Perfect Timing (20 page)

They cleared the trees and approached the water's edge. Poppy, blinking rain out of her eyes, wondered why a disheveled-looking pensioner would want to wade around in the muddy shallows on such a cold day.

Then she spotted the bottle—whisky-shaped—in the pensioner's hand. Poppy turned and waited for Caspar to catch up.

‘He mutht be plathtered. Should we try and do thomething?'

‘What did that dentist take out, your eyes as well?' said Caspar. ‘It's not a he, it's a she.'

Poppy squinted across at the pensioner. In that battered trilby and long flapping raincoat it was hard to tell.

The next moment the pensioner was wading round in a semi-circle, shaking her whisky bottle at them.

‘Bugger off!' The throaty, clearly articulated voice that floated across the water towards them was deep-pitched but definitely female. ‘Sod off, the pair of you. Nosy bastards, come to gawk. What am I, some kind of peepshow? The latest tourist attraction?' She glared at Caspar and Poppy in disdain, then bellowed, ‘By God, it comes to something when a soul in torment can't even bloody kill herself in peace.'

The voice wasn't only female, it was instantly recognizable.

‘Crikey.' Poppy gazed transfixed. ‘It'th Eleanor Brent.'

‘Whatever you do,' said Caspar, ‘don't ask for her autograph.'

Eleanor Brent was one of the darlings of British theatre. She was practically a national treasure. Never what you could call a stunner, she had made up in talent and character for what she might have lacked in the looks department.

Eleanor's first fifty years had been spent ricocheting from one hopeless marriage to the next. She endeared herself to her public by proving you could be endlessly talented and still spectacularly unlucky in love. She was famous for smiling through her tears and insisting the show must go on.

Now she was in her mid-seventies, still much-loved, still working in the theatre, but no longer a slave to men.

‘I've grown up,' she was fond of informing interviewers when they broached the subject. ‘Put all that lovey-dovey stuff behind me, thank God. My days of romance are over. Such a relief.'

In which case, thought Poppy, what was Eleanor Brent doing, drunk as a skunk in the Serpentine, hurling insults at strangers, and threatening to do herself in?

‘I mean it.' The actress stumbled and waved her bottle wildly over her head to balance herself. Her trilby slipped over one eye. ‘Get out of here,' she roared, sounding like Margaret Thatcher in need of a cough drop. ‘Go on, bloody clear orf.'

To make sure they got the message, she stuck two fingers up at them.

‘No,' said Caspar.

The deadly glare narrowed.

‘Look,' Poppy began to say nervously, ‘how can we leave you here? You thouldn't be—'

‘Jesus Christ, what are you, a pair of sodding Samaritans? Just turn round and start walking, can't you? I don't
want
to be lectured to about the joys of living by a couple of do-gooders. Apart from anything else, this water is fucking freezing—'

As she bawled out these lines, Eleanor Brent began wading clumsily backwards. Within seconds she was up to her waist. The rain, pelting down even harder now, pitted the surface of the water like machine-gun fire.

The next moment she lost her balance and toppled over, losing her trilby in the process.

‘For heaven's sake,' sighed Caspar, kicking off his shoes. He peeled off his jacket and handed it to Poppy.

‘Quick,' Poppy squealed, shoving him forwards and promptly dropping his jacket in a mud slick. ‘She'th going to drown!'

The torrential rain had emptied the park as efficiently as bleach kills germs. There wasn't another soul in sight.

‘Damn.' Caspar spoke through gritted teeth. ‘She was right about something. It is bloody freezing.'

The trilby was sailing out into the center of the lake. Eleanor Brent appeared to have sunk. Not without trace though; a stream of bubbles broke the water's surface ahead of Caspar who was now struggling to keep his own balance.

The bottom of the lake was disgustingly slimy. The thought of what he could be treading in made Caspar wish he hadn't kicked off his shoes. Taking a deep breath he launched himself into a crawl in the direction of Eleanor's bubbles.

This was nothing like
Baywatch
. It didn't bear much relation, either, to the lifesaving techniques he had practiced years ago at school, when all you'd had to save was a plastic dummy in a pair of striped pajamas. Plastic dummies cooperated beautifully. They rolled over onto their backs, let you put one hand under their chins, and allowed you to guide them effortlessly back to the side of the pool.

They definitely didn't kick, punch, bite, and swear at the top of their voice. Nor did they bash you on the head with a bottle of Scotch.

‘Drop it,' Caspar spluttered as Eleanor Brent simultaneously kicked him in the kidneys and lashed out at his face. God, for an old dear she had a grip like superglue. ‘Drop that bottle and stop
fighting
—'

‘Bog off,' howled Eleanor, her teeth bared with rage. ‘Think I want to be rescued by some bloody blond nancy boy who dyes his hair?'

