Clouds Of Cousins

2

Clouds Of Cousins

    The Haworths stood in Moulder’s Way, looking silently at the three unrenovated cottages which, it had just been revealed, were the property of John Haworth, Capt., R.N.

    After quite some time his wife managed to say: “John, it’s not that I mind that ya never told me you’re a bloated capitalist landowner, but what’s it gonna do to my sociological study of the village?”

    The Captain bit his lip. “Mm. Well, I’m not assigning blame, darling, but if you remember, you embarked on that, or at least decided to do it, without warning me.”

    “We weren’t even engaged back then!” cried Rosie, going very red.

    John shifted John Frederick Bernard Haworth, aka Baby Bunting, to his other shoulder and took her hand, squeezing it rather hard. “No. As I say, I’m not assigning blame.”

    “Greg’ll throw ten fits,” she warned glumly.

    Balls. Greg Singh was Rosie’s research assistant, the recently completed M.A. being a reliable indicator of his age, sophistication, and ability to stand up to Dr L.R. Marshall, M.A., Ph.D., Research Fellow at London University and, never mind the pink cheeks and golden curls, pretty hard case. Not that she hadn't needed to be, growing up in a typical Sydney suburb with ambitions to get a Ph.D. and be a sociologist. “Mm,” he agreed neutrally.

    “Look, even discussing anything to do with the cottages is a no-no, it’ll skew my results!”

    “Mm,” he murmured.

    “They are in it, ya know,” she warned, scowling at the cottages.

    Well, yes: the whole of Bellingford and Upper Bellingford was in the study, with the exception of their own old cottage, isolated on its own little bay over the hill from Bellingford proper, and the two new cottages he’d recently put up alongside it. “Yes, I know, Rosie. I’m sorry. The thing is, I thought that if I, um, well, just laid low and did nuffin’—not letting them or doing them up or anything—until you’d completed the research, it—”

    “Might not be noticed!” she snapped.

    “No: couldn’t affect the results,” he said glumly.

    Rosie drew a deep breath.

    “I know: skewing them in the opposite direction.” He got out the keys. The three cottages, like most of Moulder’s Way, were built to the same pattern: two storeys, two rooms up and two down, with the kitchen a lean-to at the back and the bathroom built over it. “Well, these are they, Rosie.”

    “Yeah. Which one do you think Colin could have?”

    John drew a deep breath. Rosie seemed to be convinced that R&R in deepest rural Hampshire would be sure to fix Colin up. “Whichever one he prefers. But he won’t be out of hospital for months yet. Remember how long your broken leg took to heal? And he had that bash on the head as well. –They’re all basically the same, Rosie. Oh, except that the third one’s kitchen was repainted in the Sixties.”

    Immediately Rosie dragged him off to look at it: Colin might like it better!

    In the kitchen of Number 11 Moulder’s Way, she looked round the nightmare of orange, lemon and green and announced with satisfaction: “This is nice and bright!”

    It was bright, all right. “Yes. Late Sixties, one would imagine,” he managed. The cupboard doors, in particular, were frightful: the inspired decorator had covered them in some sort of plastic substance in a swirly, not quite Paisley pattern in the three shades. No, actually four: there was a lime green in there, flickering hideously, as well as the dark green which featured amongst the orange and lemon in the flickering pattern of, possibly, boxes, on the floor. John opened a cupboard and investigated the dried, curling edges of this plastic sub—

    “Don’t,” said his wife in an iron voice.

    “But—Oh,” he said with a silly grin. “Pristine condition—no skewing of results: right.” He watched with considerable enjoyment as she bent over, giving a very good display of that perfect bum that bloody Derry Dawlish had featured in The Captain’s Daughter in all those shots of putatively Fifties bikinis, genuine Fifties one-piece bathing-togs, tennis panties under abbreviated tennis skirts, so-called play-suits calculated to have a more direct effect on the average red-blooded male than a double dose of Viagra, and outright knickers. The bum was still perfect, even though today it was merely clad in a pair of very old, very worn, and very soft black tracksuit pants. He put his hand on it, on the strength of them.

    “Ooh! Um, I know what this is.”

    “Temptation?” he murmured.

    “You’ll shock Baby Bunting!” she said with a laugh. “No, this pattern. It’s a quilt pattern.”

