Nameless (29 page)

‘Man, this is so real,’ said someone beside Daisy’s ear. The young man penetrated her briskly and everyone crowded around them. She felt a part of the whole, accepted, wanted, desired. Then it was Mandy and the friend’s turn, and they joined together in a frantic scrabble, Daisy and her partner supporting them, fondling them, loving them.

Someone was saying Pink Floyd were on the stage, but the noise and the crush of people were so intense that Daisy found she didn’t even care. Her head was starting to spin from the heat; she felt parched. She felt . . . very odd.

She reeled away to the side of the great hall and slid down the wall. She sat there, thinking she was about to be sick. People passed by her, huge giants looming over her. She felt the stickiness between her thighs and frowned in confusion. How had that happened? Had her period come early or something . . . ? And where were her clothes?

Her stomach contracted once, hard, and she leaned over and vomited on the floor.

‘Jesus,’ she groaned, and Mandy lurched up to her and slid down beside her. Daisy had no idea where their clothes had gone. Mandy’s hat and poncho had vanished somewhere, into the crowd. But Mandy was ever resourceful. She was holding two jackets. She gave one to Daisy, who was now shivering, and put the other one on herself.

The music played on, the lights strobed. They sat there for an hour, too weak to move. Then at last Mandy said: ‘Let’s go, shall we?’ and they staggered outside.

It was two o’clock, and still there were people going into the hall.

‘What’s it like in there?’ asked one couple passing by the two girls in their jackets and – apparently – little else.

‘Groovy. Really happening,’ said Mandy.

Daisy felt too sick to speak.

There was an ambulance out here, someone was being shoved in the back, there was blood . . .

Daisy couldn’t look. Her first happening, and she’d been sick and thought she was going to pass out. And . . . oh God, she thought she’d done something really stupid. Hadn’t she
fucked
someone, someone she didn’t even know? Hadn’t she done that again, when she had
sworn
she wouldn’t? Her mind felt wired, scrabbling around like a rat in a cage, but her body was exhausted. Mandy hailed a cab, and they fell in the back of it, and went home.

72

1968

‘More flowers? God, that man just don’t know the meaning of the word
quit
,’ complained Ruby.

Jane, her PA, brought the huge bouquet of creamy-white roses into Ruby’s office over the flagship store. It was the third bouquet she’d received from Michael Ward.

‘Don’t knock it,’ said Jane with a wry smile. She was a plump, immaculate and silver-haired matron, extremely efficient, long-married and merry-eyed. ‘Mine don’t even know what flowers are
for
.’

Ruby stood up and took the bouquet from her. ‘Is there a note . . . ?’

‘Yeah, it’s here, look.’

Ruby read it.

Roses for a Ruby. Call me.

His number was written underneath.

Ruby gazed at it, and wondered. Mr Ward was a very handsome man with his iron-grey hair and his steely grey eyes. He oozed a brutal confidence. He scared her. All right, he attracted her too. She had to admit that.

But . . .

She’d already done the whole love thing once, in her youth, with Cornelius. It had been painful beyond belief. To start over again, try again with another man . . . she didn’t want to do it. It would hurt too much when it all went wrong. And it would; she knew it would.

‘I’ll put them in water then . . . ?’ suggested Jane, while Ruby stood there, staring at the note.

Ruby shook herself. ‘Yeah. Thanks, Jane.’

No, it was safer to cling to her business. They were launching a new wine department to run alongside the food halls, and it had taken up most of her time to debate with her team the merits of the various wines and choose which wines to select. They had settled on eighteen wines, plus vermouth, sherry, beers and cider.

‘Liebfraumilch at ninety-five pence a bottle, that’s a good deal,’ had been Jane’s input. ‘Us ladies do love a sweet wine.’

So the Liebfraumilch had been included, along with a good selection of other whites and reds.

What remained of Ruby’s time was taken up with wondering if she could get up the nerve to meet with Cornelius and ask if she could see her daughter. She quailed at asking him, though. She knew he’d be angry at the very idea. And she hadn’t seen him face-to-face in years.

