Читать книгу Clouds among the Stars - Victoria Clayton - Страница 9

The sound of the telephone woke me. I opened my eyes, aware that something was terribly wrong. Then with the violence of a fist in the face, I remembered everything. For the first time for years I said the waking prayer the nuns had taught us, as fervently as when I was a child. From the age of sixteen I had declared myself an atheist but now I could not afford intellectual pride. I stared gloomily through the window. All the brightness of the previous day had dissolved in swollen grey clouds, piled ominously high.

I listened to the insistent monotone, hating it, hoping it would stop or that someone else would answer it. For the first part of the night I had been unable to sleep for more than a few minutes before a subconscious prompting had made my eyes snap open to confront some awful danger. I had had to visit the lavatory several times, whether because of the indigestibility of Yell’s cake or the affect of terror on my bowels I did not know. My mind was in rags.

When the telephone went on ringing, I rolled out from beneath the weight of Mark Antony and ran down two flights to the first-floor landing, my bare feet recoiling from the coldness and hardness of the stairs.

‘Hello?’

‘Chief Inspector Foy speaking.’

The cleft in his chin flashed into my mind. ‘It’s Harriet.’

‘Ah. I was hoping to speak to your mother.’

‘What’s the time?’

‘A quarter past eight.’

‘Could you ring back later? She doesn’t like to be disturbed before half-past ten.’

There was a pause followed by some pom-pomming up and down the scale. ‘Perhaps you’ll tell her that Mr Byng is due to appear in court this morning at nine fifteen.’

‘Oh. Oh dear!’ I immediately felt sick. I could not deal with reality following so swiftly on sleep.

‘Don’t worry. It’s only a formality. He’ll be put on remand. No need for you to be there.’

‘Isn’t there any chance they’ll find him not guilty?’

‘This is only the preliminary hearing. The case won’t come to court until we’ve had a chance to sift the evidence. Probably not for months.’

‘He didn’t do it. He’s not the sort of man who could kill someone.’ A crushing misery made my throat tight. Tears began to roll down my face.

‘Harriet, listen to me. Can I call you Harriet?’ I let out a kind of bleat because I was suppressing a howl. He took it as assent. ‘You’ve got to be brave, Harriet, both for him and for you. British justice is slow and often the way it goes about things seems pretty asinine but it’s the fairest legal system in the world. I know that perhaps isn’t saying much but, believe me, the idea of sending an innocent man to prison is as abhorrent to me as it will be to the judge and the twelve men and women of the jury. Be patient, and trust me.’

It did not seem to me that I had any alternative but I was grateful for the kindness in his voice. ‘All right. Thank you.’ I tried to sniff quietly.

‘Good girl. He won’t be without friends. Mr Sickert-Greene will be with him.’ The cleft in Inspector Foy’s chin was swiftly replaced by a mental snapshot of Sickly Grin’s neck, which bulged in a fleshy roll over his starched collar. I could not imagine him being a comfort to anyone. ‘If I were you I’d spend the day quietly at home. The press will be merciless for the next few days. You might get Mr Sickert-Greene to give them some sort of statement on behalf of the family.’

‘All right. Thank you,’ I added, though probably it was silly to thank the man who was accusing my father of murder.

‘Chin up.’

The line went dead. I put back the receiver and the telephone rang again immediately.

‘Hello, it’s Crispin. Who’s that?’

‘Harriet.’

‘Oh, good.’ There was a shade of relief in Crispin’s cultured tones. ‘I hoped it might be you.’

‘Shall I go and get Ophelia?’

‘Ah – no. Hang on a sec – don’t disturb her. Just tell her I called, will you?’

‘Any particular message?’

‘Er – just say I’ve gone down to the Towers for a few days. Awful bore – m’uncle’s birthday. Mother insists I show the phisog for a spot of celebrating. He’s nearly ninety and expected to pip out before long.’

‘Oh.’ I did not know whether to sound pleased or sorry.

