Bed of Roses

by Daisy Waugh

  ‘So, Scarlett,’ a female journalist ventures, about twenty minutes in, ‘would you tell us in your own words, what’s the story actually about?’

  ‘Do you want to tell her, darling? Or shall I?’ But then Kitty makes the grave mistake of pausing for breath, and Scarlett’s small voice can be heard, clear as a bell. ‘No, it’s all right, Kitty,’ she says. ‘I’ll explain.’

  Kitty double-takes. A look of irritation flits across her face. But she smiles, not unpleasantly. ‘Oh!’ she says. ‘Jolly good. Well, go on then, darling. Tell-tell. What it’s really about, of course,’ she adds, turning back to the journalists, ‘as always with my work, for those of you who haven’t read it, is the indomitability of the human spirit. And, need I add, the truly unpackageable magic of childhood!’

  Fanny’s been listening to Kitty bombast her way through this whole process. She’s watched the journalists, like putty in Kitty’s hands – and even she can’t quite deny that Kitty is funny. But beside her, she sees Scarlett, bursting with pride and yet never, not even once, getting a chance to speak. ‘Scarlett?’ she blurts out. ‘Is that how you would have described it?’

  Scarlett chuckles. ‘Not really, no.’

  ‘Oh!’ says Kitty, not in the least put out. ‘Scarlett, you are awful! But she’s quite right, of course, I’m talking absolute nonsense. As always.’

  ‘So? What is it about then, Scarlett?’ persists Fanny. She has to raise her voice to be heard over everyone’s laughter.

  Scarlett doesn’t mind sharing credit for having written the book. She doesn’t mind sitting here and smiling while her mother enjoys herself, showing off – in fact, she loves it. She’s never seen her mother on such good form. But there is one thing she wants to make clear to everyone, and it’s this:

  ‘The book,’ she says, ‘is about a real boy, who I know very well. He’s spoilt and stupid and nasty. He bullies the children. He bullies me. And yet his parents think he never does anything wrong…I wanted to write – we – we wanted to write a story where he gets his just deserts.’

  Kitty cackles wickedly. She steals a glance at Geraldine; she is standing next to Linda Tardy, wearing a tired, distracted grin. Obviously not listening. Lucky.

  ‘Who’s the boy? Does he go to school with you here in Fiddleford?’

  ‘Well,’ she says solemnly, ‘I don’t think I should probably tell you that. But I’m hoping his mother will read it to him every single night as a bedtime story, since he’s probably too thick to read it himself. And that one night, in a terrible, blinding flash, he’ll suddenly realise the story’s all about him.’

  Kitty cackles again. Naughty Scarlett, teasing everyone like this! She’d never realised her daughter was such a good sport.

  ‘So it’s revenge against the playground bully, is it?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘No, but it’s only pretend, though, isn’t it, darling?’ says Kitty suddenly, remembering Clive and Geraldine’s swimming pool, and the fact that they are lawyers. ‘Those people don’t really exist. The horrid boy and his ghastly parents and so on. It’s just pretend.’

  Scarlett gives her mother a strange, cold look. ‘No, Kitty. It’s not pretend. I really hate him.’

  ‘No, but sweetheart, he doesn’t actually thump you or anything horrid like that. Of course not.’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘OK,’ interrupts Jo, sensing danger. ‘I think that’s probably enough questions.’

  ‘So who’s the bully?’ demand the journalists. ‘What’s his name, Scarlett? Can you tell us that?’

  ‘Of course I can,’ she says, stung by her mother’s uncharacteristic attempt at diplomacy. ‘His name is—’ at which point Kitty and Fanny and Jo, too – who doesn’t know the name but most certainly knows that nobody else should either – all start shouting at once.

  ‘What? Who?’ The journalists turn in frustration from Scarlett to one another. ‘Did you catch that? What did she say?’

  ‘His name is—’ Scarlett tries again. But it’s too late. Everyone’s making too much noise. Jo has moved in front of Scarlett and is yelling about coffee being available in the village hall. Kitty is yelling about authors believing their characters are real. Journalists are shouting that they can’t hear. Photographers are shouting that they can’t see. And Fanny is clapping her hands, yelling over everyone that it’s time for the children to go back inside.

