The Queen's Margarine (3 page)

‘Come in,' he said, although grudgingly. He didn't like the man's thin lips, his sludge-brown eyes and putty-coloured skin. However, he ushered him into the sitting-room with as much grace as he could muster, and took down Ocean Beauty from the shelf, handling her with care, indeed devotion, as befitted the top favourite in Pearl's extensive tribe. ‘What would you give me for this?' he asked.

Vincent peered at the figurine as if it were a piece of shit, then said, in near-derision, ‘I'm sorry, sir, but there's no call for this sort of thing.'

No call? So how did Royal Doulton stay in business, or Hummel, or Boehm Porcelain, or all the other firms Pearl had patronized?

‘Knick-knacks like this are completely out of fashion now.'

Really? In that case, why did the glossy catalogues still plop on to the doormat; the special offers arrive in every post? Knickknacks indeed! Snatching back the Mermaid from the man's offensive grasp, he replaced her on the shelf.

‘Hold on! Not so fast. I'll give you a fiver – although that's far more than it's worth.'

A fiver was an insult. That slinky little Mermaid had cost at least two hundred.

‘Tell you what, how about fifty quid for the lot? In fact, I'll be doing you a favour, taking them off your hands. No one wants this kitsch stuff any more.'

Aubrey all but shoved the odious man across the room and into the hall. ‘And don't come back!' he bawled, giving the front door a slam. Fifty quid, for Christ's sake!

Slouching back to the sitting-room, he was aware of countless pairs of eyes fixed on him in cold contempt.

‘Traitor!' Thumbelina hissed.

He bristled in indignation. ‘I got rid of the blighter, didn't I? Refused to take his cash.'

‘If he'd offered more, you'd have taken it fast enough.'

‘Fancy inviting him in, in the first place!' Esmeralda fumed, pursing her cherry lips. ‘Pearl must be turning in her grave!'

‘And look at the state of this room,' Autumn Splendour chided. ‘Marilyn bought you all those dusters and you haven't used a single one.'

‘Or washed your stinking trousers,' the Queen of the May chipped in.

‘Slob!' Aurelia accused.

‘Randy brute!' jeered Jasmine. ‘If you spent less time lusting after Marilyn Monroe, you might find a few minutes to dust us.'

‘No point,' he tried to remonstrate, despite the fact he was fatally outnumbered. ‘Dusting's a total waste of effort. Do it once, and it only needs doing again.'

‘If you really want to know,' the snooty Miss continued, ignoring his interruption, ‘Pearl always found you rather gross. That's why she bought
us
, of course – to escape your crude demands. She felt the need to surround herself with people of distinction, people in possession of natural style and class, to compensate for her lecher of a spouse.'

‘Yes, she often used to confide in us,' Ocean Beauty confirmed, now taking part in the general execration. ‘Tell us what a trial you were. However high her standards, you would always drag her down.'

Suddenly, she took a step towards him, and all the other figurines began moving from their shelves, closing in, bearing down, jostling and surrounding him, until he was in danger of suffocation. And they were all shouting accusations; even the ones upstairs joining in the diatribe. ‘Traitor!' ‘Ruffian!' ‘Monster!' ‘Lout!'

China fingers were wagging, china fists raised in indignation, china faces distorted in expressions of disgust. China angels plucked their harps in discords of disdain, while china fairies used their wands to beat him round the head. Even the china bambinos let out wails of protest, and their reproachful elder siblings swelled the chorus of complaint.

All at once, he dashed into the hall, flung open the front door and, despite his age and bulk, began pounding along the street in pursuit of Vincent Grundy. The guy was still in sight, thank God, about to turn in to another house, fifty yards along the street.

‘Wait!' he shouted. ‘Wait! Come back! You can have them all – have everything.'

He clung on to a gatepost, feeling a sudden sense of liberation, so astounding and acute, it was like a revelation from on high. He could be freed, at last, from those foppish, phoney figurines that had held him in subjection for two tyrannical months! He had somehow reached a crisis-point; could no longer bear their sanctimonious faces, their self-important posturing, their endless castigation. And it wasn't just the figurines – the ultra-delicate bone-china cups and saucers also drove him to distraction: too small and itsy-bitsy for a bloke of six-foot-three. He needed a
pint
of tea, for pity's sake, not a derisory thimbleful. And his strong coffee stained the insides of the cups, which only reinforced his sense of being gross and yobbish. He was sick of feeling an intruder in his own prim and decorous home – a home better off without him, so all its other occupants believed.

‘Do you buy fabrics, too?' he asked, in desperate hope, clutching hold of Vincent, as the man doubled back to join him.

‘Depends,' the guy said, warily. ‘I'd need to see the stuff.'

