Cuckoo Page 24

  She had been. And so was Frances. It was obvious she had changed. Some new, careless lethargy clung around her body like a second skin. It wasn’t just the shabby dress, but something very basic. He had seen it with Piroska. The only difference was, Piroska had been expendable and Frances wasn’t. He leant across and took her hand, checking first that nobody was watching.

  ‘Come back, Frances. Please. I miss you. I’ve wronged you over Magda – I admit it, and I’m sorry. But you’ve wronged me, too, and far more irresponsibly. But I still want you back – I know that. I’ve never told you this before, but I need you. Very deeply.’

  She almost choked on a fragment of French bread. Charles never needed anyone. He was totally self-sufficient, moulded people, enlightened them, but needed them – impossible! She saw herself reflected in the pale wastes of his eyes, could hardly believe that he was pleading with her, begging.

  ‘Frances, let’s start again, darling. I love you. I want you.’

  He had never told her he loved her in a public place before. And this was Croft’s. Nothing was fake at Croft’s, or insubstantial. Croft’s meant genuine authenticity, true sterling value.

  She forced down the scrap of bread. ‘But do you want the baby?’

  A waiter glided over and stared reproachfully at Charles’ untouched mousse. ‘Was something wrong, sir?’

  ‘No, no, absolutely not. Everything first-rate as always.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. I do hope you’ll do justice to the sole, sir. They were sent up from Newhaven just this morning.’

  Newhaven. That’s where Ned had caught a conger eel. They’d gone there after Brighton, a lifetime ago, squatted on a breakwater and skimmed pebbles through the waves. Ned would teach the baby to fish, build it sandcastles, make it laugh. The crested silver soup-spoon suddenly felt too heavy in her hand. She put it down. ‘Do you want me back with the baby?’ she repeated.

  That would be the perfect compromise – Ned’s baby in Charles’ house. If she tried, she could almost turn it into Charles’ child. There were things a kid needed – a heritage, a legacy. You had to pass on values and traditions. This Club, for instance, symbol of all Charles represented, and all she’d come to prize herself. She couldn’t deny those standards to her child.

  Two waiters were already hovering, bearing the sole like the Blessed Sacrament. ‘Shall I fillet it for you, sir?’

  ‘Please.’

  He hadn’t answered her. He was fussing over his fishbone while her baby’s fate hung in the balance. A third waiter swamped them both with vegetables – épinards au beurre and chou-fleur Mornay smothering an unborn child.

  ‘Mustard, madam? The English or the Dijon?’ Three waiters, four.

  ‘Thanks, just a spot of English.’

  ‘Certainly, madam. Tartare sauce for you, sir?’ Four waiters, five. And now the head waiter salaaming in front of them, kneading his hands like pastry, an expression of pained subservience ironed and starched into his features.

  ‘Everything all right, sir?’

  ‘Excellent, thank you, Lewis.’

  ‘Madam?’

  ‘Yes, fine.’ Everything just fine, except the baby. Soup fine, spinach fine, only the infant cooling on her plate, abandoned like a piece of gristle.

  At last the tide of waiters ebbed away, leaving nothing on the beach except a small, forgotten foetus.

  ‘Well, Charles?’

  He picked up his wine glass and sipped. Mersault fine. Vintage fine. She could see his lips, full and generous, distorted in the glass. The restaurant had stopped breathing. His voice was so soft, she had to lip-read. His lips were pale, edged with a tiny wash of golden wine.

  ‘No, Frances,’ they were saying. ‘I can’t accept the baby. It wouldn’t work. I know I’d feel – look, leave it at that. It’s simply quite impossible.’

  He was sipping again, only to hide his face. Suddenly he drained the glass and rammed it back on the table. ‘Look, you must come back. Then we can scrub the whole summer out, and start again. We’ll make a deal. I’ll send Magda back to Hungary and you … get yourself – er – fixed about the baby.’

  Frances had ordered entrecôte. Slowly she cut into it and watched it bleed over the pale cauliflower, the waxy white potatoes. ‘Fixed, Charles?’

  ‘You know what I mean, sweetheart. It’s simple nowadays. You can see the finest chap in London. We’ll book you in at the best private clinic, with convalescence afterwards. I’ll take you away. We’ll go to the Seychelles, Corfu – anywhere. I’ll make it up to you.’

