He was taken aback when the fellow said: “You must be Judge Osgood.”
Penge’s bicycle in the hall reassured Topher that he would find his daughter at home.
In the front room the minor poet sat at the table writing. With his pale face, his prematurely receding hair, and his damp hand (which he extended in greeting) he did not look, Topher thought, capable of fathering a child. Having enquired after each other’s health and commented on the weather, both Chad and Topher looked out of the window, which was so grimy that you could scarcely see across the street. The young man in the plaid shirt, whose name was Robert, went upstairs to fetch Penge. She had been washing her hair and came down wrapped in a grey bathrobe which Topher had discarded many years previously and which had once been pale blue. He averted his eyes from the girdle which was tied around Penge’s middle but did not define her waist. Mystified, she greeted Topher and the four of them stood staring at each other awkwardly, as if about to embark on some bizarre quadrille.
Penge broke the silence. “Is everything all right?”
“I wondered if I might have a word with you.” Topher said.
“You’d better come up.”
Contemplating the bedroom – shared presumably with the minor poet – Topher hoped that the house-proud Caroline, from her metaphysical existence, was spared the sight of it. Penge cleared the chair of its tangle of unsavoury looking garments so that Topher could sit down. Blotting her wet hair with a thin towel, she perched on the unmade bed.
“What’s the matter?”
Topher wondered what they used for fresh air.
“I thought perhaps you could tell me that.”
They eyed each other. Topher looking into his mirror image. The resemblance was uncanny.
“Chelsea has been shooting her mouth off…”
“Not at all.”
“Well…?”
Topher was silent for a long time watching Penge dab and squeeze the darkening fronds until they began to turn golden.
“I’m not much good at this.”
Caroline had always dealt with the more delicate situations. Penge put the wet towel on her lap and sat facing him, her hands unconsciously cradling her belly.
“You know.”
Topher nodded.
“Well, that’s a relief. I did try once or twice but I couldn’t bring myself to tell you.”
“Couldn’t you have done something about it while there was still time?”
Penge stared at him.
“Chad and I have been trying for ages…”
“Are you thinking of…?”
“Having a baby has nothing to do with marriage. We are very happy as we are.”
“You’d be better off with Robert.”
Penge started to laugh. “You can’t be serious!”
Topher recalled the coloured handkerchief spilling from the back pocket of the young man’s jeans, the moustache, the earring. He had opened his mouth to talk about responsibility and commitment, about finances and plans for the future, when he happened to glance at Penge. Her face beneath the long curling strands had the gentle gaze of a Madonna, the unmistakable and indescribable halo of motherhood. He went to sit beside his daughter on the bed. He took her in his arms and felt the damp hair against his face.
“I wanted to tell you,” Penge sniffed into his shoulder. “I thought that you’d be angry.”
That was putting it mildly.
“I wish Mummy was here.”
Recounting the episode later to Sally Maddox, Topher said that it was the minor poet, to whom Topher had addressed himself over a mug of rose-hip tea, who seemed to have the situation in hand. He had enrolled with the Law Society and was going to qualify as a solicitor.
“What made Penge pluck up courage to tell you about the baby?” Sally asked.
“Oh, she didn’t tell me,” Topher said, without thinking. “That was Lucille.”
Eighteen
Driving down to Berkshire, Topher thought what a relief it was to get out of London, away from his women. The episode with Lucille had sent ripples in ever widening circles across the erstwhile calm of his life. Monday morning had seen him in the florists, on his way to court, sending a guilt-ridden bouquet – through Interflora – to Lucille in Bingley. In the evening he had rung Tina to thank her for the cake.
“I’m so pleased you took Lucille out,” Tina said.
Topher did not tell her that it was Lucille who had done the taking.
“She’s a lovely person and she’s not had a happy life.” In the manner of sisters, she added: “Shall you be seeing her again?”
It was not a simple question to answer. Had Tina posed it a week earlier, he would have had no hesitation in telling her that he and Lucille, with her jangling jewellery, were not in the least compatible. Having known her (in the Biblical sense), however, Topher was by no means averse to doing so again.
“I can’t say,” was his reply.
“It’s not my business.” Tina said. “Anyway, did you enjoy it?”
Topher was speechless.
“Cats,” Tina said in to the silence.
“Oh, Cats…” Topher repeated. “Great.” He realised that he sounded like Penge, and borrowed once more from her vocabulary to elaborate. “Terrific.”
“Lucille thinks you’re the cat’s whiskers.” Tina laughed at her own joke. “She wants to know where I’ve been hiding you.”
Topher had discussed Lucille with Marcus.
“Even Her Majesty’s judges are human,” was all Marcus had said.
“Suppose I get AIDS?”
“I don’t think it’s the fear of AIDS that’s bothering you. It’s your punishing conscience again.”
Marcus was right. All week Topher had wavered between bouts of self-reproach and desire for Lucille. He had discussed his dilemma with Sally, although he had not told her precisely what had taken place between himself and Lucille.
“There’s something on your mind,” Sally had said, when he had visited her after extracting Penge’s confession.
“The prospect of becoming an unmarried grandfather, so to speak.”