Aubrey all but dragged him back towards the house. Here was a chance to rid himself of the frilly bedroom curtains, the chichi satin counterpane (salmon-pink, with ruffles), the stack of silken cushions littering the bed. If he couldn't sleep, why did he need curtains? And those poncy cushions were just impedimenta, to be offloaded or sent flying every time he needed to lie down. As for the fluffy bedside rugs, all they did was clutter up the place and shed guilt-inducing, snow-white wisps on the darker, smooth-pile carpet. Every item in the preening house was too refined and smug for him; the whole place a gilded cage, tarnished by the simple fact of his living there at all. Only now had it dawned on him – and with electrifying force – that he must sell not just the contents but the namby-pamby house itself.

Vincent was discussing the recession, as the pair turned into his gate, but Aubrey barely heard. His whole attention was focused on a further wild idea, sprouting like a lush green shoot in the desert of his mind: why not find another dilapidated cottage – yes, one with peeling paint, a dodgy roof and a garden overrun with weeds? He could spend the rest of his old age there, with no one to reprove him; no conceited, nagging figurines; no ornaments at all. The only person he'd allow past his moat and drawbridge would be Marilyn
Monroe. Double M might be perilous, but now he
wanted
danger; wanted every Madcap M missing in his life to date – Marvels, Mischief, Messiness and, Most of all, Majestic Massive Mammaries. He and that Momentous Minx could revel in the squalor of their steamy little love-nest, indulge in Miraculous Mating, from Morning through to Midnight, until he pegged out from the unaccustomed exercise – or expired from simple bliss.

No, not simple bliss – Magnificent Martyrdom.

‘Quiet today,' Julia observed, pausing by the desk on her way to shelve an armful of books.

Claire looked up from the screen. ‘I suppose the weather's keeping everyone indoors.'

The rain slamming at the windows served to underline her point, all but drowning her voice, as a sudden, still more frenzied blast rampaged against the glass. Hardly April showers, she thought – more a deluge or a cloudburst. She had a sudden image of the library floating down the water-logged street like a second Noah's Ark; the books lined up in twos, the staff transmuted into animals: tall, gangling Bill, a giraffe; svelte Olwen, a gazelle; Julia, a dragon (breathing fire, despite the flood), and herself – now, what would
she
be? An ocelot? A warthog? A millipede? Rhinoceros? Something singular, for certain, so she could experience a different kind of life; break out of her rut.

Just at that moment, the door was flung open by a
striking-looking
man – dark, dramatic, dishevelled and drenched through – who catapulted himself inside and strode up to the desk, showering raindrops in his wake.

‘Listen,' he urged, in a deep yet ringing voice – a far cry from the muffled tones employed by many library-users. ‘I've just had this amazing dream! I was trapped in a cage of tulips – not ordinary tulips, but exotic ones with frilly petals in a fantastic
orangey-yellow
colour. I was tiny, like a manikin, and they were huge, like giants, so I was totally surrounded by them. It was as if they were prison-warders, ordered to guard me, day and night, though only for my good, you understand.'

He paused for breath; rain plopping on to the desk from his
shock of wild black hair. Despite the cold outside, he was wearing neither coat nor jacket, and his saturated shirt was clinging to his chest, revealing the outline of his ribs. Claire found herself distracted by his narrow-shouldered, slender figure – almost girlish, in a sense, although contradicted by highly masculine features: the scruff of not-quite stubble on his chin, the thick, emphatic brows, the vibrant Adam's apple pulsing in his neck, as if it shared his own exuberance.

‘I just knew it was the subject of a poem, maybe a whole series. But, before I write it, I need to find out about the tulips – whether the ones I dreamed actually exist. Trouble is, my damned computer's crashed, and I haven't had a minute yet to call someone in to fix it. So I wondered if
you
could help.'

‘Yes, of course,' Claire said, glancing with interest at his soaked and balding cords; their unusual shade of aubergine echoing the purple of his shirt, and pleased to see that this (apparent) poet fitted the Bohemian stereotype. Besuited gents like T.S. Eliot or Philip Larkin, whose photos had graced the display-board during the library's Poetry Week, were less exciting altogether. ‘You're welcome to use our computers. They're over there, at the back. Hold on a sec – let me just check the booking-screen to see which ones are free.'

‘No, you don't understand. I have to leave – right now! I'm giving a reading in Bristol and I'll miss the train if I don't get off sharp.'

‘Well, we're open all day tomorrow.'

‘Tomorrow I teach. We poets have to earn a crust, and no one seems frightfully keen to pay us for actually writing the stuff.' He smiled disarmingly, reaching out a slender hand – effeminate again, with long, pale, tapering fingers, at variance with the dark, tangled hairs on the wrist. ‘Would it be an awful cheek to ask
you
to do the work?'

