Crimson (40 page)

“I know what you need, Clare: someone you know and trust, someone who won’t make you feel anxious. Then you’ll relax and it’ll happen then you’ll stop being one of them miserable nymphos who bop from man to man, hoping for Mr. Right, the man who can satisfy her.” As Gilda held out her glass to be refilled, 1..,she added reflectively, “Although you seem more lonely than horny. Are you looking for sex, or just someone to Ulk to? You ain’t likely to pick up Prince Charming in a bar.” Clare said, “I’m not looking for Prince Charming. I don’t want the disorder, the pain, the mess, or the misery of being in love. I just want a short-term relationship, without responsibility.” Gilda laughed.

“So do these fellas you pick up. But I’m not convinced that’s right for you. You need a secure situation with someone you can trust, who you know will stick around because he loves you. I’ll tell you who you ought to fall in love with, Clare.”

“Who?” “Yourself. You clearly think that you’re a piece of worthless rubbish, and if I pick up those vibes, then so do the blokes. Why not give sex a rest for a bit, and pay a bit of attention to yourself? You never want to make a man the centre of your existence. That place is for you, Clare.” “I am the centre of my existence,” Clare sang, as if chanting a psalm, pitching her voice an octave lower, as she pushed Josh to her play group the next morning.

A man stood on the porch, his hands in the pocket of his beige mackintosh.

“Good morning. Are you a prospective parent?” Clare asked. She felt in her pocket for the key.

“No,” said the man.

“I’m an inspector for the local education authority!

After examining the bathroom, the inspector pointed out that legally one toilet was required for every seven kiddies.

Clare said, “But if each child goes there every two and a half hours, one lavatory is adequate. There is a potty for emergencies. We have never had a problem.”

The inspector was not listening. He was making notes on other violations.

Half an hour after the inspector left, as if to prove his point, the lavatory refused to flush.

The following morning, Clare’s play group was ordered to close.

Two days later, Clare’s mind was unexpectedly diverted from her personal problems no job, no man when the CND office telephoned to ask her for voluntary evening help: they were organizing another protest after a nuclear accident. Over Spain, an American B-52 bomber carrying an H-bomb had collided in mid-air with another aircraft. The H-bomb, with an explosive capacity of mpre than a million tons of TNT, had fallen into the Atlantic Ocean off southern Spain.

Clare felt cheered to be back among like-minded people, doing something worth while.

MONDAY, 14 FEBRUARY 1966

Valentine’s Day brought two happy events. The radio reported that the missing H-bomb had been located on the Atlantic seabed. And to Clare’s delight, she sold the lease of the apartment in which she ran her play group for a profit of twenty-three per cent.

Clare felt as if she had won a sweepstake. On the following morning, she bought a portable TV, a warm winter ZPS,4W. for herself, and new clothes for Josh. She didn’t buy f Josh because she had decided to open a toy toys or Two weeks later, Clare bought the short lease of a small shop in the Pimlico Road, close to Mrs. Gooden’s home. Though there was a lot to do, Clare, busy redecorating the shop and visiting wholesalers to buy stock, still managed to work one evening a week for the Movement.

In mid-April, just before her toy shop opened, Clare’s weary, amiable, National Health doctor looked up from his desk and said, “About your vaginal symptoms, Mrs. Shapiro. You’d better go to St. Stephen’s for tests: they’re properly equipped to handle this sort of thing.” He seemed uneasy.

“What sort of thing? … Not … can cerT “No, gonorrhoea,” the doctor said apologetically.

Clare almost fainted from surprise and anxiety, horror and shame. Then she wept.

The doctor refused to give her more sleeping tablets but scribbled a prescription for tranquillizers, which were increasingly prescribed for women like Clare, with symptoms of anxiety in stressful situations such as poverty, divorce, or bereavement; women with marital problems and women who were out of work also found them helpful, although the pills did nothing to resolve the problem responsible for the initial anxiety.

Clare, who blushed with shame whenever she thought about it, waited anxiously for the result of her tests at St. Stephen’s Hospital.

The tests were negative. But within a month, she couldn’t get through the day without tranquillizers; she felt less anxious, calmer.

Clare managed to open the Red Rocking Horse by mid May At the opening party, an excited three-and-a-half year-old Josh rode the pretty antique red rocking horse in the shop window.

