Windfallen, Page 20

"So it wasn't a success, then," Camille said when the mask was fully applied.

  "Oh, no. I took your advice, love. I bought two outfits in the end." Evie's voice lowered. "I've never seen Leonard's face like that in thirty-two years of marriage. He thought his ship had come in." She paused. "I thought I'd killed him afterward."

  "But he's not talking about getting that cable television thing anymore? The one with the Dutch channels?"

  "Nope, or taking up bowling. So you've done me a real favor there, Camille. A real favor. Can I have some of those eye pads again? They were lovely last time."

  Camille Hatton padded her way over to the cupboard and reached up to the fourth shelf where she kept her Cooling Eye Pads. She had been busy this morning; normally she didn't have this many appointments unless there was a wedding or a dance on at the Riviera Hotel. But the summer season was suddenly edging closer, and all over town the female inhabitants were treating themselves, priming themselves for the annual influx of guests.

  "Do you want the tea ones or the cucumber ones?" she called, feeling for the boxes.

  "Ooh. Tea, please. Speaking of which, Tess couldn't make me a cup, could she? I'm absolutely gasping."

  "No problem," Camille said, and called for her young assistant.

  "There was one thing that made me laugh, though. Just between you and me. Here, come over here. I don't want to shout it across the salon. Did I tell you about the feathers . . . ?"

  The onset of the spring months always seemed to make people want to talk more. It was as if the March winds that picked up, blowing in from the Channel, quietly shifted away the stasis of winter, reminding people of the possibilities for change. That and, in the ladies' case, the new influx of women's magazines.

  When Camille's boss, Kay, had opened the salon, nearly nine years ago, the women had been shy at first. They'd been reluctant to try the treatments, fearful that it looked in some way overly indulgent. They would sit rigid and silent as she smoothed and pasted, as if waiting for ridicule or for her to make some dreadful mistake. Then, gradually, they began to come regularly. And about the time that the Seventh-Day Adventists took over the old Protestant church, they began to talk.

  Now they told Camille everything: about unfaithful husbands, recalcitrant children, about the heartbreaks of lost babies and the joys of new ones. They told her things that they wouldn't have told a vicar; they joked--about lust and love and libidos battered, like Leonard's, into new life. And she never told. She never judged, or laughed, or condemned. She just listened as she worked and then, occasionally, tried to offer some gentle suggestion to make them feel better about themselves. Your congregation, Hal had joked. But that had been back when Hal still joked.

  She leaned forward over Evie's face, feeling the moisturizing mask harden under her fingertips. It was a tough environment for skin, a seaside town. The salt and wind blew tiny lines prematurely into a woman's face, aged and freckled it, remorselessly stripping away whichever moisturizer was applied. Camille carried hers in her handbag and reapplied it throughout the day. She had a thing about skin that felt dry; it made her shiver.

  "I'll peel that off in a minute," she said, tapping Evie's cheek. "I'll let you drink your tea first. Tess is just coming."

  "Oh, I do feel better, love." Evie leaned back in the seat, making the leather squeak under her considerable bulk. "I come out of this place a whole new woman."

  "Sounds like your Leonard thinks so anyway."

  "Here's your tea. You don't take sugar, do you Mrs. Newcomb?" Tess had a photographic memory for tea and coffee requirements. It was an invaluable asset in a beauty salon.

  "Ooh, no, that's just lovely."

  "Phone, Camille. I think it's your daughter's school."

  It was the school secretary. She spoke in the firm yet oleaginous tones of those accustomed, through a steely charm, to getting their own way.

  "Is that Mrs. Hatton? Oh, hello, Margaret Stevens here. We've had a little problem with Katie, and we wondered if you could possibly come and pick her up."

  "Is she hurt?"

  "No, not hurt. She's just not very well."

  There was nothing that clenched the heart like an emergency call from the school, Camille thought. For working mothers it held a potent mixture of relief when the child turned out not to be injured and irritation that they were going to jettison the working day.

  "She says she's not felt very well for a few days." The supposedly offhand remark held a mild rebuke. Don't send your children to school ill, it said.

  Camille paused, thought of her appointment book. "I don't suppose you've rung her father, have you?"

  "No, we like to ring the mother first. That's who the child tends to ask for."

  Well, that told me, she thought.

  "Okay," she said. "I'll be along as soon as I can. Tess," she said, replacing the handset on the wall, "I've got to go and pick Katie up. Not well, apparently. I'll try and sort something out, but you may have to cancel some of this afternoon's appointments. I'm really sorry."

