Читать книгу A Girl’s Guide to Kissing Frogs - Victoria Clayton - Страница 13

10

‘That was a dreadful evening.’

Rafe drove slowly, carefully, using the gears to brake on the steep bits. I sneaked a glance at his profile and saw he was smiling. From the back seat came excited barks. Rafe’s dog, Buster, having been shut up in the boot room all evening was thrilled to be allowed to accompany us on our midnight journey.

‘Not for me. I enjoyed seeing you all again. And the food was lovely. Except I feel so guilty that you’ve had to turn out so late and in this awful weather.’

Snow was blowing into the windscreen, making it impossible to see more than a few feet ahead.

‘Shut up, Buster! I told you. It’s a pleasure. I like driving. I like driving with you.’

‘Thank you.’ I held my breath as we came to the hairpin bend but Rafe took us safely round it. ‘I can’t think why Dimpsie hasn’t answered the telephone,’ I said for the thousandth time.

At a quarter to twelve, when Spendlove was staggering into the hall under a weight of coats and the other guests were delivering polite speeches of appreciation and gratitude, I had refused all offers of lifts, explaining that my mother was waiting up with the express intention of acting as chauffeur. I had dialled our number several times and let it ring what seemed like ages. Evelyn and Kingsley went to bed, leaving Isobel, Rafe and me in the drawing room. There was plenty to talk about and the time went swiftly enough between fruitless telephone calls, but I was uncomfortably aware that they must be longing for me to go. At last, when Isobel yawned with a sort of groaning sound, I capitulated and Rafe went to bring his car round from the stableyard to the front door.

‘Oh, Isobel.’ I had put my arms round her neck and hugged her. ‘It’s been so lovely to see you again and I hope – I’m sure you’re going to be wonderfully happy.’

‘Of course I shall. Goodnight, darling. Promise you’ll come and meet Conrad as soon as he arrives?’

‘The minute I’m asked.’

‘It was a memorable evening, wasn’t it?’ I said to Rafe as we reached the bottom of the valley and started to climb the other side. ‘We shall none of us forget it.’

Evelyn, of course, had been the person most affected by Isobel’s bombshell. When Isobel had announced her engagement I had looked immediately at Evelyn’s face and seen it blanche. Several seconds of silence followed Isobel’s announcement, before the archdeacon said, ‘Well, well, Isobel. You have … ah-hem … surprised us.’

‘Certainly,’ said Mustard Crepe, who I had by then identified as the archdeacon’s wife. ‘Evelyn, my dear, how inscrutable you’ve been.’ This was generous, as it was obvious that Evelyn had been as surprised as the rest of us. ‘May we ask, who is the fortunate young man?’

I have never met anyone who did smiling rage as well as Evelyn. Her diamonds were flashing on her chest as she breathed fast. ‘I assure you, Fanny, I am as much in the dark as any of you. I suppose it must be Harry Cunningham … a charming boy, devoted to Isobel … Kingsley and Harry’s father were at school together—’

‘Quite wrong, Mummy.’ Isobel’s face was lit by excitement. ‘His name is Conrad Lerner.’

‘Conrad … Lerner.’ Evelyn mouthed the syllables as though she was eating bitter almonds.

‘Will someone explain what’s going on?’ Kingsley asked plaintively.

‘Isobel is telling us about the young man to whom she has become engaged.’ The archdeacon’s wife took charge of the situation as smoothly as though this was a meeting of the Mother’s Union which threatened to get out of hand. Her tone was emphatic, almost severe. ‘We are all delighted, naturally, but there seems to be some mystery.’

‘No mystery at all,’ said Isobel. ‘Conrad’s just the sort of man any girl might want to marry. He’s very clever and very nice and very, very rich.’

‘Conrad.’ Kingsley wrinkled his face in perplexity. ‘Conrad.’ He looked helpless. ‘Do I know him?’

‘No, Daddy. I met him in London three months ago. At a party. We spent a brilliant week together. We had the most enormous fun. Then he went back to Germany. We kept in touch, of course. A few days ago he rang up, asking me to marry him. I said yes. So now you know all about it.’ She looked triumphant but I saw that she was tense, anticipating attack from all sides.

‘But Isobel,’ Evelyn’s voice had more than a tinge of anger to it now. ‘Who exactly is this man? Who are his family? What is he doing in Germany if he has engaged himself to you?’

