Clouds among the Stars

‘I shall call him Byron,’ I said. ‘After the poet.’

‘He doesn’t look a bit like a nasty old poet.’ Cordelia was feeding Derek with glacé cherries, which he was gobbling greedily. ‘I wish Bron had given him to me. He’s such a sweet little snookums. I’d call him Honeypot.’

‘You wouldn’t!’ I was revolted. Derek blinked and panted and laid his chin gratefully on Cordelia’s knee, showing a regrettable lack of taste.

‘Why not? Better than calling him after a boring, wrinkly old man.’

‘Byron was only thirty-six when he died. He was stunningly attractive and women fell in love with him by the lorry-load, even though he had a club foot. Besides he was a first-class poet,’ I added, attempting to redress the trivial aspects of my argument.

‘A club foot? Now that is romantic,’ Cordelia became dreamy. ‘Like Richard the Third, do you mean?’ This was Cordelia’s favourite film and every time it came to the arty little cinema down the road she made me sit through practically every performance. Laurence Olivier’s improbable wig sent shivers of delight through her and she made noses like shoehorns out of Plasticine for all her dolls. Now she got up from her chair, brought one shoulder up to her ear and walked about the kitchen, limping. Derek – Byron, I should say – was driven into a frenzy by this performance, racing several times round the table, jumping up at Maria-Alba and knocking the whisk from her hand.

‘Uffa! Senti!’ she said, fetching a cloth to wipe zabaglione from the table, chairs and floor. ‘Le cose vanno di male in peggio!’

By which I understood her to mean that things were going from bad to worse. Derek was sick at her feet, the glacé cherries being conspicuous on their return. Maria-Alba flung me the cloth wordlessly.

After a lunch that was rich even by Maria-Alba’s standards – chiocciole with walnuts and mascarpone, braised guinea fowl, tomatoes stuffed with rice and the zabaglione – for Byron’s sake as well as our tightened waistbands, we dragged ourselves out for a walk. The only thing I knew about dogs was that they needed plentiful exercise. Also Derek was such a tiring dog indoors that by the time he had gnawed the legs of the furniture, fought the rugs, eaten the lock of Garrick’s hair and knocked over almost every vase of flowers in the house, we were quite prepared to brave the newspaper men. That is, Cordelia and I were. Ophelia had appeared briefly for lunch, dry-eyed but subdued. She had confined her remarks to unfavourable comment on Derek/Byron, who, it must be admitted, behaved quite badly. He insisted on lying under the table, snatching our napkins from our knees and trying to take off our shoes. When we put him outside the room he cried continuously with a high-pitched whine until we allowed him back in.

‘This was a very bad idea of Bron’s,’ Ophelia said, somewhat savagely as I tied the dining-room curtains into loose knots to discourage Byron from thrusting up his head inside them and pulling down the interlinings with his teeth.

‘I expect he’ll settle down soon,’ I said. ‘You must admit he’s terribly sweet.’ There was about Byron a floppy, panting appeal that I was beginning to find quite irresistible. His nature was affectionate to a fault.

‘I admit nothing of the kind,’ said Ophelia, as she wrested her shoes from Byron’s jaws and placed them with the entrée dishes on the sideboard.

Our walk was not particularly enjoyable. For one thing I was suffering from indigestion, having grossly overeaten to keep Maria-Alba happy. Also I had been obliged to jump up between each mouthful to rescue our goods and chattels from Derek. For another, the weather was damp and chilly, with water droplets condensing on one’s hair, face and hands. The reporters stuck to us like blowflies to a corpse as we wandered through the park, Byron pulling on the choke chain until his eyes were starting from his head.

‘You ought to let him have a good run, miss,’ said one of the reporters, wearying of my reply of ‘No comment’ to all his questions. ‘It’s cruel to keep them always on a leash.’

I was cut by this accusation and, against my better judgement, I unhooked his lead. Byron at once changed down, revved up and sped away into the mist. It was a good hour later when Cordelia and I and the two reporters who remained loyal to the search, sank down hoarse and exhausted on the bench beside the war memorial drinking trough. The fog was much thicker now and we could see barely ten yards in front of us. My hair clung wetly to my forehead and my shoes were ruined.