‘Tell Ophelia I’ll ring her when I get back. By-ee.’

‘The low-down, snivelling, craven wretch,’ said Ophelia when I gave her the substance of the conversation. ‘He’s going to rat!’ She punched her pillow violently. ‘Well, I hate that hideous Mallilieu Towers, anyway. All pinnacles and gargoyles and nasty blue bricks. Henrietta Slotts is welcome. I don’t care.’

She put the pillow over her face and refused to say another word. After I had closed the door behind me I heard what might have been a stifled sob. I went downstairs to make myself some tea.

Maria-Alba was washing up the supper things.

‘Che c’e? You look beaky.’

‘Peaky, I think you mean. I’m all right.’ I could feel my chin trembling ‘It’s delayed shock or something. It seems worse this morning but I expect I’ll be better when I’ve woken up properly.’

I managed a smile, which changed to a scream as a man with several cameras round his neck jumped from the front garden down into the area outside the kitchen window. He pressed his face against the glass, which clouded with his breath.

‘Basta così!’ exclaimed Maria-Alba, picking up a soup ladle that lay to hand. She threw open the kitchen door and ran out. ‘Va fottere la cucina della Mamma!’ she screamed. It was one of her favourite insults. I heard the man yell as Maria-Alba hit him hard on his bald head. He tried to take a photograph of her but she pelted him with blows. He ran off. Maria-Alba came in again, her normally sallow face dark red.

‘La feccia!’ She was panting with anger.

‘You gave him a good thrashing. I bet he won’t come back.’

‘If he do I take a knife to him. I keel him!’

I wondered if the world had gone mad. I did not want to spend the rest of my life travelling between maximum-security prisons, visiting those I loved.

Cordelia came down, looking pale but determined. She was wearing jeans, though it was a school day.

‘You don’t think I’m going to that stinking convent so those beastly girls can be foul to me? Drusilla Papworth’ll be thrilled to bits. She’s jealous as hell of me and now my father’s a criminal she’ll be able to leave me out of everything.’

‘He isn’t! You mustn’t believe that. I can understand that some of them might be unkind but surely your friends –’

‘You’ve obviously forgotten what school’s like.’ Cordelia thrust out her lower lip and shook her silky curls. ‘I won’t have any friends after this. Ever again. I shall be ostrichised by everyone. When all my family are finally dead there won’t be anyone left speaking to me. But by then I’ll probably be used to it.’ A faraway look came into Cordelia’s eye. ‘I shall live in a cave in a forest and tame wild animals. People will come and make offerings of food and wine and call me Cordelia the Holy Woman. It might be fun to make a hole in the rock and tell people’s fortunes, like an oracle. You have to say things in an amphibious way so you can’t be caught out. Pa told me all about it.’

‘Ambiguous. But it would be very difficult to think up clever answers if you hadn’t been to school and acquired some sort of education.’

‘What a poisonous remark!’ Cordelia glared at me. ‘Just the sort of sneaky, trapping thing the nuns say.’

There was some truth in this but I was not in the mood to be generous and admit it.

‘I hate school,’ Cordelia continued with passion, ‘and particularly those nasty nuns. Their only happiness in life is to punish helpless children. I bet when they’re supposed to be saying prayers they’re dreaming up new forms of torture. Camilla Everard had to kneel on a broom handle for an hour because she forgot her gym pants. Her parents were furious and she wasn’t allowed back after that. She goes to school in Switzerland now and her skiing instructor buys her chocolate cake in return for favours – you know.’ Cordelia assumed her grown-up, knowing face.

‘Some people come cheap.’ I suppressed a smile, not believing a word of it.

‘Well, poor Camilla has braces and glasses,’ Cordelia conceded. ‘It’s a dump and I’m never going back. I shall kill myself if you try and make me.’ I sighed, unable to contend with so much violence. Cordelia scented victory. ‘I’m going to make Pa a cake.’ She fetched the flour jar as she spoke. ‘That’ll cheer him up. I’ll put it in a tin so the rats can’t get at it.’ She found Maria-Alba’s folder of recipes and began to weigh ingredients.

