Connections Page 14

  Fourteen

  Fleur looked at the cordial letter of invitation dated December fourth from Zoe Andriades. It had been delightful, Zoe wrote, to meet her. She and her husband would be entertaining the Jethros and a small party of others, including the Keiths, over Christmas at their house in Barbados. She very much hoped Fleur would join them between December eighteenth and January tenth. Guests would travel in a private jet which would take off from an airfield in Kent. It all sounded so easy.

  This invitation did not shake Fleur’s resolution to stay away from the Jethros. In any case she was supposed to begin her computer course just after the New Year. She rang her mother and had a chat and then said, “About Christmas—” in the comfortable expectation that Grace and Robin would be expecting her. There’d been a disappointment, barely expressed, once before, when she and Ben had decided to spend Christmas together in Morocco and on another occasion when they’d spent the holiday with Ben’s parents.

  However, this time Grace hesitated. “We have a sort of plan to go with the Harrisons to their time-share in Portugal. Just for a change. But nothing written in stone. It would be lovely to have Christmas at home as usual. Will you come?”

  “Not if you’ve got a plan, Grace. It would be a nice change for you. Do go.” She hesitated and realised she had to say, “Actually, I’ve been invited to Barbados for Christmas – the Jethros – well, Sophia Jethro’s parents.”

  Grace’s response was unambiguous. “Darling! How wonderful for you.”

  Fleur said, “I’m not sure I want to go. It conflicts with the start of my computer course, too.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Fleur. You can defer that. Think of it – Barbados – sunshine – servants to do everything – parties. It sounds absolutely wonderful. And after all, Fleur, it will be a good chance to get to know your father better. And your cousin and his wife. And to get out of that flat for a bit. You’ll need some new clothes. Robin and I would be glad to help.”

  “Not necessary, Ma,” Fleur said and as she put the phone down wondered how her mother knew the Keiths would be among the guests in Barbados. Or even who they were. Guesswork? The gossip columns her mother never read? Or the mysterious Jones on the phone again, this time telling Grace there was an invitation and how nice it would be if Fleur accepted it. Was she being set up? Or was she paranoid?

  Fleur looked out of her kitchen window at the rainswept balcony in front of the flat and, feeling like a child rejected by her parents at Christmas, thought, Maybe I’ll go. She couldn’t see herself, Dominic and Joe putting up a Christmas tree at Adelaide House and didn’t really want to try. Her relationship with Dominic had a fragile, out-of-this-world quality. It connected with nothing; they had no shared interests or activities; there was no imaginable future. It felt like some rare Chinese bowl, shapely, intricately painted, with a beautifully mended crack on one side, useless for any practical purpose.

  Dominic came into the Findhorn Star late in his working clothes. Because trade was slack Patrick told her to go and sit down with him. Patrick, being Irish, was on Dominic’s side. Before she left the bar he told her, “I can’t guarantee to hold the job open for you if you go away over Christmas.” She’d told him earlier she might be going to Barbados and he hadn’t been pleased.

  “What’s this?” Dominic asked as they walked over to the table by the imitation log fire.

  “I’m thinking of going to Barbados for Christmas,” she told him.

  “Not bad, for somebody on the dole,” he commented.

  “Rich relations,” she said.

  “Your mum?” he asked her, though he probably knew better.

  “No – the others. The new-found lot. My mother and stepfather aren’t rich.”

  He looked at her sceptically.

  “It’s a long story,” she told him.

  “You must tell it to me some time,” he said.

  “Give her a break,” said Patrick, who had turned up at the table. He was trying to be faír. “Someone offers you a free trip to Barbados – what would you do?”

  “Look at it carefully,” Dominic told him, staring at Fleur. “Joe and me were thinking of going over to my folks in Ireland, with half the building trade in London. Fight our way back, ditto, then get back to building our bank again. The Irish Government should catch us straight off the boat and get us all to knock up a few housing estates while we’re there …”

  “It’s the paddies that built England,” Patrick joined in. He’d been born, he’d told Fleur, in one of the narrow streets they’d torn down to build the Yarborough Estate. His father had worked on it. His grandfather had dug tunnels for the London Underground.

