Connections (18 page)

I sighed. “Temps again. I'll messenger it over to him this afternoon.
”

Back in the office I got Veronica to ring a few permutations on the number I thought the woman in the restaurant had dialled. No joy – she came up with an import-export business, a tobacconist, the NatWest Bank's savings department and the rectory of a church. All in the City of London.

It seemed pointless to pursue it any further, partly because anyone challenged with knowing a Robinson would probably deny him, since secrecy seemed to be Robinson's thing. But Veronica's work on the phone did prove to me that there was every chance the mysterious Robinson hailed from the City, that square mile running along the north side of the Thames from Temple Bar to Middlesex Street which, with its banks, insurance companies, the Stock Exchange and so on brings in a quarter of our national income. That's right – a consideration, eh, William? A quarter of our money in Britain is made from money. Not that you don't know that.

Before we left for Christmas I did get Veronica to do one last job for me. After some sleuthing on my part, she popped into some places in Cray Hill and got chatting. And in one pub the girl behind the bar said, “Fleur – she won't be back till after Christmas.” So Veronica said, “Oh – what a pity. I've got a card for her. Can you tell me her address – I'll pop it through the door.” But then the landlord came up and told Veronica if she'd hand the card over he'd see she got it. So Veronica did, and slipped away. And what I had was a name, a place, and
a date for the return, of the girl who'd been at the funeral with Floyd and Carter – the girl whose face had worried Robinson so much.

Fleur looked at the cordial letter of invitation dated December fourth from Zoe Andriades. It had been delightful, Zoe wrote, to meet her. She and her husband would be entertaining the Jethros and a small party of others, including the Keiths, over Christmas at their house in Barbados. She very much hoped Fleur would join them between December eighteenth and January tenth. Guests would travel in a private jet which would take off from an airfield in Kent. It all sounded so easy.

This invitation did not shake Fleur's resolution to stay away from the Jethros. In any case she was supposed to begin her computer course just after the New Year. She rang her mother and had a chat and then said, “About Christmas—” in the comfortable expectation that Grace and Robin would be expecting her. There'd been a disappointment, barely expressed, once before, when she and Ben had decided to spend Christmas together in Morocco and on another occasion when they'd spent the holiday with Ben's parents.

However, this time Grace hesitated. “We have a sort of plan to go with the Harrisons to their time-share in Portugal. Just for a change. But nothing written in stone. It would be lovely to have Christmas at home as usual. Will you come?”

“Not if you've got a plan, Grace. It would be a nice change for you. Do go.” She hesitated and realised she had to say, “Actually, I've been invited to Barbados for Christmas – the Jethros – well, Sophia Jethro's parents.”

Grace's response was unambiguous. “Darling! How wonderful for you.”

Fleur said, “I'm not sure I want to go. It conflicts with the start of my computer course, too.”

“Oh, for goodness' sake, Fleur. You can defer that. Think of it – Barbados – sunshine – servants to do everything – parties. It sounds absolutely wonderful. And after all, Fleur, it will be a good chance to get to know your father better. And your cousin and his wife. And to get out of that flat for a bit. You'll need some new clothes. Robin and I would be glad to help.”

“Not necessary, Ma,” Fleur said and as she put the phone down wondered how her mother knew the Keiths would be among the guests in Barbados. Or even who they were. Guesswork? The gossip columns her mother never read? Or the mysterious Jones on the phone again, this time telling Grace there was an invitation and how nice it would be if Fleur accepted it. Was she being set up? Or was she paranoid?

Fleur looked out of her kitchen window at the rainswept balcony in front of the flat and, feeling like a child rejected by her parents at Christmas, thought, Maybe I'll go. She couldn't see herself, Dominic and Joe putting up a Christmas tree at Adelaide House and didn't really want to try. Her relationship with Dominic had a fragile, out-of-this-world quality. It connected with nothing; they had no shared interests or activities; there was no imaginable future. It felt like some rare Chinese bowl, shapely, intricately painted, with a beautifully mended crack on one side, useless for any practical purpose.

