Friends for Life Read online

  She danced listlessly with a couple of cousins, then slipped away before Risa threw her bouquet and they all expected her to catch it. She made a lame excuse about having to be back at the studio to finish an urgent job, and she knew she was being ungracious on her sister’s big day. Bitter tears burned at the back of her eyes as she ran outside and hailed a yellow cab and, once safely inside and on her way, she could not prevent them from bursting forth.

  It wasn’t fair. The one thing in the world she had ever really wanted and Risa had got there first.

  • • •

  Myra answered on the first ring, sounding querulous and anxious but relieved to know she was safe.

  “Is it raining? Was the flight on time? Did you remember to take your raincoat?” (Did you meet anyone?)

  Yes, yes. Georgy knew her mother well and smiled at her predictability. They chatted awhile, then Myra told her not to waste her money and rang off. Georgy dialed the number in Newport Beach but the machine was on and Sylvia’s pleasant voice instructed her to leave a message and they’d be sure to call back. She swallowed her disappointment and went upstairs to unpack.

  Once everything was out of the case and in its place—her wash things in the bathroom, her nightdress on the pillow, the photograph of her father on the bedside table—Georgy went downstairs again and poured herself a large Scotch. It was ten to seven London time but she still felt wide awake and half inclined to go into town if only there were someone to go with. Instead she would scramble some eggs, wash her hair, and try to get some sleep in order to adjust to the time difference. Tomorrow she had work to do and wanted to be at her best the first time she walked into the theater and up onto that stage.

  She sat on the cream-colored sofa and flicked through the evening’s television programs to see if anything took her fancy. One of the things about London was its marvelous television. That was something they were always saying back home and they were right. She was in time to catch the early news and it made her feel good to sit there in her own space, drinking her whiskey and feeling in charge of her fate, slowly becoming part of this city that so much attracted her. After the news came a wildlife program, so she watched that too, kicking off her shoes and beginning to unwind as the alcohol hit the spot. She pulled the barrette from her long curly hair and let it cascade down over her shoulders. Daddy called it her crowning glory and she knew it was her one striking feature, which was why she had never given in to convenience or fashion and allowed it to be cut.

  She switched off the television and went down to the kitchen, neat and impersonal as an operating theater with every possible cooking aid known to man. She beat up a couple of brown eggs, broke off a chunk of the fresh baguette, and spread it thickly with homemade duck pâté, courtesy of her hosts. The door of the fridge was lined with bottles of white wine, so she pulled the cork out of an Australian Chardonnay and settled down for her meal with some muted Bach on Radio 3 as background music. This was exactly how she had always imagined living in London to be: quiet, cultured, and eminently civilized. Light-years from the noise and raucous energy she had left behind her in New York.

  She rinsed the dishes, took another glass of Scotch upstairs, and changed into the fine wool robe she had treated herself to in Bergdorfs. If no one else was going to spoil her, then she would do it herself. The water was hot so she’d have a nice long soak, then wash her hair. She laid out her things, methodical as always, and moved the radio to the bathroom so she could go on listening.

  Only then did Georgy Kirsch let go of her iron control and allow compulsion to get the upper hand. She picked up the telephone one more time and asked Directory Enquiries for the London number of Gus Hardy.

  Chapter Six

  The barn was a good place to hide, dark and cool and full of exciting corners where a small person could secrete himself without fear of detection. He often went there to escape his mother but today he was searching for his brother. The great timbered door stood partly ajar and the men were long gone, driven over in the truck to the Long Meadow for the seeding.

  Normally the place smelled of shadows, musty and comforting like the pages of the old family Bible, but today there was a sharp metallic edge to it which halted him in the doorway and made him want to turn back.

  “Alec?”

  Sunlight slanted across the stone floor in a hard bright triangle from the partially opened door and he glimpsed dark shadows strung across it like a row of paper dolls. Huge dolls and bulky, swaying slightly as if dancing. Curiosity overcame his faint distaste and he ventured farther into the cavernous interior, so suddenly cool after the fierce heat of the afternoon sun.

