Harriet (10 page)

    Oh dear, perhaps she ought to start looking for a father for William.

    ‘Where does one meet people round here?’ she said.

    ‘Darling,’ said Sammy. ‘On the other side of the valley is Wakeley, with discos and bright lights and rich industrialists with loads of bread just waiting to spend it on you and me. There’s even a singles bar just opened called the Loose Box. It’s always packed with the most dishy single guys, people who’ve come up North on conferences and who’ve got nothing to do in the evenings. I picked up my Finn there. I’ll take you there one evening next week.’

    Harriet cuddled William, feeling his small solid weight against her left shoulder, his fat hands clutching her hair, thinking how gorgeous -he smelt. The Loose Box sounded rather too advanced for her.

    The telephone went.

    ‘I’ll take him,’ said Sammy, holding her arms out to William.

    It was a Senora di Cuizano ringing from Rome. It was imperative to talk to Cory, she said. Harriet wasn’t risking it.

    ‘I’m afraid he’s awfully busy at the moment. Can he ring you back?’

    The Senora sounded extremely put out. Perhaps she ought to tell Cory? Then she heard the front door bang. He’d probably gone out to get some cigarettes. She went into the kitchen to get tea. Sammy came down and sat in the rocking chair, hiding behind her hair, then peeping out making William crow with laughter.

    Ten minutes later she heard the front door open; he must have just gone down to the stables.

    ‘I wonder what Chattie and Georgie are up to,’ said Sammy, making no attempt to move.

    ‘I’ll just make the tea,’ said Harriet, ‘and I’ll go up and see.’

    ‘Oh look - walnut cake,’ said Sammy, ‘how lovely. Elizabeth’s so mean we’re never allowed anything like that for tea and when you consider the amount they spend on drink, and pouring oats down their horses. It must be quite a nice life being Elizabeth’s horse.’

    ‘Cory’s nice that way,’ said Harriet. ‘He’s not interested in how much money I spend. He’s nice anyway,’ she said, ‘when he’s not being nasty.’

    She had spoken too soon. At that moment Cory threw open the door.

    ‘Harriet,’ he roared, ‘will you get those bloody children out of my hair. Can’t you manage to control them for five minutes. That infernal Georgie’s been smoking my cigars, and sprayed water all over my script, and Chattie’s scribbled over the walls.’

    Sammy giggled.

    ‘Oh God,’ stammered Harriet. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll remove them at once. I thought they were watching television.’

    ‘Who was that on the telephone?’ said Cory.

    ‘A Senora di Cuizano rang from Rome.’

    ‘And what did you say to her?’ said Cory, his voice suddenly dangerously quiet.

    ‘I-er-said you were busy.’

    ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Cory. ‘Don’t you realize that was Zefferelli’s P.A.? I’ve been trying to get hold of her all day. You’ve probably just lost me half a million bucks.’

    Harriet fled upstairs and met Chattie and Georgie coming down.

    ‘I don’t like Daddy,’ said Chattie, sniffing.

    ‘Makes two of us,’ muttered Harriet.

    Georgie was looking very green.

    ‘Where does Dracula stay in New York?’ he said. ‘I don’t know,’ snapped Harriet.

    ‘The Vampire State Building,’ said Georgie, and was violently sick all the way down the stairs.

    Later she was telling Chattie a bedtime story.

    ‘Who’s been sleeping in my bed?’ she said in mother bear’s medium sized voice.

    ‘Why don’t Mummy and Daddy bear say, "Who’s beensleeping in our bed",’ said Chattie. ‘Mummy and Daddy used to sleep in the same bed, although they don’t now. They might again one day, I suppose.’

    ‘And little baby bear said, "Who’s been sleeping in my bed",’ said Harriet, in a high voice.

    ‘My mother’s very famous,’ said Chattie. ‘She looks like a princess all the time. Georgie says his mother doesn’t look like a princess first thing in the morning, only when she goes out. People are always asking for my mother’s naughty-graph.’

    Harriet decided she’d heard quite enough about Noel Balfour in the last twenty-four hours.

