The Four of Us (47 page)

Geraldine turned her head, all dark thoughts suppressed. ‘Good. I'll speak to Matt tomorrow. He'll be able to put me in touch with a reliable local builder. And the first task we can give someone is to have suitable sleeping quarters made for Black-Hearted Alice. What was it Matt said she needed? An airy but draught-proof shed to sleep in at nights, with a sleeping place with low sides?'

‘And he said I'd find it easier to milk her if she had a little platform to stand on and that if it had a feeding trough at one end it would coax her into the right position.'

‘Particular little wench, isn't she? Is Maybelline so fussy?'

‘No. Maybelline is a sweetheart.'

‘And Black-Hearted Alice is a witch.'

Giggling like schoolgirls, they walked in deep mutual contentment past the church.

‘Hugo is here,' Primmie said ten minutes later as they approached the house and saw a parked Mercedes.

‘Good. I can't wait to meet him. An art dealer who, prefers Cornwall to New York is either madly eccentric or else has his priorities right.'

‘Hugo is and has,' Primmie said as they walked past the field where Maybelline was happily grazing and Black-Hearted Alice was crossly tethered. ‘He's a lifelong bachelor who looks gay – he dresses totally inappropriately for Cornwall. Very Oscar Wilde.'

‘And is he gay?'

‘Not according to Matt. Hugo's problem is that he hasn't moved with the times. Women's lib is anathema to him. He likes his ladies to look like ladies – and to be helpless and dependent, like lilies of the field. There aren't many women like that these days, are there?'

‘No, thank God.'

They giggled yet again and then, a minute or two later, Geraldine said, ‘I take it the Pavarotti-built gentleman unhappily knee-deep in hens is Hugo, but who is his companion? Do you know her?'

Primmie squinted into the light of a sun that was beginning to go down, seeing, for the first time, that Hugo had someone with him. ‘Not a clue. They're both dressed as if they're about to go to a wedding. Perhaps it's someone visiting him from New York. A sister or a sister-in-law.'

As they stepped from the track into the cobbled yard, the woman in the floral dress and jacket turned and, from a distance of thirty feet or so, looked towards them uncertainly.

Primmie and Geraldine looked back at her, aware that she looked familiar, but unable to place her.

Slowly Geraldine said, ‘It isn't, is it? It can't be, can it?'

‘It is. It
is!'

As Artemis's face changed from momentary doubt and confusion to blessed relief, Primmie hurtled towards her, arms outstretched. ‘Artemis!
Artemis!'
she gasped. ‘How wonderful! How absolutely, fantastically, gi-normously
wonderful!'

Her arms went round her and, as Artemis felt herself being hugged by someone whose love she had never in her life had to doubt, she filled with tears yet again.

Watching her fondly, Hugo reached for the spare clean handkerchief he'd had the forethought to bring with him. All his life he'd been attracted to women who brought out his sense of chivalry and gallantry. He'd always been drawn to damsels in distress who needed to be looked after. And Primmie's friend quite obviously fell into the needing to be looked after category with bells on.

As the striking-looking woman who had walked into the yard arm in arm with Primmie, and whom he presumed was Geraldine, now began hugging Artemis tightly, he decided that he was definitely de trop and that a discreet exit was in order.

‘For Artemis,' he said, pressing the handkerchief into Primmie's hand, and then walked out of the yard and across to his parked car. He would come back in the morning. As he drove away, he could see in his wing mirror that the three of them were still hugging and kissing and squealing with joy. He wondered where the missing member of their foursome was, and narrowly avoided her as he turned out of the track into the lane.

‘Apologies,' he shouted as he swung the wheel quickly in order to give her more room to drive in. He wound his window down. ‘You're Kiki, I assume.'

Kiki, her window already down so that Rags could hang happily half out of it, nodded, riveted by the sight of his pink carnation.

‘There's quite an emotional scene taking place up at the house,' he said, almost equally riveted by the sight of what looked to be a snowy-white polar bear in the seat beside her. ‘Your friend Artemis has just arrived.'

Kiki didn't hesitate. She swung the wheel and pressed her foot down hard on the accelerator, zooming off up the track towards the house in a blaze of dust and scattered pebbles with Rags, excited by his beauty treatment and the sudden urgency, leaning even further out of the passenger-seat window, barking frenziedly.

