Stephanie (7 page)

But Errol Colton had been married twice already and presumably was still living with his second wife and daughter; he was well-to-do in some not precisely defined way connected with tourist development, and he was a lot older than Stephanie. How much more easy and unperturbing Teresa was, meeting and quickly marrying a talented young accountant, settling in suburbia and thoroughly enjoying it, expecting her first child in July. She and her husband seemed quite uninfluenced by the modern fashion which would have condemned their way of life as stuffy and old-fashioned.

Stephanie arrived in her yellow Mini at 12.30, and, since it was another fine day, James whirred himself down to the gates to meet her. Since going to Oxford she had seen very little of her father, even though he lived a bare fifty miles away. All the same, their being together was always pleasant, and whenever she left she told herself it wouldn't be so long next time. But it was.

At the house he ran his chair up the ramp to avoid the three steps and kissed her and hobbled with her into the drawing room. Presently Mary Aldershot came in and they shook hands and all had a drink together. Then the older woman went off to prepare lunch, refusing Stephanie's cheerful offer of help.

It was a large enough house for Mrs Aldershot to have her own set of rooms. Dinner she had every night with James; at breakfast and lunch they kept to their separate apartments. Over lunch Stephanie chatted brightly about her fabulous trip to India, her
lovely
trip to India, and was only waiting for an opportunity to go again. James had been once, briefly, to Calcutta and had found the poverty appalling. Travelling as Stephanie had travelled, she had seen little of it, and she thought conditions had much improved since her father was there.

James had sensitive antennae where his daughters were concerned, and he thought there was a shade of darkness in Stephanie he had not perceived before. In spite of her tan she did not look particularly well. Of course, for two years now she had lived a life that at one time would have been called rackety. She moved in a fast set, kept unearthly hours, took quite a lot of drink. Young, optimistic, with perfect health, she had taken life in her stride. Well, the clear bell of her nature was still ringing, but somewhere there was a hairline crack. Errol was referred to casually and without the least discomposure, but James's perception was that he was not mentioned often enough. Since there had always been great frankness between father and daughter, it seemed unlikely that she was restricting her references to spare him embarrassment.

As always when home, she was full of interest in the garden and they spent a couple of hours after lunch looking at the things he was growing, and discussing them. Even though it was still only April, the mild winter had brought things forward and there was a show of early bloom.

Looking at her, blonde ponytailed, slim and elegant and leggily feminine, James was visited by a sudden rush of affection for his younger daughter. He had been in love with his wife, and Stephanie was in many ways like her, impulsive, overtalkative, nervously acute, with a glowing aliveness and a total inability to dissemble. He was not often a man to show his feelings, but sometimes they bubbled up and made him emotional. He turned away from Stephanie to hide his expression and glowered at a Tai-haku cherry which was holding back from bloom as if undeceived by the false sunshine.

‘Do you know about drugs?' Stephanie asked, plucking at a weed.

‘Drugs? What sort? The forbidden sort? No. Why?'

‘There's a fair amount in Oxford, of course. Not just among undergraduates but in the town. I've tried smoking a joint a few times and eating some other stuff but it doesn't seem to work for me. At least, it works after a fashion but I get a filthy head the next day.'

‘Ah,' said James. ‘ Good thing, I suppose.'

‘Yes. Maybe.'

They talked about plants for a bit, then James brought the subject back.

‘I've lived an average life and seen a fair share of the seamy side. But, honestly, where drugs are concerned I'm a newborn babe. I don't know the first thing about them.'

She smiled slowly. ‘You're the wrong generation.'

‘Pretty well, yes. They were certainly never a major problem. Though I did know one youngish woman …'

‘Oh?'

‘Husband killed in the war, so she went to live with her brother, who was a doctor. Somehow she got her hands on the morphine. Started injections, two a day – went up to four, then to six, before he found out.'

‘What then?'

‘She went for a cure. Came out after two months. Completely cured – for a bit. Then went on the streets to get the money to buy the stuff. I'm not sure what happened to her in the end.'