She saw him often in the press: Lord Bray was a very influential man now, chairman of many charities and active in politics in the upper house. It always shocked her when she saw his photo. He was still her Cornelius, more
white
than blond now, with crinkling lines around his eyes when the camera caught him smiling.

Yes, he was older, but he was still the devastatingly attractive charmer she had known. If she saw him in the flesh, would she turn back into the star-struck idiot youngster she had once been, falling out of the Windmill Theatre straight into his arms?

‘You gonna put this man out of his misery soon?’ asked Jane, pausing at the door with the bouquet in her arms.

‘Mr Ward? I don’t think so,’ said Ruby, sitting down behind her desk and reaching for last month’s figures.

‘Shame,’ said Jane. ‘You could use some fun in your life.’

‘I have the business,’ said Ruby with a brisk smile. Jane was starting to sound like Vi. Going on about fun all the time, when Ruby really wasn’t interested. She’d thrown herself into business to hide from her own feelings. What else could she have done? Shit happened. All you could do was tough it out, get on with it.

‘That’s work,’ said Jane. ‘That ain’t fun.’

‘So you say.’

‘I
do
say. You gonna do that thing of lying on your deathbed saying you wished you’d spent more time at work? I don’t think so. Love’s what counts, girl. Family. That’s the stuff that matters in the end.’

Family! Apart from Joe and Betsy and their kids, she had none. She was pleased that Joe seemed to have drawn back a little from all the shady deals and thuggery he’d once been so deeply involved in with Charlie. Oh, he was still operating on the fringes of it all, she knew that – but she thought that Charlie’s fate had sobered Joe a lot, made him more careful. Joe was a family man these days. But what was she?

She had cashed in on her daughter.

Sacrificed her poor son.

Sold her soul to the devil, in fact.

As the door closed on Jane, Ruby turned her attention back to the figures. Maybe she didn’t even
deserve
happiness. Maybe she was just wicked, through and through. She concentrated on the figures, forgot the rest. She had to, or it would drive her crazy. Tonight, when she got home, she would think about all this again. About her children. She promised herself she would.

73

1968

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Daisy, this is
ridiculous
,’ said Aunt Ju.

They were sitting in the waiting room in Harley Street. It was a beautiful high-ceilinged Georgian building, staffed by discreet white-coated nurses and one of the best private doctors in the country.

‘I can’t believe you’ve been so stupid. Again.’

Daisy sat there, ashamed. She
had
been stupid. Her wild night out with Mandy had come at a cost. As the months had wound on after the happening, she had become aware of a monstrous itching in her genital region. She could remember dimly that she’d had sex with someone that night, but she didn’t know who. And now she had this horrible
itch.

She suffered it in silence and then in despair and desperation went to Aunt Ju, who instantly whisked her off to her doctor.

‘Crabs,’ he pronounced, when Daisy had been examined and Aunt Ju was ushered in with her to hear the diagnosis. He wrote a prescription and Aunt Ju snatched it from him, casting a withering look at her niece. ‘This’ll clear it up. And, young woman, you should be more careful who you mix with in future.’

‘I have never been so embarrassed in my entire
life
,’ said Aunt Ju as she left the building with a cringing Daisy. She shook her head in disbelief. ‘For the love of God, Daisy, what on earth have you been up to?’

Daisy hung her head in shame. She’d even frightened herself this time. She’d awoken on the morning after the happening feeling dry-mouthed, foul-headed and sick. She remembered snatches of what she’d done, how she’d behaved, and was appalled. ‘You won’t tell Mother, will you?’ she begged.

‘No. I won’t. But only because I want to spare her feelings, and your father’s too. They’re so good to you. Cornelius bought you that car just a week ago.’

Daisy thought about the little car, her Mini. Red and shiny as a Christmas bauble, and she loved it. But that was always Pa’s answer to everything: throw money at it. She didn’t see him much.

Aunt Ju raised an imperious hand as a cab approached. ‘I think it’s best if you go home, Daisy. I really do. I don’t know what to do with you any more. You’re twenty-four years old, and all you do is get into trouble. You need to just
grow up.
You are worrying me to
death
.’