    ‘And Goldilocks looked up and saw the little baby bear, and screamed and screamed.’

    ‘Is Drackela in real life?’ said Chattie.

    ‘Oh Chattie,’ wailed Harriet, ‘can’t you concentrate for one minute?’

    Cory appeared in the doorway.

    ‘Hullo, Daddy,’ said Chattie.

    Harriet refused to look up; her lips tightened; she was fed up with Cory.

    ‘That’s enough stories for one night,’ said Cory.

    Harriet got up, and walked straight past him.

    She heard Chattie shrieking with giggles as he kissed her goodnight.

    Downstairs, the tea things were still waiting to be cleared away. Harriet groaned. She felt absolutely knackered. Dispiritedly she started loading the washing-up machine.

    Cory walked in and opened the fridge.

    ‘I’m starving,’ he said.

    Serve you right, thought Harriet, you should have eaten that omelette.

    He opened his mouth to speak, once again she turned on the waste-disposal. For a minute they glared at each other, then he laughed.

    ‘Turn that bloody thing off. I’m going out to get some curry.’

    Harriet’s mouth watered.

    ‘There’s a movie I want to watch later,’ said Cory, ‘Really,’ said Harriet, crashing pans.

    ‘Will you please stop sulking,’ said Cory. ‘I’m sorry I kept you up half the night. I don’t remember what I said, but I must have bored the pants off you.’

    Didn’t have any on, anyway, thought Harriet.

    ‘I’m sorry I’ve shouted at you and bullied you all day,’ he went on. ‘It was entirely my fault. I was feeling guilty about wasting a whole work day yesterday, and then being in no condition to do any work today. You’re a good girl. I’ve put on a bath for you, so go and have a long soak - by which time I’ll be back with the curry.’

    Totally disarmed, Harriet gave a grudging smile. One had to admit that Cory had his moments.

    She was just getting into her bath when she heard crying. It was William. She’d only just put him to bed. She wrapped a towel round her and went into his room. Immediately, he;topped crying and cooed and gurgled at her. His nappy was quite dry, but as soon as she’d tucked him up, and turned off the light he started yelling again.

    She was just about to go back into the room when Cory came down the passage with his car keys.

    ‘Leave this to me,’ he said. In amazement Harriet watched him go over to William’s carry cot, wrap his arms into his shawl, winding it up tightly like an Indian papoose.

    ‘They like to feel secure,’ he said to Harriet.

    William opened his mouth to bellow indignantly.

    ‘And you can shut up,’ said Cory sharply. ‘Give your poor mother a bit of peace.’

    William was so surprised he shut his mouth and didn’t make another sound.

    Out on the landing, Harriet blinked at him.

    ‘You’re absolutely brilliant with babies,’ she said.

    ‘Noel was never the maternal type,’ said Cory. ‘So I’ve had plenty of practice.’

    They had a nice, relaxed evening, drinking red wine, sluttishly eating curry off their knees in the drawing-room, and throwing the bones into the fire. Harriet enjoyed the film, but, as Cory was an expert on movies, was determined lot to appear too enthusiastic.

    ‘It’s quite good,’ she said. ‘Although some of the dialogue’s a bit dated. Who wrote it?’

    ’I did,’ said Cory.

    Harriet was so glad the room was lit by the fire and Cory couldn’t see how much she was blushing.

    ‘Have some meat and mushroom, it’s quite good too. I wrote it,’ he went on, ‘with a Hollywood Pro called Billy Blake. It’s the last time I’ll ever collaborate with anyone. It shortened my life, but I learnt a lot.’

    ‘What was she like?’ said Harriet, as the heroine took off her dress.

    ‘Thick,’ said Cory.

    ‘And him,’ said Harriet, as the hero hurled her on to the bed.

    ‘Nice fag - lives with a hairdresser.’

    ‘Golly,’ said Harriet, ‘I never knew that. If you know all these people, why don’t you ever ask them up here?’

