Clouds among the Stars. Victoria Clayton
Читать онлайн книгу.
no mean actor yourself?’ I said politely.
‘I was, in my day, a skilled journeyman of the stage. I could charm and I could menace. Girls, the length and breadth of England, dreamed of being taken in my arms and bent to my will. My performance as Lord Sylvester Steel, the Man in the Scarlet Hood, was, I believe, definitive. But I could not have played Hamlet to save my life.’
‘Ma has always said you’ve the best profile of any man she’s ever met.’
‘Really?’ Ronnie sounded pleased. What she had actually said was that Ronnie had done very well with nothing to recommend him but a handsome profile, but it was nearly the same thing. He offered Dirk the remains of the leg of lamb he was cutting up. ‘That’s a nice puppy you’ve got there.’
‘He is sweet, isn’t he?’ Dirk did not at that moment look specially sweet, tearing the flesh from the bone with huge white teeth. ‘But he’s fully grown, thank goodness.’
‘Mm.’ Ronnie considered him. ‘I wouldn’t be too sure.’
I fetched potatoes and carrots from the larder and together Ronnie and I chopped and scraped and scrubbed in a warm, steamy atmosphere of domestic harmony. From time to time I looked at Dirk as he lay slumbering, one ear folded across the glistening picked-clean femur. Now Ronnie had drawn my attention to it, Dirk did seem larger than when he had arrived.
‘I’m afraid the clinic wasn’t all it was cracked up to be,’ I said. My father and I sat facing each other, in the middle of a long row of prisoners and their visitors. Two prison officers patrolled the room, looking bored. Between Pa and me was a battered table, over which crawled an out-of-season fly. Neither it nor my father looked well. ‘The bruising’s very bad. They’re still refusing to take off the scarves and sunglasses. You remember The Invisible Man? It’s almost the same except for the turban and Ronnie’s purple hair. Apparently because it was so cheap and the surgeon was awfully persuasive, they got carried away and had far more done than they’d originally planned.’ I was chattering on in this inconsequential way, hoping to cheer Pa up. His skin looked colourless, almost flabby. I wondered if he was eating properly. I paused, then plunged on. ‘Ronnie’s staying with us for the time being. He’s being very useful because he knows how to cook. Maria-Alba has had to go and stay with the nuns again.’
Poor Maria-Alba had had upsetting flashbacks from her involuntary experience with LSD and her doctor had decided that she should have a rest. She had a love-hate relationship, mostly hate, with the sisters at the Convent of St Ursula, in Bushey Heath, whose guest she had been several times in the past. She was convinced they wanted to get possession of her soul so they could barter with God to improve their own lot in the life to come. The more Maria-Alba raged the more saintly the sisters became, which inflamed her to greater heights of scurrilous invective. On the other hand Maria-Alba’s sanity was invariably restored by the peaceful rhythm of conventual life.
Maria-Alba had been in no state to survive a long journey on public transport so I had bribed Bron – with the offer of doing all his laundry for the next six months – to drive us to the convent. I was pretty sure I would be doing it anyway, so it was cheap at the price. Despite what Maria-Alba said, the sisters who welcomed us seemed much saner and sweeter-tempered than my old schoolmistresses, no doubt because they didn’t have horrible little girls to look after. It was a closed order so we would not be allowed to visit her, but as she was a guest, she would be allowed to send and receive letters.
‘Poor Maria-Alba,’ said my father in a lacklustre way.
I wondered what I might say to cheer him up. I had met Marina Marlow at the prison gates. She had been posing for photographers and giving an impromptu interview. I heard her say that it was a matter of indifference to her whether my father was guilty or not. Friendship meant commitment through thick and thin. I got the impression she would prefer him to be guilty as this would show her in a more praiseworthy light. Her hair was a bright shade of platinum, like tinfoil. A low neckline and a thigh-length split in her skirt seemed tactless when visiting men obliged to be celibate. But she was magnetic. I felt a shudder of apprehension and pretended not to see her matey little wave.
The truth was, no matter how many affairs my parents entered into, I always bitterly resented their paramours. I was wounded on behalf of whichever parent was left out in the cold and I was fearful each time that the temporary sexual attachment might turn out to be something more important. No matter how hard I tried to be an obedient daughter and teach myself the lesson that monogamy was unnatural, illogical and deplorably lower middle class, my feelings of insecurity were painful. One of the things I had loved about Dodge was that he held fiercely puritanical views about everything, which included constancy in love.
‘I saw Marina outside.’ I tried to sound matter-of-fact. ‘It was good of her to visit.’
‘She brought me a bottle of L’Equipée Pour Hommes. Very expensive. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Marina that making oneself smell attractive is the last thing one wants to do in a place like this.’
‘You mean –’ I lowered my voice – ‘the other men?’
‘You bet. I go in fear of my virtue. That’s why I got the barber to cut my hair.’ I had managed to suppress a gasp when I first caught sight of his shaven head. It made his eyes and jaw look much bigger. ‘You see that bloke with the scars and the broken nose two tables down?’ I looked surreptitiously at a man who seemed to have spent his whole life running his face into sharp and dangerous objects. ‘That’s Slasher O’Flaherty. He’s offered me a whole month’s snout – that’s tobacco – if I’ll drop into his cell one evening to discuss acting techniques.’
Unluckily the man happened to glance in my direction before I could look away. He winked and smiled, exposing a solitary brown tooth.
‘Oh, Pa! Do be careful! Can’t the prison officers protect you?’
‘Some of the screws are worse than the prisoners.’ He laughed in a depressed way. ‘So Ronnie’s seized the opportunity to lay siege to your mother. Not that it will do him any good. He’s about as virile as a pink-eyed rabbit in a conjurer’s hat.’
I thought he was entitled to be catty in the circumstances. ‘Ronnie’s really very domesticated. He’s hardly ever out of apron and rubber gloves. And I think he’s enjoying it.’
‘He always was an old woman.’ My father looked gloomy and rubbed his hand over the bristles on his head. ‘I suppose you’re all having a wonderful time without me.’
‘We certainly are not! Portia still won’t go out anywhere, though the police found Dimitri’s house and arrested him and discovered masses of drugs and things and they’re all in prison – luckily not this one – and the police guard’s been called off.’ I knew Portia had written to my father, giving an edited account of her escapade, but I had not seen the letter so I kept the details vague. ‘All except Dex.’
I felt a sinking of spirits, recalling this disappointment. When Inspector Foy had telephoned to tell me about the successful police raid on the house in Oxshott I had hoped that he might have found Mark Antony as well, but there had not been so much as a bowl of Kittichunks or a clump of ginger fur. Or Dex. The inspector assured me there was a nationwide watch for Dex and he would not be able to leave the country. I had not told my father about Mark Antony being missing. The news could only depress.
‘Ophelia’s as grumpy as she can possibly be.’ I wanted to reassure him that we were not disporting ourselves, indifferent to his plight. ‘Peregrine Wolmscott hasn’t asked her to marry him and she’s worried in case her looks are going. She reckons to enslave any man within two weeks.’
‘That’s my girl. Your mother enslaved me in less than one. How is Cordelia?’
‘At rather a loose end.’ I felt guilty and I expect I looked it. ‘She hasn’t been to school since you were arrested. I had a bit of a row with Sister Imelda.’
Sister Imelda, headmistress of St Frideswide’s, had telephoned to ask why Cordelia