A Regimental Affair (5 page)

‘How is Alice – and Megan, of course?’

‘Alice is fine. Megan’s at public school.’

Ginny looked aghast. ‘My God! So grown-up.’

‘You must come round and meet them again. Megan’ll be back soon and Alice was so pleased to hear you’d been posted here.’

Ginny didn’t say anything. She had a feeling that the last few words were a lie. She could not imagine that in the intervening ten years Alice Davies would have revised her opinion about her.

Bob left the bar and Ginny ordered a lemonade from the steward. Taking her drink, she picked up a tabloid to read but, although she looked at the headlines, she didn’t take in a single word. She was far too busy thinking about Bob. She decided that the two wings of grey that had appeared at his temples made him look very distinguished, but that had been the only change she could see. His fringe still fell almost into his eyes as it had done ten years previously. When she had been talking to him she had wanted to push it off his face and she had only just managed to refrain.

She recalled the time when they went on a climbing expedition together and they had been alone on a ledge while they waited for the other members of their party to join them. She had allowed herself to do it then and she remembered how soft his hair had felt. Bob had looked surprised and then he had leant towards her. She was certain he was about to kiss her when they were interrupted by one of their fellow climbers appearing from below. Bob had grinned at her a little sheepishly as he moved away again.

Ginny had wondered then, and since, if he had been embarrassed about almost getting caught or allowing his feelings to show. Ginny sipped her lemonade, gave up any pretence of reading the paper and admitted to herself that she still fancied him like mad. She knew it was wrong and she knew it was unwise but she couldn’t help it. She plonked her drink firmly on the table. No, not unwise, she told herself. Completely stupid. Bob was off-limits and was going to stay that way.

When Alice saw Megan’s hair, it was every bit as hideous as she had imagined it would be. No wonder Miss Pink had been so annoyed. It was not the sort of advertisement she would want for her school.

‘I’ll make an appointment at the hairdressers to get it dyed back,’ said Alice as they drove home from the school. Megan said nothing. ‘What on earth possessed you? And black!’ Megan still didn’t reply. ‘Well?’

‘Well what?’ she said with a deep sigh.

‘Don’t you take that tone with me.’

Megan sighed again. ‘But I like my hair this colour.’

‘Of course you don’t.’

Megan raised her eyebrows in exasperation. ‘I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t wanted it to be this colour.’

‘We’ll get it dyed back and that is that.’

Megan didn’t argue but Alice knew she actually had to get her daughter to the hairdressers. That was another matter.

‘It’s a shame nothing can be done before tomorrow.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘I’m having a coffee morning for the other wives.’ Bob had persuaded Alice that she might as well hold her function at Montgomery House. As he had pointed out, they could hardly confine Megan to her room for the whole of the holidays and so there was no point in altering things as people were bound to come across Megan and her hair at some point.

Megan groaned. ‘Gross.’

‘Well, if you’re going to be like that about it, you can stay in your room.’

‘That’s what you’d like, isn’t it?’

Megan might be the teenager from hell
, thought Alice,
but she isn’t stupid
. ‘Not really. I was rather hoping you might help out.’ Alice was hoping nothing of the sort.

‘Huh.’

Alice was finding Megan’s monosyllabic grunts increasingly irritating but she knew it would be better not to rise to the bait. ‘I hope you’re not going to be like this for the whole of the Easter holidays. You don’t want your father to go off to Kosovo with a memory of you doing nothing but sulk.’

‘What would he care?’

Alice almost snapped. It was only the fact that she had both hands on the steering wheel with the car doing seventy along a stretch of dual carriageway that stopped Alice from slapping Megan’s thigh. ‘He would care very much. And I’m not going to stand for you spoiling his last few weeks at home.’

Megan didn’t reply, she just glowered at her mother.

They didn’t exchange a further word for the remainder of the two-hour journey. When the car pulled up outside Montgomery House, Megan got out, slammed the door and dragged her case from the boot. Alice had expected her to comment on her new home at the very least. Really, that child was the limit sometimes.

Alice locked the car and opened the front door. ‘Your room is at the top of the stairs on the left.’

Megan didn’t answer; she just thumped up the stairs, banging her suitcase against the paintwork. Alice breathed deeply and refused yet again to take the bait.

