Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs

by Clayton, Victoria

  ‘Hello, dear. Come to see Mr Rafe? That’s nice.’

  Before I could reply she had fallen asleep again. The drawing room and the conservatory were deserted. Kingsley and Spendlove were nodding in chairs beside the library fire, with Balfour and Gladstone at their feet. Balfour wagged his tail and Gladstone struggled up on stiff legs to greet me, but soon stumbled back to put his chin on Spendlove’s slippers and add his snuffles to the chorus of laboured breathing.

  I paused outside the door of the morning room. The house was peaceful, the silence broken only by the ticking of the clock at the foot of the stairs and the twittering of birds outside. The scent from the green throats of lilies on the hall table was strong enough to muddle one’s senses. I took several deep breaths to fortify myself for the interview. Evelyn would be furious with me because of my quarrel with Rafe and no doubt would say blistering things, but I had to tell her how grateful I was for all she had done for me and how sorry I was at the same time.

  I took a step inside the room. Evelyn was standing on the rug before the fire with her back to me. A strange man had his arms round her and they were kissing passionately.

  Had the sun turned black and the sky the colour of blood, I could hardly have been more astonished. I must have let out a squawk of surprise because Evelyn sprang from his arms and whipped round to face me.

  ‘Marigold darling! What a surprise … I didn’t hear you come in …’ She smoothed her hair and ran her fingers down the buttons of her shirt … ‘I don’t think you know … this is Rex Campion … an old friend.’ I had heard the name before but I couldn’t remember the context. ‘Rex, this is Marigold, my daughter-in-law.’ She laughed and attempted to regain her composure. ‘To be.’

  Rex and I shook hands. He was probably unaware that much of Evelyn’s dark lipstick had been transferred to his mouth. It looked distinctly odd above such a rugged jaw. His teeth and the whites of his eyes dazzled against his tanned skin. His broad shoulders gave an initial impression of youthful vigour, which was contradicted by his cropped grey hair.

  ‘Hi, Marigold – is it all right if I call you that? Rafe’s a very lucky guy.’

  As soon as I heard his accent I remembered the Canadian Evelyn had told me about when she had been warning me not to cast my lures at Rafe. That had been before Bunty’s lack of dress sense put her out of the running. So this was the love of Evelyn’s salad days.

  ‘Thank you.’ This was not the right moment to announce that the engagement was off.

  ‘Evelyn says you’re coming to live here. It’s a beautiful house. I guess you’re lucky too.’

  His grey eyes were alert and friendly. I thought he looked trustworthy.

  ‘Marigold will make an excellent chatelaine.’ Evelyn seemed to purr. ‘I shall be quite happy to hand over the reins to her.’ She moderated this generous vote of confidence by adding, ‘when she has had a little more experience.’

  Rex laughed. ‘Evelyn’s afraid you’ll get the linen closet in a mess and upset the head coachman. I felt the same when I handed over the ranch to my son. It took me a while to stop checking that he’d ordered the winter feed on time.’

  ‘You’re a cowboy?’ I asked, keenly interested.

  I pictured him in a Stetson and fringed chaps riding across a cactus-punctuated desert, pursued by dust devils and the bittersweet memory of his English love. But there was a son, so presumably there was a wife too or at least a mistress. He had not been inconsolable.

  He laughed again. ‘Not cows. Horses. The finest bloodlines in Saskatchewan. It started as a hobby and just grew. I’m a lawyer really. Or was. My wife died six months ago and it seemed a good time to take my head out of the money-making noose and see something of the world. I’ve been travelling ever since. Last week it was Budapest. Before that Leningrad.’

  He grinned at me all the time he was talking. His face was crinkled, particularly about the eyes, as though he had spent the years since parting from Evelyn staring ruminatively into the sun.

  ‘I loved Leningrad,’ I said, ‘and Budapest. Where will you go next?’

  ‘That depends on Evelyn. I’m hoping to persuade her to come with me to Salzburg. All my life I’ve wanted to see Mozart’s birthplace. We could stay at the Sheraton and take in concerts and the opera … visit the museums and enjoy the architecture … see those fountains at the Hellbrunn Palace. We could have a great time.’

