by Patrick Gale
Samantha, Lady Canberra’s latest, was peeling potatoes when Candida let herself in. She would soon have to be replaced; Jasper had twice unthinkingly referred to her as Mummy. Her straw-blonde hair was tied back in a pony-tail and she had on one of her unwise, short skirts. Seeing her mistress, she flushed pink behind her unkind freckles.
‘Boy, am I glad to see you, Candy!’ she exclaimed.
‘And why’s that, Sam?’ Candida undid a button on her blouse and washed her hands at the sink.
‘You’re back just in time. Perdita’s been guzzling all day and the last of your milk ran out an hour ago. Christ! Amazing flowers! Where’d you get them?’
‘Is she awake now?’
‘She’s hollered herself to sleep but Jasper’ll wake her in a sec with all his thumping.’
Jasper could indeed be heard crashing his pedal car around the playroom overhead.
‘How was she with the bottle?’
‘Hated it at first, but I did as the book suggested and squeezed a drop or two onto her tongue. Once she realised it was still your stuff and not something out of a can, there was no holding her. A couple of days and we can put her on to formula.’
‘Goodee,’ sighed Candida and went to inspect her mail. The envelopes were on the table beside the salmon, which Maison Rostand had dropped off as ordered. The fish lay under clingfilm on its returnable plate, poached, boned and with its skin replaced with alternating ‘scales’ of blanched arugula and radicchio. If Madame Rostand’s promises had been fulfilled to the letter, its intestinal cavity was stuffed with a fluffy mousse of haddock and ricotta, coloured with flecks of tarragon and lemon zest. Maison Rostand was confidential to the point of invisibility. Each dish delivered to a household for the first time was accompanied by its easily memorised recipe, all ready for passing on to an enquiring guest. Candida paid the company a small retainer to keep her recipes unique and to buy the right to pass them off as her own in magazine articles. ‘The hollandaise,’ she murmured. ‘They’ve forgotten the hollandaise.’
‘It’s in the fridge,’ said Samantha. ‘I’ll slip it into the bain-marie before I put Jasper to bed.’
‘Fabulous. What have you made us for pudding?’
‘Two chocolate terrine. That’s in the fridge too.’
‘Good girl. You have been busy.’
The letters were more than Candida could face. She glanced at a couple of facetious postcards from abroad, peered inside a bank statement then, casting the rest aside, walked upstairs. She took off her shoes to free her hot, cramped toes, and tiptoed into Perdita’s bedroom. Her baby was fast asleep, breathing heavily. Candida had spent the weekend trying to acclimatise herself to the indignity of a human milking-device and Perdita to the less-than-luxury of a rubber teat. The news that she had accepted the replacement so fast had come as a relief; Candida was a valuable commodity but the studio would not take kindly to a backstage nurse, not now that the baby had already been introduced to the nation and become stale news. As it was, she was having to hire a babysitter from Lady Canberra’s to cover feeding times on Samantha’s day off. She was tiptoeing out again when the playroom door was grappled open with a grunt and Jasper came pedalling to greet her.
‘Mummee!’ he shouted.
‘Quiet,’ said Candida, and gestured to the doorway behind her. ‘She’s asleep and Mummy’s tired.’
‘I’m tired too.’
‘Are you, poppet?’
‘Very. But Peter showed us how to make pasta pictures. Do you want to see?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Oh. Well, I gave it to Rachel Highsmith because hers wasn’t very good and she’s always giving me kisses and things in the shrubbery …’
‘Is she, by Jove?’
‘Yes, so you can’t see it but it was very good. At least, Rachel said so.’
‘Do you want a kiss from me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘Here.’ He pointed to his cheek, turning his head to one side. ‘And make sure you leave a red kissy-mark. Rachel can’t do those.’
‘All right.’ She knelt on the carpet before him and planted a thick kiss where indicated. Still in the car, he trundled over to a full length mirror to inspect himself.
