Harnessing Peacocks (8 page)

‘Thought you didn’t like him mentioned.’

‘I don’t.’

‘Well, then. What did that chef teach you that you had not learned at the Cordon Bleu?’

‘Soufflés.’ Hebe remembered Hippolyte. ‘You laugh, you relax, you enjoy, you rise, light, generous, delicious, ready for a second helping.’ ‘He taught me how to make soufflés,’ she said gravely.

‘Ho,’ said Amy, doubtful still. ‘Ho.’

Changing the subject, Hebe said, ‘I’m dropping Mrs Cook-Popham, Amy. I don’t like her son. I’m okay with Mrs Fox and Mrs Duff and the odd job.’

‘I distrust the odd jobs.’

‘I enjoy them,’ said Hebe, blithely thinking of Mungo and Hippolyte, regretting Terry. ‘It’s the odd jobs that make the money as you—’

‘As I should know. Odd jobs don’t last,’ said Amy sadly, remembering in old age the delights of waking up in the double bed in the Hotel d’Angleterre, the laughter, the rising sun glinting through the red plush curtains, the coffee and croissants. ‘They don’t last,’ she said in bitter recollection of the lonely journey home to London, the quack doctor in Battersea, the pain and anguish. ‘They don’t last. That’s why I became a secretary.’

‘And worked for the Duffs and Foxes and my grandfather,’ said Hebe sombrely. She could remember Amy the secretary, but found it hard to visualise Amy in her career in Paris. Who was the man who let her down, she wondered, and heard for a second those other voices asking, ‘Who was the man?’ and ‘Have an abortion’.

‘Shall I make us some tea?’ She stood up to break the spell.

‘Yes, love.’ Amy watched Hebe put on the kettle, lay out cups. She wondered for the millionth time who Silas’ father could be. One would think, if one had not seen the child born, that the man had never existed. She tells me about her lovers, thought Amy. Those grandparents had not found out. Fools, always on at the child, ‘Don’t mumble, don’t interrupt,’ always ‘Don’t’. And ‘Hold yourself up,’ ‘Don’t stoop.’

Hebe, warming the pot, spooning tea, reaching for the kettle, thought, So Amy had an abortion. If she hadn’t her child would be older than me, middle-aged. She handed Amy her cup.

‘I keep my life narrow. It’s better that way.’ She was defensive. ‘I stick to business.’

‘Yes.’ Amy took the cup. ‘I suppose it is best.’

‘I save a lot of money.’

‘A bank balance is nice,’ Amy agreed.

‘I am getting Silas educated. That’s what is important.’

‘Yes.’ Amy’s thoughts were years away. Why did I panic? she asked herself. Out loud she exclaimed, ‘The bastard!’

‘What?’ Hebe was startled.

‘I loved a bastard. He was not the marrying kind.’

‘As you know I think love should be avoided.’ Hebe’s tone made Amy laugh.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I have you, I have Silas and now Giles and Hannah. Hannah believes in love; that’s why she has changed her name and her teeth and is learning to talk posh. Hannah believes in marriage, but she ain’t got
chien.
Perhaps in marriage you don’t need
chien
.’

‘What’s
chien
?’

‘It’s indefinable, sort of smell, what was called sex appeal in my day.’

‘Smell?’ Hebe looked thoughtful. ‘I bet you had
chien
.’ She searched Amy’s face for the girl concealed by old age.

‘Not enough to hold him,’ said Amy. ‘He loved somebody else.’

‘At the same time?’ Hebe was shocked.

‘You’re a fine one to talk, with your collection.’

‘But I don’t love. Love’s a disaster. I am an entertainer.’

‘You certainly entertain me. I live a vicarious life these days. Got Silas’ address in the Islands in case of need?’

‘I have it for you. The people are called Reeves. They sound all right.’

‘In what way?’

‘Oh, you know.’ Hebe looked away.

‘The right sort?’ Amy’s tone made Hebe flush.

‘Yes, I suppose so.’ She stood up, hesitating, unwilling to leave Amy’s atmosphere of serenity. She bent to kiss the old woman. ‘You would have made a wonderful wife.’

‘Not to him. Some men should never marry. I realise that now.’

Hebe wondered how much Amy had suffered to acquire wisdom. ‘Some women, too,’ she suggested. ‘Perhaps I am one.’

‘From the way you are shaping you may well be. Your career—’

‘Now, Amy, don’t start on “my career.”’

‘Certainly not my sort.’

‘Hannah will marry George Scoop.’

‘Hannah may not be as sensible as you think,’ said Amy. ‘I rather hope not. That dentist does not deserve Hannah.’

‘Not good enough for her?’

