‘It’s up now.’ Primmie rose briskly to her feet. ‘As we’re all in tonight I’ll make something to eat. Do Eggs Benedict sound OK?’
With an odd, set expression to her face she marched out of the room, into the kitchen.
Artemis bit her lip, her concern escalating, certain that Primmie had known exactly what it was she, Artemis, had been going to say – and that she’d waltzed out of the room before she should be given a second chance of saying it.
As there came the sound of a pan being put on the stove and a cupboard being opened, she said tentatively to Geraldine, ‘I’m a bit worried about Primmie. I think she may have a boyfriend.’
‘Well … it wouldn’t be before time, would it?’ Geraldine took a sip of her wine. ‘I may only have had one boyfriend in my life, but he’s been my boyfriend since childhood. Kiki was fifteen when she began going around with Ty. You and Primmie have been very slow off the mark where boyfriends are concerned and if Primmie is finally dating someone, it’s something to be pleased about, not worried over.’
‘Y-e-s,’ Artemis said doubtfully, not sure she liked being bracketed in a ‘slow off the mark’category with Primmie. ‘But what if he isn’t suitable?’
‘In what way, for goodness sake? Primmie isn’t you, Artemis. If she’s attracted to someone, she’s not going to worry about his family’s social status, his bank balance or his prospects. All that is going to matter to her is what he’s like as a person – and whether she fancies him or not.’
‘But what if he’s … he’s …’ She hesitated. She couldn’t very-well say, ‘What if he’s a carpenter or an electrician,’ because Geraldine would get seriously cross with her if she did. ‘What if he’s married?’ she said.
Geraldine’s eyes flew wide and Artemis felt an unworthy stab of satisfaction at having taken her so aback.
‘Married?’ She put her wine glass on to the coffee table as if afraid she might spill it. ‘What on earth put an idea like that in your head? Primmie’s far too open and straight to get involved with a married man. Stop worrying about her, Artemis. It’s your own love life you should be giving thought to. According to Francis, Rupert thinks you’re the last thing in cool sophistication – which makes me think he’s fallen for the person he thinks you are, not the person you really are.’
‘But I am sophisticated now! I did my first fashion show last week and I’ve got three work engagements this coming week.’
‘And you were wonderful last week,’ Geraldine said truthfully. ‘I barely recognized you, you were so soignée and self-confident.’
‘Well, then?’
‘But that’s just a veneer you’ve learned to adopt at Lucie Clayton – and if it’s the same veneer you’re dazzling Rupert with, what happens when he discovers the real you? Won’t there be problems?’
‘Problems?’ Kiki asked, swinging back into the room. ‘Who and what are we talking about?’
‘Geraldine thinks Rupert can’t possibly have fallen for the real me and that when he discovers what the real me is like, he’s going to dump me!’ Though her voice was wobbling, Artemis managed – with effort – to hold back the tears that were threatening to spill. ‘And I think she’s being very cruel and totally out of order.’
‘I just want you to be aware of how stunningly successful you’ve been at creating a very cool, very sophisticated image,’ Geraldine said soothingly. ‘So successful that, according to Francis, Rupert thinks the image is the real thing.’
‘I told him that Francis had been fibbing about my being one of David Bailey’s favourite models. If I’d been intent on leading him up the garden path, I wouldn’t have done that, would I? And he was absolutely uncaring about it. He said I probably soon would be one of Bailey’s favourite models and that I was far more lovely than Jean Shrimpton.’
‘That’s because despite all the weight you’ve lost you still have tits and Jean Shrimpton doesn’t,’ Kiki said, taking up a cross-legged position on the sofa again.
‘OK, I back down.’ Geraldine reached for her wine glass. ‘Rupert does know the real you and, though I would never have teamed the two of you together in a million years, I should bear in mind that opposites attract. Where is he taking you at the weekend? Annabel’s again?
‘The Hurlingham. He’s playing polo.’