  “How long is it since you’ve been back?” Patrick asked Dominic.

  “Fifteen years,” Dominic told him. “I left as a boy, when the uncle we lived with got married. My mum and auntie didn’t get on. They’re all still there, though. I called up – there they were and said to come over for Christmas.”

  “God bless the farm,” Patrick said piously. “Have you any Irish blood, Fleur?”

  Fleur was sitting silent, hardly listening to the conversation. She knew Dominic didn’t want her to go to Barbados. Probably jealous, she thought. Or maybe not.

  “I don’t know,” she told Patrick. “I don’t think so.”

  “They won’t be the rich side, that’s for sure,” Dominic said.

  “That’s the truth,” Patrick confirmed.

  All this Celtic solidarity was getting on Fleur’s nerves. She thought it was a conspiracy to punish her for deserting Patrick at the pub’s busiest time of the year and deserting Dominic to go off with rich relations.

  “No sun-drenched holidays for the likes of us, Patrick,” Dominic said. “Maybe just a free cruise to Botany Bay if you were one of the unlucky ones.”

  “God save Ireland,” Patrick agreed. “Will you have another, Dominic?”

  “I will, thank you.”

  “Fleur?”

  “No thanks,” she said. “I think I’ll go home before you start singing.”

  “Ah – the English are a miserable lot,” Dominic told her.

  “And goodnight to both of you,” Fleur said and sulked her way home.

  Jess had left a message on her machine. “Fleur! Wonderful news about the holiday! I’m jealous. Do you want to borrow some floaty things? Much love.”

  She’d spoken to Grace. It was a campaign. They were planning to kit her out and send her off, like an arranged marriage. It didn’t matter how high-minded they were, like Grace, or ambitious and energetic, like Jess, the middle classes still united if one of their number was living like Fleur. Rule one was, you must not sink, and like dolphins Grace and Jess were going to bear her to safety, out of the shoals of Cray Hill.

  A bit later Dominic called round, carrying a bottle of wine and a video.

  “Oh Dom,” she said, pulling him in. “Come and sit down and give us a kiss – I might as well tell you about these relations and get you off my back. You’ll have to swear not to tell anybody, though, not even Joe.”

  So, cuddled up on the sofa with cups of tea, half watching the action movie Dom had brought over, Fleur told Dominic about the unexpected arrival of Valentine Keith and her first meeting with her father at Eaton Square. As a man in a stained vest shinned up the ventilation duct to escape from the baddies she explained, “I decided not to see them again, but they won’t drop me.” As twenty-five storeys of windows exploded in a shower of glass, she said, “I’m not all that easy about this Barbados trip. I wouldn’t have gone but I’ve had my mother on my case about it. And she’s called Jess to persuade her to get me to go. I don’t know what’s going on – Phew!” she said. The man in the vest was dangling from the building.

  “Don’t worry,” Dominic told her. “He gets out of it.”

  “What a surprise. You’ve seen it.”

  They watched the film peacefully for a little while.

  “Swear you won’t tell anybody,” she urge
d.

  “I said I wouldn’t.”

  “No – but—”

  “I said I wouldn’t so I won’t,” he said stubbornly.

  The man in the vest was on a ledge, being shot at. “I suppose they’ll get him in the leg,” Fleur said.

  “Right arm,” said Dominic.

  “Ah.”

  After a pause he said, “I won’t tell anybody. But, be honest, do you like this guy, your father? Because I suppose that’s the point.”

  Fleur considered. “He’s charming. He’s a bit of a bully, and” – she suddenly realised – “he frightens me a bit … Valentine Keith wants me to be nice to him because he depends on him. My mother wants me to be nice to him because he’s my father and Jess wants me to be nice because of the money.”

