Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs (25 page)

Golly shook her head. ‘Shakespeare has a speech about the madness of kings but I can’t remember in which play. It must be an occupational hazard. Being kowtowed to is very bad for people.’

‘It is the Bastard’s speech in
King John
—’

‘The girls must be getting cold,’ Rafe interrupted, as though tired of providing an audience for a flow of information from Conrad. ‘Let’s move on.’

I wished we could tear ourselves away from the topic of madness.

My leg was a thorough nuisance on the tour. Rafe assisted me back up to the hall but I made him go on with the others while I recovered my breath.

Fritz was alone in the drawing room, sitting in one of the deckchairs, with a sprinkling of sugar decorating his flower-embroidered waistcoat, his eyes closed, listening to Wagner. The fire blazed high, and the music swelled to a climax in glorious sympathy with the ultramarine of the darkening sky, which was lit by a single unwinking star beyond the great windows. It was so like a stage set that, for the hundredth time that day, as every day since the accident, I wondered whether I would ever dance again.

Fritz opened his eyes and sprang up. ‘Dear Marigold! Vat is the matter? Hurts your bone?’

‘Oh … no. The spiral staircase took it out of me, that’s all. Are there many more rooms on this floor?’

‘Permit me. I show you. Zis,’ he conducted me through a door leading off from the drawing room, ‘vas, ve sink, vonce
a library.’ Bookshelves covered with dust bore out this idea. ‘Here ve shall do our vorks. It holds no welcome at present but I have faith.’

It was fortunate that this room also had a large fireplace, for it looked towards the hillside and was as dark and as cold as the bottom of a lake.

‘Now this,’ he led the way to another much smaller room, ‘vill be a plunge pool. Ceramics all over and vith a big –’ with his fingers he imitated something trickling down on his head – ‘
die Dusche
… what do you say… douche? Conrad is most fond of taking seaweed baths.’

‘Really?’ To my ears, unaccustomed as they were to luxury – not only my ears, of course – the seaweed had a dangerously Ludwigian ring to it.

‘Ve Bavarians have a strong pleasure in therapeutic walue of bathing. Our bath towns are most numerous.’

These three rooms made up the whole of the ground floor, since the house was only a castle in miniature. The stairs to the upper floors were too narrow and steep for crutches. Fritz and I returned to the fireside and shared the last
Apfelküchen
, while he gave me an interesting account of German confectionery, a subject evidently close to his heart, until the others came down.

‘Four bedrooms and a bathroom of sorts,’ said Isobel in answer to my question. ‘Polythene tacked over the windows and plastic canisters of water.’

‘Naturally, after so long unused, the system does not work,’ said Conrad. ‘It pours rust only.’

‘I’m sure Mummy won’t mind if you come over to Shottestone for a hot bath every day.’

‘Thank you,’ said Conrad, ‘but I enjoy prevailing over difficulties and I believe in the benefits of cold-water bathing.’

‘Poor boy!’ Golly tapped his head. ‘Wandering in his wits! I’m all for the simple life and I hate pretension above all else –’ she broke wind noisily and quite unselfconsciously, as though to
emphasize the point – ‘but no water, no electricity, no telephone … For one of the world’s richest men to choose to live in a ruin, surely this is taking eccentricity to the point of masochism?’

I was inclined just then to agree with Golly that the entire enterprise was the product of a seriously disordered brain, but later, as we sat by the fire in candlelight, watching the last ray of light die out of the sky and a panorama of moon and stars take its place, I had to admit that the project offered thrilling possibilities. When Conrad drew the stool up to the piano and began to play Chopin nocturnes so beautifully that they made me shiver, I was quite prepared to concede that the whole scheme was the cleverest thing ever thought of.

‘How
good
Buster’s been all evening.’ Isobel bent to look under the table.

Rafe looked gratified. ‘Dogs are pack animals. It’s a matter of teaching them who’s boss.’

‘How revolting!’ said Isobel. ‘He’s sleeping with his chin on a dead mouse!’

I looked at Conrad. He happened to catch my eye. To my surprise he bared his teeth and growled low like a dog. Then his black eyes filled with mischief. I was sorry to remember that he was undoubtedly deceitful and probably insane as well.

‘Keep still.’