I was touched by this instance of thoughtfulness in one so young. It seemed a good example to imitate. I began to cast about in my mind for something I could do to console the weary prisoner. I wondered if he would be allowed music. I could take along my portable gramophone and some of his favourite records. Prison furniture was probably uncomfortable. Perhaps they wouldn’t mind a very small bergère armchair. The piece of Brussels tapestry that hung on the stairs would conceal ugly paint or wallpaper. I began to form a picture of quite a cosy cell with pictures and books and a few pieces of his favourite Vincennes porcelain.

It occurred to me that someone ought to inform Cordelia’s headmistress that she would not be coming to school. My mother’s voice, issuing from the receiver as I lifted it, said sharply, ‘I am trying to have a private conversation. Whoever that is, put it down at once.’ I was disappointed. I had assumed the telephone’s silence was because the reporters had given up using it as a medium to contact us. It shows how naîve I still was.

When I wandered down again an hour later, having refreshed myself with a bath and a few lines of Gerard Manley Hopkins, I was surprised to find Max Frensham in the drawing room. Max was a member of the cast of King Lear and a friend of my parents’.

‘Harriet!’ He came towards me and took my hand in both of his. ‘I had to come and see you were all right. How is Waldo bearing up?’

‘How did you get in?’

‘Through the back door. I expect you’ve forgotten, but last year at your mother’s birthday party, you let me in on the secret of the maze.’

I remembered that Max and I had spent half an hour last summer exploring its intricacies and I had told him Loveday’s masterplan. Caroline Frensham, Max’s wife, had been waspish when we re-emerged and had devoted the rest of the afternoon to flirting with my father. She was good-looking, if one overlooked the blankness in her eyes. In fact the Frenshams were considered a handsome couple and were much in demand socially. Max was auburn-haired with a pale, ascetic face, in which hazel eyes burned, and one of those thin, finely modelled noses with a slight dent at the tip. He had considerable charm. Being Edgar to Basil’s Lear was the high point of his career so far but he was only thirty-four and great things were foretold.

‘It is good of you to come.’

‘This is so terrible for you. Of course he didn’t do it. Waldo would be the last person on earth to hurt anyone. He is quite simply, and without any qualification, my hero. He can act anyone else off the stage. Certainly poor old Basil. But you mustn’t worry. The police have made a stupid mistake. We’ll all testify to the fact that Waldo is incapable of murder.’ This was like a lungful of oxygen to one who had been breathing thin, foetid air. I was ready to tell anyone who would listen that my father was innocent, but to hear someone else say it was balm to the soreness of my heart. ‘Poor Harriet, you must be having a wretched time of it.’

‘Max! Dear boy!’ My mother glided towards us across the drawing room carpet, her lilac peignoir fluttering like a sail head to wind, one arm held out before her like a bowsprit. ‘You find us supping full with horrors! Harriet,’ she added, in her ordinary voice, ‘ask Maria-Alba to bring us some coffee.’ She shook out a fan. ‘Time has been my senses would have cooled to hear a night-shriek.’ She fluttered her hand. ‘And, darling, some of those delicious little almond biscuits.’

‘What do you think?’ Bron was up unusually early. It was not yet eleven o’clock. He was looking soigné in his best suit with a blue silk shirt and a scarlet tie. He twirled on the spot. ‘Elegant or what?’

‘Elegant,’ I said, though Maria-Alba and Cordelia said ‘what’ in unison. After all it would do no good if we allowed ourselves to marcher à la ruine. This was one of my mother’s most damning phrases and applied to anyone who had allowed a centimetre of fat to accrete to their hips or the tiniest wrinkle to quilt their cheek. ‘Are you going out?’

‘My press conference.’

‘What are you going to tell them?’

