‘I know,’ I said, brightening, ‘I’ll wait till after my party, that gives me another couple of weeks, and maybe I’ll have him out of my system by then.’
‘Mañana, mañana,’ sighed Bernice. ‘Maybe.’
‘I thought,’ I said, changing the subject, ‘that I’d invite absolutely everyone to my party. You know, a real mixed bag. It’s time I brought all the threads of my life together—’
‘—and made one ruddy great granny knot which you won’t be able to untangle,’ said Bernice, gloomily. But prophetically.
We talked for a little longer and then I got up to go. Bernice accompanied me to the games room—a damp and crumbling annexe where Barty had his darts board, and a dilapidated ping-pong table which rose in a kind of sharp ridge along the centre join. He and Clara were as happy as Larry, apparently, which all goes to show that you never can tell.
‘Harriet,’ said Barty, shuffling over and wagging a fistful of Crafty Cockney Super Flights in my face. ‘ Clara tells me you’re having a party!’
Clara was lucky that we were in company, and separated from each other by the ping-pong table.
‘That’s right,’ I said, through clenched teeth. ‘Just a few friends, you know, nothing—’
‘She’s invited me along, bless her.’
I gave Clara the old optical gimlet, but she was terrifically busy examining the scoreboard. I could feel warm shudders of suppressed laughter from Bernice.
‘Has she?’ I said. ‘Fair enough.’
‘I shall look forward to that,’ Barty assured me. ‘Haven’t been to a do in ages. Formal, is it?’
‘Yes,’ I snapped. ‘Absolutely.’
To my dismay, Barty evinced delight at this information. ‘Watch out girls,’ he cackled, pirouetting round us like something from the dance of the living dead. ‘ I’ll be there in my zoot suit!’
‘Come on, Clara,’ I said. ‘ Time to go.’ We collected Spot and went out to the car. Bernice was seismic with giggles.
‘Don’t be too hard on her,’ she said, putting her arm round Clara, ‘you did say you were going to invite everyone.’
Out of deference to my friend, and Barty, who had appeared in the doorway wearing a plastic Snoopy apron, I maintained an icy silence. Just as we pulled away from the kerb, a familiar green Jag drew up in front of us and Clara, keen to forestall my wrath, said: ‘Oh look, there’s Mr Channing!’
‘So it is,’ I said. ‘Don’t change the subject.’
Nonetheless I did notice as we drove off that Mike Channing was visiting 55 Tennis Court Road. And was admitted without demur.
I waited till Monday to visit Constantine, though over the weekend I saw him twice—once at a fork supper given by Barry and Lydia Langley, where he was introduced as ‘our latest doctor’ and I as ‘our local celebrity’ and we were both rendered speechless by the ferocity of the chilli con carne; and then again at the Open House wine bar in Regis where I took Gareth and Clara on Sunday in order to get out of cooking lunch, and where he was present as the guest of Dr and Mrs Donleavy. I felt obliged to stop at their table and pass the time of day, but escaped as quickly as possible. It was awkward in the extreme to meet, socially, two men who both had intimate knowledge of my private parts, especially as Dr Donleavy was wedded to his work and probably saw all his female patients as no more than a cluster of tubes and channels on legs, and might at any moment be unable to contain his curiosity on the subject.
On Monday, at about midday, I put on my running gear and set off for Parva at a cracking pace, without the dog. I covered the distance in record time, and as I turned into the Prickhard I almost mowed down Kostaki who was painting the gate, dressed in denim shorts and flip-flops.
‘Hallo,’ I gasped, ‘may I come in?’
In reply he rested the brush across the top of the paint can and escorted me into the house. In Anna’s absence it was, as she had implied it would be, pin-neat. A scent of beeswax hung in the air, and the effect of screwing on the gleaming parquet flooring was that we moved along, humping and stretching like a bipartite caterpillar, so that I finished up with my head in the drawing room. The marmalade cat patrolled round me with his tail in the air like a flag, treating me to a snail’s eye view of his neat, seamed anus.
Kostaki, disengaging, glanced over his shoulder.
‘Didn’t they used to get the servants to do the quickstep with dusters on their feet? This would have been just as effective and twice as enjoyable.’
