This Charming Man (23 page)

‘On his way.’ He’d bloody better be. ‘You’re very thin.’

‘Am I? Good.’

Oh God, I thought, I hope on top of everything else that she hasn’t gone
and caught anorexia. I’d recently done a piece on it being a growing trend among women in their forties, and although Marnie was only thirty-five she liked to be ahead of the curve.

Down in the kitchen, there was shouting and chaos. Daisy and Verity were galloping around the table being ponies, Ma was stirring a pot and doing the crossword and Dad had his face buried in a biography of Henry Miller.

It looked like a pink bomb had exploded: pink rucksacks, pink anoraks, dolls dressed in pink…

‘Hello, Sweets.’ Nick stretched over (actually he stretched
up
, if I’m to be honest) to kiss me hello. ‘You look gorgeous!’

So did he. He was only about five foot eight, but had mischievous good looks. His haircut was noticeably cool and his jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt looked new and (as Ma said later) ‘magaziney.’

‘Say hello to Auntie Grace!’ Marnie ordered the girls.

‘We can’t,’ Daisy said. ‘We’re ponies. Ponies can’t talk.’

She thundered past and I grabbed her and kissed her petal-like face. She twisted away, yelling, ‘You kissed a horse, Grace kissed a horse.’

‘She’s kissed worse in her time.’ Damien had arrived.

‘Glad you could make it,’ I said quietly.

‘I’m not.’

I shouldn’t laugh, it only encouraged him. I pinched his thigh, hard enough to hurt. ‘You’re very bold. Who let you in?’

‘Bid. She’s gone back to bed. Why’s Bingo outside?’

Bingo’s face was pressed up against the glass, mournfully watching all the fun in the kitchen.

‘Verity’s suddenly afraid of dogs.’

‘Uncle Damien!’ Daisy launched herself at him and tried to clamber up his leg, like a monkey up a tree. He held her upside down by her ankles and carried her around while she shrieked in terror and delight. He put her down, then held out his arms to Verity. But she’d taken a defensive position behind the kitchen table.

‘Say hello to Damien,’ Marnie said. But Verity retreated further and stood with her back against the wall, staring fearfully at Damien.

‘Don’t worry, Verity,’ he said kindly. ‘Not the first time I’ve been rejected by a woman.’

Poor Verity cut an unattractive little picture. She was small and oddly
shrunken-looking but had an old face. There was something wrong with her eyes – nothing serious – but it meant she had to wear glasses, which made her look adult and knowing.

It must be hard being Daisy’s little sister. Daisy was so cheery and confident, tall for her age and as clear-eyed and velvet-skinned as an angel.

‘Beer, Damien?’ Nick asked.

‘Yeah, Nick, beer, great!’ Damien always went extra-blokey around Nick, to compensate for the fact that he had nothing to talk to him about. ‘So! How’s work?’

‘Great! You?’

‘Yeah! Great!’

‘Is there wine?’ I found a bottle of red and poured four glasses.

‘None for me,’ Marnie said sorrowfully. ‘I’m on antibiotics.’

Dad looked up from his book, his face alert, about to launch into his anti-drug companies tirade.

‘Somebody stop him,’ Damien said.

‘Shut up,’ Ma said to Dad. ‘You stupid old man. No one wants to hear.’

‘What’s wrong with you?’ I asked Marnie.

‘Kidney infection.’

God Almighty, it was always something. She was the sickest person I’d ever met.

‘It’s your fault, you know.’ She grinned. ‘Hogging all the nutrition in the womb. Leaving me with nothing.’

A familiar refrain, and to look at us, you’d agree. She was tiny, fine-boned and barely five foot. With her thin little face, big blue eyes and long chestnut hair, she was a beauty. I felt like a lumbering carthorse beside her.

The galloping began again, the ponies bashing into chairs (particularly Dad’s), shrieking, laughing and thundering.

‘You two!’ Dad suddenly screeched, when they’d knocked his book from his hand for the fifth time. ‘Stop it, stop it! In the name of all that’s holy, stop it! Go and watch telly in the other room.’

‘There’s nothing to watch,’ Daisy said. ‘You don’t have cable.’

‘Read a book,’ Ma suggested. Everyone ignored her.

‘Tell us to watch a DVD,’ Daisy ordered me.

‘Watch a DVD,’ I said.

‘We can’t.’ Daisy gripped my wrist and said, her limpid eyes alight with genuine astonishment, ‘Because there’s no DVD player!’

We stared at each other in mock amazement.

Dad got to his feet. ‘I’m going to walk Bingo.’