‘Goodness! So many questions!’ Isobel walked over to the drinks tray and poured herself a large brandy. ‘He’s in Germany because that’s where he lives when he isn’t in London or New York. He is German, you see. As to his family, I don’t believe he has any.’

‘But Isobel, my dear.’ The Archdeacon’s wife had taken over again seeing that Evelyn was having difficulty in ordering her thoughts. ‘Was that quite wise? To engage yourself to man without family, of whom you and your parents know nothing?’

‘Of course he must have some family,’ put in Sir Ibbertson. ‘Everyone has, be they never so humble.’

‘What I meant was, they’re all dead. His grandparents and all the rest of that generation died in concentration camps. And his mother and father were killed in a plane crash when he was eight. He was brought up by his uncle Charles who was the only relation he had left. He died last year so Conrad truly hasn’t any family. Sad, isn’t it?’ Isobel did not look in the least sorry, only defiant.

Evelyn closed her eyes.

‘Very sad,’ said a girl who had been standing on the outskirts of the group. Her hair was cropped into a short back and sides, like a schoolboy’s, and she wore an unbecoming brown dress with a halter neck that emphasized the squareness of her shoulders. All I knew of her so far was that her name was Bunty Lumbe. ‘He must be a very interesting person.’

I liked her for this attempt to lighten the encircling gloom of disapproval, but Isobel rounded on her.

‘Interesting? I hate that sort of morbid curiosity that finds people interesting just because they’ve had awful things happen to them.’

Bunty looked alarmed. ‘I didn’t mean … all I meant was … I don’t think I’ve ever met a German.’

‘Never been able to take to them, you know, not since the last shemozzle.’ Kingsley had been something, a major perhaps or a colonel, in the last war. ‘Lost a lot of damned fine men. But I suppose the same’s true for them.’

‘Conrad is a Jew, Daddy.’ Isobel’s tone was one of exaggerated patience. ‘His people were on the side you were fighting for.’

‘Does he speak English?’ asked the archdeacon.

‘A smattering. I shall learn Yiddish. Oy, oy! Nach a mool!’ She grinned.

The archdeacon and his wife exchanged glances of absolute horror and everyone else looked grave, as though Isobel had said she was going to have to live in a ghetto and eat rats.

‘What am I thinking of?’ Evelyn roused herself as if from a trance. She assumed an air of grim resolution. ‘Ring for Spendlove someone. We must have some champagne. A toast to Isobel and –’ she gritted her teeth – ‘Conrad.’

‘I do admire your mother,’ I said to Rafe as we approached the bottom of our drive. ‘Don’t slow down for the bend if you can help it. If there’s ice you have to take it at a run or you can’t get all the way up the drive.’ I shut my eyes and held on to the door handle in case we went over the edge into the river. I had read somewhere recently that, contrary to received opinion, you must get out as fast as you can and not wait for the car to fill with water. Would my cast weigh me down like divers’ leaded boots? Don’t scream … go on talking … pretend it’s all right … pretend you aren’t going to die … ‘It must have been a tremendous shock for her – not having met this man – having it sprung on her in front of all those people.’ I felt the wheels spinning, imagined us sliding sideways down … down … ‘I expect they’ll like him very much,’ I heard my voice rise to a squeak, ‘… once they get to know him.’

‘It’s all right. Just a little skid. We’re quite safe. And it seems to have silenced Buster.’

Buster had his paws on the back of my seat and was panting down my neck. The warmth of his breath was comforting.

‘Of course you don’t mean that,’ Rafe continued. ‘About my parents liking Conrad. Xenophobia is canon law at Shottestone. I begged her to wait until we’d all met him before agreeing to marry him, but you know how impulsive she is. She said she was the one who was going to live with him and it didn’t matter what the rest of us thought. Which is nonsense, of course. One can hardly avoid seeing a great deal of one’s in-laws.’

It seemed Rafe was the only person Isobel had discussed her engagement with. This did not surprise me. She had always set great store by her brother’s opinion. Worshipping at the same altar ought to have brought us closer together as children, but I think in those days she had resented me as a coreligionist in case I drew Rafe’s attention away from her. Not that I ever did.

‘It will be nice for Isobel to have a lot of money.’

‘You shock me, Marigold! What a mercenary pair you are!’

After everyone else had gone home, Isobel had dwelt for some time on the considerable riches of her betrothed.