‘She is not right for him.’

‘Gosh! Why?’

‘She would treat him as she treated Edward Krull.’

‘How do you know?’

‘You have to be a saint to tolerate bores. She is set on marriage though.’

Hebe stood, considering Hannah’s relatively simple life. ‘I must fly.’ She kissed Amy goodbye.

‘Goodbye.’ Amy was comparing Hannah’s intention of marrying with Hebe’s mode of life, which to her mind did less damage. She chuckled, thinking, She does enjoy herself. She said out loud, her eyes reflecting the glint of sun on her paperweights: ‘She entertains, she enjoys variety.’ She spoke to the paperweights as to a living person. ‘And she makes people happy.’ Amy kept these thoughts to herself, having no one to share them with.

I
T IS AGAINST MY
nature to confide more than the minimum to Amy, thought Hebe, sorting Silas’ clothes for him to take on his visit. She wondered whether there was someone somewhere from whom it would not be necessary to guard her tongue. She piled Silas’ clothes on the bed and took what was necessary to iron down to the kitchen. Putting up the ironing board, plugging in the iron, she thought of Mungo. Amy approved of Mungo, she was obviously doubtful about Terry. Was it not Terry who had encouraged her to call her clients The Syndicate, finding the joke in dubious taste. But would she approve of Mungo if she knew how foul his language could be, that he boasted ridiculously of the size of his member. Testing the heat of the iron, Hebe thought of Mungo with tolerant affection. Amy likes it when he takes me to Wimbledon, she thought, and the movies and the opera. He is very generous, always pays up without a murmur when I beat him at backgammon. I jolly him along, she thought, ironing Silas’ T-shirts. I make him more fun for his family, better for his wife. Go home and practise, I say, you’ve had a nice change. Hebe folded the T-shirts, reached for some pillowcases, squirted water to damp them. She likes Mungo’s class, she thought, smoothing the pillowcases, she knows Hippolyte was born a peasant, refers to him slightingly as Hippo. I call him Hippo to show fondness. He enjoys me, finds me funny. Hebe pressed the iron on the pillowcase. He gives me free lunches in his restaurant on my day off when I’m working for Maggie Cook-Popham, pretends he doesn’t know me when I appear in his restaurant. Hebe chortled in recollection of Hippolyte’s face when she had come not alone but with a potential client. He succeeded very neatly in putting me off the poor man. I was not planning to do more than tease. I was bored with the man, that was all. Who had it been, what had been his name? Folding the pillowcases Hebe racked her brain. There had been quite a number of potential members tried and found wanting.
‘Il y a toujours l’un qui baise et l’autre qui tend la joue.
’ Grandfather used to say. ‘Well, old man, it is I who
tend la joue
.’ I am making a pretty profit in this career you suggested for me and getting Silas educated. There had been failures, Hebe admitted to herself. There was the man who had taken her to Rome for the weekend, dined her in the Piazza Navona:
prosciutto con figi,
a marvellous risotto, mountain strawberries. But he drank too much Soave, did not know its fatal effect. He had become alarmingly drunk, uncontrollably tiresome back at the hotel. I am not proud of that one, thought Hebe, switching off the iron. It was a dirty trick to throw all his trousers, shoes and pants out of the window, but what else could a girl do? I had to get away. I told Hippolyte about that one, she thought. He was so pleased he invited me to dinner with his partner. I never told Amy. I can’t remember what he looked like, she thought, leaning on the ironing board. Some sort of English outdoor type? She shook her head, remembering Edward, head clerk in a solicitor’s office, who did his wife’s ironing every Saturday, ironing out the clients’ marital dramas in imagination. There had been something sinister about him; she had not wanted him to start ironing out her troubles. Hebe folded the board and put it away. ‘Keep them keen,’ she said to Trip, who came mewing through the cat-flap. ‘Limit them to two weeks at most. With Mungo three times a year, four or five trips to Paris with Hippolyte and my cooking we are okay. I shan’t really miss Terry. I can still see him. Can’t put so much aside for the rainy day or Silas’ university, that’s all. It’s a far cry,’ she said, picking up the purring cat, ‘from flogging my mother’s pearls and Social Security. Not that I ever intended to depend on that!’ The cat jumped out of her arms to lap milk from her saucer. ‘It’s an enjoyable life,’ Hebe said to the cat, ‘but I wish Silas wasn’t going away.’

‘Who is this you are taking me to see?’ Sitting in the bus beside Silas, Giles wiped the steam from the window with his sleeve.

‘An old man in a cottage miles from anywhere. He’s got the most fabulous things. He is very old. He is called Bernard Quigley. He has a dog called Feathers and a cat. He’s my friend. I found him when I was exploring across country.’

