Kissing Toads (32 page)

I stared at him in growing horror. No one's been called a Commie since the Berlin Wall came down; it's so dated as to be really embarrassing. He was also clearly both racist and sexist, though prepared to be broad-minded in the cause of displaying charm and drinking good champagne. Suddenly, I worried that I might be like him – not that I'm racist or anything, but I
am
a material girl and I do like my Bolly and Cristalle. I reminded myself that as HG didn't care for champers, I'd been deprived for weeks without becoming embittered, and had just voluntarily spent three hours trudging through cold muddy woods on a mission of mercy. That made me feel good about myself again. Perhaps I'm not totally materialistic after all.

My father was still on the subject of HG. ‘I'm sure we'll get along,' he said. ‘Friends in common. And of course we're very much of an age.'

‘You look a lot better on it than he does,' Alex said.

My father accepted the compliment as his due, despite an automatic disclaimer. I suppose it was true. But it's difficult to know what your parents actually look like; you can't see them with genuine detachment. I'd never discussed him with Alex, so I couldn't blame him for letting himself be charmed, but I wanted to get him away from there, to make him
understand
– to have him back on my side. Not my father's. I couldn't bear seeing them together, nose-to-nosey, isn't-this-cosy, father/son-in-law bonding. Normally I can handle any situation, but my brain was still refusing to function and I groped in vain for an exit strategy.

It was Roo who did it for me. Wonderful Roo. (I'll never call her a beach again, no matter what.)

‘Delphi and I need to eat,' she said. ‘I think dinner's waiting for us. Why don't you get some rest and we'll see you tomorrow? We've got an early start in the morning so we'll be crashing out straight after dinner.'

Alex said he'd stay and have another drink with my father while we adjourned to the dining room, but at least Roo had got me out of there. Ash, who had been chatting with Morty and Nigel, came with us. My father said he wouldn't leave till we'd finished.

‘I'm a night owl,' he reminded me. ‘Anyway, can't go without kissing my little girl goodnight.'

‘I'm hardly a little girl,' I said. ‘I'm thirty-four.' I don't usually announce it to the world, but just then I wanted to sound very mature.

‘You'll always be my little girl,' he said.

At dinner, Ash was amazingly tactful and didn't ask any awkward questions. Gays are always so sensitive. The food was gorgeous, a wild-rabbit casserole with wine and damsons and spices (‘The inside of your other jacket,' Roo said), but although I'd been starving when we got back, somehow I couldn't eat it. Cedric served us himself, since the drama of the search had thrown everyone out of sync.

‘You don't look good,' he told me. (He definitely isn't the sort of gay I want for a friend.) ‘Face like whey. Too late for extra blusher – you need to eat up. Food'll put some colour in your cheeks.'

‘She's tired,' Roo said hastily, ‘and she's had a bit of a shock, what with her father turning up out of the blue.'

‘On bad terms, are you?' Absent-mindedly, or so I assumed, he pulled out a chair and sat down beside me. ‘Can't stand my old man, never could. When I came out he tried to take his belt to me. I was twenty-two. I got it off him and gave him a wallop round the ear. “I'd love some bloke to give me a whipping,” I told him, “but not you, ducks.” We ain't spoken since.' He filled a glass from the decanter on the table and took a mouthful. ‘That how it was between you and your dad?'

I saw Roo sucking her cheeks in, and bit back a sharp reply. ‘Not exactly.'

‘So what's wrong with my casserole then?'

‘Nothing,' I said. ‘It's lovely. I'm just . . . not hungry.'

He gave me a weaselly look. ‘Up the spout, are you?'

‘I
beg
your pardon?'

‘Leave her alone,' Ash interceded. ‘She's had a tough day. We all have. It was a long, cold walk, and even though we located our quarry in the end, they didn't seem to be very grateful.'

‘Those sleazemongers are all the same,' Cedric said. ‘Load of wankers.'

Harry – I mean Winkworth – walked in partway through the meal. Cedric got him a plate and sat him down with us, but by then I was too shattered and stressed to object. It was a disorganised kind of evening; no doubt that was why we were eating with the staff.

