Clive and Geraldine’s Problem
.
They had to sell some of their investments last month just to keep their creamy-coloured lifestyle on the road. There is no work coming in to the Lamsbury practice. None. Clive says he’s going to give it another couple of weeks but if nothing changes between now and then he’s going to have to hand the secretary her notice. Clive and Geraldine are feeling the pinch, something they’re not at all accustomed to, and a week ago, when Geraldine and Kitty returned from a clothes-shopping bonanza in Bath, she and Clive had the first money-related marital of their lives. Really uncivilised. Geraldine heard herself calling him
a sexist pig
. And Clive heard himself calling Geraldine
a silly little girl
. She was so angry she couldn’t speak to him for three days.
It should go without saying that Clive and Geraldine don’t want an arsonist roaming round their son’s school, any more than anyone else would. Geraldine, especially, hates to think of little Ollie being exposed to such danger…(And Clive and Geraldine, like everyone else, are in no doubt as to their client’s guilt.)
On the other hand, Clive argues, as a responsible parent,
Geraldine needs also to think of little Ollie’s
long-term future.
Ollie is due to go away to prep school in September, anyway. (As has ever been the plan.) Except that if his parents can’t make their practice pay, they won’t be able to afford his far-from-inconsiderable school fees.
Geraldine cannot afford to be sentimental, Clive says. Nor can she afford to turn publicly on a client, let alone be seen to assume him guilty of the very crime she’s just been fighting to have him acquitted of. Public perception, as their useless PR woman might tell them, if she could ever tear herself away from her wretched twins, is everything. If Clive and Geraldine are to succeed, they need to be seen as efficient, sympathetic, reliable, consistent and honest.
So. To expel or not to expel? To defend or not to defend? What a dilemma. The very thing to make cerebral Clive’s heart sing.
Clive and Geraldine’s Solution
.
Best-case scenario – for the school governing body to vote for Dane’s exclusion without Geraldine having to be involved. She could, of course, abstain from the vote, but Clive (who, as non-governor, has no vote) feels that it might be wrongly interpreted. At all costs, he believes, she needs to be seen to support her client.
Geraldine must vote to keep Dane in the school, while Clive, as Dane’s lawyer, does whatever he surreptitiously can to ensure that the exclusion vote wins the day. Not only for the sake of his son but for the sake of the practice. It would allow the Adams Family Practice to launch an appeal against the decision, thereby generating – with the supposed help of their unsatisfactory PR agent, Jo Maxwell McDonald – some direly needed local acclaim.
By the time they win the case (
if
they win the case) the summer term will be over, Dane Guppy will have left the
school anyway, and Ollie (though nobody’s bothered to mention this to Fanny) will have his trunk packed up ready for his first term at prep school…
While Fanny struggles to get the vicar off the telephone, Geraldine is racing ahead with arrangements for the disciplinary meeting tonight. She has sent Lenka to Safeways for alcohol and ‘bits’, and has her large, creamy house to herself. She sits at her breakfast bar tapping a long sharp pencil against her list of governors’ names and telephone numbers and tries to calculate…She has contacted all of them now, except for Kitty. She has quizzed them gently about how they intend to vote, given what they know – that Dane has been formally charged with arson, that he has a history of arson, that his fingerprints were found on an empty petrol can in the neighbouring field, and that there are photographs of him building fires at the school on a separate occasion – and she has a clear idea how the vote will result.
There are eleven governors in all:
Fanny Flynn, will vote: FOR EXCLUSION.
Grey McShane: FOR EXCLUSION.
General Maxwell McDonald: FOR EXCLUSION.
Reverend Hodge: FOR EXCLUSION.
Solomon Creasey, away on business in Frankfurt: ABSTAINS.
Tracey Guppy, as a witness to the case, is: DISQUALIFIED.
Mr Trumpton, LEA representative (holding firm to his habit of non-availability): ABSTAINS.
Geraldine Adams must vote: AGAINST.
Maurice Morrison, rigidly on-message New Labour candidate for Lamsbury: AGAINST.
Robert White will vote anything, as long as it’s opposing Fanny Flynn: AGAINST.
Making the score (minus non-participants): 4 EXCLUSIONS, 3 AGAINST.
And Kitty.