  “Say what you like about the woman, at least she’s straightforward,” Dominic said. “Now me, I wish you wouldn’t go to Barbados.”

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “Because I’ll miss you,” he said. “I was planning to invite you to Ireland. Now Joe doesn’t really want to come because of Melanie and Melanie can’t come because of something to do with her gran – so it’s just Joe and me. I’ll miss you.”

  “Nice of you to say that, Dom,” she said.

  “What do you think I am? Some kind of a cold-hearted alien? I thought I’d better tell you where I was coming from.”

  “The trouble is, with big sums of money floating around you get confused. I still don’t know what to do.”

  “Try coming to bed.”

  “That’s been on my mind.”

  “Better get it over with then,” he said.

  In the morning she said, “I’ll stop whinging about going to Barbados. I’ll go and when I come back I’ll just keep my distance from all of them.”

  “That’s the way,” agreed Dominic.

  Fifteen

  Fleur pulled herself out of the pool on to the sunny terrace with its pots of freshly watered, tumbling flowers, and found her hostess, Zoe Andriades, had come out of the house and was sitting at a table, a man in a white jacket and black trousers bending over her. She waved and Fleur went over, dripping.

  “Have you had breakfast? No? Arthur, for two, please … You’re an early bird. I’m a wreck today. Time zones kill me. But you’re young. You’ve got more stamina.”

  “You look very fit and fresh to me,” Fleur said. It was true: Zoe, in a white bathing suit with a thin cotton shirt over her shoulders and her black hair gleaming, looked much younger than she must in reality be.

  They had left London at ten in the morning of the previous day and arrived in late afternoon. They then drove in convoy for ten miles through narrow roads and turned off on to a long drive bordered by thick woods of palm and passion fruits, bay and mahogany, a huge half-tamed jungle of darkening trunks, leaves and vines.

  This was Barbados, that “Little England” of the Caribbean, only 300 square miles set between the Caribbean and the Atlantic: orderly, beautiful and, as Diana Keith had told Fleur on the plane, “Peaceful and safe. Not like some of the other islands. That’s why the Andriades like it.” She’d added, “Of course, the house is in the most exclusive part of the island. Sandy Lanes – they call it the Platinum Coast. George likes it because of the golf course.”

  The residence they arrived at, named Braganza House, was a small, porticoed eighteenth-century building. The nanny of the Keith children, Violet and Jonathan, took them immediately up a sweeping staircase to bed and did not reappear until after they were settled. The remainder of the party walked over cool stone floors, through the house and out on to the terrace. To one side lay a long, two-storey house, newer than the original house, built, perhaps, in the twenties or thirties. On the west-facing terrace a long table had been set near the parapet, on which globe lamps glowed softly. The sun was going down into the bright sea. They ate shellfish, chilled fish, salads, fruits and cheese and were waited on by two men in white jackets, eager to please. Below the table the guests could see a long expanse of green – the golf course, George Andriades said, a gleam in his eye – and beyond it the gleaming ribbon of the sea.

  “It’s like magic,” Fleur said to Fiona Jones. “To think this morning we were in dark, freezing London.” But Fiona, who had been almost silent since they had set off, did not reply. She was both strained and tired and probably, Fleur thought, on some kind of medication intended to reduce stress.

  It had not been a hard journey. Fleur had been collected from Adelaide House in a car driven by a uniformed chauffeur. The journey through the early morning streets of London, in darkness, had been rapid and a little over an hour later they were among fields where the little airfield lay. Two or three jets and what looked like a military helicopter were stationed on a vast concrete area. To one side lay the low building containing a lounge where the Andriades’ guests had assembled. They were Valentine and Diana Keith – who was a tall, very thin blonde woman with a down-turned mouth – their children, Violet, a girl of about ten and the boy, Jonathan, perhaps two years younger, and the children’s nanny, a round-faced girl of twenty who looked nervous. There were the Joneses, Henry and Fiona; Fleur herself; the Jethros and the Andriades and, perhaps to relieve the monotony of such a domestic party and provide companionship for Fleur, Hugh Cotter, an aetiolated young man with long hair, a long pale face and an expression of suppressed humour in his eyes. He worked as an auctioneer of fine arts, Sophia said when they introduced him.