‘Did Operation Tabloid-Rescue go all right?' Roo asked.

‘Just. If you allow for the fuss they made. Oh, and they took the opportunity to make me an offer for my story.'

‘What story?' I said with an upsurge of hostility.

‘Any story. HG – you – you and HG – you and Mortimer Sparrow – your bust-up with Basilisa – your bust-up with Mortimer – your bust-up with Alex. Whatever.'

‘Did you go for it?'

‘Not this time. They wouldn't meet my price.'

‘Creep,' I said. I must have sounded half-hearted, because he looked up from his plate to study me closely.

‘I gather your father's turned up,' he said eventually. ‘Alex asked Morag to prepare a room for him, but I'm afraid we can't do that. Aside from the fact that it's Morag's day of rest – the Sabbath is sacred to her – we'd need HG's permission to put up another guest. I'll ask him when he gets back tomorrow, if you like.'

‘No!' I said. ‘I mean . . . it really isn't necessary. I'm sure my father will be fine in the village.'

Harry's regard grew thoughtful. ‘You haven't seen him in a while, have you?'

‘Quite a while,' I answered evasively.

‘Morag said he and Alex appeared to be pretty good friends.'

‘They've only just met,' said Roo. ‘They bonded.'

Harry hmmed in response, polished off his wild rabbit and accepted an offer of Scotch from Cedric.

I decided things had gone far enough. ‘If this is turning into a staff piss-up, I think I'm in the way,' I said as grandly as I could manage, which, under the circumstances, wasn't very grandly at all. ‘I'm going to bed.'

‘Me too,' said Roo with a smile which didn't even attempt to be grand. ‘Thanks, Cedric. Night, Harry . . . Ash.'

‘Goodnight,' Ash said.

‘Night,' from Harry. And to me: ‘You were a sport today, Dacres; you really were.'

‘It'll get me some good publicity,' I said on a defiant note.

How dare he call me a sport? As if I were some jolly-hockey-sticks type who went around being hearty and clapping people on the back. And
Dacres
??!!

In the hall, Roo said, ‘You look zonked. Why don't you go up to bed now and I'll make your excuses to your father?'

I hugged her with real gratitude. ‘I don't know what to do about him,' I said.

‘We'll think of something,' she responded. ‘Tomorrow.'

When I got to my bedroom I found Fenny, exhausted by his stint as a bloodhound, curled up asleep on the tiger-print duvet. I wanted a bath, but I couldn't even be bothered to wash my face. I undressed and tumbled into the bed beside him, unconscious in minutes.

I dreamed I was back in the gallery with the conspirators, but when the man turned round it was my father, and I knew the person they were planning to kill was me.

I woke in the morning to the sensation of Alex nuzzling my breasts. It should have been enjoyable, but with the presence of my father looming over me (not literally, but in the immediate future), I felt far too tense for sex. Haltingly, I tried to convey to Alex the real nature of my (non-existent) relationship with my long-absent parent. But I didn't want to go into details – it would mean exposing myself too much, showing myself as weak and vulnerable instead of the strong, successful person I knew I really was. Alex needed my strength to lean on, my success as a substitute for his own idle dabbling; he wouldn't be able to cope if I became helpless and needy. So all I could say was that my father had gone out of my life when I was ten and I didn't want him back.

‘He treated my mother appallingly,' I said, ‘and he never bothered about Pan at all. He had another child and didn't even tell us. Now he's fallen out with her so he's getting back in touch with me to try and fill the gap.'

‘You're not being fair,' Alex said. ‘Roddy told me about Natalie. He said
she
filled the gap in his life after he lost
you
. Your mother wouldn't let him visit you – she told him he wasn't even to write.'

‘Rubbish,' I said. ‘She's not like that.'

‘She was mad at him for running off with someone else. She used you – you and Pan – to hurt him. Mothers do that sometimes. It's sort of understandable. I mean, he broke her heart and punctured her ego all in one go – but that's ancient history now. He's your dad: you've got to give him a chance. He's a great guy. I really like him.'

