Not Married, Not Bothered. Carol Clewlow

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ he makes lovely mellow imitation Shaker chairs and tables, which he sells for such wonderfully inflated prices to owners of weekend cottages, the reason he’d been pushing for early retirement.

      He’s a craftsman, is Fergie. Watch him lathing and planing. Watch the way he runs a hand along with something approaching joy, something so much more than satisfaction. It’s the same look I’d see on our father’s face, bending inside a bonnet, which was why, I guess, the pair of them got on so well from the moment Cass and Fergie first got together. They’d spend hours together in the garage, Fergie alongside my father, learning, working on whatever was his current old banger. Taking tea out to them, you could feel the mutual appreciation, the companionable nature of the silence.

      Anyway, like I say, I wished Fergie well in his new life. I just wasn’t that crazy on the idea of a party to celebrate it.

      ‘Oh God, it’ll be full of teachers moaning about their pensions.’

      Look, the way I feel about teachers is this: whereas it’s just possible that putting the proverbial monkeys in a room for a trillion years with a bunch of typewriters might result in the plays of Shakespeare, teachers would still be talking about their pensions.

      I’m only jealous, of course. I don’t have a pension. Something of which my mother constantly likes to remind me.

      ‘I don’t know what you think you’re going to do. There won’t be anything from me, you know. I’ll need the money from this house for a nursing home.’

      ‘No you won’t.’

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I thought I’d mentioned it. I fully intend to murder you.’

      For the record I have made no provision for my retirement, my only plan being a note in my diary to steal a supermarket trolley and put it by, this because I expect there to be a run on them from the several million or so old sixties swingers who, when we all come finally of age, will start moving, pensionless, around the country, probably in marauding gangs, our progress charted each night just before the news using those little triangular symbols rather like the ones for rain, and sleet and snow, which will be slapped onto the weather chart then as now by one of those eternally smiling, highly irritating young women clearly enjoying flaunting her fingernails.

      From all this you will deduce that my economic position can best be described as precarious, a major reason why the news that Archie had been invited to the party fell like a dead hand on my heart.

      ‘Oh God. Not Archie.’

      Cassie raised an eyebrow in that elder sister way she has, denoting disapproval. ‘Of course. Why not?’ There was an edge of irritation in her voice. ‘Really. I don’t know. What is it with you and Archie?’

      Precisely how Archie got his squillions is a mystery to me, but then high finance has never been my chosen subject. All I know is (I have chosen not to know more) he was involved in some dot com company selling pet food, or perfume, or toys or something on-line. When it went public he became a zillionaire along with everyone else including the tea lady. Not, you understand, that I am remotely jealous. Something I constantly have to make clear to my mother.

      ‘See … see …’ she said the day the news broke on the financial pages. (‘See …’, such a small and insignificant word and yet so pregnant with meaning.) Just in case I should fail to appreciate every last nuance of her wrath, she thundered a pan down on the stove top.

      My mother is unable to mention Archie’s name these days without adding the rider, ‘He’s worth a fortune now. You know that, don’t you?’ And of course I do know it. I know it very well and it doesn’t improve my temper, so that to save face I have to come back with a lofty little rejoinder.

      ‘Really, it’s of no conceivable interest to me, Mother.’ Which is totally untrue because in my heart of hearts I’m as mad as hell, in fact possibly even more pissed off than my mother. Something Danny understands perfectly.

      ‘I mean, the least you can expect from an ex-lover is that he’ll have the decency to remain an abject failure.’

      ‘It’s not like you’re asking for skid row or anything.’

      ‘He doesn’t have to be in the gutter.’

      ‘Just respectably hard up.’

      ‘Decently overdrawn.’

      ‘But not, definitely not, a fucking dot com millionaire, darling.’

      Despite all the above, Fergie remained firmly unashamed of his decision to invite Archie to the party.

      ‘Never thought he’d accept, if you want to know the truth of it.’ He smiled amiably, clutching a pint of his beloved Butcombe to his chest. ‘I mean, these days it’s practically impossible to get him off that island of his.’

      ‘Of his. His?’ My mood was getting decidedly nasty. ‘You’ll be telling me next he owns the bloody thing.’

      ‘No, of course not. He’s just got a villa there, that’s all.’

      ‘Oh, a villa. Excuse me.’

      ‘Well, probably it’s not really a villa.’ He was backtracking now and I knew it. ‘Probably it’s just a house. A very small house. Really no more than an apartment.’

      ‘Bollocks. It’s a villa. You know it’s a villa. And I bet it’s got its own pool.’

      ‘I wouldn’t know.’

      ‘Yes you would. You’ll have seen pictures of it.’

      ‘OK. Yes. It’s got a swimming pool.’

      ‘And I suppose the whole thing is surrounded by olive groves.’

      ‘I believe I saw olive groves, yes.’

      ‘And I’ll warrant it’s set on the side of a hill overlooking the bay.’

      ‘It’s true. You can see the sea.’

      ‘And, no doubt, just for good measure, it has one of the terraces where you can sit out in the evening with a glass of wine in your hand and smell the bougainvillaea.’ I positively spat the ‘b’ out at him.

      ‘Well …’

      ‘And it’ll be furnished with antiques – wooden chests and expensive rugs and brass incense lamps, the sort of stuff you see in House and Garden.’ And since I was spitting blood by now I thought I might as well end with a flourish. ‘And for sure there’ll be a fucking maid who comes in every day so you don’t have to lift a finger.’

      ‘Ah, now there you’re wrong.’

      Fergie had found something to take issue with. A relieved smile flooded across his face. ‘There’s definitely not a fucking maid.’

      His head bent to mine as his voice became distinctly gossipy and conspiratorial. ‘Matter of fact he was quite open about that last time we spoke. Said things were a bit thin in that department.’

* СКАЧАТЬ