The Queen's Margarine

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘I suppose you’re keen to get off to your party.’

  ‘Party?’

  ‘You told me you were going to a—’

  ‘Oh, yes. Of course. It slipped my mind.’ Her ‘party’ gear now seemed a shade ridiculous. Julia was right, in fact – orange wasn’t a wise choice of colour. Acceptable for tulips, but not for a plumpish, blondish (and probably past it) human female, who looked better dressed in inconspicuous beige.

  Between customers, she gazed out of the window at the brilliant April sunshine, which seemed to mock her sense of crushing disappointment. These last few days, the weather had been as mercurial as her moods; switching from serene to stormy and back again, with perverse and spiteful glee.

  ‘Are you sure that man didn’t come in?’ she asked again, returning to the desk, after helping a reader locate the gardening section. Gardens had reminded her of tulips – not that she needed a reminder.

  ‘Look, I’ve told you twice,’ Julia snapped, ‘he didn’t. Anyway you’ve been here yourself all day, apart from an hour or so running the group.’

  ‘Yes, but weren’t you out at lunch then?’

  ‘No. Do we have to keep going over the minutiae of where I was, and when?’

  Yes, Claire murmured soundlessly, we do. She needed to be absolutely certain that Fergus hadn’t come and gone without anybody noticing. Unlikely. He wasn’t a shrinking violet who would shuffle in and huddle in a corner. Besides, Olwen, too, had been keeping a lookout for him, whilst setting up the display of ‘Great Inventors’. Maybe the whole thing was a hoax. Fergus Boyd Adair was probably Joe Bloggs in reality – a plumber or estate agent – or certainly no more of a poet than she was the Queen of Hearts. But what would be the point of such deception? – it didn’t make the slightest sense. And, anyway, he’d seemed completely genuine; enthusiastic, eager for her help, and envisaging a whole new poetic project.

  ‘Hey, you at the desk, are you deaf or something?’

  Claire suddenly noticed a woman standing waiting: a stiffcoiffed matron, tut-tutting in impatience.

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’ she barked aggressively.

  ‘Er, no. I do apologize.’

  The woman gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘I don’t know why we pay our rates, when you people are so useless.’

  Claire switched on a placatory smile, although inwardly alarmed by her own peculiar mental state. Could an obsession with a poet actually make you blind and deaf? ‘How can I help?’ she asked, endeavouring to sound brisk and on the ball.

  The woman seemed slightly mollified; her glare changing to a frown. ‘I’m looking for a book, but I don’t know what it’s called or who wrote it.’

  ‘Well, can you give me some idea of what it’s about?’

  ‘No, I can’t. You see, I had it out before – last year – but never got round to reading it. All I can remember is that it was big and blue – I think – with a picture of a church on the front.’

  Claire ran through a mental repertoire of books: church architecture, ecclesiastical history, or some novel, perhaps, set in a country parsonage. ‘Was is fiction or non-fiction?’

  The woman didn’t appear to know the difference, which made things still more difficult, yet, a mere ten minutes later, the book had been miraculously located (on the trolley by the returns desk), and a grudging ‘Thank you’ had even escaped the woman’s lips. Once she’d shuffled off, Claire allowed her mind to migrate back to Fergus. Perhaps he’d never returned from Bristol – been killed in a train crash or mown down as he crossed the street. Or was simply too ill to come out: laid low with flu, or stricken with consumption, like Keats or D.H. Lawrence. Writers had notoriously bad health, and poets in particular seemed alarmingly accident-prone. Shelley had drowned at thirty; Byron died of fever in some Greek campaign or other, again pitifully young. She should be wearing black, not orange, and certainly her mood was dark as she prepared to help the other staff usher out the last remaining customers and get ready to lock up. Tomorrow was her Saturday off, and the place was shut on Sundays, so the earliest she might lay eyes on Fergus was a good sixty hours away – too achingly distant to provide a shred of comfort.

  Then, suddenly, the dreary, dying library exploded into life, as a tall, dark, dashing figure swooped full-pelt through the door and bounded up to the desk.

  ‘Sorry! Terribly late! Meant to come hours ago, but words were gushing out of me and I didn’t want to stop the flow.’

  Everyone looked up – Bill and Olwen with interest; Julia in distaste.

