Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs

by Clayton, Victoria

  ‘I’m afraid I’m awfully ignorant,’ I confessed humbly.

  Conrad shrugged. ‘No one knows everything. Remember the first law of thermodynamics. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed.’

  ‘… neither created nor destroyed,’ I repeated.

  He pushed back his cuff, held out his hand and spread his fingers, then turned it over so I could see there was nothing in it. Then he made a fist and opened his fingers in one rapid movement, like the opening and closing of a fan, to reveal a salted almond. ‘Matter,’ he repeated, ‘can neither be created –’ he folded up his fist again then showed me his empty palm – ‘nor destroyed. But it can be changed –’ again the fan-like dexterity – ‘from a gas to a liquid or from a liquid to a solid. Or in this case …’ He showed me a stuffed olive.

  It was astonishing. I had watched most carefully and neither the nut nor the olive could have been hidden between his fingers or up his sleeve. ‘How did you do that?’

  Conrad shrugged. ‘The art of prestidigitation is the first thing any amateur magician learns.’

  He opened his mouth and threw in both the almond and the olive.

  ‘Do you really believe in vampires?’

  ‘No.’ Then his cold, rather severe face broke into a charming smile and his black eyes lit with amusement.

  ‘Dame Gloria Beauwhistle,’ announced Spendlove.

  ‘A thousand apologies, Mrs Preston.’ Dame Gloria came into the room at a run. ‘I wish I had as many excuses for being late but the truth is I overslept. I do my best work after midnight and my desk faces an east window, so the pleasure of staying up to see the dawn is one I can rarely resist.’ She did not look like the sensitive aesthete Evelyn had led us to expect. She was a big woman dressed in a brown boiler suit, the sort of thing men wear in inspection pits in garages. I guessed her age was somewhere between sixty and seventy. She shook Evelyn’s hand energetically. ‘I woke at half-past twelve, threw myself into my car and came straight here.’ It was evident that she had not stopped to brush her hair. It was cut short and stuck up in browny-grey tufts like a newly hatched bird’s. ‘Luckily Butterbank – that’s the name of my little cottage – is on a hill so I can always get the car to start. I just give it a push and then run like stink and … Conrad! But how extraordinary, I thought you’d gone back to Germany.’ Dame Gloria strode towards him in her large brown boots, her arms held wide. ‘What joy!’ They embraced each other. ‘This is a marvellous surprise!’ she said to Evelyn. ‘Why, only the other day Conrad was at Butter—’

  ‘Yes,’ Conrad interrupted her, ‘I did go to Germany. But as you see I have returned.’

  If Evelyn was put out to discover that her chief lion was apparently the best of chums with her arch enemy, she hid it admirably. ‘What a coincidence! I’d no idea you had friends in Northumberland.’

  Dame Gloria whacked him on the back making him cough. ‘Oh, Conrad and I go back a long way, don’t we?’

  He smiled. ‘We certainly do.’

  ‘We met at Heidelberg when I was visiting professor of music. Conrad was a student then. All the girls had crushes on him.’ She poked him in the chest. ‘Remember the one who used to sleep in the corridor outside your room and bite the legs of the other girls? With yellow plaits and enormous tits.’ Dame Gloria chortled. ‘You certainly made the most of your educational opportunities.’

  ‘Conrad is engaged to marry my daughter.’ Evelyn’s smile was a little wintery.

  ‘Conrad? Engaged?’ Dame Gloria looked at him, astonished. ‘But you never said anything … that is, ah-ha—’ She looked confused as Conrad gave a slight shake of his head. ‘I wish you all the best, naturally … engaged!’ Her eye went round the room, paused for a moment on Sybil, then travelled on to me. ‘And is this the young lady?’ Dame Gloria bounced on her toes and swung her arms out from her sides. ‘Do introduce me.’

  ‘My daughter hasn’t come down yet,’ said Evelyn. ‘This is Marigold Savage, a friend of the family. Marigold is a ballerina.’

  I was not actually entitled to be called a ballerina, as this means not just any female dancer but an exceptional one, usually the leading dancer of a company. But it was not the moment to clear up this common misunderstanding.

  Dame Gloria’s grasp made my bones crack. ‘Hello, dear. I don’t know as much about ballet as I should, considering Stravinsky’s my hero. The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring are works of genius as everyone knows, but there are others, Apollon Musagète for example, Les Noces and Agon—’

  Evelyn moved her firmly onward. A sprinkling of erudition had its place at her lunch parties, but it should not be so cumbrous as to exclude the uninitiated. ‘As you know Conrad, I presume you also know Fritz?’