Kiki made a rude noise
Artemis was uncaring. Opposites did attract. Rupert was wild about her – and that was all that mattered. ‘I’ve never been to a polo match,’ she said with a trace of her old uncertainty. ‘What should I wear?’
‘Your Mary McFadden coffee-coloured silk with the tiny, tiny pleats would look wonderful. And wear a big white straw hat with a floppy brim. Polo is dressy.’
‘And expensive,’ Kiki said, as Primmie came back into the room carrying a tray.
‘Do you want your Eggs Benedict in here or in the kitchen?’ Primmie asked. ‘And what is expensive?’
‘Polo – and we’ll eat in here.’ Geraldine began clearing the papers and magazines from the low glass table so that they could picnic off it.
‘What is it that makes polo so expensive?’ Primmie asked, settling the tray down. ‘Is it having to have your own horse?’
‘Pony, Primmie,’ Geraldine corrected, vastly amused. ‘In polo, the mounts are always referred to as ponies. And you can’t get by with one pony. You need to change your mount every two or three chukkas and have a couple in reserve if poss.’
‘And how many ponies does Rupert have?’ Artemis took the towel off her head and shook her hair loose so that it would dry. ‘And how many chukkas are they in a game?’
‘I’ve no idea how many ponies Rupert has, but there are six chukkas in a game.’ Geraldine took a mouthful of egg dripping with hollandaise sauce. ‘There are eight players in every game and you have to be a very, very experienced rider to play.’
‘And is Rupert a very experienced rider?’ Mindful of her diet, Artemis was ignoring the egg and sauce and nibbling at a small piece of crisp pancetta.
‘He carries a six-goal handicap.’
‘And is that good?’
Geraldine gurgled with laughter. ‘Yes, Artemis. It’s very good. Superlatively good. It makes him one of the best players in the country.’
Artemis sighed rapturously, her pique of a few moments ago completely forgotten. ‘Wonderful,’ she said dreamily. ‘Absolutely and utterly wonderful!’
Chapter Twelve
May 1972
Primmie walked through Soho with a song in her heart. It was a gorgeous day. The sky was a heavenly blue. She’d just been given a new, very important account to handle – and she was on her way to have lunch with Simon.
She looked down at the wristwatch her mum and dad had bought her for her twenty-first birthday and saw that she was going to be at the restaurant way too early instead of being late, as she usually was. It didn’t matter. It was a wonderful day and she had never been happier.
Ever since her birthday in April, she and Simon had been unofficially engaged. The difficulty about announcing their engagement was that Kiki was in Australia, on tour, and it wasn’t news Simon wanted to break to his daughter over the phone. She was, however, due home at the end of the week, and Simon would then have the heart-to-heart with her – a heart-to-heart he should have had months and months ago.
His reluctance to put Kiki in the picture as to the nature of their relationship had put her under great pressure. Geraldine, Artemis and Kiki knew, of course, that ever since the break-up of Simon and Eva’s marriage, she and Simon had been extraordinarily close. Kiki had said she thought it bizarre that one of her best friends was also a friend of her father, but otherwise had been uncaring about it. Neither Geraldine nor Artemis, who had always liked Simon, had thought it at all odd, but that had been because they didn’t know that she’d always had a crush on him, that she’d been in love with him since she was eighteen – and that he was the reason she’d stayed on at BBDO instead of taking up her place at university.
‘You lived in my home, Monday to Friday, from the time you were eleven years old to the time you left school at eighteen,’ he’d said once, when she’d wanted to tell the whole world that they were in love. ‘Can’t you see how that will look to people, Primmie? They may wonder just when I became sexually interested in you. I’m a family GP, I can’t afford the slightest whiff of scandal – and if the word paedophile is ever bandied about, I’m finished.’
She had understood, but keeping their love affair a secret from Geraldine, Artemis and Kiki had been the hardest thing she had ever done. Sometimes she’d had the feeling that Geraldine had long ago guessed the true nature of her feelings for Simon – and of Simon’s for her – but if she’d guessed, she’d never said anything.