I was, at last, used to his little ways. Fuck first and talk after. It was all very well for him, since his powers of recovery were phenomenally rapid. But if I had anything worth saying I had to make sure it wasn’t poked clean out of my head before I got round to saying it.
‘I’ve decided to have a party,’ I said, sitting up. ‘ Can you come?’
‘What date?’
‘You tell me which Saturday’s best for you, and I’ll make it then. I haven’t sent any invitations yet.’
He got up, fastened his shorts, and went to consult the diary by the telephone.
‘Saturday fortnight?’
‘Fine. It’ll be lunchtime, because I want to ask the people from Era Books.’
‘Including Screwball Major?’
I considered this question. ‘Yes, I think so. I mean, I’ll invite him, but I don’t suppose for a moment he’ll come.’ I scrambled to my feet and went over to him. ‘Kostaki …’
‘Yes?’ He put his arms round me and began licking my neck. ‘You’re all nice and salty.’
‘It’s called sweat. Look, don’t you think it’s time we—’
‘Talked about Us?’
‘Then you agree?’
‘I think it’s an appalling idea. Once you start talking about something it turns into a dead bird in a glass case. A conversation piece. Leave it alone and it flies around like it ought to.’
‘But I really think we should—’
‘Ever since I was a child,’ he went on conversationally, pushing his fingers into my hair and his tongue into my ear, ‘ I have loathed and detested the word should. It smacks of cabbage and homework and cold showers. I so much prefer can and will and might …’
It was hopeless. My attempts to rationalise and regularise were being met with nothing but criticism from Bernice and levity from Kostaki. I had about as much chance of making him take the matter seriously as I had of preventing him, now, from manoeuvring me across the hall and up the stairs.
For the first time in weeks, as I submitted swooningly to Kostaki’s impassioned manipulations, I thought, wistfully, of George.
Chapter Fifteen
Like any other red-blooded writer, I was prepared to endure virtually any indignity at the hands of the media in order that my (usually misguided) pronouncements might be enshrined in print, or carried over the airwaves in between pop records, or, best of all, be actually seen, articulated by myself, on the TV screens of those hapless viewers who had omitted to switch over to ‘Minder’.
Therefore, in spite of misgivings about the premise of ‘Imitating Life’, and stark terror at the thought of public debate with Arundel, I set out one humid Tuesday in late June for Antwich, and Mercia TV.
My party was on the Saturday, only four days off, but I was confident I had things in hand. It seemed to me that if I was to enjoy myself, without George’s invaluable organisational presence, I had best get the Little Men out in force. So I had splashed out on Attwood & Co, Caterers of Basset Regis (who, with a nice appreciation of cause and effect, advertised for Parties-Weddings-Functions-Children), whom Linda Channing had described as obliging and presentable. I had also commandeered Damon for the day as general dogsbody, and had grudgingly agreed, as part of our verbal contract, that he might provide background music for the occasion.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said soothingly. ‘I got plenty of your sort of thing.’ I knew this to be true, but it was not so much the content as the manner that concerned me.
‘If there’s the slightest
hint of a hitch,’ I warned, ‘off!’
‘Of course,’ he agreed, discernibly pained by my mistrust.
Declan was to take charge of car-parking arrangements, and the children had agreed to be responsible for any of their contemporaries who might turn up. This left me almost nothing to do but look decorative, act vivacious, and have fun.
I just hoped I should be able to manage the last. I had recently experienced my very first, tremulous stirrings of angst concerning my affair with Kostaki. Mine had been a fast-moving and highly intensive course in adultery, and the graph of my emotions had been correspondingly steep, reaching a dizzy zenith in Fartenwald and now slithering inexorably, inevitably, downwards.
