Every Woman for Herself (26 page)

‘I haven’t seen her, just spoken on the phone. Rod said she looked great, but then, half the actresses he works with these days are walking skeletons, so his eye for normality’s warped.’

‘You are used to being with thin, immaculate women too,’ I pointed out. ‘And
I’ve
no intention of reducing myself to emaciation point – or going in for liposuction, facelifts or even bikini waxing – I’m staying
au naturel
.’

‘You don’t need to lose weight – you go in and out in all the right places – and I like you just as you are,
especially
au naturel
,’ he assured me, and I could hear the wicked smile in his voice. ‘I wish you were here now, so I could show you how much. And I’m not the only one who misses you: Caitlin talks about nothing but Upvale and the Rhymers. She’s dying to get back as soon as the wedding’s over and she’s done her bridesmaid’s act – and so am I.’

‘Will Kathleen let you bring her back, though, without a fight?’

‘Yes, under certain conditions. It’s all been a bit tricky. She was mad with her so-called friend for passing on to
Surprise!
magazine what she’d told her in confidence about our custody argument, because now the newshounds have got their eye on her. But I got together with Rod, who’s a really nice guy, and he’s persuaded her that she should do what’s right for Caitlin – whatever Caitlin wants. And Caitlin’s made it abundantly clear that she wants to come back to Upvale. She’ll see Kathleen as often as possible, of course, but she can do that in the holidays and when Kathleen’s over here.’

‘How awful for Caitlin to have to make the choice, though: her mother or her father!’

‘Oh, there wasn’t any real contest, darling, though it wasn’t the thought of living with
me
that swung it, it was life with the Rhymers.’

It didn’t seem quite the right moment to tell him that actually, technically speaking, I wasn’t a Rhymer any more.

‘Kathleen’s been offered a major part in Rod’s next film, which has focused her small attention span on other things. She loves Caitlin in her way, but her chief worry if Caitlin stays with me is what the press will say about it. So she’s come up with a solution – a PR exercise: she wants
you
to come to London and bring Caitlin home to Upvale straight after the wedding.’

I nearly dropped the phone.

‘Me? Why
me
? I thought
you
were going to bring her?’

‘I’ll drive her home, yes, but Kathleen wants to show the press that she’s reluctantly letting her make her home with me and her beloved nanny—’

‘I didn’t know she had one,’ I interrupted, astonished. ‘It’s the first I’ve heard of it!’

‘She means you.’

‘
Me
?’

‘Yes, you.’

‘But you’re making me sound like an old retainer!’

‘That’s the whole idea. A touching scene after the reception, where she hands Caitlin over to Nanny. “I only want what will be best for my little girl,” says film star Kathleen Lovell … Well – you can see how it will be.’

‘You’re very cynical!’

‘I’ve been around long enough to know the score, that’s all. What I didn’t tell Kathleen is that soon you’ll be looking after Caitlin permanently in your capacity as Mrs North.’

‘The third?’

‘And last.’

‘There’s no guarantee of that, though, is there? If I was mad enough to marry you, one day you’d wake up and see boring old Charlie Rhymer and trade me in for a new model. I’ve already done all that stuff; I’m not going through it again.’

‘If you’re still waiting for the magic potion to wear off, forget it. You’ve got so far under my skin you’re now part of me, and I want you for keeps. And better to be the last Mrs North than the first, don’t you think, darling? Did you get my message?’

‘Yes – I’m bananas.’

‘
I’m
bananas about
you
– I have to be or I wouldn’t have turned my house into Homage to Haworth via Upvale Parsonage. Did you get the photos? I walk into some of the rooms and forget where I am; and the conservatory is like a chunk of Kew. Do you want a fountain and fishpond in there, as well as in the garden?’

‘You’re wasting your money,’ I said severely, thinking what a long time it seemed since breakfast and Revelations One – and an even longer time since I’d seen Mace …

‘When you come down to collect Caitlin you’ll see it, and you can tell me what you think,’ he suggested enticingly.

Just as well he couldn’t tell what I was thinking at that moment.

‘I’ve got some coloured brochures from a tropical plant supplier full of things like pineapple plants and palms, and I don’t know what to order,’ he added, my very own private serpent in Eden.

