Gifted and Talented (16 page)

‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’ Olly shouted through the noise and the acrid swirl of cigarettes and joss sticks.

‘Whose side are you on?’ Hero blasted back. ‘You sound like my effing parents.’

Olly opened his mouth to say that Dotty and David did a better job of being parents than Hero did of being a daughter. He shut it again, however. It wouldn’t help.

‘You’re wasting your education,’ he told her.

‘So what?’ Hero returned. ‘What’s education ever done for you?’

‘As a matter of fact,’ he informed her with dignity, ‘I’ve got an interview.’

This news was sufficiently astounding to make Hero prop herself up on one elbow. ‘Really? Don’t tell me,’ she added scathingly. ‘Editor of the
Daily Telegraph
?’

‘Better than that,’ Olly flipped back. ‘The
Hagworthingham Chronicle
.’

Hero cackled and returned to her laptop.

Dotty was at the kitchen table, gazing into space over a coffee mug with ‘Doubt Everything’ printed on it. She looked as if she was taking the advice literally. Her mouth was turned down and her forehead wrinkled. She looked, most uncharacteristically, devoid of hope.

‘What’s up, Dotty?’ Olly asked, abandoning the idea of breakfast after one look at the kitchen clock. It was later than he had thought; he would buy something at the station. ‘Lintles due, are they?’

Dotty shook her head and gave a wry smile. ‘Martin,’ she said. Olly nodded. Martin was a management consultant: tall, middle-aged and meaty, with rimless spectacles and a bald head beneath his cycle helmet. Helmet off, he looked like a short-sighted egg. But, according to Dotty, he was as electric an interpreter of Bach as they came. He had, she added, only started playing again a year ago, after more than a decade of not even looking at his bow. It was never too late, Olly remembered her saying.

He saw her now raise her eyes to the kitchen ceiling. The thumping upstairs had intensified. ‘I don’t think the “Hands-Off” approach is working.’

‘Poor you.’ Olly began to sympathise. ‘I’m sure—’ he began, intending to say something comforting.

‘But it doesn’t matter,’ Dotty cut in, with spirit. ‘No,’ she added, slapping the sticky pine table and standing up, ‘it doesn’t matter at all.’ Determination flashed in her small, dark eyes.

‘Doesn’t it?’

‘No.’ Dotty’s face was positively burning with resolution. ‘I’ve got a whole new approach and I’m going to start it today. The Commando Parent.’

Olly grinned. ‘You’re not going to wear underwear?’

Dotty gave him a shove with something of her old high spirits. ‘It means I’m in charge and I have natural authority.’

He could not help but admire her. She had persistence. ‘Gosh, Dotty. You don’t give up, do you?’

She looked him in the eye. ‘How can I?’ Dotty asked bleakly. ‘She’s my daughter.’

He felt suddenly, quite powerfully moved.

‘Well, good luck with it, Dotty,’ he said in a voice thick with emotion as he headed for the door. ‘I do hope it works.’

On the way to the station, his mind went back to Isabel. He felt sure the forthcoming interview would go well, that he would finally have a job, that she was his lucky charm.

The robin was back, hopping around, clockwork head jerking busily. He fixed Diana with his bright round black eye, darting forward occasionally when a tempting flash of worm revealed itself. ‘You can’t have them all,’ Diana told him. ‘They do some good work for me. Airing the soil, turning it over. Very good gardeners, worms.’

She realised, as she was speaking, that she was not alone. A pair of ankles in tan tights was standing before her. Diana looked up, heart sinking slightly. It was Sally again, the over-curious college housekeeper. She held a mug in her hand. ‘As you never come in for a break,’ she said, brandishing the mug, ‘I thought I’d bring you one out here.’

Diana smiled up at her. ‘That’s very kind of you. I’ve got a flask –’ she gestured at her backpack, somewhere in the distance – ‘but thank you.’

‘Fresh is better than flask,’ Sally said stoutly. She dug in her apron pocket and produced a plastic-wrapped packet. ‘Brought you a biscuit, too.’ She held the packet out and squinted at it. ‘Viennese crunch.’

‘Thanks.’ Diana turned back to her bulbs. Sally’s ankles remained where they were, however.

‘Funny bugger, isn’t he? Professor Black?’ Sally remarked, her tone sufficiently indulgent to arouse Diana’s suspicions. She looked accusingly at Sally. ‘You thought he was awful before.’

‘Well he seems to be making a bit of an effort now. Bit of a charm offensive, maybe. Some of the others even think he’s quite sexy.’

Despite herself, Diana made a discreet exploding noise, which could have been a cough or a disbelieving guffaw and was in fact a combination of both. She had seen the offensive. But none of the charm.

‘Quite Mr Darcy-ish,’ Sally was continuing.

‘Mr Darcy!’ Diana plunged her fork hard in the ground to relieve her feelings.

‘He’s quite famous you know,’ Sally went cheerfully on. ‘Some sort of super-scientist. The brain’s his speciality, I gather.’

‘Is it?’ Diana murmured, wishing Sally would go. So far as she could see, the Master’s speciality was rudeness.