Kitty Mozely, Clive and Geraldine agree, will do anything so long as she thinks it’s amusing and she will almost certainly, given the Louis situation, think it’s amusing to do whatever she can to annoy Fanny. Which, most inconveniently, will mean voting AGAINST.
Geraldine sits there, tapping her pencil for at least a minute and a half. She decides, with a final tap, that with Kitty’s reputation, Geraldine could perfectly well get away with not mentioning the meeting at all, and then claiming that Kitty must have forgotten. Kitty wouldn’t mind. At least, not much. In fact, she would probably be grateful to get out of it.
Excellent. Geraldine picks up her bag and keys and drives off to Lamsbury, where she and Clive are going to load themselves with flowers, oily bath salts, rich dark chocolates and dry champagne, before calling on Mr and Mrs Guppy, both of whom much prefer hard cash, and who are unlikely to be very grateful.
‘Mrs Guppy. Hi-ya! He-lloo!’ Big smile from Geraldine. Not reciprocated. Geraldine hesitates. She’s never seen Mrs Guppy at such close quarters before. She’s thinking of her delicate creamy-white sofas, and suddenly regretting the fact that the disciplinary meeting is to take place in her own ‘parlour’ after all. ‘We haven’t actually met, Mrs Guppy. My name is Geraldine. And this is my husband, Clive…’ They’re standing beneath the same dilapidated porch Fanny did, being hit with the same stink of frying, and if either of them cared to look down they would see the tiny dent left on the door by Fanny’s foot, now with paint peeling off.
‘What do you want?’ asks Mrs Guppy suspiciously, keeping the door pressed to her side.
‘May we come in?’ Geraldine gestures to Clive to bring the flowers forward. An enormous cluster of precious, sweet-smelling orchids sweeps towards Mrs Guppy’s nose, briefly masking the stench of her hall. Mrs Guppy sneezes.
‘Bless you!’ cries Geraldine.
Mrs Guppy sneezes again, and with her big hand shunts the orchids roughly away from her, causing several to snap. ‘Take ’em away!’ she barks, and sneezes again.
‘Oh, dear. Is it the flowers? Mrs Guppy, I’m so sorry! How stupid of us. Clive, for heaven’s sake, the poor lady’s sneezing! Get them away from her! Mrs Guppy…’ She waits, but there seems to be no sign of the sneezes abating, or of Mrs Guppy standing back and asking them in. She tries again. ‘We’ve really come to offer our condolences—’ Mrs Guppy straightens up from another sneeze, looks very suspicious, throws herself forward and sneezes again. ‘To say how
sorry
we are. About Dane.’
‘May we come in?’ asks Clive. Geraldine nudges him.
‘As Dane probably told you, Clive and I—Clive, dearest, do give Mrs Guppy the chocolates. She’s standing here in the freezing draught.’ Geraldine rolls the eyes skyward, shoots Mrs Guppy a wife-to-wife look, which Mrs Guppy ignores.
‘Dark chocolate,’ Mrs Guppy says instead. ‘Never mind.’ She shunts them behind her. And almost smiles. ‘What else have you got?’
Mrs Guppy takes the offerings in, one by one, all £243-worth of them; piling them up behind her, grunting with dissatisfaction as each new package is presented, until finally there is nothing left for the Adamses to give. And still Mrs Guppy doesn’t invite them in. ‘What do you want, anyway?’ she asks at last.
‘Ah. Yes. Now. As you’re probably aware it was Clive and I who came to see your lovely son Dane at the police station last Sunday morning. We’re solicitors.’
‘I don’t know nothing about that.’
‘Mmmm.
Boys!
’ says Geraldine deftly. Mrs Guppy is lying, but there is nothing to be gained from making a point about it. ‘We have one of the same age. In Dane’s class. Ollie Adams? Perhaps Dane has mentioned him…?’
No response at all.
‘Well, anyway. We – that is, Clive and I – are absolutely convinced
there is insufficient evidence for the case ever to come to court. However,
Miss Flynn
, whom,’ a little smile from Geraldine, remembering the incident in the village hall, ‘I believe we’re all familiar with—’
‘Rather too familiar with,’ mutters Clive. ‘I think we might all have benefited from being familiar with rather less!’