I hastened to explain myself. ‘I didn’t mean it was the most important thing. I’d marry a shepherd with nothing but a dog and a crook and a hut on the moors if I loved him. But as I haven’t met Conrad, I don’t yet know what else there is to like about him.’

‘Here we are.’ Rafe pulled up outside Dumbola Lodge. ‘Love is a state of madness. If money comes into it I doubt if there’s much passion.’

I wondered if Rafe was speaking from experience. He was thirty-two. Naturally there must have been attachments. I felt something wet and hot in my ear. It was a long tongue.

Rafe turned to reprove Buster. ‘Bad boy! Down, sir.’

‘I don’t mind.’

‘He mustn’t be allowed to lick people’s faces. What bothers me,’ he went on, ‘is that this fellow means nothing more than an escape route to Isobel. It’s hardly a sound basis for marriage.’

I was flattered that he should take me so thoroughly into his confidence. During all those years that he had been a fixed star in my imagination, he could only have thought of me as a silly little girl. If he had thought of me at all. ‘What’s she escaping from?’

Rafe was silent for a time. ‘From home …’ He spoke with an air of reluctance as though the words were being forced out of him. ‘From Evelyn …’

‘But surely that wouldn’t need something so drastic as marriage? She could go back to London. She had a job, didn’t she?’

‘Yes. But she wasn’t happy.’ He turned off the engine. ‘I don’t know why I’m boring you with my family’s concerns when you ought to be tucked up in bed. Come on, I’ll help you in. And perhaps we’d better clear up the mystery of the telephone that didn’t ring in the night-time.’

‘There’s only one in the house, in my father’s study. He sleeps there when he’s on call. The ring’s always switched to low so you can’t hear it from anywhere else except the drawing room if both the doors are open.’

‘That’s very considerate of him.’ Rafe got out of the car and leaned into the back for my crutches. Buster gave me a farewell lick.

The truth was, this arrangement was entirely in my father’s own interest. Even when he was not on duty, patients tended to ring him in the small hours of the morning to say that they had felt a slight twinge on bending over to pick the milk bottle from the doorstep that morning and might it be a heart attack? Or the cough which they had had for several weeks might be cancer and ought they to have an emergency chest X-ray? It was perfectly reasonable not to want to be dragged from sleep in order to prescribe aspirin for someone with thumb-ache, but the telephone had always been the cause of much vexation in our household. When my father was at home he guarded the privacy of his study with ferocity, as though it contained a treasure chest and he was the dog with eyes as big as millwheels, so we could only use the telephone when he was out.

We tiptoed into the hall. At least Rafe did, and I swung my leg and crutches with careful deliberation. A soft light shone through the open drawing room. We went in. A table lamp illumined the sorry scene. My mother was stretched out on the sofa, her neck crumpled against one arm of it, her bare feet projecting over the other. A glass and a bottle stood on the table beside her. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing slowly and heavily.

‘I’d better wake her,’ I said. ‘She’ll get terrible cramp with her head at that angle.’ I shook her gently, then quite roughly, but she pushed away my hand and muttered something incomprehensible. ‘I’m afraid she’s had a very tiring day. I’d better put some blankets over her. She’ll be cold when the fire goes out.’

‘Tell me where they’re kept. I’ll fetch them.’

I gave him directions to the airing cupboard. While Rafe was upstairs I tried to move Dimpsie on to her side in case she was sick and choked on her own vomit, as I’d heard people sometimes did. But she was too heavy. When Rafe returned he had a go, but she lashed out at him with her fists so we tucked the bedclothes round her, turned out the light and crept back into the hall.

In the gloom I could see not much more than the whites of his eyes.

‘Thank you so much for bringing me home.’

‘I told you, I liked doing it. Come and see us again soon.’ He paused and smiled, his teeth shining in the dim light. ‘Give my love to Dimpsie,’ he said eventually. ‘I’m very fond of her, you know. A sympathetic soul.’

‘Thank you. I will. Good night.’

I offered him my cheek. He gripped my shoulder in a friendly, man-to-man sort of way and left.

‘Of course Conrad isn’t a bit the sort of person Mummy wants me to marry,’ said Isobel.