‘I shall point out how few decent parts there are for good-looking young classical actors. Rudolf Rumpole is playing Romeo at the Tivoli and he’s nearly forty. What chance is there for the rest of us? I’d like to know.’

‘I meant, what are you going to tell them about Pa?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Something will occur to me.’ He waved his hand in a lordly way. ‘Is there something to eat? I don’t want to look pale.’

Maria-Alba, Cordelia and I had breakfast together in the dining room, with the curtains drawn against the photographers, who were back, jostling for place like thirsty buffaloes round a water hole. I lifted a corner of the curtain and counted sixteen of them milling about among the clipped box and bay trees in the front garden. Probably this was trespass but ordinary citizens’ rights no longer seemed to belong to us. One reporter sat on a gate pier, his legs either side of the stone ball and another shinned up the lamppost to get a bedroom shot. One of them spotted me and immediately they were shouting and pointing cameras. Cordelia turned to look at me in surprise as I dropped to the floor, my heart beating fast. Her huge blue eyes, in a face as yet unmarked by weal or woe, looked angelic. Supposing this terrible experience had a permanent affect on her happiness?

‘This is silly.’ I got up and tried to laugh. ‘Like being besieged in a Royalist stronghold during the Civil War. With hordes of Roundheads camping beyond the barbican.’

‘We wouldn’t hold out for long with only Bron to do the fighting.’ Cordelia cracked the top of her egg with a spoon.

‘Women fought too, even in those days. At least they helped with dropping boiling oil and quicklime on the enemy’s heads. Though sometimes the sieges went on for months or even years with nothing much happening. The worst thing must have been running out of food and having to eat dogs and cats and candles and soap and things.’

‘I’d rather starve to death than eat Mark Antony.’ Cordelia punctured the yolk of her boiled egg with a toast soldier. We were drinking hot chocolate with whipped cream. Maria-Alba’s instinctive response to any crisis was to try to fatten us up. ‘Think of his dear little whiskery face poking out of a pie.’

‘How stupid it all seems now, looking back,’ I said, in a vain attempt to turn our thoughts from our own difficulties. ‘All those young men killed in battle and then poor King Charles having his head chopped off. He put on an extra shirt so he wouldn’t shiver. He didn’t want people to think he was afraid – it was so unfair.’ I paused, remembering Pa, and felt a twist of pain in my stomach. It was odd how one managed to forget for nearly a minute at a time and then memory would come lurching back, to terrorize.

‘How’s he going to go to the lav?’ asked Cordelia anxiously. I realized she meant Mark Anthony not Charles II. ‘You know how he hates doing it if anyone’s looking.’ A fastidious propriety in such matters was one of Mark Antony’s good points.

‘He’ll have to nip into the maze when no one’s looking. What’s that?’

‘It is the front door. Some man is got in.’ Maria-Alba stood up and seized the poker from the fireplace. I ran to get ahead of her. Leaning against the front door, his coat disarranged, the carnation in his buttonhole crushed and his toupee crooked, was Ronald Mason.

‘Harriet, my dear girl! I hope I didn’t alarm you,’ His voice, once a mellow baritone, had the graveliness of a long-term smoker. ‘I remembered where you keep the spare key.’ He held it out to me. ‘You’d better have it indoors for now.’

Ronald Mason had been a heart-throb of the silver screen during the thirties and forties when he was hardly ever out of slashed doublets and diamond-buckled knee-breeches. His characters’ speeches were punctuated by antique expressions such as ‘’pon rep’ and ‘i’faith’ and ‘have at thee, varlet’. When he saw Maria-Alba holding the poker his protuberant eyes and small girlish mouth grew round with dismay. ‘Sono io, Maria-Alba,’ he cried with pure Oxford vowels. ‘Il tuo anziano amico – Ronnie.’

‘Anziano, vero,’ said Maria-Alba with uncharacteristic brutality, but she put down the poker.