  ‘Fritz, dear old thing, how are you? How’s the dissertation on the similes of Catullus going?’

  Fritz smiled shyly and submitted to having his shoulders clapped and his ears pulled. Before Dame Gloria could be introduced to Sybil and Basil, Isobel made her entrance. Her dress, of black and gold stripes, was eye-catching. It was sleeveless, with a puffball skirt that came down to the tops of gleaming patent-leather boots. Her hair was fastened into a tight chignon, with a black feather tucked into the topknot like a squaw’s headdress.

  ‘Here you are at last, darling.’ Evelyn’s tone was disapproving. She had strict ideas on what was convenable for lunch in the country and they did not include feathers, shiny gold or false eyelashes. ‘You must go without a drink. Our guests must be faint with hunger.’

  I thought Isobel’s appearance was wonderfully dramatic, but I saw by two little white dints above his eyebrows that Rafe also seemed to dislike it. Perhaps he thought she ought not to court Conrad’s approval so plainly. As for Conrad himself, he looked as inscrutable as Providence.

  Lunch was a success, largely thanks to Dame Gloria – Golly, as she insisted we call her – who ignored all the rules and entertained the whole table with stories of people she had met and things she had seen. She told us about her grandfather who had been a milkman. Her happiest memories were of accompanying him on his rounds with horse and cart. Golly had round brown eyes and round nostrils in a broad, upturned nose. In fact she reminded me of a cow. I don’t mean this disrespectfully as I have always liked cows. Her real name, she explained, was Gloria Toot, but her agent had been afraid that Toot’s First Clarinet Concerto would excite ridicule.

  Golly described picnicking during the saffron season in Kashmir on a sea of purple crocuses with not a fingerbreadth between them, of seeing a bearded lady being shot out of a cannon in Romania, of meeting Sophia Loren in a cloakroom at Bologna railway station. Basil, perhaps feeling that he was being outshone, told an amusing little story about diving into the sea to rescue a pretty young lady’s dog and being struck by cramp after only a few yards. He had been rescued and given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation by a burly fisherman. When he came to, he found the pretty young lady kneeling by his side in tears while the dog ran heartlessly up and down the strand barking at gulls. Evelyn was in for a big disappointment if she believed that there was a chance that Isobel might transfer her love from Conrad to Basil. I was quite certain that the kisses of the burly fisherman were more to his taste than the tears of the pretty young lady.

  Golly was a hearty eater. She cut everything that was placed before her into bite-sized pieces, then shovelled it down with a spoon. She addressed Spendlove as ‘old boy’ and leaned back in her chair to ask his opinion on the subject being discussed. Mindful of Evelyn’s sharp eye upon him, he replied each time, ‘I really couldn’t say, Madam,’ but I got the impression he rather liked being consulted by a dame of the British Empire.

  After Golly had finished the last of the rhubarb tart, she leaned back in her chair, patted her stomach and gave several deep whooping belches like a ship steaming through the English Channel on a foggy day. Sybil and Basil exchanged shocked glances. Rafe confined his reaction to a lifted eyebrow. Conrad was looking at Isobel who was giggling. Evelyn affe
cted deafness and summoned the cheese.

  The only impediment to thorough enjoyment of a fascinating lunch was that, thanks to the blazing fire and two fan heaters, the temperature of the dining room was tropical. I saw Conrad and Fritz pulling at their shirt collars. By the pudding course I could bear it no longer and took off my fur-lined velvet jacket. I caught Evelyn’s eye. She looked surprised to see me at the lunch table with naked shoulders and a bodice embroidered with silver thread and liberally scattered with sequins. When Golly dipped her napkin into the water jug and mopped her forehead with it, Evelyn gave Spendlove orders to remove the heaters.

  ‘I must say, Mrs Preston, you’re a first-class cook!’ Golly threw herself back in her chair and undid the middle button of her boiler suit. ‘That was top-hole! Well, Conrad,’ she grinned across the table at him, exposing food-encrusted fangs, ‘I’m looking for a subject for my new opera. What do you say to a little jaunt somewhere to spark off a few ideas? China, perhaps? Or the Azores?’

  ‘I have no plans to leave Northumberland at present,’ said Conrad. ‘Yesterday I bought a house here. And I think it will take much of my time.’

