Stout, perspiring, panting, gesticulating, Ken Smollett thundered towards me like a mad sea urchin.
‘Don’t be silly,’ I told him repressively when he was close enough to spray-grease me. ‘What do you mean by startling me like that?’
‘I was looking for you,’ he said reproachfully, caught a glimpse of my bare feet and reddened as if they were indecent. ‘And don’t mind me mentioning it, but shouldn’t you have shoes on? There are scorpions, snakes . . .’
‘While I’d be sorry to tread on any creature, they’ll just have to take their chance,’ I said patiently. ‘I’m not a Buddhist so at least I won’t think they’ll be a defunct relative.’
And my soles are so leathery, due to my unfortunate habit of walking about in my bare feet like a superannuated hippie, that I don’t suppose I’d even notice unless it was something really squidgy.
Ken eyed me strangely. ‘Are you on something?’
‘Borrowed time: isn’t everyone? Why were you looking for me?’
‘Well, because it’s the last day of the course, and I didn’t want to waste a minute of it. So when I looked out early and saw you—’
‘It’s your last day, not mine,’ I cut in ruthlessly. ‘My sessions run at clearly stated times and none of them before breakfast. In any case, you aren’t on my course, you’re supposed to be doing poetry with Nigel.’
His face fell, but he stood his ground and took a determined grip on the sheaf of papers clutched in one sweaty paw. ‘I’ve written a villanelle – for you!’
He wouldn’t recognize a villanelle if it snuggled up and licked his ear. And one more of Ken’s appalling poems and I might be jumping off the edge voluntarily.
(Another theory – maybe Sappho Numero Uno was hounded into the leap by awful poets following her around trying to read her their work.)
‘You are so much more sensitive and sympathetic than Nigel,’ he pleaded, edging too close considering I couldn’t step back. ‘In fact, I hoped we might be able to meet in London from time to time to discuss – work.’
By now he was leeringly eye to eye with my bosom, and I was just contemplating the bloodless infliction of a little agony upon his portly person, when His Master’s (or Mistress’s) voice yelled: ‘KEN!’
Barbara Smollett’s voice is a rare gift: deep, powerful, strong, commanding – you could use it as a foghorn in emergencies.
Ken gave a galvanic jerk as if a rod had been strategically inserted by an invisible hand and hissed: ‘It’s Barbara – act casually. Later we can arrange—’
‘KEN!’
His little fat legs turned about of their own volition and marched him jerkily off, while with turned head he was still mouthing at me.
Interesting . . .
I moved away from the cliff edge and, taking out my notebook, scribbled: The power of her voice was irresistible – even Dragonslayer, though not of her race, felt its resonance jerk his limbs commandingly . . .
Chapter 2
Birthday Letters
There were three letters among my cards, though one was not strictly speaking a birthday letter, but an indignant epistle from one Dorinda Ace, who was writing on behalf of her husband ‘. . . Gilbert Ifor Ace, last direct male descendant of the Gower Aces, and as such the rightful inheritor of Aces Acre.’
Then she went on to accuse me of exerting undue influence on the two elderly Ace brothers in order to buy the property, and ended by demanding that I instantly restore it to her husband, for: ‘I am not without influence in the Gower: before my marriage I was a Penryn.’
I dashed off an immediate reply.
Dear Mrs Ace,
I will not begin by thanking you for your letter, since it was offensive in tone and slanderous in content.
Reading between the lines I take it that your solicitor has already informed you that you don’t have a leg to stand on. When I bought the cottage more than twelve years ago Dafydd and Gethyn Ace were fully aware of what they were doing, and more than happy with the price I paid and the agreement that they could continue to live there, rent-free and without interference, for the rest of their lives.
I understand that your husband has inherited all the contents of the house, including family documents, which I’m sure will be a consolation to him.
I was most interested to learn your maiden name. Tell me: are you any relation of Chinless Charlie Penryn, who was arrested last year for posing as a nude Greek statue at the Acropolis and frightening a party of female tourists nearly to death? I believe the police have agreed to let him go back to Britain, providing he undergoes medical treatment. I expect you will be glad to have him home . . .