MONDAY, 15 AUGUST 1966

Standing by the swimming pool at Saracen, Miranda beckoned to Adam, who was floating on the water in a transparent blow-up plastic armchair.

In a voice of soft persuasion, she said, “Will you do something for me, Adam? I’m going to learn to fly. I want you to break the news gently to Gran.”

“But you promised your grandmother not to learn to fly,” Adam objected.

“It was a condition of her gift to you the ten thousand pounds” capital to start KITS.”

“I didn’t say for ever. I’ll pay the money back to her.” Miranda was defiant.

“I’ve always wanted to fly. I won’t be held by a promise that was unfairly extracted from me before I legally became an adult. And I get bored with nothing to do on holiday but lie in the sun.”

“When are you star tine Adam asked, resigned.

“This morning, at the Cannes flying school. They have English instructors. Four hours of instruction a day for two weeks. And of course, this time of year, it’s perfect flying weather!” Miranda was triumphant now.

“I’ve already passed the two written exams. Did law and meteorology last Easter, and now I’ve finished navigation, radiotelephony, and technical that was the toughest.”

“So that’s why you’re so pate.” Three hours later, two thousand feet above the Mediterranean, Miranda, alert and exultant, sat next to her instructor at the controls of a trainer plane, an ugly little single engine Rallye which her instructor described as efficient and forgiving: you could do something wrong in a Rallye without getting immediately punished for it.

Flying was even better than she had hoped: better than skiing, better than driving a sports car. As the Rallye droned towards the lighthouse on the tip of Cap Camerat,

Airanda felt as if she were breathing the air of the gods…“Odntly they swooped, turned, and climbed in the azure sky.

After they reached two thousand feet, the instructor showed her how to fly level; he then encouraged her to experiment with the stick, manoeuvring the plane in every direction. Miranda felt that the aircraft was an extension of her arms and her fingertips, outspread in flight. I Heading west on the return flight path, the instructor said, “This is the first time I’ve flown with a pupil and haven’t once needed to touch the controls.” Miranda pushed home this advantage.

“Then can I land?” The instructor hesitated, then said, “Why not?” The girl was clearly a natural flyer.

After being given clearance to land, Miranda, following her instructor’s directions, started her approach; she throttled back to reduce speed and control her descent as she flew towards the threshold the point just before she intended to touch down. The plane was now moving at not much above stalling speed. As the Rallye dropped to about thirty feet above the runway, Miranda throttled back completely and held the stick back.

The plane seemed to glide forward and land itself. The undemonstrative Miranda flung her arms around the instructor.

“Oh, thank you! Thank you! .. .”

“Quite a smooth landing,” the instructor said approvingly. He hesitated, then warned, “Next time be careful not to land too fast or you’ll run out of runway.” This woman was adventurous and ambitious: such pilots did not live long. He added, “Careful pilots are the ones that survive. A good pilot never takes a risk.”

“The opposite of a good businessman,” Miranda said, still on a high.

“A businessman has to take risks constantly and win sixty per cent of the time.”

“In the air, that risk factor would kill you.”

Nine hundred years earlier, the great hall had been the. hub of castle life: wolfhounds ate on floors strewn with rushes; servants slept on straw pallets thrown on the floor. Then, the winter salon did not smell of lilies and expensive leather but of stale, fat, stinking human bodies and animal ordure. Elinor sometimes thought of all the love and the hatred, the treachery and the killing that this hall had undoubtedly seen, when strong men fought hand-to-hand to the death, to protect their women and children.

Now the winter salon at Saracen, where Elinor waited for Adam, was not only the coolest but the most impressive room in the chdteau. High arched walls of pale, honey coloured stone were hung with bluish-green tapestries; around the big stone fireplace, where logs burned in winter, stood sofas covered in the blues and greens of the tapestries; here and there were lamps, flowers, books, and piles of parlour games.

“What’s keeping Ada mT Elinor asked Buzz, who was adding up the Scrabble score.

“You said three o’clock. It’s only two-thirty,” Buzz said.

“Ninety-three for you, two hundred and sixty-four for me.. That’s not a bad score for you, Nell.” Buzz never cheated to let Elinor win: she knew that Elinor would immediately sense this and feel humiliated.