    Handiwork of any kind was a completely closed book to Rosie. John had to swallow. “Oh?” he managed to croak.

    “Yeah. I’ve seen a quilt with the very same pattern in Le Petit Cabinet de Carole!”

    This was the extremely arty-tarty crafts shop in the High Street. “That explains it,” he said, squeezing the bum gently.

    “Ooh! Um, better not, what if somebody came?”

    “It is our property, darling: Somebody would be trespassing,” he murmured, squeezing again. “Far from them doing us for indecent exposure or conduct unbecoming”—his wife gave a smothered gurgle—“we could do them for being a Peeping Tuh—Jesus!” he gasped as there came a thunderous knock at the front door.

    Rosie straightened hurriedly. “See? The village is full of Peeping Jesuses, what planet you been living on for the last thirty years?”

    “Planet Sea Duty,” Captain Haworth, R.N., admitted with a grimace. “Who the Hell—”

    “Ya won’t know if ya don’t answer it, John.”

    Resignedly he went off to answer the door.

    It was a middle-aged woman he’d never seen in his life, somewhat unsuitably clad, given the unseasonable weather and the rural obscurity of Bellingford, in a peacock-blue afternoon dress, complete with drapings over the large bust and a well-sized, glittering brooch on the shoulder. And the high-heeled shoes to match.

    “Oh! Good morning, Captain Haworth! It is you!” she trilled.

    “Yes. Good morning,” he said cautiously.

    “Actually it’s almost noon,” said his wife’s voice from just behind him. “Hullo, Mrs Mason,” she said, joining John in the doorway.

    “Good morning, Mrs Haworth!” beamed the woman. “I thought it was you! I said to John—my John, of course!” she assured John Haworth with a coy laugh: “that looks like the Captain and Mrs Haworth going up the path of Number 11: now, could it be? Because last summer we had some horrid people that tried to squat, you know!”

    Last summer the Haworths had been in Australia, filming The Captain’s Daughter, but Rosie agreed immediately: “Yes; down at Number 3.”

    John had to swallow—not because she’d caught up with local events to that extent, he was in no doubt she would have done so even without the excuse of the sociological study, she was that sort of person—but for God’s sake, Number 3 Moulder’s Way had three walls and part of a roof! Any squatters’d be welcome to it!

    Nodding, Mrs Mason added that the place was a disgrace, such a pity to see such an excellent site going to waste—and did they have any idea who owned it?

    Very probably Rosie did: she and Greg had done endless title searches—either of them would now have qualified for a decent job doing conveyancing in a country solicitor’s office. Oddly enough he had a feeling that Greg’s father would be quite pleased to learn the fellow had settled down to anything as sensible as conveyanc— Yes, well.

    “I’m afraid not,” he said as his wife was smiling blankly and shaking her curly head.

    “John owns this one and Number 7 and Number 9,” said Rosie helpfully. “Not as him, it’s a company or something, his accountant set it up.”

    “Of course!” she beamed. “So, you’re thinking of letting them, Captain?”

    “No,” said Rosie immediately.

    Mrs Mason’s face fell. “Not selling?” she ventured.

    “No, he doesn’t believe in letting property go out of the family,” said Rosie in a firm voice.

    This was true, but John had never expected her to retain it. Possibly not noticing his startled blink, Mrs Mason rejoined eagerly: “Very wise, very wise indeed, Captain! Well, just inspecting them, then? John—my John!”—coy laugh—“was saying they seem to be in very good condition. I must say it is rather a pity to let them stand empty.”

    “We were more or less inspecting them, mm,” agreed John in the faint hope of shaking the woman off, not to say getting home for lunch. “We think one of my cousins might like to stay in one.”

    “Well! A cousin! How very nice!”

    “Two,” contradicted Rosie. “We don’t know for sure they’re both nice.”

    It was Mrs Mason’s turn to blink.

    “One of them’s in hospital, John thinks he won’t be able to come for ages,” she explained with her blinding smile. “The other one could turn out to be anything, John’s never even met him. He’s an American, but he’s a drop-out sort of American, not like the rest of them that went over there.”—John opened his mouth to say that one had gone over there, his mother’s cousin Diane, and thought better of it.—“If he turns out to be noisy or anything like that, you’ll be sure and let us know, won’t you?”