‘Of course, you know his wife died,’ Sally added casually.

Diana looked up, shocked.

‘Oh, yes,’ Sally said, gratified by the effect and the attention. ‘He lost her a couple of years ago. You didn’t know, really? Dreadful. Cancer. Mmm. She was quite young, too. They met at – where was it? – Harvard, is it? She was one of his students, apparently. That’s why he moved to England; couldn’t bear to stay in America. We all think –’ she waved a hand in the direction of Branston’s concrete bulk – ‘that it’s quite romantic, really. Gives him that sort of sexy tragic air, doesn’t it?’ She paused before adding, theatrically, ‘No children.’

Diana was sitting back on her wellied heels, staring. She had a sense of things whirling in the air, slowly, then settling back down in a different pattern altogether.

‘I didn’t know that, actually,’ she admitted quietly. ‘I had no idea.’

The ankles shifted. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then.’ Bestowing upon her a conspiratorial wink, Sally went back inside.

Diana finished her digging and moved to a more secluded part of the garden between the pleached pears. She had planned clumps of hyacinths here but now, resolutely, she emptied out the bag of scorchingly scarlet tulip bulbs destined for the area instead. She handled them carefully; they were still flowers in the making.

Her mind was running on the Master. To lose your wife was a terrible thing, and to have no children, either. How alone he must feel, especially having moved continents. She at least had Rosie to show from the wreckage of her own relationship. Perhaps she should be nicer to him from now on. Rude he might be, but it was the grief speaking.

A few hundred yards away, in the Branston College development office, Richard was doing his level best to control himself. He wanted to explode with frustration, but he was fighting the urge hard.

He loathed the fact that, along with others, including the Bursar and Professor Green, he now had to sit in the development office to make the Big Ring-Round calls. And he had to do it between nine and ten in the morning, just the time he would normally be setting off for the labs. All, apparently, Clyde Bracegirdle’s idea. ‘He thinks that we need to create a bit of an
esprit de corps
, do it together, daily,’ Flora Thynne had explained earnestly.

Flora’s own contribution was some home-made scones – ‘wholemeal and not too sweet’ – which she placed before the telephoners with a rehashing of Napoleon’s remark about armies marching on their stomachs.

Richard reflected grimly that he had never yet seen Flora pick up the phone and that marching the entire length of France, as Napoleon had, in order to re-seize a throne was nothing beside the task of working through the Branston alumni list. This, definitely, was the last time he was doing it. He would pull rank – else pull the receiver out of the wall.

Miss Sarah Salmon had been at Branston between 1984 and 1987 and was now deputy editor of a national broadsheet. Her phone was picked up by a haughty-sounding young woman who asked Richard, disdainfully, who he was. Disdainful himself, he told her; more disdainfully yet, she returned in her clipped tones, ‘Miss Salmon’s in conference. You’ll have to call back.’

Richard marked time by phoning a few more names on the list. Graham Trowell had been at Branston thirty years ago, ‘I wonder if my room’s still the same,’ he thought wistfully. ‘There was a stain on the ceiling the exact shape of a naked woman. I used to lie there for hours looking at it.’

When Richard called Sarah Salmon back he was put straight through.

‘Richard?’ cooed a voice. ‘So lovely to hear you.’

Richard’s hopes rose. This sounded like money to him. And he wouldn’t let her get away, like Allegra Trott had.

‘Necker was divine this summer,’ went on the voice, dripping honey, ‘wasn’t it?’

He had no idea what she was talking about, except that it was at cross-purposes. ‘I’m Richard Black. Ringing from Branston College,’ he began. Clyde had instructed, via Flora, that college staff should not give their titles. This was, Richard understood, to preserve the illusion that students were calling. Very mature ones, presuambly.

An angry exclamation from the other end. ‘But Sasha told me you were Richard Branson.’

‘Well, I’m not,’ Richard said levelly. ‘I’m Richard,
ringing
from Branston.’

‘Branston?’ said Sarah Salmon. She sounded choked.

He began his spiel. Flora had originally written one out on a card, but it had been so bad he preferred to improvise. ‘We’re doing this big fundraising ring-round. Perhaps, as such a distinguished alumnus, and possibly because you feel Branston helped get you where you are now, you might want to contribute.’

A strange sound was filling the spaces between his words. It was coming from the other end of the line.
Huh huh huh
, it was going. Richard stopped immediately. ‘Sure I’ll donate to Branston,’ Sarah said lightly.

He need not have feared, Richard realised, satisfied. ‘Well, that’s great . . .’ he began.

‘But only,’ Sarah Salmon went on, ‘if the whole place is knocked flat, renamed and rebuilt in the style of the Palace of Westminster.’

She slammed the phone down after that.

Richard rose to his feet. ‘That’s me done. I’m going.’

He strode rapidly over the garden, his accustomed short cut towards where his bike was parked. He caught his breath and slowed down as he saw, in the distance, Diana – talking to someone.