  “Alec?”

  The thing about big brothers was they did like to creep and terrorize. He faltered on the threshold, balancing nervously on one sneakered foot while he scratched the back of his ankle with the other, wondering if he dared risk losing face by calling it a day and going back home for tea where Ma was making jam. He clutched at the door for support but it gave under his touch and swung wide, throwing the monotone scene into sharp relief and explaining the acrid smell.

  The pigs. They hung like half-deflated blimps, snouts pointing downward in an orderly row so that the blood could flow freely into the aluminum trough placed beneath them for just that purpose. “Good black pudding.” He could imagine his mother’s approval. You did not grow up on a farm without knowing such things but the spectacle was nonetheless shocking. The pigs, his friends: Daisy and Thelma and Santa and Sam, whom he had known since birth and played with until they grew too cumbersome and, Ma said, unpredictable.

  He reeled back, stunned, clutching his throat in horror, lungs filling with the hideous stench, wanting only his mother’s arms about him and the reassurance of her comforting touch. Then he saw his brother.

  “Alec?”

  Lying across the butcher’s block, unmoving, his throat slit from ear to ear in the parody of a grin. And only then did the shadow across the sun-streaked floor move so that he realized he was not alone.

  Chapter Seven

  “You’ve got a lump in there the size of a grapefruit,” said the doctor grimly, pressing cold thumbs into Beth’s abdomen. She walked to her desk and started to write, nodding curtly to indicate it was all right for Beth to put her clothes on.

  “What exactly does that mean?” asked Beth carefully from behind the screen, slipping into her panties, hooking up her bra.

  “Fibroids,” said the doctor with a brisk sort of satisfaction, as if she were enjoying it. “It means, of course, a hysterectomy.”

  “But . . .”

  Beth was silenced. She had no plans for any more children, had put all that sort of thing behind her years ago, was totally happy with just Imogen, couldn’t envisage the thought of more dirty nappies, more potty training, but still. Jesus Christ! She was young yet, and wanted to keep her options open. Zipping up her tracksuit she emerged from behind the screen and stood, dumbfounded, facing the grim-faced stranger who was so casually delivering sentence.

  “Why would you mind?” It was a statement, really, not a question, as the older woman flicked a soulless eye over Beth’s medical history. “It’s not as if you’re still married.”

  And that, apparently, was that. Beth was speechless, her killer repartee deserting her for once. This cold bitch had made her pronouncement and no further discussion was called for. She gave Beth a tepid smile to indicate her time was up and glanced toward the door.

  Beth tottered home meekly bearing a letter to the hospital, to find Deirdre and Imogen huddled as usual in the kitchen by the Aga, watching Neighbours on the television.

  “I’ve got to have an operation,” she wailed, opening a bottle of New Zealand Cabernet and fishing three clean glasses out of the dishwasher. Imogen was allowed the occasional snifter on special occasions or at moments of crisis, just as long as she didn’t tell her dad.

  “She says I need a hysterectomy—at my age—but it doesn’t matter because I don’t need any more
babies because I’m not married.”

  Deirdre sniffed and resumed peeling carrots.

  “Knowing you,” said Imogen, “you’ll probably want one now. Yuk, an awful squalling brat! Can you imagine? I’m off to live in Islington the minute it arrives.”

  “Shut up,” said Beth, aiming a swipe at her. “This isn’t funny. It’s serious stuff.” She turned to Deirdre with a tragic face.

  “What am I going to do?”

  “These days,” said Deirdre dourly, “it’s all plain sailing. They have you in and out and don’t even have to open you up it’s so easy, just hoover it out and send you home. Sounds good to me. What do you want with periods and all that stuff? I’d count my blessings if I were you.”