    Hurriedly Mrs Mason assured them she was quite, quite sure that a cousin of the Captain’s wouldn’t be a noisy neighbour.

    “You never know,” rejoined Rosie darkly: “he might own a Harley.”

    “Darling, Luke doesn’t own a Harley, he’s on a walking tour,” said John feebly.

    This apparently washed over Mrs Mason: she immediately launched into the saga of “that awful Potter man” from Number 10.

    “Yes,” said Rosie with her lovely smile as the woman paused for breath, temporarily damming the flow: “they are terribly noisy bikes, aren’t they? But actually, in spite of that five o’clock shadow, Bob Potter’s always been very nice to me. He gave Baby Bunting a little ride on the bike, didn’t he, Baby Bunting?”

    “Mum, Mum,” replied the offspring sleepily from John’s shoulder.

    “Isn’t he a-dor-a-ble! But on the motorbike, Mrs Haworth? Was that wise?”

    “He just sat him on it, he didn’t actually make it go.”—Technical, approved her husband, biting his lip slightly.—“But it was fun, wasn’t it, Baby Bunting? Ya sat on a big bikey! –And I tell ya what, that can last him until he’s twenty-one!” she said threateningly to her husband.

    “Darling, he is twenty-one,” he floundered.

    “Eh? No, ya nana! Not twenty-one months, twenty-one years, and old enough to realise that ruddy Harleys lead to speeding and death!” she retorted vigorously.

    The unfortunate Mrs Mason was now completely reduced to silence—in fact she was looking helplessly from one to the other of them.

    “Yes. I gather the Australian roads are even more frightful than ours—very much longer distances, you see,” John said nicely to her. “And for my part, I’d be happy to see it his last ride on a Harley until he’s fifty-one, Rosie.”

    “Yes,” she said, the flush dying away. “Wouldja, John? Good on ya.”

    “Absolutely,” offered Mrs Mason, faint but pursuing. “So the Australian roads are worse than ours, then?”

    “I think so, Mrs Mason,” she agreed, grimacing.

    This of course gave the woman the opportunity to reply eagerly: “Oh, but please call me Rowena!”

    Rosie nodded happily. “I’m Rosie. Rowena’s a very pretty name; I don’t think I know of anyone else called Rowena.”

    “And I’m John,” said John quickly, before it could become glaringly apparent to the woman that his wife wasn’t going to bother.

    Bridling with pleasure, Rowena Mason agreed she’d call him John, remarking by the way that it was such a coincidence that their husbands were both called John, wasn’t it, Rosie? And so Baby Bunting was twenty-one whole months, was he? Wozza precious, den! And was he walking?

    This was a sore point: Rosie cousin Wendalyn’s little Kieran had walked very early, whereas Baby Bunting appeared to be taking after his Uncle Terence, who hadn't taken a step until he was two.

    “No,” said Rosie on a sour note. “He can stand, but he won’t try to walk.”

    “Darling, his Uncle Terence didn’t walk until he was—”

    “We know! –Sorry Rowena, didn’t mean to shout.”

    “Not at all, my dear! But it’s nothing at all to worry about, you know—” Many instances of slow walkers who had turned out brilliantly in later life were cited. “No, well, when they do start they’re into everything, of course—quite exhausting! But then, you’ve got your nanny, of course!”

    Doubtless the whole village knew the Haworths had a nanny, and very probably Rowena Mason had actually met Yvonne, but nevertheless she then urged Rosie on to divulge the whole story, which she did with great readiness, the facts of Yvonne’s coming from Jersey and being a qualified hairdresser and make-up artist and having been her Personal Dresser during the television series before she became their nanny all having to be exclaimed over.

    This was followed up with further details, solicited and unsolicited, about John’s two cousins. Rather fortunately Rosie didn’t know all that much, and certainly nothing about Colin’s love life, the which would have made an exceedingly juicy, not to say long story, but Luke Beaumont’s involved history, including the stint on a trawler, the canning factory in Canada, grape-picking in California—she’d got that wrong, it was Europe, but John, thinking of his lunch, didn’t bother to correct her—the obligatory ashram in India, the mining in Australia and the organic cotton farming in Central America, was faithfully retailed. Rowena Mason obviously didn’t know whether to express horror or not, the more so as Rosie then immediately assured her he had a degree in civil engineering from MIT. Ending: “Only he’s never done anything with it.”