Sally fixed him with her brown eyes.
“It’s Lucille, isn’t it?”
“‘I confess nothing, nor I deny nothing.’”
“It wasn’t just Cats. Cats couldn’t have that effect on anyone.”
“Like most judges,” Topher said, “I tend to be very old fashioned in my ideas.”
“That’s what I like about you. I liked your reserve from the moment Marcus introduced us. I find it terribly sexy.”
“So it appeared.” Topher thought back to their first meeting.
The warmth of Sally’s thigh against his on the sofa made him not only want her to lay hands on him again, but conscious that were she to do so he would raise not the slightest objection. He imagined that going to bed with Sally would in no way duplicate his afternoon at the Mount Royal with Lucille. With Sally he would be tender, as she would be with him. Afterwards he would recite some Pushkin for her.
Standing up, ostensibly to look at the books which he was getting to know as well as he was Sally herself, it occurred to him that he might just be falling in love.
“I don’t deny that I find you attractive, Christopher,” Sally was privy to his thoughts as usual, “but you don’t need to worry.”
She stood up and made for the tiny kitchen.
“I bought a couple of lamb chops. I’ll stick them under the grill while you tell me about Penge.”
While Sally cooked the chops, Topher told her not about Penge, but of his ambivalence concerning Lucille.
“I can’t understand it. She’s not my type at all.”
Sally opened a packet of frozen peas and took a baguette from her shopping basket.
“‘My father’s house has many mansions’.”
It was what she had written on one of her first postcards to him.
“Was that what you meant?”
“Didn’t yo
u know?”
After dinner – the chops and the peas and the French bread, followed by coffee and a box of Turkish delight consumed mainly by Sally – they got round to the subject of Penge and her expected baby.
“She needs Caroline,” Topher said.
Sally looked at him. “She’s not the only one.”
“At a time like this a girl needs her mother.”
“She’ll manage. Women have an instinct for these things.”
Topher told Sally about Chad and his decision to embrace the law.
“He doesn’t seem to be such a bad chap.”
“He must have something going for him. You have to give your daughter a little credit. I expect you make him nervous.”
“I make most people nervous. Not you.”
It was true. Talking to Sally was like talking to himself.
On Wednesday Lucille had telephoned to thank him for the flowers. “I could come down on Friday,” she said tentatively.
Topher told her that he was going to the country. He omitted the fact that it was to stay with Jo Henderson. It was not exactly a lie.
Lucille was disappointed.
“How about the weekend after?”
A disturbance on the line saved Topher from replying.
Two days later a clumsily wrapped package had arrived. On the back of it was the name of the sender, “Lucille Moss”, in a spidery hand. Topher was ambivalent about gifts. Books chosen by others depressed him, and the ties given to him by his family over the years were generally not quite right. Winding the string into a neat butterfly and folding the brown paper, for what was obviously not the first time, he opened Lucille’s parcel.
It was a book: Man in the Kitchen. On the cover a jolly chap in a business suit executed some sort of war dance, while he nonchalantly tossed a pancake with one hand and whipped up a soufflé with the other. Lucille had written on the fly leaf. “You must look after yourself, love Lucille!” Eighteen kisses (such as Chelsea and Penge had appended to their postcards as children) followed the signature in which the “l”s were looped extravagantly and the dot over the “i” was composed of a small circle. Touched by Lucille’s concern, he put the book on the shelf next to Caroline’s ageing copies of Elizabeth David, the only culinary authority she had acknowledged.
Considerably lighter of heart than when he had left London, he slowed down in the sleepy village of Woodspeen to take a final look at Jo Henderson’s directions (which had arrived together with a small map) on how to reach Badger’s Cottage.
He and Caroline had never had a second home. Topher felt that if you always went to the same place it quickly became a habit, rather than a distraction, and Caroline maintained that worries about beds and plumbing could convert the most desirable of country residences into a nuisance.
He didn’t know what he had been expecting. Possibly a terraced artisan’s dwelling (such as Marcus and April had in Norfolk) or a converted barn, similar to that of Caroline’s brother, Mathew, by the river Hamble. Badger’s Cottage, a sprawling farmhouse set in grounds which extended as far as the eye could see, was not a cottage at all.
Parking his car on the sweep of gravel between a vintage Bentley and a Land Rover, Topher wondered whether he should perhaps have packed his dinner jacket.
The door was opened by a white-coated manservant. He took Topher’s small grip from him, and informed him that Lady Henderson was on the terrace and was expecting him. Traversing the drawing room, Topher noticed that not only was it large enough to accommodate a tennis court, but that it had an open brick fireplace and was furnished with a great many chintz-covered armchairs.
Jo Henderson left the small group of people which surrounded her to greet Topher. He tried to repress the unbidden image of her breasts, now restrained by a striped shirt, which she had exposed for his benefit on the occasion of their last meeting. As she embraced him, her perfume (which had lingered so long in his car), took him back to the evening at Le Mazarin.