Another few days, though, once Kiki was home and Simon had spoken to her, then everyone could know and congratulate her – her parents included.
‘But they’ll be appalled,’ he had said, running his fingers through his fair hair when she had asked if she could, at least, tell her parents. ‘They trusted you in my care for seven years! They, of all people, have every reason to wonder what sort of man I am – and for just how long I’ve had designs on you.’
‘You’re a good, kind, gentle, wonderful man,’ she had said, her head resting against his shoulder. ‘And no one could ever believe differently. I know you never thought of me in any way that was inappropriate when I was a child and no one else will believe you did, either.’ She’d begun to giggle, thinking of the long two years between Eva having left him and their becoming lovers. ‘And if they don’t believe me, I shall have to tell them that in the end it was virginal me who seduced you!’
Whether anyone would believe her last remark – which was a perfectly truthful one – was doubtful and a wide grin split her face. Geraldine and Artemis were going to be staggered when they learned that she and Simon were lovers – and they were certainly going to have to stop teasing her about what they had always thought was her boyfriendless state.
She glanced down at her watch again and saw that it was five to one. The restaurant where she was meeting Simon was in Greek Street, on the far side of the square and, unhurriedly, she rose to her feet.
Breaking the news to Geraldine and Artemis – and Kiki, too, of course – was something she had longed to do for so long that now the time was nearing she was on tenterhooks. It would certainly be great news to break at what was to be a reunion for them all. Kiki had been away for two months, touring Australia, and Geraldine had been away for nine months, trawling through northern India and Kashmir with Francis. Artemis hadn’t been in circulation of late, either. Married to Rupert and living in the Cotswolds, she now used the flat only as a pied-à-terre. With Kiki always flying off to gigs abroad and Geraldine satisfying her wanderlust now that Francis was no longer Kiki’s manager, the only person permanently resident in the flat they had all shared was herself.
As she strolled out of the square, it occurred to her that she wasn’t likely to be living in it for much longer either. Once Simon’s and her engagement was announced and happily accepted by everyone there was absolutely no reason for delaying their marriage. Unlike other engaged couples, they didn’t have to save for a home. Simon hadn’t wanted to move from the house at Petts Wood and, as it was a house she had always loved and she had no troubled feelings about his life there with Eva, she hadn’t asked that he do so.
As she crossed the road into Greek Street she could see his dearly familiar figure walking up it from the opposite end. He was wearing grey flannel trousers and a tweed jacket, just as he had been the first time she had seen him. With a stab of déjà vu she remembered the moment when she had stood with Geraldine at the entrance to Bickley High, watching in appalled fascination as Artemis’s father had pitched into him for having clipped his wing mirror.
Even then, without even having met him, she had liked him. He had been so quietly polite in the face of Mr Lowther’s aggressive rudeness that it would have been impossible not to have liked him. He had been attractive, too. His slim build and fair hair had reminded her of a painting she had once seen of St George.
As he saw her coming towards him, a smile creased his face. With love for him flooding through her, she ran towards him. He caught hold of her hands, squeezing them tightly, not hugging her and kissing her, as she would have liked him to do. Public displays of affection were not Simon’s style.
‘Hello, sweetheart,’ he said, releasing hold of one of her hands so that they could walk along the pavement side by side. ‘How long have you got for lunch today?’
‘An hour and a half. Howard is in Birmingham, seeing a client.’
That Howard Phillips had moved from the creative side of advertising into management and was her account director at BBDO was something she had found far more interesting than Kiki had. ‘He’s a wanker,’ Kiki had said, uncaring of the fact that he had been instrumental in introducing her to Kit Armstrong – and that without Kit Armstrong she would never have had a hit record with ‘White Dress, Silver Slippers’.
‘Smashing.’ Simon pushed open the door of the Hungarian restaurant that was their favourite eating place. ‘It means we don’t have to keep looking at our watches.’
