The Eunuch's Ward (The String Quartet) (5 page)

Then I phoned Steen Publishing and introducing myself as Nat, Mungo’s friend from a project for young offenders, asked to speak to him. A pleasant, motherly voice asked me to leave my details and the message. I gave her my mobile number and the request for him to ring me. Then I tried a little subterfuge.

‘How long will he be, do you think?’ I asked casually. ‘I could use his input.’

The motherly voice promised to pass that on.

‘Today?’ I pressed.

‘If at all possible,’ the woman was still friendly but I could feel the door closing on me.

‘There’s something wrong, isn’t there?’ I lost my patience. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Thank you for ringing Mungo Steen Publishers, Madam. I will make sure that your message is passed on.’ The phone was put down.

The few answers that I received on FB told me that no one else had a clue either. How could they? All his ‘friends’ were actually book collectors, only interested in the beautifully bound volumes that Steen Publishing was known for. First editions, special editions, limited editions. No one was interested in him personally.

After initial reticence I told Rosie everything. She was back from the French Riviera, tanned, relaxed and full of giggles. After a bit of half-hearted shopping we told my driver of the day, no, not Dazza, like all those before him, he’d been replaced a while ago, to take us to Kaffeine in Fitzrovia. It was actually Rosie who told him; I didn’t even know that Kaffeine existed. With an Armenian father and an ex-beauty for a mother, I didn’t have sophisticated friends to tell me about sophisticated places. Plus, I didn’t like coffee. Two years ago, coffee was much too grown-up for me.

Over hot chocolate and vanilla biscuits I told Rosie about my fiasco.

‘Oh, you poor lamb,’ she hugged me, ‘I didn’t realise that you had it so bad. You really are in love.’

‘I’m in lust. Lily Merchant’s sex education left no lasting damage.’

She nodded and smiled.

‘You?’ I asked invitingly.

‘As I’ve told you...’

‘Yes, yes, you have. According to you, our virginity is a valuable commodity. Some nonsense like that. I think it’s an embarrassment...’

‘Is that freak still checking you every three months?’

I nodded.

‘I bet you can’t wait for the moment when he bends over your hymen...’

‘My perfect hymen’ I corrected. ‘Don’t forget the ‘perfect’ bit.’

‘And finds it in tatters,’ Rosie laughed back. ‘I’d just love to see his face.’

‘You can do if you wish. Dr. Tanner doesn’t mind audience. I think that he gets off on it.’

‘Is that what your lust is all about? It’s really just rebellion?’ Rosie asked seriously.

‘In part,’ I admitted. ‘Or, maybe I can’t handle rejection. Mungo put prudence before romance. What does that say about me?’

‘It doesn’t say anything about you, you silly goose. It only says something about him. Not necessarily anything bad, you know. Would you like it better if he had a reputation for screwing underage girls?’

‘Of course not. I would have liked it better if he’d let me have a go at that big hard thing that he keeps in his trousers.’ I gently brushed my hand over my crotch. ‘It felt luscious.’

‘That big hard thing is called penis,’ Rosie laughed, ‘but it usually answers to a number of other names...’

‘Like cock,’ I suggested.

‘Dick,’

‘Prick.’

‘Roger.’

I sat up in my chair. ‘Roger?! I haven’t heard that one before.’

‘I’ve just made it up,’ Rosie admitted. ‘Listen, you don’t want to turn into a stalker, do you? I’ve had an idea.’

Only Rosie could have come up with an idea like that.

She travelled from France via Stratford-on-Avon, where her parents and most of the crowd that they had been holidaying with were taking part in the next season’s production of
King Lear
.

‘Cordelia hasn’t been cast yet, but Morgan Lee will be the understudy... You know who Morgan Lee is, don’t you?’

‘The one from the cornflakes commercial?’ I answered meekly.

‘No, the one from the
Beautiful Corpse
. The opening shot is of her as a corpse. Remember?’

I didn’t, I hadn’t watched the
Beautiful Corpse.
But I nodded all the same.