  ‘Conrad!’ Isobel looked excited. ‘You didn’t tell me!’

  Evelyn’s curiosity overrode her intention to be distant and unfriendly. ‘Surely you haven’t bought Shawcross Hall? Really, Conrad, I think you should reconsider, the proportions are very bad—’

  ‘No,’ Conrad interrupted her, ‘I have not bought Shawcross Hall. But I doubt if you will think better of my choice. I have bought Hindleep House.’

  ‘You’re kidding! You can’t have! It’s madness!’ said Golly, Isobel and Rafe respectively.

  ‘It is true. I have.’ Conrad folded his arms and looked down his nose at us. It was difficult to see the libidinous student in the aloof autocrat of today. ‘And I think it will suit me admirably.’

  As soon as I opened the front door I heard sobbing. I waved goodbye to Rafe, then hopped upstairs as fast as my leg permitted. Dimpsie was lying on the bathroom floor, weeping and clutching her hand from which blood dripped. The bath mat was a crimson puddle, and for a dreadful moment I thought she must be haemorrhaging, until I realized it was red wine.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she moaned, ‘I tripped on the rug.’

  ‘Let me look.’ Luckily the cut was shallow. I cleaned it, found a plaster in the bathroom cabinet and picked up pieces of broken glass from the floor. ‘Dimpsie,’ I said, when she was sitting on the bathroom stool, more or less dry-eyed, ‘you can’t go on like this. Supposing you’d cut an artery. No man is worth killing yourself for.’

  Dimpsie’s eyes welled again. ‘I heard someone drive up so I went to the window … a sports car … the roof was down. Tom got out to fetch something … she sat in the passenger seat, smoking. Then she looked up. I bobbed down but I think she saw me. She’s frighteningly glamorous … sexy …’

  ‘She reminds me of Cruella de Vil.’

  ‘You’ve seen her?’

  ‘She’s been into the surgery.’

  Dimpsie screwed up her face with pain. ‘Vanessa Trumball was just a plaything. I knew he’d get bored with her. This woman is different …’

  ‘You’ve got to stand up to him. Even if he wasn’t seeing other women, you oughtn’t to put up with being sneered at and trampled on.’ Fine words, I thought, coming from Sebastian’s doxy. But I pressed on. ‘It isn’t doing you any good. If you carry on drinking like this you’ll pickle your liver and be really ill. And it isn’t doing him any good either. It’s corrupting him, making him think he can get away with anything. Okay, that’s not your responsibility, but—’

  ‘It is, though,’ interrupted Dimpsie. ‘I can’t separate my good from his. I’ve known Tom since I was eighteen. He’s the only man I’ve ever loved. If I try to imagine life without him there’s nothing but howling darkness.’

  ‘Where’s your courage?’ I asked in rallying tones. ‘Where’s your determination not to be beaten?’

  Dimpsie shook her head. ‘Without Tom I’m nothing.’

  ‘Rubbish! You’ve got brains and talent and a generous spirit and a sense of humour – most of the time – and you’ve got Kate and me.’

  ‘Kate doesn’t care about me. She’s only interested in acquiring coasters to match her place mats. And you, darling Marigold, my pride and joy, you inhabit another world where I’m nothing but a fond memory. Don’t think I’m blaming you,’ she added as I felt myself blush with guilt. ‘I want you to be a success every bit as much as you can possibly want it. I revel in your achievements. Honestly. But as soon as the plaster cast’s off your leg you’ll be – quite rightly – going back to London. And the last thing I want is to be a weight on your conscience.’

  I wrestled with myself like that bloke with the serpents – I had seen the famous statue in the Vatican Museum when we were dancing Romeo and Juliet at the Teatro Dell’Opera di Roma – and for a while it felt as though I had as little chance of winning. But at last I got the words out. ‘I’m not going back to London until I’m sure that you’ve stopped drinking and you’ve got yourself back on your feet. With or without Tom.’

  ‘Angel, it’s sweet of you to be so concerned but I couldn’t

  accept such a sacrifice—’

  ‘I’ve made up my mind. You haven’t any choice. I refuse to go until you’re better.’ I looked at her swollen eyelids and shiny pink nose and said in a softer voice, ‘So what’s it to be, old thing? A permanent hangover or my name up in lights?’

