Vivien Armstrong - The Honey Trap

Frederick swivelled round, curious, open to live entertainment of any kind. The voice seemed familiar. The doorman was moving in, sternly intent on shifting the chairborne patient who was ruffling the carefully nurtured calm.

Frederick strode to the kiosk.

‘Aran. Aran Hunter, you noisy bugger!’

The young man expertly spun the wheels of his chair, grey eyes skewering the interfering old party. The frown evaporated.

‘Fred! What are you doing in this Valhalla?’

Frederick smoothly manœuvred the wheelchair back to his sofa and the abandoned Country Life and sank back, smiling broadly, ignoring the question. He tapped the plaster cast. ‘Been kicking up the dust, old son?’

‘Fell off some scaffolding in Venice. Trying to photograph some bloody frescoes for assessment. Flew me home, luckily my insurance covered it.’

‘Bad luck. In here long?’

‘Ten interminable days. It was a complicated fracture. But I’m pretty fair now, just pissed off wasting time I could usefully spend in my studio.

‘When are they discharging you?’

‘As soon as I’ve convinced them I’ve got some place to go which doesn’t involve any more monkey tricks.’ His scowl reappeared, furrowing a tanned forehead untidily overhung with hair the texture and colour of Shredded Wheat.

‘Can’t you work from a wheelchair?’

‘Some,’ he replied guardedly. ‘Problem is they’re trying to shunt me to some convalescent palace of varieties in Torquay which they use here.’

‘If you got an au pair or someone you could probably rest at home just as well.’

Frederick had known Aran Hunter for several years, admired his work enormously, but could hardly imagine this dynamo quietly recuperating in a post-operative lay-by until his plaster was removed.

‘Tried that. Got one of my students to agree to live in but it won’t work. You see, I’ve no lift. Four floors up and I couldn’t possibly cope with the stairs.’

The soft announcement of Frederick’s appointment led them to break off, but, anxious to catch up with Hunter’s news, Frederick pressed him to meet after his check-up. They exchanged details of Aran’s room number and Frederick hurried in the wake of a pair of dark stockings leading him towards the row of steel elevators. In contrast to the cosiness of the reception area the streamlined efficiency of the lifts gave the game away: the Darwin Clinic meant business. Like everything else beyond the ground floor, the lift equipment was probably sterilized daily, he decided.

Rowan was waiting in the reception hall when Frederick reappeared, sickly pale but determinedly cheerful.

‘Hope I haven’t kept you waiting, my dear. I bumped into a young friend of mine who’s a patient here. We had a chat in his room after my tests and I persuaded his doctor to let him out to lunch. He’s on parole,’ he confided as she took his arm, ‘so we must return him reasonably sober.’

Frederick’s protégé appeared on cue, now turned out in a kilt of virulent yellow and black tartan and a tweed jacket of such proportions as to involve the cooperation of several alpaca. Wheeling himself between the leather sofas, Aran Hunter, bright-eyed as a schoolboy on half-term release, was greatly impressed by the old man’s driver. Michelangelo would have swooped on this one, all woman indeed, her male get-up lending a tantalizing fillip to this unexpected exeat.

The doorman gladly assisted the unlikely trio into the street, anxious to maintain the reverential hush which distinguished the Darwin from other less classy establishments.

The Volvo was illicitly to hand.

‘Where to?’ she said.

Confused, Frederick began to stutter about the wheelchair. She patted his arm. ‘Now, have you booked, Frederick?’

‘I thought the Chelsea Arts Club.’

‘Oh no.’ Aran’s response was unyielding.

‘Your leg—?’ Frederick queried.

‘It’s not that. I really can’t face that nosey crowd. To be honest, Frederick, I’d rather the word doesn’t get around that I’m back from Venice,’ he explained, only adding to the confusion.

Rowan took them in hand.

‘Well, how about a little place I know where we can eat in the garden? There’s a back entrance so we can wheel you straight in without struggling through the restaurant proper. Wonderful food. No hassle.’

Frederick nodded; Aran concurred; the matter was settled.

‘We’ll get a taxi,’ Aran said. ‘While you go ahead to clear the way for me and the leg.’

Rowan expertly summoned a cab with an ear-piercing whistle.

The taxi-driver manœuvred Aran, the plaster cast and Frederick into the cab and folded up the wheelchair with a flourish, stowing it inside. Frederick bounced about trying to catch the girl’s eye, worried about the lunch booking.

Aran leaned out of the window.

‘What’s your name? In case we get there first?’

‘Rowan. Just Rowan. They know me. Ask for Toto.’

Aran looked nonplussed. ‘Rowan?’

‘Mountain ash,’ Frederick explained.

‘My mother smoked a lot,’ she said.

‘I thought Rowan was a man’s name.’

‘Well, it’s not. What’s yours?’

‘Aran.’

‘I thought Aran was a jumper.’

He laughed. ‘ Touché .’

Lunch was a huge success. They spread themselves beneath a flame-red maple in the walled garden behind the restaurant. The sun lent a gilded touch to the fag end of a hot summer and for weeks tables in the courtyard had been in great demand, giant tubs of geranium, rosemary and basil lending a spicy un-English scent to a backyard only yards from the choked artery of King’s Road.

Aran sat sideways to the table, his leg propped on a chair, his restored bonhomie embracing the entire population of Chelsea. They ribbed Rowan about her previous night’s dip in the Thames, she, in turn, refusing to elaborate on the bizarre event. Aran, more than a little drunk, leaned across the table.

‘Why hide all that loveliness under a man’s shirt?’

‘Same reason,’ she tartly retorted, ‘you wear a skirt.’

Frederick roared with laughter. They made wonderful sparring partners.

‘Needs must,’ Aran confessed. ‘I wasn’t going to pass up Fred’s generous offer of lunch away from that snake pit. One of the orderlies, Jimmy Macleod, offered to lend me his Burns Night kit.’ He patted the plaster. ‘Trousers over this are a problem. I could get used to the kilt,’ he said, grinning. ‘Convenient all round.’

‘Couldn’t you try shorts, the baggy Boy Scout sort?’ Rowan suggested.

‘It’s an idea. My flat’s just round the corner.’ He paused and then urgently addressed Frederick. ‘Would you mind if this glorious girl of yours nipped up to my apartment and packed a few things? It wouldn’t take more than five minutes.’

Frederick turned to Rowan, who shrugged and laughingly agreed to go through Aran’s drawers. Aran emptied the bottle and mentally weighed Frederick’s discretion. ‘There’s something else, old chap. I hate to ask you but this accident has put me well and truly in the cart.’

He lowered his voice and Rowan, unabashed, moved in, all three heads bent over the littered table.

‘My flat’s in a new block at the end of Tite Street. The developers put in for eight floors but the planning people cut them down to four—something to do with existing rooflines. As the profit depended on twice as many units the builder cut his losses by eliminating lifts, which is OK unless you have luggage or a broken leg. I agree it’s a luxury “walk-up”, as they say in New York, but in practice there’s no real problem. In the normal course of events, four floors is nothing out of the way in London. I don’t use it all that much. Travel a lot,’ he explained, ‘working on site, and then there’s this workshop and photographic studio I rent in Rome which has most of my technical gear.’