Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs (7 page)

‘Tickets, please.’ A uniformed man had slid back the door. His eyes took in the mess. ‘What the bloomin’ heck’s going on in
here
?
’ The elderly lady was brushing off the pages that had
landed on her with as much shuddering abhorrence as though they had been cockroaches. ‘There’s a ten-pound fine for littering of railway property.’ His stare roamed round the compartment to rest on each of us in turn.

‘It was the wind,’ I explained. ‘I’ll clear it all up before I get off.’

‘I hope so, young lady.’ The ticket inspector’s already extensive frame seemed to swell with menace. ‘I’ll just have a look at your ticket.’

‘She’s got a rabbit,’ shrilled Gary, pointing at Siggy. ‘In that cage.’

The little swine! I would have liked to have chucked Gary after Bunyan.

‘Ho!’ The ticket inspector advanced into the compartment, trampling on several feet. The elderly woman gave a screech of pain and the man with the astrakhan collar winced and closed his eyes. ‘No Livestock Allowed In Passenger Accommodation,’ the ticket inspector said impressively. ‘You’ll have to put it in the luggage van.’

I summoned all my powers to charm. ‘I’m getting off in half an hour at Haltwhistle,’ I pleaded. ‘And,’ I put extra pathos into my voice, ‘I’ve just had an operation on my foot. It’ll be difficult – almost impossible – for me to fetch him from the van as well as get my luggage off the train. Couldn’t you please, just this once, out of the kindness of your heart, overlook the rules?’ I gave him my ecstatically happy Giselle smile from the beginning of the first act. ‘I’d be eternally grateful.’

‘No,’ said the inspector.

The man was an ass, a lackey in the pay of a hygiene-obsessed bureaucracy. I gave him my furious Titania scowl.

‘I’m sure I’ve caught a flea already,’ complained the old lady petulantly.

‘We done the plague at school,’ said Gary. ‘Teacher said it was fleas that killed everyone. Proberly you’re goin’ to come out in black boils. It looks like a plague rabbit.’ Before I could
stop him he had darted forward and stuck his finger into Siggy’s cage. Siggy struck like a cobra. Gary screamed until my hair practically stood on end and his finger became a fountain gushing blood.

His mother lifted her eyes from her magazine long enough to say, ‘Shut it, you little tyke,’ and to give him a hard clout on his ear.

Gary howled and knuckled his eyes with a grubby fist. I saw the man in the astrakhan collar take out his wallet and discreetly press something into the ticket inspector’s hand. It looked like a ten-pound note. All the bluster and bullying went out of the ticket inspector. He grinned sycophantically and touched his cap as the note disappeared into his pocket.

‘Well, sir. Seeing as the young lady’s getting off soon it might be as well to make an exception, bearing in mind as she is a disabled person.’

‘That would be most sensible,’ said the astrakhan collar in a lordly way. There was a trace of something foreign in his accent.

Deferentially the ticket inspector withdrew his paunch and slid the door shut with an air of respectful solicitude.

I examined my benefactor. His hair was very dark and his skin was what people misleadingly call olive, though it was neither green nor black nor in the least oily but a sort of yellow to gold colour. Though he was much better looking than Alex, there was a similarity in the colouring and the long thin nose. Alex’s family were Lithuanian Jews. They lived in a poor but jolly community in Bethnal Green and a group of them always came to cheer his performances. Afterwards they got plastered and homesick together. I wondered if this man was a Lithuanian. Perhaps he was a refugee, as Alex’s father had been. He might be travelling north to find work so he could send money back to his starving family in Sovetsk. Perhaps he did not know the value of a ten-pound note. I imagined him sitting in a grim bedsitter in Carlisle, tears rolling down his face as he counted his remaining change and thought of the feast his hungry children could have enjoyed
if only he had known … this flight of fancy was checked when I remembered that astrakhan was exorbitantly expensive.

I rose from my seat and leaned forward to tap him on the knee. He looked at me with black eyes like Alex’s, but unlike Alex’s, his were hostile.

‘I saw you give that man money. You must let me pay you back. I’m afraid I haven’t got enough cash but I could give you a post-dated cheque.’

He held up his hand. ‘Please. The bribe was offered in an entirely selfish spirit. I have already been interrupted in my reading more times than I could count. I have been sat on, trodden on, blown by the wind, snowed upon, had my ears tortured by screams and cryings. I would consider it a sufficient return if you could contrive not to excite any more disturbances.’

He returned his gaze to the printed page. I sat down, feeling thoroughly snubbed.

Gary was still snivelling. Though he was a repulsive child I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for him.

‘Tell you what, Gary. If you help me pick up all this paper, I’ll give you fifty pee.’

When Gary had collected them we put them in my picnic carrier bag with the sandwich wrappers and other rubbish. I gave him fifty pence.