‘My hair-is-not-dyed.'

She let out a turkey screech as he managed to pry the bottle from her gnarled fingers. Her nails clawed at his neck, drawing blood. Caspar began to wonder if he was going to have to knock her out cold; at this rate, he didn't stand a hope in hell of getting her onto dry land.

The next moment, eel-like, Eleanor slithered from his grasp. She sank again. Caspar dived and dragged her back to the surface. This time she didn't fight back. All her strength had gone, he realized. She had also swallowed a couple of lungfuls of lake.

By the time Caspar managed to tow Eleanor Brent to safety, two cars had stopped. Poppy, who had flagged them down and dialed 999 on the second driver's mobile phone, waded in up to her knees to help Caspar haul the semi-conscious Eleanor out of the water and up onto the grass.

Eleanor promptly threw up. When she had finished, she rolled over and aimed a wild punch at Caspar's knees.

‘Raving bloody poofter. My second husband was one of 'em. And what the buggering hell have you done with my Scotch?'

‘I'm not a poofter.' Caspar rubbed his eyes wearily, then blinked as a flashbulb went off six feet to his left. The driver of the first car was crouching on a muddy patch of grass to get the best camera angle.

‘What the bloody hell was that in aid of?' Caspar demanded. Listen to me, he thought. Eleanor Brent's profanity must be catching.

‘Come on,' reasoned the man, ‘I've got a mate who works in a picture agency. You're Caspar French, aren't you? And that's Eleanor Brent.' As he spoke, he took another shot. ‘I can sell these. You'll be a hero.'

‘I can hear the ambulanthe,' said Poppy, whose mouth was hurting horribly. She took off her shoes and emptied them of water.

‘Come here.' Caspar patted the ground next to him, thinking that this could give Jake the break he'd been looking for. ‘Come and sit down next to me.'

Poppy spent the next day in bed nursing a monumental toothache—or, more accurately, gapache—and gazing morosely at the photographs of Caspar and herself in the papers.

Claudia, who had dumped the whole pile into her lap before rushing off to work, hadn't helped.

‘I've heard of bad hair days,' she told Poppy with ill-concealed smugness, ‘but this has to be a bad face day. You must be so embarrassed.'

Tactless but true. With her hair plastered down, her white face grotesquely swollen on one side, and a dribble of blood smearing her chin Poppy was almost—but sadly not quite—unrecognizable. She looked like a cross between Quasimodo and a vampire left out in the rain.

Caspar, needless to say, looked terrific.

The day worsened as one by one, the women Caspar had stood up yesterday discovered the pictures in their own newspapers.

Caspar made his escape shortly after breakfast, murmuring something vague about having to meet a visiting Hong Kong collector. This meant Poppy was left in the house with only a packet of ibuprofen for company.

And a phone that rang every five minutes.

Babette Lawrenson was the first, madder than a wasp because not only had Caspar stood up the journalist from
GQ
, he had made her look a fool in the bargain. It was unforgivable, she raged, not to mention bloody unprofessional. What the hell did Caspar think he was playing at?

Poppy, who hadn't so far met Babette, quailed beneath the onslaught. She wasn't up to this; her jaw felt as if it were being pried apart with the kind of equipment blacksmiths used on horses' hooves. She certainly didn't have the energy to defend Caspar, who might have let Babette down but who had saved someone's life.

As if sensing as much, Babette swapped targets.

‘And I'm surprised you haven't seen fit to apologize,' she remarked acidly, ‘seeing as you were the one who persuaded him to slope off yesterday afternoon.'

‘But I didn't—'

‘Funny, Caspar's talked so often about you, I'd imagined someone more attractive. When I saw the photo in the paper I couldn't have been more surprised. I had no idea you were so… plain.'

The calculated hesitation indicated that plain was Babette's way of saying she looked a complete fright. Poppy was rendered speechless by the jibe, all the more cruel because it was true.

‘Anyway, make sure Caspar rings me the moment he gets in,' Babette concluded briskly. ‘Oh, and tell him I spoke to my travel agent last night. If we want to go ahead and book, he needs confirmation by noon tomorrow.'

Wearily Poppy put the phone down. She wished she was one of those people who could leave it off the hook but she wasn't.

Minutes later, as she was mournfully examining her reflection in a hand mirror, the phone rang again.

‘I've just seen your picture in the paper,' Dina screeched joyfully. ‘Not that I recognized you! God, Poppy—what have you been doing to yourself? You look like that chap in
Alien
just before the monster explodes out of his chest. Whatever's happened to your
face
?'

With friends like this, Poppy thought, who needs enemies?