When she reached the house, she skidded into the cobbled yard as if into a pit stop at Le Mans.

‘Temmy!
Temmy!'
she shouted, hurling herself from the car and, with Rags hard at her heels, sprinting across to where Artemis was the centre of a tight-knit threesome. ‘My God, but you've changed! How much do you weigh? Sixteen stone?' She was hugging her, laughing and crying at the same time.

If it had been anyone else, Artemis would have been mortally offended. As it was, she was so glad to see Kiki again she only said, hiccupping from tears to laughter as she hugged Kiki and kissed her and hugged her again, ‘Fifteen stone and
you've
changed as well. Why is your hair all gelled and spiky? You look like a hedgehog.'

‘I look hip,' Kiki said, gurgling with laughter. ‘My goodness, isn't this wonderful?' She beamed round at Geraldine and Primmie, her green cat eyes dancing. ‘We're all together again. After how many years? Thirty? Thirty-one? Have you any champagne in the house, Primmie? I think we should crack open a bottle. Moments like this don't happen very often.'

Primmie hadn't any champagne and so, tearing herself away from Artemis and with money Geraldine gave her, she zoomed off in the Corsa with Rags to buy some.

‘I want to make this evening's meal special,' Primmie said as she, Geraldine and Artemis went into the house. ‘Will you lay the dining-room table, Geraldine? My best tablecloth and napkins are in the bottom drawer of the sideboard. You sit in the chair near the Aga, Artemis, and just
be
. We'll catch up with what has brought you here when Kiki gets back and we're all seated together around the table.'

As she was talking, she was taking things from shelves and cupboards: a flameproof lidded casserole dish, olive oil, tomato purée, white wine vinegar, salt, black pepper, a tub of bay leaves.

‘I don't want to just sit here,' Artemis said, slipping her foot from her good shoe and easing her other foot gingerly out of her hastily repaired and extremely fragile other shoe. ‘I want to help. What can I be doing?'

‘You could heat some oil in the casserole dish.' Primmie took a chicken from the fridge and began jointing it. ‘And there are some tomatoes in a bowl on the window-sill. If you skinned them, it would be a great help.'

As Geraldine came back into the kitchen, Primmie was peeling and slicing onions and the oil in the casserole dish was sizzling.

‘Have you a candlestick and candles?' she asked. ‘And a small flower vase?'

‘There's a cut-glass candlestick on the sitting-room mantelpiece and a small flower vase in the bathroom.'

With the onions peeled, Primmie began placing the chicken joints in the shimmering oil.

Artemis, busily dipping tomatoes in boiling water and slipping the skins from them, said, ‘Your friend Hugo is a very kind man, isn't he? My shoe heel broke in the street and he went to a cobbler's repair bar to get it mended for me. Rupert would never have done that, not in a hundred years.'

She paused in what she was doing. ‘And this is so nice, Primmie. Making a meal together. It reminds me of when we lived in the flat. I knew I was happy, way back then, but at the time I never appreciated just how precious those days were.'

Later, as they sat round the candlelit table, replete after the chicken cacciatore, Primmie, serving raspberries into small glass bowls, said, ‘You don't actually have to explain what brought you here, Artemis. Geraldine and I did try to contact you. The young woman who answered the phone told us you were no longer living with Rupert and then Rupert, when we phoned again, told us that you and he were getting divorced.'

‘And so we are.' Artemis took one of the small glass bowls from her. ‘After thirty-two years. Can you believe that, Primmie? I can't.' There was a wobble in her voice. ‘He's always had affairs, but nothing's ever come of them and then this … this Serena creature appeared on the scene and he's become a
monster
.'

Picking up her dessert fork, she stabbed a raspberry with unnecessary violence.

‘And when I went away on a cruise, Serena moved into the house – and she's still there and no one seems to mind! Orlando and Sholto have both met her and Sholto says it isn't the end of the world and Orlando says I should be grateful his father stuck by me all the time they were children and it's all so bloody, bloody
unfair!'

