Quintin Jardine: Poisoned Cherries

‘Well, look at you,’ I heard her say, after a while; Susie as I’d never heard her before. ‘Look at her, Oz. She’s just like you.’ I did; she was.

‘Don’t you ever think about tomorrow, son?’

‘I gave that up a long time ago, Dad.’

‘Maybe you should start again. What are you going to say to Miles and Dawn when they turn up in Scotland for this new movie? When they find out about the baby they’re going to run out of sympathy for you bloody quick.’

That was a good question; jet-lag and the stress of the day were catching up with me fast, so I gave my brain a few seconds more than normal to come up with a good answer. I looked across the garden and out to sea; it was early evening, and May Island, bathed in sunshine, seemed to be smiling at the Fife Coast. I’ve seen a few pretty spectacular things in my life, but still I love that view more than any other. It’s a doorway to so many memories, and, once the medical staff had pronounced Susie and wee Janet to be in the best of health, and had bedded them down for their only night in the Royal, there had been nothing for me to do but carry on up the road to Anstruther, to add another to the list.

‘Who says they’re going to find out?’ I asked Mac the Dentist, still looking out to sea. Through the kitchen window, I heard the sound of rattling crockery, as my stepmother resurrected the meal she had readied for earlier in the day. There was a tension between Mary and me; I had expected it, but it didn’t make it any easier to take. I’d been her blue-eyed boy for a long time, and she hadn’t disguised the fact that she felt let down.

My Dad gave a half-snort, half-laugh. ‘Will the pram not give them a clue?’

‘There won’t be any pram around. Susie and the baby will be back in Glasgow by the time they get here. I’ll be in Edinburgh. We’re not planning to put a birth notice in the Herald or the Scotsman , Dad.’

‘You might as well. Susie’s a prominent businesswoman, and now she’s become a single mother. The tabloids are going to want to know who the father is.’

‘And Susie’s not going to tell them. Neither am I.’

‘Are you not going to acknowledge your child, man?’

‘Of course I am; I do already. I’m just not making any public announcements, that’s all. . not yet, at any rate.’

‘Not until the new movie’s well under way, is that what you’re saying?’

‘If you like, yes. I’m contracted already, so it would be bloody difficult for Miles to fire me. It would be a wee bit reckless of him too; I’ve become box office to an extent. Still, better safe than sorry. Once I’ve done this picture, I can cut myself loose, and look for other opportunities. I have a couple of them in the bag already.’

He frowned; I surmised that he wasn’t that pleased with me either. ‘So you have been planning ahead.’

‘Of course I have.’ I flashed him a grin. ‘I might never think about tomorrow, but I’m fucking good when it comes to next week.’

‘You’ve changed, Osbert, right enough.’

‘For the worse?’

‘No, I wouldn’t say that. For the better, in some ways. For all your luck, for all your success, you’ve had too much grief in your life, too young. Your eyes have been opened to the evils of the world, okay. You’ve grown hard, and you’re devious, but you don’t seem to be bitter and you’re not living in the past. You’ll survive, and one day you might be happy again.’

‘Today’s not bad,’ I told him.

‘True,’ he grinned. ‘I canna wait to see my new granddaughter. I still wonder about you and her mother, though. Is that it for the two of you? Your ships have bumped together in the night and now you’re going your separate ways?’

‘No, that’s not it. I’ll be a good father to wee Jan. I’m on the board of the Gantry Group, and I’ll be a support to Susie that way.’

‘But what if another father comes along? What if Susie meets someone else? What if you do? What if you find you miss Prim after all?’

‘I never did miss Prim, Dad, any more than she missed me, really. We settled for each other; that’s where we got it wrong. I’m not going to do the same with Susie. If she meets someone else, I’ll handle that. I’ll protect my daughter’s interests, but I’ll handle it.’

‘Aye, son, I guess you will, in your own way, like you handle everything else. You know the thing that gets me about you?’ I looked at him, but he didn’t give me the chance to hazard a guess. ‘You’ve never even had bloody toothache, not once in your life. Toothache is nature’s way of letting the mightiest among us know that we’re fallible after all, yet as far as I recall you’ve never had as much as a twinge.’

‘D’you think Jesus had it, then?’

‘Maybe not, but he had plenty in its place. .’ He stopped short. ‘And so, I mustn’t forget, have you.’

My father laid one of his massive hands on my shoulder. ‘Don’t be afraid of settling for Susie, son, if you want to put it that way, and if that’s what’s right for you. You and Prim should never have got back together, and if I’d been up to my job I’d have told you that. But you and Jan should never have drifted apart, and I kept that truth to myself too.

‘You and Susie have this wee lass now, and that’s not a bad basis for a partnership.’

‘That’s not just up to me, Dad. Susie’s made her feelings clear.’

‘Maybe, but it’s a whole new world now. It changed about one o’clock this afternoon, when your daughter put in an appearance.’

The great hand squeezed my shoulder, hard. ‘There’s just one thing I want to know. If Prim hadn’t left you, would you still be standing here right now, telling me about your daughter?’

I hadn’t asked myself that question, but I knew the answer at once. ‘Yes, if I’d had to make the choice, I reckon I still would.’

Mac the Dentist was right about the tabloids; was he ever. We weren’t past the soup course before my cellphone played ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’. It was Susie, sounding a lot less tired than I did.

‘The hospital’s had a call from one of the Sunday papers,’ she said, and I could hear the fizz in her voice. ‘They’ve been tipped off about me having been rushed here, and that it was you who did the rushing.

‘Who’d have done that, Oz?’ she asked, indignantly.

‘Take your pick. Police, hospital staff, another patient, it could have been anyone. I’d bet on the porters myself, but we’ll never know for sure. The newspaper will protect its source.’

‘Who’s protected us?’

‘We’re not entitled to protection. . at least I’m not. What did the hospital tell them?’

‘They’ve referred the reporter to the Trust press officer. She’s with me now, and she’s asking how we want to play it.’

‘It’s decision time, then. What do you want to tell them?’

‘That’s up to you. If you just want to say that you’re a friend and you happened to be with me when the baby started to come, that’s okay by me. It would be the sensible thing to do, Oz.’

It was; I knew that. Nobody at the hospital knew for sure that I was the father, other than the people who had heard us in the delivery room, and I reckoned they were bound by medical confidentiality. If I played it that way there would be no comeback from Susie, ever. No lawyer would allow the paper to say any different and Miles would only find out if I chose to tell him.

There was only one problem.

‘I won’t deny our daughter, Susie,’ I found myself saying, ‘not for one second. Tell the press officer to give me the reporter’s phone number. I’ll issue a statement through my lawyer.’