Moonshine. Victoria Clayton

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СКАЧАТЬ take care not to fall.’ There might have been a little resentment in his tone and he seemed to stand up straighter as though encumbered by so much solicitude. ‘Thank you, Mrs Harris,’ he added in a softened tone. ‘Where would we all be without you to take care of us, eh?’

      A wave of colour ran over Mrs Harris’s face. ‘It’s my pleasure, sir.’ She began to clear the table, an expression of satisfaction curving her lips.

      ‘A good woman,’ muttered Dickie as we crossed the hall to the garden door. ‘None better. But not always tactful. Damn! I wonder where Fleur’s got to? I’m always afraid that when she flies into a pet she’ll do something stupid on Stargazer. He’s a wonderful animal but he gets a look in his eye …’

      Dickie set the pace to the Temple, or the China House, which was how I thought of it. By daylight the garden had lost its mystery but was still lovely.

      ‘What a fabulous rose!’ I stopped to sniff at its tumbled raspberry petals revealing a glimpse of gold stamens. ‘Oh, the scent! I wonder what it’s called?’

      ‘Souvenir du Docteur Jamain,’ said Dickie, without stopping. ‘French hybrid perpetual.’

      ‘And this?’ I cupped my hands round an exquisite quartered bloom of blush pink.

      Dickie threw a glance over his shoulder. ‘Queen of Denmark. An alba rose, probable parentage Maiden’s Blush.’

      I longed for information about the other roses that dropped showers of pink, yellow, white and crimson petals on the path as Dickie brushed hastily past but his anxiety was so manifest that it seemed cruel to detain him for a second. We came rushing through the gap in the hedge which surrounded the China House to find Fleur sitting on its front step, talking to a young man. When he saw us he stooped in a leisurely way to pick up a trowel and began to slap cement from a bucket on to a piece of ground marked out with string. This, obviously, was Billy. He had short hair, tipped blond, and a craggy sort of face, good-looking in an aggressively masculine way. He was shirtless, his back burnished by the sun. His legs revealed by cut-off jeans were muscular and his wrists were bound with leather straps. He cast me a look of interest that hardened into something more like approval.

      ‘Arternoon, guv,’ he said, in a high nasal voice that spoiled the tough, lion-tamer image.

      Dickie was scarlet in the face. Beads of sweat sat on his forehead and his voice was not quite under his command for he was panting.

      ‘Hello, Billy.’ He looked at Fleur. ‘There you are, darling. I wondered what had happened to you.’

      ‘You look as if you’re going to pass out.’ Fleur sounded unsympathetic. ‘Why don’t you take off your coat? For heaven’s sake, it’s high summer and you’re wearing a tie! I’m boiling!’

      She pulled up her cotton jersey and hauled it over her head.

      ‘Well, girls, if you don’t mind, I think I will.’

      Dickie leaned his stick against the steps and began to unknot his tie. I saw Billy looking at Fleur’s breasts. Her nipples were prominent beneath her thin, not altogether clean T-shirt. Her armpits had tufts of dark hair. The gypsy look is not one I normally care for but on Fleur it seemed fine, even attractive in an earthy way. Billy’s eyes narrowed and he licked his upper lip. I glanced at Dickie but he was still fighting his way out of his coat. Perspiration was damp on the back of my neck but I was disinclined to remove my jersey beneath Billy’s lascivious gaze. Mrs Harris appeared with the coffee. I saw her eyes take in everything.

      She put the tray on a table that stood outside the China House. ‘I’ll take that coat, sir, then you won’t have to carry it back. You’d better put your shirt on, Billy,’ she added sharply. ‘It isn’t decent in front of ladies.’

      Billy looked at Dickie.

      ‘Mrs Harris is always right.’ Dickie smiled. ‘We must do as we’re bid.’

      Billy showed by the contemptuous drooping of his eyelids precisely what he thought of the housekeeper. He put on his T-shirt and bent and stretched languidly over his task, pausing now and then to look at Fleur and sometimes at me. Once when I caught his eye he turned his back to the others and rested his free hand casually on his groin. I stared with cold dignity at a clump of delphiniums.

      ‘Now, Roberta.’ Dickie sank into a deckchair. ‘Tell me honestly what you think.’ He waved his hand at the China House.

      ‘So far, excellent,’ I said. I noticed that Fleur was amusing herself by chucking little stones into Billy’s cement and that he was fishing them out and waving his trowel at her in mock anger.

      ‘I’ve consulted pre-war photographs, though it was nearly a ruin then,’ said Dickie. ‘But outside, at least, it’s as near as dammit to the original.’

      ‘It’s lovely. Did you know it was traditional to hang bells from the eaves, beneath the curled-up corners of the roof? So you get a tinkling sound whenever the wind blows. You could have a whingding at the apex. That’s a sort of pinnacle. Something fanciful. Perhaps a crouching dragon with a long tail spiralling upwards?’

      Dickie was thrilled by these suggestions and began to make notes on the back of an envelope. Fleur lobbed a stone that bounced on a bucket and struck Billy’s thigh. He mimed a parody of spanking and she giggled. I heard him give a low growl. The little square of garden seemed to throb with dark primitive urges.

      ‘You could paint the roof with a scale pattern, like a goldfish,’ I continued, though my mind was not wholly on the subject. ‘Scarlet, white and green would be appropriate colours. And you ought to reach it by crossing a little scarlet Chinese bridge across a square or circular pool. Strictly speaking, though these roses are lovely, if you want to be traditional the only flowers should be water lilies. Otherwise masses of ferns and rocks.’

      ‘Roberta, you’re absolutely right!’ Dickie looked delighted. He turned to Fleur and just missed seeing her sticking out her tongue at Billy. ‘Isn’t it marvellous to have found someone who knows? Won’t it be fun, darling? I’m determined we shall do the thing right. Now tell me, what should the bells be made of?’

      ‘Anything you like. Often they were wooden but you could just as well have brass—’

      I was interrupted by the sound of breaking china. ‘Oh, bugger,’ said Fleur. A pretty pink and gold Coalport tea cup lay in pieces on the gravel. ‘Mrs Harris’ll have a field day.’ Then she giggled. ‘It’s your fault, Billy. You shouldn’t make those ridiculous faces.’

      Billy chuckled, an unpleasantly lubricious sound.

      ‘Better pick up the pieces, darling,’ said Dickie. ‘Perhaps it can be mended. But be careful not to cut yourself—’ It was too late. Fleur was sucking her thumb. The unselfconsciousness of the babyish pose was utterly charming and seductive. When she took it from her mouth drops of crimson fell on to the wet cement. ‘Here’s my hanky.’ Dickie sounded alarmed. ‘Put pressure on it and hold it above your head. We’ll go in and get a plaster—’

      ‘Don’t fuss.’ Fleur stood up. ‘It’s just a little cut. I was going to see Stargazer anyway. You stay and talk gardens with Bobbie.’ She fluttered a hand at me. ‘See you later.’ Then she was gone through the gap in the hedge.

      Billy put down his trowel. ‘If you’re going to put a pond in, is it any good me going on with the СКАЧАТЬ