Wild Grapes

by Elizabeth Aston

  Tranquillity reigned.

  CHAPTER 19

  The sun was shining in Oxford with equal intensity, but Fergus was feeling far from tranquil. The tiresome work of clearing the three rooms had been completed; at least he had achieved something. He assembled all his files and papers and disks to be taken out to the car together with his computer. Maybe it was the thought of all those words which was making him depressed; a grim reminder of how he had spent the last three years.

  Or was it the knowledge that he had to ring Charlotte?

  Fergus didn’t want to speak to Charlotte. This was strange, because Charlotte, a very handsome girl with seemingly pleasant ways, was his long-standing girlfriend. It was taken for granted that in due course they would settle down together; taken for granted by her, her family, Fergus’s family and, until very recently, by Fergus himself.

  Now he didn’t want to speak to her, could quite cheerfully face the rest of the summer without seeing her, and could likewise look forward to a life ahead in which Charlotte played no part.

  It wasn’t that he was keen on anyone else, he told himself. This alarmed him. Fergus was not a promiscuous man, although he had had his share of briefer and longer-lasting relationships before settling into this long-standing partnership with Charlotte. But no Charlotte, no sex, unless he found himself another girlfriend. And he didn’t mind.

  Something in the water, Fergus decided gloomily as he wrote out a list of instructions about what to do if the boiler started clanking. Or maybe it was the exceptional heat. With cooler days, his libido would surely return. Meanwhile, there was Charlotte, waiting for him to ring her, fix up this and that for the summer. She would expect all the usual: Glyndebourne, a Prom or two (for Charlotte was a civilized girl and liked music), Wimbledon (for she was a good tennis player herself and genuinely enjoyed watching the matches), visits to friends around the country, two or three weeks abroad ...

  No way, Fergus said to himself. Not this summer. After all, he had his thesis to finish. She would understand, it was high time he finished it and got down to finding himself a job.

  A job. In London. Something in the City, as befitted an economist. Or a position somewhere abroad. Somewhere glamorous; Charlotte had made it quite clear that she preferred the urban life. Smart urban, that is, none of your teeming third-world capitals or brash American cities.

  Fergus sighed. Better to ring her and get it over with, explain the need to escape from Oxford, terrible in the summer, going to ruralize so that I can really get my head down.

  Charlotte might just accept that. Fergus wasn’t too sure about Zoe. Charlotte tolerated the three girls who had shared his house this last year, although she didn’t like any of them, because she felt there was safety in numbers. When she discovered he was sharing a cottage with Zoe, as she inevitably would, then she might be less happy.

  Oh, to hell with Charlotte, Fergus thought, giving the house a last look round before he started loading up the car. He could ring her later, he told himself as he propped the front door open with a learned tome.

  The postman paused by the low brick wall at the front of the house. “Just one for you,” he said cheerfully. “Going on your hols?”

  “Letting the house for the summer,” said Fergus, taking the letter.

  “Make sure they know where to send your letters on,” said the postman.

  Good point, thought Fergus, tearing open the envelope. Thick card, tasteful black copperplate... a ball. For Aimee. Good gracious, was Aimee only twenty-one? Some very vivid memories of Aimee came into Fergus’s mind, bringing a warm and appreciative smile to his face.

  “And Charlotte,” was inscribed in a wide, flowing hand.

  Back to earth.

  Charlotte. Well, she’d love that. Invite her down to the cottage, let her see Sybil, pretend Zoe was away a lot. It could be made to seem as respectable as it actually was. How boring, thought Fergus, pushing a pile of books into the boot of the car. But armed with this invitation, he would phone Charlotte, right now, get it over with, and then be on his way. Free and carefree.

  At least until Charlotte arrived at Heartsbane.

  Gina had installed herself in the hammock at the other end of the terrace, and she settled down to do some hard thinking.