‘I’m very busy with the magazine,’ I said, weakening. ‘We’ve been working till all hours packing and labelling, and a Sunday paper came and photographed us, and they’re doing an article about it. Was that your doing?’

‘I may have mentioned it to one or two people. And I’m sure Em and Anne and Chris could manage without you for a couple of days, when they know I need you to come and fetch Caitlin. She’s dying to get back, and if you don’t do what Kathleen says, she might change her mind – she’s very mercurial – and whip her off to America instead.’

‘But if my photo’s in the paper with a caption saying something like: “Charlotte Rhymer, daughter of biographer Ranulf Rhymer, pictured in the office of her new alternative women’s magazine
Skint Old Northern Woman
…” and then I suddenly appear in
Surprise!
or somewhere in the guise of a nanny, aren’t people going to notice?’

‘Dark glasses and a nanny-type felt hat,’ he said. ‘I’ll arrange it. And take it from me, Kathleen will be occupying centre stage in any pictures, while you’ll be firmly relegated to the background.’

‘Yes, but what if they find out I’m really Charlotte Fry, the Pan Murderess?’

‘It was a domestic accident, and no one except the local paper reported it at the time, did they?’

‘Well, no.’

‘So, how would they find out?’

‘Only if someone told them, I suppose … and Angie’s gone home to pack for her cruise.’

‘So, what’s the problem?’

I dithered.

‘Mace, I
do
miss Caitlin, but I’m sure Kathleen could find someone else to bring her here, and—’

‘No. She said you or no deal. She took a fancy to you, for some reason. You don’t want me to tell Caitlin that you won’t do it, do you?’ he added persuasively.

‘Well, no. We all want her back here. I just don’t— I mean, I’ve never been to London.’

‘I’ll send a car, and you can stay here overnight; you’ll feel at home, because I’ve recreated your old Parsonage bedroom. Then my mother will have Caitlin’s things sent over – she’s off to her usual hotel for Christmas – and when you’ve collected Caitlin in a taxi from the reception, I’ll drive you both back. Bring that green dryad dress and I’ll take you to see my new play. It seems to be a success.’

‘Congratulations,’ I said rather absently, my mind racing. Did I want to spend a night alone with Mace in London? (Yes! Yes!) Did I want to be seen at the theatre with a well-known actor and playwright, wearing a chiffon nightie from a jumble sale? (No!)

And if he took me to the theatre he was bound to see at last just how much of a fish out of water I was among his sophisticated friends … so perhaps I’d better do it, and sooner rather than later? Gird my loins in floaty sea-green and prepare to disillusion him?

I wavered. ‘You just want me to see you crowing on your own dunghill, don’t you?’

‘I’d rather be Cock of the North,’ he said cheekily, but I thought he was shaping up to that quite nicely already.

In the end I gave in and agreed to stay one night, but more because he was showing signs of being about to drive all the way back up here just so he could drag me out and carry me off personally (not that this idea didn’t have a certain attraction too).

I decided to tell him when I arrived about my not being a real Rhymer after all, though unlike Matt, who set such store by it, Mace had enough fame for both of us.

It was odd to realise I now didn’t have a right to any name except, I supposed, Matt’s, should I get the mad urge to start calling myself Charlie Fry at this late hour. And even that was not really my own, and forever now connected with Dead Greg.

Looking down, I discovered I’d covered the notepad in front of me with ‘Charlotte North’ in big loopy writing.

‘You big, loopy pillock,’ I told myself severely.

Chris’s temporary replacement had arrived (so amazingly quickly they must have been convinced he’d thrown his lot in with the Devil and was about to hold satanic rites in the parish church), so he was devoting himself instead to the running of
Skint Old Northern Woman
, at which he was very good.

If it became a regular thing – and I felt it just might – perhaps he could become the editor?

The
Skint
team certainly didn’t need me at that moment, and Anne and Em positively urged me to go to London to see Mace on his own ground.

‘After all,’ Em pointed out persuasively, as she sewed a button onto her dungarees while still wearing them, ‘he’s shown he’s serious about you, doing all that work to turn his house into a home from home. You could give the man a chance.’