The trouble was, I had got used to him. You get used to anything if you get enough of it, and I was getting a superfluity of Kostaki. It wasn’t that I didn’t still want to get laid by him. I had no say in that whatever, for he pushed the ‘Go’ button with masterly accuracy every darn time. But I did wish there was something else—a little more conversation, a few shared interests that were non-physiological, one or two frills and trimmings to our relationship. A little—dare I say it—romance. Besides which, it was exhausting. There were none of those drowsy, whispering, post-coital hours which I had envisaged as part of an illicit affair, no drives into the country for lunch at cosy anonymous hotels, no calls to say ‘I love you’. We simply continued with our separate lives, and came together at intervals for voracious bouts of screwing during which he displayed no concern whatsoever for our respective reputations. No place was too public for him, no situation too risky, no audience too large. We walked a continual knife-edge of scandalous risk, upon which he thrived, but which was beginning to saw through my nerves. Only the previous Sunday I had conducted a lengthy conversation with Eric Chittenden at a cocktail party with Kostaki’s hand in the back of my trousers, and he had twice jumped me when I was out jogging, leaving the Ghikasmobile parked at the side of the road, as conspicuous in the empty Barfordshire countryside as a Harriet Blair novel in a headmistress’s study.
There was no doubt that I couldn’t carry on indefinitely. It was only steam heat that held us together, and I was running out of steam. The party, therefore, had taken on a different aspect in the light of all this. It was now beginning to look less like a celebration of liberated lust and feminine independence, and more like a graceful swan song. Bernice’s advice did not now seem so outlandish. I should welcome George home, when he came, with open arms and nicely warmed bed … I should treat him to all that I had learned from Kostaki … we would resume our well-ordered, tolerant and sensible existence … and who knows but that I might not be able to continue seeing my lover from time to time, in order to keep my fires stoked and riddled?
Of course, my heroine Maria was subject to the same emotional fluctuations as myself. Before the Buchfest the problem had been to keep her in check so as not to disaffect my army of loyal readers. Now she was back on course (and in women’s dress) and confronted by the pressing need to make a choice between the two men in her life. Kersey House had been relieved, as the saying goes, by the Royalist troops, and there had been much ostentatious gallantry on every hand, culminating in the rescuing of young Jamie from the jaws of death by Richard Hawkhurst. Biting both the bullet and her full underlip, Maria must needs go to where Richard (slightly and becomingly wounded) lay, and proffer her thanks.
‘Sir,’ she faltered, ‘may I speak with you?’
Even from her position by the door Maria could see how his blue eyes glittered in his white face, and she felt the old thrill that was part fear and part excitement, as he beckoned her to draw closer. But his voice was softer than she remembered as he bade Martha withdraw, and a smile played about his bloodless lips.
‘What would you, cousin?’ he enquired. ‘Now it is your turn to look down on me. Is that sweet, little Maria Trevelyan? Does it please you?’
‘It does not, sir,’ she replied stoutly. ‘Indeed it grieves me to see you brought low. Are you in much pain?’
‘It is nothing, a scratch merely.’ He was curt, and she liked him for it. ‘But I tire readily. Tell me what it is you have to say.’
She felt her cheeks burning with the childish blushes he must surely despise, and her voice, when it came, was scarcely more than a whisper. ‘I wished to thank you for saving the life of Jamie Farrell.’
‘Do you so …’ She knew those piercing blue eyes rested on her face, and she dared not raise her own to meet them. ‘And what is young Farrell to you?’
‘He has been a good friend to me …’ She looked up, and spoke with passion now. ‘A friend when I thought I had no other in the world!’
‘No more!’ Richard half-raised himself from the pillow, but fell back with an oath and repeated, more quietly: ‘No more. I read it in your face, what it is that you feel for him, and I wish to hear no more of it. He fought well today, he did not deserve to die. But nor does he deserve those tender and impassioned feelings which shine in your eyes and cry out in your voice—’
For a moment he closed his eyes and tightened his lips in pain, and Maria reached out to touch his hand where it lay upon the bed. But he shook her off angrily.
‘Go, cousin! I tire. Go—and send Martha to me.’
‘I will do so.’ With soft tread and troubled heart she left the chamber. She had seen her proud cousin brought low, but it had brought her scant satisfaction. For she had also seen, in that tortured white face, those blazing blue eyes, suffering not only of the body—but of the heart …
The satisfaction I took from all this was far from scant. I was back on familiar territory, in the very heartlands of the literary genre which I had made my own. Also, I had planned an ending of unrelieved gloom which would ensure that all the protagonists, and especially Maria, would emerge with honour, and without a dry eye in the house as far as my readers were concerned.
