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СКАЧАТЬ often joked among ourselves about Ronald’s little economies. He never entertained but was always the first to arrive at a party and the last to leave. More than once he had been seen pocketing the remaining canapés and sometimes a bottle of wine or whisky. And always after Ronnie’s visits the soap disappeared from the downstairs lav. Once even the towel. My parents were amused rather than irritated by these lapses. Ronnie still occasionally appeared in films, in cameo roles, and probably earned enough to live on, but these days his fees were as crumbs to the cake he had once commanded. Advancing age made him fearful of poverty and as my father charitably said, who could blame him?

      ‘What difference does it make?’ I said, with reference to the flowers. ‘They’ll be dead in a week anyway.’ I tried to sound careless. I was disappointed that, with the exception of Ronnie and Max Frensham, my parents’ friends had found it easier to dial the number of the nearest florist rather than come themselves to offer sympathy. But perhaps they were giving us time to adjust.

      ‘If you’re quite sure you don’t want them …’ Ronald replaced his spoiled carnation with an orchid and rearranged his hair and clothing in the hall mirror. He looked critically at his reflection. I could see that his velvet-collared coat, which must have been expensive long ago, was worn at the lapels and he was no longer able to fasten it across his stomach. He looked rather longingly at the clothes brush before putting it back into the drawer of the console table.

      ‘There you are, Ronald.’ My mother was coming downstairs, wearing her leopard coat and a pair of tinted spectacles. She was carrying a suitcase. ‘I was beginning to wonder what had happened to you. A traffic accident or – something.’ She made it sound a matter of supreme indifference.

      ‘I set out the minute you rang off,’ Ronald said, with a slight air of injury. Then he straightened his tie, braced his shoulders and lifted his chin. ‘How ravishing you’re looking, my darling! The bloom on your cheek would put a rose to shame.’ He flung up his hand in a graceful gesture, just as he must have done years ago when he first said the line in front of the camera.

      ‘That wig wouldn’t fool a blind man,’ replied my mother, very nastily, I thought. ‘And the dye you’re using on the rest of it looks purple in this light.’

      I had been struck myself by the odd effect of the aubergine tufts of hair above Ronnie’s ears.

      ‘Well! You certainly don’t believe in robing naked truth with the silk of courtesy.’ Ronald looked pardonably annoyed.

      ‘You’re getting a paunch,’ was my mother’s rejoinder. ‘You’d better go and see Bo-Bo Lascelles. She’s opened a new clinic in Bruton Street. Her special diet is a week of raw beetroot juice three times a day combined with three tablespoons of kush-kush stalks from the Andes. Apparently it pulverises the fat cells.’

      ‘Knowing Bo-Bo I bet it costs an arm and a leg,’ muttered Ronald peevishly. ‘Raw beetroot! Never mind the damned grass!’

      ‘If you’re going to be moody and difficult I shall be sorry I asked you to go with me.’

      ‘Where are you going?’ I asked.

      ‘I’m going to see Bo-Bo’s plastic surgeon. She says Mr Moffat-Rime is a genius and very reasonable, and luckily he’s managed to squeeze me in. I’m having a little tuck here.’

      She pressed her hands to her jawbone. Cosmetic surgery was my mother’s recourse in extremis.

      ‘But what about Pa?’

      ‘I shall be over the bruising by the time he comes out. It’s all fitting in quite well.’ Her mouth smiled with satisfaction. She seemed to have forgotten about his name being wounded and her bosom being a bed to lodge it in until it was healed.

      ‘Aren’t you going to see him? I think he was sorry you didn’t go yesterday.’

      She turned her dark lenses towards me. ‘Harriet, I have noticed before that you have a tendency to wallow. Mawkishness is extremely vulgar.’ She tossed her head, petulantly. ‘I expect Marina Marlow will be delighted to have the publicity. You know how I dislike it.’

      I was surprised into silence. Marina Marlow was playing the part of Regan in King Lear. She did not look much older than me. Was it possible that she and my father …? I turned the thought away.

      ‘I’ll be back next week. Goodbye, Cordelia, my sweet one.’ My mother blew a limp-fingered kiss in her direction. ‘Give my love to darling Bron. I shall take this opportunity to have a complete rest.’ She gave a little hum of pleasure. ‘Goodbye, Harriet. Do keep an eye on Ophelia. When I spoke to her just now, I thought she seemed un peu distrait. Goodbye, Maria-Alba. I know you’ll look after my chicks for me.’ She pecked the space above Maria-Alba’s ear. ‘My fortress. My harbour in a time of storm.’ Maria-Alba gave a grim smile of satisfaction, which I doubted had anything to do with my mother’s patently insincere praise. ‘Ronald, there is nothing for it but to face those vultures. God knows, they have picked me to the very bone often enough! But, arm in arm, we may yet triumph.’

      ‘Ah, yes.’ Ronald put a good deal of solemnity into his voice ‘Fame is indeed a twin-headed monster. As it creates, so it devours.’

      They almost banged heads trying to see themselves in the looking-glass. Then they sucked in their cheeks and stomachs, Ronald flung open the door and they exited together. There was an awkward little moment of anticlimax as the garden was found to be quite empty. Presumably all the reporters were at Bron’s press conference. Nevertheless, as they titupped elegantly down the path – Ronald’s heels were nearly as high as my mother’s – they turned their heads from right to left as if greeting the crowd. Ronald’s bow as he handed my mother into the waiting taxi would have struck an echo in the bosoms of those fans who had seen him as Sir Walter Raleigh conducting his sovereign across that celebrated puddle.

      ‘Bravo! Ben fatto!’ Maria-Alba’s dun-coloured cheeks had points of pink in them, which was unusual. ‘Dio mi è giudice … but all of heaven and hell is not know till when we die.’

      With this inscrutable utterance she went down into the kitchen.

      I brought Mark Antony downstairs and put him out into the front garden. Then I went back upstairs to make what I was almost sure would be a useless attempt to console Ophelia. I knocked on the door and called her name but she ignored me. I put my eye to the keyhole. If I had believed for one moment that she loved Crispin I would have been most upset, for she lay pale and still on her bed, the picture of dejection. Now and then she sniffed despondently and once she said, ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger!’ with great emphasis. I imagined she was thinking of Henrietta Slotts as the future Countess of Sope.

      While I was on my knees at the keyhole strange noises broke out downstairs and then Mark Antony, his ginger fur stiff with feeling, shot past me on his way to the attic. I looked over the banisters. Bron was standing at the foot of the stairs, his arms extended, holding the loop of a lead with both hands. At the other end was a dog, brown and white and very furry, with feet like dinner plates. Deaf to Bron’s commands and in defiance of a throttling choke chain, it was trying to climb the stairs.

      ‘Good dog! Who’s a beautiful girl, then?’ I said ingratiatingly as I descended. It is hard to prevent oneself from extravagant gushing in the one-sided conversations imposed by animals and babies. The dog jumped up to lick my jerseyed chest with an enormously long tongue, and whined with every appearance of love.

      ‘That’s СКАЧАТЬ