Mrs Guppy glances at him uncertainly. But he is smiling at her. A moment of acute tension. And then suddenly her great big face lights up in a great big ugly grin, and she cackles, and all her chins cackle with her. Mrs Guppy probably hasn’t laughed for twenty years, and the facial contortions it entails obviously disconcert her. She glances nervously at her own shuddering cheeks. And the laughter dies as quickly and unexpectedly as it began. ‘What about her?’
‘She, er—’ But Geraldine’s been thrown off by the image of Mrs Guppy settling that vast, juddering body on to her beautiful East Coast sofas. ‘She, er—Where was I?’
‘Fanny Flynn,’ rescues Clive, ‘has taken it into her head to declare your son Dane guilty of a crime we believe he didn’t do, Mrs Guppy. A crime which the courts have yet to try him for. And which, if my wife and I have anything to do with it, the courts will never be permitted to try him for. There’s to be a disciplinary meeting – a sort of trial-by-governors. This evening. Miss Flynn wants to expel him from school.’
‘Stupid cow,’ Mrs Guppy says placidly.
‘Mmm,’ smiles Clive. ‘Well, absolutely.’
‘You can tell that cow from me. He didn’t do it.’
‘Which is why we’re here with you now, Mrs Guppy. You and your husband are invited to attend the disciplinary hearing. Geraldine is a school governor, of course, and will certainly be voting against Dane’s exclusion.’
‘Tell the bitch he didn’t do it.’
Clive gives another of his thin, bloodless smiles. ‘Mrs
Guppy, you can tell her yourself. If you come to the meeting this evening.’
But she shakes her head. ‘I’m not going there. And Ian’s not neither.’ She shuffles backwards and begins to close the door on them. ‘So don’t go asking him—’
‘Mrs Guppy!’ Clive calls after her. But he and Geraldine are a cool-headed pair. They know better than to put a foot in her door. Besides which, their job for that morning is done.
‘Good,’ says Clive, when the door is properly closed, and they can hear her heavy footsteps thumping back down the hall. ‘That’s that, then. I think it went as well as we could have hoped.’
‘Do you think they won’t come?’ asks Geraldine hopefully.
He shrugs. ‘They may. They may not. Doesn’t matter, does it?’ Clive and Geraldine turn happily towards their mushroom-coloured Land Rover, settle their bottoms into its soft leather seats. ‘Either way, she knows we’re on her side. I’d be amazed if she doesn’t let us take on the case.’ He starts the engine and a Mozart
Minuet for Harpsichord
fills the car from six separate, mushroom-camouflaged speakers. ‘Excellent,’ mutters Clive. ‘Good good good. Right then. Onwards and upwards, eh, Gerry?’ He turns to pat her knee. ‘D’you know, I’m almost beginning to enjoy myself!’
When Solomon Creasey first told Fanny about her husband’s death she’d been drunk; and then numb, except to a sudden lightness, a great lifting of fear. She has thought and felt many things about Nick Faraday since that morning – and about her marriage, about his violence, and about all the years she spent needlessly fleeing from his non-existent shadow. For so many years now, her flight from Nick Faraday has been, if not a driving force, then an excuse for the lack of one in her life. Now, at odd moments throughout the day, tides of grief, regret, foolishness, recrimination, bewilderment, come swinging down on her, all of which she feels unable to share with anyone, least of all with Louis.
She was listening to the little boy called Carl (whose mother ran away with the woman from the mobile bank last summer) describe the difference between a pentagon and a hexagon, when the realisation came to her in a horrible, suffocating thump –
‘…different sides going off in different shapes, especially the pentagon, which has sides going off mostly
this
way,’ says Carl, pointing his arms haphazardly.
– the obvious cause of her husband’s death, the reason Solomon had been so obtuse about it.
‘But you really need a compass,’ says Carl.
‘Oooh,’ she moans, covering her face, dropping her head into her hands, ‘I’m stupid.
I’m stupid
. Why didn’t I work it out before?’
‘No, you’re not stupid,’ Carl says, looking at her in astonishment. ‘I only just worked it out myself, see?’
The news of Nick Faraday’s death has not put an end to the telephone calls, of course. In fact, they’ve been steadily increasing, so that now barely a day passes without Fanny receiving one, sometimes two, either at school or at home. Whoever it is always disguises his number, and although he (or she) never says anything Fanny can recognise him (or her) from the peculiar hiss, so even and steady, of warm air passing through nostrils. It reminds her of a dentist, or a doctor performing minor surgery.
