Away From It All Read online

  Mo had glared at her from across a plate of bacon, eggs and tomatoes which was on its way to the solitary bed and breakfast guest in the little morning room off the far side of the kitchen.

  ‘I don’t have time to go gadding off out for fancy lunches,’ had been Mo’s speedy answer. Harry came in from the garden carrying a bunch of well-grown onions in time to hear her saying quickly, ‘And neither has Harry. He’s got the chickens and the veg to deal with.’ She’d then added, with grudging grace, ‘Thanks all the same.’ Harry had raised his eyebrows at Alice but hadn’t questioned Mo’s decision. Alice knew better than to push him – he’d be panic-stricken at the possibility of defying Mo.

  On the King Harry chain ferry, crossing the river Fal, Alice stepped out of the car to lean on the front rail and breathe in the steamy air of the deep valley. The day was wonderfully warm and she was thankful to be here where the air was scented by foliage and fields, and not in London with the stale smells of traffic fumes and aircraft fuel. If she was at home now, she’d be up at the top of the house in her little study, making notes for the next Gulliver School adventure. The girls she’d created eight years ago as nervous new junior boarders were now teenagers with more on their minds than inter-school tennis tournaments and the drama club auditions. They were moving on to sex and secrets and choices about life after Gulliver’s. The powers-that-be at Pericles Productions, who turned the books into TV programmes and sold them so profitably to the networks, were close to dribbling with glee at this prospect. If she took the storylines in the direction they were now suggesting, the series would turn into a kind of boarding-school version of Sex in the City. She just knew that the next time she finished a book they would be positively salivating, thinking along the lines of Britney-in-a-gymslip. It was all a long way from her first stories, scribbled down at twelve and a mixture of Malory Towers, the Chalet School and her own lonely imaginative longings in her school-free anarchic existence at Penmorrow.

  She looked back to the car where Jocelyn and Aidan sat close together on the back seat, talking intently and ignoring the scenery. Joss was looking at Aidan as if he was a delightful new pet. It was a look she’d seen many, many times before: Joss didn’t really ‘do’ friendships with males but instead needed to captivate them, to have them admire and preferably adore her. That sparky need to attract was still there in spite of the ageing and the illness and Aidan looked as if he was all right with this, that he was playing along just far enough with the flirting game, rather in the manner, Alice thought, of a gay ‘walker’ attending a beautiful celebrity.

  Both Joss and Aidan were wearing cream linen – Joss in a long wrap-around skirt and bell-sleeved tunic top, Aidan in a floppy unlined jacket. Ignoring the obvious difference in age, they reminded Alice of a pair of eccentric adult twins who had never shaken off their mother’s habit of dressing them alike. Joss was wearing her plum lipstick and a lot of deep grey eyeshadow which accentuated the slightly sleepy look her face had acquired since her recent illness. Her long pale tapering plait lay between her left shoulder and Aidan’s right, giving the bizarre impression that it could belong to either one of them. Noel had said he was sure her unchallengeable autocracy over Penmorrow was somehow contained in her hair, and had once amused himself for a day or two making elaborate plans to chop off the plait in the dead of night.

  ‘Did you bring a hat? It gets hot on the hotel terrace,’ Alice said as she switched on the car’s engine and took her turn to be directed off the ferry.

  ‘Don’t fuss, sweetie,’ Joss replied, treating Alice’s reflection to a tight-jawed smile, ‘I do know how to live with the sun, you know. I find it highly energizing to absorb a few extra rays. It’s like a dose of solar power for me.’

  All the same, Alice was glad that, after she’d parked the car at the top of the hill and joined her mother and Aidan at the table overlooking the estuary at St Mawes, the attentive young waiter had made sure Joss’s head was protected by a large canvas sunshade. Aidan put on a pair of mirrored Oakley sunglasses, then immediately took them off again as Joss gave him one of her pursed-mouth looks of amusement.

  ‘Sorry – you can’t see who I’m talking to with these on,’ he said.

  ‘Oh I’d know who you’re talking to, my dear young man, there’s only a choice of two of us. I can’t see what you’re thinking, that is the important thing.’

  ‘Eyes being the windows of the soul?’ he smiled.

  ‘I hope this book you’re putting together isn’t full of clichés like that.’ Jocelyn, frosty-faced, turned away from Aidan to study the wine list. He hid behind the menu and pulled a face at Alice, looking exactly like a thoroughly told-off school boy, which made her want to giggle.