Two days had passed since the dinner party. We were in the morning room at Shottestone but it was afternoon. The morning room was charming, with walls of green silk, curtains patterned with honeysuckle and plenty of books. A large desk where Evelyn did her accounts and telephoning stood in the window, and in front of it was the sofa on which Isobel and I were sprawling. On our plates were crumbs of Mrs Capstick’s orange cake, just as good as I had remembered it.

‘You mean because he isn’t English?’

‘He isn’t English, he hasn’t a title, he doesn’t know any of the people we know and he isn’t even a Christian.’

‘Your father hasn’t got a title.’

‘No. But then Mummy’s father made his money in cotton mills. That had to be lived down. An untitled landowner was quite good enough for her.’ I remembered Dimpsie telling me years ago that Evelyn had confessed to her father being in trade and had sworn her to secrecy. I had wondered at the time what the fuss was about. I could see nothing wrong with being a daughter of the loom. Now I was older and wiser I understood that to Evelyn it was a shameful blot. ‘She thinks because I’ve gentle blood in me I ought to aim higher. She’s got Lord Dunderave’s son in her sights.’

‘How do you know?’

‘She’s been dropping his name – it’s Ronald, can you believe it? – into the conversation whenever possible. Apparently he can play polo, waltz, carve, help a woman on with her coat, open champagne without spilling it and he changes his underpants daily. Also he’s a bruising rider to hounds, a brilliant shot and the salmon he catches are so enormous they have to be brought home by Carter Patterson.’

‘Really?’ I envisaged a salmon as big as a whale, quivering with harpoons.

‘No, you clot! But that’s the gist of it. What she really means is he’s a bit thick and never opens a book but he’s a guaranteed, true-blue, copper-bottomed member of the English upper classes. He’s just got back from Cirencester – he’s been doing a course in land management to equip him to run the ancestral acres – so she’s going to ask him to dinner. Meanwhile she’s been lushing up to Lord Dunderave like mad. She had him to dinner yesterday. He’s a pig of a man. Bad-tempered. And he was rude to Daddy when he repeated himself.’

‘Honestly, Isobel, I think you’re awfully hard on your mother. She’s always been angelically kind to me and it can only have been out of genuine good-heartedness. I’ve never been able to give her anything in return.’

‘When we were children it suited her to have someone around for me to play with. It saved her the trouble of finding things for me to do.’

‘Yes, but she took the trouble to be sweet and generous to me when she needn’t have bothered. Now you don’t need entertaining and she’s just as warm and hospitable.’

I had met Evelyn in the hall that afternoon as she was on her way to a meeting of charitable people busy raising funds for impoverished war widows. She had looked stylish as usual, a fur coat over her tweed suit and shining crocodile shoes. She had stopped to ask me about my foot, my mother, my diet and my prospects, and she had pressed me to come to Shottestone whenever I wished. I only had to ring and Spendlove would come with the car.

‘She wants to get you on her side over the business of Conrad. She thinks you might be a good influence on me. She sees you as serious and hard-working and brainy.’

‘No!’

‘Oh, yes. She told me after that horrible dinner party the other night that she was very impressed by the way you’ve turned out. Apparently the archdeacon said you were decorative but a little too intellectual for his tastes. He thinks young ladies should be compliant and not argumentative. Mummy knows the man’s a first-class idiot, so she was rather pleased by his not quite approving of you.’

‘I’m afraid it’s a con.’ I explained about the reading list for intelligent conversation and that I had so far only managed to read a fraction of each of the two books at the head of it.

‘Thank God for that. I was worried that you’d turned into a prig. Have a cigarette.’

She picked up a packet of Disque Bleu and offered them to me. I was about to refuse, mindful of my lungs, but I was afraid of seeming priggish so I took one. Isobel lit it with a lighter shaped like a silver pistol.

‘You needn’t hold it as though it was a stick of dynamite. It won’t blow up in your face.’

I took a puff. My body went into revolt. Even my toes and fingertips got pins and needles.

‘Tell me,’ I blurted out between coughs, ‘about Conrad.’

‘Hm. Where shall I begin? Can I trust you, Mother’s nark?’

‘If you’re going to be beastly … I shall … go home.’ This had been my refrain when we were children.

‘I was a beast. And I still am. I’m sorry, you’re an angel.’ Isobel put her hand – soft, with nails painted dark-red – on mine and looked solemn. ‘Don’t take any notice of me. Being at home does terrible things to my character. Say you forgive me?’

