Connections (15 page)

“Shall I tell him to go?” Joe asked.

“There'll only be a row. Let him stay and make his little demonstration.”

“I'll go and tell him he can't come back – after,” Joe told him. He left the room.

“Who can't come back?” Ellen asked.

“Just somebody I don't think has any place here,” Dominic said.

“Surely that's for me to say,” Ellen said. “I want all Van's friends, people who knew her – oh, that reminds me, Dominic, will you go to Tesco's for some kitchen roll? We're right out.”

“It's too late, Ellen,” he said gently. “The cars will be here soon.”

“But we're right out—”

Dominic moved towards her and put his arms round her. “We'll get some later,” he told her. She slumped against him. “It doesn't matter,” he said.

“I know it doesn't,” she said in a low voice. “Oh Dominic, this is so awful.”

“I know. Just get through it. We're all here to help you.”

The doorbell rang. “The cars are here,” said someone outside the kitchen door. Dominic took Ellen's arm and walked her to the front door.

There weren't enough cars for everyone so Joe and Fleur volunteered to take the bus and found themselves at the bus stop with Chas, a handsome young man in a good dark coat. Joe ignored him.

“Looks like rain. Pity my motor's in the dock,” Chas remarked imperturbably.

“Pity you're not,” Joe said.

“Come on, Joe. Sad occasion and all that. We all loved Van. I knew her from knee high.”

Joe said nothing.

“This wasn't down to me,” Chas said.

“Chas,” Joe told him, “shut up. You shouldn't be here and everybody knows it, but you are, and none of us wants any trouble for Ellen's sake, which is lucky for you. You're making your point. So shut up.”

Chas said no more and they stood in silence until the bus came up. At the cemetery gates, Chas said, “Better get a move on; they don't hang about in these places.” He left them at a rapid pace.

It was cold. It began to rain and the bare trees stood stark in the vast graveyard like sentries. The priest at the head of the grave said the words of the burial service. Women sobbed. Tom Whitcombe, too, stood at the grave's edge weeping, while Ellen was tearless and rigid between Dominic and her boss. As the coffin was lowered into the ground, she moaned. Dominic said something to her.

Fleur and Joe, without discussing it, had stopped beneath a tree ten metres from the grave and the other mourners. Fleur felt him beside her, tense and breathing hard.

“You going back to Ellen's after?” he said to her.

“No. I'm not a friend or anything.”

“Come out for a drink later?” he offered.

She accepted, said goodbye to Ellen, shook hands with Tom Whitcombe and went back to Adelaide House.

Numb and upset, she drifted to her phone and checked her answering machine mechanically. Jess had rung, probably to find out what had happened at the Jethros' the previous night. The silent caller had made another silent call. She sat down and looked into space, then, without planning it, opened one of the boxes in her bedroom. She took out a rug, a lamp and a small watercolour of a cow in a field that she'd bought on holiday with Ben in the West Country one snowy day, when the flakes of white had been swirling over the small cobbled street leading down to the sea. She found this memory did not upset her now. She put up the pictures and arranged the rug and lamp in her front room. Then the phone rang and, thinking it must be Jess again, keen for details of life among the great and good – and rich – she picked it up.

“Did you get the flowers?” Valentine Keith enquired. Fleur, thinking of Vanessa's flowers and wreaths making a splash of colour on the ground in the overcast cemetery amid the crowd of black-coated mourners, said, “What flowers?”

Then the doorbell rang and she went to the door and opened it. A man stood there holding a pretty countrified arrangement of flowers, leaves and berries. “Thanks, Val,” she said into the phone, taking them, “they're here.” She decided, unfairly, not to tip the delivery man. She didn't want Val's floral tributes – and she was too broke, anyway.

“Flowers all right?” he enquired.

“Lovely,” she replied meekly, hating herself because she sensed there was probably a sting in the tail – as there always would be where Val Keith was involved.

He went on, “Listen – I've got a couple of theatre tickets for tonight.”

“Sorry, Val. I'm going out with friends,” she told him.

“Oh,” he said. “Disappointment. I feel a little tear come creeping – never mind. A bit unrealistic to think you might be free at such short notice. Say I could change them for a night next week?”

