Cuckoo Page 17

  She almost heard the grin on the other end of the telephone. ‘That’s better. But are you sure, my love? I don’t want to drag you kicking and screaming from your fastness …’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’ She wasn’t. But, then, everything was confused and contradictory at the moment. Last night, she’d shouted and panicked and wished Charles a thousand miles away, but in the morning, when he’d gone that far and further, he seemed indispensable and precious. He and his daughter might be turning her from Minton china into barbed wire, but her life was still grafted on to his, like a frail scion on a strong branch, and without him she would droop and wither. It was humiliating to be so dependent on him, but she appeared to have no choice. He was her sap and root-stock, and no other man, no Ned, could be as strong. Her marriage was sacred, despite Magda. There was still the Charles who was civilized, considerate, and cultivated – loyal and faithful even. After all, the Magda business was only a relic from the past. Was it fair to keep on blaming him for something which had happened sixteen years ago? It was simpler to snip Charles in two. Magda’s Charles she could turf out and send away with no compunction, as she had done last night, but her own Charles she still needed as her rock and her lodestar. That left Magda – fatherless. The second Charles would somehow have to deal with her, not as a daddy, but as a distant relative and a strict disciplinarian – the only way the three of them could live together. And in the meantime, Magda must be sent to cool off. With a little help from Ned, they could choose somewhere bracing and remote, with friends her own age and a safe set of rules.

  ‘We’ll be able to have a serious talk in Brighton, won’t we, Ned? I need your advice. That’s why I rang.’

  ‘’Course. That’s first priority. Didn’t you know I’m Brighton’s answer to Evelyn Home?’

  He was. They got down to Magda almost as soon as the train heaved out of Victoria. It wasn’t easy. Ned had met her with a huge scarlet beach-ball and a hug to match, a pile of peanut-butter sandwiches, a party pack of Mars bars and forty pigeons in tow whom he was teasing with the crusts.

  ‘Ned, you’re not allowed to feed the pigeons. There’s a notice up.’

  ‘I’m not feeding them, my darling, I’m preaching to them. It’s my Francis of Assisi thing. Though I must admit they seem more interested in their grub than in their God. Christ – you look ravishing! Let’s not go anywhere. I’ll just put you on a pedestal and stare at you for ever and a day.’

  People were already staring, especially when he bounced the beach-ball all the way down Platform 16. She tried to walk a step behind. The station was probably swarming with accountants, half of whom were Charles’ bosom friends. She could imagine the phone call that evening.

  ‘Hello, darling. How’s Nassau?’

  ‘Fine, fine. How was Brighton? And what in God’s name were you doing strolling arm-in-arm with an out-of-work lunatic in shorts?’

  The shorts had certainly been a stumbling block. They were cut-down jeans, sawn off so close to the crotch that his bare brown legs seemed to go on and on for ever. It was difficult to concentrate on Magda, with all that tangled golden hair creeping over the train seat and trying to involve itself with her severe brown dress. She brought out Magda almost immediately, as a shield and a defence. This was a problem-solving day, not a spree. Strangely, the lipsticked letters seemed almost to have shrunk. Ned had a way of rubbing things off with a little optimism and a lot of common sense. He turned rebellious teenagers into a temporary affliction, like a head cold, rather than a terminal illness. A wrecked bedroom, in his eyes, was a sneeze, not a death throe.

  ‘Kids from the cosiest families do worse than that, Franny.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ She didn’t know. Teenager had just been a word until she’d met Magda – something she’d read about in the Sunday supplements, a species which roared around on motor bikes and stuck safety-pins up its nose, but always at a safe distance from her and Charles.

  ‘But Magda’s had a double shock. First no father, and then her mother running off …’

  ‘One-parent families are here to stay, my love. Brent Edge was swarming with ’em. It’s us who’ve got to change our attitudes. Lots of kids seem to thrive on Dad in jug, or Mum in Blackpool. We’re just bloody hypocrites. If you’re a famous film star, it’s positively fashionable to have a baby without a father – the Vanessa Redgrave syndrome. I bet she even denies any bloke conceived hers in the first place! But try and get away with it when you’re a humble office cleaner or a shop assistant, and all hell’s let loose.’

