Francesca and the Mermaid

by Beryl Kingston

  He thought he’d misheard her. ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a cocktail.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ he said, recovering. ‘Of course.’ And went to get it.

  It looked pretty sickly to him but she took it, sipped it and seemed to enjoy it.

  He tried the next line. ‘D’you come here often?’

  She didn’t hear it. ‘What?’

  ‘D’you wanna dance?’

  ‘Not really,’ she said. And sighed.

  He moved into suave and caring mode at once. ‘Don’t sigh, pretty lady!’ he shouted at her. ‘Tell your uncle Jeffrey what’s up.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tell me what’s up,’ he shouted.

  ‘People are foul,’ she shouted back.

  He gave a deprecating smile. ‘Not all of us.’

  ‘My flat mates are,’ she said. ‘You’d never believe the way they go on. Never believe it. Never. They won’t let me say nothing. It’s all what they want, their music, their programmes, every single fucking night, their programmes.’ She was shouting in earnest now, her face distorted, and her eyes staring. ‘I got rights too. They’re not the only ones at uni. I got a career to think of an’ all. I pay my share of their fucking mortgage. More than my share. It’s not right now is it.’ Then she burped and put one rather fat white hand over her mouth. ‘’Scuse ’ee!’

  Useful facts slotted themselves into his mind, one after the other, neat and slick as cards sliding into a cash dispenser. She was drunk and she paid a mortgage and she wanted out of her flat. ‘Sounds tough,’ he said, arranging his face into a suitably sympathetic expression. ‘Tell you what. Why don’t we go and have a bite to eat somewhere and you can tell me all about it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bite to eat,’ he said, miming lifting a fork to his mouth and munching.

  She watched him in the bemused, lop-sided way that drunken girls so often assume, then she shrugged her shoulders so that her tits swung inside her skimpy t-shirt. ‘Why not?’ she said.

  He put a hand under her elbow and escorted her out of the club, his expression all tender concern.

  ‘I suppose we’d better introduce ourselves,’ he said suavely. ‘I’m Jeffrey.’

  She looked at him lopsidedly. ‘Bubbles,’ she said.

  ‘That’s a pretty name,’ he said, thinking how silly it was. But what did her name matter? Inside his head he was crowing. It was in the bag. It was a done deal. Give him a week or two and she’d be moving in. Then they’d see some changes. With her paying half the mortgage – and if she was shelling out towards a student flat she could certainly pay towards his mortgage – and cooking the meals and shopping and that sort of thing, he’d have time for business again. He’d get that china clay thing sorted out for a start. Visit the bloke with the Magic Mermaid pottery. I’ll bet he’d be up for it. And actually she was quite pretty now he came to look at her. Or she would be if she wasn’t sloshed. She’d do very well. That’ud show that damned fool Fran. She needn’t think she can walk out on me and get away with it.

  Francesca was actually walking into the restaurant that Henry had chosen and feeling decidedly hungry. It was an elegant place, black, white and gold and softly lit but it contained such a variety of people in such amazingly idiosyncratic clothes that she felt happily at home there. And the food was excellent. She chose melon and smoked salmon, a perfectly cooked steak and crepes suzette and enjoyed every mouthful. Henry ordered half a bottle of red wine, ‘can’t have any more as we’re both driving,’ and that was a revelation to her. She’d always avoided red wine because she thought it was too rough but this one slid down her throat like velvet. She felt better with every course she ate and when her last plate was clean, she leant back in her chair, smiled at Henry across the table and told him she felt like a different person.

  ‘I hope you’re not,’ he said, smiling back. ‘I shouldn’t like to lose my premier artist.’

  What a compliment, she thought. ‘Oh that won’t change,’ she assured him. ‘I shall always want to paint.’

  ‘Glad to hear it. Ready for coffee?’

  ‘Please. I think I need sobering up.’