‘Brilliant,’ he said. Although the kiss mark was less red than nymphe bronzée, and he would have preferred one to match his car, he knew from a severe dressing-down she once gave him, that Mummy’s lipsticks were fabulously superior to the redder ones Samantha let him play with.
‘We’ve got people coming to dinner tonight, poppet, so you will be good about going to bed on time, won’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good boy.’ Candida rose, stroked his hair and started towards her bedroom to choose what to wear.
‘Mummy?’
‘Yes?’
‘There’s a man peering up at the house from the playground.’
‘Is there?’
‘Yes. He was there when you came home, only you didn’t see him. I did though, because I was watching, and he’s been there for ages.’
‘Never mind. I expect he’s just another funny-man.’
‘Like the one outside the station with all the plastic bags?’
‘Yes. Now go and see if Samantha needs help in the kitchen, there’s a good boy.’
Jasper abandoned his car and ran downstairs to his nanny while Candida carried on to her room.
The house was one of sixteen in an early Victorian square in Stockwell. The square was making up for its maiming at the hands of wartime bombs with an ostentatious flurry of self-improvement. A firm of builders and a pet decorator were forever being passed from recommending hand to hand within the residents’ association. The Browne’s house was Jake’s, bought when Candida was a rising researcher and he won the bulk of their daily bread. Stockwell would not have been Candida’s first choice, or even her third, but she had come to appreciate its charms and had recently consoled herself by purchasing the bomb-site adjoining Jake’s property. The square was too close to the council tower blocks for the playground in its centre to be a suitable haunt for Jasper and his friends; Candida proposed to extend her garden over the land she had bought to give them more room for a climbing-frame, a swing and, just possibly, a very basic swimming-pool. She had also applied for and won planning permission to build a garage with a staff flat on top. When the children were too old for nannies, she would redecorate the flat and bring her mother to live there as a babysitter. Or Jake’s mother; whichever won the race for widowhood.
She shut herself in, rapidly stripped, draped her dress into the pile for Samantha to take to the dry cleaners, then walked in her knickers to the bathroom. She washed off all her make-up, cooling her face and arms with a cold flannel and dabs of scent, then pulled out the sort of clothes she would never parade for Candida-Thackeray-relaxes-at-home photographs. She tied her hair away from her face with a piece of rather stained white silk and slipped into an incredibly cheap but flattering tube of creamy cotton she had bought while shopping in dark glasses for Samantha’s birthday. Then she remembered to peer out of the window to look for Jasper’s ‘funny-man’. Her first reaction was an involuntary, out-loud, ‘Oh no!’ her second was to dart behind the curtains where she could peer unspotted, her third was to replace half of the make-up she had just washed off.
There was no mistaking him, even with his beard and longer hair. She had not expected him to look so normal. She had not expected him so soon or so unannounced. Then she reflected that this was no longer the Middle Ages and monks would not be expected to swelter through hot weather in thick woollen habits. She also decided to be touched at her childhood friend’s naive assumption that she could be paid impromptu visits in mid-week and found in.
Why didn’t he come and ring the doorbell? Perhaps he had missed her return home. (Impossible.) Perhaps he had merely come to spy out the lie of the Land of Marital Bliss; see where she and Jake had ended up. (An idyllic afternoon had been spent w
ith him when they were thirteen, trailing their biology teacher for hours to see what precisely she did on her weekends.) She ought to ignore him. She ought to draw the curtains and take a couple of hours’ rejuvenating sleep before changing for dinner. She flung the window up so hard the sash weights clunked in their shafts.
‘I don’t believe it!’ she shouted. ‘It is you, isn’t it?’ He just smiled up and wayed. It was him. He never shouted in public places. For once the playground was deserted. He was sitting on a swing, long legs stretched out before him. He had lost weight; it suited him. ‘Will you come in or shall I come out?’ He stood, still smiling through his beard, which also suited him, short and Jacobean-looking. She assumed he was coming in. ‘Be right down,’ she called and pulled the window shut again. She stopped in the bedroom doorway, hurried back to dig in the back of her dressing-table drawer, and pulled out a thin silver crucifix on a hair-fine chain. She kissed it, thoughtlessly, and tied it round her neck, leaving it to dangle outside her dress. The bell rang. She heard Samantha shifting in the kitchen.