“No, Valentine,” she said. “No hard feelings, but I wasn't keen on my father. Which means I don't want to get too close to anybody close to him.”

He took this calmly, responding straight away, “I can see the whole thing must have come as a bit of a shock. Would you mind if I rang in a week or two, just to talk?”

It wasn't worth arguing about. “All right,” she said, looking at the bunch of flowers lying glamorously on her formica kitchen table, next to the letter giving her the computer course date and a red bill for the electricity.

“Good,” he said. “That's what I'll do.”

“Thanks for the flowers,” she said. And byebye, smoothie chops, she said silently to the purring receiver.

She turned on the television and saw that the German Chancellor, the British Prime Minister, the French, the Dutch and the Russians were assembling to discuss the Middle Eastern threat. Which was what? she wondered. The transport unions were staging a day of action and the Christmas lights had been turned on in Oxford Street. The new East-West railway line was to go ahead.

Jess rang.

“Horrible,” she said, in response to Jess's enquiry about the evening. “And I don't want to see them again. Plus my alleged cousin's just rung up to ask me out, though he's married. I'm broke, it's cold, Christmas is a-coming and I've just got back from the girl next door's funeral.”

“I'm glad I called. It's nice to have a laugh,” Jess said. “OK – listen. Are you free this evening?”

“I said I'd go to the pub with the neighbours,” Fleur told her.

“What?
The
neighbours?” Jess asked.

“Yes – Dom and Joe.”

“What's the pub called?”

“The Findhorn Star. What…?”

“I'm there,” Jess said promptly.

“No,” Fleur told her.

“Yes I am,” Jess declared. “Put us together and see what you get. No – wait – I'll pick you up.”

Jess's problem, Fleur reflected, was that she was incurably nosy. You couldn't tell her to get a life because, obviously, she had one, whatever you might think about it. Fleur didn't
look forward to an encounter between Dominic and the prying Jess. “Try to remember Dominic and Joe have just buried their best friend,” she advised.

“Oh, the funeral,” Jess said. “The druggie – yes, I'll remember.” She broke the connection.

Fleur sighed and went back into the bedroom. She took from the opened box a framed photograph of her grandmother and her grandmother's sister hand in hand, four and five years old, standing in a meadow high with grass and tall daisies. They were both laughing. She hung the photograph on the bedroom wall.

When Joe and Dominic arrived to collect her she told them, “A friend of mine's coming. Hope you don't mind. I'll see you in the pub.”

Jess turned up in a taxi half an hour later, wearing an expensive red suit and bright lipstick. With her flowing red hair she looked like a burning match. She sped round the flat saying, “Who's your decorator? Don't think much of him. You know who does the most fabulous blinds? In Covent Garden – Viv Jenkins.” She made further suggestions for improvements which were quite impossible for Fleur, in her penniless state, to make. Then she flopped into a chair and asked, “What happened at the Jethros'?”

Fleur told her, then said she had sent a brush-off letter to her stepmother. She expected Jess to react badly to this and she did.

“I knew you'd be a silly tart. There you were, going down a treat, even the tough mother-in-law making friendly overtures, inviting you for a holiday – and you have to be stupid.”

“You knew I'd do it and I knew what you'd say,” Fleur said. “So why don't we go to the pub now?”

“You'd better send a bunch of flowers and another note tomorrow,” Jess said implacably.

“I won't. Let it go,” Fleur said. “I don't like the way everyone hangs round Dickie Jethro because of his money. I don't like the atmosphere there.”

“My God. My God, Fleur Stockley!” Jess cried out, pacing the
room in nervy strides, her crinkly red hair jumping about. “This is your future at stake.”

“Stand still,” Fleur said, “and don't deny you've been sniffing something in the Ladies' somewhere.”

Jess obeyed, meeting Fleur's gaze defiantly.

“I don't know what sort of an evening we're supposed to have,” Fleur said, “with you in this state. Are you sure you don't want to go home?”