The nurse approached the frayed and filthy edge of the plaster with a small whizzing circular saw. I imagined flesh and blood, mine, splattering the walls of the outpatients’ ward of Carlisle hospital. I had dreamed almost every night of being able to walk and run and dance again, free of the hated cast. Now that the moment had come, my heart was beating so hard I was quite worried about pulling through the experience.

‘Steady.’ The nurse frowned and stuck her tongue into the corner of her mouth. ‘I don’t like this job. I’m always afraid me hand’s goin’ ter slip. It’s that hot wi’ the radiators going full blast.’

She paused to wipe her forehead with the back of her arm. My own palms were moist and my skin prickled. I closed my eyes and thought of the view from Hindleep as the saw buzzed again like a furious bee.

A cracking sound made me open them quickly.

‘Here we are.’

She was peeling away the plaster. There was my leg, incarcerated for six weeks, white, thin and feeble-looking, covered with a fine ginger down like a gooseberry.

The nurse examined the scar, a purple line. ‘It seems to have healed up nicely.’

Feeling sick with fright, I flexed toes that hardly seemed to belong to me. But oh joy! I could point them! I stood up and put my feet in the turned-out position. Carefully I lowered myself into a plié, then rose and extended my leg in a trembly
battement
tendu
. The arch of my foot would have disgraced a ten year old, but I would work, work, work to get back its flexibility. Tentatively I lifted my foot above my head. My thigh muscles hurt like hell, but feeling pain again after weeks of numb immobility was exquisite pleasure.

‘Crikey!’ The nurse was impressed. ‘However did you do that?’

‘I’ve been doing it every day since I was ten,’ I explained. ‘That way you retrain groups of muscles and ligaments. It isn’t possible otherwise. I’m a dancer.’

‘Really? Like Ruby Slipper and the Slipperettes?’

‘No. Ballet.’

Her enthusiasm waned. ‘Fancy.’

I took the sock and shoe I had brought with me from my bag and put them on. ‘Thank you so much.’ I picked up my coat. ‘Goodbye.’

‘You can’t go till the doctor’s seen you. He’ll want to X-ray it and then you’ll have to make an appointment to see a physio … You’ll need your crutches until you get used to it …’

But I was walking away from her, concentrating on not limping, on distributing my weight equally between my feet, teaching myself to trust my newly restored leg. Had the crutches belonged to me I would have taken them to the nearest bridge and hurled the hateful things into the River Eden. As they belonged to the NHS, I left them propped against the wall in outpatients.

‘Darling!’ Dimpsie was walking down the corridor towards me. I had left her parking the car as we were, inevitably, a little late for my appointment. ‘Sorry I wasn’t there for the disrobing. I ran into someone I knew – literally, I’m afraid. Luckily he’s one of your father’s patients. He said he’d tell the insurance people he backed into a wall. As he was being so kind, I had to ask about his hernia … how is it?’

‘I feel like a slave who’s had her fetters taken off. I’m
free!
’ I threw my arms around her, attracting the curious glances of those trudging up and down the corridor. ‘I’ve got rid of that foul bloody cast and I shall never be unhappy again. Look!’ I did an experimental, very poor pirouette in slow motion. ‘Seriously,’ I said later as we were driving home after a celebratory sausage and chips, ambrosia after an exclusive diet of eggs, ‘I do think it might be going to be all right if I absolutely devote every waking hour to exercising it. A couple of months ought to do it.’

‘Oh, darling, really? I’m so thrilled!’ In her excitement, Dimpsie wandered into the path of a car transporter. The driver could not have been attending, because he had to slam on his brakes. Together with his burden of cars, he did a loop round the traffic lights. I looked over my shoulder to see a van collide with the transporter’s tail. ‘I was so afraid you’d be leaving the minute you got the cast off. And I wasn’t going to say anything but I can tell you now: I was simply dreading you going. Two more months! That’s absolutely wonderful!’

I had serious misgivings when I heard this. How to tell her that I intended to spend those two months in London attending classes? Having seen an old lady on a bicycle career into the crashed van, I turned my eyes to the front and wrestled with my conscience. Most immediately, ought I to tell Dimpsie of the mayhem she had left behind her? Her only crime had been to swerve into the wrong lane. If the driver of the transporter had been concentrating, nothing would have happened. But Dimpsie, I knew, would insist on going back and shouldering the blame. What good could that possibly do the old lady or anyone else? We were on the ring road now and leaving the scene of destruction behind. My anxiety about the old lady took the edge off my exultation at becoming a biped once more. I decided to ring the police station anonymously when we got home to find out if anyone had been injured.