As Simon didn’t work in town – and because of the nature of his work – weekday lunches together were prized occasions. Today, a locum was taking his surgery and home visits for him. Today she was doing a rare thing – taking an extended lunch break in order to be with him as long as possible.
‘Good afternoon, madam. Good afternoon, sir,’ the elderly waiter who seated them said in greeting.
Primmie always had to fight the urge to giggle when addressed, in The Gay Hussar as ‘madam’. For Simon’s sake, it was an impulse she kept well under control. He liked the restaurant’s old-style service and ambience: the stiff white cloths on the tables, the unchanging but satisfying mid-European menu, the snug intimacy that was worlds removed from the brash and noisy Italian trattorias thronging the rest of Soho. Another advantage of it, for him, was, she knew, that they were unlikely to run into any of her work colleagues there.
‘You can’t possibly want them to know that you’re going out with a man old enough to be your father, he said whenever she suggested they meet up somewhere her work colleagues would also be.
His sensitivity where their age difference was concerned troubled her because she found it so unnecessary. He was forty-two and forty-two wasn’t old. Her father was in his sixties. Now that was old – and if Simon had been in his sixties she’d have been able to understand his constant anxiety about how people would view their relationship.
‘It just isn’t anyone else’s business,’ she had said, time and time again. ‘I love you, and you love me, and that’s all that matters. If anyone has any comment to make about it, why should we care?’
The waiter broke in on her thoughts. ‘We have wild cherry soup today, madam,’ he said, ‘or perhaps you would prefer the duck pâté as a starter?’
‘The wild cherry soup would be lovely,’ she said, and then, so familiar with the menu that she didn’t need further help, ‘and could I have the fish dumplings with dill sauce as my main course?’
‘You may indeed, madam.’
As Simon ordered bean soup, paprika chicken and a bottle of Merlot, she wondered if the waiter was aware that she and Simon were not father and daughter, nor uncle and niece, but lovers. Always, when they were out dining, she wanted to hold hands with Simon across the table; to make an outward display that would leave no doubt in the eyes of anyone seeing the
m that they were in love. Simon, though, would never be drawn into behaving in a way that might draw attention to their relationship – and to their age difference.
‘I’ve been thinking about the tête-à-tête I’m going to have with Kiki, Primmie,’ he said when the waiter had retreated out of earshot. ‘And I’ve decided to postpone it for a week or two.’
‘Postpone it?’ She stared at him, bewildered. ‘But why? I don’t understand. You’ve bought me a ring and I want to wear it. I can’t bear being with Geraldine, Artemis and Kiki, pretending that the two of us are just friends and nothing more. It makes me feel as if our being in love is something to be ashamed of – and it isn’t.’
The wine waiter brought the bottle of Merlot to the table. Simon tasted it, waited until their glasses had been filled and then said gently, ‘I know how hard the situation is for you, Primmie, believe me I do, but what if Kiki doesn’t react as we hope she will? What if there is a knock-on effect that will spoil other things?’
She laced her fingers together in her lap. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, fighting down a rising sense of panic. ‘I don’t understand. A knock-on effect on what? What difference is there in telling her at the weekend when she arrives home and telling her in a few weeks’time? The sooner we tell her, the sooner we can tell everyone else, and people are going to be happy for us. There aren’t going to be any problems. Why should there be? And what are the other things you think could possibly be spoiled?’
‘There’s the wedding.’
‘The wedding? Our wedding?’
‘No,’ he said patiently. ‘Geraldine’s wedding. That’s why Geraldine and Francis have come home, isn’t it? To get married?’
‘Yes, But I don’t see …’
‘And both you and Kiki are to be bridesmaids?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘And if Kiki isn’t as rapturous about our engagement as you think she will be, then it will make for a difficult atmosphere when you are bridesmaids at Geraldine’s wedding and that would be grossly unfair to Geraldine. So I think it best that …’
The Four of Us Page 13
