Hot Breath

by Hot Breath (retail) (epub)

  ‘I shall be going to Turkey soon. People keep telling me I should give it up at my age, but it’s like everything, if you still have the taste for it, why not?’

  ‘Oh quite.’ I eyed the body beneath the sarong. ‘Do you actually dive?’

  ‘Not seriously, alas, not any more. I just correlate the information and the bits and pieces as they come up.’ Brought to the surface of the wine-dark sea, I had no doubt, by a squad of burnished young men in infinitesimal bathing trunks.

  ‘How do you like Basset Parva?’ I asked, to get away from this unsettling picture.

  ‘We love it,’ she said. ‘Everyone’s been so kind.’

  I bet they have, I thought, groaning inwardly. The social gatherings of Parva were notorious for the accompanying jungle of latchkeys hitting the ground. And it was extremely doubtful that the indolent executive wives of the village would share Declan’s violent prejudice against the Greek doctor.

  ‘I love this house,’ I remarked, desperately. ‘I’ve often admired it.’

  ‘Would you like to see inside?’ she asked at once. ‘Do! But please excuse the dust, it’s the fine weather.’

  We wandered across the lawn and went in through the french window. The interior of The Rickyard was, of course, exquisite, a tasteful, confident hotch-potch of eclectic furnishings and hangings and pictures and objets trouvés. And, as she’d predicted, dust.

  ‘Kostaki’s a tidy devil,’ remarked Anna Ghikas, ‘but he has to suffer me when I’m here.’

  She escorted me through the house, discussing its age and merits, enlarging on the provenance of this and that, unembarrassed by the graceful chaos of her surroundings.

  ‘This is his study,’ she announced. ‘I’m not really allowed.’

  She was right, he was tidy. In complete contrast to all the other rooms the study was neat, the floor clear of clutter, everything in its place. I poked my head in and gazed about, but there were no dead giveaways and I was just about to withdraw when she brushed past me and picked up a photograph off the desk.

  ‘I’ll just show you this, it’s my husband.’

  If I’d been expecting some swarthy, dwarfish Greek with a walrus moustache, like the head waiter at the Zeus, I was again disappointed. Spiridion Ghikas, leaning against an open-topped MG in a T-shirt and shorts, was a tall, slim man, of film-star good looks. Moustache there was, but it was the merest scimitar of black on his upper lip, enough to make his teeth gleam extra white as he grinned into the camera. His hair was black, and ruffled as though he had just been towelling it after a swim. He was definitely the thinking woman’s under-gardener.

  ‘He’s awfully handsome,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said dismissively, as though it went without saying, ‘and with all the contingent faults. Conceited, womanising, puerile and utterly delightful.’

  ‘When did he die?’

  ‘Six years ago. But we weren’t living together. I’m afraid we did not provide Kostaki with good role models for marriage and parenthood.’

  She did not sound in the least repentant. As we went back downstairs I tried to re-focus on Constantine in this new light. For some reason the knowledge that he was the fruit of this hotheaded sporadic union was not comforting. The severe little lady in black would have been much easier to handle.

  As we reached the hall the front door opened wide and Constantine arrived.

  ‘Well?’ asked Anna Ghikas. ‘What was it then?’

  ‘A boy, ten pounds! I thought that kind of thing went out with crinolines. Hallo …!’

  He beamed at me amiably enough, but his remark about the baby served to remind me that he had spent the last few hours staring up some other female’s vaginal passage.

  ‘I’m just off,’ I cried, in a positive ferment of conflicting urges. ‘The children will be home from school. I just brought your invitation to dinner next week.’

  ‘Must you dash?’ asked his mother.

  ‘You can stay for five minutes, surely?’ echoed Constantine. But my mouth, like Maria Trevelyan’s, was dry, and my heart was pounding, and these disabilities entirely incapacitated me.

  Smiling wildly at no one in particular I headed for the door, then remembered my other reason for coming and flung over my shoulder: ‘By the way, I’ve been asked by our local boys’ football club to make an approach to you.’

  ‘That does sound tempting,’ said Constantine, almost flirtatiously.

  ‘Oh—no—I’m afraid we’re in dire need of a manager for the Under Fourteens, and after what you said I thought perhaps—I hope you don’t think it presumptuous—’

  I was not doing awfully well, but he was Olympian in his poise.

