The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets (41 page)

Charlotte and I fled my
bedroom and stood just back from the edge of the gallery, looking down at the
scene being enacted below. Marina looked Daphne du Maurier-beautiful, still
dressed for her walk, radiant and mysterious in a pale grey wool cape. She
seemed to register very little surprise at Rocky’s arrival, rather she smirked
a bit and held out her hand to be kissed, which I thought jolly affected. Rocky
looked heartbreaking in a long black coat that must have cost about a hundred
pounds, a red and black checked scarf wound round his neck. His hair was
Brylcreem-advertisment perfect despite the blustery day, and he carried a light
brown leather case and a newspaper under his arm. I felt curiously detached
from myself, watching him and Marina standing in the hall was like watching an
alternative ending. to a favourite film.

‘I
suppose you want me to ask you what you’re doing here,’ I heard Rocky say.

‘I
could say the very same to you!’ said Marina.

‘Where’s
little Penelope Wallace, havoc-maker?’ asked Rocky, shaking off his coat, and
my heart jumped and Charlotte nudged me in the ribs.

‘How
did you guess I was here, anyway?’ demanded Marina.

‘You’re
as easy to read as Salinger,’ said Rocky.

‘I
suppose George sent you,’ said Marina dramatically.

‘All
George told me was that your jazz fan boyfriend is the man that Penelope kissed
at the Ritz. That was all he needed to tell me for me to work out where you
were.

‘Congratulations,
Perry Mason,’ said Marina, removing her cape and tossing it onto the hall
table.

‘I
suppose you’ve terrorised that sweet girl into thinking that she has to give
him up?’

Surprisingly.
Marina had the insight to lower her voice at this point so I missed most of
what she replied, but I caught the phrase ‘doesn’t love him like I do’.

‘He’s
not so old,’ conceded Charlotte in a whisper.

‘I told
you!’ Gosh, but he was handsome. The hall at Magna, which dwarfed and made fools
of most people, seemed the perfect fit for Rocky. He held out his arms to me as
Charlotte and I descended the stairs.

‘How
are you, girls?’ He smiled, kissing me on both cheeks.

In that
moment, I didn’t think to ask him what he was doing rolling up unannounced. I
didn’t think to wonder what his reasons were for anything. The only thing that
struck me as remotely important was the fact that ten minutes after Charlotte
and I had been talking about him, he was standing next to me, as real and as
shake-makingly intimidating as ever.

‘Do you
want to stay for supper?’ I asked him, trying to keep the glee out of my voice.

‘I can’t
think of anything nicer,’ he said.

I led
him to the drawing room and poured him a Scotch.

‘Good
girl,’ he said, taking it from me. He chucked it down his throat in one gulp.
Everything looked too small for him, even the double dose of whisky. ‘What a
place!’ he exclaimed, noticing his surroundings for the first time. He gave a
great kick of laughter and prowled around the room. ‘My God! This is the kind
of England I read about when I was a kid. I kinda assumed there was none of it
left. Seems I was wrong.

Not
that wrong, I thought, covering up a huge tear on the back of the sofa with an
equally-ravaged cushion. Help, Mary would go spare if I didn’t let her know
that there was yet-another glamorous guest for dinner.

‘Would
you mind terribly if I left you here for a minute or two?’ I asked Rocky
politely. ‘I need to talk to Mary about dinner.’

‘Who’s
Mary?’ asked Rocky, eyes glinting.

‘Oh, she’s
just the cook.’

‘Wonderful.
Are we having spotted dick? Or frog in the hole? Suet pudding?’ I giggled.
Rocky sloshed his ice around in his glass. ‘You’re so pretty when you laugh. It’s
hard to believe you’re behind all this mess.’

‘Me!’

‘Yeah,
you.
I know Marina better than I know myself. She’s far more concerned with the
fact that the jazz fan finds you so darn pretty than she is with the fact that
she really loves him after all. You’ve got right under her skin.’

‘It was
never meant to be like this,’ I said awkwardly. I clenched my teeth together to
stop myself from running into his arms and yelping out that he was the only one
I could ever want.

‘I
kinda understand the way she feels, you know,’ he said slowly. ‘I always want
what I can’t have.’