But as we went in through the front door, the telephone
started to trill and, as things turned out, it was several hours later before I thought about the old lady again.

‘Marigold? It’s Rafe. How did it go at the hospital?’

‘Very well. How sweet of you to remember.’

‘Of course I knew how important it must be for you.’

I felt a rush of gratitude. ‘It is rather. How are you?’

‘At something of a loose end. Evelyn’s taken my father to Newcastle and Isobel’s gone to London with Conrad. I’ve been painting all day and it won’t go right. Would you be angelic and come and cheer me up? Mrs Capstick’s made an orange cake.’

‘That does sound tempting. Hang on a second, would you?’

‘Yes, of course, do go,’ said Dimpsie when I consulted her. ‘I must ring some of my weavers and whittlers to see if they’ve survived the winter.’

‘I’ll be back in time for supper.’

‘Don’t worry if you get a better offer. It’ll only be scrambled eggs again.’ Dimpsie’s face folded into familiar lines of anxiety. I had had to pay the electricity bill with the last of my savings. I intended to send the gas bill to my father, but I had no idea what we would do if he didn’t pay it. Also, the washing machine had broken down halfway through a cycle and was still full of soapy water. And we would soon become egg-bound. I had to think of a plan of action, but what?

I picked up the telephone again. ‘I’ve got some shopping to do. I’ll meet you in the Market Square in an hour.’

The walk down to the town was a time of purest happiness. For the first time for months I was able to enjoy the luxury of stepping briskly out – fairly briskly – in solitude, listening to the birds, admiring the trees, the clouds and patches of livid green grass that were beginning to appear through the snow. It was as though blinkers had been removed from my eyes and muffs from my ears now I no longer had to concentrate on the crutches and not falling over or banging my leg. It was officially spring and, though the temperature was chilly, a silvery
shimmer behind a grey cloud curtain revealed the whereabouts of the sun. I snuffed up the smell of cold earth and last autumn’s decaying leaves, intoxicating after the stuffiness of houses and cars. A man cycled past without giving me a second glance. I was no longer an object of interest and pity, separated from the rudely healthy by plaster and crutches.

Rafe’s car was already parked in the square, though I had arrived ten minutes early. He jumped out and came to meet me.

‘My goodness, what a transformation! You look marvellous without your props!’ Did I imagine it, or was his customary kiss more lingering, less of a peck? ‘But you haven’t walked all the way? Surely that’s overdoing it for the first day?’

‘Dancing’s all about overdoing it. You have to push yourself until you’ve reached the end of your physical and mental tether and then you have to do it all again but much better.’

‘Good Lord! Can it be worth it?’

‘It is to me.’

‘Well, you’re the most interesting girl I’ve ever met. Now what about that shopping?’

‘I’ve got to call at Miniver’s. They save the vegetables that aren’t fresh enough to sell for my rabbit.’

‘You’ve got a pet rabbit?’ Rafe laughed and squeezed my arm. ‘How utterly charming and like you!’ He opened the passenger door for me. ‘Get into the car and I’ll go to Miniver’s for you. No, I insist.’

Being told I looked marvellous and was interesting and charming was irresistible. I slid into the seat to be greeted exuberantly by Buster. My leg muscles throbbed and tingled with the unaccustomed strain of walking. Rafe returned after a few minutes with two carrier bags which he put on the back seat before getting in behind the wheel.

‘She’d only got some yellow-looking cabbage leaves and some green potatoes put by. Surely rabbits don’t eat potatoes?’

‘Not unless starving.’ Pride prevented me from explaining that the potatoes were for Dimpsie and me.

‘That’s what I thought, so I got him some nice fresh carrots and cabbages and apples and things.’

‘That was so kind. I must give you the money—’

‘Don’t be silly. It hardly amounted to anything. Besides, this is a celebration, isn’t it? What’s your rabbit called?’

‘Siegfried. Siggy for short.’

‘I like that.’ He started the car and pulled away from the kerb. I thought it was sweet of him to be interested. But he was the kindest, most agreeable man I had ever known.