‘Oh, I know all about that mock penitence.’ I smiled and turned my hand up so that hers rested in my palm. ‘You’re trying to lure me into trusting you so that you can trip me up later. Tell me about Conrad. What does he look like?’

‘Well,’ Isobel appeared to be thinking, ‘you couldn’t say he was exactly good looking. Unless you have a taste for short, bald men with large stomachs.’

‘Does anyone?’

‘Some people might. And he has a very large hooked nose. His feet are very broad and long. It was almost the first thing I noticed about him, that he had very big feet. But though the packaging isn’t beautiful, he has the most engaging personality and that’s far more important, isn’t it?’ I agreed that it was, feeling impressed by Isobel’s maturity. ‘And of course he can afford the most elegant clothes, so you don’t notice so much. He’s one of those people who’s always the centre of attention. He has a joke for every occasion. A fantastic memory. I can never tell jokes, can you?’ I shook my head. ‘Well, Conrad remembers entire stories and the punch-line. Honestly, he’s a hoot!’

I tried to look captivated by her description. No doubt it was due to a reprehensible lack of humour on my part, but I was not particularly fond of jokes. I always found it a strain to try to rig my face into pleased anticipation before producing the mandatory laughter at the end. ‘How can you tell if they’re funny if he tells them in Yiddish?’

‘Oh, yes. Well, he speaks French. And German, of course. And I’ve got O levels in both. He’s a great tease, too, tying people’s shoelaces together when they’re asleep and putting salt into the sugar caster, that sort of thing. He’s got a disarmingly childish streak but he’s really terribly clever.’

‘Where does all the money come from?’

‘I’m not sure. Property I think. And Conrad’s made masses himself. He owns a lot of casinos.’

‘Does Evelyn know that?’

‘No, and she won’t like it at all, though it’s a more honest way to make a living than exploiting the poor like Lord Dunderave. He owns half of Paddington, apparently. Poor people are shoved ten to a room in his nasty tenements while Lord D creams off all the profits. I can’t see what’s so admirable about that.’

‘I quite agree,’ I said. ‘But casinos do sound a little …’ I paused, wondering how to put it. I took another puff of my cigarette and felt a strange giddy sensation, not unpleasant.

Isobel withdrew her hand from mine. ‘Vulgar, you mean.’

‘Oh, not that I think that. But your parents might … undoubtedly will. Do you think you could persuade Conrad, without hurting his feelings, not to mention the casinos?’

‘I’m not ashamed of Conrad.’ Isobel looked rather angry and I accused myself of tactlessness.

‘Absolutely not. He sounds … remarkable. Such a jokey character when you consider how tragic his childhood was.’

‘I can’t live my life according to my mother’s rules.’

‘Certainly not.’

‘One of the good things about money is that when you’ve got a lot of it you can do as you like.’ Isobel threw herself back on the sofa and smiled with satisfaction.

I had a healthy respect for money myself, never having had any, but I wondered if Isobel wasn’t relying too much on the happiness she imagined it would bring her. Altogether I began to fear for her future.

‘Don’t look so solemn, you little Jeremiah!’ Isobel stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Let’s go and see Rafe. He’s in the conservatory.’

I put out my cigarette thankfully, for the room was beginning to spin and my mood seemed to dip and soar alarmingly. Isobel walked on ahead with that swaying sexy walk she had had from her early teens, while I stumped along behind. The conservatory looked west towards the head of the valley. On any day of the year it was filled with light; in warm weather it became steaming and sultry because the gardeners watered the plants several times a day. Years ago, during a rare heat wave, Isobel had dared me to see how long we could withstand the furnace-like temperature, lying on the burning encaustic tiles with the sun scorching our faces through the glass. I had given in quite soon, emerging scarlet and sizzling, but Isobel had stuck it out. She had been discovered by one of the gardeners in a dead faint. She was put to bed and my father sent for and there had been another row.

Now the conservatory was dazzling because of the snow. Rafe was standing with his back to us, looking out at the hillside, an easel in front of him, a paintbrush between his fingers. Isobel crept up behind him and put her hands over his eyes. He gave a shout, spun round, hit out and caught the side of her face with his hand. She staggered and fell. It all happened in a second and then he was on his knees beside her.

‘Darling, I’m so sorry!’ Tenderly he pulled her into the circle of his arm and examined her face, then stroked her head. ‘I was miles away and you startled me. Did I hurt you?’