And she is becoming strangely accustomed to it. Nowadays it’s almost routine: she picks up the telephone, registers the cloggy silence, the soft hiss, immediately tells the caller to
fuck off
, and hangs up again. Since she realised it couldn’t be her husband, for some reason it doesn’t worry her so much. Not usually.
But on this occasion the pattern changes. It is twenty minutes before Dane’s disciplinary meeting is due to start at the Old Rectory, and Fanny is still deliberating over how to dress. (Conservative – in case Mrs Guppy comes. On the other hand…Fanny’s not to know that Solomon won’t be there this evening. She hasn’t seen him since he prowled back out into the rain with his beautiful silk dressing gown and his beautiful painting, but she’s found herself wondering about him, guiltily – as if Louis could read her thoughts. She actually caught herself stepping out of her cottage the
other day and sniffing the air for a hint of his sandalwood and lavender.)
On this occasion, the telephone rings – and the caller speaks. She goads him into speaking. On this occasion, for some wild reason, she hears him breathing and it makes her laugh.
‘You’re pathetic. You’re pathetic. You’re not scaring me. So really what the hell’s the point?’
There is a startled pause in the even, hissy breathing and he hangs up. Fanny is triumphant, emboldened enough to put away the sensible linen skirt and to pull out the low-slung fitted jeans again, and a shirt in orange cheesecloth with very few buttons.
Fifteen minutes later, just as she’s leaving the house, the telephone rings again.
‘Hello?’ she says briskly. She’d already forgotten about him.
A thin reedy voice, muffled by something – a cloth, his hand – held between his lips and the mouthpiece. But she knows the voice from somewhere. She’s heard it before. ‘Running late, are we?’
‘What?’
‘I left a little prezzie for you, Fanny. On the door.’
‘You what?’
A girlish snigger; an hysterical girlish snigger – and the line goes dead.
It takes a moment, after that, for Fanny to brace herself. She picks up her keys and a bread knife from the kitchen, closes her fist around it, slides the fist into her bag. And forces herself to open the door.
Nothing. There’s nothing there. She pushes the door closed behind her – and she spots it at once, hanging limp on the latch: a flimsy piece of red material. She peers at it. Picks it up. Damp. Sticky. A tiny pair of gauze-and-lace silky-look scarlet knickers.
‘Oh!’ She holds them out in front of her, too shocked to let go. ‘
Fuck! Oh, fuck!
’
Tracey and Macklan, also running late, just then emerge from the cottage next door. They glance across at her. Tracey looks from Fanny to the scarlet fabric held out in her hand, and then looks again, closer. ‘Those are mine,’ she says. ‘What are you waving them round for?’
‘What? I’m not. Of course not!’
Before she has a chance to say more, Macklan, in a dextrous flash of chivalry, has stretched across and snatched them from her. He stuffs them into his pocket.
‘Give them back!’ Fanny cries. ‘They were hanging on my—’
‘And you should watch your language,’ Tracey says. ‘Head teachers aren’t supposed to talk like that. Come on, Macklan. We’re late for Dane. Let’s go.’
‘Wait! Tracey, stop! I just found them. Someone put them on my door. I think they’re—I think someone’s just—Oh, please. Can’t I come with you? Please, Tracey…
I need your help.
’
Tracey turns back. Heavy body. Billowing clothes to try to hide it. Pale, puffy face. (She used to be so pretty, Fanny thinks.) ‘
You
need help?’ she says coldly. ‘And what about Dane?’
Fanny doesn’t know what to say.
‘It’s not his fault he’s a Guppy, Fanny. And contrary to what you and everyone else seems to think, it doesn’t automatically make him a criminal, neither.’
‘Oh, come on! All the evidence.
And he’s done it before
.’
‘You disgust me,’ Tracey says, her eyes filling with tears.
‘Let’s go,’ mutters Macklan. They walk away.
‘So-oo,’ slurs Kitty Mozely, plopping crisps and a round of drinks on to the table, and settling herself back down in her
seat, ‘on your tod again this evening, Louis? What’s Miss Flynn up to then?’
‘Oh. Some sort of meeting,’ Louis says vaguely, because he’s not entirely sure. He’s stopped listening recently. All she talks about is school, and he has enough problems of his own. Like the fact that he has exactly no work at the moment. Nothing. Like the fact that he has no money in the bank, because he spent so much in Spain, and Mr Guppy’s rent is due any minute. ‘Some meeting to do with the school fire, I think. I dunno. She works too hard, Fan does.’ He smiles. ‘I can’t keep up with it.’
