Strangers in a Garden Read online

  The champagne went untouched. The girls weren’t in the mood, and were too busy speculating whether Mikey had set up the whole drama.

  ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘Don’t know. Just ran off down the road.’

  When the housekeeper brought in a pot of coffee, they asked her, ‘That guy Tom hit. Do you know who he is?’

  ‘Yes of course. Don’t you girls ever go to the pictures?’

  This was Mayfair. None of them liked to say they were usually too broke for the flicks. That they sang Campelltown Loch and argued about who’d lost the vital piece of the jigsaw puzzle.

  The housekeeper explained that his name was Jack Flynn and he was an actor who usually played character parts. Villains or, if the film was set in the war, he’d be the one with a bravely chirpy quip as the ship was fatally shelled.

  Laura remembered. She’d seen a couple of films like that with the builder, canoodling in the back row because it was too wet to go in the field.

  Dinkie asked the housekeeper if they should phone the hospital. The woman shook her head. ‘They won’t speak to you unless you’re a relative. Even if you pretend, they ask you reams of questions to find you out.’

  Tom came back around five. He found Laura alone in the sitting room. The others had gone for a walk.

  Laura leapt up. ‘How is she?’

  He rubbed his eyes. ‘She’ll be okay. But she’s lost the baby.’

  Laura sat down. ‘Tom. I didn’t know. None of us knew.’

  ‘She wanted to keep it quiet. Just in case. She’s had miscarriages before.’

  ‘So that’s why you married her?’

  He was opening a bottle of beer. ‘What else could I do? Sorry. Can I get you something?’

  ‘No thanks. Listen, Cressida said you were going to stay in London. I mean, is Mayfair quite the place to bring up a child?’

  On the drive through Mayfair, and up to the Marylebone Road, Laura hadn’t noticed anyone with a pram. These days, she had a heightened perception for this kind of thing. Stab.

  Tom was saying, ‘Very good schools. There’s one just round the corner, where Cress lived. Church school. The racket they made used to drive Cress mad.’

  ‘But you need a park,’ Laura argued. ‘Where’s the park?’

  ‘Well there’s Hyde Park. Or nearer, there’s Mount Street gardens. You and the baby can rub shoulders with film crews and deceptively normal blokes from MI5.’

  ‘MI5?’

  They do their drops there. It means, accidentally on purpose, they exchange identical briefcases.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  He laughed. ‘I just do.’

  For heaven’s sake, Laura thought, watching him finish his beer and open a bottle of Taittinger. How can I go back to Glasgow, breathing in sooty grime and putting up with Jimmy reeking of BO and cheap aftershave?

  The girls caught the early morning train back. Tom came with them and threw into the carriage a stack of Sunday newspapers.

  ‘It’s all lies,’ he said. ‘Never believe a word of what you read in the papers.’

  He slammed the door, and was gone.

  Every paper carried a variation of the story:

  SOCIETY WEDDING SPARKS PUNCH-UP

  ‘The wedding between the Earl of Ashcroft and Cressida Palmer ended in fisticuffs yesterday. Jack Flynn, a bit-part actor, made an unflattering reference to the bride, prompting the Earl to punch him in the face. The new countess was so overcome, an ambulance had to be called. It is believed she is still in hospital.’

  The girls were dumbfounded.

  Tom was an earl.

  Cressida was now a countess.

  Mikey’s pictures were everywhere. A touching one of Cressida in the ante-room, before the wedding. Frightened it would all be off, Lol beside her, holding her hand. Tom and Cressida on the Marylebone Town Hall steps, just married, smiling, happy. Then the shot. Tom’s fist smashing into Flynn’s face. There was no picture of Cressida in the lavender border.

  ‘Mikey had scarpered by then,’ Marje said.

  ‘But she’s coming out of hospital tomorrow, Tom said,’ commented Lol. ‘Thank God she’s all right. I still can’t imagine why she didn’t tell us about the baby. I mean, she invited us to the wedding, so she must regard us as friends.’

  Wrong, thought Laura. Cressida invited us because we’re the only people she knows, who still want to know her. Cressida was the sort of person who could appear sweet, sympathetic, empathetic, concerned. And then in a flash would come the vitriol, the accusations, the abberant behaviour. Laura had fairly limited experience of this, but Tom had said enough when she and he had stopped fucking long enough to talk.