    ‘Film people are all right to work with,’ said Cory. ‘But I don’t want to go into their houses, and I don’t want them here, talking the same old shop, movies, movies, movies. And I don’t like the way they live, eating out every night in order to be seen. If you hang around with them you start believing you’re a star, everyone treats you like a star, and doesn’t act normally towards you, and you start thinking that’s the way people really behave, and you lose touch with reality - which is lethal for writers.’

    He threw a chicken bone at the fire, it missed, and Tadpole pounced on it.

    ‘No, darling,’ said Harriet, retrieving it from him, ‘It’ll splinter in your throat.’

    Cory emptied the bottle between their two glasses.

    ‘The script I’m doing now’s a bastard,’ he said. ‘It’s about the French Civil War in the seventeenth century.’

    ‘The Fronde,’ said Harriet.

    ‘That’s right. It needs so much research.’

    He picked up two biographies of French seventeenth-century aristocrats, which were lying on the table.

    ‘Instead of stuffing your head with novels, you could flip through these and see if you could find anything filmable.’

    Harriet wiped her chicken-greasy fingers on Tadpole’s coat and took the books. ‘I could certainly try,’ she said.

    Cory’s glass was empty. ‘Shall I get another bottle?’ she said.

    ‘Nope,’ said Cory. ‘That’s my lot for tonight. I’m not risking hangovers like yesterday any more. I’m turning over a new leaf. Bed by midnight, no booze before seven o’clock in the evening, riding before breakfast. Don’t want to die young, I’ve decided.’

    ‘I’ll cook you breakfast,’ said Harriet.

    ‘That’s going too far,’ said Cory nervously. ‘How did you get on with Sammy?’

    Harriet giggled. ‘She’s staggeringly indiscreet.’

    ‘I hope you never discuss me the same way,’ said Cory.

    ‘I s-said you were absolutely marvellous,’ said Harriet, her words coming out in a rush. ‘Then you spoilt it by coming in and shouting about that telephone call from Italy, She’s going to take me to the Loose Box one evening to pick up rich Finns.’

    ‘Not sure that’s a very good idea. From all I’ve heard about that dive, "Loose" is the operative word.’

    He picked up a handout from Jonah’s school that had been lying under the big biographies. ‘What’s all this?’

    ‘The Parents’ Association on the warpath again,’ said Harriet. ‘They want money for the new building, so they’re holding a Parents’ dance. Tickets are Ł3.50 and for that you get dinner, and a glass of wine. You should go. You might meet Mrs. Right.’

    ‘Not if I’m going on the wagon,’ said Cory. ‘I can’t allow myself lapses like that.’

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

    CORY kept his word. He cut down smoking and drinking to a minimum and although occasionally she heard the gramophone playing long into the night, he was usually in bed by midnight.

    Most evenings he would come downstairs and talk to her while she was giving William his last feed. They spent a lot of time together, gossiping, reading, playing records, and talking about Cory s Harriet was enjoying the i search she was doing fol.:…,.,, it was the first time she’d used her brain since Oxford. She also found she was taking more trouble with her appearance. She was tired of saving up money for her and William’s future. She wanted to buy some new clothes.

    There were also two new additions to the household: Python, a little black mare who arrived from Ireland - Cory was delighted with her and immediately began getting her fit for the point-to-point - and Tarbaby, a lamb with a sooty face, whose mother had died on the moors, and who Harriet was trying to bring up with a bottle.

    ‘Just like having twins in the house,’ said Cory, as he watched her make up bottles for the lamb and William.

    One Monday towards the end of March she was cooking breakfast and getting Jonah and Chattie off to school when Cory walked in. She still couldn’t get used to seeing him up so early.

    He threw a pair of underpants down on the kitchen table. ‘I know you think I’m too thin, but this is ridiculous. These pants belong to Jonah.’

    Harriet went pink. I’m sorry, I get muddled. I’m just putting eggs on for Chattie and Jonah. Do you want one?’ Cory grimaced.

    ‘It’d be so good for you,’ she said.

    ‘All right, I suppose so.’

    He sat down and picked up the paper.