Megan threw her case on the bed and looked at her room in disgust. Pink –
again
. Why did her mother have this fixation with pink? Every room she could remember, and there had been a few, had been painted pink. God, it was so twee. But that was their house all over; all frills and knick-knacks, with dainty little ornaments littering the surfaces. Megan vowed that when she had a place of her own she would have absolutely no clutter. Nowhere. Ever. And no pink.

Megan propped herself up against her pillows and angrily studied her new room. At least it was a decent size. Better than the last place they’d lived in at any rate. It was odd seeing all her things arranged differently, although it was still completely recognizable as her room. Or rather what her mother’s idea of her room should be. Pink and frilly, with a white and gold dressing table to match her white and gold headboard, chintzy cushions scattered on her pink counterpane and pink curtains at her window. But all the pink plastic toys that Megan had longed for with a passion when she was little had never materialised – the Barbies, the My Little Ponies, the Sylvanian Families. Alice had made no secret of the fact that she considered them naff, and instead Megan had been given dolls with beautiful clothes and porcelain faces, a designer doll’s house, a wooden rocking horse with a horsehair mane and tail, all of which were still in her room, still pristine, still ignored, still unloved, still unwanted.

At least, thought Megan crossly, she’d managed to make her mother see sense about her clothes. A stand-up, knock-’em-down, drag-’em-out row in John Lewis had put paid to Start-Rite shoes, tartan kilts and coats with velvet collars. She’d stamped her foot and cried, her mother had been ashen-faced, shushing and embarrassed. Megan was a little embarrassed herself at the memory – after all, she had been eleven at the time and hardly of an age to be throwing a tantrum in public, but the ploy had worked. She knew her mother would crack before she did and after ten minutes (although it had seemed infinitely longer) she had got her mother to agree to take her to Top Shop. She hadn’t needed to set foot in John Lewis since. And now, thank God, she was like the rest of her classmates when out of uniform, indistinguishable in baggy jeans, skimpy tops and hooded sweatshirts.

She pulled her case towards her and flicked open the catches. The lid sprang open and Megan reached in and pulled out the latest
Cosmo
. She thought it better if she stayed out of her mother’s way for a while. She immersed herself in an article about body piercing – if she was going to get her belly button done, she needed to know the possible pitfalls. She’d just finished that and was about to start doing the ‘How Sexy are You?’ quiz when there was a knock on her door. Guiltily, she stuffed the magazine back in her case. Mum would not approve. ‘Yeah,’ she called.

Her father opened it. ‘Hiya, Megs. Got a hug for your dad?’

Megan scrambled off her bed and ran over to him. She put her head on his chest as he folded her in his arms. His khaki jersey was scratchy but she didn’t care and it smelt as it always did – a faint mix of cigarette smoke and his aftershave.

Bob ruffled her hair. ‘Hmm. Not sure about the colour.’

‘Don’t you start as well,’ she mumbled into the wool.

‘Your mother giving you a hard time?’

‘What do you think?’ Megan looked up at him. ‘You know what she’s like.’

‘It’s only ’cause she wants the best for you.’

‘No. It’s because she wants me to be like Princess Eugenie.’

Bob laughed. Megan knew he agreed with her but that he couldn’t say so. They both knew Alice pored over anything to do with royal children in her glossy magazines.

‘So, do you approve of your new home?’

‘’S OK.’

‘It’s big.’

‘Mum must be in seventh heaven.’

‘Probably.’ They both laughed again. ‘I’ve got to go back to work. I only popped back to say hello to you. It’s a bit busy at the moment.’

‘Yeah.’ Megan resented the army with a vengeance. She hated the way it was always taking her father away from her.

‘So why don’t you come downstairs and make your peace with your mother?’

‘She still mad at me?’

‘She’s calmed down. I think the hair was a bit of a shock.’

‘Yeah, well …’

‘Not quite as you planned either, eh?’

‘Of course it was.’ Megan couldn’t hold her father’s steady gaze. ‘Well, not quite,’ she finally admitted.

‘So let your mother pay to have it sorted out. It’ll make her happy.’

‘Maybe.’

‘She could probably do with a hand too. She’s up to her ears in baking in the kitchen.’

‘Coffee morning tomorrow. She told me.’

‘I’d best get back to the office. See you at supper.’