‘Ronnie! How good of you to come!’ I kissed his wrinkled cheek, which smelled of lavender water. ‘But you look a little … Have they hurt you?’

‘No, no.’ Ronald panted as he straightened his toupee. ‘Bron coming out distracted them. Had to come. Clarissa asked me. Couldn’t let her down.’ His eyes were watering with the cold, and perhaps with emotion, for he clutched my arm and added, ‘This is a ghastly business. Poor Waldo. I’ve never been more upset.’

I felt ashamed of all the times Portia and I had made fun of Ronnie behind his back, imitating his mincing walk and his mannered laugh and stagey speech. He had been my mother’s lover years ago and had remained worshipping at the shrine despite being replaced by a stream of younger actors. It struck me for the first time that these suitors were conspicuous by their absence. Where was Jeremy Northampton, her current cicisbeo? Recently he had been in the habit of dropping in almost daily. And where were those other friends who had so often gathered round the dining table, making assignations in the drawing room and love in the garden?

The doorbell rang. I peered through the letter box into the eyes of an unknown youth.

‘Perdi’a’s Pe’als. I go’a lo’a flahs fer yew.’

‘What?’ Then I remembered that Perdita’s Petals was our local flower shop. ‘Oh. Yes, wait a minute. Maria-Alba, stand by with the poker. I’m going to open the door.’

I tried to ignore the yelling that broke out the minute I put out my head. Lenses were thrust into my face as the press shouted questions about my father’s guilt, his reaction to prison life, and was it true that my father had been staying with Princess Margaret on Mustique?

Luckily the delivery boy was fiercely voluable. ‘’Ere! Don’ you go pushing me, ma’ey. ’Ere!’ He was inflamed from indignation to outrage when his hair was rumpled by a fur-covered microphone. ‘Naff orf or I’ll push tha’ fucking thing down yer throa’!’

While he was arguing with them I was able to gather up the bouquets and pass them back into the house to the others. Then I slammed the door, bolted it and put on the chain.

‘Hyenas! Vipers! Wolves!’ Ronald passed a handkerchief across his brow. ‘I am sorry for modern youth. They are uncultured yobs, wallowing in ignorance. Their understanding is superficial and their tastes are banal.’

‘Come and have some coffee.’ I guessed his pride had been hurt by one of the reporters asking if Ronald was my grandfather.

‘Thank you, Harriet, but I have a cab waiting.’ He bowed his head. ‘I except you and your dear sisters, of course, from the general censure.’

‘What we do with these flowers?’ asked Maria-Alba. ‘I use every vase yesterday.’

Cordelia read one of the notes accompanying what the woman in Perdita’s Petals would probably have called ‘floral tributes’. ‘“Darling Clarissa. You must be going through hell!!! It’s too maddening our having to go away just now. Our thoughts are with you. Binny and Oscar, with our love.”’

Binny and Oscar had been friends of my parents for years. When Oscar had temporarily left Binny for a double-jointed Olympic sprinter, as black as ink and with hair like a thunder cloud, Binny had found consolation in eating Maria-Alba’s food, gossiping with my mother and, I was almost certain, sleeping with my father. Certainly when Oscar had turned up at our house several weeks later with dark circles under his eyes and a slipped disc, there had been some difficulty in getting Binny to go home with him. She had declared that my father was twenty times the man Oscar was and then this was certainly true. Now it seemed all this was forgotten.

‘I don’t like the house looking like a wake,’ I said. ‘Oh no, someone’s actually sent a wreath!’ I looked at the label. It said, ‘Darling Clarissa from Jeremy. I shall never forget.’ ‘How horrible! They all believe he did it! We’ll give them to Loveday for the compost heap.’

‘Think of the cost of those orchids!’ moaned Ronald.