‘You’ve walked him already,’ Ma said. ‘Sit back down. Marnie! How did you get those bruises?’

‘What bruises?’ Marnie’s cardigan sleeves had slipped up to her elbows, revealing livid, purple blooms on both forearms. She took a look at them. ‘Oh those. Acupuncture.’

‘What do you have that for?’

‘Cravings.’

I cast an involuntary glance at Nick. His eyes slid away from mine.

‘What cravings?’ Ma asked.

‘Oh you know. To be five foot six. To be a naturaloptimist. To win the lottery.’

‘Is acupuncture supposed to give you bruises like that?’

‘Probably not, but you know me.’

‘A slight problem.’ Nick came down the stairs into the kitchen. ‘Verity won’t go to bed. She says the house is haunted.’

Ma seemed dumbfounded. ‘… But it’s not. It’s about the one thing that isn’t wrong with it.’

‘If it was, we could start charging,’ Dad said.

‘She wants to go home to London.’

Verity was standing on the landing, her little pink rucksack packed, sullenly refusing eye contact.

‘There are no ghosts in this house,’ I told her.

‘They all moved next door when they got cable.’ Damien came up the stairs behind me.

‘Not a man!’ Verity screamed, suddenly animated. ‘I want Mum!’

‘Fine, grand, sorry.’ Damien retreated.

Marnie took control. She crouched beside Verity, talking quietly with her, trying to quell her fears without once sounding patronizing. She was endlessly patient. So patient that I was afraid we’d be there all night but Verity abruptly capitulated. ‘Sorry, Mum. I love you, Mum.’

‘I love you too, sweetheart.’

She got into bed and Marnie lay next to her. ‘Just for a little while, until she’s asleep. I won’t be long.’

As I came back downstairs, Damien collared me. ‘She asleep? Can we go? Please, Bomber Command.’

‘I want to have a proper chat with Marnie.’

‘Can
I
go? I’ve an early meeting. And I’m losing the will to live. I’ve been talking to Nick for the past nine lifetimes. Seasons have changed. The trees have blossomed, withered, then bloomed again. Maybe if I was smoking, but my tolerance isn’t what it was…’

No point in forcing him. ‘Oh all right.’ I laughed. ‘I’m going to stay, though.’

Dad noticed Damien gathering up his stuff and became instantly alert. ‘Are you going for a pint?’

‘No, ah… just going home.’

‘Oh are you?’ Cries of disappointment all round. ‘Why? Why are you going? Why?’

‘Early start.’ He grinned uncomfortably.

‘Bye, Damien.’ Ma patted his face. ‘ “I love the majesty of human suffering.” Vigny.
La Maison du Berger.’

‘Bye,’ he said, and skedaddled.

Dad looked at the door that Damien had disappeared through and remarked thoughtfully, ‘The interesting thing is that, underneath all of it,
all
of it, he’s a decent man. He’d give you the shirt off his back.’

‘Even though he’d complain that it was his favourite shirt and that he was going to miss it terribly,’ Ma said, then she and Dad dissolved into sudden hard laughter.

‘Leave him alone!’ I protested.

Marnie reappeared. ‘Where’s Damien gone?’

‘He needs his space.’

Marnie shook her head. ‘I don’t know how you do it. I’m far too insecure to be with someone like Damien. Whenever he was in a bad mood, I’d think it was my fault.’

‘But he’s always in a bad mood!’ Dad cried, as if he’d just said something tremendously witty, then he and Ma laughed again for a very long time.

I tried to sneak in without waking him but Damien sat up and turned on the light.

Blearily he asked, ‘What’s up with Verity?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Those glasses? They make her look like an economist.’

‘Or an accountant. I know.’

‘She’s freaky.’

‘She’s only a little girl.’

‘She’s like Carrie. I bet she could start fires.’

I said nothing. I knew what he meant.

‘Come in, Grace, come in.’

Dee Rossini. Early forties. Olive skin. Red lipstick. Snapping brown eyes. Black corkscrew curls caught up in a twisty bun. Wide-cut Katharine Hepburn trousers. A hip-length cardigan, tied tight around a slender waist.

She led me down the short hall. ‘Tea? Coffee? Macaroon? They’re just out of the oven.’

‘What? You made macaroons? Yourself?’

‘One of my army of aides bought them in M&S and stuck them in the oven ten minutes before you were due.’ She smiled for the first time. ‘Yes, home-made.’