  Her surroundings were not conducive to hard thinking. Thin, high wisps of cloud floated in a deep blue sky. A light breeze took the edge off what would otherwise have been an excessively hot day. The air was clear and fresh, the formal gardens entrancingly green with sharp shadows to make the fretwork shapes stranger and more interesting. There was much to please the eye and all the other senses, and little to help Gina to assess her situation in a cold and logical way.

  Harry was in Bath. Gina had been avoiding Harry, and particularly avoiding Harry in the swimming pool when he seemed to be at his most dangerous. Harry, Gina sensed, was becoming impatient. He liked her, they got on well together, why worry? Why ask for more than that? Look at Byron and Nadia, a strange marriage born out of necessity and a secret agenda. They were still together, it had worked, that marriage, in its own way.

  Okay, maybe in ten years if she married Harry, there might be problems. If Harry was going to spend his spare time in gay clubs, there would certainly be problems. But how, on a morning like this, could you worry about what might happen in ten years’ time? It’s the next ten days, the next ten weeks that concern me, Gina said to herself as she swung gently to and fro.

  Her peaceful, idle frame of mind was changed into a state of alarmed alertness as a familiar voice cut across her thoughts.

  “Excuse me, have you seen Victor Cordovan around? They told me he was out on the terrace.”

  Gina gave such a violent lurch that she hurled herself out of the hammock, landing with a bump in an undignified heap on the stones.

  “Gracious, I am truly sorry, let me help...

  “...Why, Gina! Whatever are you doing here?”

  “Oh, hell,” said Gina, unwinding herself from the last bits of hammock. “Hi, Dad.”

  They stared at each other, dark eyes meeting dark eyes, the olive skin of one an echo of the other.

  Gina came to her senses. “Did you say Victor was out here? Quick, he mustn’t see us, not until I’ve explained.”

  “Explained what?” said Serge, who was hard put to keep up with Gina’s frantic dash towards the relative security of a patch of woodland. He stopped. “Hey, why are we running? This Victor seems okay, why are you hiding from him?”

  “Sssh,” said Gina. “Come on, and keep your voice down. This place is terrible, you never know when or where one of the family or staff is going to pop up.”

  Serge gave in to the inevitable and set off again after Gina. They came to a halt beside a rustic bench, and Gina collapsed on to it, panting dramatically. Serge sat beside her, looking down at his daughter with a questioning eye.

  “What’s up?” he said. “I didn’t know you were staying here, your friend in Oxford said you were with friends, but not where... How long have you been here? I visited not long ago, and you weren’t here then.”

  “I was, but I snuck off so’s we wouldn’t meet,” said Gina.

  Serge was hurt. “Hey, what did I do to deserve that?”

  Hell, thought Gina. I’ve been longing to lash out at him for years, and now I get the chance I can’t do it.

  “No, it wasn’t you, Dad,” she reassured him. “It’s just that things with me are a bit complicated. You see, although I’m staying here, they don’t know I’m your daughter. In fact, they think I’m someone else, a kind of cousin of theirs.”

  “Cousin? Of the Cordovans?” Serge was incredulous. “How did you hope to get away with that one? And why?”

  “I have got away with it,” hissed Gina. “And I’ve got to go on getting away with it. Please, Dad, it’s really important.”

  Serge folded his arms and sat back on the seat. “Right, shoot, kid. I want to know just what’s going on.”

  “It’s like
this,” Gina began.

  Serge, among his other attributes of a good brain, a fair degree of charm and his great artistic skill, possessed a sense of humour. While hardly able to believe what Gina was telling him, and while realizing that the visa business could be serious, he found the whole story of the impostorship very funny indeed.

  “I can’t see why young Harry went along with this, though,” he observed. “Is he some kind of practical joker, a trickster?”

  “It must be that,” agreed Gina.

  That was the one strand of the matter she wasn’t letting on about: the scheme for her and Harry to get married. If it happened, then she would present it as a fait accompli, but, although she didn’t know her father that well, she had a sneaking idea that getting married to get a passport would seem like a sick idea to him.

  Serge got up from the bench and wandered over to the other side of the path. The ground fell away steeply there, so that you were on eye-level with the tops of ancient oaks. Serge looked appreciatively down into the leafy darkness.