Goddamn it, and he hadn’t apologised to her yet. He hadn’t seen her for a few days; he had been hoping, he realised, that she might resign before he had the chance to say sorry and save him the necessity. The instructions he had given her, after all, had obviously gone down badly. She had not complained, not in the least, but her eloquent face had said it all. She was busy, anyway. Perhaps he could sneak past, before she saw him.

Her heart was so light, Isabel thought as she wandered across the lawn, it had gone up into her throat; it was bobbing there. Was it Olly? But no – it was Jasper. At the mere thought of him she felt filled with sunshine. She felt she floated above the ground; the sky was blue; the clouds were white; everything was beautiful – even Branston’s garden, which had previously looked so scabby, so unloved. No, but it had really improved. It looked attended to. Saved. Brought back to life.

And here was the gardener, a nice, smiling, friendly-looking woman.

Diana raised an earth-encrusted hand and waved. ‘How’s it going?’ she asked the smiling red-headed girl. What a difference! She looked transformed.

The auburn hair shimmered out as Isabel happily swung it. ‘Great!’

‘Good for you,’ Diana said warmly. The girl’s shining eyes said it all. Something good had happened, obviously. She felt relief; the girl’s situation had weighed on her, she now realised. She had been actively worrying.

Isabel now noticed the robin pecking about in Diana’s barrow. ‘Oh! Look at him! He’s so tame!’

‘He’s stalking me,’ Diana grinned. ‘Just watch this!’ She bent and turned up a clod under which, as she had guessed, a fat, ribbed, shiny-pink earthworm writhed under the sudden exposure. She placed it near the robin, now watching proceedings from the safe distance of a bush. As the women watched, he hopped out, grabbed the worm and scurried away triumphantly.

‘Not much of a contest,’ Isabel observed. ‘The worm had no idea what was happening, poor old thing.’

Diana smiled up at her. ‘That’s nature for you. Predator and victim.’

Isabel felt suddenly sober. Was that how it was? Did you have to be one or the other?

The bird had flown away and, as Isabel said goodbye and hurried off on pale colt legs, Diana looked after her. She was so lovely, so eager, so full of life. So happy now, obviously, thank goodness. But was there something fragile about her too?

She mused on this, sitting back on the heels of her wellies while the red net of bulbs lolled in her hands. A shadow fell over the grass, sharp and sloping in the low light, making her jump. She looked up, startled, into the sharp black eyes and closed expression of Professor Richard Black, the Master of Branston College.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ Richard said stiffly. She looked, he realised, frankly horrified. Was he really such a monster? He felt even guiltier than he had imagined.

Diana, too, felt uncomfortable. Sally’s words about his widower status burned into her memory. She was uneasy, knowing so many painful, private things. Her warm heart was already going out to him, not entirely with her permission.

‘I just,’ Richard struggled on, ‘wanted a quick word about the garden.’ He had tried to force a friendly tone in his voice, but it was coming out gnarled and strangled. Apology was not something he had much practice in or natural affinity for.

‘The garden?’ While her hackles had risen and her defences were up, Diana nonetheless sensed something conciliatory in his manner. She realised it was possible that his stiffness of expression was not personal coldness, only inability to communicate.

Richard cleared his throat. ‘I just thought . . .’ he began, then stopped. Oh, this was difficult. Why was he doing it? As his defensive instincts started to bunch together, forming the usual curtain wall, he shouldered his way through, forcing the words out. ‘A misunderstanding,’ he began. ‘There’s been a misunderstanding.’

‘A misunderstanding,’ Diana nodded. She wanted to encourage him, as one would a child. As she listened, a sense of unreality began to creep over her. Was he really saying that she could put in her delphinium border after all? She gazed up warily into the narrowed eyes in which something else lurked, something that she could not read. ‘Really?’

He was calming down. She wasn’t all that similar, up close. Her wide, clean face lacked Amy’s freckles, her nose was smaller and her hair curlier, tangled, blow-away. It shone as the breeze affectionately ruffled it. So long as she did not smile, he would be OK. But how would he stop her – he was about to give her what she wanted, after all. He must keep his voice discouraging, grumpy even.

‘The delphiniums?’ Diana repeated. His tone was so unpromising she had to check.

‘The delphiniums, yes.’

Now Diana could not help a great beam of pleasure flooding her face. He looked down, unable to bear the impact of
that smile
. She could not know the sudden stab to the heart this gave him.

‘I’m so pleased,’ she said, glowing. ‘They’ll look wonderful, I promise.’

He was talking again, in more of a rush now, as if whatever obstacle had held the words back earlier had eased itself. She frowned to follow what he was saying about having given more thought to her idea about drifts of crocuses across the lawns.

Diana butted in excitedly. ‘And the roses? I’d picked some wonderful ones. Madame Hardy, Buff Beauty, Bengal Crimson, William Lobb, Pierre de Ronsard . . .’ She went on, unable to stop. ‘Of course, you never get more than three really perfect blooms at once, and one breath of the scent is never enough but it’s just so . . .’ She stopped; he was looking at her with a strange expression.

Richard blinked, brought up short. He had been watching her mouth – full, generous – and enjoying the feeling of being swept up and away in her pleasure. It was some time since he had seen a woman talk with such passion, on that particular subject.