‘I don't,' I said, more bluntly than I intended. He'd twisted everything for Alex's benefit, but he didn't fool me. I know my mother. She'd never tried to set me against him; she'd even made excuses for him from time to time. ‘
I expect he's busy. I'm sure he'll come and see you soon. He's got to sort out his financial affairs from France now
.' He'd always been ‘in business' in a vague sort of way, dabbling in the markets, playing with stocks and shares. Another dabbler.

Mummy would never have used me as a marital weapon, or Pan. She wasn't an adoring parent, but her principles were unshakable.

‘I want him out of here,' I said. ‘Today.'

‘I don't know what's happened to you lately, Delphi,' Alex complained. ‘You used to have more heart. This is your dad we're talking about, for heaven's sake. He just wants to make it up to you for all those years apart. You're obviously a bit jelly of Natalie, but you shouldn't be so . . . vindictive. It's not like you. Roddy's a charmer. He's got a lot more charm than your mum, frankly. You'd love him to bits if you let yourself.'

‘I don't need his charm,' I said. ‘I've got mine.'

‘I haven't noticed much of it since I got here,' Alex said nastily.

‘Look, I want him to leave, and that's it.' I was all out of reasons, operating on instinct. I'd been expecting Alex to support me, to be sympathetic and understanding. I hadn't given him much to understand, but I thought he would stick by me no matter what. His defection hurt.

Too many things hurt right now.

‘You can't send him away,' Alex said. ‘Think what the press'll make of it.'

‘Why should they make anything of it?'

‘Come off it, Delphi, you know they will. Your estranged father tries to patch things up with you, but you turn him away because you're hanging out with an international rock star. It's a hot story. One interview with him in the
Mail
or the
Scoop
and your name will be mud.'

‘He wouldn't,' I said. ‘He couldn't be so . . .'

Treacherous.

A man who'd dumped his wife and daughters without a qualm had no problem with treachery.

‘Why not?' said Alex. ‘You're the one who's treating him like shit.'

‘He wouldn't even think of it. He's a bastard, but not that kind of a bastard.' I was clinging to a forlorn hope, and I knew it.

But I wasn't prepared for Alex's response.

‘He already
has
thought of it.'

‘
What?
'

‘Well, he asked where you were last night, and I told him about the missing journalists. I can't think what came over you, going to look for them, but anyway . . . He said maybe they'd like to talk to him.'

‘So all this crap you've been spouting about father-daughter relationships is just . . . crap! What he really wants is to blackmail me—'

‘No . . . no,' Alex floundered. ‘He wasn't threatening, he was just . . . thinking aloud. He might give a wonderful interview about you. But if you boot him out, he might . . . You see?'

I saw.

If I wasn't going to tell Alex the whole story about me and my father, I certainly wasn't going to tell the papers. Whereas he would paint a picture of himself as a lovable rogue, trying to build bridges with a long-lost daughter, shut out of Celebrity Castle because I was too busy being famous to want to see him. It was all right for Pan, who had no public profile to live up to, but I was caught in the trap of my own success. And as far as I could see, there was nothing I could do about it.

‘He's a loose cannon,' I told Roo over coffee. ‘If I send him away – if I say I don't want him at my wedding – he'll head straight for the pub, pal up with those bloody journalists, and then I'm cooked. And it won't be just me. He'll have a go at Mummy too; maybe even Pan. Perhaps if I offered him money . . . ?'

‘Why should you?' Roo said indignantly. ‘Besides, does he need it? He seems to be fairly comfortably off. Does he – did he – ever work?'

‘Inherited income,' I said briefly. ‘He just plays around with it. I think he's played around quite profitably sometimes. I gather his second wife left him a packet, too. I don't know for sure, but that was a Savile Row suit he was wearing yesterday, and the sweater under it was cashmere. And his watch is a Rolex.'

‘Bugger,' said Roo. ‘Still, if you started paying him off you'd never stop. Best not to start. We'll come up with something.'

We spent the day filming in what was to be the meadow garden, planting a range of wild flowers which might not have managed to take root on their own. Russell had wanted to do the last of the historical scenes, but HG and Basilisa didn't get back till late afternoon so they would have to wait. I didn't witness their return, but flying rumours said they were not on good terms and she was turning people to stone with a single glance.