  There were only a few ladies contented to have Tess minister to them instead. They didn't feel they could tell Tess the stuff they told her. Too young, somehow. Too . . . But Camille knew what they really meant.

  "There's a lot of it about," said Evie from under her mask. "Sheila from the hotel has been under the doctor almost ten days now. Winter was too warm, I reckon. All the bugs have been breeding."

  "You're nearly done, Evie. Do you mind if I go? Tess will put your tightening moisturizer on."

  "You go ahead, love. I'll be off soon anyway. I promised Leonard a fish supper, and I've run out of oven chips."

  KATIE HAD FALLEN ASLEEP UNDER HER RUG. SHE HAD apologized, with her peculiar mixture of eight-year-old maturity going on twenty-eight, for interrupting her mother's working day and had then said simply that she'd like to sleep. So Camille sat there beside her for a while, her hand resting on Katie's covered limbs, feeling powerless and anxious and vaguely annoyed at the same time. The school nurse had said Katie looked very pale and asked whether the dark shadows under her eyes meant she was staying up too late. Camille had been affronted at her tone, at her unspoken suggestion that what they politely referred to as Camille's "situation" meant that she might not always be aware quite how late her daughter was awake.

  "She doesn't have a television in her room, if that's what you mean," she said abruptly. "She goes to bed at half past eight, and I read her a story."

  But the nurse had said that twice this week Katie had fallen asleep during lessons. And that she seemed lethargic, lackluster. And reminded Camille that her daughter had been ill not two weeks ago. "Perhaps she's a bit anemic," the nurse suggested, and somehow her kindness made Camille feel even worse.

  On the slow walk home, Camille had asked if it had anything to do with her and Daddy, but Katie had said irritably that she was "just ill," in a tone of voice that suggested the conversation was closed. Camille didn't push it. She had handled it well, they all said. Possibly too well.

  She bent down and kissed the sleeping form of her daughter, then stroked the silky muzzle of Rollo, their labrador. He had settled himself with a sigh at her feet, his wet nose brushing against her bare leg. She sat for some moments, listening to the steady ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece and the distant hum of traffic outside. She was going to have to ring him. She took a deep breath.

  "Hal?"

  "Camille?" She never rang him at work anymore.

  "I'm sorry to bother you. It's just that I needed to talk about tonight. I was wondering if you'd mind coming back a bit early."

  "Why?"

  "Katie's been sent home from school. And I need to go out and catch up on a couple of appointments that I had to cancel this afternoon. See if I can reschedule."

  "What's wrong with her?" In the background she could hear nothing but the sound of a distant radio, none of the sounds of hammering, clamping, or voices that had once indicated a thriving workshop.

  "Just some viru
s or other. She's a bit low, but I don't think it's anything serious."

  "Oh. Good."

  "The school nurse thinks she might be a bit anemic. I've got some iron pills."

  "Right. Yes, I suppose she has been a bit pale." He paused. Tried to sound casual. "So who are you going to see?"

  She had known that was coming. "I haven't organized anything yet. I just wanted to see if it was possible."

  She could hear him struggling. She closed her eyes, wishing he didn't.

  "Well, I suppose there's nothing I couldn't bring home."

  "Are you busy?"

  "No. In fact, it's been dead all week. I've been working out savings on toilet paper and lightbulbs."

  "Well, as I said, I've got nothing fixed. If no one's available, I won't need you back early."

  They were so polite. So solicitous.

  "No problem," he said. "You don't want your customers getting upset. No point jeopardizing our one good business. Just--just ring me if you need picking up from anywhere. I can always get your mum to sit with Katie for five minutes."

  "Thanks, love, that's really kind."

  "No problem. Better go."

  CAMILLE AND HAL HATTON HAD BEEN MARRIED FOR precisely eleven years and one day when she revealed to him that his suspicions about Michael, the estate agent from London, had been correct. Her timing, it is fair to say, stank. They had just woken up after celebrating their wedding anniversary. But then Camille was a fairly straightforward person--or at least she'd thought she was until the Michael episode--and her talent for comfortably carrying other people's secrets did not extend to her own.