Dominic came into the Findhorn Star late in his working clothes. Because trade was slack Patrick told her to go and sit down with him. Patrick, being Irish, was on Dominic's side. Before she left the bar he told her, “I can't guarantee to hold the job open for you if you go away over Christmas.” She'd told him earlier she might be going to Barbados and he hadn't been pleased.

“What's this?” Dominic asked as they walked over to the table by the imitation log fire.

“I'm thinking of going to Barbados for Christmas,” she told him.

“Not bad, for somebody on the dole,” he commented.

“Rich relations,” she said.

“Your mum?” he asked her, though he probably knew better.

“No – the others. The new-found lot. My mother and stepfather aren't rich.”

He looked at her sceptically.

“It's a long story,” she told him.

“You must tell it to me some time,” he said.

“Give her a break,” said Patrick, who had turned up at the table. He was trying to be faír. “Someone offers you a free trip to Barbados – what would you do?”

“Look at it carefully,” Dominic told him, staring at Fleur. “Joe and me were thinking of going over to my folks in Ireland, with half the building trade in London. Fight our way back, ditto, then get back to building our bank again. The Irish Government should catch us straight off the boat and get us all to knock up a few housing estates while we're there …”

“It's the paddies that built England,” Patrick joined in. He'd been born, he'd told Fleur, in one of the narrow streets they'd torn down to build the Yarborough Estate. His father had worked on it. His grandfather had dug tunnels for the London Underground.

“How long is it since you've been back?” Patrick asked Dominic.

“Fifteen years,” Dominic told him. “I left as a boy, when the uncle we lived with got married. My mum and auntie didn't get on. They're all still there, though. I called up – there they were and said to come over for Christmas.”

“God bless the farm,” Patrick said piously. “Have you any Irish blood, Fleur?”

Fleur was sitting silent, hardly listening to the conversation. She knew Dominic didn't want her to go to Barbados. Probably jealous, she thought. Or maybe not.

“I don't know,” she told Patrick. “I don't think so.”

“They won't be the rich side, that's for sure,” Dominic said.

“That's the truth,” Patrick confirmed.

All this Celtic solidarity was getting on Fleur's nerves. She thought it was a conspiracy to punish her for deserting Patrick at the pub's busiest time of the year and deserting Dominic to go off with rich relations.

“No sun-drenched holidays for the likes of us, Patrick,”
Dominic said. “Maybe just a free cruise to Botany Bay if you were one of the unlucky ones.”

“God save Ireland,” Patrick agreed. “Will you have another, Dominic?”

“I will, thank you.”

“Fleur?”

“No thanks,” she said. “I think I'll go home before you start singing.”

“Ah – the English are a miserable lot,” Dominic told her.

“And goodnight to both of you,” Fleur said and sulked her way home.

Jess had left a message on her machine. “Fleur! Wonderful news about the holiday! I'm jealous. Do you want to borrow some floaty things? Much love.”

She'd spoken to Grace. It was a campaign. They were planning to kit her out and send her off, like an arranged marriage. It didn't matter how high-minded they were, like Grace, or ambitious and energetic, like Jess, the middle classes still united if one of their number was living like Fleur. Rule one was, you must not sink, and like dolphins Grace and Jess were going to bear her to safety, out of the shoals of Cray Hill.

A bit later Dominic called round, carrying a bottle of wine and a video.

“Oh Dom,” she said, pulling him in. “Come and sit down and give us a kiss – I might as well tell you about these relations and get you off my back. You'll have to swear not to tell anybody, though, not even Joe.”

So, cuddled up on the sofa with cups of tea, half watching the action movie Dom had brought over, Fleur told Dominic about the unexpected arrival of Valentine Keith and her first meeting with her father at Eaton Square. As a man in a stained vest shinned up the ventilation duct to escape from the baddies she explained, “I decided not to see them again, but they won't drop me.” As twenty-five storeys of windows exploded in a shower of glass, she said, “I'm not all that easy about this Barbados trip. I wouldn't have gone but I've had my mother on my case about it. And she's called Jess to persuade her to get me to go. I don't
know what's going on – Phew!” she said. The man in the vest was dangling from the building.