She had one of those kitchens, you know the type – basil plants lined the window sill, and shelves overflowed with jars and retro tins full of arborio rice and peculiar-looking misshapen pasta (like off-ends that you’d think they’d give away at the end of the day to the local peasants but, strangely, was more expensive than the normalunpeculiar stuff). It was cosy, welcoming and fragrant with warm chocolate air and you could tell that if Dee was challenged to make
anything
in the whole world, she’d have the ingredients to hand. (Mongolian yak stew? ‘I’ll just thaw out a couple of yak steaks.’ Fresh truffle soup? ‘I’ve a small truffle patch in the garden, I’ll just go and snuffle them.’) It was some comfort to notice that the ceiling above the cupboards could do with a good dust.

Big Daddy had decreed that we were profiling Dee, but Jacinta refused to do it. Something to do with an Hermès scarf – she claimed Dee Rossini had whipped the last one in Ireland from right under her nose – so I’d asked if I could go.

Ma was pleased; she loved Dee Rossini – who was one of seven children from an Irish mother and an Italian father, a survivor of domestic violence, a single mother and the first woman in Irish politics to have set up a
mainstream political party. Starting your own political party usually ended in tears, especially in Ireland where politics were run by a tight club of men. But against all expectations, New Ireland had survived, not as a joke fringe party, but as a partner in a successfulcoalition government with the Nappies (Nationalist Party of Ireland). Despite having to sing from the same hymn sheet as the Nappies, Dee Rossini was nevertheless vocal about anything to do with women – Ireland’s comedy child-care provisions, the dearth of funds for women’s refuges, the absence of regulation for plastic surgery.

‘Sit down, sit down.’ She pulled out a kitchen chair for me.

It was rare to get an interview at a politician’s home. Even rarer for the politician to make coffee and to produce a mountain of warm macaroons on her granny’s willow-pattern plate.

‘Did you get parking okay?’ she asked.

‘Grand. I came from the office, but would you believe I live only five minutes away from you? In Ledbury Road.’

‘Small world.’

‘Is this okay…?’ I indicated my tape recorder.

Impatiently she waved away any concerns. ‘Fine. I’d rather you quoted me correctly. Do you mind me painting my nails while we’re talking?’

‘The many roles of women.’

‘That’s not the half of it. I’m doing my pelvic-floor exercises as well. And thinking about what I’ll make for tonight’s dinner. And worrying about third-world debt.’

‘Okay, Dee.’ I opened my notebook. ‘The “scandals”.’ No point pussyfooting. The purpose of this piece was to let Dee defend herself. ‘Who’d want to stitch you up?’

‘All kinds of people. The opposition, obviously. Plenty of mileage for them if the Nappies’ coalition partners are damaged. Even within the Nationalists there are plenty of people who think I’m a pain in the arse.’

Good point. She was always highlighting unpalatable treatment of women, even when the Nappies were to blame. Only last week she’d objected to the appointment (by the Nappies) of a male judge, who’d stood against a female candidate, pointing out that rapists and wife-batterers rarely got anything but joke sentences from a sympathetic, almost entirely male judiciary.

‘But do you have any specific theories? Specific individuals?’

She laughed. ‘And have a writ for slander slapped on me before you can say knife?’

‘Let’s go through what happened. You got your house painted. How did you choose the firm? Did they approach you?’

‘God, no. Like I’d be that stupid – “Hello, Minister for Education, can we paint your house for free?” Someone recommended them.’

‘Okay. So they arrived, painted your house, made your life a misery for a couple of weeks, then sent an invoice?’

‘No invoice. I rang four times, eventually got a verbal total and sent a cheque.’

‘So, no invoice. And no proof that you paid. How much was the job?’

‘Two grand.’

‘Most of us would notice if a cheque for two grand hadn’t cleared our account.’

‘Tell me about it. Show me the handbags. But it was from an account that I pay something into every month, for big jobs, like replacing the boiler and getting the roof retiled. There isn’t much activity in it, so I don’t check it often. I work eighteen-hour days. Seven days a week. Not everything gets done.’

While she was speaking, she was painting her fingernails with the skill of an expert. Three perfect strokes – middle, left side, right side – on each nail, then she’d move on to the next. It was very soothing to watch. And the colour – a pale, pale brown, like very milky coffee, that most women (i.e. me) wouldn’t even notice on the display yoke – looked so off-beat and beautiful on, that I bet people were always asking her where she got it. She was astonishingly stylish. (That would be her Italian side.)

‘Okay. Your daughter’s wedding? Why didn’t you pay for it?’ (Despite Big Daddy’s attempts to downplay the story, every other paper had gone huge on it.)