  I saw an expression of yearning cross Evelyn’s sharp features. Poor Kingsley’s idea of heaven was a month in Scotland. Evelyn had once told me about their honeymoon. They had gone to stay with Kingsley’s sister who lived in a vast Victorian mansion in the far north, where a sparse crop of trees grew at an acute angle because of the constant gales. The highlight had been a concert of port-a-beul, which is Gaelic for unaccompanied singing in imitation of bagpipes.

  ‘But she seems to think everything will fall to pieces if she isn’t here to hold it all together.’ Rex gave Evelyn an affectionate pat on the arm to remove any sting of criticism.

  ‘No man has the least idea what has to go on behind the scenes so that life can be comfortable,’ said Evelyn. ‘There’s Kingsley for one thing …’ She drew in her breath as she noticed the lipstick smear and tapped her own mouth to warn Rex.

  He glanced in the mirror and took out his handkerchief to wipe away the evidence, chuckling to himself, not in the least abashed. ‘Didn’t you say you had a nurse arriving this evening?’

  ‘Yes, but I can’t just dash off, leaving her in sole charge. These girls are always complete dummies. One has to coax them along, show them how to get into a routine, how to deal with the permanent staff—’

  ‘Hello, darling.’

  It was an unpleasant shock to find Rafe standing right behind me. Before I could decide how I ought to react, he had kissed me on the lips. He had a delicious outdoor smell, as though he’d been rolling in wet bracken. Buster ran in and we greeted each other with wild yelping euphoria, which was the only sort of salutation Buster thought proper. I was grateful because it gave me time to gather my wits. It was certainly not Buster’s fault that they refused to converge.

  Rafe seemed to be brimming with good humour, unrecognizable as the man of wrath I had run away from the day before. ‘Hello, Mother. Rex. Had a good lunch?’

  Evelyn looked at Rex. ‘The food was dire but we managed to enjoy ourselves.’

  Rex returned the look and the air between them sizzled. ‘It all seemed pretty damn perfect to me.’

  Rafe lowered his eyes for a second and I perceived that he disliked Rex. Or was it Rex’s effect on his mother? There was something almost girlish in the way she twirled on one foot to pick up a petal that had fallen from a vase of flowers. She held it to her nose, inhaling deeply with closed eyes as though intoxicated by its scent.

  Rafe turned to face me squarely as if to shut out the sight. ‘I’m so glad you’re here. It’s the perfect reward for an afternoon spent listening to Will Templeton’s grievances. He seems to think the catalogue of disasters afflicting Bullbeck Farm is due to an envious god rather than his own mismanagement. You’ll stay for dinner, of course?’

  So craven is my nature that for a second or two I felt relieved to be forgiven. Then I remembered that under no circumstances must I be bullied or cajoled into resuming our engagement. I assumed what I hoped was an appropriate expression, cool without being cold, cordial but not enthusiastic.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t. Fritz is coming to fetch me up in about—’ I looked at my watch – ‘twenty minutes.’

  Rafe tweaked my ear in a proprietary way before going to the tray to cut himself a slice of cake. ‘I met Fritz just now in the newsagent’s. He told me he’d arranged to pick you up. I said he needn’t bother. I’ll run you home later.’

  I was dismayed and also not a little annoyed at this high-handedness. ‘That’s kind of you but I want to go to the telephone kiosk outside the Post Office to order some pointe shoes from Freed’s—’

  ‘You ca
n ring from here. Have you had some of this cake? It’s very good.’

  ‘No …’ I hesitated, then reminded myself that I did not need Rafe’s approval of my domestic arrangements. ‘Actually, I’ve had a row with my father so I’m staying at Hindleep for the time being.’

  Rafe lifted the lid from the teapot to look inside, his brow fluted in a frown. ‘This is stewed. I’ll get another pot.’ He tugged at the bell rope that had been prettily embroidered with flowers by a deceased female Preston, no doubt as a time filler while she waited for fresh instructions from her lord and master.

  ‘Darling, did you say a row with your father?’ Evelyn tore herself out of the little dream she had fallen into. ‘How upsetting for you. He’s the most impossible man and always has been. You mustn’t reproach yourself. But Hindleep is so inconvenient – still in a half derelict state from what Isobel tells me, and no telephone. You must stay here.’

  ‘Evelyn, could I talk to you? Alone?’