Of the other two letters, one was from Aunt Pops and Jaynie in Portugal, saying they thought they’d made a pretty good job of bringing me up for an Odd Couple, and now I was about to move to my Welsh hovel they were having fun collecting old pieces of Portuguese china and furniture for it, including a door.
I only hoped they didn’t try to gift-wrap it.
Miranda’s note gave me the welcome though surprising news that she had moved down to what had been her parents’ house on the Gower:
. . . which Dad left to me provided I lived there: otherwise it would have passed to the Pondfish Preservation Society. We’re going to make it our main home, although we will have to keep the London house on too, since Chris needs to be there so much.
I’m sure he’s quite pleased to have me down here, because I’m an embarrassment now I’ve put on all this weight, but actually I prefer it in the country and so does Spike. He’s pretty old for a Labrador, but the fresh air has given him a new lease of life.
The Gower peninsula has changed a lot since you and Mu spent that summer here when we were students. There was a magazine article recently that called it the New Cornwall, since lots of writers and artists are moving here, or buying weekend cottages. Even the ruined house at Penryn Castle is now a craft centre.
I meet most of the newcomers, since when Chris is down for the weekend it always develops into a sort of open house on a Saturday night, but there are some old friends here, too. I bumped into Lili Ford Jakes recently, who said she’d just bought a weekend cottage in the next village, and she wrote down the recipe for the Cabbage Soup Diet and gave it to me.
It was well meant, but when I read it I realized that being fat with permanent wind would be even worse than just being fat.
Also, I’m terribly busy working out biscuit recipes for Chris’s next TV series, Chris Goes Crackers, so there are thousands of tempting biscuits around all the time . . .
It was great news that Miranda would be living in Bedd too, so what with Mu being only in Pembrokeshire, we would be practically all together again for the first time since we were students. Also, since Miranda was on the spot, she could keep an eye on the workmen who were supposedly fixing the roof of Aces Acre, and installing an indoor toilet.
When shall we three meet again?
Mu and I hadn’t actually seen very much of Miranda since she married Chris Cotter, and the Iron – or maybe Slab Cake – curtain came down.
He really doesn’t like me. Maybe it was the time I told him that since he’d built his career on Miranda’s creative cookery skills, he should at least credit her contribution in the series and in the books. I thought he was going to spontaneously combust, which would have been the most interesting thing I’d ever seen him do, on or off screen, but unfortunately he didn’t.
What sort of a man can’t take a little criticism? Especially when it’s clear to anyone who knows them that Miranda is the real creative cookery genius. She even produced her own cookery book, The Stuffed Student, while we were still at college. Mu did the illustrations, we persuaded Miranda to send it off to a publisher, and it’s been in print ever since. But then she married Chris the Succubus, who has the culinary skills of a dead donkey, and that was the end of her personal career. I don’t know what she saw in him, though apparently some women do find him sexy in a foxy kind of way, b
ut he was persistent and she is very persuadable.
I wrote a note back to her, since there was no point in ringing to tell her the glad tidings about the cottage: she has the mother of all stammers, and it’s worse on the phone.
After my last class with that week’s budding Fantasists I went into the hall and phoned Mu, who sounded wraith-like, which she isn’t, her slenderness stopping just this side of skinny.
‘Happy birthday, Sappho,’ she said cheerily.
‘Yes, but I’m thirty-nine, you heartless hag! What’s there to be happy about?’
‘It could be worse – you could be forty now.’
‘Thanks for that Thought for the Day – and there’s only a year to go. How can I possibly be nearly forty, Mu? I mean, isn’t forty wearing your hair in a bun, twinsets, Mantovani, and changing your library book twice a week? Middle age?’
‘I am old, I am old, I will wear my Levis rolled,’ she intoned sepulchrally. ‘Come on, Sappho: that might have been what it was like once, but not now. Forty today means changing your hair colour twice a week, not your library books, twinsets aren’t compulsory, and even if you could get all that hair into a bun the weight would squish your face up like a rubber mask.’