  ‘Look, Ned, that’s not the point.’ He was being far too pat. Perhaps he just wanted to dispose of Magda, so that he could get down to the Mars bars, or worse. People’s motives were always so suspect. Hadn’t she herself sandwiched Magda between her scruples and his shorts? But she must be fair to Ned. He was still up to his neck in Magda, only five miles out of Brighton. They hadn’t even had a coffee in the buffet car.

  ‘Her mother’s not dead, Franny, only absent for a while. And meantime, you’ll cope. You will, you know. Kids are tough. They adapt, and if they kick a bit in the process, just kick ’em back – gently. You’re tough, too, Fran. My little blue steel whiplash.’

  She was amazed that he could take it all so lightly, shrug off rebellion, joke about hate. She stared out of the window. Patchwork cows chewing contentedly while Concorde screeched over them, curdling their milk; stolid sheep munching all the way to the abattoir. Nature seemed as unconcerned as Ned. It was an ordinary sort of morning, half-awake, and drizzling with a lazy rain.

  ‘Ned …’

  ‘Yup?’

  ‘I thought you promised sun.’

  ‘Give it time, love. Have a while-u-wait Mars bar.’

  She shook her head, closed her eyes. The black darkness behind them suddenly capsized into crimson, as if someone had unrolled a red carpet across her eyelids. The sun had come out, blazing with repentance, galloping after the rain. It jumped in at the window and sliced Ned in half, turning his hair from straw to champagne. The dust in the air between them exploded in a thousand colours. She felt his body leap in sympathy.

  ‘Fantastic timing! I bet they pay the sun to do that on purpose – part of Brighton’s tourist drive. You’ve gone all golden, Franny. Cheer up! Let’s leave Magda in Richmond for a while. I refuse to let her spoil our day. It’s just you and me and the sea.’

  And half a million other bods, she thought, as they fought for a patch on the beach. Charles hated crowds, especially ones with transistor radios and progeny. But Ned knew everyone.

  ‘See that lady there,’ he whispered, ‘the one with the double boobs.’ Her purple-padded bikini top had shifted down, so that two purple cupolas abutted against her breasts, and all four mounds rose and fell in sleep. ‘She’s madly in love with her driving instructor – the one snoring beside her with the zebra-crossing on his swim trunks. They’re staying in sin at the Metropole, but her husband thinks she’s gone to a London clinic to get her boobs fixed. He’s a conventional sort of chap who likes his ladies with the usual two. There he is now!’

  He pointed to a small, swarthy man, waddling towards them with his trousers rolled up, and brandishing an ice cream cornet.

  ‘There’s going to be violence, I know it! Don’t look, Fran. He’s armed with a double-scoop strawberry.’

  She didn’t look. She was staring at Ned. He had just removed his blue cotton sweater and underneath was a dazzling white T-shirt printed with the words ‘I‘D SELL MY SOUL FOR FRANNY‘ in screaming scarlet capitals.

  ‘Ned!’

  ‘Do you like it? I got it done just before I met you. There’s a place outside the station which prints them while you wait. I was going to put ‘‘Franny for Pope’’, but something told me you’re an Anglican.’

  ‘Oh, Ned.’

  ‘Well, I suppose you must like it, if it’s just earned me two Neds in a row. Give me a kiss, then.’

  His face was moving towards hers. She dodged it and bestowed a safe
peck on his shoulder. He deserved it. No one had ever plastered her name all over them before. He was like a walking advertisement for Franny. She had stopped being Franny fifteen years ago. Charles didn’t approve of nicknames. But Ned had resurrected her. Sometimes she hardly knew who she was. Franny was almost dead, and Charles’ Frances was too precious to be taken out of its case, and there didn’t seem to be a central, essential Frances in between. She was one person with Charles and a different one with Ned, and another one still with Viv, and Laura and … And yet none of them was authentic or spontaneous. But just looking at her name written on Ned’s crazy chest made her feel better. Ned was like a rope trick. One flick of his wrist and the knotted, tangled piece of string she’d been all day pulled out into a simple scarlet ribbon. All right, she would be Franny – just for a day – one magic day, when the sun was shining and half of London had parked itself on Brighton beach and a marvellous mixed-up man thought fit to write her name all over his chest.

  ‘Ned,’ she said.

  ‘Yup?’

  ‘It’s super.’

  ‘So are you. Now close your eyes. It’s sandwich time and I’m about to say grace in Latin.’