  ‘Well now,’ he said when the coffee had been served and poured, ‘we must give our minds to how Agnes is going to manage when they send her home. She’ll never be able to get up and down those stairs with her leg in plaster. We shall have to move a bed downstairs for her. I presume she’s got a downstairs loo?’ Francesca nodded. ‘With a wash basin?’ And when Francesca nodded again. ‘Right. So it’ll just mean moving the bed. And some of her bedroom furniture, dressing table, chest of drawers, that sort of thing. We could do it between us. My gardeners would give us a hand.’

  ‘Yes,’ Francesca said but she spoke doubtfully, wondering whether she ought to tell him something about Agnes’s living arrangements.

  He was too busy thinking and planning to notice her doubt. ‘It’ll mean shifting some of the furniture about downstairs to make room but that shouldn’t be a problem.’

  He was so full of enthusiasm, she felt she had to warn him. ‘It could be.’

  ‘Tricky stairs, is that it?’

  ‘No, no nothing like that. The stairs are fine.’

  He looked at her quizzically. ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘I’m not sure I should tell you,’ she said, looking worried again. ‘I mean, it could be private. She might not like it. I mean it might upset her.’

  Henry watched her with growing affection. She looked so lost when she was worried and that crumpled expression brought Candida back to him most powerfully, especially now, when the table lamp was gilding her usually pale face. ‘I would be the soul of discretion,’ he tried to reassure her. ‘Nothing you tell me would go beyond these four walls.’

  ‘Yes, I know that,’ she said. ‘But I wouldn’t want to upset her. I mean, I want to help her.’

  ‘We both do,’ he said, ‘which is why we need to know what the problems are. Once we know that we can begin to solve them.’

  She sighed. ‘You make it sound simple.’

  ‘I’m not saying that. It could be quite difficult but if we want to help her. . . .’

  Francesca put out a tentative feeler. ‘Have you ever been to her house?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he said, a little surprised by the question. ‘No. I haven’t. I’ve been in the kitchen and the garden, of course, because that’s where she is when I go calling but most of our socialising has been in my house. I don’t think she’s much of a one for entertaining. It’s not big enough? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s plenty big enough. There are three rooms downstairs apart from the kitchen. It’s just. . . . Well. . . . What I mean to say is, she doesn’t like things being moved.’

  He took that lightly. ‘That’s not a problem,’ he said. ‘We’ll put everything back as we found it. I’ll make a floor plan to show where everything should go.’

  Oh dear, Francesca thought, he doesn’t understand what I’m trying to tell him. ‘I think you ought to look at the place before you start talking about floor plans,’ she said.

  ‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘And the sooner the better if we’ve got furniture to shift. Look here. I’ve got to drive you back to pick up your car. I’m assuming you left it there? Right. Why don’t we take a look at things tonight? Then we could make plans. Although I don’t suppose you’ve got a key to the house, have you?’

  ‘No,’ Francesca told him, ‘I haven’t, but the back door’s never locked. She says you don’t get burglars out in the sticks.’

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘In that case, we’ll go and take a look. See the lie of the land.’

  I ought to tell him, Francesca worried, but she couldn’t think how to do it without being disloyal to Agnes. It was very awkward. ‘Be prepared for a few shocks,’ she warned.

  It was very dark in the empty country lanes and the hedges were grey as ghosts in the headlights. Halfway there, a dog fox ran across the road j
ust ahead of them, its russet coat bold in the sudden light of their approach. It looked at them briefly before it streaked into the hedge and the road seemed darker than ever after it had gone. Then they’d reached Agnes’ house and were edging through the overgrown hedges that bulged over the drive. The house was so wrapped about by darkness they could barely make out its outline and the garden was sentinelled by black trees, where half-hidden stars flickered and swung like tiny candles. There was a faint smell of wood smoke in the air and the night was full of unfamiliar sounds, shuffles and creaks and a distant bird hooting. Francesca shivered despite herself and was glad when Henry put a hand under her elbow and led her towards the back door.

  They switched on the light in the kitchen and went off rather gingerly to start their tour of inspection. Francesca led the way and stopped to tell Henry what each room had originally been before she opened the door on the chaos inside. It was perverse of her and she knew it but it pleased her to see how shocked he was.

