Clouds among the Stars

‘I set out the minute you rang off,’ Ronald said, with a slight air of injury. Then he straightened his tie, braced his shoulders and lifted his chin. ‘How ravishing you’re looking, my darling! The bloom on your cheek would put a rose to shame.’ He flung up his hand in a graceful gesture, just as he must have done years ago when he first said the line in front of the camera.

‘That wig wouldn’t fool a blind man,’ replied my mother, very nastily, I thought. ‘And the dye you’re using on the rest of it looks purple in this light.’

I had been struck myself by the odd effect of the aubergine tufts of hair above Ronnie’s ears.

‘Well! You certainly don’t believe in robing naked truth with the silk of courtesy.’ Ronald looked pardonably annoyed.

‘You’re getting a paunch,’ was my mother’s rejoinder. ‘You’d better go and see Bo-Bo Lascelles. She’s opened a new clinic in Bruton Street. Her special diet is a week of raw beetroot juice three times a day combined with three tablespoons of kush-kush stalks from the Andes. Apparently it pulverises the fat cells.’

‘Knowing Bo-Bo I bet it costs an arm and a leg,’ muttered Ronald peevishly. ‘Raw beetroot! Never mind the damned grass!’

‘If you’re going to be moody and difficult I shall be sorry I asked you to go with me.’

‘Where are you going?’ I asked.

‘I’m going to see Bo-Bo’s plastic surgeon. She says Mr Moffat-Rime is a genius and very reasonable, and luckily he’s managed to squeeze me in. I’m having a little tuck here.’

She pressed her hands to her jawbone. Cosmetic surgery was my mother’s recourse in extremis.

‘But what about Pa?’

‘I shall be over the bruising by the time he comes out. It’s all fitting in quite well.’ Her mouth smiled with satisfaction. She seemed to have forgotten about his name being wounded and her bosom being a bed to lodge it in until it was healed.

‘Aren’t you going to see him? I think he was sorry you didn’t go yesterday.’

She turned her dark lenses towards me. ‘Harriet, I have noticed before that you have a tendency to wallow. Mawkishness is extremely vulgar.’ She tossed her head, petulantly. ‘I expect Marina Marlow will be delighted to have the publicity. You know how I dislike it.’

I was surprised into silence. Marina Marlow was playing the part of Regan in King Lear. She did not look much older than me. Was it possible that she and my father …? I turned the thought away.

‘I’ll be back next week. Goodbye, Cordelia, my sweet one.’ My mother blew a limp-fingered kiss in her direction. ‘Give my love to darling Bron. I shall take this opportunity to have a complete rest.’ She gave a little hum of pleasure. ‘Goodbye, Harriet. Do keep an eye on Ophelia. When I spoke to her just now, I thought she seemed un peu distrait. Goodbye, Maria-Alba. I know you’ll look after my chicks for me.’ She pecked the space above Maria-Alba’s ear. ‘My fortress. My harbour in a time of storm.’ Maria-Alba gave a grim smile of satisfaction, which I doubted had anything to do with my mother’s patently insincere praise. ‘Ronald, there is nothing for it but to face those vultures. God knows, they have picked me to the very bone often enough! But, arm in arm, we may yet triumph.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Ronald put a good deal of solemnity into his voice ‘Fame is indeed a twin-headed monster. As it creates, so it devours.’

They almost banged heads trying to see themselves in the looking-glass. Then they sucked in their cheeks and stomachs, Ronald flung open the door and they exited together. There was an awkward little moment of anticlimax as the garden was found to be quite empty. Presumably all the reporters were at Bron’s press conference. Nevertheless, as they titupped elegantly down the path – Ronald’s heels were nearly as high as my mother’s – they turned their heads from right to left as if greeting the crowd. Ronald’s bow as he handed my mother into the waiting taxi would have struck an echo in the bosoms of those fans who had seen him as Sir Walter Raleigh conducting his sovereign across that celebrated puddle.

‘Bravo! Ben fatto!’ Maria-Alba’s dun-coloured cheeks had points of pink in them, which was unusual. ‘Dio mi è giudice … but all of heaven and hell is not know till when we die.’

With this inscrutable utterance she went down into the kitchen.

I brought Mark Antony downstairs and put him out into the front garden. Then I went back upstairs to make what I was almost sure would be a useless attempt to console Ophelia. I knocked on the door and called her name but she ignored me. I put my eye to the keyhole. If I had believed for one moment that she loved Crispin I would have been most upset, for she lay pale and still on her bed, the picture of dejection. Now and then she sniffed despondently and once she said, ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger!’ with great emphasis. I imagined she was thinking of Henrietta Slotts as the future Countess of Sope.

While I was on my knees at the keyhole strange noises broke out downstairs and then Mark Antony, his ginger fur stiff with feeling, shot past me on his way to the attic. I looked over the banisters. Bron was standing at the foot of the stairs, his arms extended, holding the loop of a lead with both hands. At the other end was a dog, brown and white and very furry, with feet like dinner plates. Deaf to Bron’s commands and in defiance of a throttling choke chain, it was trying to climb the stairs.