She certainly didn't need Julia's barbed comments. They might not have been as deliberately cruel as Babette Lawrenson's, but the implication was there; Caspar had failed to turn up for Jules' best friend's wedding and it was all Poppy's fault. Somehow she had forced Caspar to go for a walk with her in Hyde Park. He hadn't wanted to, of course; she had dragged him along, subjected him to some insidious emotional blackmail.

Whatever, she was the baddy. She was entirely to blame.

It was almost a relief to field the terse calls from Bella McCloud's manager. At least he didn't sling vile accusations directly at her or tell her she had a face like a monkey's bum.

The next call was from Kate, in tears as usual. She didn't have the nerve to point the finger at Poppy, but she undoubtedly thought it. Listening to her being sweet and understanding and asking how she felt made Poppy feel worst of all.

‘I'm sorry,' she told Kate hopelessly, ‘I didn't ask him to come along with me to the dentist. He just… insisted. You know what Caspar's like when he makes up his mind.'

‘Of course I know,' Kate sniffed. ‘It's not your fault, Poppy. He just decided he'd rather be with you than with me. Oh bugger'—she blew her nose noisily—‘how can s-someone you love so much make you so mis-mis-miserable?'

The last call came from her dentist, the lovely Lisa, who was too busy inflicting pain of her own to read newspapers. She hadn't heard about the rescue in the park, she was simply phoning to invite Caspar round to her house for dinner that night.

‘He's busy,' snapped Poppy.

‘Oh, shame. Well, do tell him I called. Maybe another night.'

‘Maybe.'

‘Is this Poppy?' As if remembering her for the first time, Lisa asked with professional politeness, ‘How are you feeling today?'

‘Like shit,' said Poppy and hung up. She had had enough.

When Caspar finally rolled in at six o'clock, she had had time to build up to a simmering state of rage. Misery had given way to irritation. All the blame that had been so unfairly heaped on Poppy by the various women in Caspar's life, she was now ready to off-load onto him.

Her jaw had never hurt more. And the swelling was expanding to unimaginable proportions. The anger inside her grew.

First
Alien
, now
The Elephant Man
, thought Poppy as she caught sight of her reflection in the sitting-room mirror. At this rate, I'm going to do John Hurt out of a job.

‘You poor thing,' said Caspar, who was in great spirits. ‘How about a brandy, would that sort you out?'

‘I don't need sorting out,' Poppy snapped, itching to get started. ‘You're the one who needs to get yourself sorted out. I'm sick of it, Caspar. Bloody sick of this.' She tried to hurl a piece of paper at him, which didn't really work. She should have written his messages on a brick.

‘Ouch.' Caspar pretended to stagger backwards.

‘It's not funny. This is the list of everyone who phoned you today. Sorry I didn't have time to type it up'—Poppy attempted withering sarcasm—‘but I was in bed
trying
to get some sleep.'

‘Sweetheart—'

‘No! Shut up and let me say this. And don't call me sweetheart,' she yelled, ‘because I've had it up to here with your sweethearts. That bitch Babette… Kate… Julia… they all blame me for you standing them up yesterday. It was all my fault, wasn't it, that you let them down! You should have heard the things they said—'

‘I'll tell them.' Caspar shrugged. ‘No worries. I'm sorry if they gave you a hard time, swee—Poppy, but I'll put them straight. You know I will.'

‘That's not the point,' she howled. ‘What you need to do is get your act together, stop mucking everyone around and… and…
grow up
.'

She shivered suddenly, hating the way Caspar was looking at her, half amused and half taken aback. In his eyes, she was good old Poppy, someone he could have a bit of a laugh with, someone who would always listen to his mild grumblings when the endless stream of girlfriends made too many demands on his time. Oh, every now and then she might have put up token resistance, Poppy thought with fresh bitterness, but basically, as far as Caspar was concerned, she was on his side.

She was okay. A good sort. A pal.

Every time she had studied the photographs in today's papers, Poppy had been struck, painfully, by the differences between the two of them. There was Caspar, blond and godlike, and herself, bedraggled and hoglike. And even though she knew she didn't normally look like that, it still hurt. Like hell.

No wonder Caspar had never made a pass at her.

Shocked that she could even think it—good grief, what was the matter with her today?—Poppy launched into the next wave of attack.

‘You know what you are, don't you?' she demanded. ‘You are just so damn
selfish
. You don't give a shit about anyone else. As long as you're all right, nothing else matters. What do you care about other people's feelings? Sod all, that's what.'

‘You're beginning to sound like Eleanor Brent,' said Caspar. ‘Good job we don't have a swear box.'

‘Oh ha-bloody-ha.'

The doorbell rang. Since Poppy was too busy seething and thinking up fresh home truths, Caspar answered it.

He came back into the sitting room with a cellophane-wrapped bouquet of orange roses and a bottle of Stolichnaya. They weren't for her.