    He got her away at last, but only at the cost of promising to come to tea with Rowena and John Mason tomorrow afternoon as ever was.

    “Rosie, I was looking forward to a Sunday at home with you and Baby Bunting!”

    “Oh, shit. Sorry. Well, um, afternoon tea won’t take all that long. I can’t see why ya don’t wanna go, it won’t be worse than afternoon tea with anybody else.”

    He took a deep breath. “Tell me in words of one syllable why you want to go, please!”

    “I haven’t been before,” said his wife simply.

    John felt his choler rise. “You mean it’ll give you the chance to inspect the woman’s house for your ruddy statistics!”

    “Ssh! Um, well, I will probably make a few notes afterwards, yeah. But I’d of accepted anyway: I like going to people’s places.”

    “Mm. Sorry, Rosie. Didn’t mean to be grumpy,” he said, taking her hand and squeezing it hard. “I need my lunch!”

    “Yeah,” she agreed mildly.

     They walked on in contented silence for few moments. Then she said: “I’m not absolutely sure that there’s anything for lunch.”

    “I can always dash up to the Superette,” he replied calmly.

    “Thanks, John. Me and Greg sort of got absorbed, all day yesterday. I was gonna ask Yvonne if she’d mind doing a bit of shopping, but I think I forgot. I do remember thinking about it.”

    “Mm. Never mind.”

    Rosie squeezed his hand and smiled him. “Wasn’t it interesting that her name’s Rowena?”

    Fascinating. “Yes,” he managed.

    They walked on in companionable silence, until, round about the top of Harriet Burleigh Street, Baby Bunting started to whinge. It was a horrible sort of “Mee-ah, mee-a-ah,” sound, calculated to drive the average adult insane in very short order.

    “Damp?” asked Rosie in a voice of doom.

    “I’d say both damp and hungry.—“Mee-ah, mee-a-ah! Mee-ah, mee-a-ah!”—“Ssh, Baby Bunting! Dada’s got you! Soon be home!”

    “Waa—aa-aaa!” he roared, suddenly turning purple.

    “Decided he hates Dada,” noted his mother.

    “Yes, the parental inability to magic up food from out of thin air can result in— Where are you going?” he gasped as she suddenly swerved towards a cottage gate.

    “Pam Melly’s place. Come on, John!”

    John just stood there and goggled with the roaring Baby Bunting on his shoulder as she headed up the short garden path of a completely strange cottage. No, well, the cottage itself wasn’t strange: mercifully unrestored, unlike its neighbours, but—

    “I don’t know any Mellys, Rosie.”

    “You do! Seaman Melly!” she retorted fiercely. “Come on!”

    There had been over a thousand men serving on John’s last ship. Numbly he tottered after her.

    Pam Melly looked no more than sixteen to John, but then, he knew he was past it as far as today’s fashions were concerned, not to mention the hairdoes: she seemed to have a knitting-needle in her untidy bun. She was very pleased to receive them, assured the Captain that Stan was at sea again, assisted capably in peeling the layers of padded waterproof trousers and waterproof nappy off the infant, provided a clean nappy—the same brand, John noticed dazedly—and into the bargain gave the still-whingeing Baby Bunting half a banana. It went into the gob immediately, the noise ceasing miraculously, and the big blue eyes shone.

    “We’ve been out too long,” explained Rosie, jigging the small Lily Rose Melly on her shoulder. “We stopped to chat with Mrs Mason—didja know her name’s Rowena? Isn’t that pretty?”

    Pam Melly thought it was very pretty and didn’t know of anyone called that…

    They did finally get away but it was a near-run thing: Pam had already told Rosie that there was stacks left over from her lunch.

    “Sir Walter Scott!” said John rather loudly.

    “Eh?”

    “One of the characters in Ivanhoe is called Rowena!”

    “Yeah, the dumb blonde that he ends up marrying. I can’t think of anyone else called Rowena, though, can you? And it wouldn’t of struck a chord with Pam or Mrs Mason, so I didn’t say it. –What’s up?”