  ‘Some decent clarets anyway,’ Jocelyn commented, then her mood instantly switched and her voice became loud and cheery. ‘Now! Who’s for a mad cocktail?’ She called to a nearby waiter, ‘A Margarita for me please.’ Alice wondered if this was a good idea and Joss spotted the wondering look on her face, adding immediately, ‘A very large one.’

  ‘You always were a contrary old bat.’ Alice grinned at her, knowing better than to start cooing concerns such as, ‘Do you think you should?’ Joss, as always, would do exactly as she chose.

  ‘No, you’re wrong you know, Alice. I’m not at all contrary. If I was I’d have ordered something ghastly like a Diet Cola. You could have bet serious folding money on me ordering something strongly alcoholic.’ She hesitated a moment, catching her breath and putting her hand to her chest. ‘Besides, it’s terribly good for the blood.’ She was panting slightly.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Alice reached out and touched Joss’s arm. The skin felt warm and soft. An unwelcome imaginative flash came into her mind of touching the same skin after death. How cold do we go? How hard and inflexible would it feel then?

  ‘Of course I’m all right, darling.’ Joss patted her daughter’s hand, then returned it firmly to Alice’s lap. ‘Rather an excess of stairs up from the road, that’s all.’

  She took a deep restoring breath and declared, ‘Now! Let’s order! Sea bass for me, I think. It reminds me . . .’ and here she leaned forward towards her biographer. ‘You’ll need this, Aidan. Aren’t you going to make notes?’ Obediently, Aidan took out his electronic recorder and Joss spoke up as loud and clear as an actress. ‘Sea bass always reminds me of darling Arthur. We used to take his boat, wonderful it was, a classic Cornish crabber a bit like . . .’ She scanned the many sailboats out in St Mawes harbour, then pointed. ‘That one! Just like that one there with the orange sail! Oh look, Alice!’ Jocelyn scraped back her chair and went to stand by the balcony rail and gaze out towards the estuary. ‘Do you remember? We used to go round the Lizard to the Manacles and fish for mackerel. Or we’d anchor just off the Prussia Cove beach and cast for bass. We’d be up at five and out of Tremorwell bay before the fishermen. And lobster pots too, we had a good dozen of them. Sold any spare catch to the trippers, straight off the boat. They liked that sort of thing of course, made them feel “local”. And often,’ she returned to the table but kept her voice pitched high, fully intent on entertaining the entire terrace, ‘very often actually, Arthur would buy them in cheap from a lovely boy in Chapel Creek, sail into Tremorwell and flog them off as newly caught. It made good trading sense.’

  He hadn’t just sold fish, Alice suddenly remembered. The little boat had often been loaded with rough wooden boxes. She used to sit on top of them, on a green and white checked blanket. The boxes had chinked as they moved and were kept under the ropes and spare rigging. ‘Just a spot of brandy, to help keep the hotels stocked,’ Arthur had told her, tapping the side of his nose and winking. He’d made quite a few sea trips at night, leaving Penmorrow after supper, wrapped up against the night chill in his holey old guernsey and a black felt hat with fringed ear flaps that Kelpie had made for him. He couldn’t have gone all the way over to France, she realized now, but presumably just far enough to transfer cargo from another boat without excit
ing the interest of the coastguard. She looked at Joss, waiting for her to tell all this to Aidan, but Joss was now gazing out to sea again, rapt in some secret memories that she wasn’t prepared to share.

  ‘The Sunday Times sent someone to photograph us on the boat just before Arthur’s Tate retrospective,’ she then went on. ‘We took him up to Newlyn. I was to lean out from the prow like a ship’s figurehead, wearing a sort of toga thing and with my hair flowing out loose. Sick as a pig, that photographer was. Absolutely sodding useless.’

  After the bass and before the chocolate and lavender ice-cream, Alice went off to the loo and came back to find an unknown man sitting at their table, his chair pulled up close to Jocelyn. She glanced at Aidan as she returned to her seat but he shrugged and shook his head vaguely.

  ‘Alice! This is . . . tell me your name again?’