  She feels her mobile telephone vibrating in her jeans pocket.

  ‘Yes? Hi! Who is it?’

  ‘Louis,’ he says coldly.

  ‘Who?’ She walks away from the noise. ‘I can’t hear!’

  ‘It’s Louis. I’m standing in front of the school and I think you might like to get out here.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘I should hurry if I were you.’ He hangs up.

  Fanny turns to look back at the school. There is a tail of smoke rising from the far side of the building. ‘Keep them here until I say,’ she mutters to Jo. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  The bonfire, on the tarmac just in front of the girls’ cloakroom, is raging a metre high by the time she turns the corner. She sees him laying something on top of the flames: another dead bird, by the look of it, with a couple of fireworks strapped on to its back.

  ‘Dane Guppy!’

  He jumps, obviously guilty, but still can’t drag himself away. His fireworks could go off at any moment.

  ‘They’re going to explode!’ shouts Fanny.

  ‘I hope so.’ Dane bends closer over the fire to get a better look.

  ‘Get back, you idiot!’

  He doesn’t move.

  ‘Get down!’ Fanny, not much larger than he is, throws herself on top of him and knocks him to the ground just as the first firework fires off into the morning sky…

  …and the last frame Louis takes is of Fanny, scrambling up from on top of her pupil, a furious finger pointed at the camera while the bird and remaining firework explode above the bonfire’s flames. As he lowers his camera Louis is weeping with laughter.

  ‘Give me that fucking camera. It’s not funny, Louis.’

  ‘Oh, sure, it’s funny.’

  ‘Why didn’t you stop him?’

  ‘I did, didn’t I? I called you.’

  She looks down at Dane, still flat on the ground. ‘Dane, you idiot. Go and wait for me outside my office. I’ll be there in a minute. And you,’ she spits at Louis, ‘give me that film!’

  ‘What?’ He laughs. ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘Give it to me!’

  Louis smiles, indicates the playing field on the other side of the school. ‘By the way,’ he asks lightly, ‘about how many journalists you got over there right now?’

  She gazes at him. ‘Oh…fuck.’

  He gazes back. Gives another burst of laughter.

  ‘Louis…please. Please…There’s a fire extinguisher in the hall.’

  Somehow they manage to put the thing out and sweep away most of the embers just as the first few reporters begin to file out through the front door, so that the only telltale signs of Dane’s experiment are a lingering smell and the black smears on Fanny and Louis’s clothing.

  And then Fanny and Louis are left alone. They are standing side by side where the fire had been, Louis with his hands in back pockets, Fanny absorbed by her shoe stitching, both uncertain whether their shared adventure constituted any kind of a truce.

  ‘Thank you, Louis. Thank you very much.’

  ‘Where’s Mr White when you need him, huh?’

  ‘What’s that?’ she asks hopefully.

  ‘Robin Grey. Whatever he’s called. The skinny teacher.’ He shrugs. ‘Doesn’t matter.’ He looks at her, at last. Most of Fanny’s hair has tumbled out of its clip and she’s got a smear of soot across her nose and cheek. She looks slightly mad, he thinks, and wild, and – it demands all his willpower not to take the cheek in his hand; not to bend down and kiss her. ‘I’m late, Fan,’ he mutters. ‘I should get o
n. Scarlett and Kitty are waiting. They’ll be pissed.’

  At the mention of Kitty’s name the spell is broken. ‘Well, well.’ Fanny smiles sourly. She can’t help it. ‘Heaven forbid you should keep Kitty waiting.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he says. ‘I’m supposed to be working.’

  ‘“Work” is it now, Louis?’ Stupid and spiteful. She knows it, and yet still can’t seem to stop. ‘Business must be very bad.’

  ‘Don’t be a jerk,’ he says coldly and begins to walk away.

  ‘Oh, come on, Louis,’ she calls after him. ‘Louis, I was joking. I didn’t mean—’ But the moment is gone. He doesn’t turn back. He ignores her.

  He wanders off, leaving Fanny standing there alone. Briefly she considers Ollie and Dane, both of them waiting for her upstairs – no doubt beating the life out of each other. She ought to break them up. She ought to do that.