    “Nothing, you incorrigible woman. It was an inspiration, the infant’s cheered up no end,” he admitted feebly.

    “’Course!” said Rosie cheerfully, taking his arm. “Come on!”

    Limply John came on: out of Harriet Burleigh Street and into the top, or westernmost end of the High Street, where there were no houses, through the gap in the hills and left, down the steep, unpaved track to their little south-facing bay. It took all of five minutes. Oh, well!

    There were no lights on in the cottage when he got home the following Monday. Denying to himself the anxiety that had immediately flooded him, John hurried inside. Yes, well. He switched the sitting-room lights on and the pair of them gasped, and straightened up from the blessed computers.

    “Go on, ask us if we’ve been buried in these computers all day,” his wife invited.

    Greg was looking sheepish. “I suppose we did forget to have lunch, Rosie,” he bleated.

    “Yeah, but given we didn’t forget to have a huge morning-tea with Sean, can it signify?”

    Sean Bates was not the long-lost brother of either of them, he was the blessed postie. They were at the end of his run, so— Forget it. He was the long-lost brother of both of them.

    Competently John sorted out that Rosie hadn’t thought what to have for dinner, produced the steak he’d got in Portsmouth, agreed there was enough for Greg (he hadn’t been intending to send him home to his lonely loft over the garage while they gorged themselves on steak, actually), squashed Rosie’s suggestion of sour cream with it with the remark that giving up the Lily Rose stuff was not an excuse for getting fat—not that there was any—and waited for Rosie’s inevitable squashing of Greg’s suggestion of yoghurt.

    “Leave it out, Greg! Your mum’s the only person in the entire universe that can make yoghurt taste good in anything!”

    Grinning, Greg replied: “Dad’s Jasmine Chicken’s not bad, either.”

    This did not indicate something very wrong with the nuclear Singh family, it merely indicated that Greg’s strict father was a professional cook: their restaurant, The Tabla, being conveniently situated just down the road from the Haworths’ London flat. Well, the flat that they shared with Rosie’s gay actor friend, Rupy Maynarde.

    Incautiously John agreed the jasmine chicken was wonderful, thus betraying he’d had it when he was in town last month for committee meetings at the Admiralty, provoking: “You wanker! Meantime Baby Bunting and me were stuck down at this dump, eating frozen fish fingers and flaming cabbage out of the garden because I couldn’t identify anything else of what assorted males have planted out there! And for sure there were no tomatoes, never mind that palaver that went on when you lot claimed you were planting them, there are no tomatoes!”

    “There are no large red, ripe fruits of the tomato plant ready to drop into the hand, true,” John agreed, opening the front door again. “Those pyramid-like structures laden with vines are, however, tomato plants.”

    “Thought you claimed they were bean poles?”

    “Not in the tomato patch,” he said, exiting hurriedly before she could throw something at him.

    Behind him he could quite clearly hear his wife saying exasperatedly: “Now where the fuck’s he gone?” And Greg replying limply: “Yvonne’s place. To get your son.”

    John hurried next-door, his shoulders shaking helplessly.

    The immediate post-prandial period in the Haworth home was of course enlivened by Rosie’s order to put the frying-pan in the ruddy dishwasher, John, it was what it was there for. And it wasn’t until quite some time later, when Greg had pushed off to his loft over the garage to watch sports on TV and they were sitting cosily in front of the fire, Rosie having pointed out loudly that, never mind if the calendar said it was June, this was the south coast of England, and John not having pointed out that he was going to light it anyway, that the Captain got around to saying nicely: “Was there any post today, darling?”

    “Uh—oh. Yeah, actually, think there might of been a large, official-looking envelope from an insurance company or something addressed to you, John. Where did I—?”

    He got up and helped her look.

    “They won’t be behind the curtains in the dinette, Jo—Oh. How the Hell did they get— Never mind, ya found them, Captain Leave-No-Stone-Unturned, good on ya!”

    “I think this might be from your cousin Wendalyn, darling.”