But that would have to wait till after ‘ Imitating Life’. My main concern as I sat in the buffet car en route to Antwich was that I should put up a good show before the cameras, and not disgrace myself in the confrontation with Arundel Potter, spokesman for Literary Standards. Bernice had phoned me concerning Arundel’s preparedness to give me a lift, but I had declined, for two reasons. Firstly, I suspected she was traducing her husband, who had never had an altruistic impulse in his life, and, if he had, would have rung me himself; secondly, I knew that whatever I might gain in terms of comfort and convenience by accepting the offer would simultaneously be snatched away by the psychological war of attrition which Arundel would certainly wage on my morale. If I was to be pitched against him before the cameras, the very least I could do was to arrive in good confrontational order, my arguments mustered, my self-regard stable, my enthusiasm untarnished.
Constantine, bucked as usual at the prospect of a new setting for his activities, had arranged to meet me in a pub in Antwich called the Flag and Ferret, and to drive me home thereafter. So I put on the black dress he had admired at the gymkhana, daubed Instan on my legs and red varnish on my toenails, and set off.
Mercia TV occupied a building like a breezeblock mausoleum on the northern outskirts of Antwich, as inconveniently placed as possible for those arriving by public transport. The taxi driver who took me from the station to the studios pointed out these disadvantages to me at some length and in a hectoring and accusatory tone. By the time we arrived I was disposed to overtip, and to apologise for the inconvenience I had caused him by being a guest of Mercia TV, both of which he accepted as his right and due.
‘What you on?’ he asked, as I turned to go.
‘ ‘‘Imitating Life’’,’ I replied.
‘Never ’eard of it.’
‘It’s a new arts programme.’
‘Oh yeah? We need that like we need a hole in the head,’ was his encouraging rejoinder.
I entered the foyer. The decor was poor man’s Scandinavian, with a lot of pine-look laminate, and khaki carpet tiles. The walls bore the massed mugshots
of Mercia TV’s presenters, plus signed photos of their more eminent guests—one or two wholesome pop singers, a Chinese cookery expert, and a footballer with a perm. Behind the receptionist’s desk was a slatted board, headed: ‘Today Mercia TV welcomes—’ and nothing else. Beneath it was a tray full of plastic letters from which, one dared to hope, the words ‘Arundel Potter and Harriet Blair’ might have been formed. ‘Una Paloma Blanca’ wafted over the sound system. The receptionist was reading Cosmo.
‘Good morning,’ I said, in my best upfront, unabashed, self-publicising manner. ‘I’m Harriet Blair, here to record “Imitating Life”.’ I produced my letter. ‘ Torquil Bannister contacted me.’
‘Oh yes,’ said the receptionist. ‘Miss Drinkwater from Era Books is here already, she’s in the hospitality room. I’ll just call someone to take you through.’
‘Miss Drinkwater?’ I gaped foolishly. Marilyn? Erans in attendance were an unforeseen complication.
The receptionist consulted a large book. ‘Yes, Marilyn Drinkwater, publicity director, Era Books. Yes? No?’ She gave me a quizzical patronising smile. She had an orange crew-cut and a spotted bow tie.
‘Yes,’ I muttered. ‘Marilyn, of course.’
‘Take a seat, please.’
I sat down on a black vinyl banquette, reminiscent of the one in the waiting room of the Basset Parva surgery. On a large, shin-high table before me were an assortment of magazines and periodicals. The elaborate fans in which these publications had been arranged suggested that they were seldom if ever read by the guests whom they were supposed to divert. Irritated by the fans, I picked up a copy of something called On the Move and read, with mystification, of a grandmother from Stoke Poges who had circumnavigated the earth on a specially modified tricycle to raise money for a community centre.
The receptionist dinked a few buttons with her purple-lacquered nail and waited, smiling at me sightlessly as she listened for an answer. ‘Oh, Pia. Mrs Blair is here for Torquil. Could you come along and fetch her? Her publicity lady is in the green room with the others. Thanks, love.’
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