‘And does she know how worried you are?’ purrs Kitty. ‘About the work? About the lack of money coming in?’
‘I expect so.’ He shrugs. ‘I don’t know. Maybe not. It’s not too interesting. I guess I probably haven’t told her so much.’
‘Hmm…You should watch out, angel boy. I hear Solomon Creasey’s been dropping in on your Miss Fanny Flynn.’
Louis smiles. ‘I was there, too, Kitty.’
‘And he’s a
pariah
, that man. So legend has it. Though I must admit he’s never bloody well pariahed me…’ A lazy, untroubled sigh. ‘Ah, well,’ she chuckles, ‘plenty of other pariahs in the sea!’
Louis takes a slurp of his cider and says nothing. Quite nice, he thinks, to be thought of as a pariah again. Because Fanny – he loves her and all that, of course. He’ll always love her, but he feels she’s already beginning to take him for granted. Or maybe he’s already taking her for granted? One way or the other…
‘So,’ Kitty’s voice breaks in, ‘I’ve spoken to Twiglet Prick. As promised.’
‘Oh.’ A pause while he tries to remember who she’s talking about. The name certainly rings a bell.
‘
My agent
, poppet.’
‘Sure. I know. About the illustrations.’ He waits, but she doesn’t add anything else. ‘Well? So what did he say?’
She leans forward. ‘Tell me, my friend. Have you mentioned any of this to the little lady yet?’
He shifts uncomfortably. ‘Don’t call her that, Kitty,’ he says amiably.
‘Because, darling—’ She leans a little closer, taking care not to touch him. He catches her musky smell, feels the warmth of her skin, hears all the libidinous, reckless promise in her voice. He glances over the rim of his cider into her eyes – avaricious, devilish eyes.
She’s actually pretty damn fuckable
, he thinks. And Kitty reads it – as surely as if he’d shouted it aloud.
‘Because, darling,’ she says again, ‘you’re going to have to tell her sooner or later…’ Kitty’s lips curve. She leans closer, and closer still. ‘And, Louis,’ she murmurs into his ear, her chubby finger finding the wrist, sliding itself smoothly up inside his sleeve, ‘
I strongly suspect
your adorable little girlfriend doesn’t even know we’re friends, let alone business associates…Well, does she?’
Louis tries to ignore her.
‘She doesn’t, does she, Louis? You naughty man!’
‘Don’t you worry about that,’ he murmurs. ‘I’ll worry about Fanny.’
‘Well, then, you should,’ she says, finger twirling through the hair on his deliciously golden forearm, ‘because I have a funny feeling that you and I and old Twiglet Prick may be on to something big.’
‘Is that so?’ Louis replies lazily.
‘It is so, Louis. He’s already spoken to my ghastly publisher—’
‘He has?’
She nods. ‘And they’re waiting, with bated breath, for you to send them your portfolio.’
‘My portfolio?’ Louis frowns slightly, wondering where it is. He’s definitely seen it recently. ‘That’s exciting,’ he says. Thinks about it. He’d actually enjoy doing her illustrations, if she’s serious about it. Especially now, with no other work coming in. ‘That is pretty damn exciting,’ he says again.
She nods. ‘My publishers are very keen to please me at the moment. For some reason. I have a feeling they’ll do almost anything for me,’ her hand drops from his arm, to beneath the table, ‘if I ask them nicely…’
A heady silence. Louis doesn’t move her hand or his thigh. He allows her hand to travel further, slowly, further…
‘
Mmmm
,’ she says. Even better than she’d hoped. ‘Even better than I’d hoped!’
‘Well, Kitty?’ he asks, with another of those lazy half-smiles, allowing free rein to the practised hand at work beneath the table, ‘and are you going to ask them nicely?’
‘That all depends,’ she says, undoing the zip, sliding inside, ‘how nicely you’re going to ask me…’
Why not?
he thinks. If he thinks anything at all. ‘We could go back to yours,’ he says. ‘But it’s a lovely evening. We could just go for a little walk…’
‘Ahhh,
wwwwalkies!
’ gurgles Kitty. ‘
What fun!
’