‘You said a pound.’

‘I didn’t!’

‘You did, you did, you
did!
A pound!’ Gary began to jump up and down with excitement.

‘I said fifty pee. It only took you five minutes. Anyway I haven’t got a pound.’

This was true. I only had twenty-six pence and an overdraft in the entire world.

‘Listen,’ said Astrakhan Collar to Gary. ‘If you do not sniff, cry, speak or move until I get off the train, I will give you two pounds. He raised a finger as Gary opened his mouth to say something. ‘Not one syllable more.’

Gary sat as though entranced for the remainder of the journey. When we were within five minutes of arriving at Haltwhistle, I stood up and began feebly to pluck at my case.

‘Sit down,’ said Astrakhan Collar. ‘I will assist you when we reach the station.’

There was a hint of something almost like violence in his voice, so I did as I was told. When we drew alongside the platform, he went to the window and shouted for a porter. So peremptory was his tone that the stationmaster himself came running up.

‘Take this lady and her belongings off the train,’ said Astrakhan. I could not be sure but I thought another note changed hands. The stationmaster appeared in our compartment faster than a genie after a hasty rub of the lamp. My suitcase, Siggy’s cage, the bag of rubbish and I were manhandled off the train. I had no time to express my gratitude.

I heard a scream of joy. ‘Marigold! My angel!’

My mother was skipping towards me down the platform.

I put my arms round my mother and hugged her, registering the familiar maternal scent of orange blossom, joss sticks and damp from the hall where our coats hung.

‘Hello, Dimpsie darling.’

She did not like to be called Mother, Mum or Ma because it made her feel old. She was forty-six, which is certainly not ancient.

Her eyes glistened with happiness. ‘It’s been such
ages
.’

I acknowledged to my shame that it had been. Who can put their hand on their heart and say with absolute truth that they have fulfilled the expectations of a fond parent? She examined me by the dim lights of the platform.

‘You look wonderful, poppet, so beautiful and glamorous. But you’re shivering. Let’s run to the car. It’s right outside.’

‘Sorry but I can’t. Run, that is. My leg.’

‘Oh yes, poor sweet! Is it agony?’

‘Not at all.’

She embraced me again. ‘Well, let’s hop then.’

She hopped all the way to the exit, laughing gaily, while the stationmaster brought my case and I followed at a more sedate pace with Siggy. The car, a Mini, painted purple and stencilled with flowers in primary colours, was, as she had said, parked at the station entrance, much to the annoyance of the taxis and the
local bus. We jerked away. The car was old, the road was slippery with snow and Dimpsie was a bad driver.

‘I barely slept a wink last night I was so excited you were coming! You’re looking so gorgeous, sweetheart. I can hardly believe you’re my daughter. You take after your father, of course.’

‘Only superficially – look out!’

The car mounted a kerb and rolled off it with a suddenness that made the chassis judder on its springs.

‘Sorry, I can’t see where I’m going. Your case is weighing down the back so the headlights are up in the air. Head
light
, I should say. I meant to ask the garage to put in a new bulb.’

I closed my eyes, envying Siggy’s ignorance of the danger he was in. We headed west to Gilsland and then turned north on the snaking road that climbed to Black Knowe and Reeker Pike.

‘How lovely that you’ve got a little holiday, darling. Everyone will be so thrilled to see you. Evelyn rang this morning to ask you to dinner tomorrow night. I don’t suppose you can drive with that leg. I’ll run you across.’

‘With or without the leg. I’ve never taken a driving test.’

‘Goodness, Marigold, haven’t you? Never mind, I’ll take you about whenever I can. The only trouble is I’m standing in at reception for the moment. The last girl had some sort of breakdown, poor lamb. I tried to get her to do some yoga breathing, but if you’re always in tears you can’t control your diaphragm. Boyfriend trouble I think, but she didn’t confide. Tom was furious.’

Tom was my father. I felt the car slithering on bends, imagined it plunging over the precipice, turning over and over before crashing into the river and bursting into flames.

‘How is Evelyn?’

‘Marvellous, as always.’ My mother worshipped Evelyn Preston with the same devotion she had once given to Laetitia Pickford-Norton. ‘She hasn’t changed a bit. I’ve put on weight, my jaw line’s saggy and my neck’s beginning to go, but Evelyn looks marvellous, she hasn’t changed a bit!
And
she’s ten years older than me.’

I had noticed that my mother was a slightly more generous armful. I felt mean for noticing but I couldn’t help it.

‘She certainly doesn’t look her age. She came to see me in
The Firebird
. Did you know?’