  ‘Of course, my sweet. Is it about Tom and Dimpsie? I’ve met Jode, you know. Rex and I had a cup of coffee with them both in the Singing Swan – I must say you’ve transformed that ghastly place – this morning. That is, Dimpsie, Rex and I had coffee, but Jode had his own home-made teabag, full of dried bramble leaves apparently. He wasn’t quite as bad as I’d expected – completely unsuitable of course but clearly he adores her.’

  ‘I liked him,’ said Rex. ‘He’s a kind of Thoreau type. Noncooperation with evil and all that. The philosopher naturalist.’

  Evelyn looked amused. ‘He reminded me of the Pentecostal preacher who used to stand in front of the butter cross on market days and rave about hellfire and the sins of the flesh to embarrassed pensioners. But if Dimpsie doesn’t mind, why should we?’

  ‘I want to call in at the Singing Swan myself.’ I looked nervously at Rafe who was flicking through the pages of the Spectator as though deaf to the conversation. ‘Perhaps if I could just have a word with you, Evelyn – it needn’t take long.’

  ‘Hello, Marigold.’ Isobel sauntered in and came over to kiss me on the cheek. ‘How’s the world’s most famous ballerina?’ The telephone call of the night before might never have taken place. ‘Rafe and I have had a marvellous afternoon up on the moors. First it rained, then it sunned, then it rained again. Even my knickers got soaked. Now where did I put them?’ She felt in her pocket and withdrew a scrap of black lace which she waved about. ‘Hello, Reg. Sorry I wasn’t down in time to see you at breakfast.’

  ‘It’s Rex, darling.’ Evelyn’s expression of maternal fondness had become strained.

  ‘Oh. Sorry. Just hang these on the fireguard, would you?’ She threw her knickers to Rex who fielded them expertly and draped them carefully before the fire as calmly as though airing a pair of cricket flannels. ‘Did you have a lovely day?’ Isobel continued. ‘Is there any tea?’

  ‘I’ll go and see what’s happened to it.’ Rafe departed.

  ‘We had a great time, thanks.’ Rex smiled but I sensed he was wary of his hostess’s daughter. I didn’t blame him. She seemed charged by some invisible power, her eyes practically emitting sparks.

  I concentrated on effecting an escape. ‘Evelyn, could we … ?’

  ‘Of course. We’ll go and talk in the drawing room.’

  Evelyn ushered me into the hall. ‘Remember, Marigold, when married life and motherhood seem thankless, as they’re sometimes bound to do, one’s reward is to do the thing well. Your mother has decided to sever those ties, and frankly I think she has every right to do so. Tom has never appreciated her particular gifts. Naturally you’re worried about her, but I don’t think you need be. A sordid caravan on a desolate moor with a crazed evangelist for a companion may not be our idea of domestic bliss but – oh blast!’ She broke off as a peal rang through the house. ‘Where’s that old fool got to?’

  Spendlove, his slippers trodden down at the back, his eyes gummy with sleep, his white hair sticking up in a quiff, staggered out of the library and opened the door. Meanwhile the bell had been rung twice more by an impatient hand. ‘Good … evening, Madam,’ he gasped out between wheezes.

  ‘Hello, dear.’ A young woman wearing a blue nurse’s uniform beneath a navy coat strode into the hall, shook Spendlove’s hand and then Evelyn’s hand. ‘You must be Mrs Preston. I’m Susan Strangward. I managed to catch an earlier train.’

  Susan Strangward exuded confidence. She had shiny brown bobbed hair with a heavy fringe. Her figure was stout and neat, her legs muscular. Her voice was penetrating. The expression in her toffee-coloured eyes was direct and she would have won any staring contest hands down. She turned to look at Spendlove, whose trembling fingers were doing up his waistcoat buttons in the wrong holes.

  ‘Is this the patient?’

  ‘No, that’s my husband. I mean, it is my husband who is the patient.’ Evelyn seemed the tiniest bit put out by the woman’s self-possession. ‘This is Spendlove, our butler. You must be tired after your journey,’ she added in a more commanding tone. ‘That dreadful bus takes an hour to do a fifteen-mile journey.’

  Susan did not bother to disguise her curious scrutiny of Evelyn’s hair, clothes and shoes. ‘So I discovered when I looked at the timetable. I took a taxi. I’ll put it on expenses.’ She examined her surroundings. ‘Quite nice, isn’t it? I like the yellow you’ve painted the walls. Some people might think it a bit gaudy, but a bright colour cheers everyone up, I always say.’

