Page 99 of The House of Hopes and Dreams
‘No dice,’ Carey said curtly.
‘Anyway, we’ll be filming it for the new series, so if you were in it, it wouldn’t go down well with your boss,’ Nelson pointed out.
I was sitting at one end of the velvet sofa with Fang curled on my knee, and every time Daisy spoke, he lifted his lip in a silent snarl, which she seemed to find disconcerting. Or maybe, after a glass of spiced rum, I was doing the same …
I’m not sure what kind of scenario Daisy had envisaged would develop when she arrived with her two bottles. She’d known I’d be there, so perhaps she’d intended laying me out with one, then rendering Carey resistless to her charms with the other?
But she hadn’t reckoned on the crew, who demolished the rum, but left the whisky to Carey, who had one small tot, then put it away in the cabinet in the corner. I had coffee after my solitary drink: I didn’t want to spend tomorrow nursing a hangover.
I was just drifting off to sleep that night when there was a sudden rumpus somewhere at the other end of the landing. I slid out of bed and opened the door a crack – and there was Daisy, clad in something diaphanous, backing out of Nick’s room.
He appeared in the doorway, looking slightly sozzled and amused.
‘Sorry I wasn’t who you expected, but I’ll give it a go if you like?’ he called after her retreating form. ‘I don’t mind.’
‘In your dreams, buster,’ she snapped. ‘Stay off me!’
‘I never touched you. You’re the one who threw yourself on me,’ he pointed out. ‘In fact, I was trying to protect my virtue.’
‘I wish you’d protect it quietly, I’m trying to sleep,’ said Nelson, popping his dreadlocked head out and staring at them, especially the transparently clad Daisy. ‘It’s hardly worth wearing that thing, you know,’ he added to her, then went back in and shut his door.
Daisy, her face scarlet, made a furious hissing noise and rushed for her own room, though unfortunately forgetting the two steps down and up, where the stairs rose to the landing. She fell heavily, floundered back up again and staggered on.
I silently closed my door just as another opened and Jorge’s voice said, ‘What the hell’s all the racket?’
It was just like an old-fashioned farce.
Daisy’s door slammed resoundingly. There’d been no sign of Carey, though I was sure he couldn’t have slept through all of that.
As my shape changed and my slender body grew ever more rounded, it seemed to me that both my husband and Mr Browne regarded me with increasing distaste. Indeed, though Ralph was punctilious in enquiring after my health, he seemed to find me physically quite repugnant and avoided even kissing my cheek whenever he could do so, let alone according me any more intimate demonstrations of affection.
I confided these concerns in a letter to Lily and she replied that she had heard that some men did find pregnant women unappealing, even the most loving of husbands, but she thought his affections would soon rekindle when the child arrived.
I hoped she was right … but I now suspected Ralph and I would never draw close again while Mr Rosslyn Browne was planted firmly in our midst. Even when he had to go away on business, Ralph would often go with him, so we rarely spent time alone together.
Honoria and I both feared that one day Ralph would return from one of these excursions and inform us that he had purchased land in the Lake District on which to build a house …
34
The Morning Chorus
My inner alarm woke me at five and I got up, and then shivered under the antiquated shower next door, a brass arrangement that sprouted like a strange steampunk flower from one end of the bath. Daisy was in the room opposite, so my bathroom reeked of something delicately exotic – though her snores were not delicately anything, but of the more homely snort-and-whistle variety. I was tempted to record them for posterity … or blackmail.
She wasn’t the sole emitter of nocturnal noises, because there was a positive symphony of snores as I tiptoed along the landing with Carey’s card and painting tucked under my arm, like a slightly Goth and out-of-season Mother Christmas. Silently I cracked opened his bedroom door and listened: he sighed gently and turned over, so I quickly slid the envelope and parcel in and closed it again.
Downstairs, once I’d let Fang out for his morning watery communion with the fishy fountain, I made a mug of coffee and took it through to the studio. This was probably going to be the only quiet time to myself that I’d get that day and I had the two enquiries about possible commissions to think over and reply to. Then, I wanted to start designing a series of free-hanging roundels, based on the under-and-over the sea idea, like portholes. I could sell that kind of thing for a good price very easily, through galleries and online.
And maybe some more angels … starting with one of Carey. Not that he was any kind of angel in reality, and nor was Daisy, despite herother-worldly beauty. Last night he hadn’t shown any signs of falling for her all over again, but she’d certainly done her best to make him.
Perhaps he was still attracted by her, but too proud, or afraid of being hurt again, to show it.
Deep in thought, I’d been sitting at my worktable staring blankly at the wall opposite for ages, coffee in hand, before I registered the brown paper package leaning against it. An envelope bearing my name was stuck to the front. And even without the unmistakable writing, the style of the wrapping was typical of Carey: his presents were always covered in recycled brown parcel paper, turned inside out, or odd wallpaper samples.
I got up and when I pulled off the envelope and opened it, I found inside a slip of paper that said:
Here you are, Angel, my little Heavenly Host all rolled into one –
Happy Valentine’s Day!
