Chloe (5 page)

‘Your phone,' said Jasper, ‘is perpetually engaged. We've been trying you for yonks.'

‘If the Sins weren't using it,' Chloë explained, ‘I left it off the hook. Knowing that it would never again be Jocelyn, I can't bear to hear it ring.'

Chloë cradled a chipped cup that she knew well and nibbled biscuits from the lucky dip of Jocelyn's old Foxes' tin. Wardrobes full of velvet were just up the stairs and off the landing, and there would undoubtedly be a bottle of Mitsuko in the bathroom, one in the bedroom. And yet it seemed strange to be there, half asleep, freezing cold, sitting amongst all the familiar accoutrements and smells but with no Jocelyn.

‘They say that people inhabit their places, their things, long after they're gone – but I can't find Jocelyn anywhere here,' Chloë mumbled, her nose running on to Peregrine's Hermès scarf. Jasper topped up the mulled wine and laid a slender, perfectly manicured hand on the top of her head.

‘We couldn't find her either, poppet, not at first. But in drifts and droves she returned and now we chat away to her frequently, don't we, P? I hated it here at first, didn't I, dear? I found it so empty – and yet everything was in its place; all should have been comfortingly familiar, but it was alien and cold. And then, a few days on, I opened a kitchen drawer and found a shopping list scrawled by Jocelyn on the back of an envelope. It matched entirely the items currently in the larder. Suddenly I was quite warm and Jocelyn was here once more.'

‘And for me,' said Peregrine, coaxing the Hermès scarf from Chloë's clutches to replace it with a damask handkerchief from Dunhill, ‘for me it was when I spied one slipper under the Lloyd Loom chair in her bedroom – you remember those pointy, turn-up-toe Indian things she had? It caught me quite unawares – it was only when, a day or so later, I found the other one lurking behind the laundry basket that I could smile. In fact, I had a right old chuckle – it was as if she had just that moment kicked them off prior to springing into bed with a magazine, a brandy and the telephone!'

‘But,' sighed Chloë who had begun to thaw, ‘I
miss
her. And it hurts, it
pulls
– here,' she explained, pressing both hands above her breasts. Peregrine and Jasper cocked their heads and donned gentle half-smiles.

‘She'll never really be gone, you know,' said Peregrine, cuddling up to her comfortingly in the armchair.

‘You'll see her again, Clodders old thing. I bet you anything she'll be in Wales!'

‘Ooh! And Ireland!' cooed Peregrine, rolling his ‘r's and jigging his head.

‘Scotland,' philosophized Jasper, looking vaguely northwards.

‘And good old Blighty!' declared Peregrine, gesticulating expansively and inadvertently clonking Chloë's nose in the process.

‘In fact,' said Jasper standing up and lolling with a certain swagger against the fireplace; one knee cocked, one hand in a pocket, the other draped aesthetically over the mantel, ‘you'll see her quite often – in you!'

Chloë looked at Jasper gratefully. And then she looked at him in quite a different light. She stifled giggles.

‘You're Mr Andrews!' she exclaimed, looking from him to the painting above his head.

‘Gracious duck!' whooped Peregrine. ‘You
are
! To a ‘t'! What is it, Clodders? Is it the pose or the poise?'

‘It's both,' she declared, delighted.

Jasper moved not one inch, if anything he lifted his chin a little higher and dropped his eyelids fractionally.

‘Then I suggest, my dearest Peregrine, that you don a divine sky-blue frock and sit demurely at my side! For if I am indeed Mr A, you can be no other than my devoted Mrs A!'

‘Velvet!' proclaimed a suddenly lucid Chloë having picked herself up from a fit of giggles on the Persian rug.

‘Blue satin!' sang Peregrine, tears of mirth streaming down his face. He looked at Chloë slyly. ‘Race you!' he hollered before diving for the door and the stairs beyond.

Because she was at least forty-five years younger than him, Chloë reached Jocelyn's bedroom first and flung open the cupboard doors with the grandest of gestures that would have done her late godmother proud. Peregrine and Chloë, and a wheezing Jasper just behind, looked in awe at the sparkle and drape of the cupboard's contents. There were yards of silk, watered, raw and crushed; swathes of satin, duchesse, brocaded and ruched; there was velvet and devore velvet; plain taffeta and moire; there was suede that was butter soft and cashmere that was softer than air. A superior collection of handmade shoes was hidden from view in their soft fabric sacks.

The three of them stood in silent reverence and gazed on. Jocelyn was amongst them once more. Chloë slithered into a dark green velvet dress that was far too long but it didn't matter. Jasper zipped her up and placed a lattice of jet around her neck while she scooped up her hair and he fixed it with a bejewelled pin.

‘Divine,' he whispered, ‘so Rossetti! So Burne-Jones!'

‘Do you think I could have it altered to fit? Do you think I
should
?'

‘I think you should! Jocelyn decreed it in her will, girl. No use just
having
“anything of velvet” – what good is velvet if it is not to be worn? I'll do it for you, being the accomplished seamstress that I am. Gracious, Peregrine!'

Peregrine stood before them, resplendent in washed blue silk, one hand on his hips, the other raised affectedly above his head.

‘It fits like a glove!' he declared, his voice saturated with pride heavily laced with outrage. Though it was decidedly odd seeing a man of grandfathering age wearing her godmother's dress, Chloë had to concede that it fitted perfectly, suiting him and complementing his demeanour utterly.

‘I like it!' she enthused after a momentary assessment.

‘I
love
it!' boomed Jasper, twirling Peregrine around. ‘Shall we take more mulled wine and then play rummy?'