  Knifing into babies, cutting them out as easily as filleting a fish, the baby she’d waited fifteen years to bear. Buying the best murderer in London, paying for an execution, flowers for the grave, hothouse grapes for the funeral. Celebrating afterwards in a five-star hotel, washing the baby’s blood away with Moét et Chandon.

  A deal, he called it. The perfect word for the perfect businessman. I’ll sacrifice my child, if you destroy yours. How many times would Magda have to be uprooted to pay the debts that were never hers? First to Richmond, then to Westborough, and now dragged half-way across Europe, back to Budapest, to balance the death of a baby who wouldn’t even be her half-brother.

  ‘We can’t do that, Charles, it’s criminal. Magda’s suffered enough, and my child hasn’t even got its limbs, yet. Let’s have them both. Can’t that be a different sort of deal – a better one? Let’s get Magda home from boarding school and try again. I know I can be loving to her this time, if only you’ll let me keep my own baby. Let’s not even talk about mine and yours. Can’t they both be ours, Charles? Our children.’

  Charles’ fish lay like a white shroud on the cold white plate, his face above it the same dead unnatural white. He shut his eyes. ‘Magda’s not my child.’

  ‘What?’ Frances’ voice began as a whisper and finished as a shout. Two waiters rushed. She waited, silent, for a moment, while Charles oiled them away. ‘Of course she is. You’re raving …’

  Charles swallowed his first mouthful of fish, then laid his knife and fork down. ‘No, Frances, you told me so yourself, only a few short days ago.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it, Charles. How could you think I meant it? I was just trying to get my own back. Of course she’s yours. She’s got the same proud, stubborn shell as you, to start with. And the same love and loyalty underneath. She’s even got your mouth.’

  ‘You didn’t say that on Friday.’

  ‘Well, no, but …’

  ‘You didn’t even mean it on Friday. You told me quite distinctly she was nothing like me in the least, that there wasn’t even a bond between us, no love, no tie, no likeness.’

  ‘Look, Charles, I only …’

  ‘There was a bond, Frances, but you destroyed it. You took away the only thing I felt a sort of reverence for – the blood link with a child. It’s sacred, somehow. I can’t explain it, but it was there, all right. I admit I wasn’t marvellous with the kid. I never even knew what she was thinking, or what the hell I ought to talk to her about. But the relationship was real, precious, until you ruined it. Whatever the truth is now – genes, or likenesses, or chromosomes – as far as I’m concerned she’s not mine any more. You’ve killed her as my daughter.’

  Frances shut her eyes. So she was a murderer, was she? But why, in hell’s name had he never said those things before, let her see that a child was precious to him, instead of just a nuisance, an expense? How ironical it was. Here they were, almost united in the way they saw the holy bond of parenthood, and yet she’d only realized it too late, when she’d forged that bond with someone else. She felt terrible regret, but also anger.

  ‘You’ve already had your kid for fifteen years. Mine’s not even born. And, anyway, Magda’s still alive, wonderfully alive. You can’t just deny her as your daughter, because of some rubbish I let slip in a row. You must want to kill her, to react like that. Leave her alone – we’ve ruined her life enough. And leave me alone. And my baby. I intend to have this baby. I’ve let you
mould my life for almost sixteen years, but now I’m going to smash the mould and go my own way. This child’s the first thing I’ve ever had without your rubber stamp.’

  She hardly knew what she was saying. It was saying itself, pouring through the dam they’d built so carefully to keep out any flood. If only he’d stop her, interrupt, or make some bland remark about late Victorian watercolours, or the refloating of the pound. But all she could read in his eyes was murderer.

  ‘Look, I didn’t kill your daughter. And, if I did, you helped to kill her, too. We both killed her; our home killed her, our rules, our stupid, rigid, narrow barrenness. But that doesn’t mean we have to kill another child. Why can’t we change, Charles? We can still bring Magda back, resurrect her. We can resurrect ourselves, if only we’d stop being so terrified.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Frances, I don’t know what you’re talking about, except that it sounds very uncontrolled. I don’t want your lover’s breakneck ideas served up with my sole.’