‘Is he a relation?’

‘I have no relations.’ Silas stared at the passing country.

‘You must have. I’ve got lots of relations in America and Amy’s Mum’s aunt. Everybody has relations.’

‘We don’t.’

‘You must have. Why don’t you have relations?’ Giles persisted.

‘Don’t be boring. I don’t have any.’

‘Ask your mum. Doesn’t she tell you about them? My mother tells me all about her father and mother, what they did and everything.’

‘Boring. We get off here.’ Silas led Giles out of the bus at the stop near a telephone kiosk forlornly posed at a crossroads. Rain was pelting down; the boys pulled up the hoods of their parkas.

‘We go across here.’ Silas climbed a gate into a field.

‘Isn’t there a path?’

‘No.’

Silas led the way through wet grass. Water seeped into their shoes, which squelched. ‘Should have worn wellies.’

Giles persisted. ‘Surely your father had relations? Hasn’t your mum kept up with them?’

‘No.’

‘Why? Hasn’t she told you about them? My mother tells me about my father. She wants to put me off him.’

‘We climb this.’ Silas leapt at a bank and scrambled over it, dropping down into a field of kale. Giles followed. Silas trudged on, the tall kale brushing against his shoulders.

‘Surely,’ Giles nagged, ‘she’s told you about your father.’

‘Nothing, I told you.’ Silas let a kale plant swish back to hit Giles’ face.

‘But when you ask?’ Giles mopped his face.

‘I don’t. She never brings up the subject, so it’s not there.’ Silas pushed on through the kale.

‘Perhaps you were born in a test tube like those kids in Australia.’

‘They didn’t do it twelve years ago.’

‘Might have done. What else could you be?’

‘Son of a murderer? Artificial insemination?’

‘Secret agent, titled bloke of some kind, pop star.’

‘If I were I’d get maintenance, like your mum.’

‘That’s boring, too. Mine goes on and on about my father. One of these days I shall run away, live with him in America.’

‘You do that. Here’s Feathers.’ Silas squatted down to greet the large wet dog who had appeared out of the mist. ‘We have ham sandwiches. You like ham.’ Feathers pranced back a pace then came forward and licked Silas’ face. He had large ears with strands of hair round the edges. His tail, long and feathery, waved so that a swirl of drops swished from side to side of his chocolate brown body. ‘This is Giles,’ Silas told the dog.

Giles patted the dog then followed Silas to a clump of trees bent sideways by the prevailing south-wester. From the trees rose a drift of smoke. ‘He’s in.’ Silas trotted to a wall and began to climb, putting his feet neatly between the stones. Giles followed. Silas called in his high child’s voice:

‘Mr Quigley, Mr Quigley, are you there?’

Bernard Quigley stood in his porch. ‘I did not expect visitors on a day like this. Come and get dry by the fire.’

‘I just thought we would visit. This is Giles Krull. I am going away tomorrow to the Scillies for three weeks.’

‘What does your mother say to that?’ Bernard peered into Silas’ face.

‘She’s pleased for me. I shall be sailing. She’s going to do a job for a couple of weeks.’

‘Where?’ The old man moved jerkily about his tiny sitting-room, pushing the boys near the fire, fetching glasses from a cupboard, a bottle of sherry.

‘To some old girl called Fox.’

‘Fox.’ The old man glanced quickly at the boy. ‘Get by the fire. Don’t let the dog take up too much room. He’s wet too. Have a drink, dear boys, a drink won’t do you any harm. You’re old enough. Eleven, are you?’

‘Twelve.’ Silas held his hands towards the fire.

‘Well then, drink up.’

The boys tasted the sherry, trying to hide their distaste.

‘You’ll like it when you are grown up.’ The old man observed them as he drank, emptying his glass in one gulp, quickly refilling it.

Giles was fascinated by Bernard Quigley. He was small, stooping and old. His face had fallen in in some places and filled out in others so that the original proportions were lost. His nose, once an aristocratic curve, had taken hold and jutted out above a gentle mouth, putting large hooded eyes into shaded misproportion. His hair hung wispily round his collar. He wore brown trousers, a collarless shirt and braces which hung down over shrunken shanks, like the harness of a horse too old to work waiting for the knacker. His straggling moustache was stained with snuff.

‘I knew your father,’ he said to Giles. ‘Edward Krull.’

‘Oh, did you?’ Giles, beginning to steam, moved away from the fire. ‘When?’

‘When he was at university.’ The old man took a snuff box from his waistcoat pocket and said: ‘Edward Krull, so dull, dull, dull. They sent him to America.’