“Don't worry,” Dominic told her. “He gets out of it.”

“What a surprise. You've seen it.”

They watched the film peacefully for a little while.

“Swear you won't tell anybody,” she urged.

“I said I wouldn't.”

“No – but—”

“I said I wouldn't so I won't,” he said stubbornly.

The man in the vest was on a ledge, being shot at. “I suppose they'll get him in the leg,” Fleur said.

“Right arm,” said Dominic.

“Ah.”

After a pause he said, “I won't tell anybody. But, be honest, do you like this guy, your father? Because I suppose that's the point.”

Fleur considered. “He's charming. He's a bit of a bully, and” – she suddenly realised – “he frightens me a bit … Valentine Keith wants me to be nice to him because he depends on him. My mother wants me to be nice to him because he's my father and Jess wants me to be nice because of the money.”

“Say what you like about the woman, at least she's straightforward,” Dominic said. “Now me, I wish you wouldn't go to Barbados.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“Because I'll miss you,” he said. “I was planning to invite you to Ireland. Now Joe doesn't really want to come because of Melanie and Melanie can't come because of something to do with her gran – so it's just Joe and me. I'll miss you.”

“Nice of you to say that, Dom,” she said.

“What do you think I am? Some kind of a cold-hearted alien? I thought I'd better tell you where I was coming from.”

“The trouble is, with big sums of money floating around you get confused. I still don't know what to do.”

“Try coming to bed.”

“That's been on my mind.”

“Better get it over with then,” he said.

In the morning she said, “I'll stop whinging about going to Barbados. I'll go and when I come back I'll just keep my distance from all of them.”

“That's the way,” agreed Dominic.

Fleur pulled herself out of the pool on to the sunny terrace with its pots of freshly watered, tumbling flowers, and found her hostess, Zoe Andriades, had come out of the house and was sitting at a table, a man in a white jacket and black trousers bending over her. She waved and Fleur went over, dripping.

“Have you had breakfast? No? Arthur, for two, please … You're an early bird. I'm a wreck today. Time zones kill me. But you're young. You've got more stamina.”

“You look very fit and fresh to me,” Fleur said. It was true: Zoe, in a white bathing suit with a thin cotton shirt over her shoulders and her black hair gleaming, looked much younger than she must in reality be.

They had left London at ten in the morning of the previous day and arrived in late afternoon. They then drove in convoy for ten miles through narrow roads and turned off on to a long drive bordered by thick woods of palm and passion fruits, bay and mahogany, a huge half-tamed jungle of darkening trunks, leaves and vines.

This was Barbados, that “Little England” of the Caribbean, only 300 square miles set between the Caribbean and the Atlantic: orderly, beautiful and, as Diana Keith had told Fleur on the plane, “Peaceful and safe. Not like some of the other islands. That's why the Andriades like it.” She'd added, “Of course, the house is in the most exclusive part of the island. Sandy Lanes – they call it the Platinum Coast. George likes it because of the golf course.”

The residence they arrived at, named Braganza House, was a small, porticoed eighteenth-century building. The nanny of the
Keith children, Violet and Jonathan, took them immediately up a sweeping staircase to bed and did not reappear until after they were settled. The remainder of the party walked over cool stone floors, through the house and out on to the terrace. To one side lay a long, two-storey house, newer than the original house, built, perhaps, in the twenties or thirties. On the west-facing terrace a long table had been set near the parapet, on which globe lamps glowed softly. The sun was going down into the bright sea. They ate shellfish, chilled fish, salads, fruits and cheese and were waited on by two men in white jackets, eager to please. Below the table the guests could see a long expanse of green – the golf course, George Andriades said, a gleam in his eye – and beyond it the gleaming ribbon of the sea.

“It's like magic,” Fleur said to Fiona Jones. “To think this morning we were in dark, freezing London.” But Fiona, who had been almost silent since they had set off, did not reply. She was both strained and tired and probably, Fleur thought, on some kind of medication intended to reduce stress.