Several months ago, Evelyn had nobly taken a cab from Brown’s Hotel where she usually stayed when in London, all the way to Hammersmith, to watch me dance in an absurd costume that shed feathers so fast that by the time Prince Ivan had destroyed the egg containing the soul of the magician Kashchei and set the princesses free I was practically naked, but for a tissue-thin flesh-coloured body suit. Evelyn and I had exchanged kisses and congratulations briefly in my dressing room afterwards before she had rushed to catch a plane back to Newcastle.

‘So she did. I’d forgotten. That’s so like her, she’s so loyal to her friends.’

‘What did she say about it?’

‘She said you were brilliant, far better than anyone else.’ This was both kind and untrue. But what Evelyn knew about ballet could be written on a grain of rosin.

‘I suppose Shottestone looks just the same?’

‘It’s looking wonderful. How she does it with only a cook and a butler and two daily helps, I can’t imagine!’

Dimpsie intended no irony. For one thing she was too loyal to be critical of Evelyn, and for another Shottestone Manor was large and ancient and you would have needed a fairy godmother with an inexhaustible wand to run it without staff. One of my earliest memories was of Evelyn’s commanding features bending over my pram. Apparently she had been my first visitor at Gaythwaite Cottage Hospital, my father having been called away elsewhere. She had looked into my cot and said, ‘That baby’s hair is remarkable. You must call her Marigold.’

Dimpsie had at once agreed, though my father, who liked plain names, had intended that I should be called either Jack or Jill. My father’s personality was essentially combative, but I guessed
he had given in because Evelyn’s patronage was extremely useful. As well as being chairwoman of the hospital board and a governor of the little school to which they intended to send Kate, she had a finger in all the local pies. Besides, Evelyn was good-looking, and in those days he probably had designs on her.

In the days of my youth I had spent almost every day of the school holidays at Shottestone Manor and Evelyn had treated me like a second daughter, something she was fond of pointing out. There was no denying her generosity – not that I wished to, nor that she had been influential in the course my life had taken. Luckily Dimpsie’s nature was not competitive. She had humbly accepted that Evelyn’s rule was absolute.

‘It will be lovely to see Shottestone again. And I’m dying to see Dumbola Lodge, too, of course.’

‘I’m afraid it’s looking awfully shabby. Tom says we can’t afford to have it redecorated. You’ve got a treat in store, darling. Rafe’s home. You used to admire him so much, remember?’

‘Is he?’ I felt a quickening of interest. Admiration was too temperate a description for the violent infatuation I had entertained for Evelyn’s son. He must have been about seventeen years old and I a passionate child of eight when he had patted me on the head to thank me for fetching his jersey after a tennis match. This insignificant act had been enough to light the fire. The top of my head had tingled for months afterwards whenever I thought of it. He had gone up to Cambridge shortly after that and then into the army. I had not seen him for – I did a quick calculation – nine years. ‘Just for the weekend, you mean?’

‘No. He came home in September to rest his nerves. He was serving in Northern Ireland and the tank he was in was blown up.’

‘How awful! Was he badly hurt?’ I opened my eyes just as we were yawing towards a tree picked out in hideous detail by the single headlight. I screwed up my face and waited for the crunch of metal and the somersaulting of my stomach as we flew into the abyss.

‘Only a few cracked ribs and a broken jaw.’ Dimpsie wrestled with the steering wheel and changed down. The engine screamed in protest but somehow we remained in contact with the road.

‘Only?’

‘Almost everyone else in the tank was killed. Though it might have caught fire at any minute, Rafe waited inside until the rescue team could get to them and made a tourniquet of his socks to stop the other survivor bleeding to death. He was given a medal for conspicuous gallantry.’

I imagined Rafe as a war hero with a troubled mind. It added a piquancy to my idea of him, which until now had been too smooth, too bland, to keep the flame of memory burning.

‘Evelyn’s delighted to have him home, of course. Not only for his own sake – she’s always adored him, as you know, but Kingsley’s become something of a problem.’

Kingsley Preston was much older than his wife. I remembered him as a sort of caricature of a country squire. He had not been much interested in children, preferring horses and dogs. We had had the same conversation each holidays.

‘Hello, Marigold.’ He would smile and shake my hand. ‘It’s good to see you back. How are you?’

‘I’m fine, thank you, sir.’

‘Good, good.’

Then he’d walk quickly away, calling his spaniels to heel. At the end of the holidays, he’d say, ‘Well, well, so you’re off again.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Going to make Margot Fonteyn shake in her shoes, eh?’

Polite laughter from me. ‘Not yet.’

‘Jolly good.’ The smile and handshake again. ‘Keep it up.’

‘What’s the matter with Kingsley?’ I asked.

‘He’s terribly forgetful. He was eighty last birthday, so perhaps it’s not surprising. Evelyn’s marvellous with him, so patient. She never complains, you know how strong she is, but it must get her down all the same.’