‘This is a rum do,’ said the nicest reporter, whose name was Stan. ‘Likely the little blighter’s halfway home by now. Where did you say you got him from?’

‘I didn’t. I’ve no idea where he lived before. Perhaps he’ll be run over before he gets there.’ Low spirits dipped past the point of what was tolerable at the dreadful idea of Derek – we had given up calling him Byron – smoothed extensively over the surface of Shooter’s Hill Road.

‘I’d better go back now,’ said Cordelia, looking dutiful. ‘I promised Maria-Alba I’d help her make the strozzapreti for supper.’ Though strozzapreti literally means priest-stranglers, it is nothing more homicidal than a kind of pasta. I suspected there was a favourite television programme about to come on. ‘Don’t get all mopy, Hat. He’s probably waiting for us on the doorstep. Whatever anyone else says, I think he’s very intelligent.’

During the last half-hour Derek’s reputation had been much sullied by the other reporter, whose name was Jay.

‘See if you can persuade Maria-Alba to cook something simple,’ I begged. ‘Sausages would be nice. I don’t know when we’ll be back from visiting Pa.’

‘I’d better come with you,’ Jay said to Cordelia, relief evident in his tone. ‘You’ll get lost in this fog.’

‘It’s just like that film with Doris Day, called Midnight Lace,’ said Cordelia. ‘It begins with her walking across a London park and it’s foggy and this voice says from behind a fountain – only you can’t see anyone – “Mrs Preston –” that was Doris Day’s name in the film, – “Mrs Preston! I’m going to kill you.” It’s a really spooky voice – sing-song Welsh – and Doris Day is terrified. Her husband’s incredibly swave and sexy, played by Rex Harrison …’ They were hidden from view by the drifting vapour long before I ceased to hear Cordelia’s voice describing the plot in fine detail.

‘Cheer up, young lady,’ said Stan to me. ‘Probably the little girl’s right and the dog’s gone home. I’ve got a dog meself – a Westie, cute as a button – and I shouldn’t like not knowing where she was. They’re part of the family, aren’t they? My Melanie – that’s my daughter, only six but she’s got me twisted round her little finger – she’d break her heart if Snowy got lost.’

He told me all about Melanie, how pretty and bright she was, and then about Annette, his wife, who had multiple sclerosis and had been forced to give up her job as a clerk in a solicitor’s office and was very depressed in consequence, and about their house in Purley Oaks that they were struggling to pay the mortgage on, and Annette’s mother who lived with them. Her name was Ivy, and Stan called her Ivy the Terrible because she was so disagreeable. I was sympathetic about all these difficulties and Stan said it was as good as a tonic to talk to someone who really understood.

In return I told him a little about my family. Despite the awfulness of my father’s arrest and wrongful imprisonment, I realised that our life sounded much more fun than Stan’s and I felt embarrassed by our comparative good fortune. Because he had been so honest with me I felt obliged to do a little unburdening myself. So I told him about Bron’s dormant acting career and Ophelia’s engagement, which looked unlikely now and Portia’s having gone off with a sinister-sounding man, and Stan was very kind and made all sorts of consoling and boosting remarks.

‘Tell you what,’ Stan shook his head and little starry drops of water fell on my knees, ‘it’s getting dark and I could do with a drop of sustenance. What say we finish me sandwiches leftover from lunch and then have one last holler for the hound?’

I was not at all hungry but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings as he’d been so decent, so I agreed it was a good plan. Stan undid the unappetisingly soggy parcel and a split second later Derek materialised at his knee. His coat was silvered all over with fog but he was quite unharmed. I was so pleased to see him I forgot to be angry about the wasted time spent searching. I snapped on the lead and begged Stan to give Derek my share of the fish-paste sandwiches as he had fixed the package with his large brown eyes and was drooling unbecomingly.