  ‘Patrice Hillyard.’ He held out a long-fingered, tanned hand for Alice to shake. Huge, big-toothed smile, a glint of gold filling. ‘Here for a couple of days’ break from the heaving city. And this is such a wondrous coincidence! I’m a lifelong admirer of Mrs Lewis. Angel’s Choice was a pivotal 1950s work, up there with Sagan and John Braine. A work of genius.’ He turned a full beam of a smile towards Joss, who was looking utterly delighted by the attention. Aidan seemed to have been instantly replaced in the captivation game. It crossed Alice’s mind that Patrice sounded as though he’d been rehearsing that little speech, and had possibly uttered exactly those words only moments ago to her mother. Whether this was a repetition or not, Jocelyn was looking serenely pleased, beaming at her admirer.

  ‘Please, Patrice, do call me Jocelyn,’ she said, lightly touching his arm. Her silver and amethyst rings glinted against his tanned skin. To Alice, her long lilac-painted nails looked somehow predatory. She’d seen all this before. Poor Patrice. ‘And I never held with marriage and all that “Mrs” business. You should know that if you know anything about me.’ Patrice held up his hands and bowed his head in apology.

  Jocelyn was little short of purring. Alice exchanged glances with Aidan, each of them expressing ‘smarmy git’. Patrice was an unmistakable media man of some sort, shinily bald, tall, dressed in low-slung jeans plus a tee shirt that proclaimed ‘Home is Where the Art Is’ on the front. His right wrist sported a grubby pink and blue plaited friendship bracelet which Alice guessed, with no evidence at all, was a handmade gift from a pre-teen daughter to whom he had weekend access.

  ‘The amazing thing is, I had written to you, some months ago, but as you never replied I thought, well, obviously you’re not interested.’ He smiled around the table at them all, inviting them to marvel at this serendipitous meeting. Alice watched her mother for an enlightening clue, but Joss showed no sign of recalling a letter.

  ‘It’s just a small series, in pre-production right now,’ Patrice went on. ‘Working title is Whatever Happened To . . .’ He leaned conspiratorially close to Jocelyn and murmured, ‘Not the greatest title, you’ll agree, rather implies the past-it brigade, which of course in your case is far from . . .’

  ‘Oh but it’s true,’ Joss demurred. ‘Just a long ago one-hit wonder, that was me.’

  ‘Ah but what a hit!’ Patrice parried. ‘Which is why I was wondering, though no, I’m sure you wouldn’t consider changing your mind . . . would you?’

  ‘Consider? What exactly?’ Alice could see her mother’s hands trembling slightly. The pearly nail varnish was twinkling in the sunlight and the fingers of her right hand went up to push a stray hair back from her face. Joss had her neck stretched taut, showing her still-slender jawline and once-famous cheekbones to their best advantage. Opposite Alice, Aidan sighed gently. His knee started to jog up and down with suppressed impatience. She smiled across at him, sympathizing.

  ‘A documentary, subject entirely yourself of course – about forty minutes.’ Patrice’s hands were expressive, fingers spread as if he was already framing shots. ‘The here and now, the in between, the way-back-then for those, so few I’m sure, who didn’t know . . .’

  ‘Maybe you should give her a bit of time to consider,’ Alice interrupted. Patrice’s smile faded for a moment, then quickly reignited. ‘Oh absolutely!’ he agreed. ‘No need for an instant decision, none at all. Though you must agree, this meeting today is so, oh how can I put it, surely so serendipitous, so cosmically, perfectly timed.’

  He was using all the right words. As they left the restaurant a lazy hour later Alice realized her mother had agreed to allow an entire film crew the run of Penmorrow for at least a week at the height of the summer season. Well, she thought as she steered the car round the headland past St Mawes castle, Jocelyn would have to be the one who told Mo.

  Oh God, she was a dull woman. At the Caprice, Noel paid the bill for lunch and wondered how he could quickly offload Paula without making her feel like handing in her notice. She was a terrific asset on reception at the office. She’d also been there just long enough to know his clients and was exactly enough of a phone-chatterer to get them to do plenty of useful confiding. They didn’t always tell the truth to him. Truth, where high-profile divorce was concerned, could often cost a vast amount of money. If the wife in search of several millions in alimony was popping down to Cannes with a new love, she wasn’t necessarily going to inform her lawyer. On the other hand her lawyer might need to know: if push came to shove in court it could be as well to have a cover story handy. He still shuddered at the memory of a cabinet minister he’d represented a few years previously, pleading immense cash-flow difficulties that would preclude decent alimony to his soon-to-be-ex wife. If he’d only said about the offshore moolah, Noel could have helped him avoid all that tabloid press speculation, still sorted out a more than fair payout for his wife, and the chap would have kept his personal savings more or less intact.