  Back at Arundell House, they found a posse of what they called the new girls sitting on the steps. Laura considered that this was a moment for nonchalant disdain, but Dinkie proved incapable of this.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she shrieked. ‘You can’t sit here. We always sit here.’

  A sharp-faced girl snapped back, ‘Oh really? Own the steps, do you?’

  ‘Don’t be cheeky,’ Dinkie raged.

  Lol pushed her aside. ‘Don’t take any notice. She’s just tired.’

  The sharp-faced girl gazed at the group. ‘Which one of you is Laura James?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Well you’d better get inside. You’ve got visitors.’

  Visitors? But I don’t know anyone.

  ‘They’re upstairs. In Miss Speddie’s office.’

  Laura hurried to the staircase, completely mystified. She tapped on Miss Speddie’s door and received permission to enter.

  Miss Speddie was standing. In her chair, using her telephone, was Laura’s brother Richard.

  ‘Yes, well that’s very understanding of you. So you’ll forward that on to me, and I’ll make sure she gets it. And of course, you’ll include her holiday pay… oh, come on, now, my sister has worked for you for some time. Obviously she is due holiday pay.’

  What the hell was going on, wondered Laura. There was no clue from Richard’s wife. Penny was sitting in the visitor’s chair that no-one was ever invited to use. Laura could see why Miss Speddie had changed the habit of a lifetime.

  Penny, in her baby-pink dress, was heavily pregnant.

  Richard put down the receiver. ‘Thank you for letting me use your phone, Miss Speddie. I wonder, would it be possible for me to have a private word with my sister?’

  ‘Of course, Mr James. If you need me, I shall be just next door.’

  Oh, Lord, thought Laura. Every time Richard dignified her with ‘my sister’ it was always bad news. When she was little he had called her Loupy Lou.

  As Miss Speddie left the room, Penny started to say something. Richard immediately interrupted. ‘If you don’t mind, Penny. Let me handle this.’

  Worse and worse, Laura realised, as Penny’s English rose face crimsoned. Now I’ve got to be ‘handled’, like a difficult pony.

  Richard stood up. ‘Come and sit down, Laura.’

  She sank into Miss Speddie’s chair. She was desperate for a cigarette, but apart from this being Miss Speddie’s domaine, she’d run out of Kensitas on the train when they’d been so stunned by all the wedding publicity, they’d filled the ashtrays and then littered the floor with cigarette butts.

  Richard stood, arms akimbo, legs manfully apart. Laura regarded him with scorn. She recalled him as a whiney seven-year-old, forever running to mummy. Laura had been delighted when the mummy’s boy aspect had been hammered out of him at boarding school. It was unfortunate, in Laura’s opinion, that his expensive education had turned him into a prize prig.

  Richard said, ‘Laura, it’s Mother. We took the girls down to see her at Easter and, well, frankly, we were appalled.’

  Penny, mirroring her husband, put on an appalled face.

  ‘I gather,’ Richard went on, ‘you hadn’t been in touch with her?’

  ‘Not really. I always used to write to them both, but it was Daddy who wrote
back.’

  ‘And you haven’t rung mumm – Mother recently.’

  ‘It’s difficult from here, Richard. It’s long distance and I have to keep putting money in the slot.’ All right, she could use the phone on Shona’s old desk, but she didn’t want the entire office listening and anyway, Jimmy was using it for his racing bets.

  ‘I’ll cut a long story short, Laura. I was so worried about Mother, I called in the doctor. He knelt down beside her, and asked her questions. One of the questions was Who is the Queen?’

  Penny sniggered.

  Richard said, ‘I need the bathroom. Where is it?’

  The nearest bathroom would involve Richard invading the chaos of the Dorm. Well, thought Laura grimly, that’ll make a man of you.

  As Richard strode off, Penny leaned forward. Awkwardly. Given the size of her stomach, Laura was terrified she was going to explode.

  ‘When the doctor, who’s awfully nice, asked her who the Queen was, Mother said, very sweetly, Oh, when I was a young girl you know, we had a dog called Queenie. How clever of you to remember that.’

  Hell, thought Laura. Oh hell.

  ‘The fact is,’ Penny hurried on, ‘the doctor said she’s got senile dementia. No,’ she forstalled Laura’s question, ‘there’s no medicine. No cure. She can stay at home. But she needs someone to look after her. Of course, we realise it will mean you’ll be apart from Adrian.’