By the time we had walked back across the park, exulting in a shared sense of relief, Stan and I were the best of friends. Though he thought it wouldn’t come out because the light was bad, he took a photograph of Derek for his daughter because Melanie loved dogs and would be interested to hear how her father had spent the afternoon. He hoped it would cheer Annette up a little to hear that the dog had come at once in response to the sandwiches.

‘Laughter’s the best medicine, when all’s said and done,’ he said, with a wink.

As I was waving a fond farewell a black car drew up and Inspector Foy and Sergeant Tweeter got out. At once I felt guilty because I had been smiling at Stan and forgetting, for a moment, my father’s predicament. Actually, I think now that it is impossible to keep sorrow continually before one’s eyes, and almost the worst thing about unhappiness is constantly remembering it, so that you realise your grief a thousand times over with the devastation of a fresh shock each time.

Derek took a shine to the inspector at once and made lengthy smears over the immaculate mackintosh with his muddy paws. I apologised profusely but the inspector said it didn’t matter a bit. This confirmed my opinion that despite his calling as a fascist instrument of proletarian oppression he was a nice man.

‘Is your mother coming with us?’ he asked, attempting to wipe his coat with his handkerchief and making a worse mess.

‘I’m afraid not. She’s – having an operation.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ He looked so concerned that I almost told him the truth. ‘What about your brother and sisters?’

‘Cordelia’s coming. Portia’s still away, Bron’s got a – business appointment and Ophelia, my eldest sister, isn’t well.’

Just as I said that the front door opened and Ophelia came down the front steps. Even by the light of the streetlamp, which was refracted into a halo by the excessive moisture in the air, she looked stunning. She was wearing a white wool coat, a diaphanous silver scarf and a black Juliet cap. The fairy-tale romance of her appearance was exaggerated by her golden hair, which was knotted loosely behind her head and tumbled down her shoulders in elegant waves, like the youngest of three princesses, who is always the most virtuous and kind-hearted. Ophelia shrank back from Derek’s overtures.

‘For God’s sake, don’t let that bloody animal near me.’ She ignored the inspector. ‘I’m going out to dinner with Peregrine Wolmscott. I can’t stand another minute in that depressing house of horrors. Woe, woe, woe! All those ghastly flower arrangements – nobody cheerful to talk to. As for Maria-Alba, she’s sinking so fast into depression, I think she’s going to have to go in for another sizzle.’ She meant the electroconvulsive therapy that Maria-Alba so hated and feared.

‘It’s awfully early for dinner.’ I looked at my watch. It was not yet six. ‘Do come with me and see Pa.’

‘I thought I’d go to a news cinema and cheer myself up watching the Libyans blasting one another to bits.’

‘I’d be grateful if you’d give me a few minutes of your time.’ Inspector Foy looked gravely at Ophelia and I longed to explain to him that she only talked like that because she was unhappy.

‘You are …?’ Ophelia turned her eyes towards him for the first time with her most crushing look of boredom and indifference, which she had spent years perfecting.

The inspector reacted only by the merest contraction of his eyebrows. ‘If you’ll just step inside, Miss Byng. It shouldn’t take long.’

‘As I just said, I’m going out.’ She turned to walk away but the inspector made a sign to Sergeant Tweeter, who placed his large bulk in her path.

‘Don’t let’s play games, Miss Byng.’ The inspector looked very calm. ‘My time is valuable. I want to speak to all the members of Mr Byng’s family. I can interview you at the police station if you prefer.’ He nodded towards the car and Sergeant Tweeter took a step forward and opened the door.

‘Are you going to arrest me?’ Ophelia gave a contemptuous laugh.

‘You’ll look less ridiculous if you come with me into the house of your own free will.’

‘You wouldn’t dare!’

‘The choice is yours.’

Something in the inspector’s face persuaded Ophelia, for once, to capitulate. She flounced up the steps to the front door and stalked in ahead of us. I went down to the kitchen. Maria-Alba had just finished making the strozzapreti.

‘Is there anything for Derek to eat?’ I asked. ‘I’m going to creep out to the police car. Probably he won’t whine if he’s got food. Where’s Cordelia?’