Bed of Roses. Daisy Waugh

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СКАЧАТЬ I know. I’m coming down in a minute. Could you—’

      ‘Mrs Tardy’s in with them.’

      ‘Oh, good. Good. I’ll be down in one minute.’

      He sighs, a sigh full of teacherly, mature forbearing. ‘Fanny, are you going to tell me what’s going on?’

      ‘Nothing’s going on. You can see what’s going on. That silly picture.’ She stops, shrugs. ‘You know how it is. Lonely people out there. They get the wrong idea.’

      It takes him a moment to work out what she is implying. ‘Ah, of course,’ he says slowly, ‘how very disagreeable.’ A tiny flash of vexation that he hadn’t worked it out before, and then he imagines it: the strange man, the photograph, Fanny listening. He feels faintly aroused. ‘Well, I suppose you’re always going to get these specimens, aren’t you. They see these sort of images in the paper and they take them as an invitation…’

      Fanny doesn’t say anything. The room feels small with Robert in it, talking confidingly about things she’d so much prefer never to discuss with him. People wanking over her. She feels claustrophobic. She wishes he’d leave her alone.

      ‘Perhaps we should call the police?’ he says.

      ‘No.’

      ‘Well, Fanny, it’s obviously upset you…’

      ‘No. Robert—’ She stops, forces herself to smile again. ‘I’m fine. Forget it. So, anyway, you came to see me. What did you want? How can I help? Actually, I’m glad you came, because I’ve really been wanting to ask you about Scarlett.’

      ‘Scarlett?’ He looks confused.

      ‘You know Scarlett. Little disabled Scarlett, with the thick specs.’ Fanny speaks quickly, keen to move the conversation on. ‘Scarlett Mozely. Only she won’t show me any work and there are no notes. Mrs Haywood can’t find any notes and I’m wondering—’

      ‘Fanny, excuse me, but I return to work to discover photographs of our new head teacher in her bra and panties all over the press and you’re talking to me about—’

      ‘I wasn’t in my “panties”,’ she snaps. ‘Don’t get carried away.’

      ‘The telephone hasn’t stopped ringing all morning. You’re hiding away in your office here, refusing to pick it up, refusing to come to class. It’s hardly the way—It’s hardly a very good example.’

      ‘I know.’ She sighs. ‘I know it isn’t. And I’m sorry. Give me two minutes—’

      ‘What were you doing in your bra and panties, anyway?’ he persists. ‘In front of everyone! What are the kids supposed to think? More to the point what is the Local Authority supposed to think? They’re seeing images of our new headmistress in her bra and panties—’

      ‘I wasn’t in my pa—’ She stops, glares up at him.

      He smiles. ‘And what about me?’ he adds softly. ‘Tell me, Fanny.’ He moves across and sits down on the edge of her desk. ‘Hmm? What am I supposed to think?’

      She can’t stand it. She can’t stand him. What’s he doing, sitting on her desk? She feels anger rising, and panic. She needs, she knows, to get on top of the situation. And yet—‘Please, think whatever you want.’ She longs for him to go away. Instead he leans forward, over the table, and rests a light hand on her shoulder. ‘No, really, Robert. Please,’ she shrugs her shoulder, but the light hand stays in place. ‘Thank you for trying to help. And I don’t mean to be rude, but—’

      ‘Shhh,’ he says, and begins to massage ever so gently. ‘You’re so tense, Fanny,’ he murmurs. ‘You need to relax.’

      ‘Please – seriously – piss off.’ And from nowhere she notices that she’s crying, and that he hasn’t pissed off, far from it. And that the telephone is ringing again. He’s slid further across the desk and now he has both hands on her shoulders, massaging, stroking and she’s still bloody well crying.

      ‘Shhh…Shhhh,’ it’s barely a whisper, ‘relax. Relax, Fanny. Why so tense? Hmm?…Why so tense?’

      Out of desperation, to get him away – to bring a third party into the room – she picks up the telephone. ‘Louis?’ she says. ‘Is that you?’

      Panting.

      ‘Oh…Fuck off!’ She bends her head to the desk, with the telephone still rammed to her ear.

      Robert eases the receiver from her hand and gently returns it to its cradle, and as he does so his soft pink lips burrow beneath her hair, and he kisses her neck. ‘Louis isn’t here now,’ he murmurs, ‘I’m here…I’m here.’

      And though she tells him to fuck off, more than once, it sounds muffled, with her face on the desk. It’s possible Robert doesn’t hear.

      And from nowhere, for the moment, can she seem to find the strength to push him off…

       13

      Louis grew up in Baton Rouge, the son of an Anglican vicar and a classics professor at Louisiana State University. His parents sent him to England for his degree, because it was something they had both always wanted to do themselves, and because he asked, and they could just about afford it. He and Fanny were both enrolled on the same course and have been friends since the first week of their first term together. Louis is happy in England (he tends to be happy wherever he finds himself), and except for the occasional holiday, he hasn’t quite got around to going home since.

      He spent a couple of years after university driving removal vans. Then he went to art school. He worked briefly as a children’s illustrator. He trained as a TEFL teacher and for a year or two made a fortune giving private English lessons to Japanese bankers. He worked as a park attendant. He took a course in cabinet-making.

      For the past year Louis has been working as a freelance news photographer which, with the occasional boost from painting and decorating jobs, more or less pays his way. He enjoys the work: it allows him to travel, and to chat to people (which he loves) and he’s actually a pretty good photographer, too. But Louis isn’t somebody who lays much weight on his ‘career’, nor has he ever been. In fact he’s always found other people’s career obsessions very comical.

      And yet, to his own dismay, he finds himself more than a little undermined by Fanny’s recent stride towards adulthood and respectability. He feels as though he’s dragging behind. After all, he has two degrees, one in English, another from the Camberwell School of Art, and almost nothing to show for either of them: a rented flat in horrible Hackney, a part-time job, a motorbike with two helmets, an overdrawn bank account and a credit card that’s just hit its limit.

      When, the day after the limbo cotillion, Louis had ambled into the Fiddleford village post office to ask, on a whim, about local housing, Mrs Hooper had recognised him at once. Mrs Hooper (who was feeling a little lousy that Saturday morning) told Louis she was aware of only three places which were available in the area: one, a cottage on the road to Lamsbury, close to the famous hat maker’s, large and newly refurbished, СКАЧАТЬ