    “Ya mean it’s only got the exact postage in five hundred brightly-coloured Australian stamps? Right, that’s an Aunty Allyson gene. Awful round curly green writing?”—Silently he held it out. “Yeah. I don’t want it, it’ll be full of pics of Little Kieran and skiting as to how advanced Little Kieran is compared to Baby Bunting.” Scowl, scowl. “Like usual.”

    “I thought Little Kieran was sweet,” he said with a smile.

    Rosie was quite clearly affected by this smile, but nevertheless—taking no prisoners, as ever—retorted with: “Of course he is, John, he isn’t old enough yet to be ruined by ruddy Aunty Allyson and start acting out like Sickening Little Taylor!”

    “I’m not perfectly sure I know what ‘acting out’ means, darling, but you’re right, I’m afraid. But at the moment he’s sweet.”

    “Well, you read it, then, John.”

    He opened the fat envelope and a pile of Polaroids slid out and scattered all over the Persian rug. At the moment the rug was occupied by Tim, John’s big black retriever: he looked round at them mildly as they scrambled for the snaps.

    There was a short silence.

    “Are they?”

    “Er, no; actually they mostly seem to be of Sicken— Now you’ve got me doing it! Of Taylor in her ballet tutu. Oh, and tap costume,” he added weakly. “That’s new.”

    “That’d be right,” agreed Rosie, shuddering faintly and picking up another letter. “Cripes!”

    “Anything wrong, darling?”

    “I don’t think so. Um, ’member when we stopped over in Perth on our honeymoon?”

    As a matter of fact, he hadn't forgotten it completely: “Yes, wasn’t it lovely?” he said mildly. “A beautiful city. So that’s from one of your Western Australian relatives?”

    “Mm.” She swallowed. “Anna. Aunty Julia’s Anna, John.”

    He lowered Wendalyn’s letter and the pile of snaps. “Something wrong, Rosie?”

    The question was not wholly unjustified: Anna had been supposed to meet the Haworths at the train terminal after they’d crossed the Nullarbor Plain, Aunty Julia having been unable to, having a long-standing date with a plumber who was to fix the flood she was getting under her kitchen window every time she let the bath water out. They waited for some time but there was no sign of Anna, so John finally rang Julia. She was extremely annoyed, had no idea what had happened to Anna, grimly rubbished any suggestion her daughter might have had an accident, and ordered them to get a taxi, giving him the exact and precise directions as to the route the man had to take so as not to gyp them. They had three days in Perth and never saw Anna at all. No, she hadn’t been in a ghastly accident or been mugged or kidnapped. Just never turned up. Julia eventually got her on the phone and shouted that she had to apologise to them, then forcing the receiver into the unfortunate Rosie’s hand and standing by while the apology was offered, but on her grabbing the receiver back, Anna hung up on her. Julia then demanded angrily of her niece what she’d said to her, and poor Rosie, being pretty out of it after the long trip across Australia—she wasn’t much of a traveller at the best of times, and as John had since ruefully admitted to himself, it hadn't been the best of times by any means, she’d been pregnant with Baby Bunting—went and told her. “She said ‘I’m awfully sorry, Rosie, but I lost my nerve. Mum’s always kidding herself that I can do things that I can’t.’”

    All indications to the contrary, Anna was not a girl just out of school, she was, according to Rosie, forty-odd. But it was very clear—and in case it hadn't been clear to John Rosie had helpfully explained it—that Julia was “the sort that never can see that if a person can’t do a thing they can’t, and no amount of being told they can or to pull themselves together will make them capable of it.” Quite. He had asked cautiously what precisely she thought Anna had lost her nerve about, and Rosie had thought it over and then replied seriously: “Well, there’s several contenders. Driving all the way to the railway terminal and then out to Aunty Julia’s, that’s one. Looking for two people that one she doesn’t know and the other she can’t remember what she looks like on a large railway station she’s never been to before, that’s two. But I gotta admit the strongest contender is being shit-scared of having to meet a senior Royal Navy Captain a good ten years older then her. ’Cos how could she know he’s absolutely adorable and would never, never look down his nose at her?” After which the conversation had become considerably less serious…

    “Ya never did get to meet her, didja?” she now said, scanning the letter. “I never seen her flat, either, I mean, it’s thousands of K to WA from Sydney, and I was always broke ’cos of doing my degree, I could never afford to go over there.”