  The peanut butter had melted into the bread and turned the sandwiches into soggy cowpats. He’d sat on the swiss roll and flattened it. The Acton market pears were long past their first, firm youth. On Charles’ rare trips to Brighton, he always ate at Wheeler’s, or ordered lunch in his suite at the Grand. He avoided picnics unless they were socially unavoidable, as at Glyndebourne or Lord’s. They had a picnic set, with proper china plates and small silver forks for the salmon and the strawberries. Ned was drinking out of the bottle and his table was two bare legs spread with a Mother’s Pride wrapper.

  Frances bit into a squelchy pear. The juice trickled down her wrist. Ned licked it off obligingly and kept his face, upside-down, below her chin. ‘That’s how you’d look to an Australian, I suppose. Smashing! Shall we swim after lunch?’

  ‘I haven’t brought my costume.’

  ‘I have! I bought you a bikini for your birthday. It must be your birthday soon, if you’re a Virgo. Christ, you really are a Virgo, aren’t you? – so tidy and efficient. I’ve never seen a girl give hospital corners to dirty sandwich papers before. I bet your dustbins look like ornamental swans.’

  Frances stared at the wrappers. She’d been giving them the Charles treatment quite unconsciously, smoothing them out and folding them into squares. She dropped them almost guiltily.

  ‘Happy birthday!’ said Ned, and passed her a package the size of a pocket hankie.

  ‘But it’s not my …’

  ‘It’s gotta be. Otherwise we can’t swim. Try it on.’

  It was nothing more than three Union Jacks – one to cover each of her vital territories, held together dangerously by skimpy scarlet ties.

  ‘Ned, I couldn’t possibly wear it! It’s outrageous. Everyone will stare.’

  ‘And so they should. You’re a Michelin entry, ‘‘worth a detour’’. Come on, get undressed. I want to see the only walking flag in Brighton. I bought it at the same place as the T-shirt. It could have been worse. I almost got it printed with a message in morse code. Do you know, they tattoo people there. While you wait. I heard them – screaming! Shall we be done on the way back? ‘‘Why did the swiss roll?’’ plastered all over my belly!’

  There wasn’t much room on his belly. It was already thickly tangled with honey-coloured hair, creeping down below his navel and disappearing into the top of his trunks. He had stripped off his shorts and his T-shirt and was standing naked except for six inches of striped poplin. Everyone else around them was more or less undressed, but somehow Ned looked nude. She couldn’t understand it. The whole beach was jostling with bare bodies, but Ned’s towered above them all like a naked bronze on a high pedestal. And yet he was small, made on a completely different scale from Charles, with narrower shoulders, tauter hips, a neat, tight bottom. Charles’ swim trunks didn’t cling like that, or plunge so disturbingly far below his stomach. Charles was a he-man, a bigger and better specimen than Ned, but Charles preferred to camouflage his form, hide it in a stern and unobtrusive uniform. Ned wore his body like an exhibit, even with his clothes on. ‘Look at me!’ it shouted, as he undid the bottom button on his shirt, or belted his trousers another inch tighter.

  He was displaying it now, leaping around her, throwing up the sand. ‘Hurry up, my love. We’ll have the sea to ourselves if we get a move on. Half these bods will be tramping back to ‘‘Sea View’’ and ‘‘Mon Repos’’ for their braised-landladies-with-custard, any minute. The one o’clock curfew. Stewed prunes, pass the ketchup. Aren’t you glad we’ve eaten?’

  Frances nodded, felt ridiculously glad about everything – the sea pouncing on the pebbles; the sun squeezing between brown bellies and trying to find room for itself on the beach; even the gimcrack little plastic windmill, which Ned had bought her and stuck in the sand, where it shouted to the wind. A simple, stupid word, ‘glad’, not big enough for the clean, salty feeling that tugged at her hair and had washed all the lipstick from the walls. All right, he shouldn’t be buying her bikinis and she shouldn’t be profaning the national flag by wearing them, but she was Franny today and the rules were different if you changed your name.

  He held a huge striped beach towel for her, and she tried to squirm out of her clothes.

  ‘Oops! Dropped it. We should have gone to Cannes – they’re topless there. Mind you, you look pretty stunning not topless. I’ve always yearned for a girl with red-white-and-blue breasts.’

  She could feel him looking at her and the glance was like a red-hot finger, outlining her curves.

