Breaking the Chain (26 page)

In this militant mood, Phoebe eased herself through the crowd and went to talk to Rick.

‘Hello,’ he said, ‘sad occasion.’ He put his arm round a young, pretty West Indian girl at his side and drew her forwards. ‘Meet Treasure,’ he said. ‘This is probably not the right moment to say this, but Treasure and I have decided to live together.’

‘Oh,’ Phoebe said. The girl smiled shyly at her. She looked about eighteen! Phoebe wanted to warn her off; tell her about the fate of her predecessors, but all she managed was a weak, ‘Welcome to the Moon family.’

‘Thanks,’ Treasure said, barely above a whisper. She looked up at Rick with lustrous brown eyes, and he pinched her cheek gently like a benevolent old uncle. Dirty old man! Phoebe thought, disgusted.

‘Have you heard from the boys?’ she asked him, smothering her disapproval. ‘I still kick myself for not realizing what was going on that day.’

‘How could you?’ Rick said casually, and to her surprise: ‘Don’t give it another thought, Phoebe. I shall get them back, you’ll see. I’ve got the best lawyer. It’s just a matter of time.
Now, Treasure, my treasure, pluck up your courage and come and meet Mother.’ They moved off. Phoebe tried to imagine how the poor girl would get on with Rod and Pete when – if -they returned, and failed. She was amazed that Rick could change so quickly from Distraught Father to Proud Sugar Daddy, but then, she supposed, that was the nature of actors. She wished she’d known it before. She need not have got herself into such a state!

When she spoke to Conrad, Phoebe found herself feeling quite sympathetic to him. He was very composed, but when she murmured how sorry she was about his father, his eyes filled briefly with tears and looked extra blue as Duncan’s had.

‘Have you seen Fay lately?’ she asked him.

‘We’ve spoken on the phone. She tells me you’ve been to her flat.’

‘Ye-es’ Phoebe felt guarded.

‘It’s all right,’ Conrad said, ‘she’s told me where it is, and in any case she’s not staying there much longer. It’s too far from Jack’s nursery school and too awkward for his nanny. Fay’s moving back home this weekend.’

‘But that’s good!’ Phoebe said with enthusiasm. ‘I’m so glad for you.’

‘Oh, I shan’t be there,’ Conrad said at once. ‘I’ve been offered a twelve-month contract in Saudi. Very convenient, really. I’m off on Friday.’

‘So you’re still splitting up then?’ Phoebe said, disappointed.

‘ ’Fraid so. It’s been brewing for years, in fact.’

‘I’m really sorry.’

‘Oh well, these things happen.’

Phoebe was once again struck by the apparent shallowness of Moon emotions. Perhaps he did care, but was able to conceal it? Phoebe couldn’t imagine anyone being indifferent to the loss of someone like Fay. Did he know about her affairs? Was that why? Phoebe decided that she must see Fay herself soon, and make her peace with her. Perhaps the next day Duncan would agree to a slight detour so that she could just pop in and talk to her for five minutes. No good, Phoebe remembered. Tomorrow is Thursday; she’ll be at work. I’ll just have to ring her from Herry’s.

‘Ah, Phoebe,’ Hope said, appearing beside her with several elderly ladies in tow. ‘I don’t believe you’ve met my cousins.’ She turned to them. ‘This is Duncan’s wife. Where is Duncan, by the way?’

‘I haven’t seen him,’ Phoebe said, shaking hands all round.

‘I do hope he hasn’t disappeared,’ Hope said with asperity. ‘That would be so like him!’ Phoebe had never heard her mother-in-law criticize Duncan before, and she felt surprised and rather pleased.

‘I could go and find him for you?’ she offered.

‘No matter,’ Hope said almost cheerfully. ‘Have you tried the food? It’s really rather good.’

It was not until the funeral party began to disperse that Phoebe realized Duncan was really not there. She supposed he had gone on ahead, and would be waiting for them at Herry’s, but when she and Herry and the children arrived they found an empty house with no one on the doorstep.

‘Where on earth can Duncan be?’ Phoebe asked, worried.

‘He’s probably buggered off home,’ Herry said, ‘if I know him. We’ll ring him later. No point now; he’ll still be on the road.’

‘I do hope you’re right,’ Phoebe said. ‘Oh no!’

‘What?’

‘He’s got my bag in the car. I haven’t even got a toothbrush with me!’ Or the diaries, she thought worriedly.

‘You can borrow stuff from Becky,’ Herry said, leading the way indoors and kicking aside various cardboard boxes full of junk. ‘No worries.’

‘Where is Becky?’ Phoebe said. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask.’

