‘What a gorgeous idea,’ said Daisy.
‘Hush, she’s coming,’ said Rupert. ‘I’ll let you know when we’re going, and arrange for you to have a set of keys.’
Next day it snowed and Ricky gave Eddie a virtually new red-and-silver sledge he’d bought for Will one year there had been no snow.
‘Pointless it eating its head off in the attic.’
‘It’s Mum’s birthday next week,’ confided Eddie. ‘What d’you think she’d like?’
The day before Daisy’s birthday Drew arrived bearing flowers, champagne, a side of smoked salmon and a great deal of silk underwear.
Later, pretending she’d bought it all herself as a birthday treat, she couldn’t resist showing the underwear to Eddie and to Violet, who’d come home for the weekend.
‘You goofed there, Mum,’ said Eddie, disapprovingly. ‘Why waste a fortune on stuff no-one’s going to see?’
Next day they brought her breakfast in bed. Violet gave her a black polo neck, Eddie, having borrowed a fiver off his mother, gave her some fishnet tights. Around twelve Violet said, ‘Ricky’s asked us for a drink.’
‘We can’t,’ said Daisy. ‘We’ve imposed on him enough. He doesn’t know it’s my birthday, does he?’ Thirty- nine seemed horribly old.
‘Of course he doesn’t,’ said Violet.
‘Happy birthday,’ said Ricky as she walked through the front door.
‘Pigs,’ hissed Daisy to the grinning Violet and Eddie.
‘Happy birthday,’ chorused all Ricky’s grooms and Joel, the farm manager.
After a glass of red wine, incapable of keeping a secret, Eddie told his mother that Ricky had a present for her.
‘Shut your eyes,’ he added, at a nod from Ricky.
Taking her hands, the children led her up flight after flight of stairs. Acutely aware of fishnet tights wrinkling around her ankles, Daisy wondered if Ricky was following behind. She was walking on bare boards now. Then she heard a door being opened and felt warmth.
‘OK, you can look now,’ said Eddie.
She was in a large attic room, with a window stretching the length of the far wall looking over the Eldercombe Valley to the Bristol Channel. A low winter sun was pouring in. By the window was an easel complete with canvas covered in white drawing paper. On a side table were sketch pads, more rolls of paper, a complete set of new paints, rubbers, pencils, brushes in a jar and a huge bowl of snowdrops.
‘The smock’s from Ethel, so you won’t get paint on your clothes any more,’ said Violet.
‘I don’t understand,’ muttered Daisy.
Ricky’s face was expressionless. ‘It’s your new studio. I’m f-f-fed up with you covering my cottage with paint.’
‘Oh,’ gasped Daisy. ‘The view, the light, the peace. It’s incredible!’
‘There’s no excuse for you to be sidetracked now, Mum,’ said Violet.
‘Here are the keys to the front door.’ Ricky dropped them into her hand. ‘Come and go as you like.’
‘But I’ll be in your way.’
‘I’m out most of the time. Seems a shame to waste such a nice room.’
‘I must be dreaming.’ Daisy wandered towards the window.
On the horizon was a streak of palest turquoise below a lavender sky. Opal-blue smoke rose straight up from chimneys and bonfires. The woods looked soft and fluffy like the stretched belly of a tabby kitten. Turning, she went up to Ricky and quickly kissed him on the side of his face where there was no scar.
‘Ricky can be your toyboy, Mum,’ said Eddie.
‘It was all Ricky’s idea,’ said Violet as they floated home an hour later. ‘He’s so knocked out with Will’s portrait.’
‘He’s a good bloke,’ said Eddie. ‘We’re going to shoot clays this afternoon.’
‘And he says I can practise driving on one of his flat fields,’ said Violet.
The only person not pleased with the arrangement was Drew.
‘How can I possibly get in touch with you if you’re up at Ricky’s all the time?’
A week later Rupert flew into Palm Beach in a furious temper. Overdoing things, Taggie had nearly lost the baby. James Benson, Rupert’s doctor, had ordered her to rest for the next month and had flatly refused to let her travel with Rupert when he was forced to fly over and sort out the ghastly row that had blown up over the documentary on Perdita Macleod.
Venturer had already sunk a great deal of money in the project. Cameron Cook and a very expensive crew were out there filming, and now the mighty Ferranti’s had come down like a ton of bricks, saying that their exclusive contract with Perdita precluded her from taking part in anything else.
Cameron Cook had then waved Venturer’s contract at Ferranti and was defiantly filming Perdita in an early Rolex Gold Cup match when a posse of Ferranti heavies, secretly alerted by Red, rolled up and frightened Cameron off. Knowing how much it took to frighten Cameron, who’d made programmes in Beirut and Grenada, Rupert realized that the heavies must have been very heavy indeed.
Cameron’s temper had not been improved by Perdita turning on the crew, whose presence had made her miss two easy passes, and screaming at them to eff off and make their piss-pot film somewhere else. It was then that the lawyers moved in.
They had now reached a stalemate with neither side prepared to budge an inch, but Ferranti’s were infinitely richer than Venturer and had, furthermore, employed Winston – ‘If you’re innocent, you don’t need me’ – Chalmers, Florida’s toughest lawyer, to act for them. Dino Ferranti, the sales director, who was an old enemy of Rupert’s and disliked him intensely, was intending to take no prisoners in the ensuing battle. At this stage Cameron had reluctantly begged Rupert to fly out. It was the sort of tussle he would have relished in the old days, but not since he married Taggie. Under her gentle influence he had shed much of his aggression and he detested letting her out of his sight for a second – particularly now she was having a baby.
They had been married fourteen months now, during which time Rupert had never dreamed he would suffer such extremes of happiness and misery. There was the miracle of her love, not just for him but for his children. Every day he expected some flaw in her character to be revealed, some pettiness or bloody-mindedness, but she had not revealed even a toenail of clay. There had been the unbelievable joys of initiating her sexually, slowly, slowly breaking down her shyness and inhibitions, until he was rewarded a thousand-fold by the passion and enthusiasm of her response.
But this wonderful happiness had a flipside. Rupert was absolutely terrified of losing her. With his track record, Taggie was the one who should have been jealous, but she trusted him implicitly and felt so blessed that he had married her rather than any of the legions of others that she had no right to question her exclusivity. It was Rupert who suffered hell-pains. He was jealous of every man she talked to, of her prodigal, importunate family who were always dropping in to borrow money and enjoy Taggie’s cooking, of people she met in the street, even of his own children, dogs and horses. And now she was having his child and he was scared he might be jealous of that too. Although he made heroic attempts to curb this jealousy, every so often it overwhelmed him and he found himself biting her utterly innocent head off. Then, crucified when he saw the bewilderment in her big eyes, he pulled her into his arms frantic with remorse.
As the months passed things had got better, as Taggie, who originally had such a low opinion of herself she couldn’t imagine anyone being miserable when denied her company, gradually realized how passionately Rupert loved her, and that these outbursts of rage were merely expressions of his love. As Rupert became more sure of her, the outbursts became fewer.
And, although she still slipped the odd hundred to her family, she had persuaded them to telephone before they dropped in. It had helped, too, that Rupert had installed electric gates after her mother, Maud, had arrived unannounced after a row with Declan to find Rupert in the sitting room using a pastry brush to paint Taggie’s labia with olive oil before photographing her in the nude.
They had not spent a night apart since they were married, and now Rupert had to leave her at the Priory in the somewhat dubious care of Maud and Declan. But at least it gave Daisy a chance to paint flowers and animals all over the nursery walls and, flying overnight, he hoped he would be able to sort out Ferranti’s in a day and fly back