  “This place is great,” he said. “This is the kind of place you dream about. The Cordovans must be pretty rich to keep all this going. And,” he added, his face alight with laughter, “to buy one of my big pictures. I take it as a compliment, though, them wanting to hang one of my canvases here, when you consider the art they’ve already got.”

  “Victor’s very successful in business,” said Gina. “Luckily, because a lot of these English families just have to sell their old houses.”

  “He’d better make good provision if it’s not all going to fall apart when he goes,” said Serge. “Taxes and so on. It’d be a shame if his kids have to sell up, let all this go, see it all broken up.”

  “Yes, it would,” said Gina.

  Serge became practical. “I’m flying back to the States tonight,” he said. “Only for a quick visit, I have some business to attend to. Then I’m coming back for a few more weeks in Europe. So while I’m in New York, why don’t I drop by on this person and get your passport back?”

  Gina blinked.

  “You’re broke, I suppose, that’s all right. I was going to send a cheque to the Oxford address in any case. That’ll more than cover your ticket home.”

  A sense of relief flooded over Gina. She could turn up at the airport, get a standby ticket, slip out of the country before Popplewell or anyone else was any the wiser.

  “What about Georgie, though? She’ll be stuck in the States, no passport. She’ll be mad at me.”

  Serge raised a cynical eyebrow. “I think it’s you who should be mad at Georgie. She sounds to me like a girl who can take good care of herself; in any case, there’s no problem. Give me her British passport and I’ll do a swap with her.”

  “What if she doesn’t want to?”

  “She hasn’t got much choice,” said Serge laconically. “The way I see it, she stole your passport - that’s quite a serious offence in itself. Then, she has no right, as a British citizen, without a visa or work permit, to be in the States at all. Let alone holding down a job. No, I think your Georgie will play ball.”

  Once I’m back in America, Gina was thinking, I can get in touch with Alwyn, he seemed very confident about getting me a work permit. Or maybe I could come back to study some more, do a Ph.D. That would mean at least another three years in England, bliss.

  “It’s great here,” she told her father as they walked back to the house together. “It’s just so beautiful.”

  Serge looked at her, concerned. “Don’t fall in love with all this,” he said. “Especially at your age. It can make for a terrible tie, just when you need to be out trying all kinds of new things, going new places.”

  “Don’t you love England?”

  “I like it, yes. But I find it small, and the people like being depressed and pessimistic. That doesn’t suit me.”

  Gina remembered something. “You and Mom got married near here,” she said. “I found the records in the parish church.”

  “Why, yes, we did,” said Serge. “Your mother came from these parts, and she had a yen to get married down here. It was a pretty little church.” He looked away, up at the Gothic facade of the Hall. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out for me and your mother. It’s always hard on the kids when a marriage breaks up.”

  “Did you treat Mom so badly?”

  “Is that what she told you?”

  “We don’t talk about it much,” said Gina. “But I remember your rows.”

  “We just didn’t suit. I liked New York, she didn’t. I work odd hours, have my ups and downs, like most artists. Your mother wanted a more regular kind of life. And I was a struggling painter then, life was hard. Still, we had some great times together; I wouldn’t have missed it. She seems happy enough now, with her Italian count.”

  “Count?” said Gina. “Is he a count? I thought he was a crook.”

  Serge laughed. “Can’t you be a count and a crook? Isn’t that often the way in Italy these days?” He grew momentarily more serious. “No, he seems like a nice guy, I don’t see him as a crook. Besides, that’s not your mother’s style, you know that.”

  True, thought Gina. Surprise on surprise. This very unexpected father, whom she liked, really liked, and who was helping her out, just as though he’d always been there. And she’d perhaps misjudged her mother. Of course, her mother had always had a rigid sense of right and wrong, no halfway houses or perhapses. Fine for her, but a nuisance for me, and out of place in this non-judgemental world, Gina told herself.