  ‘Claire, you look sensational!’ Leaning right across the desk, he gazed at her with undisguised admiration. ‘I adore the orange. It’s exactly the same colour as the tulips in my dream. What a weird coincidence. And, talking of tulips, I don’t expect you’ve had a minute to find out anything about them.’

  ‘Well, actually—’

  ‘Though I’m praying that you have, because they’re coming out of my ears – or at least tulip poetry is. It’s funny, you know, you can ignore a subject all your life – I mean, I hardly know a tulip from a daffodil – then, all at once, the world is full of tulips. They’re the only flower in the world for me at present.’

  Yes, she agreed. And for me.

  ‘Well, did you find a book or two?’ he asked, still scrutinizing her outfit. ‘Listen, forgive me being personal, but I can’t believe how you’ve changed. You should always wear bright colours, you know. They make your eyes look bluer and—’

  ‘We’re about to close,’ Julia put in; her voice as strident as a piece of chalk rasping on a blackboard.

  ‘Yes, I’m keeping you all. Most inconsiderate. But I’ll be gone in a sec – I promise. Just tell me, Claire, did you find some books?’

  ‘I found twenty-two, in fact. Not all of them exclusively about tulips, but including books on art and nature, a few useful ones on Holland and the bulb-fields, lots of gardening books, of course, and even—’

  ‘He can’t take out more than eight at a time,’ Julia interrupted. ‘If he wants the others, he’ll have to bring the first ones back.’

  No problem. The more often he came in, the more delighted she would be. But what about her research? It would take ages to explain all the different sources she’d consulted, and the tulip’s use in medicine and cooking, as well as in trade and garden-design, and a host of other areas. She was also dying to convey to him how, although she’d once viewed tulips as comparatively low in the hierarchy of flowers (neither romantic like red roses, nor exotic like camellias; not highly scented like freesias, or even endearingly bizarre like red-hot pokers), that had changed entirely now. Indeed, she could almost understand the crazy sums paid at the height of tulipomania. The flower had come to be regarded, then, rather like a work of art: a thing of such rare beauty it was, in essence, priceless. Yet how could she discuss such matters in any sort of depth, when Julia was already glaring at the clock? Besides, they were sitting within a few feet of each other, so her colleague was bound to eavesdrop on any personal chat. And undoubtedly remind her (should she herself ‘forget’) that readers had to pay for printed matter, extorting every last penny of the cost.

  Fortunately, just at that moment, one of the last stragglers suddenly rushed up to the desk with three DVDs to rent, and, while Julia was ringing them up on the till, she quickly took her chance, lowering her voice to a whisper.

  ‘I do have more information, Fergus – print-outs from a whole variety of sources. The problem is—’

  ‘It’s lock-up time.’ He completed the sentence for her, now speaking equally softly; his usual trumpet blare muted to a lyre. ‘Don’t worry, I understand. Tell you what – why don’t I walk you home?’

  Walk her home? Impossible! She might run into Susanna, coming back from netball practice, or her evil neighbour, Ruby, might be snooping, as so often. Given her predilection for mischief-making, Ruby could easily inflate a simple tête-à-tête into an adulterous affair, then regale the entire street with tales of her debauchery.
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  ‘Yes, good idea,’ she said, with studied nonchalance. Any risk, however ill-advised, simply had to be discounted for the thrill of this man’s company.

  ‘Who in God’s name’s that?’ Rodney groped out a hand for the alarm clock, peering at its illuminated figures.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Claire said sleepily, rolling out of bed. ‘Maybe it’s the milkman.’ She had an uneasy feeling she hadn’t paid his bill for several weeks, so he was probably on the warpath.

  ‘Well, tell him not to wake us up so early – especially not on Saturday.’

  She grabbed her dressing-gown and tiptoed down the stairs, hoping the shrill peal of the doorbell hadn’t woken the kids.

  Her ‘pacify-the-milkman’ smile changed into an expression of astonishment as she came face to face with an enormous bunch of flowers: orangey-yellow tulips, with ruffled, frilly petals, and pink streaks in the insides. The man holding them was a total stranger – not that much of him was visible, half-concealed as it was by his booty.

  ‘Are you Claire Henderson?’ he asked.

