At that moment, the door opened. I hadn’t expected Susie to come to greet us, but she did. I marked that down as a big gesture on her part, and so did Prim, for her face changed again. Uncertainty was something else I’d never known her to show before. Then my wife said, ‘Come here,’ and the two of them hugged. For all the nonsense, they’d been on decent terms in the past. Of course, Prim started crying again, didn’t she? This time I left her to Susie to sort out.
‘Hey,’ I heard her say, as she swept her inside, ‘there’s no need for that. Come on; I’ll show you your room and you can lie down for a bit.’ Take me back five years and tell me that I’d wind up watching that scene and I’d have called you crazy.
I felt unsettled as I led Janet back to her tree-house, and for the first time, a little annoyed. I knew, I just knew, that something I did not want or need was about to erupt into my life. And it was my own bloody fault for being soft enough to invite it in.
Chapter 8
When I was back indoors, after handing Janet back to Ethel, I went through to the office conservatory. Audrey was there on her own, so I guessed either that Prim was still ‘lying down’ or that Susie had reached the same conclusion as I had, namely that a drink would be more therapeutic.
There was a new document on my side of the desk. ‘Everett’s movie?’ I asked. Our secretary nodded. I picked it up: it had a project number on the first page, that was all. Industrial espionage is a big part of movie life: clearly the big man knew that much about the business already. For all my wife’s leaning on me, I still wasn’t that keen on the idea, but I picked it up and began to glance through it.
I looked at the plot outline, then the shooting schedule, and saw right away that my potential part was a wee bit more than a cameo, as it had been described: I was only in around ten per cent of the scenes, but they were all quite lengthy and half of them were at the end.
I started to read through the script, or at least the sections that were of direct interest to me. It wasn’t exactly Ingmar Bergman, but Everett’s audience were more the action-before-intellect type, and by those standards it read okay. Well, no, that’s not true: it read terribly, but with a bit of imagination, a bit of inflection here and there, backed up by good direction and editing, I reckoned that it would be okay. Whether I was in it or not, I didn’t want my friend’s first venture to be an embarrassment.
I was into the second scene when the door opened and the former and current Mrs Blackstones came in. They were both carrying tall glasses. . Susie’s looked like orange juice, but I took a guess that Prim’s was Bacardi and tonic, unless she’d changed her tastes as well as her appearance.
My wife motioned me to follow, turning on her heel and leading the way from the office across to the conservatory wing on the west side of the house, where the pool is. Afternoon had given way to evening, but it was still warm in there: all the doors to the garden were open and the roof vents too, yet the automatic air-conditioning was still blowing.
‘Where’s my drink?’ I grumbled, as the women settled into the wicker seats, set round the glass-topped table.
‘In the fridge,’ said Susie, pointing to the big cooler that we keep out there. I opened it, chose a bottle of a Belgian beer known colloquially as ‘wife-beater’, and joined them.
I looked at Prim. She had changed out of her travel clothes into a light top-and-trousers outfit, city gear rather than country: once again, this was someone I felt I knew only slightly.
‘Okay,’ I said, quietly. ‘Let’s hear it.’
She glanced at the floor, then at the shimmering surface of the pool. Finally she looked across at me. ‘Two years ago,’ she began, ‘well, no, it’ll be a bit more than that now, I met a man.’
In spite of myself, I grinned. ‘When do we get to the surprise?’ Susie fetched me a look that was the equivalent of a clout round the ear. ‘Sorry, go on.’
‘You know that I went back to nursing, after the last time I saw you, that is?’
I nodded. ‘Dawn told me. She said it was to let you get your head back together, and to recover some of the old family values.’
A corner of her mouth flickered. ‘Did you believe that?’
‘I believed that Dawn believed it, and I even gave you the credit for believing it at the time yourself.’
‘But you couldn’t see it lasting?’
‘To be honest, no: I reckoned you’d get bored before long and be off on your travels again.’
‘Since you’re that bloody clever, it’s a pity you didn’t tell me!’
‘We were each other’s keepers for long enough. Plus, we were in the process of getting divorced, remember. So, how long did it take you to get bored out of your scone?’
She smiled wistfully and scratched her chin. ‘It took a couple of months for me to realise why I’d left the profession in the first place, and another couple before I was going bats. I couldn’t go back home, though. My mum had made a good physical recovery from her cancer, but she was still preoccupied with it emotionally, and she didn’t need to be lumbered with my mid-thirties crisis. As for my father. . Oz, you know him, you know what he’s like.’
Yes, I know David Phillips: he’s a very nice, kind man who’s been content to let his wife and daughters rule most of his adult life. He is also from the Planet Zog.
‘So you packed a bag, quit your job and disappeared into the night?’ I prompted.
She scrunched up her eyebrows, as if she was pinching back more tears. ‘I should have, months before I actually did, that is. I should have gone off to Africa or the US or wherever … And yet even now when I say that I don’t mean it.’
I decided to push things along a bit, before she unravelled again. ‘Where did you meet him?’
‘You reckon you know me that well?’ she shot back, bitterly. ‘You just assume it was a man. Primavera’s in trouble, so the cause has to be some bloke’s pants hanging on the bedroom door. Is it that easy to diagnose?’
‘You said that you met a man. Where did that happen?’
‘Gleneagles Hotel,’ she answered, her short-lived feistiness going out of her with a great sigh. ‘After a couple of years, I decided that I had to see my parents again. So I quit my job, and headed north. It was good for a while, but all they did was hang about the house all day, so in the evenings I’d go along to Gleneagles for a drink. I went on my own, but the staff knew who I was, so they didn’t worry that I was a high-class hooker or anything.’
‘Did anyone else think that?’
‘Gleneagles isn’t that sort of place, Oz. Most of the time I just sat, read the magazines in the lounge and people-watched. Occasionally there would be a man there on his own, and we’d say hello to each other, but it was always very proper. Even when I met him, it was all above board.’
‘Name of?’
‘Wallinger; Paul Wallinger, bastard that he is.’
There was so much pure hatred in her tone that even Susie was startled. I try to listen to both sides of an argument before taking sides, but I knew right then that I didn’t like Mr Wallinger.
‘What was his story?’
‘We met in the cocktail bar, my usual hang-out: I was on my third Bacardi, and just getting nicely relaxed, when he came in from the dining room, tall, dark-haired, tanned, clean-cut.’
My wife glanced at me. ‘I know someone else who answers that description.’
Prim went slightly pink. ‘To tell you the truth, that’s what made me give him more than just one glance; he does have a passing resemblance to Oz. He didn’t as much as look my way, though. He sat down at another table and ordered a Macallan, then he picked up one of the posh magazines and started to read it. Still he never even looked in my direction. That must have stirred my vanity, for when he glanced around to catch the waiter’s eye, I made damn sure that mine got in the way too.’
I knew that scene. ‘So you pulled him,’ I suggested, ‘not the other way around.’