Her dad left the room. Megan stared after him. She wished he didn’t have to go away. Six months meant he was going to be away for the summer too. Back for Christmas. Well, hoo-bloody-ray. There was still the problem of eight weeks in the summer with only her mother for company.

Chapter Four

At seven-thirty, Ginny called it a day. She’d been in the office since eight that morning and, apart from a toasted sandwich that she had grabbed from the mess at lunchtime, she had worked solidly. Debbie and Richard were expecting her for ‘kitchen supper’ and she owed it to her hosts to have a shower and change out of uniform before she went round. She grabbed a pile of papers that Colonel Bob had asked to see and wandered along to his office.

‘He’s just left,’ Richard informed her, seeing her standing in the doorway. He was busy clearing his desk and locking the safe.

‘Oh, he wanted these.’ She waved the sheaf of documents.

‘Leave them on his desk.’

‘No. I’ll drop them in to Montgomery House on the way round to yours. He said he wanted to see them today.’

‘Would you like me to do it?’

‘No, it’s OK. He may want to ask me questions about a couple of things.’

‘OK then. See you later.’

Ginny left regimental headquarters and scooted back to the mess. In record time she showered, changed, repaired her make-up and tidied her hair. Squirting a puff of perfume with one hand she grabbed the papers with the other and left her room just as the grandfather clock in the entrance hall struck eight. A couple of minutes later she rang the bell of Montgomery House. She hoped she wasn’t interrupting supper or anything; eight was an awkward time to be calling.

An odd-looking waif with jet black hair opened the door. ‘Yes,’ said the child.

‘Megan?’Surely not.

‘Yes.’

‘Really?’

Big sigh. ‘Yes.’

Ginny remembered her manners. ‘God, I’m sorry. You must think I’m dreadfully rude. Except that the last time I saw you, you could only have been about two, two and a half.’

‘Oh.’

‘I used to babysit you.’

‘Oh.’

This conversation was proving too much like hard work for Ginny. ‘Is your dad in?’

‘Yeah.’

Perhaps it wasn’t cool to be chatty when you were thirteen.

Megan left the door open and Ginny stepped into the hall. From a room on the right Ginny could hear a murmur of voices, then Megan reappeared and told Ginny to go into the sitting room before disappearing upstairs.

‘Come through here, Ginny,’ called Bob. ‘Come and say hello to Alice.’

Ginny followed the direction of the CO’s voice. Ginny noted that Alice’s taste hadn’t altered a bit in the intervening years, only now it was on a grander scale. Even more she seemed to be trying to recreate the drawing room of some stately home. There were more ornaments, more little tables, more silver photo frames, more antiques, a big overmantel mirror on the wall and natty tie-backs on the curtains. Ginny thanked her lucky stars she didn’t have to clean and polish this lot. She pitied whoever did. Somehow she didn’t think it was Alice these days.

She switched her attention from the room to her boss’s wife, sitting on a rather uncomfortable-looking Queen Anne chair, stitching a piece of needlework and watching an opera on BBC2. Very
Country Life
, thought Ginny cattily.

‘Hello, Alice. How lovely to see you again.’ She hoped she sounded sincere.

‘Ginny. How nice. Bob told me you were here. Have you settled in all right?’

‘I was about to ask you the same.’

There was a brief silence and the two women smiled at each other with their mouths but not with their eyes.

‘Can I offer you a drink or something?’ said Alice.

‘No. I can’t stay. I’m late already.’ Ginny switched her attention to the colonel. ‘I’ve brought those papers you wanted.’

‘Oh, surely they could have waited until morning,’ interrupted Alice.

‘I did ask to see them today,’ said Bob with a slight smile to Ginny, as if to apologise. Alice sniffed.

Ginny felt the sooner she got out of there the less she would upset Alice. She didn’t care about Alice’s feelings but it wasn’t a good idea to antagonise the boss’s wife in front of the boss – even if you knew that he liked you. ‘Right, well I’d better go, leave you in peace.’

‘Off somewhere nice?’ asked Bob.

‘Supper at Richard and Debbie’s.’

‘That’ll be fun.’

Ginny nodded. She thought she had detected a hint of wistfulness in his voice. She didn’t think Alice went in for ‘fun’ evenings somehow. Once again Ginny wondered why Bob had married Alice. She just didn’t seem his type. Perhaps she had been more of a live wire in her youth.