  Paula had gone down the far staircase to the loo many minutes ago. She was probably looking at the display of classic David Bailey celebrity mugshots on the wall on the way back. Alice had said there was a particularly stunning Marianne Faithfull. Noel looked at his watch, wondering if he should simply give Paula the afternoon off and tell her to go and do some shopping. She’d like that – women did. He hoped she’d think it was because she deserved the time, that it was a reward for being such charming company. She’d had that keen look though, right from the moment she’d accepted a glass of champagne (‘Ooh I shouldn’t!’ Had she really said that? He almost grimaced at the memory) and more than once he’d caught her doing that thing she must have read somewhere was sexy – picking up long bits of food in her fingers and practically fellating it. There was nothing sexy about watching a woman sucking a thin chip.

  Was it possible she hoped they’d leap into a taxi, whizz back to Richmond and hurl themselves on his hyper-chic chrome bed and rumple Alice’s pink/purple shot-silk throw, skidding around on it in the throes of passion? Surely not. He certainly hoped not. He couldn’t bear the thought of even one more minute hearing about her dog Beasley’s tricks with the boomerang or her weekly charity visits to Battersea Dogs’ Home to cheer up the terminally homeless mutts. Nor did he want to hear the bizarre details of Her Kevin’s PhD thesis on Internet advertising valuation. She probably hadn’t been overenthralled by his ‘amusing’ tales of Alice’s mother’s hippy home life either. In fact she’d probably heard them all before, but had applied the simple good manners that kicked in when your meal was being paid for.

  What he really wanted, Noel thought as Paula at last shimmied across the restaurant (and oh no, oh God, big swivel of the head and she’d stopped to gawp at Ringo Starr. Surely she knew you just Didn’t Do That?), what he really wanted was to be with Alice and Theo and Grace. He wanted them to be there as usual when he came home from work. He missed the silly tick-tick-tick noise of Grace and Theo texting all their unseen mates, missed Alice in her Saturday night suspenders. He missed the smell of her clean hair and the way, when she was in her study working on a book, her fingers flew over the Mac keyboard as she raced to get the stor
y out of her head and into the world. It was a bit like a birth, she’d told him, and stupidly he’d laughed, been dismissive. He wished he hadn’t now. He wished he’d thought for more than a millisecond about what she was saying and made an effort to understand what she was getting at. After all, if she’d said it, it was because she’d thought it through carefully and chosen the words she really needed. You didn’t get mindless flannel with Alice.

  Paula, as expected, was delighted to take the rest of the afternoon off. Noel sent her off in a taxi in the direction of Knightsbridge and prayed she wouldn’t spend a fortune in Harvey Nicks underwear department on something she guessed he’d enjoy. If she was hoping for an enthusiastic licking she’d do better to get the Beasley dog a new collar.

  Noel walked down past the Ritz and decided he too would abandon the office for the day and take the tube straight home to Richmond. There was time for a spot of golf. At the thought of it, at the idea of deep-breathing fresh air on the edge of Richmond Park, he very nearly stopped walking and took a practice air-swing right there on Piccadilly. But Green Park station was closed. Thwarted travellers milled about on the pavement and the transport official, who looked bored at having to keep repeating the same explanations, sighed, ‘Suspect package,’ in the tone that Noel remembered from his prep school that suggested that this hurt him more than it hurt anyone else. Noel looked at his watch. Three o’clock – not really much point in going back to work anyway – he wouldn’t get much done and wine at lunchtime always left him at less than full mental strength. He hailed a taxi and slumped comfortably in the corner with a former passenger’s abandoned Evening Standard.

  There was the usual depressing summer reading: strikes at airports, a row about a Wimbledon umpire, rain predicted to disrupt the next Test series and a flurry in suburban house sales. ‘That’s good news anyway,’ Noel found himself commenting aloud, and then immediately wondered why it was of any relevance to him at all. He and Alice weren’t planning to move, hadn’t considered it. They’d had the house renovated to an incredible level of personal comfort exactly to suit their needs and tastes. And yet . . . as Noel entered the hallway of his silent immaculate home, he felt for a moment as if it belonged to someone he’d never met before. He ran quickly upstairs, flung off his clothes and walked into the shower to try to wash in a more familiar mood.