‘I’ll get it,’ she shouted and ran downstairs.
She unlocked the front door with the unfamiliar sensation of a broad smile tugging her cheeks into craziness. He was taller than Jake. She had forgotten that. Eight years.
‘Robin!’ she sang.
‘Hello, you,’ he said. He stood there while she hurled herself at him. He was all in black, including fairly tight black jeans. Her hugging hands stroked his back and she found one falling briefly to his bum. He didn’t feel like a monk. ‘I came by to see where you lived,’ he said. ‘I saw you come home but thought I should give you time to unwind.’
‘Thanks. You look wonderful.’
‘Thanks.’
He said nothing of her appearance so she took his hand and led him into the sitting-room. There were still high wooden shutters in here, which they kept closed during the week as a security precaution. The shaded room was beautifully cool. Candida uncovered and opened the windows. Robin sat in an armchair in the dark. When she turned, he was smiling again.
‘Why are you smiling?’ she asked.
‘Am I?’
‘You know you are. What’s so funny?’ He laughed then smiled some more. ‘What?’ she asked, laughing too, but infuriated. He stopped smiling and reached in the pocket of his polo shirt.
‘I’ve brought a present.’
‘Oh, Robin!’ she gushed, trying to see what he was holding.
‘It’s not for you, it’s for my god-daughter.’
‘Oh, how sweet. We were so glad when your Ma said you’d said yes.’
‘Where on earth did you find that name?’
‘What? Perdita Margaux Browne? Don’t you like it?’
He laughed again. To himself. She reached up to tighten the cloth around her hair with a little tug.
‘I brought her this,’ he said, holding out a clenched fist. ‘Hold out your hand.’
She smiled and did as he told her, shutting her eyes. Something hard and cold fell into them with a dry rattling. She opened her eyes. It was a tiny red coral necklace with a gold clasp shaped like a heart. She pressed the catch and laughed to see that the heart released another, thinner heart from its grip.
‘That is what you give little girls, isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘Coral to cut their teeth on?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Early days for teeth yet, I hope, but she’ll look enchanting it in. She’s getting the full works – godparents clutching candles to light her way and renouncing “the Devil and all his work”.’
‘And “all carnal desires of the flesh”.’
‘Yes. I’d forgotten that bit.’ That strangely irritated her. Damn him. She laughed and went on, ‘And we’ve got her great-great-grandmother’s christening gown out of mothballs. It’s about six feet long.’
She ran dry and he offered nothing. They sat in silence for a moment, staring with sudden candour into one another’s sun-pinked face then he said,
‘Aren’t you going to welcome me back, then?’
and she said,
‘Don’t be silly. There’s no need.’
He looked around the room, and stroked the underside of his beard; a mannerism developed behind her back.
‘Nice house,’ he said. ‘Just what you always planned to end up in. Are you both fabulously rich now?’
‘Fairly,’ she dryly admitted, then stood and passed him back the necklace. ‘Come and give Perdita her present.’
As they climbed the stairs, Robin pausing to appraise the passing pictures and photographs, with his increasingly maddening smile. She heard Jasper shouting at Samantha in the garden. She glanced at her watch and guessed that he was refusing to come inside to eat his supper. She would have to get rid of Robin, soon. She had a dinner party to organise. The Director General and his depressingly well-read male consort were coming, as were a well-known, impossibly glamorous acting couple Jake was wooing towards a five-year instant coffee contract. The flowers were probably beginning to droop in the sink, she had her infallible spinach soufflés to begin and she had forgotten to tell Samantha to polish the silver. They would have to make do with a quick dust. Robin would have to go very soon.