‘There was a case in Headington last month,' Stephanie said after a minute. ‘Nothing to do with the university. A chemist's assistant. He was hooked – on heroin, I think – and took an overdose and died. It didn't make the headlines.'

They moved between two shrub borders. ‘ Damned birds,' said James. ‘ They've taken nearly all the forsythia.'

‘I thought you liked birds.'

‘In their proper place. But they're mischievous little buggers … Why this sudden interest in drugs?'

‘It isn't a sudden interest. I just feel maybe if I take no notice of it I'm living with my head in the sand. Time I woke up, observed the world as it is today, took an attitude.'

‘Attitude?'

‘Well, not like the Statue of Liberty! But this is the new scene for our generation, isn't it, and I thought maybe I should make up my mind about it.'

‘Whether to take them or not?'

‘No,
no.
I'm not even
interested.
Whether I'm actually
against
them – in other people, I mean.'

‘Pro or con?'

‘Pro or con. I've always taken the view that what other people do is not my business. If somebody finds that smoking a reefer gives them a lift and enables them to enjoy life more fully, well, then, that's their affair. Isn't it? We go our own way, live our own lives. None of this “for whom the bell tolls” rubbish. Correct?'

‘Correct enough.'

‘It's too bad if the marijuana smoker finds it not doing its stuff any longer and drifts into the hard drugs, really gets hooked and finally kills himself. Along the way there's a lot of suffering and crime, but there's a lot of suffering and crime in the world anyhow. What business is it of mine?'

‘Indeed. None at all, I might say.'

‘You might say … Of course I like my drink. So do you. But I don't see any signs of addiction in you, and I hope I shall not see any in me. But some girl at St Martin's might get addicted to good old mother's ruin, and her downfall, if less dramatic, could still take place. Couldn't it? There she is, a soak, sitting on the pavement outside a pub with a bottle in her hand, too gassed to find her way home. That isn't the new scene; that's the old scene. A great one in Victorian times! But is it any more my fault or my responsibility or your fault or your responsibility than the man with the syringe or the pills?'

They had moved as far as that part of the garden given over to the purely acid-loving plants.

‘These are new
yakushimanum
hybrids,' James explained. ‘It's been one of the finest rhododendron finds of the last forty years, and it's going to give rise to scores of new plants, all small and sturdy, and of almost all colours. Unfortunately, most of the hybrids don't have the marvellous leathery-tomentose leaves of the parent. I have high hopes of a couple of them.'

‘What a name! Where does it come from?'

‘Japan. It's an island there, Yakushima. Stephanie.'

‘Yes?'

‘I'm not sure yet why you feel you have to take a pro or con attitude to the particular problem at this particular time. As a direct decision not as a generality? Is that what you mean? Something has come up and you need to make a choice.'

He studied the curve of her cheek, which was all he could see just now. She said: ‘I suppose you could say that.'

‘Some special friend of yours is in danger of getting hooked, and you want to know how far you'd be justified in trying to stop him?'

‘Not altogether that.' Stephanie fingered the furry brown underside of a rhododendron leaf. ‘Rather more than that. I'm thinking of the distribution side.'

James activated his chair to move around her so that while apparently looking at a plant he could get a better view of her face.

‘Distribution. Ah yes, well, that's rather another kettle of fish.'

‘Why is it?' she said. ‘Tell me why it is.' Her tone was sharp, aggressive.

Surprised, he said: ‘I would have thought that evident, wouldn't you?'

‘Well, just tell me why.'

‘The drug barons make their illegal millions out of the poor suckers who buy their stuff. I've always regretted that the death penalty never operated for people like that.'

The sun was shining in her eyes. Her mouth looked pinched. She said quite angrily: ‘But there are two standards, aren't there? These men who smuggle in marijuana and heroin are breaking a manmade law, and so are those who push it on the streets and so are those who use it. But this is just an arbitrary law, dividing one kind of addiction from another. You want the death penalty for the drug barons but not for the drink barons or the tobacco barons. You wouldn't consider being even in the same
room
as a man who imported cocaine from Colombia, but you'd mix, and be pleased to mix, with a Guinness or a Haig or a Wills! Where's the difference?'