  She ought to do a lot of things, and yet she stands there, waiting – hoping that for some reason Louis might turn round and come back. So they can try having the whole, stupid conversation again.

  32

  Macklan Creasey spent the first seven years of his life in Durham shuttling between a handful of foster homes and the tiny, dirty flat of his ageing mother. During that time he never once set eyes on his father. He was barely aware that he existed – until one strange afternoon, at the end of a month-long visit to the foster home, it had been not his depressive forty-seven-year-old mother, but a twenty-four-year-old Solomon who turned up to take him away.

  By that stage Solomon the art dealer had already spent a short spell in prison, for fraud, and had learnt from his various mistakes, definitely not to make identical ones again (although he would return to prison for tax evasion several years later). He was also already well on his way to making his first million. He spent some of it on Macklan’s mother whom he’d deserted seven years previously. He was guilt ridden; a rare state for Solomon (and not wholly justified since, at the time of Macklan’s birth, Solomon, at seventeen, was twenty-three years younger than Macklan’s mother, his former art teacher). He found her treatment for the depression, paid for it, even pre-booked the thrice-weekly minicabs that were due to take her to her appointments with the shrink. He bought her a brand new house in a brand new close in a refined corner of Durham. And he took Macklan.

  Solomon promised his former art teacher that as soon as she felt well enough Macklan would be returned to her. But the months passed and she never asked for him. A year passed, and Macklan’s mother stopped telephoning. She stopped replying to Macklan’s letters. Finally, Solomon and Macklan travelled north together to find her. And there she was, still living at the lovely new house Solomon had bought for her. She looked well – and neither pleased nor particularly displeased to see them. She had a job at Boots, she said, and a new boyfriend. She probably would have taken Macklan back if Solomon had insisted on it, but then, when it came to the crunch Solomon found, most inconveniently, that he couldn’t quite bring himself to be separated from him. He loved his goofy son, and his goofy son appeared to love him. So he bundled Macklan back into the car and drove them both south again.

  Macklan didn’t shine at school. He was academically slow, physically uncoordinated, tone deaf, not even any good at art – and dyslexic. But people loved him. He was good-looking in a fey, haphazard sort of way, and incredibly good-natured. His mixture of vulnerability, selfpossession and humour made him hard to resist, especially for women.

  He left school at sixteen without a great deal to show for it and took a year-long course in cabinet-making, since when, because he is a perfectionist and he constantly undercharges, Macklan has always had more work than he can keep up with. He moves around, sometimes staying with friends or a girlfriend, often staying with his father in London. But he’s spent the last couple of months on his own at Hawthorne Place, Solomon’s weekend house in Fiddleford. He’s rented part of the disused stables up at the Manor Retreat, which he uses as a workshop. It is the first workshop he has ever had.

  Solomon worries that Macklan, alone in the country all week, might sink, as his mother did, into depression. Solomon is always trying to persuade Macklan to return with him to London.

  But Macklan is far from depressed. He is in love with Tracey Guppy. Macklan and Tracey have been in love with each other since the evening they met, seven weeks ago, on the night that the people of Fiddleford were meant to be learning how to limbo dance.

  On the Sunday that Kitty and Scarlett Mozely’s faces are splattered over a handful of newspapers’ inside pages, Macklan Creasey ambles gracefully into Solomon’s study, hands in pockets. He waves vaguely at his father, who is on the telephone, as ever; feet up on the desk, mid-negotiation with an Austrian packaging tycoon, and speaking in effortless, fluent German.

  They have the same long-limbed, athletic physique, Macklan and his father; the angular cheek-bones, set jaws, long, straight, bony noses (although Solomon’s looks as if it might once have been broken), and yet nobody who didn’t already know it would ever guess they were related. It would be hard to find two men with such opposing styles. Macklan’s large green eyes are full of light and humour; Solomon’s are black, hooded and watchful. Macklan, with his pale skin, careless clothes and shaggy russet hair, looks like a Romantic poet. He is beautiful. Solomon is not. He is a long way from beautiful. He is smooth and swarthy, impeccably dressed and deliciously scented. He looks and smells like a Hollywood villain.

  ‘Etwas ist passiert,’ Solomon lifts his long legs from the desk, nods at his son, ‘ich rufe sie zurück,’ and hangs up without waiting for a response.