    “Yes, I know, darling,” he said patiently. “Would you rather I read the letter for myself?”

    “No, ’s’okay, I’ll summarise.”—His lips twitched but he refrained.—“Like, ya know how fancy Aunty Julia’s flat’s garden is, don’tcha?”

    “A little piece of Bali in Perth,” he murmured, the sky-blue eyes twinkling.

    “Yeah: there’s a fair bit of it about in Oz, though I dunno that I’d say that bright blue and pink concrete garden walls are particularly Balinese. But ya gotta have them, plus those statues and a funny wooden sofa. And believe you me, artistic it might be, but it’s horrendously uncomfortable! And how she can bear it without cushions with her bony bum don’t ask me! And all those big-leaved tropical plants, they look ace, but they take gallons of water to keep looking that good—not to mention the fountain. When the whole country’s short of water? Anyway, the thing is, she’s always doing things to the garden and making it good, like that new bright blue pergola with the gold bits on the ends of the roof bits—that looked ace, eh? Only it is only a courtyard garden, there’s only so much even she can do. So,”—she swallowed—“she started in on Anna’s place.”

    “Oh, Christ. So, uh, what was Anna’s reaction, darling?”

    “She sold the dump.”

    He swallowed in spite of himself.

    “The thing is, she can’t stand up to Aunty Julia!”

    “No. –I see, so this is to let you know her new address!”

    “Um, no. See, Aunty Julia really done her nut when she found out: Anna didn’t tell her at all, and she went round there to plant something or root something out and there was this strange couple in the flat! So then she rung Anna’s school. She’s an art teacher, ’member? And she was in class and they put her on to that awful wanker she’s been mixed up with for yonks, forget his name, um, not Brian.” She fumbled with the letter.

    “Bruce,” he murmured.

    She smiled at him. “Elephant! Yeah, that’s it. The place has gone all modern. It’s a private school, John, what your mob call a public school. He is the headmaster, only they don’t call him that. And guess what he ups and tells her? He knows that Anna’s given up her flat, and Aunty Julia isn’t to worry, because he’s leaving the wife and he’s going to marry her at last!”

    “That is good new—No?”

    “No! Listen, she’s been mixed up with the wanker for something like twelve years, wasting the best years of her life while her biological clock’s rusting away, the poor thing must almost be due for the menopause, and don’t tell me women can still have babies in their forties, the whole idea’s nauseating! And it multiplies the possibilities of having a Down’s Syndrome kid!”

    “I know. But given the circumstances, isn’t it the best possible scenario?”

    “No! John, you don’t understand at all! Hang on, I’ll read it to you. Um… Here. ‘I was really wild, because he suddenly said out of the blue “Why don’t we regularise it, darling? You’ve been such a good, patient little darling all these years, I really think it’s time I put things right for you.” As you can imag—’”

    “What?” he shouted, bounding out of his chair and holding out his hand for it. His wife watched approvingly while he read it over to himself, his chest heaving furiously. “The man’s a shit!” he shouted.

    “Good word for him.”

    “Of all the patronising—”

    “You said it! So she’s coming over here!” beamed Rosie.

    “Uh—so she is! Well, that’s splendid! And I tell you what, if she wants to bring her portfolio, I’m sure Fiona will be able to arrange for a couple of galleries to look at it!”

    Rosie eyed him drily. His sister was married to a wealthy City gent and no doubt would be thrilled to assist Anna: not enough to fill her days with, in her huge detached house at Wimbledon. “Yeah, great. –Well, go on!” she prompted. “Put it in the dreaded Diary.”

    Anna wasn’t due for a while, but she had given them all the details of her flight. Feebly John got up and made a note in the diary that sat on his big desk. Then they both settled down to their correspondence again.

    After a while Rosie admitted in a weak voice: “It’s just as well you’ve got the cottages, Captain Capitalist Landowner. We’d never fit them all in here, or at the flat. Um, you don’t mind being landed with all these cousins, do you?”

    “No, of course not! Cuckoo! Besides, two of them are mine.”

    Rosie beamed at him. “What would be the collective noun for cousins? A clutch?”

    Or a collision, or a calamity? –Nonsense! Someone walking over his grave! “A clutch of cousins!” he said with a smile. “Yes: I like it!”