  Laura sat, on that warm July day, like someone trapped in an ice box. ‘That’s all over.’

  ‘Well,’ Penny brightened, ‘be nice for you to have a change, now.’

  Richard was back, looking frazzled. ‘The point is, Laura, this is a family thing. We all have to stick together.’

  ‘Why me? Why can’t she live with you?’

  ‘She needs a downstairs bedroom and we haven’t got one. And there’ll be a new baby soon, that’s always disruptive.’

  Laura felt like someone in chains. She had never hated Richard so much. You stole my inheritance. You sold Roadnights, my home. And now you’re saying I’ve got to go and look after an old woman I’ve never felt particularly close to and who’s going batty.

  She struggled. ‘There’s my job –‘

  ‘I’ve taken care of that. Spoke to your boss.’

  ‘But it’s Sunday. He must be at home.’

  ‘So I spoke to him at home. Had his number for ages, if you must know. Just in case, you know. Just as protection for you.’

  Laura flared with fury. Protection, in Laura’s book, amounted to rank interference, not to say snooping. What else had he spied on? Her bank account? Her fucks with Adrian and Tom? Well that might teach him a thing or two.

  ‘I have to pay Miss Speddie,’ she tried.

  ‘I’ve already paid what you owe.’

  Penny stood up and smiled her Let’s all get along nicely smile. ‘I’ll help you pack.’

  Laura felt as if she was being sent off to a hospital, for treatment she didn’t need.

  ‘It’s all right, Penny. There’s a lot of stairs. Not a good idea for you.’

  Marje had taken her weekend case up to Room Nine. Laura removed her wedding clothes and dragged her large suitcase out from under the bed. As she was telling Marje what had happened, Miss May tapped on the open door and came in.

  ‘I hear you’re leaving us, Miss James. I’m so very sorry.’

  Laura was suddenly conscious of the papery skin on Miss May’s arms. Will Mummy look like that? Will I have to bath her? Oh shitting hell.

  ‘You’re going to look after your mother. What a wonderful privilege. And you’ll be cooking for her. So I wanted to give you this.’

  She pressed into Laura’s hand, a paperback. It wasn’t ‘Love Comes Seeking’ or even ‘The Hungry Heart’. It was the ‘Stork Margarine Cookery Book’.

  Marje couldn’t manage this. She turned away, laughing, pretending to concentrate on opening the window.

  Richard was at the door, to take Laura’s case.

  ‘Is this all you’ve got?’

  ‘I don’t have many clothes, Richard.’

  ‘My goodness. Penny would need five suitcases this size. She collects, you know. Owls. Anyway, let’s get on with it. I’ve booked you on the Flying Scot, from Edinburgh. Get you to King’s Cross top speed.’

  Laura turned to her room-mate. ‘You will keep in touch? Write. I’ll send you my address.’

  ‘Not very good at writing. Or goodbyes. Sorry.’

  As they went downstairs Laura saw Richard wince as they passed the usual riot in the Dorm. Laura suspected it was two of the new girls getting stamped on for speaking out of turn. Laura regarded her brother with sour amusement. You thought you had it bad at a boys’ boarding school, Richard? Try the Arundell House Dorm for a week.

  ‘Sorry I can’t drive you all the way to Mother’s’ Richard said, ‘But you know. Penny.’

  Probably having the baby right now, Laura hoped, all over Miss Speddie’s office.

  Miss Speddie was waiting by the front door. She held out her hand to Laura. ‘We’ll be sorry to lose you, Miss James. Your behaviour has been exemplary.’

  Laura thought of the fiddled gas meter, of the night Adrian had shared her bed and they’d drunk themselves to a standstill, of the girls crowding in for Thursday oxtail soup and telling the filthiest jokes. It had been fun in Room Nine.

  ‘And I hope everything goes well with your mother.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Speddie. Thank you, Miss Speddie.’

  On the train, Laura thought about goodbyes, departures, how it all happened. Fiona had gone off to be a stepmother, unmarried because Mr MacDonald’s wife refused to divorce him. (Laura had, of course, ages ago, paid back the £20 she owed him.)