  “I think I’ll skip lunch,” said Gina. “If you don’t mind. It’d be very difficult pretending in front of you.”

  “Okay,” said Serge. “In any case, if they saw us together, they might think it was weird how alike we look.”

  Gina stopped in her tracks, looking at her father properly for the first time. “Is that so? Do I look like you?”

  “’Fraid so,” said Serge. “Didn’t your mother point it out to you?”

  If she had, I wouldn’t have listened, thought Gina.

  “Anyway, you’ll still be here when I get back from the States? It’ll be a little while before I’m back in Britain, I’m stopping off in Switzerland, but I’ll get that passport back to you. And I’ll leave that cheque for you. What name are you going under here? So’s I can put it on the envelope.”

  Gina told him.

  “Hartwell without the E, of course. What a stroke of luck for this Georgie character. Okay, I’ll leave it for you on the hall table or wherever you leave post for guests in these big houses. The air ticket won’t cost so much, buy yourself something you want with the rest of the money.”

  Gina kissed him, for the first time in years. “Thanks, Dad.”

  “My pleasure,” he said. “And don’t get into any more mazes between now and next time I see you.”

  “Of course not,” Gina said with dignity.

  The front door was open at Kingfisher Cottage, but there didn’t seem to be anyone in. Fergus frowned at the carelessness. Country ways were all very well, but even so...

  The mystery was solved when he looked out of the upstairs window and saw Zoe in the garden, installed on a canopied swing in what looked like a state of complete contentment. On a little table beside her was a pile of shiny books, and a bowl of apples.

  Fergus felt a spur of unreasonable resentment. Why should Zoe, jobless, soon no doubt to be penniless, have the ability to enjoy idleness to that extent?

  “You look cross, Fergus,” said Zoe, glancing up from her book as he approached across the grass.

  “You look very pleased with life,” grumbled Fergus. “Move up, so that I can sit here. It’s far too hot.”

  “A difficult journey?” said Zoe. “And you’re hungry, too, I dare say. That’s why you’re so grumpy.”

  “I am not grumpy,” said Fergus.

  “Yes, you are. And you don’t like to see me lolling here. You feel that I should be up and doing. No way. I’m on holiday, and I’m not going t
o fret or worry or feel I should be active.”

  “Quite right, too,” said Sybil, looking over the garden fence. “If you get too hot, though, Zoe, and have the energy to slide round here, you can sample the pool for me. It seems to have warmed up to a bearable temperature, and I just read in the instructions that it needs to be swum in, to keep the water in a good state.”

  “Haven’t your grandchildren arrived?” asked Fergus, secretly hoping they hadn’t.

  Sybil saw straight through that. “No, they’ve postponed, they won’t be up until the end of the month, aren’t you lucky? The little one has some ailment, so is better off at home. My daughter knows I would be furious if I had to stop work to look after the boy, fond as I am of him.”

  Fergus was much relieved, but too polite to say so. “I’d better go and unload the car before someone walks off with my computer,” he said.

  “They won’t do that here,” said Sybil.

  “There’s cheese, and some fresh bread and cold drinks in the fridge,” Zoe called after him.

  Sybil looked at her, amused. “Aren’t you going to give him a hand with his things?”

  “No,” said Zoe. “Nor am I going to bustle about and make lunch for him. If I start off on that path, I’ll be waiting on him hand and foot before I know where I am, and I’m not having it. He’s a grown man, quite capable of looking after himself.”

  “Ah, but does he want to?”

  “I don’t suppose so, but that’s just tough.”

  “I gather he has a wife waiting for him. Doubtless she’ll provide more creature comforts.”

  Zoe gave an evil chuckle. “A wife-to-be has found him, and yes, she’ll provide whatever he wants, just so long as he comes up with the dosh.”

  “A not unsatisfactory state of affairs.”

  “One that has lasted the test of time,” agreed Zoe. “Not to my taste, but then I’m not a man. And not to your taste either,” she added with spirit. “Otherwise you’d have married again. Don’t tell me you don’t find life very pleasing as things are.”