Not so much a cheek as slightly tricky. People were meant to do their own research, and Julia was a stickler for the rules. Library staff could help, of course: show customers the range of stock in the catalogue, along with any relevant periodicals, or arrange computer sessions for beginners, to explain the mysteries of the Internet. It was fine to hold their hands until they'd grasped the fundamentals but, after that, they were left to their own devices.
‘Never set a precedent,' Julia was always saying. ‘If we start spoonfeeding one customer, we'll end up spoon-feeding the lot.'

Claire doubted it, in fact. This man was a one-off; seemed to possess the natural right to demand services and privileges denied to lesser mortals. And, frankly, she was grateful. One got bored with the usual punters: blue-rinsed matrons twittering over the latest Jilly Cooper; geeky nerds obsessing about arcane points of local history; run-of-the-mill enquirers checking holiday guides. No one had ever revealed their dreams to her before.

‘And if you could dig out a few tulip books, that would be fantastic. Big glossy ones, if possible, with close-up photographs, so I can see the details of the petals and the leaves. The leaves in the dream were sharp and pointed, and really rather lethal, towering over me like huge, green, unsheathed swords, but I haven't much idea about what real tulip leaves are like. To be honest, I know zilch about flowers. But, since the dream, I feel inspired to find out everything, then weld the two together – the dream-world and the natural world, so that—'

‘My name's Fergus, by the way,' he said, suddenly interrupting himself. ‘Fergus Boyd Adair. Actually, you may have some of my books in stock – well, they're only pamphlets, really, so, on second thoughts, probably not.'

Definitely not, she corrected silently. Their meagre poetry section didn't stretch to pamphlets. In fact, his name meant nothing to her, but it struck her as exactly right, with its air of cheeky bravado, not only for a poet, but for this one in particular. All three names were Scottish, although he spoke with no trace of an accent. Indeed, his voice was almost plummily English – rich and deep and sensuous, as if composed in equal parts of honey, brandy and buttermilk.

‘Look, give me a piece of paper and I'll draw the tulips for you, shall I? Then you'll have something to go on.'

She passed a sheet across, relieved that it was Bill's day off, and that Julia was out of sight, still busy shelving books. Her two colleagues shared the view that if you gave anyone an inch, he or she would inevitably take a mile. She saw things rather differently: give people an inch and they might transform it into a mile, through their own talents and initiative.

And this man did have talents – that was obvious from his drawing: a powerful and professional sketch, yet completed in a scant three minutes. If his poetry matched his artistic skills, he might soon be on the road to fame. After all, many poets had to struggle at the outset for any sort of recognition, let alone a living wage. Although, with a reading in Bristol, he must already have a public, so perhaps
she
was at fault for never having heard of him.

‘See,' he said, leaning over the desk to point out details on his sketch, ‘the petals are double and sort of ruffled at the edges, as if they've been snipped with pinking shears. Where I've shaded them is orange, and those unshaded bits are yellow. And the insides of the petals are streaked and speckled pink, which I've indicated here with little dots. Do you get the general idea?'

She nodded, still on the watch for Julia, who would want to take control, and was bound to shush his loud, insistent voice, which seemed to echo round the building; even carry to the street outside. Actually, no one in the library was either studying or browsing, so a little noise was surely not a problem. Julia, however, was such an ancient fossil, she would label it as ‘racket' and ‘intrusion'.

‘Shit!' he said, glancing at the clock. ‘I'm going to miss that train if I don't get off in two seconds flat. Look, will you be here on Friday?'

‘Er, yes.'

‘Great! I'll call in then, and see what you've come up with.'

‘Ask for Claire – that's me.'

‘OK, Claire, see you on Friday, for definite. And thanks a million. You're an angel – no, an archangel!'

As he scorched out of the building, she seemed to sprout great feathered wings and began soaring up to some vast celestial sphere, where everything was marble-white and shimmering; the air itself a lighter, purer blend. Alas, a swift descent was necessary, since Julia chose that moment to stride back to the desk.

‘Who was that moron?' she asked disparagingly. ‘I've never heard anyone make such an awful din! And he more or less cannoned into me in his rush to get away, and didn't have the manners to apologize.'

His mind was probably on tulips, Claire didn't say. As was her
own, in fact. She was determined to track down his ‘dream-flower', and unearth every book on tulips the library possessed. ‘He's doing a … a research project and needs some specialist stuff. I'll just check the catalogue.'