Caspar tore open the envelope and read the accompanying letter aloud.

‘Dear boy.

Having sobered up, I now have to thank you for coming to my aid yesterday. I did a foolish thing. Mercifully I have lived to regret it. I can assure you I was—headache apart—extremely glad this morning not to wake up dead.

Once more, my heartfelt thanks. Please enjoy the vodka on my behalf, as my doctor informs me I am now on the wagon. He's a bloody old fool—still, this time I can see his point. There shall certainly be no repeat of yesterday's performance. How depressing to think a bellyful of putrid pond water might have been the last drink of my life.

Thank you again. Eleanor.'

‘How moving,' Poppy sneered because saying anything nice was by this time completely beyond her. ‘What a total hero you are.'

‘What a total grump you're in,' countered Caspar. ‘Jesus, next time I see some raddled old actress drowning I'll leave her to it.' He frowned. ‘Anyway, I still don't understand. Why are you like this?'

‘I'm like this because Eleanor Brent thinks you're the bee's knees, and you aren't. You're a complete shit. What's more, I bet you deliberately sloped off this morning,' Poppy accused him, ‘just to avoid all the phone calls you knew you'd be getting. You left me to take the flak instead. And some bloody flak it was too. Come on, admit it,' she snarled, ‘you weren't really seeing a collector from Hong Kong.'

‘Okay, I wasn't. It was someone else. But it was still a meeting I couldn't break.' Caspar looked uncomfortable. He had actually been invited to Kensington Palace to discuss the possibility of a royal commission, but he had been warned not to broadcast this news.

‘What kind of meeting? Horizontal, I suppose.'

‘Now you're being childish.' He began to lose patience. Poppy was standing with her hands on her hips like a fishwife. ‘Look at you—'

‘Yes, look at me!' Poppy had spent most of the day peering into a mirror. Every time she did, it seemed she had slid up the ugly-scale another notch. ‘Just look at me, fright-night on legs. One more example—as if we bloody needed it—of how self-centered you are.'

‘What?'

She grabbed one of the newspapers and shoved it at him. Her grotesque, swollen face gazed up from the page.

‘How could you have done it? Whatever possessed you?' Poppy demanded furiously. ‘You knew how awful I looked, but you had to drag me into the picture anyway—never mind the blood on my chin and my hair being a mess and the fact that I looked as if I'd been chewing a brick. Do you have any idea how humiliating that is? Can you even begin to understand how ashamed I am? No, obviously you can't.' Since all Caspar was doing was looking bemused, she jabbed at the photograph again, so hard her finger went through his face. ‘As long as you're looking great, nothing else matters. It doesn't matter how much of a fool you make
me
look. That's why you're selfish.'

So much, thought Caspar, for his spur-of-the-moment plan. If the ploy had worked, if Tom had spotted Poppy's picture in the paper and managed to track her down as a result, presumably Poppy would have been thrilled. As it was, she was all but unrecognizable and even if Tom did recognize her, she looked such a sight he would be more likely to emigrate.

But this was something else he couldn't tell her because as Jake had pointed out, it would be unfair to raise Poppy's hopes until they had a result.

Not that she was being exactly fair, thought Caspar. Talk about ungrateful. It was positively the last time he tried to play Cupid.

In all honesty, he hadn't thought twice about how Poppy was looking when the guy had shown up with the camera. Poppy was Poppy, with her big eyes and her mad hair and the irresistible broad smile that lit up her face.

Not that her face was in much danger of lighting up just now.

‘Have you finished?' Beginning to feel hard done by, he wondered briefly if Poppy expected him to apologize. Sod it, why should he? What, after all, had he done that was so wrong?

Poppy glimpsed the flicker of boredom in his eyes. There was resentment there too, resentment no doubt that she had dared to speak her mind. Caspar clearly had no intention of saying sorry.

‘Yes,' she snapped. Then, as he turned towards the door, ‘No! No, I bloody haven't.'

Caspar suppressed a yawn. ‘Okay, but try and fit it into the next two hours. I'm supposed to be going out tonight.'

‘Don't worry, I won't keep you,' Poppy shot back. ‘I'm just saying it's about time you grew up. Sorted yourself out. Why don't you do the decent thing for once, and put your fan club out of their misery? It's not fair on any of them, buggering them around like this. What you need to do is choose one. Go eeny meeny miney mo. Then get married.'

Caspar stared at her. He could still hardly believe they were having this row. He'd had no idea Poppy felt this way about him. She was positively oozing disdain from every pore.

‘Right.' His tone was level. ‘So. Is that it?'

‘That's it.' Poppy's smile was saccharine-sweet. ‘There, never mind two hours, I managed to fit it into two minutes. Rather like your sex life.'