‘You do?’
I whispered.

‘All
the time,’ he said.

The
blissful tension of our eyes locking and my blush spreading up my neck and into
my cheeks was broken when Inigo ploughed into the room.

‘Marina
says Rocky Dakota’s here!’ he hissed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me he was turning
up?’

‘She
didn’t know it herself,’ drawled Rocky, standing up and offering his hand to
Inigo. I had to hand it to my little brother. He composed himself without
turning scarlet and without stammering.

‘You
ever met Elvis Presley?’ he asked quickly.

‘What
does an English kid like you know about Elvis Presley?’ asked Rocky, genuinely
surprised.

‘Everything,’
said Inigo, taking out his comb.

Marina collapsed into bed
and Inigo monopolised Rocky all afternoon with his incessant Elvis Presley
chat, and Rocky responded by firing questions at Inigo. How long had he been
listening to Elvis? Did he feel Elvis was going to make it in England? How many
records had he in his collection? Did he like Johnnie Ray like me? Why not?
Charlotte and I arranged ourselves prettily by the drawing-room fire and
pretended to play Monopoly, but their dialogue was too thrilling not to be a
part of. Inigo, after all, must have been the only boy in England dyeing his
hair to be like Elvis and able to sing ‘Mystery Train in perfect imitation of
the man. For both I felt it was a sort of dream meeting; it was impossible to
tell to what extent each was using the other. What they had in common was their
passion, Inigo’s for Elvis and escape and Rocky’s for making money.

‘So you
girls, how do you feel when you look at Johnnie Ray?’ Rocky asked us, taking it
upon himself to haul us into the conversation while he poured himself another
double whisky. ‘You wanna mother the guy? Is it because he wears a hearing aid?
You feel sorry for him?’

‘Gosh,’
I said. ‘It never even entered my
head
that we might feel like that.’

‘Oh no,’
agreed Charlotte breezily. ‘It’s all about sex, isn’t it, Penelope?’

I went
scarlet. Rocky raised his eyebrows at me and I wriggled my toes frantically.

‘Is it,
kid? You feel that pull towards him? Like you wanna get
close
to him?
Close to him like that?’

‘Of
course,’ I admitted, and Charlotte and I collapsed giggling.

‘Gee,’
said Rocky. ‘Does the magician know how you feel?’

‘Oh
yes,’ I said. ‘He knows absolutely everything.’ As usual, the champagne
confused me with that giddy feeling that I could say or do what would normally
stay firmly inside my head.

We sat down to supper that
night, a curious party of five, but the force of Rocky and Marina’s presence
meant it felt as if there were many more of us in the room. Mary had polished
and set the best silver; I held my breath wondering how everything was going to
taste. Marina had slept all afternoon and had joined us for drinks before
dinner in a green and white sequin gown that would not have looked out of place
at the Opera House. For someone who had drunk a bottle of champagne, she had
thought awfully hard about what to bring. She slid into her chair, between
Rocky and Inigo, not meeting my eye in a very deliberate way. We were only a
few minutes into our prawn cocktails (like bits of India rubber in a watery
pink glue) when the sparks began to fly. Marina, unsettled by the fact that
Rocky was still deep in conversation with Inigo and not concentrating on her,
cleared her throat. If she could have tapped her glass with her fork and not
looked absurd, I think she would have done.

‘So I
suppose we’re all going to sit here and act like nothing’s wrong,’ she said
loudly. We all fell silent and I noticed a spark in Charlotte’s eyes. She loved
a bit of a scene.

‘Sure,’
said Rocky lightly. ‘We’re having dinner, right? Charlotte, would you pass me
the water?’ He pronounced it ‘wah-der’. I felt my heart jump a bit.

‘So you’re
quite happy to watch me falling apart at the seams?’ asked Marina with a bark
of her famous sob-laughter. She abandoned her food and reached for her
cigarettes. Inigo flipped open his lighter.

‘What
the hell else do you expect us to do?’ said Rocky quietly. ‘You wanna go make
it up with George? We can be with him in a couple of hours if we leave now.

For a
second, I sensed Marina flipping this option over in her mind.