‘She’s taken African leave,’ Herry said easily. ‘Same as the French sort, but darker,’ he laughed. Phoebe looked round at the three teenagers to see what their reaction to this was. They looked quite unconcerned. They threw their coats onto the hooks in the hallway and ambled upstairs in a huddle arguing amiably about whether cremation was preferable to burial.

‘God no! Think of the
worms,’’
one said, and their bedroom doors banged behind them.

‘Come into the kitchen,’ Herry said to her. ‘I’ll find us
something to drink.’ Phoebe sat down at the large pine table and watched as Herry uncorked a bottle of red wine and poured two generous glasses full.

‘Don’t you mind?’ Phoebe asked him.

‘About what?’

‘Becky and her poet.’

‘Not at all. Why should I?’

‘You don’t get jealous?’ Phoebe persisted.

‘Dreary bourgeois habit. No, we don’t own each other. No one does.’

‘And do you do the same?’

‘If I get a good offer.’ He was smiling widely at her, quite unembarrassed and amused at her bewilderment. Phoebe remembered something she had always wanted to ask him.

‘Why did you get expelled from school?’ she said.

‘I impregnated the assistant matron.’

‘What?’
Phoebe was scandalized.

‘Oh, she had an abortion,’ Herry said reassuringly. ‘I shouldn’t have fancied being a father at fifteen.’

‘But how old was she?’ Phoebe asked, visualizing a portly 50-year-old.

‘Nineteen or so,’ Herry said. ‘She was a sort of trainee. Nice girl. Got married six months later, or so I believe.’

‘But Duncan said it was “some prank or other”,’ Phoebe protested. ‘I’d hardly call getting a woman pregnant a prank.’

‘Dear old-fashioned Duncan,’ Herry said. ‘He so hates to call a spade a spade. What’s the wine like?’

‘It’s fine,’ Phoebe said, still disconcerted.

‘Should be, I nicked it from Con. He fancies himself as a bit of an epicure, I believe.’

‘It’s sad about him and Fay,’ Phoebe said, drinking deeply.

‘Yeah, but Con, straight-up pillar of society that he is, could never cope with someone AC/DC like Fay. He’s basically a simple creature. I expect he was shocked.’

‘And you weren’t?’

‘Takes a lot to shock me.’

‘Does Duncan know, about Fay?’

‘Doubt it. He’s a bit like Queen Victoria. He can’t imagine it; therefore it doesn’t happen.’

Phoebe laughed. Herry intrigued her. She wondered if he knew his father was a bishop.

‘Poor Duncan,’ she said. ‘He’s really upset about Peter.’

‘We all are,’ Herry said.

‘Were you fond of him?’ Phoebe asked.

‘What a question!’ Herry said. ‘Of course I was. He was my father.’

So he doesn’t know, Phoebe thought. Blood isn’t thicker than water. I bet he would be shocked if I told him! Then she thought, No I’ve no right to interfere like that. I’ll keep quiet.

‘More wine?’ Herry asked.

‘Thanks.’

Phoebe went on sitting at the kitchen table while Herry cooked the supper. She found it hard to believe that Duncan had really gone home without her, and kept expecting him to turn up at the house. He surely wouldn’t disappear without a word to anyone? She worried about it all through supper, which was spaghetti bolognese and very good. Herry’s children treated her as one of themselves and were friendly but casual. At the end of the meal they got to their feet and wandered off without a word.

‘Washing up,’ Herry called after them.

‘Come off it, Dad! We’ve got piles of homework.’

‘I’ll do it,’ Phoebe offered, and they put their thumbs up and disappeared upstairs again. Loud rock music started beating above Phoebe’s head as she brushed the plates and cutlery in the hot soapy water. Duncan still hadn’t appeared. He must be home by now, if that was where he had gone. She wanted to know that he was safe, but she didn’t want to have another argument with him, especially not over the phone. She sighed heavily.

‘That sounded very heartfelt,’ Herry said behind her. He was drying the clean plates and putting them into a cupboard above his head.

‘I’m really worried about Duncan,’ Phoebe said, ‘but I …’

‘Shall I give him a ring?’ Herry offered.

‘Oh
yes,
would you?’

Phoebe thought, He must have realized that I didn’t want to
phone, so he offered to do it for me. Duncan could never be so sensitive! It just isn’t in his make-up, yet it seems to come naturally to Herry. Herry was already on the telephone. She could hear the sound of his voice in the hall but not what he was saying, and then the ting as he put the phone down.

‘He’s pissed,’ Herry said, coming back in. ‘But he is there, and he is in one piece, as far as I can tell.’

‘Thank you so much,’ Phoebe said, deeply relieved. ‘You are kind.’

‘You two been having trouble?’ Herry asked.