“What the hell, what the hell,” Jess said. “Let's get out of your luxury apartment and enjoy the charm of Cray Hill.” Going down the steps Jess looked up disparagingly at the sky, as if that, too, were a squalid and downmarket version of the one over other, better areas of the town. “You'd better send that note though, and the flowers. Or you'll end up working at the checkout in Tesco's.”

“Shut up,” Fleur said.

Out of old habit they pulled themselves together on entering the pub – best mates, pretty women on a night out. Dominic almost stood up when they came to the table, but thought better of it and slumped back in his seat. Ignoring wide-eyed Joe, Jess said to him, “You must be Dominic.”

“Heard all about me then?” he countered.

Damn, Fleur thought. Damn.

“Just the interesting bits,” Jess told him.

“Well then – my interesting bits are interesting, I'll grant you that,” Dominic said, sounding Irish on purpose.

“I'm sure,” said Jess, eyes glinting.

Joe struggled to his feet and interrupted, “I'm guessing you came here to have a drink. What'll it be?”

“I'll have a vodka and tonic,” Jess replied. “Fleur will have her usual half of lager.”

Joe went off to get them. Dominic and Jess locked eyes. When Joe came back with the drinks Jess said, “Thanks. What's your line of business, then?”

“Builder,” he told her. “What's yours?”

“Thanks – another vodka and tonic,” Jess answered. She'd knocked the first one back quickly. “Nice pub,” she added, looking round. “Quiet.”

“Not what you're used to,” Joe said and went off to get her another vodka.

Jess turned to Fleur. “Do you know this guy Beavis, the Channel Four guy Ben took for a ride?”

“No,” said Fleur. “And I don't think he wants to know me.” She watched Jess sink the vodka and go off to get another at the bar.

“How's Ellen?” Fleur asked Dominic and Joe.

“Not too good,” Dominic told her. “Couldn't be, could she?”

He glanced over at the bar where Jess was putting down an empty glass and picking up a full one. She'd sunk a third vodka standing at the bar. Fleur followed his gaze and was puzzled. Not since they'd been teenagers, swigging bottles stolen from their parents – wine, beer, gin and whisky mixed together – had she seen Jess drinking like this.

Jess came back unsteadily with two drinks, went away and got the other two, sat down, lifted her own glass and said, “Cheers,” to Dominic. She added, “Have you ever thought of modelling?”

He grinned. “Clay or plasticine?”

“No – seriously – with your looks, you've got a chance.”

“What – me, brought up by the Christian Brothers, take my jeans off on TV? I could never do it. I'd be all the time thinking of Brother Thomas's rope landing on my legs. Or Brother Thomas.”

“I could let you have the names of some people if you're interested,” Jess persisted. “Give me your number – I'll ask around.”

“Could you try to get me a job as the handsome one's ugly friend?” Joe asked.

“Is it true you used to live on the street?” Jess asked him.

“Didn't I used to see you going into the Groucho Club in Dean Street with loads of different blokes?” he retaliated. “I'd be the one in the doorway, huddled in a blanket.”

“I was the one with a job, giving you money.”

“Jewish, are you?” he said, peering at her.

“Yes, as it happens,” she said to him. “Why do you want to know?”

“Just curiosity,” Joe replied.

“We all know about that kind of curiosity.”

“Well, bugger it,” Joe said mildly. “I'm going. I said I'd see Melanie.”

“Made a date at the wake, was it?” enquired Dominic.

“At the party afterwards, whatever you call it. She was upset and one thing led to another. She's a nice girl,” Joe said.

“Where are you going to offer her a home – on the pavement in Oxford Street – or are you considering Piccadilly Circus?” asked Jess.

“We wouldn't aim so high – we was thinking of Elephant and Castle,” Joe responded. “Excuse me – got to rush. We've got to work out how to lay our thieving hands on a couple of sleeping bags. Cheers Fleur, be lucky Dom.” He held out his hand to Jess. “Got any change?” he asked. Then he was gone.

“That was charming,” Fleur said to Jess.

“I'll get some more drinks, shall I, while you have a chat?” Dominic offered.

“Do you want another vodka?” Fleur asked Jess.

“Yes. I'll go for it,” Jess answered.