James looked at her for a few moments, then pressed his button. ‘Let me show you the new daffodils.'

They went on. He said: ‘Are you angry with me, Stephanie, or with yourself?'

She laughed, but there was not much amusement in it. ‘Did you ever play pelota, Daddy?'

‘I played squash.'

‘Yes, well, you're the wall I'm banging the ball against.' She bent and kissed his forehead.

He said: ‘So in fact
you
are having to make a choice?'

‘Not a
choice
so much as a value judgment. Nothing more than that.'

‘Well, here the con's pretty heavy, isn't it. As I told you, I'd string up the distributors.'

‘Every one?'

‘Every one.'

‘That's a lovely daffodil.'

‘Golden Ducat. It's been on the market ten years or more now. Only slight disadvantage is the flower is so heavy it's sometimes too weighty for the stem. I believe they're breeding that out; but of course here I haven't the facilities.'

‘You say you lost touch with your friend who took to morphine. Was that a long time ago?'

‘Oh, before I married. I did go and see her once in the clinic. Not an agreeable experience.'

‘She knew you?'

‘Oh, she knew me well enough. She was just thin, frail, irritable, eyes shrunken, not able to keep still, much changed from the attractive woman I'd known.'

‘Have you heard me speak of Sir Peter Brune?'

‘Brune? I know his name. He gives a lot of money away. And he wrote that definitive book on – was it? – Aristophanes.'

‘I met him last autumn. Well, he's got this lovely house called Postgate, north of Oxford, not far from Woodstock. As it happens, that was where I met Errol. I like him very much – Peter Brune, I mean. A thoroughly nice man. And he's a great benefactor of St Martin's, so they like him there too. Someone told me that he financed a clinic for drug addicts in Reading. I might …'

‘Might what?'

‘Ring him next week, ask him if I could visit it. To see what people are like there.'

‘It's so important to you?'

‘Yes, it is. There are certain things. I want to make up my mind about things. This might help a bit. It might even help a lot.'

‘Did you think of seeing Henry Gaveston?'

‘What, the Bursar? The Col? What would he know about it?'

‘About drugs specifically, I'm not sure. But he has close links with the police, and he's likely to be fairly well briefed on most aspects of the seedy side of undergraduate life.'

‘I thought he was SAS?'

‘He has been. Among other things. If you wanted a view of the drug scene in Oxford he'd be sure to know.'

‘Yes?' said Stephanie, doubtfully. ‘Yes, I might do that.'

‘But see your Peter Brune first. He might just be able to do the trick for you, whatever trick it is you want.'

Mrs Aldershot did not dine with them that night. She had been quite adamant, so James acquiesced on condition they should all go out to Sunday lunch together.

As well as knowing a lot about plants James knew a lot about wine, and Stephanie, when she was home, always regretted not coming home more often. This was civilised drinking. They started with a Sancerre, moved to a Montrose, and ended with a Coutet. On this occasion, feeling the need, James had rather gone to town. It not only unlocked Stephanie's tongue but his own.

Towards the end of the meal he said: ‘And your affair with Errol Colton – it's really serious?'

‘Daddy, of course it's really serious! I'm not a tart! I wouldn't rush off to India with some boyfriend just for the fun of it!'

‘Begging your pardon, then. But Errol, I gather, has a wife. May it not become embarrassing?'

‘Oh, yes, maybe. It
might
have been. But … I think it may be over now.'

‘
What?
Your affair with Errol?'

‘Yes,' she said in a small voice.

‘
That's
a surprise. Since when?'

‘Since we came home.'

James sipped his chilled Sauterne. ‘So you're not in love with him any more?'

‘I didn't say that.'

‘Is he out of love with you?'

‘Nor that either! But I think we're just coming to the end of the line – to the end of
a
line anyway!'