  “But I’m still young,” wailed Beth. “I’ve still got my future ahead of me. Supposing I meet Person Wonderful tomorrow. Supposing he wants to settle down and have some kids. Supposing no one fancies me anymore when my juices are all dried up.”

  “You’re not thinking of having Oliver’s baby?” asked Imogen suspiciously.

  “Heaven forfend, the very idea!”

  But it had crossed her mind, she was a liar if she didn’t admit it. Poor man, he had lived all these years in that sham of a marriage, with no little baby of his own to cuddle and no one to carry on the family name or inherit the family wealth. Of course she’d thought of it. How could you love a man so fiercely and not have dreams of one day carrying his child? But she said nothing to her daughter or the disapproving bird of doom still scraping carrots across the table.

  “It’s the principle that counts,” was all she said. “I’m going to talk to Jane.”

  • • •

  Jane put her right.

  “Don’t listen to the doctor, what does she know about childbearing and being a real woman? That’s the trouble with the medical profession these days, they always want to take the easy way out. You don’t have to have a hysterectomy, not if it’s only fibroids and they’re not malignant. Talk to the consultant and see what he has to say. Fight for your womb if you must. Don’t let them castrate you unless it’s really necessary. Remember, it’s a man’s world and we women have to stick together.”

  • • •

  “Dad,” said Imogen, biting deeply into her cheeseburger, “can fibroids kill?”

  “What?” Gus leaned forward to hear what she was saying. They were having a late lunch in the Hard Rock Café, having spent the morning looking at the dinosaurs.

  “Fibroids!” shrieked Imogen, through a mouthful of crumbs. “Are they fatal?”

  Gus, thinking she was still back in the Neolithic age, shook his head vaguely and went on studying the framed poster for a Rolling Stones concert on the wall beside him. They were great, these Sundays spent together, father and daughter, but he did find them tiring, particularly after the sort of week he had just had, putting those cretins in the chorus through their paces.

  “She says she can’t have another baby.”

  The background noise was deafening; what was it about kids these days, they seemed to have eardrums made of steel. Or was he just getting old? Gus smiled vaguely and successfully blocked out the sound of the sixties while his fingers drummed on the table the more familiar rhythms of Autumn Crocus. Seven weeks till opening. The way he felt today he doubted they would get there, not intact.

  Imogen sucked her Coke through a double straw and studied her father’s face. She was really proud of him and it was great to have him back in London, even if he didn’t live with them. She loved it on the rare occasions he turned up at school and the other kids noticed him; some even asked him for his autograph. Compared with the other fathers, hers was fairly sensational, with his athletic body and silver hair even though he was still quite young. Her best friend, Sylvie, said he looked like Richard Gere. She watched the way women looked at him and was proud to be the one hanging on his arm, his only girl, so he always told her.

  There was that girl at the theater, the American. She certainly had the hots for him the way she carried on. With her bossy manner and fancy cameras and the affected way she flicked back her hair whenever she wanted to be the center of attention. She was always around when he was rehearsing, running up to him backstage with silly queries, trying to grab his attention in a really gross way. And she wasn’t even pretty. Imogen could not understand why he gave her so much of his valuable time.

  “Is she your girlfriend?” she asked, snapping Gus out of his inner dialogue. There had to be a reason.

  “What?” Gus was miles away, back in the theater.

  “That girl. The thin one, the photographer. Is she your girlfriend?”

  “Who, Georgy? No. She’s here on an assignment for one of the New York magazines, doing a photo story on the opening of a musical. She’s very talented. Don’t you like her?”

  “Not much. She looks like a stick insect.”

  “She’s a bit intense.”

  Gus laughed and Imogen curled her toes with pleasure.

  “Or a weasel, with that rodent nose and those fussy little paws always on the fidget.”

  “Now you’re being beastly, sweetie. She’s a perfectly nice person, you just don’t know her very well.”

  That was Dad all over. Always sticking up for people, taking the underdog’s side.