  ‘That sounds rather fun. I’ll take it on if I’ve got time. When do they play?’

  ‘At the moment they have training on Saturday mornings and matches on Sunday afternoons, and then of course there are monthly committee meetings …’ My voice trailed off as I realised how supremely unappealing it all sounded.

  ‘Tell you what,’ said Constantine, ‘I’ll think it over and let you know when I come to dinner.’

  ‘Super. Really. Thank you so much.’

  On this singularly un-cool note I left. Mother and son stood in the doorway watching me starting and stalling the car before finally screeching out into the road. As I drove home, fiery with humiliation, I imagined them discussing me in the hall. I swore that the next time I met Constantine Ghikas I would be dressed to kill and to hell with reputation.

  Chapter Seven

  Having procured Constantine Ghikas as the centrepiece for my dinner party I set about arranging everything else around him with considerable care. I decided that in order not to scare him off, nor to arouse the suspicions of anyone else, I must invite either three or five others so there would be no implied ‘pairing’.

  I settled on Linda and Mike Channing, to whom I owed hospitality, and who regarded the task of taking me out of myself as a sacred trust; and my good friend Bernice Potter who would connive at any scheme of mine, no matter how nefarious.

  The Channings accepted at once, overjoyed at this evidence of my emergence from purdah. I hadn’t seen Bernice for a while so I decided to call on her and invite her in person.

  Bernice was actually married, but she socialised on her own because her husband Arundel did not care for that sort of thing. Arundel was an academic of the most rarefied sort, who only made forays into the world of real people in order to further his career. According to Bernice she had married Arundel because he had been the only man to date who’d been able to dominate her. And he had married her (also according to Bernice) because she had been the brightest English student around at the time, and had enormous breasts.

  Since the first flush of their passion, things had changed, with the exception of Bernice’s mammaries which were still of outstanding size and quality. Bernice did nothing with her First, except write obscure and quite unpublishable erotic verse, and she very soon ceased to be dominated by Arundel. It just wasn’t in her nature. Within a year of their marriage she was laying down all kinds of conditions which Arundel, still hypnotised by her upper chest, meekly accepted. One of these was that she would not give up her friends and her social life no matter how much he disapproved of them, and only if she could indulge both without criticism was she prepared to attend academic gatherings. The bargain was struck.

  The Potter menage in the university town of Barford consisted of: Bernice; Arundel; and Arundel’s father, Barty, a lecherous septuagenarian who acted as their de facto secretary, answering the phone with much coughing and hawking, and sedulously supervising the contents of the drinks cupboard.

  I hadn’t seen Bernice for four months, since before George left, but I knew that didn’t matter. She never expressed the least surprise at seeing me, and always approved wholeheartedly of everything I did.

  Barty answered the door. He wore a drooping grey cardigan, made still droopier by the presence of his teeth in his left-hand pocket. He was a
flaccid, damp old man, all of whose juices seemed perilously close to the surface.

  On seeing me he grinned gapingly and popped the teeth back in with a gloop and a click.

  ‘Hallo, my dear, come on in, do, you’re quite a stranger round here these days …’

  I slithered past Barty into the hall, dancing about on the balls of my feet to avoid the physical contact of which he was so fond.

  ‘Is Bernice about?’ I asked.

  ‘No sooner said than done, my dear,’ said Barty, getting in a quick pat on my bicep. ‘ Just you stay there and I’ll find her for you.’

  He shuffled off. 55 Tennis Court Road, Barford, would have done nicely as the old dark house in a ‘B’ feature horror film, and Barty was even more exactly suited to the role of loathly butler.

  But Barty’s clammy aura was swiftly dispelled by the arrival of Bernice in a turquoise velour tracksuit, pink and turquoise leg-warmers and fuchsia trainers. Her dark, frizzy hair was caught up with a length of puce double-knitting wool. In fact Bernice was a double-knitting sort of woman—warm, heavyweight and loose. She would have been fat, but for the size of her bust, which had the effect of scaling down the rest of her.

  ‘Ripping!’ she exclaimed in her Angela Brazilish way, embracing me mightily. ‘ I do love the way you just bowl up after months of silence, the same as ever.’