As she'd hoped, there were several interesting items held in their Reserve Stock. She decided to go up to the stockroom and fetch them right away. She needed to be alone, in order to bottle his vital essence before it dissipated; stick in her mental scrapbook the dark disorder of his hair and blaze of his compelling,
burnt-toast
eyes; the saturated shirt and trousers brazenly delineating every angle of his body. In just ten minutes, she had changed from library assistant to archangel; from tame mother-of-two-teenagers to swoony adolescent, already fatally besotted.

‘Mum!' Susanna shouted down the stairs. ‘What have you done with my clean shirt?'

‘In the drawer,' Claire shouted back. ‘Where it's meant to be.'

‘It's
not
. There's not one single shirt there.'

With a stab of guilt, she suddenly recalled that Susanna's shirts (not to mention Rodney's) were still piled up in the laundry basket, waiting to be ironed. The tulip research had driven all else from her mind. ‘I'll bring one up, OK?'

‘Well, quick – or I'll be late.'

Hastily, she set up the ironing board, wondering, as so often, why she was the one who always did the ironing. Admittedly, with three A-levels on the near-horizon, her daughter's life was pressured, but there was no excuse for Rodney. She worked as hard as he did, so he ought to help out in the house, but his mother had brought him up to believe that such division of the chores was undignified, if not emasculating.

While she waited for the iron to heat, her thoughts returned to last night's dream – a peculiar, surreal dream, in which she was being born from a tulip's cup; expelled into the world by gently pulsing, pushing, orangey-yellow petals. She knew Fergus would be fascinated; maybe even use it for one of the poems in his series, which meant she'd be immortalized.

‘Something's burning,' Rodney observed, venturing into the kitchen, with his usual worried frown.

She dashed from ironing board to stove – too late. ‘Your kipper!' she exclaimed, removing from the grill-pan its black disintegrating skeleton.

‘I'm not bothered,' Rodney shrugged. ‘To tell the truth, kippers feature on the menu rather too often for my taste.'

‘They're good for you – that's why. And you refuse to take fish oil in capsule form, so I have to get it down you somehow.'

‘You shouldn't believe all that rubbish you read. One minute, they're pushing fish oil as the super-food to beat all else, then they change their minds and it's pomegranates or wheat-grass, or some other damn-fool thing.'

‘Shit! What a smell!' Daniel exclaimed, screwing up his nose in disgust, as he torpedoed in to join them, his hair uncombed; the laces of his trainers trailing loose.

‘Daniel, don't say “shit”. You know Dad doesn't like it. And why are you wearing jeans to school?'

‘It's “Jeans for Genes Day”. I told you twice, last night, but you weren't listening to a word I said.'

Another surge of guilt. She had been glued to the computer, totally absorbed in the long, intriguing history of the tulip.

‘I don't actually agree with it,' Rodney remarked, seating himself at the table, oblivious to the fact that it hadn't yet been laid. ‘Just because some businesses go in for this “Dress-down Friday” nonsense, it doesn't mean that schools should be allowed to follow suit.'

‘That's different, Rodney,' Claire put in, trying to make amends to her son. “Jeans for Genes” is a charity thing and—'

‘Which reminds me, Mum,' Daniel interrupted, ‘have you got a pound? We're expected to cough up, as soon as we arrive, and I'm completely stony-broke.'

‘I don't know why you children are always short of money,' Rodney snapped, ‘when we give you huge allowances each month.'

‘They're
not
huge, and we're
not
children. I'll be leaving school in two years' time.'

‘Over my dead body! You'll stay till you're eighteen.'

‘Oh, don't start that again,' Claire groaned. ‘I thought we'd agreed we'd wait till your next birthday before deciding anything. Daniel, get the cereals out, please, and the marmalade and stuff. I'm terribly behind today.'

‘You're telling me! Where's Sue?'

‘Waiting for her shirt.' Claire raced back to the ironing board, wondering what to wear herself. It might be Jeans-for-Genes day for Daniel, but certainly not for her. It was imperative that Fergus should notice her as woman, and not just as library assistant. On Tuesday, she'd been a chrysalis, clad in dreary brown, but today she was proposing to emerge as a brilliant butterfly. And if Julia's gimlet eye registered the transformation, well, she'd better pretend she was going on to a party after work and wouldn't have time to—

‘
Mum
!'

‘Coming!' Having handed over the still only half-ironed shirt, she deliberately refrained from nagging Susanna about the state of her room. She couldn't imagine Fergus wasting precious energy on such footling things as discarded clothes piled ankle-deep on the floor, or dressing-tables covered in spilt make-up. Odd how one brief meeting with a man still a virtual stranger should have influenced her attitudes; made her less concerned about the usual tedious daily round: had they run out of toilet rolls; did Daniel need new shoes?