‘But then no one could see the wrinkles,’ I pointed out. ‘And what about the Mantovani to Manilow?’
‘I think Motörhead’s the Mantovani of our generation,’ she suggested.
‘Forward into forty on a wave of “The Ace of Spades” and hennaed hair? You know, I think I’m beginning to feel better.’
‘Good. And don’t forget it will be my turn next, then Miranda’s, even though it doesn’t seem five minutes since we were all dewy little innocents sharing digs.’
‘I was never a little anything, dewy or otherwise, but no, it doesn’t, though I do feel much more mature inside – I’ve gone from seventeen to about twenty-five.’
‘That’s probably going to be the hell of it,’ Mu said thoughtfully. ‘Inside our heads we’ll still be young, but our bodies won’t cooperate. Pity we can’t slough them off from time to time like a snake.’
‘That would be lovely. I’d like to hand my folded papery self to one of the Creative Breakers and walk off fresh and uncreased . . . But – well, it’s not going to happen, is it? The only coil I shuffle off will be a mortal one.’
I shivered, goosed by Time. ‘You know, Mu, I never actually realized until this morning that I’m not going to live for ever!’
There was a surprised silence. ‘How odd!’ she said at last. ‘I’ve never thought of it like that either. I mean, you know you’re going to pop your clogs one day, but you don’t accept it. The bullet’s always got someone else’s name on it.’
‘There can’t be many that say Sappho or Mu. We just have to keep dodging.’
She sighed. ‘It’s funny, I’ve been watching my biological clock ticking away, but not my life.’
I cursed myself for my tactlessness, but she added more cheerfully: ‘At least your books will be immortal: O Immortal Sappho!’
‘But they’re not the Great Literature I thought I was going to write.’
‘Great fantasy, though – brilliant. Everyone reads them. Even teenage boys read them,’ she pointed out.
‘I know, I have to answer their letters.’
‘Well, have little cards made. Or get computerized – so much easier than compiling all those tapes and scribbles together into a book, too.’
‘Oh, yeah, and I ought to get a degree in computing while I’m at it.’
‘It’s not that difficult – I type up all Ambler’s adventures on to a computer now to send to the publisher, though my illustrations have to go separately.’
Ambler, Mu’s husband, goes on Boy’s Own ‘Cycling up the Limpopo on my pedalo with a llama’-type adventures, having much more money than sense. He’s big, blond, friendly, enthusiastic and not terribly bright.
‘My agent thinks I’ve nearly finished Dark Hours, Dark Deeds, but I haven’t. There’s the most pestilential little man among this intake of Creative Breakers who keeps following me – he thinks I’m on tap twenty-four hours a day. Hot and cold running Sappho. Mostly running.’
‘There always is one – attracted helplessly like a moth to a flame. Why do you do it? You don’t need the money any more.’
‘Bob’s been such a good friend to me over the years, and there’s always the hope that one or two will go on and become good writers. Anyway, I’ve only one more group to teach before I can settle down and finish the book – and meet you in Rhodes.’
‘You could be a personality at home. You’re a cult figure.’
‘A what?’
‘Cult.’
‘Oh, cult. The original Sappho’s already one of those, though I don’t know what she’d make of all the lesbians flocking to her island on an Olives Are Not the Only Fruit pilgrimage. But all I want is a bit of peace to finish this novel and the next Spiral Bound guidebook.’
‘You could do that over here, and help me with the Fantasy Flowers business,’ she offered. ‘It’s been fun, but I’m getting bored with it now. Speaking of which, you’d never guess who phoned up and ordered a very special little bouquet to be sent to you?’
‘Yes I would,’ I groaned. ‘You didn’t, did you?’
‘He didn’t recognize my voice, and I didn’t see why I shouldn’t have his money, so expect a parcel in the post if it hasn’t arrived already. I’ve done you proud.’
‘Thanks a lot. Look, I’d better go – see you in Rhodes.’
‘Oh-oh,’ she said in a muted voice. ‘Ambler’s waving something at me.’
‘You should be so lucky.’