‘Well, Morgan’s admitted to herself that she isn’t getting any younger and playing corpses doesn’t bring in very much money. She’s looking for a meal ticket. There’s an agency, probably a backroom outfit if you ask me, but anyway, they seem to know their business, they put together lists of most likely candidates, eligible bachelors...’

‘And you want to put my Mungo on Morgan Lee’s list of meal tickets? Isn’t he much too young for her?’

‘Nah, no one is too old, too young or too rich. But, trust me, if he wants Morgan, you don’t want him. My point is, they check people out. If you want a minute-by-minute, blow-by-blow account of what your lover boy has been up to, they’re the people to ask.’

‘Blow-by-blow sounds about right,’ I muttered crudely.

I had the vocabulary, I just needed some firsthand experience.

It took a few days but Rosie came up with the goods, as promised. She emailed me the relevant part of the report the day after my Mother suggested shopping with my father’s credit card.

There were only three paragraphs on a single page.

Latest news: Mr Mungo Steen’s injuries, suffered during a rafting holiday in Wales in August, seem to be less severe than originally feared. He was seen leaving hospital in a wheelchair last week, but only a couple of days later he attended his board meeting using just his crutches.

Relationships: In the past Mungo Steen has been seen in the company of a number of eligible socialites but nothing has ever come out of it. While in hospital he was not visited by anyone outside the immediate family – i.e. only his father, aunt, the first cousin and her husband came to see him.

Financial: Albeit the best known of all the Steen enterprises, Steen Publishing accounts for only a small proportion...

... and so on and so forth. I gave the last paragraph a miss. That wasn’t what I was interested in.

He was injured. He didn’t want to worry me. He was fine now but he’d lost the number. He needed time to recover, start his life all over again. There was a distinct surfeit of explanations, good reasons, excuses and possibilities and I was going to explore them all and put them to good use.

Armed with several landline numbers, a couple of residential addresses, one in London, the other one in Gloucestershire, and an email address, different from the one that he’d given me before, I set out to right the wrongs and make up for the lost time.

Both phones went to voicemail after three or four rings. I googled the addresses. The London house was a three-storey Georgian building in Holland Park. It offered possibilities. As, indeed, did the property in Gloucestershire. It wouldn’t be too difficult to sneak in and accost him somewhere in the grounds. Or, I could apply for a job there. The position of the bed warmer would have suited me very well.

I giggled.

My email was a model of informality.

Hi there, you

What’s that I hear? The minute I take my eyes off you, you manage to do yourself an injury.

Hope you get better soon.

If there’s anything that I can do, please let me know.

My bedside manner is legendary. I’m brilliant at holding hands and soothing troubled brows.

Yours forever and ever

Nat

I considered writing a letter as well and sending it with a bunch of flowers and a basket of fruit, but it felt like overkill.

A week later, there was no answer to my email, and the two phones offered me the opportunity to leave my name and number again. If there was a living soul at the other end, they must have been screening the calls and decided that mine was not on the list of desirables.

Three days before the start of term at the String, my father graciously agreed that I could board there until Christmas, at which time he was going to review the position in the light of my school reports and overall behaviour.

Chapter 6

My room at the String was small and sparsely furnished compared to the penthouse and Hartsfield House. Even so, for the first time in my life I felt that my space was truly mine. For the first time people knocked before entering. I was allowed to bring my favourite objects with me, even small pieces of furniture if I wished, but all I brought were my clothes, my books and CDs. There was nothing else that I had been allowed to choose for myself.

There were nineteen of us in the lower Sixth, but only ten boarders. Most girls arrived in gaggles of three or four. All the friendships had been pre-formed, including mine and Rosie’s. Only two teenagers were left unattached. Asha Banai, an Iranian, and Rafaela Cavalcanti, a Brazilian.

‘Diplomatic kids,’ Rosie sniffed. ‘No one wants to get involved with diplomatic kids.’

‘Whyever not?

‘Their parents can get recalled or even expelled at any moment. You don’t want to invest...’

‘Shame on you, Rosebud Munro,’ I admonished her with sternness that my father would have envied. ‘How do you think they feel?’

I made an effort to befriend Asha in history class. She needed A level in history because she was hoping to do Archaeology at Cambridge. I had no idea why I chose history except that I had always been rather good at it. Asha was easy to get on with, with a dry sense of humour, and quite mature for her age.

