Victoria Clayton - Moonshine

‘Can’t say I have. Drat, there goes another.’ She put down the cup she had been drying between hands like grappling-hooks and extracted the handle from the tea towel. I went to get the china glue from the drawer. ‘The doctor says my arthuritis isn’t going to get any better. He says I’ll be a wheelchair case before much longer. But I’ll still come in and do what I can, Roberta, don’t you fear. Dolly Treadgold’s never let anyone down yet. And, God willing, she never will.’ She gave a shake of her head, her expression grim. ‘Perhaps that idle good-for-nothing, Brough, could make a few of them wooden ramps to get my wheelchair over the steps. We could tie a feather duster to one wrist’ – she waved what looked like an enviably flexible joint – ‘and a wet cloth to the other.’

‘Let’s hope it won’t come to that,’ I murmured absently.

Mrs Treadgold’s musculature was massive and she could have tossed the caber for the Highlands and Islands. She thought nothing of running up two flights with our ancient vacuum cleaner, which I struggled to lift out of the cupboard. On several occasions she had single-handedly pushed the Wolseley down the drive, with me in it, when it failed to start. I had long ceased to be alarmed when she described spasms, fevers, faints and racking torments that would long ago have carried off anyone less determined to pitch in, rally round, hold the fort and keep the flag flying.

‘What’s your ma been saying then?’

‘Well, she told me the toast smelt of electricity.’ I pulled a face expressive of something between amusement and alarm as I confessed this.

Mrs Treadgold slapped her hands against her aproned thighs, leaving damp palm prints. ‘That’s a funny thing! I was thinking the very same myself yesterday. Well, we can’t both be wrong. You’d better have that toaster seen to.’

I abandoned the conversation.

On Saturday it rained without ceasing. This was doubly annoying because the rest of the country was having something close to a heatwave and the newspapers were full of alarming stories about people being swept out to sea on lilos, dogs being suffocated in cars and the population being laid waste by the injurious effects of sunburn and heatstroke. I was standing in the hall, staring through the window at the dripping laurels and wondering whether I had time to make a treacle tart for supper or whether it would have to be baked bananas again when the telephone rang. I picked it up at once. Nearly two weeks had gone by since the dinner party and I had heard nothing from Burgo. I had given up letting the thing ring six times before answering.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello, Roberta?’ It wasn’t Burgo. It was a much louder voice accompanied by noisy breathing. ‘This is Dickie Sudborough speaking.’

It took me a second or two to make the connection. ‘Dickie! Hello! It was a lovely party. I’d have written to say so but I haven’t got your address. I did enjoy it.’

‘Did you?’ I imagined his pink, eager face crumpling, pleased. ‘We were all so delighted to meet you. Now, look, Roberta, why I’m ringing you is this. Burgo says you were quite taken with my little temple and had some good ideas I ought to take on board.’

‘Well … that’s putting it rather strongly. I’m sure you have your own—’

Dickie interrupted me. ‘I’m really keen to talk about it with you. What about coming here for lunch on Wednesday? No other visitors, just us. If that wouldn’t be a bore?’

I hesitated. Perhaps Burgo had put Dickie up to this? I might arrive to find the scene reset for seduction. Even that Dickie and Fleur had been mysteriously called away.

‘I’m not sure about Wednesday. I’m rather tied up …’

‘Oh.’ Either Dickie was a good actor or he was genuinely disappointed. ‘I realize it’s asking rather a lot. Particularly as Burgo will be in Leningrad so we can’t offer him as an inducement. I expect I’m being awfully self-centred asking you but I was so bucked to think you admired my little folly—’

It was my turn to interrupt. ‘Actually, I think I can rearrange things. I’d love to come.’

‘You would? That’s excellent. Shall we say twelve-thirty? Fleur will be so delighted.’

On Wednesday, having bribed Mrs Treadgold to look after my mother with the present of a scarf she had always admired, and left a breakfast tray loaded with orange juice, muesli, grated apple and vitamin pills across Oliver’s sleeping stomach (which had a greenish hue too I noticed), I drove myself over to Ladyfield at the appointed time. My father had arranged to go up to town for the day so I dropped him off at the station, looking patrician and affluent in what I could have sworn was a new suit. Naturally he travelled first class.

Ladyfield looked even handsomer in sunlight. Its lovely red-brick front was bare of climbing plants but on each side of the front door was a box hedge enclosing carpets of silver artemisias. Dickie came limping out to greet me and kissed my cheek.

‘This is good of you, Roberta.’ He glanced at the Wolseley. ‘My goodness, what a splendid old motor!’

Fleur ran out after him and flung her arms round me.

‘Bobbie! How lovely! Have you changed your mind about the puppy?’

‘I’m afraid not. My father …’

‘Aren’t fathers horrible! I hated mine. So did my mother. The minute he died she had all her skirts shortened and went down to the docks to get a tattoo. Oh, yes,’ she added, seeing from my face that I only half believed her. ‘She got the tattoo and a dose of something she hadn’t bargained for, as well. Poor darling, it killed her.’

I looked at Dickie for confirmation.

‘It’s true,’ said Dickie. ‘Fleur’s mother, poor woman, died of … of a most unpleasant contagious disease. But we don’t talk about it more than we can help, do we darling?’

‘I do,’ Fleur said immediately. ‘It was syphilis. I think people ought to know how dangerous sex can be. Fatal, in fact.’

‘Only, darling, if you sleep with people who’ve already contracted it. And even then it’s curable with penicillin. Your mother wouldn’t accept there was anything wrong, that was the trouble.’

‘She thought her hair was falling out because the hairdresser was too rough with it,’ said Fleur. ‘So she got me to wash it for her. I didn’t mind but there was so little left in the end it was rather a waste of shampoo. When her nose dropped off we made her go to the doctor but it was too late by then.’

My eyes, which must have expressed the horror I felt, met Dickie’s once more.

‘You’re exaggerating, Fleur. As usual. It was the septum, darling, not the whole nose. Anyway, you’re upsetting Roberta.’

‘Am I?’ Fleur turned to me and gripped my arm. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t want to do that. I like you and I know Burgo does too. In fact, I think … Ah, well, let’s go and have lunch. I’m starving!’

My appetite was only briefly affected by Fleur’s account of her mother’s illness. The salmon was delicious, caught by Dickie’s brother and sent down from Scotland the day before, the peas and tiny potatoes were from the garden, the cucumber from Dickie’s own frames. We had tiny alpine strawberries and cream.

‘How odd,’ I said, tucking into my second helping of strawberries, ‘to think that our house is only fifteen miles distant and yet it’s the opposite of this place: dark and dismal and ugly, where nothing seems to thrive but laurel and every member of the household is either angry or depressed. Even the weather’s better here. It was raining when I left home.’

‘Is it really that bad?’ Fleur paid attention to the conversation for the first time. She had been feeding bits of salmon to a cat under the table.