Jasper insisted on hanging Chloë's Mr and Mrs Andrews at the opposite end of the room to their Chilean doppelgängers.

‘We could play Spot the Difference,' he declared, balanced on a Chippendale chair with a hammer between his knees and a picture hook pursed between his lips.

‘Her shoes for starters,' said Peregrine, still befrocked, his nose inches from the frame, squinting through Jocelyn's reading glasses. Then he whipped them off and stared at Chloë in alarm.

‘Gracious, Clodders! You haven't even opened it! Look, Jaspot – it's pristine. Not even the teeniest peek!' He removed the envelope marked ‘Wales' from the frame and handed it to Jasper who held it aloft as if about to light the Olympic flame – or Jocelyn's chandelier at any rate. He looked at Chloë sternly and his left eyebrow left his forehead.

‘Why ever not, girl?'

Chloë shuffled. Though she felt uncomfortable at being challenged, she felt more uneasy with the envelope suddenly out of reach. Jasper's eyebrow remained aloft.

‘There just didn't seem to be a right time, ladies,' she said. ‘I held it often; I sniffed at it and held it up to the light. Its contents just seem so, I don't know –
portentous
.'

Approving Chloë's vocabulary, Jasper allowed his eyebrow back down to earth.

‘I was,' furthered Chloë, ‘all on my own. In
Islington
, after all.'

This secured a bow from Jasper and a long nod from Peregrine who said ‘Islington. Why, of
course
' very softly.

‘What say you,' said Jasper cautiously, proffering Chloë the letter like a ring on a velvet cushion, ‘that we open it now? You're in Notting Hill after all. With us. And the Andrewsiz. Looked over by You-know-who. Safe hands all.'

Chloë took the envelope and held it to her nose, her eyes on Jasper but seeing far beyond him.

Is it there? Is it Mitsuko? Do you know, I think so.

‘Mitsuko?' asks Peregrine. Chloë nods. She turns the envelope over and wriggles her little finger into one corner. The rip, though a mere centimetre or so, is deafening. She takes her little finger to the other corner and winces as the tearing of paper screeches out.

‘Bugger,' she mutters under her breath but unmistakably. ‘Would
you
? For me?'

Jasper takes the envelope and slits it open with one deft movement. He passes it to Peregrine who slides the contents out with deliberation and grace. He offers them to Chloë but she must come forward to accept.

‘Go on,' he whispers, ‘for us.'

‘For Jocelyn,' says Jasper.

‘OK,' says Chloë.

There are two pages. A letter, and a map of Wales that appears to have been filched from a road atlas. In black ballpoint pen, an arrow shoots inland and south, to a red asterisk marked ‘Here!' Handing the map to Jasper, Chloë skims through the letter seeing the words without reading them, reading names without knowing where or who – or indeed whether a who or a where.

Peregrine's chin is tucked over her shoulder. He smells faintly of chocolate gingers and Christmas.

‘Jasp!' he says once he has read it right through. ‘Three guesses where she's going!' Jasper hands the map back to Chloë and closes his eyes with a measured twitch of his aquiline nose.

‘Three guesses,' says Peregrine again, nudging Chloë with a wink.

‘And if I am correct in just one?' Jasper asks, eyes still closed, nostrils slightly flared.

‘Oh Gracious Lordy, always a deal to be struck. Nothing's ever unconditional with the old tart!' Peregrine is pleasantly exasperated. ‘If you're right in one, I'll make it worth your while. There!'

Jasper opens his eyes and smiles – benevolently at Chloë, somewhat lasciviously at Peregrine.

‘Gin Trap. I bet my bottom dollar. It'll be the Gin Trap.'

T
he lane was slim. It was like a gorge between the hedges which rose up over six feet to either side. Though it was January and the bare trees were pressed as inky silhouettes sharp against the sky, the hedges sprouted shoots and leaves and even boasted berries and foliage that clung on from last summer. The hedge was an ecosystem of its own and the seasons were obviously its slave. Rabbit and robin cohabited and eyed Chloë amiably
en route.
The lane was single track and poorly surfaced but Chloë appeared to be the only traffic that day. There
had
been a road – a quick phone call to Skirrid End Farm the day before, to someone who wasn't the Gin Trap, had informed Chloë that a bus would take her ‘inches from the lane'. It had indeed, but Skirrid End Farm was not ‘a few yards up on the left'. Chloë had walked the few yards and seen nothing but hedge. To the left or right. Estimating that she walked a mile in around fifteen minutes, she calculated that she had covered just over two of them; the run of hedgerow interrupted only every now and then by rickety gates leading to pasture.

Something's not right.

Yes, it is. Keep going.

Trudging along, half halting every few strides to hump her rucksack back into position, Chloë tried to envisage what Skirrid End Farm would look like. No clear picture entered her mind's eye and if she tried to design the farm herself, she got no further than a vast front door more suited to a church. She considered the voice on the other end of the telephone. Australian? New Zealand? South African? No, it was antipodean for sure. Male. Not bowled over with joy and excitement to hear from her but welcoming none the less.

‘Ah yih!
Ker-Low-E
. Sure! Take the bus – it stops inches from the lane, we're just up on the left. Few yahds, you know. Be seein' ya. Travel safe.'

Lunch-time had obviously been and gone and Chloë did not need the rumbles from her stomach to tell her so. After all, it had been nearing noon on the train but, despite protestations from her stomach even then, Chloë had rejected sandwiches of rubber in favour of fantasy: doorstep slabs of Aga-baked bread slathered with furls of hand-churned butter and crested with wedges of crumbling cheddar gouged by blunt knife from a wax-clothed round.