  Once they were in the air breakfast was served by the stewardess, the Keiths’ nanny assisting. George Andriades was silent over his Financial Times, with his wife sitting opposite reading a magazine. Valentine Keith, Dickie Jethro and Henry Jones were chatting over their coffee in the corner of the cabin while Diana Keith made an effort with Fleur. The nanny, Sue, was trying to get the children to take a nap on couches in the back of the plane. A row about an electronic game began.

  Diana said to Fleur, “I would have preferred to leave the children with my parents, but Val wouldn’t hear of it. I don’t think he understands that once a woman has children, relaxing holidays become a thing of the past for her. Have you got any brothers and sisters?”

  “No,” said Fleur. Then she thought of her unknown stepbrother and stepsister and added, “Well, none I knew about until fairly recently.”

  “I suppose you must have known something about your father – his life before,” Diana Keith said. “From magazines and that sort of thing. Dickie’s not unkeen on publicity, really. It’s quite important these days, to have some kind of a public profile.”

  Dickie Jethro came up and sat down. “I’m afraid we’re a bit overcrowded, Fleur. Not too uncomfortable?”

  “It seems very splendid to me,” Fleur said, “travelling in your own plane.”

  “Something of a cattle truck at the moment,” he said.

  “I’d really better go and see what Silly Sue is doing with the brats,” Diana Keith said, getting up and walking away.

  Val slipped quickly into her seat. “Looking forward to it?” he asked.

  “Very much,” she said. She’d been taken over by the excitement of leaving Adelaide House, speeding through silent streets out into the countryside, and now the thrill of being in a plane flying far away to somewhere she’d never been. She still didn’t know what she was doing there, but now she didn’t care.

  “A good idea to leave it all behind – get a new perspective,” Jethro said. “Right, Fleur?”

  “Right,” she agreed, looking at the man who was her father. He wore chinos and a striped shirt without a tie, his brown-grey hair ruffled and his eyes bright and challenging.

  “I suppose you’d really like to make a feature film,” he asked Fleur.

  “Not really,” she said, terrified he was going to make her an offer she couldn’t refuse, buy her a studio, a script, a director.

  “You’re in films, though,” he said. “Isn’t that the Holy Grail – a full-length film?”

  He must h
ave met a lot of would-be film-makers looking for money. “It is,” Fleur said. “But it isn’t what I want to do.”

  “What do you want?” he asked her.

  “I like television,” she explained.

  “The Brits have had to,” he said, “because up to now there’s never been a self-sustaining film industry. But say you could choose, big screen, small screen, which would it be?”

  “I’d still rather make good television,” she said.

  “Fact or fiction?” he asked.

  “Either,” she said.

  “Tell me about this failed business of yours.”

  Fleur told him everything about Verity – the well-thought-of documentaries, the firm’s beginnings based on Ben’s damages from a successful law suit in the USA over a commercial he’d made and her own small legacy from her grandmother. She explained the funding thereafter: Channel Four and personal overdrafts, in her case secured by the flat she’d bought when working. Out of pride she did not expose Ben’s weak control over the firm’s finances or her own stupidity in assuming he had the money side under control. She did not say that she and Ben had been lovers, or that Verity’s creditors were pursuing her. But she thought he knew, or guessed, both things. She did not enjoy the inquisition, but felt better in the end, as if she’d been to see a doctor with some nasty symptoms and found out that a lot of other people had them and that they were treatable.

  At the end of his interrogation Jethro said, “You’ll know better next time. We pay for knowledge.”

  “I don’t think there’ll be a next time,” she told him.