  18

  I so badly wanted my mother to conquer depression and the bottle that, even if it meant being hit on the head by an iron, I was prepared to pay the price. Unwilling to trust the springs of the ancient Mini to the deeply rutted track, we walked across the field towards the caravans, carrying the best the craft shop could offer in plastic bags. Dimpsie forged ahead, fired with the zeal of doing good.

  During the past week we had been to the cinema in Hexham and to Carlisle for a shopping trip. We had visited the oriental stall on the market to stock up on incense and kohl as part of her rehabilitation. Though she had pretended to enjoy herself, her eyes had remained lacklustre and her mouth retained its downward droop. My father, when he came to pick up letters or clothes, was colder than Murmansk, where I had once danced the Sugar Plum Fairy in a vest with chilblains. My feet, not the vest. Dimpsie must have craved the numbing solace of alcohol, but such was her determination not to blight my career that she had abstained heroically. She had not had a drink since our conversation six days before and already her skin was a better colour and her hands were steadier. I had volunteered to accompany her to see the new baby and had been rewarded with the first genuine smile since Brenda had told her of the man-eating insatiability of Marcia Dane.

  The nearest caravan was called ‘The Pathfinder’ by its manufacturers. Its pathfinding days were over. It stood on logs instead of wheels, and a section of one side had been replaced by corrugated iron.

  ‘If yore from the Social ye can bugger off before Ah set the dogs on ye,’ said the woman who had poked a bedraggled head out of the door to see why they were barking. Three of them were tethered by shamefully short pieces of rope to the wheels. ‘And if yore from the animal croolty place, Ah know my rights—’

  ‘No,’ said Dimpsie, ‘I just wanted to ask you—’

  ‘If it’s about them lawn mowers we don’t know nothing about them. And if yore from the Jehovah’s Witnesses ye can shove yer blooming Watchtower up yer blooming—’

  ‘It’s about the baby.’

  A scared look came into the woman’s face. ‘Yo look here! Lawn mowers is one thin’ but babbies we don’t deal in. Ah divvent care what anyone’s telt ye, it’s a filfy lie—’

  ‘What’s up?’ A fat man, who looked as though the tip of his nose had been stapled to his upper lip, emerged from the caravan. The dogs immediately stopped barking and lay down with cowed whines. ‘What d’yer want?’

  ‘Ow, Jem,’ said the woman, her vo
ice softening in appeal. ‘They think we’ve took a babby!’ She started to whimper, ‘It’s always the same when owt goes missing and—’

  ‘Shut it!’ He pushed her roughly inside the caravan and slammed the door. ‘Now then.’ He took out a frightening-looking knife with a long thin blade and began to clean his nails with it. ‘Ye canna coom here making accusations.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to accuse anyone of anything.’ Dimpsie looked alarmed as the man threw the knife into the air as though tossing a coin. He caught it between dirty hands with scabbed knuckles and his eyes narrowed to wicked gleams. ‘My husband delivered a baby,’ Dimpsie rattled on nervously, ‘I thought the mother might live here … her father said—’

  ‘Now listen, yo!’ The man’s face became even uglier with menace. ‘Ah know nowt about any babby. Ah niver laid hands on that little draggle-tail. An’ anyone that tells ye different is a liar, see?’

  ‘What my mother means,’ I attempted to clarify the situation, ‘is that we’d like to see the baby and we’ve brought it – him – some presents.’

  His hand tightened on the handle of the knife, its blade pointing towards my heart. I imagined turning to run, the crutches slipping on the slush of snow and mud, my leg weighing like lead as I tried to escape. I felt the cold burn of steel in my back, the world turning all to white as I began to faint from loss of blood, saw my mother’s anxious face as she bent over me before my vision dimmed for ever …

  ‘Aal reet. Turn out they bags. Let’s see what ye have.’

  ‘They’re only things for the baby,’ I protested, but Dimpsie was already fumbling inside the plastic.

  She brought out a wool bonnet knitted in a repulsive mixture of beige and teal, followed by a matinee jacket in puce and olive. The man cleared his throat and spat with disgust. One really couldn’t blame him.

  ‘Let’s look in that bag.’ He pointed to the one Dimpsie had put down.

  She disinterred a crocheted cot blanket and a pottery bowl with LAD written on it. Or it might have been DAD, the glaze had run badly. I was made to remove the bag that hung round my neck and show him a stuffed giraffe made from hideous brown chenille and a painting of a kitten. Or it might have been a pig.