your number I’ll ask him to ring you back,’ which he so seldom did that Harriet was on the end of a lot of abuse from people — mostly women — who rang a second and third time and were convinced Harriet hadn’t passed on the message. He also made notes, as thoughts struck him, on bits of paper and telephone directories all over the house; and after the day, when she had to go through four dustbins to find the magazine Cory had scribbled a few lines of script on the back of, she learnt not to throw anything away again without asking him.
One afternoon in early March, however, Cory was sitting in the kitchen eating raisins absent-mindedly out of a packet and reading one of Jonah’s comics. William sat propped up on a red rug spread out on the flagstone floor, beating a saucepan aimlessly with a wooden spoon, gurgling happily and gazing at the gleaming copper pans that hung from the walls. Harriet, who’d that morning read an article in a magazine about the dangers of an all-tinned- food diet for babies, was rather dispiritedly sieving cabbage and carrots, when the telephone rang. Glad of any diversion, Harriet crossed the room to answer it, but it stopped on the third ring, then just as she got back to her carrots, it started again, rang three times and stopped. Then it started again and this time kept on ringing:
Sighing, Harriet put down the sieve again.
‘Don’t answer it,’ snapped Cory. He had gone very pale. ‘It’s only someone playing silly games.’
Then it stopped, then started the three rings stop, three rings stop formula again. Then kept on ringing for about three minutes. Harriet noticed the way his hands gripped that comic.
‘I’m going out,’ said Cory. ‘And don’t answer the telephone.’
Next minute she heard the front door slam.
The ringing kept on. It must be the secret code of someone he doesn’t want to talk to, thought Harriet. It was getting on her nerves. She’d run out of bread, so she decided to walk William in his pram down to the village and get some. She enjoyed shopping; she was beginning to know all the shop people who made a tremendous fuss of William.
It was a cold, cheerless day. The only colour came from the rusty bracken and even that lay flattened by the recent snow. The village was deserted except for a few scuttling, purple-faced women in head-scarves. Harriet came out of the bakers, warming her hands on a hot french loaf, and went into the supermarket opposite. She immediately noticed one customer, a girl with bright orange curls, wearing an emerald green coat with a mock fur collar and cuffs, stiletto-heeled green boots, and huge dark glasses. Taking tins down from the shelves she was attempting to lob them into the wire basket she had placed in the middle of the floor.
‘Loves me,’ she muttered as a tin of lemon meringue pie filling reached its destination safely, ‘Loves me not,’ as she missed with a bag of lentils, ‘Loves me not, oh hell,’ she added as she also missed with a tin of dog food. A child with very dissipated blue eyes, and a pudding basin haircut was systematically filling the pockets of his waisted blue coat with packets of fruit gums. The shopkeeper, who was trying to find a packet of washing-up- machine powder for another customer, was looking extremely disapproving.
The girl in dark glasses looked up and peered at Harriet.
‘Hullo!’ she said to Harriet, ‘You must be Cory Erskine’s nanny. I’m Sammy Sutcliffe; I look after Elizabeth Pemberton’s kids across the valley; they’re more or less the same age as Chattie and Jonah; we ought to get them together.’
‘Oh that would be lovely,’ said Harriet, suddenly craving companionship her own age.
‘We’ve been skiing, or I’d have come over before,’ said the girl.
‘You look terribly brown,’ said Harriet.
‘Yes,’ said the girl, ‘but it only goes down to my collar bones. Stripped off, I look like a toffee apple.’
She giggled and took off her glasses to show large, rather bloodshot, green eyes framed by heavily blacked lashes.
‘They’re to hide my hangover, not to keep out the sun,’ she said. ‘You never see the sun in this backwater.’
She put the lentils, which were spilling out of their packet, back on the shelf, took another packet and moved towards the cash desk.
‘And put those sweets back, you little monster,’ she screeched at the small boy, who was busy now appropriating tubes of Smarties. ‘You’ve got the morals of an alley cat. He’s a little bugger our Georgie,’ she added to Harriet. ‘Just like his Dad, except his Dad pinches bottoms rather than sweets.’
Outside she admired William.
‘What a little duck,’ she said. ‘You must be knackered looking after three of them. Why don’t you bring Chattie and William over to tea tomorrow and I’ll fill you in on all the local scandal?’
‘Gosh, thanks awfully,’ said Harriet.
‘Ours is the big house stood back from the river on the Skipton Road, just beyond the village,’ said Sammy. ‘You’ll recognize it by the sound of crashing crockery. Don’t be alarmed. It’ll only be my boss hurling the Spode at her hubby. Actually I think Cory’s coming to dinner tonight. She rather fancies him, my boss. Can’t say I blame her. I think he’s lovely too — looks straight through one in such a god-damned sexy way.’
Cory got home about eight. He looked terrible. He’s been in the pub, thought Harriet. She accosted him with a list of telephone messages.
‘Mrs Kent-Wright rang. Could you open a fete in May, and if not could you find one of your show business friends to do it?’
‘No,’ said Cory. ‘I couldn’t.’
‘A lady from
‘No,’ said Cory, ‘ring and say I can’t.’
‘And Elizabeth Pemberton rang to say they’re wearing black ties this evening.’
‘Oh, Christ,’ said Cory bounding upstairs. ‘I’d forgotten. Bring me a drink up in my dressing room, would you?’
In twenty minutes he was gone, leaving the bathroom awash, five towels at high tide, and his five o’clock shadow in the basin.
Through her two-Mogadon-induced slumber Harriet heard ringing and ringing. Don’t answer she thought, it’s someone trying to get through with a secret code. She pulled the blanket over her head. The ringing went on. It was the doorbell. Cory had a key. Who the hell could it be calling at that hour? Burglars, she thought in terror, then realized they’d hardly be ringing the bell. It must be some maniac off the moor, bent on rape. Wearing only her short scarlet nightgown, her hair falling in tangled curls down her back, she turned on all the lights, and nervously crept downstairs. Tadpole emerged, frowsty and bug-eyed, from the kitchen, and thumped his tail.
‘You’re a fine watch dog,’ she said. The ringing went on. The chain was on the door. She opened it an inch.
‘Who is it?’ she said nervously.
‘It’s me, Cory.’
‘Oh God, I’m sorry,’ she said undoing the chain. ‘I thought you had a key.’
He stood in the doorway, swaying slightly. He was deathly pale; there was a cut on his forehead where the blood had dried; his tie was crooked, his hair ruffled. He looked at her intently, trying to focus but squinting slightly like a Siamese cat.
‘What have you done to your head?’ she said, thinking irrationally of Elizabeth Pemberton’s flying Spode saucers. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I am,’ he said in a blurred voice. ‘The car’s a write off.’
He walked into the house unsteadily, heading towards the drawing room.
‘Oh my God,’ said Harriet running after him. ‘You poor thing, sit down at once.’ She dived under the table, pulling her nightgown as far as it would go over her bottom, to put on the lights by the fire. ‘I’m so terribly sorry. Shall I ring for the doctor?’
‘I’m perfectly all right,’ said Cory. ‘I ran out of fags on the way home, which didn’t help.’ He took a cigarette with a shaking hand out of the green jade box on the table. Harriet found a match and lit it for him.
‘I’ll get you a cup of strong, sweet tea,’ she said.
‘You can fix me a drink,’ said Cory.
He’s had far too much, thought Harriet. ‘You might be concussed,’ she said aloud.
‘I’m OK,’ he said irritably. ‘I walked all the way home from the other side of the village, following the white lines in the middle of the road admittedly; so I’ve had plenty of time to work up a thirst. So if you please. .’