‘No!’
she whispered. ‘I don’t want to see George. I’ve left George. I can’t ever see
him again. I need to see Harry. I need Harry!’ Her voice rose hysterically. As
if taking cue from some invisible director, she stood up and crossed the room.
Staring out of the window she clutched her hand to her chest. ‘I never, ever
imagined anything could hurt so much,’ she said. Rocky continued to spoon up the
last of his prawn cocktail.

‘Really?’
he said absent-mindedly. Charlotte stifled a giggle and he caught her eye and
grinned. Marina turned back to us, her eyes full of fire.

‘You!’
she said, pointing a red fingernail at me. ‘You! This is all your doing! You
seduced him! You
tricked
him into believing he loved you! You stole his
heart!
You. Stole. His. Heart!’
This last phrase was uttered with
Cleopatran passion, every word a statement within itself. Charlotte actually
leaned forward in her chair as if she were at the theatre, and Rocky began to
clap slowly.

‘Very
good,’ he said in a bored sort of voice. ‘Do you do a matinee tomorrow
afternoon?’ He was devastating when he was sticking the knife in, I thought.

Marina,
cued up for tears, decided to change tack. ‘You know nothing,’ she said simply.
‘Nothing at all. You’re just some rich guy with an empty heart! You can’t bear
the fact that I’m aching for Harry and not for you. You can’t
conceive
of
how I could love someone who can’t offer me what you think you could. What the
hell are you doing here anyway?’ she taunted. ‘I don’t believe you give a damn
about George. This is all about you.
You
wanting
me.’

‘On the
contrary, Marina, I couldn’t afford you,’ said Rocky idly, stretching across
the table for the remains of my prawn cocktail. ‘Excuse me, kid. May I?’ I
nodded. Rocky scooped up the rest of my starter. ‘Damn good,’ he said. ‘Where’s
Mary? I like the sound of her.’

Possibly
because she had been lurking outside the door, ears flapping, Mary appeared
only seconds later. ‘Shall I clear?’ she asked, looking straight at Rocky.

‘Oh,
sure, Mary. That was delicious. You have quite a talent.’ She blushed and
mumbled something about ‘never feeling appreciated’ until Inigo glared at her.

‘Why
don’t you sit down, Marina?’ suggested Charlotte. ‘It’s pork and carrots from
the garden next.

Marina
ignored her and stubbed out her cigarette. Mary ignored Inigo and lurked around
the back of the room, pretending to polish something.

‘You
still haven’t told us why you’re here,’ Marina said to Rocky.

‘Right
now, I just want to enjoy my dinner. If you’re determined to upstage I think
you should do so elsewhere.’

Marina
frowned as if she hadn’t quite heard right. ‘Are you asking me to leave the
room?’

‘Just a
suggestion,’ said Rocky.

Marina
gave a strangled sob and fled upstairs, taking with her a full wine glass and
Inigo’s remaining cigarettes. Mary ambled out after Marina, her face bright red
with excitement. Oh well, I thought. That may have quelled Mary’s admiration
for her.

‘Oughtn’t
we follow her?’ I said doubtfully.

‘Ah,
leave her to stew,’ said Rocky. ‘You can always tell the ones who were never
spanked as a child. Spoilt little bitch.’

‘But
she looks amazing,’ sighed Inigo.

‘The
crazy ones usually do, kid,’ said Rocky. ‘It’s a cunning disguise. You better
get used to it if you’re gonna make it in the music business.’

Inigo picked
up his glass and pretended not to look thrilled, but I could see he was, and I
felt half excited too, and half afraid that Rocky was raising false hopes. What
on earth would Mama think if she were here? Having Rocky to supper was a
revelation to me. I realised that he was the first man to hold centre stage in
the dining room since Papa died. It was something that I could see was not lost
on Inigo either. Instinctively, he sat up straight, he used his knife and fork,
he dropped his exaggerated chewing routine — in short, he behaved. I wanted to
scream with laughter, it Was so strange. The focus of the room seemed to
revolve around Rocky, even when he was not leading what was being said. He
filled the room with something that I thought had been lost years ago, after
Papa died. No, that’s not right. He filled the room with something that I
did
not even realise was missing.