‘I’m all right. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have crept up on you. It was stupid of me.’

Rafe helped her up. ‘Hello, ‘he said to me, but his attention was given to Isobel.

‘Lucky it wasn’t Marigold.’ Isobel laughed. ‘Imagine the clatter of flying crutches and cracking of plaster and the crunching of bones.’

‘I’m ashamed of myself, overreacting like that.’ Rafe’s voice was soft, his hands gentle as he smoothed his sister’s hair. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

‘I’m absolutely fine. Don’t fuss. How’s the painting going?’

‘I was so absorbed trying to capture those shadows … there, beneath that line of trees –’ he looked out towards the landscape and tapped his own painting with the end of his brush – ‘that I was in another world.’

‘Dancing feels like that quite often,’ I said. ‘The walls of the rehearsal room simply disappear. And on the stage during a performance you completely forget about the audience. It’s a terrific jolt when you come back to reality.’

‘Yes. Forgetting oneself is the best thing about painting for me.’ I saw the incident with Isobel had jarred his nerves. His eyes were very bright in contrast with cheeks that were pale, unless it was the reflection of the snow.

I looked at the snowscape on the easel, a watercolour of greys and purples and blues, very bold, almost abstract. ‘It’s very good.’

‘Thanks. I’m sadly out of practice.’

‘But it’s really lovely. It’s caught the beauty of the countryside but it makes you think of other things too … sadness, resignation … that figure on the road … it’s about the indifference of the hills, isn’t it? The puniness of all our efforts.’

‘You can see that?’ He stared at me for a moment as if I had surprised him, then studied the painting again. ‘That’s what I was thinking of all the time I was doing it.’

Isobel folded her arms and looked stern. ‘If you two are going to drivel on like Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir with an attack of existential angst, I’m going away to wax my bikini line.’

I saw that for some reason she was put out.

‘I must go home,’ I said.

‘Honestly, it wasn’t a hint,’ I said a quarter of an hour later to Rafe as I struggled into the car. No one had answered the telephone at Dumbola Lodge.

‘I’d had enough of being indoors anyway.’ He took my crutches and slung them in the back, then got into the driver’s seat.

‘And really it’s too kind of you to give me this.’ I looked at the watercolour, still a little damp, that rested on my knee.

‘You saw what I meant to paint. That doesn’t often happen. You must be a girl of rare sensibility.’ The teasing tone was back. He started the engine. ‘How’s your sister? Kate, isn’t it?’ he said as we swooshed down the hill through a fresh fall of snow. ‘Do you know, I haven’t seen her since she was a tot.’

‘She’s married, did you know?’

‘I have to confess that if Evelyn told me I’d forgotten. She hardly ever came to Shottestone, did she? Why was that?’

‘She and Isobel didn’t get on. Kate was a year older and rather … well, bossy, to be truthful.’

‘And Isobel is nothing if not rebellious. I expect she tried to tyrannize and Kate wouldn’t have it. Whereas you were angelically long-suffering, so she tells me.’

I laughed. ‘I don’t know … Kate always took my father’s side in everything so she thought any friend of Dimpsie’s – the Prestons, in other words – were the enemy. Our family was – is – sadly divided.’ I paused, thinking. ‘But what’s even sadder, it’s not very rewarding to be on my father’s side. He doesn’t need associates, you see.’

‘Families can be hell, can’t they?’

‘Mm.’ I closed my eyes as we came to the precipitous drop. Rafe was easy to talk to. He didn’t bully, he didn’t show off. It was restful being with him. Then I saw Isobel falling backwards, her arms outstretched, heard again the smack as she hit the floor of the conservatory. As I left, there had been the beginnings of a bruise on her cheek. Of course it had been an accident and no one could have been sorrier. ‘I think I always envied Isobel her family. Though naturally I love Dimpsie dearly.’

‘Of course you do. So what’s Kate’s husband like?’

‘He’s a surgeon, specializing in the pancreas. Kate went into nursing, hoping to please my father. She met Dougall in the operating theatre. Perhaps he looks attractive in a green hat and mask. Kate says he’s brilliant but it’s hard to tell because he isn’t interested in anything but people’s insides. And he’s fussy about hygiene. They have covers for everything. They’re whisked away to be washed the minute you even look at them. Soon they’ll have covers for the covers.’ Rafe laughed, a happy, relaxed sort of laugh. I felt encouraged by this response to my little essay in cattiness. ‘Everything you eat with or drink out of goes into a tank to be sterilized. Last time I was there I watched her wash the vacuum cleaner nozzle in Dettol, then hoover out the toaster. We all know he’s potty, of course, but no one likes to say so. Dimpsie is frightened of Dougall – he can be quite cutting – and she feels sorry for Kate. My father despises them both.’