  Evelyn, who had spent weeks matching the Chinese Emperor yellow with a piece of antique embroidery in her possession and who, anyway, considered any comment on her furnishings an impertinence, looked frosty. ‘You’d better go up to your room, Susan. Spendlove will bring you some tea.’

  ‘A cuppa and a sandwich would be just the biz, but I won’t go up yet. I want you to tell me all about my patient, how long he’s had dementia, whether he’s incontinent, how well he’s sleeping, what his morale’s like … that sort of thing. And I prefer to be called Miss Strangward when I’m on duty. Is there somewhere where we can be private?’

  Evelyn closed her eyes for the briefest moment. Then, perhaps thinking of Salzburg, she said coldly, ‘We had better go into the drawing room.’

  I watched Evelyn and Miss Strangward walk away. The expression of my undying gratitude had better wait until a more convenient time. After twelve years, another few hours would not matter.

  ‘Ready, darling?’ Rafe was beside me, jangling his car keys, the soul of amiability. ‘Have you made that phone call? Then we can go to Hindleep and get your things.’

  I telephoned Freed’s and ordered thirty pairs of pointe shoes.

  ‘It sounds like a foreign language,’ said Rafe when I had finished. ‘What does “vamps three and three-quarters long” mean? And extra paste at tips? And who is M maker?’

  ‘Each pair is made to fit each dancer individually. We all have our favourite maker and they’re known just by a letter. Everyone gets into a dreadful flap when their maker gets ill or retires—’

  ‘I suppose it’s a sort of sympathetic magic, is it?’ Without waiting for an answer, he took his coat from the hall chair and Buster’s lead from the umbrella stand. ‘All right, let’s go.’

  ‘I want to call in at the Singing Swan.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Jode will be there.’

  ‘It’ll be worse for him than for me.’ He smiled more broadly. ‘I’ll buy him a cup of tea to show there are no hard feelings.’

  Rafe seemed to be the spirit of cooperation made flesh.

  ‘Honestly, Rafe, though it’s enormously kind of Evelyn to offer to have me, I prefer for all sorts of reasons to stay at Hindleep. Working with Orlando, for one thing. I’ve only got six weeks before rehearsals begin. And for another,’ I looked down at my feet, reluctant to meet his benevolent gaze, ‘we’ve got to square up to the fact that we aren’t going to get married. I know it’s awkward having to tell everyone and Evelyn’s already put so much effort into it and the lace has been cut
up and everything but it’s got to be done …’

  ‘My poor darling,’ Rafe took hold of my chin and lifted my face so I was obliged to look at him. ‘I’ve made you miserable with my dreadful temper and I’m so sorry. I was utterly unreasonable yesterday.’ He put his hands on my shoulders and pulled me close. ‘Let me make it up to you. Surely after everything that’s happened between us I deserve another chance?’

  ‘But it isn’t actually your temper that’s the problem, is it?’ I said earnestly while struggling to detach myself literally and romantically. ‘The real problem is that we don’t think enough alike to be happy together. I don’t know why you wanted to marry me in the first place, and I can’t understand now why you keep on with it.’

  He laughed. ‘Foolish girl! Look in the mirror and you’ll see why.’

  ‘You know perfectly well people don’t get married because they like one another’s faces.’

  ‘I like your body too. In fact I adore it.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! If I thought for one moment that you were as superficial as that I wouldn’t waste another minute arguing with you. But you’re pretending to be dumb. And you aren’t even in love with me on that most trivial level.’

  Rafe stopped smiling and looked grave. ‘Is that what this is all about? You doubt that I find you desirable?’

  ‘Yes! No! You’re muddling me … Don’t you see, it doesn’t matter – there are too many things that we disagree about.’

  ‘I admit I find your little pets and tantrums somewhat baffling, but all women have them and all men know that the best course is to lie low until the storm blows itself out.’

  This was enraging. ‘What about Nan’s baby? That’s one little storm that won’t blow itself out.’

  ‘Who is Nan and what’s her baby got to do with anything?’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten that Nan is the mother of your child?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ He looked perplexed for a moment, then his face cleared and he started to laugh. ‘Do you mean the tinker’s daughter?’