Considering Aunt Ju never seemed to care much what she did or where she went, Daisy thought this was a bit rich. But she didn’t say so. She was in enough trouble as it was, doomed to be sent back to the country, without Mandy, without any hope of entertainment or simple downright
fun
.

But maybe Aunt Ju had a point. Maybe she was just too damned
old
now for happenings, love-ins and all that shit.

Kit was busy with the clubs and bars and restaurants, sending Mr Ward’s boys out here, there and everywhere, raking in fistfuls of money and heading off trouble. He was also busy with the voracious Gilda, meeting up with her as often as he could in far-off locations around the home counties. They would drive there separately, meet up, make love, then go home separately the following morning.

This was what he was in the act of doing in his beautiful, treasured Bentley Tourer, driving over a little hump-backed bridge over a river somewhere in the lush Hampshire countryside. There were froths of tall creamy flowers all along the edges of the lane, and in the field below they were cutting some green stuff or other, he noticed – and then a red Mini was lurching towards him, filling his windscreen, and he accelerated, pulling the wheel hard to the left to avoid crashing into it. He shot over the bridge, hearing a shriek of metal as the other car swerved and bumped the edge of it. He slammed on the brakes, switched off the engine, and jumped out.

The Mini was over the other side of the bridge, its wheels embedded in greenery, its side scraped to bare metal. Kit went to the driver’s door and flung it open.

‘You fucking fool, what d’you think you’re doing?’ he shouted.

A dishevelled blonde girl looked up at him, her face sheet-white.

‘What am
I
doing?’ she shot back in a crisp Home Counties accent. ‘
I’m
not the one who was in the middle of the road.’

‘I wasn’t in the middle of the road. I was coming over a single-lane bridge at a reasonable speed, and your driving is
crazy
.’

Daisy thought that this was too much. She’d been humiliated in London, cured of her embarrassing problem and was now at home, at Brayfield, bored and wondering about a job, fending off her mother’s probing questions about why Aunt Ju had sent her home so suddenly. She’d taken the Mini out for a spin, just to kill an hour or two – and had nearly ended up getting killed herself by this maniac.

Although . . . he was quite a handsome maniac. He was very well dressed in a sharp suit and tie, about her own age, she thought, with dark skin, black curling hair and startling blue eyes. He looked prosperous – he was driving a Bentley, after all. But even without the car, his bearing alone would have commanded attention.

‘You might ask if I’m all right,’ she said.

‘
Are
you?’

‘I’m quite shaken up, actually. I think the least you can do is buy me a drink.’

He stared at her. ‘You’ve got some front.’

‘We can call in the garage on the way to the village and arrange to get the Mini towed.’

‘A
lot
of front.’

‘My father has a Bentley too.’

‘Does he?’ Kit was looking at her. She was pretty and she did look pale and genuinely shaken after that narrow scrape. If she’d been travelling any faster, the Bentley would have mangled that Mini into mush. He wasn’t in a hurry to get back today. So why not? ‘OK, come on then,’ he said, and walked back to his car.

Daisy scrambled out of the Mini’s bucket seat, slammed the door and locked it. She ran to the Bentley and got in the passenger side, flashing him her brightest smile. ‘You can turn around in the drive of Campbell’s farm, it’s just up ahead,’ she said.

They sat in a corner of the pub in the village. He bought the drinks to the table and sat down. The Move was blasting out ‘Fire Brigade’ from a transistor radio perched on the end of the bar.

‘Thanks,’ said Daisy, taking a hasty gulp of white wine, tapping her foot to the beat.

‘You live around here somewhere?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘At Brayfield.’

‘So you live in a place here, right here in the village?’

‘I live at the house, which is about half a mile in
that
direction,’ said Daisy, pointing. ‘It’s been in the family for generations – the house, the land, the church, the village.’

He shot her a look. ‘Wait up. Your family
owns
this village?’

‘Yep.’

Kit took a drink, shaking his head in wonder. This explained a lot. She was just a crazy little posh tart, overindulged by a rich mummy and daddy.

‘What was that stuff they were cutting under the bridge?’ he asked.

‘Watercress. There have been cress beds here for centuries.’