  ‘Er, yes.’

  ‘Good! I was instructed to give you these in person.’

  Barely had he handed them over, when he turned tail and sprinted down the path, then continued along the street, as if on fire.

  ‘Wait!’ she called, but he was already out of sight, and she could hardly hurtle after him in bare feet and a dressing-gown.

  The flowers felt heavy in her arms, and weren’t wrapped in any sort of paper. Water was dripping from their stems, making damp spots on her night-clothes. Stumbling into the kitchen, she laid them on the table, torn between elation and anxiety. It was obvious who they were from, but how could she explain to her family so extravagant a gift? Tied to one of the tulip stems was a small white envelope. Scarcely able to contain herself, she tore it open and read the note inside.

  How can I ever thank you for all that work you did on my behalf? And, better still, for giving me a new, exciting project: to ravish you among the tulips. Ring me – now! Fergus.

  ‘Ravish’ her! Blood rushed to her cheeks as she read the words again. Things were going far too fast – her own stupid fault for leading him on. Deliberately, she hadn’t told him she was married. Why bore him with tedious tales of married life, when it seemed imperative to charm him, impress him with her research skills, play the role of poet’s Muse? Three glasses of wine had clearly turned her head, and the exhilaration of being with so beguiling a man – not to mention a much younger one: a zingy twenty-nine to her own fading forty-four.

  So what did she do now? Phone him, as he had ordered so peremptorily? Out of the question. Never, in twenty years of marriage, had she cheated on her husband, and didn’t intend to start. Or should she simply chuck the tulips in the dustbin and pretend they’d never arrived?

  Equally impossible. It would be sacrilege to destroy such expensive and unusual flowers – the exact tulips of his dream. How on earth could he have afforded them? The pittance he earned from teaching would hardly fund such largesse. Even more inexplicable, how had he managed to track them down, when she herself had failed, despite checking literally hundreds of varieties in books and specialist catalogues, and on every site online? The sheer range of different species was astounding, and she could barely spell their complicated names: tulipa kaufmanniana, tulipa taihangshanica, tulipa grengiolensis. Some of the English names, in contrast, had fired her imagination, expressing, as they did, her own churning sense of danger and excitement: Eros, Bacchus, Queen of Sheba, Virtuoso, Brilliant Fire.

  And these particular tulips – not just pictures on a page or screen, but vibrantly substantial – made her feel a further bond with Fergus, as if she were living through another of his dreams. Uncatalogued, unclassified, they seemed to hail from some unfathomable realm beyond the scope of flower-shops or the reach of normal suppliers. And that enigmatic stranger entrusted to deliver them, was he a mystic messenger or just a casual errand boy? All she had really registered was that he was short and plain and pale – hardly any match for the spectacular bouquet. Typical of Fergus, of course, to do things to excess. Even in the bar, he’d wolfed half-a-dozen packets of cheese-and-onion crisps, one after the other, scarcely bothering to chew.

  ‘I haven’t eaten for days, Claire. When I’m writing well, that takes precedence, and everything else – food, drink, sleep, fresh air – is more or less irrelevant.’

  Her own regime of regular, well-balanced meals seemed dull in the extreme, and she longed to share his all-consuming passion for an art. In fact, sitting with him in that dim and intimate corner of the bar, she had lost all track of time, and hadn’t even cared that her family at home were still waiting for their supper (and doubtless wondering where the hell she was). Had it been a mere eight days ago? Centuries seemed to have passed – not days – and, in fact, she’d become increasingly depressed, assuming he must have forgotten all about her. Yet how magical to think that he had spent that time ferreting out so incredible a present.

  Suddenly, she heard footsteps on the stairs. Rodney, or the kids! She dived towards the table to gather up the tulips and hide them somewhere safe. Too late.

  ‘Good Lord!’ her husband exclaimed, shambling into the kitchen in his old-fashioned stripy pyjamas. ‘How the hell did those get here?’

  She stared at them, unspeaking, racking her brains for a reply. ‘That … that woman sent them.’

  ‘Which woman?’

  ‘You know – the one I’ve been helping, who’s doing a book on tulips.’

  ‘She must be made of money. That’s a heck of a lot of flowers!’

  ‘She … she just wanted to say thank you for all the time I spent.’