‘Just a bit,’ Phoebe acknowledged, biting her lip.

‘You should have an open arrangement like mine,’ Herry said. ‘It’s far less complicated. Why don’t you leave those saucepans and come and sit down with me. We’ve wine to finish.’ He led the way over to a cluttered sofa by the fire and threw papers and clothes off it onto the floor, before patting the seat beside him as an invitation to her to join him. ‘Tell Uncle Herry all about it,’ he said.

He was so easy to talk to. Phoebe could hardly believe that he was Duncan’s brother. She found she could ask him anything she wanted and he didn’t turn a hair. Sometime, hours later, she asked what it had been like when Brendan joined them as children.

‘We were pretty foul to him,’ Herry admitted. ‘We looked up the meaning of his name and taunted him with it for years.’

‘What does it mean?’

‘Stinking hair,’ Herry said, grinning.

‘How rotten!’ Phoebe said, pretending indignation.

‘We were,’ Herry said, ‘but we’ve got our comeuppance now.’

‘In the will, you mean?’

‘Yep.’

‘Will you contest it?’

‘Yes, I think so. We’ve got six months to do it in. I was hoping to discuss it with Duncan tonight.’

‘Do it by phone,’ Phoebe said. ‘It’ll be quicker.’

‘No stammering, you mean? That’s not very kind!’

Phoebe burst into tears. ‘I’m not kind,’ she sobbed. ‘I’m horrible to him, but I can’t seem to stop. He’s so
infuriating!’

Herry put both arms round her and held her close to him. He
did it in such a calm and confident way that Phoebe was instantly comforted. He felt strong and secure and in command of things, and she found herself relaxing into his embrace. He might look scruffy, she thought irrelevantly, but he smells of Pears soap! Herry stroked her hair until she had finished hiccupping and then he felt about in his jeans pocket and produced a clean white handkerchief for her to dry her eyes on.

‘Bed time,’ he said firmly. ‘Come on.’ He led her upstairs and showed her into the large untidy room which she had last shared with Duncan when they came up to see Nancy Sedge-moor’s flat. ‘Have a good sleep,’ Herry advised her. ‘No hurry in the morning. I’m working at home tomorrow. Night night.’ Then he bent over and kissed her lightly at the top of her nose, and withdrew.

Phoebe took a long breath and looked about her. The room was a complete shambles as usual. She walked across to the double bed and pulled the duvet back, fearing the worst. The bottom sheet was tight and clean. The pillowcases had creases in them from where they had been folded after ironing. It was even warm! Phoebe heaved a great sigh of relief, threw all her clothes onto the floor, switched off the electric blanket, and crawled thankfully inside. The rock music was still pounding out next door, but it didn’t disturb her. She was out for the count.

In the middle of the night she woke with a bursting bladder, and groped her way in a borrowed dressing gown to the lavatory. Her tongue tasted foul so she rinsed her mouth out with water and rubbed her teeth with a forefinger and an inch of stolen toothpaste. Then she went back to bed and lay there thinking about Herry. She had never considered him as a man before, only as a brother-in-law. He was undoubtedly very attractive. Phoebe wondered why she had never noticed it until now. She lay there enjoying the feel of the smooth warm sheets on her skin, and began to invent a scenario in which Herry came into the bedroom in the dark and, mistaking her for Becky, started to make long, athletic, silent,
dominant
love to her … After a very short time she was wide awake and tingling in every muscle with anticipation, so she was obliged to make
herself come several times to defuse the tension and bring her fantasy to its natural conclusion. Then, exhausted, she slept again.

At eleven o’clock the next morning, Herry climbed the stairs with two mugs of coffee and went into his spare bedroom. Phoebe was still asleep and all but invisible under the duvet. He put the mugs down on a wooden bedside table which was covered in a pattern of pale heat circles like a dislocated Olympic Games logo. He sat on the foot of the bed, bouncing it up and down.

‘Coffee time,’ he announced loudly. ‘Let’s be having you!’

‘What time is it?’ Phoebe asked blearily, emerging into a sitting position and then remembering that she had no clothes on. She jerked the duvet up to cover herself, and Herry got to his feet again briefly to let it slide under him, but not before he had had a good view of a pair of large white breasts with smooth pink nipples. He regarded her with amusement.

‘Gone eleven,’ he said. ‘The kids have been at school for hours. Some people have an amazing capacity for sleep! I’ve brought you a coffee, since I was making one for myself.’ He reached forward, and, picking up his own mug took a drink. He wondered how long it was since she’d had a good fuck. She looked as though she could do with one, poor girl. She had marvellous skin, he thought, very fine textured, almost hairless, velvet smooth …