There was a silence and then Kiki said, ‘Well, not completely unfair, Tem. Look on the bright side. You don't have to go through life trying to please someone it's impossible to please any longer, do you? And if your grown-up kids are being so unsupportive, you don't have to consider them when making future plans. You're your own woman again. You can do what the hell you want. And the first thing you can do is to move in here with Primmie. Geraldine and I have already moved in, so I'm sure you doing the same thing isn't a problem.'

‘Of course it isn't,' Primmie said, knowing that someone would have to move out temporarily when the children arrived, but determining to cross that bridge when she came to it. ‘It's the four of us again, only this time, instead of our all living together in a Kensington flat, we'll be living together in Cornwall, in a house by the sea.'

Artemis brushed the tears from her cheeks and managed a smile. ‘Can I stay here, Primmie? Truly? For as long as I want?

‘Dearest Artemis, you can stay here for ever.'

Artemis's smile deepened. ‘That's the nicest thing anyone has said to me for years and years.' She looked across at Geraldine. ‘I can't tell you how wonderful it was when Hugo told me you and Kiki were here as well. Did you drive down together?'

‘God, no.' The thought made Geraldine flinch. ‘There are still too many issues between Kiki and me. I don't want to shatter too many of your illusions all at once, Artemis, but I'm barely speaking to her.'

‘Oh, goodness. I'm sorry. When I saw the two of you together I thought that you'd made things up … though of course I know that what happened was so awful that …' She broke off, deeply flustered, aware she was floundering and quite possibly making matters between Geraldine and Kiki worse. In a desperate attempt to steer the conversation into safer waters, she said hastily, ‘So what is it that brought you here, Geraldine?'

‘Retirement from running an escort agency.' Geraldine passed her a jug of cream. ‘And before you ask, Artemis, the word “escort” is a euphemism for call-girl, which in turn is a euphemism for prostitute.'

Artemis stared at her goggle eyed and, as she seemed to have lost all power of movement, Geraldine obligingly poured cream on her raspberries for her.

‘And I can probably top that,' Kiki said, determined not to let Geraldine steal the show, ‘because I came here to commit suicide.'

This time everyone was goggle eyed.

Kiki shrugged. ‘Well, I told you that my career was washed up, didn't I?' she said, looking from Geraldine to Primmie. And suicide seems a better option than going through life as a has-been.'

‘But you aren't a has-been!' Primmie stared across the table at her, appalled. ‘You're a woman who was a top-of-the-charts rock star in the ‘70s and who, because she's moved out of the age range for being a rock star, has said goodbye to it, just as successful footballers and Olympic athletes say goodbye to their careers.'

‘Well, that's one way of looking at it, Primmie, but it isn't mine.'

‘And are you still intending to commit suicide?' Geraldine asked, as if asking about the weather.

‘Yes. But it's on hold at the moment.'

‘Because of Rags?'

‘For one thing.' Kiki looked across to where Rags, resplendently trimmed, bathed and blow-dried, was lying on the rug in front of the fireplace. ‘And for another, because I have Artemis to get into shape.'

‘Excuse me?' Artemis pushed her plate of raspberries and cream to one side, unable to concentrate on them.

‘You need to lose weight, Artemis. I know you've nearly always been pleasingly plump, but now you're simply heavy and matronly. It's ageing. When was the last time you wore a bikini or a pair of jeans?'

‘I don't like jeans.'

‘And bikinis?'

There was no answer.

‘I've always had to stay slim and supple because of what I do.' Kiki paused and corrected herself. ‘Because of what I did. You can't bound around a stage in a huge arena carrying even a centimetre of excess flesh on your hips and bottom, especially not wearing the outfits I wore. Is there a gym in Calleloe, Primmie? Because if there is, I'm going to join it and Artemis is going to join it as well – and if there isn't, there'll be one in Helston and we'll join that.'

Without waiting for Primmie to answer her query, she looked across at Geraldine and said, deliberately provocatively, ‘When I was living with Francis in Los Angeles, I part owned a gym, but way back then fitness regimes were more for athletes than for everyone.'

Primmie sucked in her breath.

Artemis froze.

Geraldine said icily, ‘You always were an insensitive little bitch, Kiki. This is supposed to be a wonderful reunion dinner party and, though it goes without saying that the wonderful reunion bit doesn't apply to you and me, there's no need for you to bring things to a head between us by mentioning Francis.'