  This remark held no trace of rancour. ‘I’ve come to invite you over, as a matter of fact,’ I explained as I followed her into the kitchen.

  ‘Super!’

  Barty was at the sink, filling the kettle. He turned as we came in and grinned goatishly.

  ‘Coffee, girls?’

  ‘That’s all right, Barty,’ said Bernice. ‘I’ll do it, you run along.’

  ‘I don’t know how you stand it,’ I murmured, watching him sashay away.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Him. Barty. A repulsive old man with the hots for you, always on the premises and usually with his teeth out.’

  ‘Gosh, you’re so acerbic, you are a scream!’ hooted Bernice, spooning granules and pouring water. ‘I look on Barty as one of the perks of marriage to Arundel. My wish is his command, which can’t be bad.’

  ‘Perhaps not.’

  We sat with our coffee at the huge, cracked deal table, and Bernice lit a cigarette. She dressed like Jane Fonda, but her body-consciousness was rather less developed than the late Brendan Behan’s.

  ‘So!’ She blew smoke at me and wriggled her shoulders expectantly. ‘How are things in the world of pulp?’

  ‘Pulpy. Look, Bernice, would you come to dinner next Saturday?’

  ‘Delighted. Why?’

  ‘You assume there’s an ulterior motive.’

  ‘I’d be bloody disappointed if there wasn’t. What are friends for?’

  I sighed. ‘You’re right, of course. I’m hopelessly stricken with someone, and the dinner is stage one in my master plan.’

  ‘But you don’t want to seem too obvious, so you need another spare woman.’

  ‘Would you mind?’

  ‘Mind? A buckshee spread just for providing a cover story? I just want to know what brought all this on.’

  ‘A thunderbolt,’ I said, and went on to explain about Constantine Ghikas. Bernice listened in rapt silence until I got to the bit about his mother.

  ‘Don’t like the sound of her, dear,’ she said. ‘Good God, the woman’s probably living off his immoral earnings.’

  ‘I’d pay!’ I said. ‘I swear I’d pay if I could only just—apart from anything else, it’s uncomfortable. I need to get it out of my system.’

  Bernice shook her head. ‘ Doesn’t work like that. If you think that, surfeiting, the appetite would sicken and so on you couldn’t be wronger. You’ll be like a junkie, gasping for it.’

  ‘I’m gasping for it now!’ I shrieked, and then bit my tongue as Barty ambled in.

  ‘Got everything you need, girls?’ he enquired.

  ‘Nearly everything,’ replied Bernice. ‘And what we haven’t got you are in no position to provide.’

  ‘Don’t bet on it, my love!’ cackled Barty, melting once more into the gothic shadows of the front hall.

  ‘You shouldn’t encourage him!’ I whispered ferociously.

  ‘Fiddle-de-dee!’ said Bernice. ‘He’s all talk and trousers. At that age he needs a bit of cheering up.’

  ‘Anyway,’ I went on firmly, ‘you’ll come.’

  ‘You couldn’t keep me away, dear.’

  ‘How’s Arundel?’

  ‘Corrupted at last. Hoping to break into television.’

  I could not imagine Arundel as a media-pundit, and told her so.

  ‘It all goes to show nobody’s perfect,’ she agreed. ‘But he’s busy justifying it on the grounds he’ll reach a wider audience. Something you know all about, of course.’

  Bernice never disparaged my work, but a person would have had to be of singular integrity to have shared the past twelve years with Arundel and still retain a balanced attitude towards popular fiction.

  ‘Yes,’ went on Bernice, ‘ he’s quite swept away with the idea of dishing up a spoonful of erudition along with the soap.’

  An unpleasant thought suddenly occurred to me. What if Arundel, as part of his new expansionist policy, should decide to broaden his social horizons, too?

  ‘I say,’ I began, ‘ I don’t suppose he’s going to want—’

  Bernice shook her pony tail. ‘No, no chance. I shall be free as usual to watch you manoeuvring your prey into the corral.’

  ‘It may not work,’ I warned.

  She rolled her eyes. ‘ What, an unmarried doctor? And a Greek to boot? I’m only amazed he hasn’t ravished you already!’