And even Gloria said I might as well go – it would make no difference now.

Well, in the end I thought: what the hell? Feel the fear and do it anyway, if only to stop the arrival of ever more banana trees! I’d need a veranda annexe at this rate, and would be entitled to call myself Charlie Del Monte.

I was waved off in a large car, the back of which was bigger than the Parsonage pantry, though I was divided from the driver by an impenetrable wall of glass (not that this wouldn’t be a good idea for the pantry, too, when Gloria or Em were in it brewing potions).

Anne loaned me a large rucksack, into which I packed my green Hake-Hackett outfit, turquoise cashmere sweater and the pink and silver nightie and dressing gown purchased in York and as yet unworn: my encounters with Mace having so far been of the spontaneous kind. (He was clearly the kind of man who started first time without the choke out.)

Jessica loaned me a pashmina to go over my green dress, but otherwise I didn’t have many clothes, so jeans would have to do. I hoped they were acceptable nanny garb, but I couldn’t help thinking they were going to look very odd with a felt hat and shades.

I took a bottle of Father’s best whisky as a present, undoctored this time. Em gave me a picnic hamper, and a huge cold box full of food for Mace, in case no one was feeding him properly down there. She said he needed his strength keeping up, but she didn’t say for what.

She also affixed a little silver Chinese good luck charm to the zipper of my handbag and made sure I was wearing my power bracelets, including the new, much chunkier rose quartz replacement one she’d bought me.

Jessica insisted on spraying me liberally at the last minute with her Happy perfume, so I left in such a fug I had to have the windows right down for the first hour, and it must have seeped through the partition too somehow, because the driver kept coughing.

Still, it’s reassuring to know that whatever happens to the rest of me, my wrists and handbag will be enjoying a really good time.

Skint Old Bookworm, No. 2

It is a little-known fact (because no one ever mentions it) that the Brontë sisters were all midgets. A visit to the Parsonage museum at Haworth, where some of their clothes are on display, reveals that they were not much bigger than the Tooth Fairy.

Skint Old Fashion Victim, No. 4

Those in the know get their footwear from the sort of discount shoe warehouses where they string them together in pairs like kippers and toss them over racks.

For the persistent, there are good makes at market-stall prices, and you can build up an Imelda Marcos-sized collection for the cost of one pair of Jimmy Choos.

There is, though, as always, one snag: discount devotees can always be recognised by the two tiny punched holes in the heels of their shoes where the string was threaded.

The driver, Trevor, was quite friendly once I’d persuaded him that opening his little glass partition and all the windows for a short while would be the quickest way to get rid of the eye-watering perfumed fug.

When we stopped for lunch he declined to share my picnic, preferring a burger meal in the motorway café, but afterwards he showed me photos of his four children and serenely smiling wife (though don’t ask me how you can look serene with that many offspring).

After this I fell asleep in the back of the car, due to a potent combination of perfume fumes, exhaustion from not having slept much the previous night, and over-indulgence in food from Em’s picnic hamper. Oh, and the half-bottle of red wine she’d thoughtfully included might have had something to do with it, too.

By the time I woke up it was dusk.

‘Primrose Hill,’ Trevor said, jerking a thumb at what I’d taken to be a stretch of countryside, then turned down a street of little shops and into a square of big, terraced houses set round a garden, and we were there.

‘What was that perfume called again?’ he asked as we pulled up. ‘Only I quite like it now it’s faded a bit, and I thought I’d get some for the wife.’

‘At last I have you in my power!’ hissed Mace melodramatically, curling the ends of an imaginary moustache and leaning against the closed front door.

I smiled nervously – but the house
was
very quiet. I stood in the hall among my varied luggage, feeling like the new governess in one of those Gothic romances.

‘We’re not alone here, are we?’

He straightened and smiled, looking more like himself, which was just as alarming in its way. ‘Yes. Did you think I’d have a retinue of servants lined up to greet you on the steps, with Mrs Danvers at their head? A cleaning service comes in on Mondays, and that’s it. I can cook, too,’ he added, ‘even if I’m not in the same league as your sister Em.’