Taking Topher by the arm she made the introductions. There was a newspaper owner, wearing a yellow waistcoat, whom Topher associated with the Bentley, and a very young farmer, who never took his eyes off Jo, who had definite affiliations with the Land Rover. A flaxen-haired Fiona, in cream riding breeches (so close fitting it seemed a miracle that she had got into them), and an older woman with a disgusting smelling cigarette in her mouth, who seemed to be drinking a pint of gin, completed the group. Topher’s fears – despite Jo’s assertions to the contrary – that he was to be the only house guest were immediately assuaged. The newspaper man’s name was Giles, and the farmer’s Sebastian. It should, Topher thought over his Buck’s Fizz, have been the other way round. They were waiting upon a Tilda and a Scott (Lost Weekend?) to complete the party.
Luncheon was served at a refectory table capable of seating at least twenty people. Despite the fact that Sebastian had been hanging upon her every word, Jo Henderson had seated Topher on her right. Sitting beneath the exposed rafters, the thought suddenly occurred to him that not one of the assembled company had known his late wife.
“Play polo?” Giles, his napkin tucked beneath his chin, asked from the far end of the table.
Topher realised that he was being addressed.
“Unfortunately, no.”
“Lucky man!” Giles leaned back while his glass was filled with Chablis. “More expensive these days than keeping a mistress.”
“I’m too old,” Topher said.
“Are you referring to the polo or the mistress?” Giles chortled.
“Both.”
“Nonsense. Can’t speak about the mistress,” Giles winked at Jo, “but as far as polo is concerned, all you need is co-ordination, a sense of anticipation and the ability to think quickly.”
“I imagine it helps if you can ride,” Topher said.
“There’s nothing like a brisk chukka to help you forget your worries.”
Privately Topher preferred the therapeutic qualities of Pushkin. “I like to keep my feet on the ground.”
“Are you a High Court Judge, like poor Henry?” The woman next to him, whose name was Flora, and who had had the effrontery to light one of her filthy cigarettes, drawled, appraising him through half-closed eyes.
“Good Lord, no.”
“I’ve never understood exactly what it is that judges do.”
“Judges expound, direct and administer the law,” Topher said. “Or as Bacon put it: ‘The parts of a judge in hearing are four. To direct the evidence; to moderate length, repetition or impertinency of speech; to recapitulate, select and collate the material points of that which hath been said; and to give the rule or sentence.’”
“‘God in his heaven’.” Flora exhaled. “It must be nice to be always right.”
“It would be a very arrogant judge who imagined he was always right.” Topher ostentatiously waved away the smoke that was blowing in his direction. “If absolute certainty was the pre-condition for decision, the judicial process would be paralysed.”
“Surely the judge does have to be right in a high percentage of cases?” Jo Henderson joined the conversation. “Otherwise he would lose credibility.”
“If you are confronted with two conflicting stories and little else,” Topher said, “you know very well that you have to base your decisions mainly – if not entirely – on your impression of the witnesses.”
“There’s only one way to reduce crime. Reduce the number of criminals!” Giles almost choked on his own wit.
Jo signalled for the plates to be cleared away.
“Offenders, please Giles, not criminals. And they no longer commit crimes, they ‘breach regulations’!”
Coffee was served in the drawing room. Taking his demi-tasse to the window seat, Topher was aware of an unaccustomed feeling of tranquillity. There were no echoes, such as those in his empty house. No books to be read, no music to be heard, no translations to struggle with by way of occupational therapy. From the low murmur of conversation at the far end of
the room, Giles’ laugh and the pleasant timbre of Jo Henderson’s voice were distinguishable. Looking out of the window at the countryside, which it would need a palette of paints all in some degree of green to capture, Topher had the ridiculous impression that he was monarch of all he surveyed, that he had come home.
After the coffee, Giles and Sebastian changed for the highspot of the weekend, the polo game. They went off in the Land Rover, (which surprisingly belonged to Giles) taking Fiona with them. Tilda (a dress designer much in the news because she was patronised by the young Royals) and Scott (who had been in records but now ran the business side of things for her), unable to keep their hands off each other, retired to their room. Flora set out for the village in search of cigarettes. Jo offered Topher a tour of the estate before taking him to watch the polo.
Accompanied by two Rotweilers, Topher walked beside his hostess over the cobbles, through the disused farmyard and the loose boxes. He thought how different she was from the Jo Henderson of the Judges Dining Room, or the Jo Henderson of Lowndes Square. On both previous occasions he had had the impression that she was almost as tall as he, but realised it must have been her high heels. Today, in her wellingtons, she appeared considerably shorter. She seemed also less brittle, more relaxed. Following her through the overheated green-houses, he chivalrously admired the giant marrows and the cucumbers, the ripening grapes and the delicate orchids about which Caroline would have been sure to offer some intelligent comment. Jo showed him the formal gardens and the orchard, the paddocks and the dew-pond, the fields sown with rye-grass and with rape.
“It was Henry’s dream,” she said, leaning against a fence beyond which cows with swinging tails grazed ponderously. She turned to look at the colour-washed elevation of the house with its tiled roofs. “He bought the old farm soon after we were married. We modernised it and, bit by bit, extended it. Henry was putting in some new milking plant,” she pointed to a partially completed building in the distance, “when he had the accident.”
An Eligible Man Page 16