  ‘Poor Aggie!’ he said, when he’d taken note of all three rooms and was back in the hall again. ‘I didn’t realize the housework had got on top of her like this. She must have been struggling for quite while. I can see what you meant about it being difficult to move the bed. You forget that your friends are getting old, that’s the trouble. Poor old Aggie. I shall send my cleaners in to help her. She shouldn’t be struggling with all this on her own.’

  ‘I don’t think that would be . . .’ Francesca began. ‘I mean, she might not . . .’

  He wasn’t listening. ‘If we’re going to bring her bed down here we shall have a helluva lot of clearing to do. I’ll get my cleaners on to it. We’ll do all three rooms while we’re at it. We’ll have to hire a skip for all the rubbish. There’s far too much for the dustmen to take. If only she’d said I could have helped her earlier. I shall get on to it first thing.’

  ‘If she’ll let you do it,’ Francesca managed to say. ‘I don’t think she will.’

  ‘I take your point,’ he said reasonably. ‘She won’t want us to know she can’t manage. Don’t worry. I’ll do it tactfully. It’s not her fault she’s getting old, poor Aggie, but she’ll have to face up to it sooner or later. She can’t go on living in this mess. It’s not hygienic. Anyway, given the situation she’s in at the moment, she doesn’t really have a choice. She can’t struggle up and down stairs on crutches and we can’t get her bed into any of these rooms unless we shift the junk. Don’t worry. She’ll come round to it. Think how much clearer and cleaner it’ll be when it’s done. She’ll be grateful then.’

  Francesca looked at him steadily. ‘I keep trying to tell you, Henry. She won’t want it to be done at all.’

  ‘She hasn’t got a choice.’

  ‘So you keep saying. But she thinks she has and her choice is to keep things as they are and not change a thing.’

  ‘Then we shall have to persuade her otherwise. We’ll do it together first thing tomorrow morning. The sooner the better, don’t you think. Of course, she’ll have to stay with you until we’ve got this all sorted out. Is that OK?’

  Francesca assured him that it was but privately she didn’t think Agnes would take very kindly to that idea either.

  ‘And of course all this clearing up could take quite a while. Three or four days probably. So we’ll have to tell her that too.’

  He’s so sure about things, Francesca thought, watching him. That’s why he’s such a good boss. But he’s wrong about this. If he goes barging into the hospital tomorrow telling her things she doesn’t want to hear she’s going to be terribly upset. I shall have to stop him, somehow.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea for us both to visit tomorrow morning. I mean, it might seem a bit heavy handed.’ And when he frowned and looked hurt she tried to modify her words. ‘I’m not saying it would be, but it might seem like it to her. I mean she’s had quite a shock. She could be feeling – um – tender about things. It might take quite a time to get her to think about anything and you know how slow they are in hospital. What I’m saying is, it might take all day and you ought to be at work with all these orders coming in.’

  ‘I thought I would be a help to you,’ he said, rather huffily. ‘Being two-handed so to speak.’

  She took a deep breath and spoke while her courage was high. ‘I think it would come better from me on my own, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

  ‘Well if that’s how you want to play it,’ he said, still huffy. ‘You’ll let me know how you get on though, won’t you. If we’re going to get the place cleared I shall have to put things in motion as soon as I can. You’ve got my number.’

  ‘Of course,’ she promised. ‘I’ll ring as soon as I know anything.’

  He looked at his watch to bring the conversation to an end, the way he did at work. ‘It’s late,’ he said. ‘I ought to let you go home or it’ll be morning before you get to bed. We can’t do anything more here.’ And he raised his head and gazed round the half-lit hall, trying to remember which door led to the kitchen. And found himself face to face with Agnes’ portrait.

  It was an extremely uncomfortable moment, because it pushed the memory of his anger at him and did it so powerfully that it took root and grew before he could shake it away. He’d treated her much too roughly, poor Francesca, and there hadn’t been any necessity for it. She hadn’t known she was touching a nerve, poor girl. He remembered her face, gazing at him across the desk, looking stricken, and he stood quite still, staring at the painted face of his old friend and, for the first time in years, he felt ashamed of himself.