  I didn’t know how to convey to Bernice that Dr Ghikas was not the swarthy, ouzo-soaked Lothario of her imagination. I was saved having to try because we heard Arundel talking to his father in the hall, and a moment later they both entered.

  It’s interesting that two people can be very alike, physically, and yet one may be handsome or striking while the other is plain or even downright repellant. Such was the case with Potter pére et fils. Neither was tall, both were thin. Both had high foreheads, prominent noses and deep-set eyes. Yet whereas in Arundel the sum of these parts was an appearance of high-caste asceticism, a sort of chilly allure, in Barty they constituted the shifty, loose-lipped ferret-face of the proto-typical dirty old man.

  Arundel treated Barty like dirt, but as no one, Barty included, seemed in the least put out by this I had stopped allowing it to offend me. Arundel was a generally charmless man, but his father’s unlovely presence in his life seemed a mitigating factor. Anyone who could tolerate so embarrassing a parent as a permanent house-guest couldn’t be all bad. I suspected that what bound them together was their shared passion for Bernice. I pictured them hanging on, one to a tit, like Romulus and Remus.

  ‘Cup of coffee, son?’ asked Barty.

  Arundel kissed his wife. ‘Thank you.’ He extended a cool, stiff hand to me. ‘Hallo, Harriet, what brings you here?’

  ‘She’s invited me to dinner on Saturday,’ said Bernice, ‘to participate in an evening of lust and licentiousness.’

  ‘Good,’ said Arundel absently.

  ‘I hear you may be on the telly,’ I said.

  ‘It’s possible.’ Arundel took a cup of tea from his father and the two of them sat down at the table with us so that we looked like a rather ill-matched bridge school. ‘I’m thinking about it.’

  ‘Fame at last,’ cackled Barty, slurping tea. ‘Eh, Bernice, watch the old man on the box? Seen you on the box, love,’ he pressed my arm confidingly, ‘when they did that thing about roe-mance. I thought you came out of it very well, I won’t hear a word against your books.’

  This seemed to me to be my exit cue. Bernice came into the hall with me, her arm round my shoulders. I wondered at her ability to remain so separate from the other people in her life. She scarcely worked, she had no children, the desiccated plants a
nd dust-dulled knick-knacks at 55 Tennis Court Road bore witness to her lack of domesticity, and yet there was no trace of demeaning dependence in her character. Catlike, she had the air of bestowing the largesse of her presence on the lesser mortals who peopled her surroundings.

  ‘Hey,’ she said now, ‘I’m looking forward to this. What will you cook, aphrodisiac nosh of some kind? Shall I bring a pud?’

  ‘No, that’s sweet of you but don’t bother,’ I said quickly. Bernice’s puddings were sludgy, amorphous, and a hundred per cent proof. I couldn’t even imagine her transporting such a concoction to my house, sloshing and slapping on the passenger seat of her rust-flaked station wagon, filling the car with combustible fumes.

  ‘Cheerio then,’ she said, kissing me. ‘And good luck. It’s so terrific to see a clever woman giving in to her natural urges.’

  On the way home, I considered this remark, and found it lacking. If it had been me who was being pursued, then I would have been giving in to my natural urges. But—and I was old enough to find this undignified—it was I who was in pursuit. I did not even know whether the slightest reciprocal interest had been aroused in my quarry. I wondered, not for the first time in this cataclysmic week, if I had gone completely barmy.

  My house, when I got back to it, teemed with life. Declan, right hand still heavily bandaged, was pushing the motor mower back and forth on the back lawn like the Grim Reaper. The snooker table was up in the kitchen and Gareth and Brett Troye were engaged in a needle frame. I could tell it was serious stuff because they both stood staring at the table as if the secrets of the universe were inscribed on its green baize surface.

  ‘Homework?’ I asked automatically, ever the doting parent.

  ‘Hang on,’ said Gareth, and then, to Brett: ‘ I’m going for the brown.’

  I stood patiently while he executed the shot successfully and then shaped up for a further stab, the butt of his cue resting on the windowsill next to my Crown Derby cream jug.

  ‘Watch out,’ I suggested.

  ‘Hang on,’ said Gareth again.

  I stepped forward, prepared to be trenchant. ‘I’ve hung on once—have you done your homework?’