Clouds among the Stars. Victoria Clayton

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СКАЧАТЬ On the other hand Maria-Alba’s sanity was invariably restored by the peaceful rhythm of conventual life.

      Maria-Alba had been in no state to survive a long journey on public transport so I had bribed Bron – with the offer of doing all his laundry for the next six months – to drive us to the convent. I was pretty sure I would be doing it anyway, so it was cheap at the price. Despite what Maria-Alba said, the sisters who welcomed us seemed much saner and sweeter-tempered than my old schoolmistresses, no doubt because they didn’t have horrible little girls to look after. It was a closed order so we would not be allowed to visit her, but as she was a guest, she would be allowed to send and receive letters.

      ‘Poor Maria-Alba,’ said my father in a lacklustre way.

      I wondered what I might say to cheer him up. I had met Marina Marlow at the prison gates. She had been posing for photographers and giving an impromptu interview. I heard her say that it was a matter of indifference to her whether my father was guilty or not. Friendship meant commitment through thick and thin. I got the impression she would prefer him to be guilty as this would show her in a more praiseworthy light. Her hair was a bright shade of platinum, like tinfoil. A low neckline and a thigh-length split in her skirt seemed tactless when visiting men obliged to be celibate. But she was magnetic. I felt a shudder of apprehension and pretended not to see her matey little wave.

      The truth was, no matter how many affairs my parents entered into, I always bitterly resented their paramours. I was wounded on behalf of whichever parent was left out in the cold and I was fearful each time that the temporary sexual attachment might turn out to be something more important. No matter how hard I tried to be an obedient daughter and teach myself the lesson that monogamy was unnatural, illogical and deplorably lower middle class, my feelings of insecurity were painful. One of the things I had loved about Dodge was that he held fiercely puritanical views about everything, which included constancy in love.

      ‘I saw Marina outside.’ I tried to sound matter-of-fact. ‘It was good of her to visit.’

      ‘She brought me a bottle of L’Equipée Pour Hommes. Very expensive. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Marina that making oneself smell attractive is the last thing one wants to do in a place like this.’

      ‘You mean –’ I lowered my voice – ‘the other men?’

      ‘You bet. I go in fear of my virtue. That’s why I got the barber to cut my hair.’ I had managed to suppress a gasp when I first caught sight of his shaven head. It made his eyes and jaw look much bigger. ‘You see that bloke with the scars and the broken nose two tables down?’ I looked surreptitiously at a man who seemed to have spent his whole life running his face into sharp and dangerous objects. ‘That’s Slasher O’Flaherty. He’s offered me a whole month’s snout – that’s tobacco – if I’ll drop into his cell one evening to discuss acting techniques.’

      Unluckily the man happened to glance in my direction before I could look away. He winked and smiled, exposing a solitary brown tooth.

      ‘Oh, Pa! Do be careful! Can’t the prison officers protect you?’

      ‘Some of the screws are worse than the prisoners.’ He laughed in a depressed way. ‘So Ronnie’s seized the opportunity to lay siege to your mother. Not that it will do him any good. He’s about as virile as a pink-eyed rabbit in a conjurer’s hat.’

      I thought he was entitled to be catty in the circumstances. ‘Ronnie’s really very domesticated. He’s hardly ever out of apron and rubber gloves. And I think he’s enjoying it.’

      ‘He always was an old woman.’ My father looked gloomy and rubbed his hand over the bristles on his head. ‘I suppose you’re all having a wonderful time without me.’

      ‘We certainly are not! Portia still won’t go out anywhere, though the police found Dimitri’s house and arrested him and discovered masses of drugs and things and they’re all in prison – luckily not this one – and the police guard’s been called off.’ I knew Portia had written to my father, giving an edited account of her escapade, but I had not seen the letter so I kept the details vague. ‘All except Dex.’

      I felt a sinking of spirits, recalling this disappointment. When Inspector Foy had telephoned to tell me about the successful police raid on the house in Oxshott I had hoped that he might have found Mark Antony as well, but there had not been so much as a bowl of Kittichunks or a clump of ginger fur. Or Dex. The inspector assured me there was a nationwide watch for Dex and he would not be able to leave the country. I had not told my father about Mark Antony being missing. The news could only depress.

      ‘Ophelia’s as grumpy as she can possibly be.’ I wanted to reassure him that we were not disporting ourselves, indifferent to his plight. ‘Peregrine Wolmscott hasn’t asked her to marry him and she’s worried in case her looks are going. She reckons to enslave any man within two weeks.’

      ‘That’s my girl. Your mother enslaved me in less than one. How is Cordelia?’

      ‘At rather a loose end.’ I felt guilty and I expect I looked it. ‘She hasn’t been to school since you were arrested. I had a bit of a row with Sister Imelda.’

      Sister Imelda, headmistress of St Frideswide’s, had telephoned to ask why Cordelia was not at school. When I said I thought Cordelia needed a little time at home to recover from the shock of my father’s arrest, Sister Imelda’s voice had grown cold. It was her considered opinion that children brought up as we had been needed discipline, not coddling. Cordelia already had a distressing disregard for truth and a vulgar tendency to dramatise herself, and if she were to escape a life given over to flagrant immorality it was important that home influences be kept to a minimum.

      ‘Honestly, just because she’s a nun she thinks she can get away with any amount of rudeness,’ I said, feeling aggrieved all over again.

      Though none but the bare facts of the case had been made public, it was obvious that nearly everyone believed that my father must be guilty of the murder of Sir Basil Wintergreen or he would not be in prison. The old adage that there is no smoke without fire was persuasive. What had been admired in Pa before as the eccentricity of artistic genius had been transformed at a stroke to the vicious traits of psychopathy.

      Sister Imelda did not doubt that we were the children of a cold-blooded assassin and therefore she despised us. I had been so hurt by her disparagement of my family that I was prompted to strike a blow in return. I asked her if she was aware that her relationship with Sister Justinia had been the subject of malicious gossip throughout the school. If so, she would know how painful it was to be condemned without a hearing.

      Sister Imelda had given a satisfying scream of affliction at the other end of the telephone and the line had gone dead. For several hours I had felt quite buoyed up by the success of my revenge. I had said nothing that was not true. According to Cordelia, Sister Imelda’s passion for the novice teacher had been common knowledge for weeks and the more censorious parents were beginning to mutter. But when my indignation had cooled I repented. Sister Imelda was an unhappy woman and her spiteful behaviour was proof of this.

      I wrote to Sister Imelda, saying she was probably right about Cordelia needing more discipline. I would see that she returned to school within a few days. I apologised unreservedly for losing my temper and asked her to put it down to the strain of my father’s arrest and imprisonment, which, naturally, had made us all very unhappy. I received a letter by return of post, which said that the Byng family would be personae non gratae at any future school occasion and would I send a cheque immediately for a term’s fees, in lieu of notice? It concluded with a request for an additional forty-five pence to replace the light bulb that Cordelia СКАЧАТЬ