    ‘I haven’t finished my general knowledge homework,’ said Jonah, rushing in, one sock up and one sock down, hair unbrushed, waving an exercise book.

    ‘Who was Florence Nightingale?’ he said.

    ‘She was a lesbian,’ said Cory, not looking up.

    ‘How do you spell that?’ said Jonah.

    ‘You can’t put that,’ said Harriet. ‘Just say she was a very famous nurse, who looked after wounded soldiers in the Crimea.’

    ‘Shewas a lesbian,’ said Cory.

    ‘Can I have sandwiches today?’ said Chattie, ‘We always have mince and nude-les on Monday, it’s disgusting.’

    ‘You’ll eat what you’re given,’ said Cory.

    ‘What has a bottom at the top?’ said Chattie.

    ‘I really don’t know,’ said Harriet.

    ‘Legs,’ said Chattie, flicking up her skirt, showing her bottom in scarlet pants and going off into fits of laughter.

    ‘Oh shut up, Chattie,’ said Jonah. ‘I’m trying to concentrate. Why is a Black Maria called a Black Maria?’

    ‘She was a large black lady who lived in Boston,’ said Cory, ‘who helped the police arrest drunken sailors. She kept a brothel.’

    ‘What’s that?’ said Jonah.

    ‘Better call it a house of ill-fame,’ said Harriet, ‘Oh God, the toast’s burning.’

    She rescued it from the grill, and cut three pieces into strips, then unthinkingly cut the tops off three eggs, and handed them out to Cory, Jonah and Chattie.

    ‘Toast soldiers,’ said Cory, ‘and no one’s taken the top off my egg for years either.’

    Harriet blushed: ‘Sheer habit,’ she said.

    ‘What’s a house of ill-fame?’ said Chattie.

    Harriet dropped off Jonah and then Chattie.

    ‘Don’t forget to feed Tarbaby,’ shouted Chattie, disappearing into a chattering sea of little girls.

    As Harriet walked out of the playground, she met a distraught-looking woman trying to manage three rather scruffy children, and a large grey and black speckled dog, who was tugging on a piece of string. Harriet made clicking noises of approval. The dog bounded towards her pulling its owner with it.

    ‘What a darling dog,’ said Harriet, as the dog put his paws on her shoulders and started to lick her face. ‘Oh isn’t he lovely?’

    ‘We can’t bear to look at him,’ said his owner. ‘Come on Spotty.’ She half-heartedly tried to pull the dog away.

    ‘Why ever not?’ said Harriet.

    ‘I’ve got to take him to the dogs’ home, after I’ve dropped this lot.’

    The children started to cry. ‘I can’t afford to keep him,’ went on the mother. ‘I’ve got a job, and he howls something terrible when I go out, so the landlady says he’s got to go. They’ll find a home for him.’

    ‘But they may not,’ said Harriet. ‘They put them down after seven days, if they can’t. Oh dear, I wish we could have him.’

    Spotty lay his cheek against hers and thumped his plumed tail.

    ‘What kind is he?’ she said.

    ‘A setter, I think,’ said the owner, sensing weakness. ‘He’s only
_a
puppy.’

    Harriet melted. ‘Hang on,’ she said, ‘I’ll go and ring my boss.’

    Cory had started work and was not in the mood for interruptions.

    ‘Er-Mr. Erskine, I mean Cory, there’s this absolutely sweet puppy here.’

    ‘Well,’ said Cory unhelpfully.

    ‘He’s got to be put down unless they can find a home for him. He’s so sweet.’

    ‘Harriet,’ said Cory wearily, ‘you have enough trouble coping with William, Chattie, Jonah and me, not to mention Tadpole and Tarbaby. We haven’t got rid of any of Ambrose’s kittens yet and now you want to introduce a puppy. Why don’t you ring up the zoo and ask them to send all the animals up here for a holiday? Telephone Battersea Dogs’ Home, and tell them we keep open house.’

    ‘I’m sorry,’ said Harriet, chastened.

    ‘What’s his name?’ said Cory.