We often joked among ourselves about Ronald’s little economies. He never entertained but was always the first to arrive at a party and the last to leave. More than once he had been seen pocketing the remaining canapés and sometimes a bottle of wine or whisky. And always after Ronnie’s visits the soap disappeared from the downstairs lav. Once even the towel. My parents were amused rather than irritated by these lapses. Ronnie still occasionally appeared in films, in cameo roles, and probably earned enough to live on, but these days his fees were as crumbs to the cake he had once commanded. Advancing age made him fearful of poverty and as my father charitably said, who could blame him?

‘What difference does it make?’ I said, with reference to the flowers. ‘They’ll be dead in a week anyway.’ I tried to sound careless. I was disappointed that, with the exception of Ronnie and Max Frensham, my parents’ friends had found it easier to dial the number of the nearest florist rather than come themselves to offer sympathy. But perhaps they were giving us time to adjust.

‘If you’re quite sure you don’t want them …’ Ronald replaced his spoiled carnation with an orchid and rearranged his hair and clothing in the hall mirror. He looked critically at his reflection. I could see that his velvet-collared coat, which must have been expensive long ago, was worn at the lapels and he was no longer able to fasten it across his stomach. He looked rather longingly at the clothes brush before putting it back into the drawer of the console table.

‘There you are, Ronald.’ My mother was coming downstairs, wearing her leopard coat and a pair of tinted spectacles. She was carrying a suitcase. ‘I was beginning to wonder what had happened to you. A traffic accident or – something.’ She made it sound a matter of supreme indifference.

‘I set out the minute you rang off,’ Ronald said, with a slight air of injury. Then he straightened his tie, braced his shoulders and lifted his chin. ‘How ravishing you’re looking, my darling! The bloom on your cheek would put a rose to shame.’ He flung up his hand in a graceful gesture, just as he must have done years ago when he first said the line in front of the camera.

‘That wig wouldn’t fool a blind man,’ replied my mother, very nastily, I thought. ‘And the dye you’re using on the rest of it looks purple in this light.’

I had been struck myself by the odd effect of the aubergine tufts of hair above Ronnie’s ears.

‘Well! You certainly don’t believe in robing naked truth with the silk of courtesy.’ Ronald looked pardonably annoyed.

‘You’re getting a paunch,’ was my mother’s rejoinder. ‘You’d better go and see Bo-Bo Lascelles. She’s opened a new clinic in Bruton Street. Her special diet is a week of raw beetroot juice three times a day combined with three tablespoons of kush-kush stalks from the Andes. Apparently it pulverises the fat cells.’

‘Knowing Bo-Bo I bet it costs an arm and a leg,’ muttered Ronald peevishly. ‘Raw beetroot! Never mind the damned grass!’

‘If you’re going to be moody and difficult I shall be sorry I asked you to go with me.’

‘Where are you going?’ I asked.

‘I’m going to see Bo-Bo’s plastic surgeon. She says Mr Moffat-Rime is a genius and very reasonable, and luckily he’s managed to squeeze me in. I’m having a little tuck here.’

She pressed her hands to her jawbone. Cosmetic surgery was my mother’s recourse in extremis.

‘But what about Pa?’

‘I shall be over the bruising by the time he comes out. It’s all fitting in quite well.’ Her mouth smiled with satisfaction. She seemed to have forgotten about his name being wounded and her bosom being a bed to lodge it in until it was healed.

‘Aren’t you going to see him? I think he was sorry you didn’t go yesterday.’

She turned her dark lenses towards me. ‘Harriet, I have noticed before that you have a tendency to wallow. Mawkishness is extremely vulgar.’ She tossed her head, petulantly. ‘I expect Marina Marlow will be delighted to have the publicity. You know how I dislike it.’

I was surprised into silence. Marina Marlow was playing the part of Regan in King Lear. She did not look much older than me. Was it possible that she and my father …? I turned the thought away.

