’t like your foreign muck.’

‘That’s all right, then.’

We drank our tea companionably. Mr Sears cut a second piece of cake. ‘What are you going to plant on Parsley’s grave?’

There followed a long discussion on what would suit her. Daffodils were too municipal, cyclamen too humble. Roses would not flourish. In the end, we decided on another hellebore and I went back to number seven to fetch a couple of gardening books to show Mr Sears the illustrations. He pointed to a white one with purple markings. ‘That’s Parsley,’ he said.

He inserted a finger with a yellow nail into his mouth and rattled it around. ‘Course,’ he said, ‘now you’re not a missus any more you’ll have plenty more time to come over here.’

When I got back to number seven there was a message from Hal on the answerphone. ‘Sorry to have missed you. I’m off on a book tour to the States. I’ll contact you when I get home. Rose… it was good – no, it was lovely to see you.’

That night I dreamt in vivid, unnatural colour. I was folding clean clothes in the kitchen. Little pairs of trousers. A tiny pink jumper. Socks the size of mushrooms. I was enjoying smoothing them into shape and the clean starchy smell. Yet I could not see any of my own clothes. The stack began to tower above me, and I had enormous difficulty in lifting the basket. I felt it slip between my fingers.

When I woke, I was convinced that I could feel the soft, warm circle of a cat sleeping beside me.

Later in the month, Vee sent over a couple of books for review, which, my finances not being expansive, I welcomed.

One was the autobiography of an actor who received instructions from God before he went on stage. (‘Lucky thing,’ said Vee. ‘At least he knows what’s what.’) The second was a handbook on the ‘amicable’ divorce. ‘Copy date 31 Sept.,’ she had written. ‘Not a moment later.’ I was putting the finishing touches to both when I heard the front door flung open and the thump of a bag hitting the floor.

‘Mum?’ Poppy ricocheted up the stairs to the landing. ‘Mum, I’m home.’

I sprang to my feet so quickly that I knocked over the chair. With a mixture of speechless love, fright and irritation, I flung my arms around her. Bird-like bones, smooth skin, hair that smelt spicy and of the East… that was my daughter. I pulled her as close as I could. ‘Thanks for warning me.’

Poppy giggled. ‘Here I am, a married woman, complete with ring.’ She stuck out the relevant finger and there was no ring, only a tattoo. ‘Fun and longer-lasting than metal, which I think is important, don’t you?’

The tattoo was a heartbreakingly wispy line around her finger, barely there. I stroked her hair. ‘Where’s the bridegroom?’

‘He’s gone north to visit the parents. We like to do things separately.’

After a pause, I said, ‘Really? How sensible.’

‘Yes, well…’ Poppy looked down at the carpet, and out of the window. ‘I wanted to have you to myself, not share you. You do see, don’t you?’

‘Of course.’

She brightened and twirled around so that her muslin skirt floated in a frou of colour. ‘I’m so excited. Do you think we can have a party to tell everyone?’

There was something in the way she said it that told me Poppy was not quite as excited as she made out. ‘Of course. Let’s go and open some wine. I want to hear everything.’

But Poppy insisted that I gave her all the home news first. Obediently, I fed her the latest on Sam and Alice, on Ianthe and Mr Sears. Of Nathan I said nothing and finished up with, ‘Jilly has rung a couple of times. She’s home from New Zealand and job-hunting. Had a fantastic time and demanded to see you the instant you got back. She didn’t know your news so I didn’t say anything.’

In the past, Jilly was always the first person to know anything about Poppy, and normally long before Nathan and I did. ‘Sure. I might phone. Perhaps tomorrow.’ She took off her glasses and rubbed at the lenses. ‘And you, Mum?’

‘Fine.’

‘Oh, yes. My father leaves my mother after twenty-five years and you say you’re fine.’

‘But I am. Not fine-fine, but fine.’

‘Oh.’ Poppy seemed upset that I was so calm. Perhaps I should have rocked and wept to reassure a new bride – but I had done all that. ‘Darling, I’m picking up the pieces. Now, please tell me about you and Richard, the wedding…’

Poppy launched into traveller’s tales, which culminated in a story of a tropical ceremony where the food had been served on banana leaves, the guests danced on the sand and dived, naked, into the sea. She did not, however, talk much about Richard.

‘Dad wouldn’t have budgeted for naked guests,’ I said, thinking of Nathan’s plans in the file. Poppy’s red mouth tightened, a warning sign, and I changed the subject. ‘You always said you didn’t want to get “tied up and desperate” Like me. Darling, are you quite, quite sure that Richard is the man with whom you want to share the rest of your life?’

‘Given the situation, isn’t the “rest of your life” bit rather ambitious? After… after you and Dad, I don’t want to think in those terms.’

I felt myself flushing. ‘We nearly made it.’ I grabbed one of her hands. ‘Nearly.’

Poppy pulled herself free. ‘You’re angry with me. Richard said there’d be a row.’

I guessed that Richard had not said anything of the sort. It was Poppy who wanted the row. ‘I don’t mind how you got married,’ I lied expertly, ‘as long as you’re happy. I can wear the hat to someone’s else wedding.’

She was not sure if I was teasing or bitter, laughing or crying – I was not sure myself.

Poppy stood behind me and slid her arms round me. ‘It was so easy, Mum. Thailand is magic and moonlight. It seemed right to go with one’s feelings.’ She was silent. ‘I got caught up.’

‘As long as you’re both happy.’

Poppy’s arms tightened around me. ‘Where’s Parsley?’

I told her and she burst into shuddering sobs, which I suspected were only partly for Parsley. Eventually she calmed down and settled back on the sofa, her sweet young face swept of its defences. ‘You’ll like Richard, really,’ she said. ‘You don’t know him yet.’ This was true. ‘He’s full of surprises, and Dad got off to a bad start asking him all those questions about jobs. It brought out the worst in him.’

‘I see. Our fault, then?’

‘Got it in one.’ Poppy grinned, and I felt better.