  ‘How dare you, Charles! Don’t you ever give me credit for thinking for myself? Just because I’ve stopped spouting the Gospel according to St Charles, does it mean …’

  Nobody had ever walked out of Croft’s Club in the middle of a sentence, least of all in the middle of a Pichon-Longueville-Baron 1967. Charles tried to staunch the flow of waiters. ‘I’m sorry, my wife’s not feeling well …

  ‘Perhaps she shouldn’t have had the steak, sir, if she’s unwell. How about a little steamed plaice, sir? Or we could do an omelette. We don’t usually serve omelettes in the evening, sir, but in your case …’

  Charles flung a wad of bank notes on the table, to pay for a dozen omelettes, and strode swiftly after Frances, through the hushed, mahogany-panelled hallway, past the obsequious shufflings of the doorman. She was already half-way down the drive, her damask napkin still clutched in her hand, trailing on the tarmac.

  ‘Frances, wait!’

  She didn’t. He sprinted to catch up, stood in front of her, took both her hands in his. ‘I’m sorry, darling. Look, don’t let’s act impulsively. Come back with me for coffee, and we’ll try to sort things out.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘You’ve talked.’

  ‘Not really. There are lots of things I haven’t even touched on. I love you.’

  ‘You said that.’

  ‘I do love you, Frances. I need you. Please come back.’

  ‘You said that, too.’

  ‘It’s not just me. There are some things I can’t manage on my own.’

  ‘Like scrambled eggs?’

  ‘No, Frances, more important things. I want to ask you a favour.’

  ‘I know your favours. Just kill a child – that’s all you want, isn’t it? Rip it out, flush it down the loo, and then we’ll all be nice and cosy again.’

  She shrugged him off and streaked ahead. There were stones underfoot now, small obstreperous pebbles which ambushed her sandals and tripped her up.

  ‘Frances, you’ll break your neck!’

  He grabbed her almost roughly and led her off the path, across the grass. A wooden bench basked in a puddle of moonlight, beneath a sagging cedar. Croft’s cedars were as venerable as their port. It was no longer raining, but cold, lurking drops pounced suddenly from branch to bench, alarming the silence.

  ‘At least come back for Saturday,’ he pleaded.

  ‘Why Saturday?’

  ‘It’s our wedding anniversary.’

  ‘Oh I know that. I’d hardly forget, after sixteen years. But you don’t expect us to celebrate it, do you?’

  ‘Well, no, but Oppenheimer’s coming.’

  ‘Oh, our little friend again! How nice for you.’ Easy to be sarcastic, but Oppenheimer’s name was somehow a terrible reminder. He it was who had kept them apart at crucial ovulation time. If Charles hadn’t been sent to save his company, the baby in her womb might well have been legitimate. She still wasn’t sure whether she wanted Charles’ baby, rather than Ned’s, but at least it would have been simpler and more sacred. No rows and recrimination, then, no guilt and embarrassment, no threat of abortion, nor risk of poverty. Quarrels and conflict were bad for any child. All the baby-books advised you to nurture a foetus in an atmosphere of radiant composure, not race about a shrubbery in the pitch dark, spoiling for a fight.

  ‘Listen, Frances, I’ve invited him to stay. I didn’t have much choice. He’s off to South America to develop a stretch of jungle. It’s quite a tricky business, so he’s all keyed up about it. His plane arrives from Jersey in the late afternoon, and he’s got a one-night stay in London before the morning flight. I asked him back with us. I couldn’t not. He’ll need a briefing with me, in any case.’

  ‘So you plan to spend your sixteenth wedding anniversary closeted with a Lord of the Jungle. Well, at least you won’t need me around.’

  ‘Of course I’ll need you, Frances. I want you there as my wife, to entertain him.’

  ‘So that’s what needing me means, does it? I thought for one crazy moment you might actually need me for myself, not just to be a smarming hostess, daintying your jungle politics with my veal cordon bleu and my Constance Spry flower arrangements … That’s all I’ve ever been to you, isn’t it? The perfect Mrs Charles Parry Jones, cementing your investment deals, advertising your happy, faithful marriage, your solidity, your credit-worthiness …’

  ‘It has been happy, Frances, most of it. Just because …’

  ‘Well, it isn’t now. And it won’t be on Saturday. I shan’t be there.’ She realized, suddenly, she had turned the tables on him. When she’d begged him to return from Nassau, he’d put Oppenheimer before her baby. Now she was doing the opposite, revelling in her power. All her married life she’d sat on the sidelines, while Charles and his kingpin clients diced for the world. Now she’d upset the board and hidden the counters.