  ‘Sorry,’ says Macklan. ‘I could have waited. There wasn’t any hurry.’

  ‘Not at all. He’s always very repetitive. So what can I do for you, Macklan? Want a lift back to London?’ he asks hopefully. ‘Or you can take one of the cars if you want. Drive yourself.’

  Macklan frowns. ‘Actually, I came to tell you I’m getting my own place. I’ve decided to move to Fiddleford properly.’

  A moment’s frosty silence while Solomon absorbs this, then, ‘Macklan, you fool, you’ll be fucking miserable!’

  ‘Of course I won’t.’

  ‘You haven’t got any friends down here.’

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘But all your family’s in London. We’re all in London!’

  ‘We can see each other at weekends.’

  ‘But what the bloody hell are you going to do with yourself down here all alone?’

  ‘There’s plenty of work around. Charlie Maxwell McDonald’s got loads of work at the Manor.’

  But his father isn’t listening. He won’t listen. Though he himself ran away at fourteen and has never once contacted his parents since, he believes Macklan, at twenty, is still too young to leave home. Will always be too young. ‘There’s fuck all to do in the country. You do realise that, don’t you?’

  ‘And I’m renting one of the Old Alms Cottages off Ian Guppy,’ he says. ‘The last one. I’m lucky. There was only one left.’

  ‘Lucky? Have you gone mad? Macklan, the roof of those cottages hardly reaches your ankles!’

  ‘Well, then I’ll just have to bend. There’s no point going on, Dad. I’m moving in tomorrow…Cheer up.’ Macklan smiles. ‘You can come and have supper with me next weekend if you like.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘You might be feeling hungry.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Solomon shudders, ‘for Christ’s sake, Macklan – don’t be facetious.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Macklan smirks.

  ‘I simply don’t understand what attraction this village could possibly have for a young man like—Oh. Unless you’ve met a bird?’ Solomon chortles suddenly. ‘Is it a bird, Mack?’

  ‘Mind your own damn business,’ snaps Macklan. ‘I just like it down here.’

  ‘If it’s a bird there’s not much I can do about it…Does she—Is she—’ Solomon throws his son a sideways glance – and decides against it. Sighs. ‘Never m
ind.’ Instead he turns to the bookshelf behind his desk, taps in a code on some invisible keyboard. The spines of ten adjoining books ping abruptly open. ‘Will you at least take this?’ he says, pulling out a wad of banknotes. There is, beneath the bluster, a hint of pleading in Solomon’s voice. Mack shakes his head. As usual. ‘But you’ll need something to set the place up. You’ve got to have some cash, Mack. I mean, for example, do you have a kettle?’

  ‘I can get one.’

  A look of triumph from Solomon. ‘And do you have any idea how much a kettle costs these days?’

  ‘I’ve got a pretty good idea,’ Macklan laughs at him. ‘What about you? How much do you think a kettle costs?’

  ‘What? Well…Christ.’ He thinks about it. ‘I haven’t got a fucking clue. It’s got nothing to do with it. Macklan – please – I’m ordering you, just this once, take the cash.’

  ‘No.’

  Macklan’s a fool. He never takes the cash.

  33

  Solomon spends the entire, long journey back to London worrying about Macklan’s decision. He drops off his Silent Beauty at her elegant address somewhere in Chelsea and heads for an early bed. Solomon does all his best thinking in bed.

  At three in the morning he telephones the ex-Mrs Creasey, currently living it up in Miami with an Iranian plastic surgeon, to tell her that he and the children will be moving to the country. Mrs Creasey has never been to Fiddleford. He bought it after they split. But even the thought of the English countryside, from her air-conditioned sea-view splendour, makes her shiver with fear and loathing. She wishes him and the children heartfelt luck, which Solomon accepts with a gust of laughter so loud it wakes the children. They come down one by one – Clara, seven, Dora, six, and Flora, five – in search of breakfast.

  ‘Good news,’ he says, pulling toasted crumpets from out of the grill. ‘Ouch. Bugger. As from next week, we’re all going to live in Fiddleford and you’ll all be going to school in the village. Which of you wants Marmite?’