‘Not that sort of thing – a piece of paper. Looks like the bill for importing and quarantining that Egyptian cat – the one I told you about, that attached itself to me when I was out there helping Ambler make arrangements for the canoeing-down-the-Nile thing he’s doing this winter. I couldn’t leave her behind, could I? I think I’d better go . . . Bye-ee!’
There was just time to hear Ambler roar: ‘Aren’t there enough bloody cats in Britain without—’ before the line went dead. But I wasn’t worried – Mu can, except for one important thing, twist him round her little finger.
As I stood smiling, the crunch of gravel alerted me to danger: the portly shape of Ken Smollett was trudging hotly up the path, the inevitable sweaty handful of papers clutched to his bosom.
I tiptoed to the rear of the gloomy hall and backed through the kitchen doors, almost colliding with Bob’s wife, Vivi.
‘What—’
‘Shh! Listen, Vivi, you haven’t seen me all afternoon, so you think I must be out until dinner.’
Her brown eyes sparkled with laughter. ‘Is it that Ken? Always it is the little men who chase you. But he has a wife – he should behave himself.’
‘At least he’s going home tomorrow, and Lili’s arriving tonight, isn’t she? That’ll distract him – he might even stay another week and take “Putting the Spice into Your Fiction”.’
‘That Lili,’ she sniffed disdainfully. ‘Married three times, and can she pass anything in trousers? I said to Bob: “What does she know about romance?” She thinks love, romance and sex are the same thing.’
‘It doesn’t seem to affect her book sales.’
‘Then other people, they cannot tell the difference either.’
‘That’s a very sad thought, Vivi.’
‘You need a husband before it is too late – a Greek, perhaps, romantic and cultured? You are thirty-nine, I know, for Bob tells me, so it must be true – but I know a very nice widower, in Athens, teaching at the university, and—’
‘No, thanks,’ I said hastily. ‘I need a husband like a fish needs a bicycle.’
She wrinkled her broad, smooth forehead. ‘It is a joke? But you must be serious, Sappho – already it may be too late for the babies, and when you are forty you’ll need—’
‘Shh!’ I whispered. ‘He’s coming down the hall. I’m off
!’
‘I will head him off at the pass, as they say,’ she nobly volunteered. ‘He is not allowed in the kitchen under Eleni’s feet while she’s preparing the special birthday dinner, the lovely cake, all white icing with candles – many, many candles . . .’
‘Oh my God!’ I exclaimed ungratefully, and bolted.
‘Later I will tell you of the handsome widower,’ she hissed after me, and then I heard her voice raised, clear and cool: ‘Ah, Mr Smollett, can I help you? Coffee for all will be served on the terrace in one little half-hour and—’
She’s worth her weight in birthday candles. But what did she mean, it might be too late for babies? Had someone cancelled my option without telling me?
Not that I wouldn’t rather be sacrificed as a Born-Again Vestal Virgin than give birth, of course, but it was my choice.
Wasn’t it?
Was that another buffet from the Bladder of Mortality?
Chapter 3
Say It with Flowers
Dinner was served outside on the terrace that night, the long trestle tables lit only by the soft flickering light of candles.
This proved a blessing when Lili Ford Jakes made her appearance in a slinky green garment whose top half consisted of a narrow, horizontal strap. She’s the type of diminutive brunette sometimes described as a Pocket Venus, though I really wouldn’t recommend it unless your clothing is fire retardant.
‘Oh, am I late?’ she drawled huskily, posing her assets artistically in the doorway.
‘That dress!’ whispered Vivi, scandalized. ‘Surely she has it on the wrong way round?’
‘For goodness’ sake don’t suggest it – I don’t think it’s got a back at all. As Aunt Poppy would say: “She’s all fur coat and no knickers.”’
‘All fur coat and no knickers?’ Vivi echoed doubtfully.
Bob took a mouthful of wine down the wrong way and choked, and when I resumed my seat after patting him on the back (fortunately the Heimlich manoeuvre was not necessary on this occasion) Vivi was in fits of helpless giggles at something or other.
A Leap of Faith Page 2