‘My parents think that boarding gives me more freedom. Their residence is just an extension of the office. There’s always someone around who has to be entertained.’

Her father was the cultural attaché, her mother was researching for her next PhD thesis.

‘What in?’

‘She’s covering different aspects of spread of cultural influences. This time it’s language. You wouldn’t believe how many English words originate from Persian...’

‘Like what?’

‘Like brother, and balcony and cash and...oh, I don’t know,’ she shrugged. ‘Most of them go all the way back to Sanskrit.’ She laughed, ‘You did ask, you know.’

Oh, yes, I definitely liked her.

I talked Rosie into staying over a few times, and the three of us spent many a pleasant evening in the school garden, munching on polenta topped with mozzarella and mushrooms delivered fresh from the nearby deli. I can’t even remember what we talked about except that we laughed a lot and had to be reminded that it was the official bedtime. A few days later, Asha asked if we’d mind if the little Brazilian, Rafaela Cavalcanti, joined us. Rosie made no objection but in the morning she whispered to me that those Latinos tended to be very loud , overbearing and emotional.

Little Ela wasn’t any of those things. Oh, ok, she was a bit emotional and prone to hide behind the proverbial sofa for the best part of whatever we happened to watch on TV, but at least she had the good grace to laugh at herself.

Rosie’s parents were spending practically all their time in rehearsals for King Lear. Before the first month at the String was out, Rosie abandoned the Barbican flat and moved in as a full time border.

Our Quartet was complete.

The first time boys entered the conversation was on my 16
^th
birthday. As it fell on Wednesday, my parents decided to throw a large party with live music and other delights, and invite everyone that we’d ever known, the entire village and all of the String Six Form students the weekend after. At school, I was greeted with a few chords of Happy Birthday at breakfast, and a few more of the same at dinner when, courtesy of my parents, the staff brought in an enormous cake with 16 candles. Even after all the students and staff had their share, almost half of the cake was taken back to the kitchens. My three handmaidens helped me carry the presents back to my room where more of them waited piled up on the bed.

‘Now, let’s see,’ said Rosie, feeling selectively through the brightly coloured parcels, ‘let’s see if I’ve still got the touch.’

She certainly had it.

‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she went through the motions of asking for permission, while unwrapping a large chocolate box. ‘And now,’ having opened the chocolates, she picked out the one with half a hazelnut on top, stuffed it into her mouth as if she hadn’t eaten for a week, and dived into an unfamiliar holdall under the table, ‘and now, for the star of the show. The main attraction.’ With the expression of a fledgling magician after the first successful trick, she stood there with the magnum of Dom Perignon in one hand and three champagne flutes in the other.

‘The fourth has broken on the way here,’ she admitted. ‘I’ll use the tea mug.’

‘I don’t think that I’m supposed to drink alcohol,’ Asha said uncertainly.

‘Why? Are you a Muslim?’ Rosie was looking at the neck of the bottle with some apprehension.

‘No,’ Asha still sounded uncertain. ‘Mandaic.’

‘In that case you’re most certainly allowed to drink champagne,’ Rosie ruled.

‘Oh, and you’d know, would you, Rosebud Know-It-All Munro?’ I felt obliged to come out in Asha’s support. ‘Do your parents drink alcohol, Asha?’

‘My father is not allowed,’ she shrugged. ‘Not in public. But, I think that he and my mother, sometimes... I’m not sure.’

‘What’s your problem, then?’ Rosie was still in her judgemental mode.

‘Has he ever forbidden you or your brother and sister to drink?’ That was me again. I also took the bottle off Rosie and opened it with flourish and a satisfying pop. I’d been allowed an occasional sip of champagne ever since I was a toddler and letting me open champagne bottles at his extravaganzas was one of my father’s favourite party tricks.

I filled Rosie’s mug. Ela proffered her glass with surprising alacrity.

‘My family owns vineyards the size of Australia,’ she answered my unasked question.

‘Oh, what the hell,’ Asha lifted her own glass. ‘After all, I’m older than any of you.’