  Sven and Kel had returned to live in their homelands. Shona would never again sit at her McAllister desk and throw filaments into her beautiful eyes. Cressida was now a Mayfair countess, no doubt hostessing starry parties behind the glossy black front door. Even Logan had gone, on some management course in the States.

  Perhaps this is how it will always be, Laura realised. People come, people go.

  It was different in a novel. So much of what she read seemed to feature a group of people (from university, or the same secure background) who were forever meeting up. They met strolling down Piccadilly. Or at the Ritz. ‘Hullo, Harry. Hullo Charles. I say, is that Cynthia over there? Let’s ask her over for a glass of champagne.’

  But for me, Laura thought, am I ever going to recognise anyone I know in the Wye Valley?

  The Flying Scot thundered south.

  ‘Da-da da-da, Da-dada-da, Da-dada-da’ went the wheels.

  Don’t want to go. Don’t want to go. Don’t want to go.

  PART TWO

  SPRING COTTAGE

  Chapter Eight

  Laura passed the journey reading the notes Richard had thrust at her, written in that small neat handwriting, so suitable for school reports.

  ‘You will have to break your journey in London. I have booked you into the Great Eastern hotel. In the morning, ask them to get you a taxi to Paddington. There is a train at 10.10. Mother’s neighbour, Vi, will meet you at Bristol. She has a green A35.’

  Part two was a list of useful facts. How the washing machine worked, when to put the rubbish out, what buses went where.

  ‘I will, of course, take care of all expenses but I think it’s best if I do this on an ad hoc basis. That way, without a regular income, you’ll be able to claim maximum benefits.’

  Needing some light reading, Laura had brought a Daily Mirror and a Daily Express. They were both following the same tack, hysterical with adoration for Tom. By slugging a B-movie actor, Tom had become ruggedly the nation’s superhero. And it helped that he was an earl and that his wife (seen leaving hospital with Tom) had waist-length blonde hair.

  Vi turned out to be a pleasant woman in her early sixties. She and Kay James had been at school together.

  ‘She’s quite well within herself,’ Vi said, ‘and she’s mob
ile, but of course she’s not safe to go out on her own. I’ve given her a Twink perm. Very difficult. She wouldn’t sit still to let me put the curlers in.’

  She drew up outside the chalet bungalow called Spring Cottage because that had been the name of the workman’s dwelling which had been there before. ‘I’m so glad you’re here, Laura, to hold the fort.’

  At the gate Laura was met by a tall, thin young woman who introduced herself as Karinne, her mother’s care manager from social services.

  ‘I was expecting you at midday. Your sister-in-law said –‘

  ‘The train was late.’

  ‘Haven’t you got a car?’

  ‘No.’

  She and Richard had done the car discussion on the way to the Flying Scot.

  ‘I wouldn’t need anything expensive. I could find an old banger.’

  ‘Old bangers go wrong.’

  ‘The Wolseley, then. Daddy’s car.’

  ‘It’s clapped.’

  Laura found her mother in the kitchen, talking to Prince Charles. The tea towel with his head printed on it was draped across the chair opposite her. Laura felt she should kiss her, because Karinne was watching, and when she did it was like kissing something irredeemably insubstantial, like kissing a ghost, or the fog.

  ‘We were just wondering,’ Kay James said, nodding at Prince Charles, ‘whether we’d had our lunch.’

  ‘You had fish,’ Karinne said calmly. ‘The meals on wheels lady brought it.’

  Laura thought it to her credit that she didn’t talk to her mother as if she were an imbecile, and neither did she say pointlessly, ‘Don’t you remember?’

  ‘Your sister-in-law arranged the meals on wheels,’Karinne said, ‘but now you’re here you’ll probably want to take charge of the catering yourself.’ She patted a daunting pile of forms and leaflets on the dresser. ‘These tell you what benefits your mother may be entitled to. If you need any help filling them in, give me a ring. Otherwise I’ll be in touch in a few weeks, and see how you’re getting along.’

  Then she was gone, and mother and daughter were alone together in the Wye valley, to make the best of it.

  She was looking better than the last time Laura had seen her, after her father had died. Then, Laura had feared that the traumatised expression would be with her forever. Now, as the weeks went on, Laura found that her mother was taking an interest in her appearance again, putting on lipstick and raging at Laura until she found a hairdresser who would come to the house. Even so, it was wrenchingly sad watching a woman who had always been elegant and finely defined, diminishing into fragility and confusion.