He had stopped and was staring at the large portrait of her and baby Jasper that dominated the main landing. Jake had wanted it in the sitting-room but she had protested because it was rather too true to life and showed her all loose and puffy.
‘Is that your other?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Jasper. He’s out in the garden.’
‘Mmm. We’ve already met.’
‘Really? He never said.’
‘Sons don’t tell you everything.’ Again that smile. ‘Yes, he came out to the pavement and we had a little chat about what monks do. He told me how to make pasta pictures.’
‘Sweet,’ she said, distracted. He looked back at the painting.
‘It’s very good,’ he said. ‘Who did it?’
‘It’s a Faber Washington,’ she told him, leading the way on to their bedroom. ‘He’s a friend of Jake’s sister, Tessa. We snapped him up when he was just leaving the Slade. Of course, he’s becoming terribly well-known now. I doubt we could afford another.’
‘Of course you could,’ he snorted. ‘You’re rich as Croesus. Now. Where’s this baby?’ He swung the necklace from a fore finger. She had forgotten the extraordinary length of his hands. They had once come near to blows when he beat her in a late-night Botticelli Hands Contest.
‘In here,’ she whispered, then carried on in her full voice. ‘Don’t know why I’m whispering because it’s time she woke for a feed.’ Actually she had no idea when Perdita should have her next feed, and was not altogether certain of the wisdom of waking her up, but she had felt a sudden urge to impress on him the authenticity of her motherhood.
He followed her into the nursery, having first darted in for a brazen peek at the room she shared with Jake and emerged with the inevitable smile. At what? The size of their bed? The fact that they each had a clock-radio? Her multi-gym? Did she care? Yes, oh dear, yes. Cooing without too much affectation – Perdita was a fairly pretty baby – she leaned into the antique Swedish cot and lifted out her sleep-heavy daughter.
‘Hello, darling! Mmm? Yes! Ready for your tea are you?’
They rubbed noses and she kissed the swirling crown of Perdita’s sweaty hair. ‘Look. It’s your Godfather Robin,’ she went on, pointing the baby to face the visitor. ‘He’s brought you a present.’
‘Here,’ Robin whispered, holding out the necklace, still on a long forefinger. Perdita blew a bubble, and her head wobbled. Robin smiled a quite different smile – the one Candida remembered – and laid the string of coral on a table.
‘I’m afraid she’s still a bit little to focus,’ Candida told him. ‘Want to hold her?’
He said nothing, but nodded and held out his arms. She passed the baby over and saw at once that he knew exactly how to hold one. Wondering where he had learnt and crossly waiting for her d
aughter to save the day by bawling herself puce, she stood back. Perdita lay quite still, bubbling slightly and turning her face in search of an absent bosom. Her heavy breathing seemed almost loud in the silent room. A police siren wailed by in the distance. Jasper yelled,
‘No! I hate you!’
Smiling at this loyalty in her son, Candida turned her head for a brief check in the mirror. There she saw her childhood friend cradling her new baby, framed and distanced in reflection. All at once she sensed that the Dob of her childhood and youth had evaporated and with him her old comradely feelings towards him. This bearded stranger, who laughed at her, failed to be impressed and held her child so expertly, aroused quite another, less coherent emotion.
‘Robin, I hate to sound rude, but I’ve an awful lot on my plate this evening. We’ve got people coming round and I haven’t cooked a thing and I’m not even properly dressed.’
‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I was going anyway.’
‘You must come back, though. We’ve so much to catch up on. Where are you staying?’
‘Home.’
‘Lovely. Can I say. I’ll ring you?’
‘Say what you will,’ he said and gave her the other smile – the new, uncomforting one.
She took back Perdita, whom he had lulled into a state of blissful trance, then saw him quickly to the door. With him safely on the pavement she went directly to the sitting-room where she sat, eased her dress off her shoulders and offered her daughter a nipple.