‘Good dog! Who’s a beautiful girl, then?’ I said ingratiatingly as I descended. It is hard to prevent oneself from extravagant gushing in the one-sided conversations imposed by animals and babies. The dog jumped up to lick my jerseyed chest with an enormously long tongue, and whined with every appearance of love.

‘That’s good. He likes you. His name’s Derek.’

‘Derek? Poor thing. I don’t think it suits him at all. The only Derek I know sells office furniture and is a terrible lech.’

‘You can call him what you like. But he answers to Derek. When he answers at all, that is.’

‘Why should I want to call him anything?’ I began to be suspicious.

‘Because he’s a present for you. To make up for getting drunk yesterday and not going with you to the police station to see Pa. Maria-Alba was quite right. It was very bad of me and Derek’s to say sorry.’

‘Oh, but … Really, Bron, you shouldn’t have – I’d forgotten all about it. I don’t think I can … You know how Pa hates dogs.’

‘Haven’t you always said you wanted one? Well, now Pa’s in the clink this is your chance.’

‘But, Bron, imagine what he’ll think when he comes home – as though we were taking advantage of him being away. Of course I have always wanted a dog, but not now, when things are impossibly difficult as it is –’

‘Well, I must say …’ Bron’s handsome face was despondent. ‘It’s extremely hurtful, you know to have one’s presents rejected. I was so pleased when I had the idea. I thought. I know what will make Harriet happy again. A dear little dog she can love, to make up for Pa being banged up.’ He lifted a hand to shade his eyes and his voice was broken. ‘I don’t think I was ever more unhappy –’

‘Oh, Bron, I’m sorry! It was kind of you and I’m very grateful but –’

‘Not another word!’ Bron heaved a sigh and dashed away an invisible tear. ‘I’ll take him away. Though the man I bought him from has already left the country. He was on his way to the airport. That’s how I managed to get him for such a good price. He’s a very rare breed, you know. I’m afraid it’s the dogs’ home for Derek. He won’t like it. Apparently he hates being alone. They’ll put him in a concrete pen and he’ll howl until his poor little chest hurts and then at the end of the week, when no one’s claimed him, they’ll take him to the vet. He’ll be so happy, thinking he’s going to a good home, and instead they’ll fill his veins with poison –’

‘All right, all right!’ When we were children Bron used to enjoy telling me sad stories to make me cry, about overburdened donkeys and starving robins frozen to branches, and it always worked. ‘I’ll keep him – for the moment, anyway. Just until Pa gets home.’ I fondled Derek’s soft brown triangular ears that lay flat against his head and he wrinkled his brow comically. He was the colour of muscovado sugar, with a white muzzle and a black nose. I made up my mind to put an advertisement in the local post office straightaway before I got too fond of him. ‘And – thank you.’ I spoke a little gruffly because I was not feeling particularly grateful but Bron didn’t seem to notice.

‘Righto. Here you are.’ He handed me the loop of the lead. ‘He likes bacon and eggs to eat.’

‘What? Oh, don’t be silly, Bron. You know nothing about dogs.’

‘It’s what the man said. I wasn’t aware that you were an authority.’

‘I’m not, but surely he eats raw meat and tins of Scoffalot and that sort of thing.’

‘I didn’t say you had to cook the bacon, did I?’

‘Well.’ I tried not to sound ungracious. ‘What sort of dog is he, then? I hope he isn’t going to get any bigger.’

‘Oh, no, he’s fully-grown. The man said so. He’s a – a Cornish terrier.’

‘Really?’ I looked at Derek with interest. ‘I’ve never heard of such a thing.’

‘You’ve still got a lot to learn, Miss Harriet Byng.’ Bron spoke sarcastically as though still smarting at my ingratitude. ‘Expert though you are, in so many fields.’

‘I’m not going to call him Derek, though.’

‘Whatever you like. I’m going out. Tell Maria-Alba I shan’t be in for supper.’

‘But, Bron, you’ll come with me to see Pa today, won’t you? Ma’s gone to have her jaw tightened and Ophelia’s in a state about Crispin’s desertion and Portia still isn’t back and I don’t like to ask Maria-Alba – she was so upset yesterday.’

‘Look, we can’t all go trooping along as though it was some kind of party. A little tact is called for.’ Bron pressed his chin into his neck and looked at me reprovingly. ‘I’m going to see Wanda.’ Wanda was Bron’s agent. ‘There should be some good piccies in the evening papers. They took hundreds from every angle and wrote down everything I said, like bees sipping nectar. I don’t suppose they often get the chance to interview someone highly articulate. Wanda particularly wants me to go to this party tonight to meet an important film director. It would be madness to hurl away all my chances just to visit Pa. Ten to one Marina Marlow will be there, and Pa won’t want grown children at his knee when he’s trying to lure the bird into the cage. Honestly, Harriet, you must try to put yourself in other people’s places. It’s no good just thinking about what would suit you.’

My mother must have been right about Marina. It was selfish of me, perhaps, to be depressed by the idea. Derek suddenly took it into his head that down in the kitchen was the one thing for which he had been searching all his life and that nothing must hold him back from immediate consummation. His paws windmilled on the polished floor and my arms were pulled painfully in their sockets. I went downstairs with him, leaving Bron with the moral high ground.

SEVEN (#ulink_b8ac0576-5463-5abd-b898-09a1c25fb4a9)