‘I’ll be back next week. Goodbye, Cordelia, my sweet one.’ My mother blew a limp-fingered kiss in her direction. ‘Give my love to darling Bron. I shall take this opportunity to have a complete rest.’ She gave a little hum of pleasure. ‘Goodbye, Harriet. Do keep an eye on Ophelia. When I spoke to her just now, I thought she seemed un peu distrait. Goodbye, Maria-Alba. I know you’ll look after my chicks for me.’ She pecked the space above Maria-Alba’s ear. ‘My fortress. My harbour in a time of storm.’ Maria-Alba gave a grim smile of satisfaction, which I doubted had anything to do with my mother’s patently insincere praise. ‘Ronald, there is nothing for it but to face those vultures. God knows, they have picked me to the very bone often enough! But, arm in arm, we may yet triumph.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Ronald put a good deal of solemnity into his voice ‘Fame is indeed a twin-headed monster. As it creates, so it devours.’

They almost banged heads trying to see themselves in the looking-glass. Then they sucked in their cheeks and stomachs, Ronald flung open the door and they exited together. There was an awkward little moment of anticlimax as the garden was found to be quite empty. Presumably all the reporters were at Bron’s press conference. Nevertheless, as they titupped elegantly down the path – Ronald’s heels were nearly as high as my mother’s – they turned their heads from right to left as if greeting the crowd. Ronald’s bow as he handed my mother into the waiting taxi would have struck an echo in the bosoms of those fans who had seen him as Sir Walter Raleigh conducting his sovereign across that celebrated puddle.

‘Bravo! Ben fatto!’ Maria-Alba’s dun-coloured cheeks had points of pink in them, which was unusual. ‘Dio mi è giudice … but all of heaven and hell is not know till when we die.’

With this inscrutable utterance she went down into the kitchen.

I brought Mark Antony downstairs and put him out into the front garden. Then I went back upstairs to make what I was almost sure would be a useless attempt to console Ophelia. I knocked on the door and called her name but she ignored me. I put my eye to the keyhole. If I had believed for one moment that she loved Crispin I would have been most upset, for she lay pale and still on her bed, the picture of dejection. Now and then she sniffed despondently and once she said, ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger!’ with great emphasis. I imagined she was thinking of Henrietta Slotts as the future Countess of Sope.

While I was on my knees at the keyhole strange noises broke out downstairs and then Mark Antony, his ginger fur stiff with feeling, shot past me on his way to the attic. I looked over the banisters. Bron was standing at the foot of the stairs, his arms extended, holding the loop of a lead with both hands. At the other end was a dog, brown and white and very furry, with feet like dinner plates. Deaf to Bron’s commands and in defiance of a throttling choke chain, it was trying to climb the stairs.

‘Good dog! Who’s a beautiful girl, then?’ I said ingratiatingly as I descended. It is hard to prevent oneself from extravagant gushing in the one-sided conversations imposed by animals and babies. The dog jumped up to lick my jerseyed chest with an enormously long tongue, and whined with every appearance of love.

‘That’s good. He likes you. His name’s Derek.’

‘Derek? Poor thing. I don’t think it suits him at all. The only Derek I know sells office furniture and is a terrible lech.’

‘You can call him what you like. But he answers to Derek. When he answers at all, that is.’

‘Why should I want to call him anything?’ I began to be suspicious.

‘Because he’s a present for you. To make up for getting drunk yesterday and not going with you to the police station to see Pa. Maria-Alba was quite right. It was very bad of me and Derek’s to say sorry.’

‘Oh, but … Really, Bron, you shouldn’t have – I’d forgotten all about it. I don’t think I can … You know how Pa hates dogs.’

‘Haven’t you always said you wanted one? Well, now Pa’s in the clink this is your chance.’