    ‘Spotty,’ said Harriet, ‘and he’s a setter.’

    There was a long pause.

    ‘Well, you’d better think up a new name before you get him home,’ said Cory and rang off.

    Harriet couldn’t believe her ears.

    ‘We will look after him,’ she said to the woman, ‘And he’ll have another dog to play with.’

    She was worried Spotty’s owner might burst into tears, but she seemed absolutely delighted, and later, as Harriet drove off with the dog, she saw her chattering very animatedly to a couple of friends. Not so Spotty, who howled lustily for his mistress for a couple of miles then got into the front seat beside Harriet, and finally collapsed moaning piteously all over the gear lever, his head on her lap.

    ‘I must think of a name for you,’ she said, as they got home. She opened the A.A. book and plonked her finger down blindly. It landed on Sevenoaks.

    ‘Hullo, Sevenoaks,’ said Harriet. ‘You’ve got a cattle market on Monday, two three star hotels and you’re twenty-five miles from London.’

    ‘Harriet,’ said Cory, as Sevenoaks charged round the drawing-room, trailing standard lamp wires like goose grass, ‘That is not a puppy - nor is it a setter.’

    ‘Come here,’ said Harriet, trying to catch him as he whisked past.

    ‘He’s fully grown,’ said Cory. ‘At least two and virtually untrainable.’

    Sevenoaks rolled his eyes, charged past Cory, and shot upstairs, followed by Tadpole, who was thoroughly overexcited. Sevenoaks had already received a bloody nose from Ambrose, a very frosty response from Mrs. Bottomley, and tried to eat one of Cory’s riding boots. Now he could be heard drinking out of the lavatory. Next he came crashing downstairs, followed once more by Tadpole, and collapsed panting frenziedly at Harriet’s feet. She looked up at Cory with starry eyes.

    ‘Look how he’s settled down,’ she said. ‘He knows he’s going to be really happy here.’

    All in all, however, Sevenoaks couldn’t be described as one hundred per cent a success. Whenever he wasn’t trying to escape to the bitches in the village, he was fornicating with Tadpole in the front garden, digging holes in the lawn, chewing everything in sight, or stretching out on sofas and beds with huge muddy paws.

    The great love of his life, however, was Harriet. He seemed to realize that she had rescued him from death’s door. He welcomed her noisily whenever she returned, howled the house down if she went out and had a growling match with Cory every night because Cory refused to let him sleep on Harriet’s bed.

    The following Wednesday was another day of disasters.

    Cory was having trouble with his script and was not in the best temper anyway, particularly as William was teething and spent the day screaming his head off, and Sevenoaks had chewed up Cory’s only French dictionary. Harriet botched up Chattie’s lamb chops by burning them under the grill while she was filling in a How Seductive Are You quiz in a women’s magazine, and she’d just finished pouring
milk
into William and Tarbaby’s bottles when Ambrose came weaving along and knocked the whole lot on to the floor. She was also in a highly nervous state, having at last promised Sammy she would accompany her to the Loose Box that evening.

    If was half past seven by the time she’d cleared up and got everyone to bed. There was no time to have a bath; she only managed to scrape a flannel over her face and under her armpits, pour on a great deal of scent and rub in cologne in an attempt to resuscitate her dirty hair.

    At five minutes to eight the doorbell went. Sammy was early. Harriet rushed downstairs with only one eye made up, aware that she looked terrible. Cory met her on the landing.

    ‘Going out?’ he said.

    ‘Yes,’ she said defensively. ‘It’s my night off.’

    She opened the front door to two earnest-looking women with wind-swept grey hair. One was clutching a notebook, the other a rather ancient camera.

    ‘I’m sorry we’re late,’ said the woman with a notebook. ‘It’s a very difficult place to find at night.’

    Chattie wandered down the stairs in her nightgown. Visitors always meant a possibility of staying up late.

    ‘And who are you, young lady?’ said the woman with the camera.

    ‘I’m Chattie. I had a pretty dress on today.’

