Clouds among the Stars. Victoria Clayton

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СКАЧАТЬ our lives. It was difficult to be purposeful with a cohort of reporters dogging our steps and quite impossible to think expansively, confronted as we were at every turn by insuperable problems. Cordelia and I had been to the cinema the evening before to see Robert Mitchum in The Big Sleep but it had been hard to lose ourselves in the story while the press chortled at the seduction scenes, rustled bags of Butterkist and blew so much cigarette smoke over us that our hair and clothes reeked like the snug at The Green Dragon.

      Bron was the only one of us who did not mind having his photograph taken whenever he bought a bar of soap or went to collect his dry-cleaning. But, to his annoyance, photographs of him never appeared in the newspapers. Not a word of the interview he had given had been printed. We no longer merited headlines. Instead, articles about our clothes and our hairstyles and whether we were looking pale and haunted (Bron) or aristocratic and forlorn (Ophelia) or sparky and irrepressible (Cordelia) appeared in the society gossip columns, a whispering that continued to fan the flames of notoriety. According to the Clarion, Ophelia was suing Crispin for breach of promise and Bron was out on bail, paid by a female member of the royal family whose playmate he had been until scandal touched him.

      Because she had not set foot outside the house since her return from Surrey three days ago, the wildest conjectures were made about Portia. The Clarion revealed that she had signed a lucrative contract to star en travestie as Mozart in a new play called Amadeus. The People’s Exclusive had it from a reliable source that she had been the mistress, successively, of Prince Rainier, Lord Snowdon and Ziggy Stardust. The Herald insisted that she was due to fly out to join Lord Lucan, who had taken refuge in a Nazi colony in Tierra del Fuego.

      Probably it was my lack of resemblance to my brother and sisters that fuelled the rumours circulated by The Daily Examiner that I was the lovechild of my father and Maria Callas. I have to admit that I was pleased to be described as svelte and enigmatic.

      Portia joined us at the window. Her bruises were beginning to turn yellow and the swellings to go down, but the broken tooth was startlingly incongruous with her beautiful face. She had not been able to bring herself to confront the outside world in order to visit the dentist. Her sleep had been so troubled by nightmares that she had moved to a camp bed in my room. She refused to say a word more about her experiences and had made me promise not to tell the others. She insisted she was nearly over it but I was worried about her. She glanced indifferently in the direction of Cordelia’s pointing finger and then ducked down beneath the sill.

      ‘It’s one of Dimitri’s bodyguards!’ She clutched my ankle. ‘Not Chico, the other one! I think his name was Dex.’

      ‘Are you sure?’ The man, who was leaning against the lamppost, rolling a cigarette, looked quite ordinary. ‘I can’t see, Cordelia, if you’re going to put your head there.’

      ‘Would I say so if I weren’t sure? You think I’m having hallucinations? Or going mad, perhaps?’ Portia was extremely snappy these days, which was unlike her. ‘He’s got a birthmark on his cheek. I can hardly make a mistake about that, I suppose.’

      ‘Some people think it’s rude to push,’ said Cordelia bitingly.

      ‘Well, I can’t see one.’ I was studying the man’s profile as he fiddled about with a box of matches. ‘He’s so undistinguished, I bet thousands of people look just like –’ I broke off as the man turned his head to stare up at the house and I saw a dark red mark running from temple to chin. ‘Oh. Oh dear. It’s Dex, all right. But what can he want?’

      ‘I expect he wants Maria-Alba’s recipe for minestrone. Honestly, Harriet, you seem to be particularly stupid at the moment. Of course he’s looking for me.’

      ‘Poor man! I think it’s very sad,’ said Cordelia. ‘Imagine having people stare at you all the time. There’s a girl at school –’ Cordelia stopped speaking and begun to hum.

      I was well aware that Cordelia had been deliberately avoiding all mention of school because she was afraid someone would insist on her going back.

      I stared down at Portia. ‘Why?’ Portia had turned round so she could sit on the floor, out of sight. She shrugged her shoulders and spread her hands wide in a gesture of bafflement. ‘I know you don’t want to talk about it,’ I went on, ‘but I’ve been wondering – how did you meet Dimitri?’

      ‘Bron introduced us. He suggested we went down to The Green Dragon for a drink. He pointed Dimitri out the minute we got in there and said he was incredibly rich.’ Portia went faintly pink. ‘I thought at the time it was something of a set-up. Bron shuffled off the minute Dimitri started talking to me.’

      I was silent for a moment. An unpleasant idea had at once presented itself. This might be the explanation for Bron’s new-found riches. No doubt selling one’s sister was a time-honoured method of raising the wind in many parts of the world but I was incensed with my own brother for doing it. ‘The low-down louse!’ I said aloud.

      ‘That’s putting it mildly, I think.’ Portia thought I was referring to Dimitri and I didn’t bother to enlighten her. ‘What’s Dex doing now?’

      ‘He’s talking to one of the reporters.’ Cordelia kneeled on the window seat to get a better view. ‘He’s looking very bad-tempered. I expect it’s his birthmark that makes him grumpy. If he was a girl he could wear his hair across his face like Veronica Lake in I Married a Witch. You remember, the one which starts off with a thunderstorm and the lightning strikes the tree Veronica Lake’s buried under. She and her father, who’s also a witch – or would that be a wizard? – were burnt by the Puritans two hundred years ago and the two witches come out as puffs of smoke –’

      ‘Oh, mercy!’ cried Portia. ‘Just tell me what’s happening, will you?’

      ‘He’s shaking his head. He’s looking at the house – he’s looking at me!’ Cordelia pulled her hair half across her face and began to pout. ‘Golly, he’s really staring at me. I wonder if I remind him of Veronica Lake? I love the bit when they’re going to be married and the woman keeps singing, “I love you truly” and he says, “Oh, shut up!”’ Cordelia began to giggle helplessly.

      ‘If you don’t want to be tied to a railway track and have your Veronica Lake locks cut off by the wheels of a passing express, you’d better shut up yourself.’ Portia put up her hand and got hold of Cordelia’s skirt. ‘Move over and let Harriet see.’

      ‘Don’t pull! He’s getting out a little book and writing something in it. Now he’s tearing out a page. He’s walking up the path – he’s coming up the steps!’ We heard the flap of the letter box clang and Dirk, who had been sleeping off his breakfast on the sofa, went from nought to sixty in one point eight seconds and was at the door attempting to remove the paint from the panels with his front paws. ‘I’ll get it. You beast, Portia, you’ve torn my skirt. I hope it’s a love letter. Or a poem. I shan’t mind about the birthmark. I wish he was a bit more swave, though.’

      She ran off, ignoring Portia’s unkind laughter. She returned, frowning over the note. Written in crooked capitals, bunched together like a cipher was the legend, ‘GIVEUSTHECLOBERANDWELLEVEYOUALONE OTHERWIZYOULBESORYYOUWAZBORN.’

      Cordelia looked disappointed. ‘It’s not a very good letter. I expect he was an orphan and was made to work in a blacking factory instead of going to sch – O-ho, a-ha … What’s a clober?’

      We puzzled briefly over this until the general absence of double consonants suggested ‘clobber’. Bron came in at that moment, wearing only a towelling robe. His hair was wet and sleeked back from СКАЧАТЬ