  ‘You can tell dear Heinrich Tarzan that your doting consort won’t be around on Saturday. She’ll be in Acton – knitting baby clothes for another man’s child.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Frances, you must be there. I can’t let Oppenheimer down. Not again. He asked after you especially. I even told him about our anniversary. He said he’d be honoured to help us celebrate. He’ll have made all his arrangements by now, bought us a present and …’

  ‘I see. So I’m to come back home, merely because some stinking-rich parvenu has lashed out a fiver on a silver-plated egg cup, and I’m expected to rush back to offer humble thanks.’

  He shuddered at the new, sarcastic language she had brought with her from Acton, like a souvenir. ‘No, Frances. I need you there because Oppenheimer happens to be a very respected client, and I have a special obligation to him.’

  ‘Oh yes, it’s his millions you’re obliged to, isn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t be a hypocrite! I’ve told you already, Frances, it’s money like his which provides your whole rich life style. You can’t have one and damn the other.’

  She was silent. Even at Ned’s, she had her ritzy car to run about in, and a string of credit cards to splurge on anything that took her eye. One of her niggles against Ned was that he didn’t come complete with a freezer and a tumble-drier, a nanny and a country cottage. She only realized how much she needed all those things when she was faced with losing them. Money wasn’t simply meaningless possessions; money meant Charles and Croft’s Club. Money meant Oppenheimer.

  There was an obligation. They’d stayed in Jersey less than a year ago and Oppenheimer had flung open the flood-gates to them both, offering them his house, his yacht, his second Rolls, his influence and contacts on the island. He was a Croesus, not a Tarzan. And it was she who had wallowed in it all, sunning herself in his gold, which Charles had to quarry in the dark frowning pit-shaft of the boardroom.

  Couldn’t she cook them one anniversary dinner, in return? But it wasn’t just a dinner. Cooking it would mean turning back into Mrs Charles Parry Jones. And Mrs Parry Jones was barren, her pit-s
haft empty and worked-out.

  ‘Look, Charles, couldn’t you book him into a really nice hotel? I know it’s not the same, but …’

  ‘How can I, Frances? What reason could I give? I’ve offered him personal hospitality and I can’t go back on it. He was decent enough about the court case. I can hardly mess him about a second time. Even if I said you were ill, he’d come rushing round with flowers. Anyway, all the hotels are full by now, especially at a weekend. It’s still the height of the tourist season. You don’t just dump a man like Oppenheimer on the town, when you’ve promised him your home. He’d take it as a slight.‘

  She stared up at the dark grid of branches barring the face of the moon. Wasn’t it a slight to her, as well, that he was more worried about saving face with Oppenheimer than saving their marriage? But it wasn’t that simple. She couldn’t sling women’s lib slogans in his face and still grab on to all the goodies he provided. The trouble was she wanted everything – security as well as freedom, ambrosia in Acton, on top of entrecôte at Croft’s. But life didn’t work like that. If you settled for a charge account at Harrods, then you couldn’t indulge in midnight feasts and Mars bars with a feckless fisherman. She tried to strip everything away, claret and Kashans on one side, kites and candyfloss on the other, and see if anything was left genuinely indispensable. It wasn’t easy. There were stumbling blocks like love and loyalty, morality, habit and tradition, and a crazy, contradictory impulse which leapfrogged over all of them with a Harvey Smith gesture. Only one small thing remained totally unyielding – that vital second heartbeat in her womb.

  She turned to face Charles on the bench. Everything about him was unassailably familiar, his shape, his voice, the faint, stern whiff of power and after-shave combined. If her baby was so precious, then only he could be its guardian, a man who held the whole world together merely by frowning at it.

  ‘Charles,’ she whispered. Perhaps there would still be anniversaries – silver, ruby, gold … ‘I will come back, not just for Saturday, but for always, so long as I can come home with the baby.’