It seemed to me a little forgetfulness in an old man was not much to put up with. But then, in my mother’s eyes, everything Evelyn did, from organizing balls to raise funds for more camels in Africa, to getting poor Mrs Stopes into an old people’s home despite her wish to remain independent, were feats of the highest order. My mother kept on her desk a framed photograph of Evelyn in evening dress and tiara, which had appeared fifteen years ago in the Tatler above the caption
The Beautiful Mrs
Kingsley Preston, Indefatigable Society Hostess of the North
. I was pretty sure the rest of Evelyn’s friends had consigned the offending image to the dustbin before returning indoors to dose themselves with bile beans.

‘Could we have the heater on?’

‘Sorry, it’s broken. I keep meaning to get the garage to fix it.’

‘Will Rafe be there tomorrow, do you know?’

‘Yes.
And
–’ Dimpsie’s voice took on a slightly anxious tone – ‘so will Isobel. She’s come home to be with Rafe, to help him get over it. You know how devoted to him she’s always been. Darling, I do hope you’ll be pleased to see her.’

Isobel. The rush of memories were a welcome distraction from being cold and frightened. From babyhood to the age of ten she had been my best friend. She was a year and a half older than me, a significant age gap then. Probably she would have preferred an older companion but there were no other girls nearby whom Evelyn considered
convenable
. My family was not well off but my father was a doctor and my mother had been privately educated, which made me acceptable.

Naturally Isobel had been the dominant one. She had taught me how to ride a bicycle and how to swim, how to serve overarm, how to make a camp, how to waltz, tie knots and mix invisible inks. Sometimes she had been friendly, sometimes patronizing and sometimes beastly. There had been spats, naturally but most of the time we accepted that we were yoked together, an ill-matched team, seemingly in perpetuity.

We had started dancing lessons together at Evelyn’s instigation: ‘So good for their deportment, Dimpsie, and the car’s taking Isobel anyway so Marigold may as well go, too.’

We had attended Miss Fisher’s ballet classes in Haltwhistle. I had adored it from the moment my fingers made contact with the barre and my pink leather pumps with the splintery floor. After three terms we took our first ballet exam. When I had been awarded a distinction and Isobel a pass, there had been indignation and tears. Evelyn had been cross with her.

‘You can’t expect to excel in everything, darling. Marigold is so tiny that she can hop about easily. You should be glad for her that she has done so well, even if it is only in dancing.’

When Miss Fisher sent letters home with us to say she thought Isobel was ready for grade two but I was to move up several classes and try for my intermediate certificate, Isobel had wanted to give up ballet altogether. Evelyn had told her not to be silly.

‘You must learn not to make a fuss about trivial things. It’s very nice for Marigold that she has a little accomplishment. It may come in useful later for balls and dances.’

After I had passed my intermediate certificate with the highest possible mark, Miss Fisher asked to see my mother and told her she should think seriously about sending me to ballet school. Dimpsie went to Evelyn for advice. I remember Evelyn’s face became rather long as she read the letter the examiner had sent privately to Miss Fisher, commending my physical attributes and technical promise. She was silent for a while as Dimpsie and I stared anxiously at her pinched nostrils and compressed lips, waiting for the oracle to pronounce. Young and unsophisticated though I was, I dimly understood that, because of the Preston supremacy in birth and upbringing, for a child of Evelyn’s to be surpassed in anything was something of a facer. An inward struggle was evidently taking place as she folded the letter into small sections.

Then her better self got the upper hand. Talent must never be wasted. She had heard of a ballet school in Manchester that
had an excellent reputation. She would ring at once and ask them to send a prospectus. She congratulated me very kindly and asked us both to stay to tea. There was no more talk about ‘little accomplishments’ and ‘hopping about’.

When Isobel heard about the letter she went down to the beck that races through the valley of Gaythwaite and threw in her ballet pumps. Then she put a note through our letterbox. Unless I dropped the whole idea of ballet school she would never speak to me again. Furthermore she would put a curse on me so that my nose would be permanently covered with blackheads.

After a terrifying audition at Brackenbury House Ballet School, I was awarded a place for the following term. This meant I had only a few weeks mooning about Dumbola Lodge in a state of excommunication, shut out from the paradisial delights of Shottestone Manor – the pony, the swimming pool, the tennis court, the garden, the dogs and Mrs Capstick’s celebrated orange cake, which, being a greedy child, I regretted perhaps most of all.

The curse had been lifted by Christmas, much to my relief. I had spent anxious moments, in my precious free time at Brackenbury, examining my face for blackheads. Isobel had been sent to a smart boarding school in Berkshire, and she needed an audience during the holidays for tales of her new life and her new friends. It was about then that Isobel began a campaign of pubescent rebellion against her mother and I was drawn in as her sympathizer and support. Fortunately Evelyn was too busy reorganizing Northumberland to take much notice.