  ‘Race you to the sea!’ she said, to escape his scrutiny. They skimmed across the beach, stumbling over sandcastles and stubbing their toes on spoil-sport stones. She was a barefoot Contessa again, with a red rosette crowing on her chest. And this time no Magda to come between her and her crazy, barefoot Count. He collapsed into the sea on top of her.

  ‘I won! Ouch, it’s freezing. I’ve changed my mind – race you back again.’

  She grabbed his hand and pushed him to his knees. ‘Rotter!’ he yelled. ‘Now I’ve swallowed a starfish and I’ll have a five-pointed stomach.’

  They were sitting in the shallows like toddlers, with waves thumping over their knees and seaweed tangling between their toes.

  ‘Shall I tell you something terrible?’ Ned felt for her hand under the water and buried it in the sand. ‘Promise me you won’t rush back to Richmond, in sheer disgust.’

  ‘What is it?’ She felt a sudden twinge of fear, didn’t want to rush back anywhere.

  ‘I can’t swim. It’s shameful, isn’t it?’ He yelped with laughter. ‘I’ve tried. Oh my God, I’ve tried. I got my best friend to push me in, once, and they scraped me off the bottom three weeks later. I even took fancy swimming lessons at the Municipal Baths in Penge with an All-England wrestler called Gladys. I sank her, all fourteen stone of her, and Penge Borough Council demanded compensation. The English don’t like non-swimmers. I suppose they think it’s unpatriotic, with all that water around us. They refused to serve me, once, when I tried to buy a pair of water wings …’

  She was shocked, despite his banter. Charles could swim five thousand metres without stopping. He did it every summer, as his annual endurance test. Plunged straight in – no messing – and slogged backwards and forwards in straight lines, until the distance was up. On each occasion he tried to cut his time down. He didn’t really like swimming, but it was a challenge and a discipline, a way of measuring his prowess and fitness, making sure he hadn’t softened up.

  Ned was walking on his knees and had reached neck-level, his head a smooth brown cup sticking up on a saucer of sea.

  ‘You swim, love, don’t let me stop you. You can pop across to Brittany and back, while I sit here and knit.’

  She didn’t want to swim. It was much more fun paddling and splashing and playing childish games. They jump
ed waves and collected treasures – half a crab, a cuttlefish, a barnacled beach shoe, even a message in a bottle. (Well, Ned swore it was a message.)

  They returned to their six-inch square of beach and Ned wrapped the treasures in the dirty sandwich papers and spread the towel for Frances. She shut her eyes against the sun and the space between her eyelids filled with gold and scarlet sequins. The sun was like a velvet towel, mopping all the water from her body, and acting like an anaesthetic to dull the darts of guilt and doubt which still kept pricking.

  ‘Happy?’ Ned murmured. His mouth was unaccountably close to her cheek, but she felt too lazy to move. He was trickling tiny shells across her bare tummy, his fingers soft and languorous. She was lying in a gold and scarlet paradise, where there was no time, no rules, only indolent sensations she dared not analyse. Ned and the sun had gone into partnership and were taking her over. The shingle had turned into swansdown and the sky into goose-feathers and she was tucked up between the two of them, safe, snug and heavy.

  When she woke up, there was something warm beside her, like a damp hot-water-bottle. It shifted a little and turned into Ned. His arms and legs were tangled up with hers and she was using his chest as a pillow. There was a strange roar in her ears – the noise of six thousand people trying to out-shout the sea. She opened her eyes to a kaleidoscope of colours. How could anyone drop off on Brighton beach, in the middle of a multi-coloured August, least of all Frances Parry Jones who often found it difficult to sleep in the padded darkness of her own hushed bedroom? But she’d gone out like a light. A transistor radio was blaring in her ear, and a posse of cockney kids was squabbling over Smarties, but she’d still fallen fast asleep in a damp bikini, on a bed of hard pebbles, and with a half-naked centaur by her side. She was astonished, almost proud. Charles would have punished her with ten black crosses, but she felt she deserved an accolade. Not gold stars – they were reserved for Proust and piano practice. Red letters, perhaps, to match red-letter days and the scarlet message singing across Ned’s shirt. ‘I’d sell my soul for Franny.’ Charles wouldn’t. Charles didn’t sell anything, unless he’d carefully calculated his net profit, after VAT, depreciation and capital gains tax.