‘Poor Kate. It sounds awful. But I suppose everyone’s lives look like torture if you get close to them.’

I wanted to protest that mine didn’t, but we were approaching the tricky turn. I shut my eyes again until we had rolled to a standstill by the front door. Rafe got out and came round to open my door.

‘I shan’t come in. Dimpsie’ll be busy getting supper. Give her my love.’

‘All right.’ He helped me out of the car, put me on the crutches and guided me to the door. ‘Thank you so much for bringing me home.’

This time I did not extend my cheek. He gave my arm a squeeze and got back into the car. I waved as he drove off. His manner was friendly and unconstrained, almost brotherly. Probably I should conclude that he was not attracted to me. Was it just wounded vanity that made me feel for a moment quite disappointed?

I found Dimpsie in the kitchen – from where it was impossible to hear the telephone ring – pounding chickpeas to a slurry.

‘Sorry, darling. I forgot you were going to call. I decided to make some houmous to go with the parsnip pudding.’

My father came in, threw himself into the armchair by the Aga, and picked up the newspaper without looking at either of us. ‘When’s supper?’

‘About half an hour.’

‘Make it twenty minutes, would you? I’m going out and I shan’t be back until late.’

I had heard him come home the night before, long after the household had gone to bed. Presumably Mrs Trumball was getting a thorough medical overhaul. Though I had never met the woman, I hated her.

‘Busy day?’ Dimpsie asked brightly.

‘When am I not busy? The antenatal clinic is hardly a picnic. Fat, ugly women, who haven’t the intelligence to use contraception, determined to add yet more repellent half-wits to the population.’

‘I’m afraid it’s a busy surgery tomorrow,’ said Dimpsie apologetically, though it could hardly be her fault. ‘Have you thought any more about advertising for a receptionist? Of course I’m delighted to help out, but I’m beginning to worry about the craft shop. I’ve had a letter from the accountant. He wants to come and do an audit but everything’s in such a muddle—’

My father turned a page. ‘If you think that flogging a collection of tasteless artefacts to ignorant tourists is more important than the effective practice of medicine, you must be even more stupid than I had previously thought.’

‘Please,’ I said, feeling myself grow hot, ‘don’t.’

‘Don’t what?’ My father looked at me for the first time that evening and I sensed that behind the cold, still features there was hidden a smile of pleasure.

‘Don’t bully her.’

‘You have an inflated idea of your own importance. You stay away for years at a time, then the moment you come home you presume to interfere between your mother and me.’

My heart began to pound. ‘One of the reasons I don’t come home is because I hate seeing you being so … so horrible to Dimpsie.’

‘Really?’ His tone was sarcastic. His eyes behind the rimless lenses were keen with enjoyment. He cracked the joints of his long white fingers, as though preparing to pluck out an inflamed appendix. I knew he had once operated on that very kitchen table and saved a boy’s life when bad weather had prevented even a helicopter from reaching the village. ‘Let me put that intermittently troubled conscience at rest. Dimpsie, do you have any complaints about the way I treat you?’

‘Oh no, Tom!’ My mother paused in the process of chopping parsnips to send him a placatory glance. ‘Of course not. You see, darling,’ she looked at me, ‘when people have been married as long as we have, we don’t need to observe ordinary courtesies. Besides, all that sort of thing’s rather conventional, isn’t it, really? Our relationship is different.’

I recalled with acute pain the image of my mother stretched out on the sofa with the empty bottle beside her. But if the princess doesn’t want to be rescued, it is absolutely no good bolting on armour and taking up one’s sword. There was a ghastly familiarity about the argument. We had had something like it each time I came home. And always my father, with my mother’s collaboration, won.

‘If you really give a damn about your mother,’ my father looked down at his newspaper, ‘you might think of standing in for her at the surgery. It doesn’t require a university degree or even a superior intelligence to answer the telephone and make appointments.’

‘All right.’ I knew it was game, set and match to him. ‘I will.’