    ‘And I’m Carol Chamberlain,’ said the woman with the notebook. ‘We’ve come all the way from London to interview your Daddy.’

    ‘Come into the drawing-room and I’ll get you a whisky and tonic,’ said Chattie.

    Harriet went green, fled upstairs and knocked on Cory’s door.

    He didn’t answer. She knocked again.

    ‘Yes,’ he said, looking up, drumming his fingers with irritation.

    ‘I don’t know how to tell you this.’

    ‘Oh God,’ he said, with infinite weariness. ‘What the hell have you done now? Have all Sevenoaks’ relations arrived?’ Harriet turned pale.

    ‘I-um-I’m afraid I forgot to put off Woman’s Monthly. They’ve come all the way from London. They’re waiting downstairs.’

    Was he absolutely insane with rage?’ said Sammy, who always enjoyed stories of other people’s disasters. It was a source of slight irritation to her that Harriet got on so well with Cory.

    ‘Absolutely insane,’ said Harriet miserably. ‘I may well have joined the great unemployed by tomorrow.’

    They were tarting up in the Ladies of the Loose Box. Crowds of girls around them were backcombing like maniacs. One girl was rouging her navel.

    Harriet was fiddling with her sweater.

    ‘Do you think it looks better outside my jeans?’ she said. to Sammy.

    ‘No,’ said Sammy. ‘Doesn’t give you any shape. Let’s see what it looks like tucked in. No, that looks even worse. Leave it hanging out. You look absolutely fantastic,’ she added with all the complacency of someone looking infinitely better.

    She was poured into black velvet trousers and a low-cut black sweater, her splendid white bosom spilled over the top like an ice-cream over a cone. She was also wearing black polish on her toes and fingernails, and a black rose in her newly dyed mahogany curls.

    No one’s going to want to talk to me, thought Harriet as they went into the arena. All around her people were circling and picking each other up. Some of the girls were ravishingly pretty. It could only have been a spirit of adventure, not a shortage of men, that led them to this place.

    Sammy was already leering at a handsome blond German in a blue suit.

    ‘I’d just love a sweet Cinzano,’ she said fluttering long green eyelashes at him.

    The German fought his way to the bar to get her one. The next moment a pallid youth had sidled up to her.

    ‘I work in films,’ he said, which he patently didn’t. ‘Really,’ said Sammy. ‘I’m a model actually.’

    Harriet had completely forgotten the hassle of hunting for men. She kept trying to meet men’s eyes, but hers kept slithering away. Don’t leave me, she pleaded silently to Sammy. But Sammy was on the hunt like Sevenoaks after a bitch, and nothing could deter her from her quarry.

    ‘It’s always been my ambition to go to Bayreuth,’ she was saying to the handsome German.

    The worst part of the evening for Harriet was that she wasn’t a free agent. She couldn’t split because Sammy was driving and she hadn’t brought enough money for a taxi.

    Sammy having downed eight sweet Cinzanos was well away with the German, and seemed to be having an equally devastating effect on his friend, who had spectacles, a nudging grin and a pot belly.

    ‘Come over here, Harriet,’ said Sammy. ‘You must meet Claus.’

    She pushed the fat, nudging grinning German forward.

    ‘Harriet’s frightfully clever and amusing,’ she added.

    Harriet became completely paralysed and could think of nothing to say except that the weather had been very cold lately.

    ‘Ah but the freezing North brings forth the most lovely ladies,’ said the fat little German with heavy gallantry. He was in Yorkshire, he told Harriet, for a textile conference and had lost 10 kilos since Christmas. Harriet didn’t know if that were good or bad.

    ‘Isn’t he a scream?’ said Sammy.

    She pulled Harriet aside.

    ‘They want to take us to The Black Tulip,’ she said. ‘It’s a fantastic place; you have dinner and dance, and there’s a terrific group playing.’

    ‘It’s going to make us frightfully late, isn’t it?’ said Harriet dubiously.

    ‘Oh come on,’ said Sammy, drink beginning to make her punchy. ‘No one’s ever taken me to a place like that before. It’s the chance of a lifetime.’