‘Another unexpected thing about you,’ Rafe continued, ‘although you’re so ethereal and elf-like and look as though you ought to spend all day in a hammock of cobwebs sipping nectar, you’ve got a definite way with animals. Buster’s been a hell-fiend all afternoon, barking at every bird and leaf. The moment he sees you he’s as good as gold.’

‘It’s simple really. I just hold his paw.’

‘What?’ For a moment I thought he was going to be angry with me for undermining all his careful training. To my relief he burst into laughter and laughed all the way to the outskirts of the town. He seemed to be in a marvellously good mood.

‘You really are
quite
unlike other girls.’

‘If you knew any other dancers, you’d find we were all boringly the same. Same hopes and fears. Same grumbles.’

‘No, but truthfully I’ve never met a woman before who
really
wanted to do or be anything. Except of course to be told they were desirable to men.’

‘Isn’t that the message Nature intends men to pick up?’ I said. ‘Actually, I think most women want far more than that. We want success and recognition if we can get it.’

‘Really?’ Rafe changed down smoothly to take the road that led up to Shottestone. He had a splendid jaw line that would have looked good on the side of an Etruscan vase. ‘Then it’s very good of you all not to let on so we poor blokes don’t get rattled. It’s fortunate they aren’t all as beautiful as you or we’d be completely emasculated.’

I could not prevent a feeling of gratification on hearing this, though I told myself that Rafe was just being polite.

Spendlove was taking the tea tray into the morning room as we arrived.

‘How are you, Miss Marigold? It’s good to see you back on your old form. Mrs Capstick’ll be pleased when I tell her. You’ll be spinning about again as good as new, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘I hope so. Please give Mrs Capstick my love and thank her for the cake.’

Spendlove winked. ‘It always was your favourite, I remember.’

Rafe threw another log on the fire. ‘Thank you, Spendlove. We shan’t be wanting you again until drinks.’

Spendlove winked again at me and withdrew.

‘He’s such a dear.’ I looked hungrily at the cake.

‘Mm. He seems to have developed an annoying habit of winking all the time. How do you like your tea?’

‘Very weak, no milk or sugar, please.’ I looked around appreciatively. ‘Such a lovely room. Evelyn has the most wonderful taste. Thank goodness, now my plaster’s off I’ll be able to do more at home. I’m afraid everywhere’s got into a bit of a state.’

‘Really?’ Rafe looked as though he was paying me polite attention while thinking of something else, and I couldn’t blame him. We had fallen into an easy sort of intimacy in the last few weeks, but that didn’t mean that he would be interested in the boring minutiae of my life.

‘Did the painting go better after we spoke on the phone?’

‘What? Oh, no. I gave it up for today. I had other things on my mind. Marigold …’

‘Yes?’ I had just raised a piece of cake to my lips, but I hesitated to take a bite because a tone of portent had entered his voice.

‘Marigold.’ He came to sit next to me on the sofa. ‘All these weeks I’ve been wanting to say something but I decided, in the circumstances, it would be … ill-judged.’

‘Oh? What was it?’ I could no longer resist and took a large
bite. It was superb, sweet and tart at the same time, moist with ground almonds and syrupy on top. I took a second bite. Rafe was looking at me with a serious expression, as though troubled, so I swallowed it quickly. ‘Is it about Isobel and Conrad?’ I resisted the temptation to lick my lips, which would have looked greedy. ‘I wish I knew what to think. One minute he seems eminently sane and the next—’

‘I wasn’t thinking about them. Occasionally my thoughts stray from fraternal cares, you know.’

‘Of course. But you get ten out of ten for being a good brother in my book.’ My eyes veered to the cake but I brought them back and trained them on his, while pressing my lips together in an attempt to rid them of their sticky coating.

‘Surely you can guess what I’m trying to tell you?’

I shook my head dumbly.

Rafe leaned forward to look directly into my eyes. ‘You adorable creature. Don’t you know I’m in love with you?’

He bent forward swiftly and pressed his mouth to mine. I was taken completely by surprise. After so many meetings during which he had conducted himself with the probity of a newly appointed curate, I had more or less accepted that anything of a romantic nature between us was not to be. Naturally I hid my astonishment and kissed him back.