‘But, Bron, imagine what he’ll think when he comes home – as though we were taking advantage of him being away. Of course I have always wanted a dog, but not now, when things are impossibly difficult as it is –’

‘Well, I must say …’ Bron’s handsome face was despondent. ‘It’s extremely hurtful, you know to have one’s presents rejected. I was so pleased when I had the idea. I thought. I know what will make Harriet happy again. A dear little dog she can love, to make up for Pa being banged up.’ He lifted a hand to shade his eyes and his voice was broken. ‘I don’t think I was ever more unhappy –’

‘Oh, Bron, I’m sorry! It was kind of you and I’m very grateful but –’

‘Not another word!’ Bron heaved a sigh and dashed away an invisible tear. ‘I’ll take him away. Though the man I bought him from has already left the country. He was on his way to the airport. That’s how I managed to get him for such a good price. He’s a very rare breed, you know. I’m afraid it’s the dogs’ home for Derek. He won’t like it. Apparently he hates being alone. They’ll put him in a concrete pen and he’ll howl until his poor little chest hurts and then at the end of the week, when no one’s claimed him, they’ll take him to the vet. He’ll be so happy, thinking he’s going to a good home, and instead they’ll fill his veins with poison –’

‘All right, all right!’ When we were children Bron used to enjoy telling me sad stories to make me cry, about overburdened donkeys and starving robins frozen to branches, and it always worked. ‘I’ll keep him – for the moment, anyway. Just until Pa gets home.’ I fondled Derek’s soft brown triangular ears that lay flat against his head and he wrinkled his brow comically. He was the colour of muscovado sugar, with a white muzzle and a black nose. I made up my mind to put an advertisement in the local post office straightaway before I got too fond of him. ‘And – thank you.’ I spoke a little gruffly because I was not feeling particularly grateful but Bron didn’t seem to notice.

‘Righto. Here you are.’ He handed me the loop of the lead. ‘He likes bacon and eggs to eat.’

‘What? Oh, don’t be silly, Bron. You know nothing about dogs.’

‘It’s what the man said. I wasn’t aware that you were an authority.’

‘I’m not, but surely he eats raw meat and tins of Scoffalot and that sort of thing.’

‘I didn’t say you had to cook the bacon, did I?’

‘Well.’ I tried not to sound ungracious. ‘What sort of dog is he, then? I hope he isn’t going to get any bigger.’

‘Oh, no, he’s fully-grown. The man said so. He’s a – a Cornish terrier.’

‘Really?’ I looked at Derek with interest. ‘I’ve never heard of such a thing.’

‘You’ve still got a lot to learn, Miss Harriet Byng.’ Bron spoke sarcastically as though still smarting at my ingratitude. ‘Expert though you are, in so many fields.’

‘I’m not going to call him Derek, though.’

‘Whatever you like. I’m going out. Tell Maria-Alba I shan’t be in for supper.’

‘But, Bron, you’ll come with me to see Pa today, won’t you? Ma’s gone to have her jaw tightened and Ophelia’s in a state about Crispin’s desertion and Portia still isn’t back and I don’t like to ask Maria-Alba – she was so upset yesterday.’

‘Look, we can’t all go trooping along as though it was some kind of party. A little tact is called for.’ Bron pressed his chin into his neck and looked at me reprovingly. ‘I’m going to see Wanda.’ Wanda was Bron’s agent. ‘There should be some good piccies in the evening papers. They took hundreds from every angle and wrote down everything I said, like bees sipping nectar. I don’t suppose they often get the chance to interview someone highly articulate. Wanda particularly wants me to go to this party tonight to meet an important film director. It would be madness to hurl away all my chances just to visit Pa. Ten to one Marina Marlow will be there, and Pa won’t want grown children at his knee when he’s trying to lure the bird into the cage. Honestly, Harriet, you must try to put yourself in other people’s places. It’s no good just thinking about what would suit you.’

My mother must have been right about Marina. It was selfish of me, perhaps, to be depressed by the idea. Derek suddenly took it into his head that down in the kitchen was the one thing for which he had been searching all his life and that nothing must hold him back from immediate consummation. His paws windmilled on the polished floor and my arms were pulled painfully in their sockets. I went downstairs with him, leaving Bron with the moral high ground.