  “Actually, you could do a lot worse than turn her into a friend. She started off as a dancer before she switched to being a professional photographer. You have more in common than you might think.”

  Gus was looking at Imogen and thinking how well she had turned out. She was great, this kid of his, with her glossy brown hair and huge dark eyes and persistent chatter that showed how bright she was. She had grown enormously since he was last in town and looked like reaching Beth’s height, though she was far more slender than Beth had ever been. With luck, he’d make a dancer out of her yet, though he knew it must never be mentioned in her mother’s hearing.

  Pity, really, because that was what had finally finished the marriage, though he wondered now how long it could have limped on if Beth, with her usual impetuousness, had not made a snap decision and walked out. All he had ever wanted was to work in the theater and she had backed him fully until the child came along. And then, overnight it seemed, all that northern middle-class caution had surfaced and it was mortgages and settling down and permanence that occupied her mind, instead of the excitement and uncertainty and magic of their life together.

  Yet here, eleven years on, was this beautiful child all set to be a dancer, if only her mother would let her. If only she would allow her duckling to fly where she herself had not dared. Gus was glad to be back in London for a while, close enough to take a look if not to interfere. This was his child too and a father had his rights, even if they were benign ones. He was fully aware of the burden Beth had had to bear these past eleven years and he would never forget or cease to be grateful. For her grounding had enabled his own star to shoot. And for that, if for nothing else, he would love her forever.

  Which reminded him. What was it the child had just said about a baby?

  Imogen’s lemon meringue pie arrived and she dug into it while Gus lit a cigarette and wondered how to broach the subject. She had grown up so quickly he found it hard to get her right. Sometimes she was a child, sometimes a woman. There was not much that passed her critical eye.

  “This bloke, the one your mother’s seeing, what’s he like?”

  “Oliver? Oh, he’s all right. Quite nice really. Super car. Not much sense of humor.”

  Gus laughed.

  “Doesn’t sound much like Beth.”

  Imogen gazed at him seriously and licked the cream from her silver brace. Once she got through the ugly duckling phase, she was going to be a cracker.

  “She was lonely, Dad. What else was she to do?”

  Ouch. The accusation was so direct he was startled and mentally backed off. Imogen softened.

  “We don’t see a lot of him because he travels.”

  “Do you think
it will last? That she’ll marry him?” Beth had always sworn she’d never marry again, but you never could tell, things changed. And besides, he no longer had the right even to comment.

  Imogen laughed.

  “No way. Besides, he’s already got a wife!”

  That was news. Certainly not like Beth.

  “But the baby. What were you saying about a baby?”

  The laugh vanished and the brown eyes grew stern.

  “Dad,” said Imogen in exasperation, “you never do listen to a word I say.”

  • • •

  The consultant was better-looking and male, as well as far more diplomatic, but delivered much the same message as the doctor in the clinic, only more expensively.

  “I’m afraid,” he said cutely to Beth, steepling his fingers in an attempt to look older than his rather junior age, “ladies get very attached to their wombs. But you see, my dear . . .”

  (“Don’t ‘my dear’ me,” snarled the voice in Beth’s head.)

  “. . . what we don’t need anymore is often better out of the way.”

  He smiled at her winsomely; he had ridiculously long eyelashes for a man.

  “Do you still have your tonsils?” he asked politely. Or your appendix, your adenoids, your wisdom teeth. Beth suspected she knew what was coming.

  “That’s not the point. Just because the operation’s more difficult doesn’t mean I can’t have it. What’s mine’s mine and I’m hanging on to it. I’ve paid my contributions just like everyone else and I’m entitled to a say in my own future, thank you very much.”

  Beth was quite surprised at her own vehemence but for once she really meant what she was saying. For someone who rarely had a cause, here was one worth fighting for. She was damned if they were going to take away her sexuality just because of some lump. She glowered at the cute consultant and waited for him to demolish her argument in his smooth, patronizing way.