After an intensive rehabilitation programme of physiotherapy and speech therapy, Elinor appeared to have completely recovered from her stroke, although she could no longer think of three things at once, which Buzz said was a mercy for the people who had to live with her.

Elinor was sometimes at a loss for the right word, or name, and then became impatient with herself; she was often frustrated because she couldn’t move as swiftly as she did before. At times, she was downhearted and wondered whether she would ever write another book.

“When you want to write, you’ll write,” Buzz would tell her then.

w Buzz grunted, “Look what I tore out of the Daily She dug into her pocket, unfolded a bit of newspaper, and read, ““Sportsman Jim Clark today opened a splendidly equipped physical training college at Larkwood in Wiltshire, formerly the family home of the O’Dare family. Lady O’Dare commented,“I wish them well.”” i doubt that.” Elinor peered at the photograph of the new owner, a motor-racing hero, standing with her sisterin-law, Madorie.

The doorbell sounded.

“I’ll go,” Buzz said.

“It’s either Adam or the postman.” Buzz returned reading a postcard.

“It’s for you, from Sonia Rushleigh … Whoops, I mean Bromley. Who’d have thought them two would marry? She says the Coloners taken up petit point, and Miss Hawkins is teaching him. Remember her, the schoolmistress?” “I do indeed,” said Elinor.

“Frumpy sourpuss! Who’s the letter fro mT “Clare.” Buzz held the envelope out to Elinor.

Elinor shook her head.

“You open it.”

“It’s marked personal.”

“I don’t want to read it, unless she apologizes.” Buzz opened the letter and read it. She shook her head.

“It’s just a friendly letter, asking how you are. But reading between the lines, I think Clare needs money.”

“If she took her poor child back to his father and gave her husband a second chance, she wouldn’t need money.”

“How about a bit of generosity?” Buzz said.

“You’re a silly, stubborn old woman. And Clare’s just as stubborn and just as silly. It wouldn’t have hurt her to say she was sorry.

Elinor looked anxious.

“Do you really think she’s short of money, Buzz? I wouldn’t want her to have a rough time., This remark was overheard by Adam as, in pale

blue shirt and jeans, he sauntered through the door. He said, “Elinor, you allowed ample provision in the trust for helping Clare if the trustees consider that help is needed. I’ll check on Clare when I get back to London.! He put a pile of papers on a side table.

“There’s rather a lot of paperwork here, things that you should be aware of.”

“We’ve had more paperwork, not less, since the trust took over,” Buzz said tartly.

“And I tell you frankly that I can’t follow it, Adam. I thought the trustees were going to manage the business. Elinor shouldn’t be made to wade though pages of paragraphs with no commas in’em.”

“Of course the trustees manage the business, and they do it very well,” Adam said.

“And there’s no reason for Elinor to see any of this if it tires her. In fact, I’m about to suggest something that would simplify matters.”

“What’s th at?” Buzz asked.

“I’d like to substitute Paul Littlejohn for myself in the power of attorney that I hold on your behalf, Elinor. I’m trying to reduce the number of business administrators: the fewer there are, the simpler the system and the cheaper it will be.”

“Does that mean that Paul will be legally responsible for Elinor’s affairs instead of you, Ada mT “Yes, but that’s only a technicality. Paul will do as I say. And I’d also like you to sign this document,” Adam added, “which absolves me and STG from any further responsibility once Paul Littlejohn has been substituted.” Buzz said, “But surely…” Smoothly Adam explained, “The responsibility must clearly rest in only one area. It’s in your interests to clarify the situation. It’s customary.”

“If you think that’s best, Adam dear.” Elinor frowned slightly at Buzz.

Adam decided to hold back Miranda’s bombshell until later, after Elinor drank her evening glass of champagne.

t fore five o’clock, when the business session had be and the afternoon was still hot, quiet, and heavy with languor, Buzz left to get some tea.

Adam escorted Elinor to the elevator; after taking her to her bedroom, he intended to go to the beach for a swim.. In the high-ceilinged kitchen, surrounded by the smells of mint and basil, Buzz whistled “Roses of Picardy” with much dramatic warbling as she prepared Elinor’s tea.

1da ves and yellow blossoms obscured the top of the window, while the bottom was covered by aggressive pink hollyhocks, seemingly determined to fight their way inside.