  Francesca stood still too, watching his changing expressions and the way his spine had stiffened, and even though it was late and she was so tired she could barely keep her eyes open, she read his thoughts and knew he was remembering their awful conversation and regretting it. She was beginning to wonder whether she ought to say something to show him she didn’t hold it against him and dithering because she was so exhausted by the effort she’d made in opposing him that she couldn’t think of the right way to do it, when he turned his head to look at her and spoke again.

  ‘It’s very good,’ he said. ‘You’ve really caught her likeness.’

  To be praised when she wasn’t expecting it and after she’d taken such a stand against him, made her blush.

  The blush eased him. ‘You must be pleased with it,’ he said.

  ‘Well yes, I was,’ she admitted, looking at the portrait.

  ‘Was?’

  ‘I think you’re always pleased with something when you’ve just finished it,’ she explained. ‘You see all the faults later on.’

  He smiled at her. ‘There speaks a perfectionist,’ he said. ‘I think it’s splendid. You’ve caught her character.’

  That was such a fulsome compliment and so exactly what she wanted for this portrait of hers that she glowed with the pleasure of it. ‘Well thank you,’ she said. ‘That was what I was trying to do.’

  He was intrigued by her skill and touched by her obvious pleasure in his praise. ‘Have you painted a lot of portraits?’

  ‘This is the first,’ she told him, looking at it. ‘I did life classes at college, naturally. It was part of the course. But that was different. I mean, we weren’t trying to reveal a character, we were trying to get the proportions right. It was bodies and limbs all sitting perfectly still, not faces.’

  Talk of revealing character made him feel uncomfortable again. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Time for home. You’re asleep on your feet.’ And he turned to walk through the kitchen, talking as he went. ‘Now be careful how you drive. These roads are very dark at this time of night. We don’t want an RTA on top of everything else.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she told him. But actually when they were out in the creaking darkness again she didn’t feel quite so sure of herself. There was something spooky about all those noises that made the hair rise on the nape of her neck. She was quite glad to slide inside the security of her car.

&nb
sp; As she settled behind the wheel, there was a loud screech somewhere alarmingly close by. The sound made her jump. ‘It’s only an owl,’ Henry said. And watched her until she’d eased her car safely out of the drive. It had been quite a day.

  Francesca drove home to Lewes extremely carefully and sensibly. It was dark and late and she was so tired her bones were aching. As she negotiated the black lanes, she thought longingly of the warm comfortable bed that was waiting for her and yearned to be back in the peaceful order of her flat. When she finally eased her key into the lock, she was limp with relief to be home. And the first thing she smelt as she stepped inside the hall was dirty socks. That damned Brad! she thought, irritably. He’s still here. After everything I said this morning. And the morning’s anger returned to flood her with energy and she stomped into the living room to sort him out. There was no doubt in her mind that she could do it, not after all the things that had happened that day.

  He was sprawled across her nice, new sofa, looking as frowsty as he smelt. She took the duvet in both hands and skinned it off him. ‘Get up, you lazy great lump!’ she shouted at him. ‘Time you were out of here. Get up!’

  He was in his nasty cheesy socks and his unsavoury underwear which was grey and grimy and made his legs look flabby. ‘Whazzat?’ he said thickly. ‘What’s amarrer?’ And he opened his eyes blearily and tried to focus them.

  She was stripping the duvet of its dirty cover, thinking she’d have to open the window and give the place an airing. ‘Get up,’ she said. ‘Put some clothes on. You look repellent.’

  He was squinting at his watch. ‘Do you know what time it is?’ he said, sounding aggrieved.

  ‘Time you were out of here.’

  ‘It’s ten past two.’

  ‘Get your clothes on.’

  ‘You’re not throwing me out.’

  She pulled the pillow from underneath his head. ‘I’m throwing you out,’ she said implacably. ‘I threw you out this morning only you chose not to take any notice. Now it’s comeuppance time.’

  ‘You can’t throw me out in the middle the night,’ he said aghast. ‘Oh come on Fran. Have a heart. I’ve got nowhere to go.’