  ‘Well, I wish she’d waited till a bit later in the day. It’s a bit of a cheek, isn’t it, waking us at this ungodly hour? And at the weekend.’

  ‘Oh, she didn’t come herself.’

  ‘Who did, then?’

  Again, she cast around for inspiration. ‘Er, Interflora.’

  ‘In that case, I’m getting on the phone to them immediately. They’ve no right to make deliveries so early.’

  She tried to calm him down. He was never good in the mornings and, deprived of his Saturday lie-in, became tetchy in the extreme. ‘It’s not worth it, Rodney, honestly. If you work yourself into a state, you’ll never get back to sleep, and we’re out late tonight, remember.’

  ‘I was out late last night, Claire, which is why I object to—’

  ‘Mum!’ Susanna shouted from the landing. ‘What’s going on? Do you have to wake the whole house?’

  ‘Sorry, darling,’ she muttered, as Susanna came pounding down the stairs, wearing nothing but a frown and an elongated T-shirt. ‘Someone sent some flowers and—’

  ‘Flowers? Fantastic! That must be Joe. We had this massive argument last Sunday, so he must have decided to make up.’

  ‘You didn’t say you’d had a row. I’m sorry, love. I know how much he—’

  ‘Mum, you’ve been in your own world these last few days. None of us could get through to you. If I told you I’d won two million on the lottery, I doubt that you’d have heard.’

  Claire sank into a chair, the mass of flowers reproaching her. She’d not only neglected her daughter, she’d also betrayed her husband – in thought, if not in deed.

  ‘They’re not yours, Susanna,’ Rodney told her peevishly. ‘They’re Mum’s. Sent by some crazy woman who doesn’t realize that working people try to catch up on their sleep at the weekends. So I suggest we all go back to bed before Daniel wakes and—’

  ‘I am awake,’ called a truculent voice from just outside the door. ‘And it’s all your fault for shouting.’

  Claire glanced from the tulips to the faces of her family: all resentful and annoyed. Yet, however guilty she might feel, that dangerous, wicked, titillating phrase, ‘ravish you among the tulips’, was exploding through her body like a firework, and she was whooshing up to the stratosphere in great rocket-showers of ora
ngey-yellow flame.

  ‘Those flowers were duds,’ Susanna said disparagingly, gesturing to the vase in the centre of the supper-table. ‘Look at them, Mum, drooping after just four days. I bet that woman got them on the cheap.’

  Claire said nothing. In contrast to her daughter, she was intrigued by the way the tulips had changed from prim, upstanding Puritans to abandoned, sexy sluts. Their formerly rigid stalks were now lithe and wild and supple; bending in all directions, reaching out, as if desperate to be touched. The petals, too, had opened up, revealing their most private parts: pistils, stamens, intimate pink streaks, while even the leaves seemed lasciviously moist and fleshy.

  ‘Mind if I get on with my coursework now?’ Susanna asked, finishing her last spoonful of dessert. ‘Miss Barrett said I should have added a bibliography and several more quotations, to back up what I’ve said.’

  ‘No, go ahead. I’ll wash up and Daniel can wipe.’

  ‘That’s not fair! Why is it always me?’

  ‘Because you haven’t got exams,’ his sister retorted, pushing back her chair and flouncing out of the room.

  ‘I’ve got coursework, though, just the same as her. Mum, let me off tonight – go on!’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Want me to help?’ asked Rodney, unconvincingly. He, too, had left the table, but was already headed for the sofa, with his wineglass and The Times.

  Claire shook her head, relieved to be alone, in fact, so that she could fix her mind on Fergus. She’d been hoping – indeed praying, despite her lack of any fixed belief – that he’d show up at the library again, but his continued absence posed a real dilemma. If she phoned him, as he’d asked, she might give the impression of being ready (indeed eager) to be ‘ravished’, yet if she didn’t ring, he might well feel rejected, or offended by her rudeness in failing to thank him for the flowers. And those flowers were omnipresent. They had filled four separate vases, so she seemed to be confronted by him everywhere she went. Even in the kitchen, their once tight-furled leaves leaned eagerly towards her, as she began the washing-up, as if to say, ‘Take a risk. Take a chance. What have you to lose?’