  They had been happily married; everyone said so. She said so, on the occasions when she said anything. She was not outwardly romantic. But she had loved Hal with a fierce passion that had not, unlike in her friend's marriages, gradually dissipated into something more relaxed (their euphemism, her mother said, for sexless). They had made a handsome pair. Hal, it was widely agreed, was "fit," while she was tall and strong, with thick blond hair and a chest like a cartoon barmaid's. And he, with his university education and his prospects and his skill at restoring antique furniture--he had been prepared to take her on. Because not everyone would have, in spite of her obvious charms. And perhaps because of all these things, their evident passion for each other had been so all-consuming, and so long-lasting, that it had become something of a joke among their friends. (When they joked, however, Camille had always heard a tinge of something else in their voices, something like envy.) It was the best way they had of communicating. When he was silent and withdrawn and she felt unable to bridge the gap to him, when they had argued and she didn't know how to bring him home, the sex had always been there. Deep, joyous, restorative. Undiminished by Katie's arrival. If anything, she had wanted him more as the years wore on.

  And that had been part of the problem. When Hal had started up on his own and moved to new premises over at Harwich, the business had taken up increasing amounts of his time. He had to stay late, he would explain in another late-night telephone call. The first year of any new business was crucial. She had tried to understand, but her physical longing for him--as well as the practical problems of not having him around the house--had multiplied.

  Then the recession had struck, and furniture restoration somehow toppled down people's list of priorities, and Hal had grown more tense and distant, some nights failing to come home at all. The faint stench of sweat on his clothes and stubble on his chin told of another night on the sofa of his offices, his grim demeanor of staff laid off, bills unpaid. And he had not wanted to sleep with her. Too tired. Too beaten down by it all. Unused to failure. And Camille, who had never known rejection in her thirty-five years, felt panicked.

  That was where Michael had come in. Michael Bryant, new in town and up from London to capitalize on the growing demand for beach huts and bungalows by the sea. He'd wanted her from the start, had wasted no time in telling her so. And eventually, demented with grief at the perceived loss of her husband, bereft of the physical love that sustained her, she had succumbed.

  And regretted it immediately afterward.

  And made the mistake of telling Hal.

  He had raged at first, then wept. And she had thought, hopefully, that the expulsion of such passion might be a good sign, because it showed that he still cared about her. But then he'd grown cold and withdrawn, had moved into the spare room and, ultimately, up the road to Kirby-le-Soken.

  Three months later he returned. He still loved her, he said, muttering furiously into his chest. He would never not love her. But it was going to take a while to trust her.

  She had nodded, mutely, just grateful for her second chance. Grateful that Katie wasn't going to become another in a long line of depressing statistics. Hopeful that they could rebuild the love they once had.

  A year on, they were still tiptoeing through minefields.

  "SHE FEELING BETTER?"

  In the front room, just out of earshot, Katie sat, glazed-eyed in front of a blistering run of cartoon explosions.

  "She says so. We've been stuffing her with iron tablets. I dread to think what it's doing to her digestive system."

  Camille's mother snorted and placed another pile of plates in a kitchen cupboard. "Well, she looks like she's got a little more color in her face. I did think she'd gone a bit pale."

  "You as well! So why didn't you say anything?"

  "You know I don't like to butt in."

  Camille smiled wryly.

  "So what are you going to do about tomorrow? I thought Hal had that weekend in Derby."

  "It's an antiques fair. And it's just the day. He's coming home on the late train. But, yes, unless she goes to school, I'll have to cancel my appointments again. Can you see if Katie's egg is done, Mum? My hands are wet."

  "Another minute, I think. . . .It's a long way for him to go for just one day."

  "I know."

  There was a brief silence. Camille knew that her mother was well aware of why Hal didn't want to stay away at night. She thrust her hands deeper into the dishwater, searching for stray cutlery.

  "Well, I don't think you should send her back to school for one day. You want to give her a long weekend to get right again. So if you want me to take her, I'm free from midmorning. And I'll still have her Saturday evening, if you want to go out."

  Camille finished the washing up, placing the last plate carefully on the rack. She frowned and turned slightly.

  "Aren't you going to Doreen's?"

  "No. I've got to go and meet this designer person. Hand the keys over. And take the last of my stuff."

  Camille stopped. "It's really sold?"

  "Of course it's sold." Her mother's voice was dismissive. "Been sold for ages."

  "It . . . it just seems so sudden."

  "It's not sudden in the slightest. I told you I was going to do it. This man didn't have to get a mortgage or anything, so there's no point hanging around."

  "But it was your house."

  "And now it's his house. Will she want ketchup?"

  Camille knew better than to argue with her mother's tone of voice. She pulled off her rubber gloves and began rubbing moisturizer into her hands, thinking about the house that had, in its way, dominated her childhood.

  "So what's he going to do with it?"

  "Luxury hotel, apparently. Some kind of upmarket hotel for creative types. He's got a club in London--all writers and artists and entertainers--and wanted something similar by the sea. Somewhere this type could escape to. It's going to be very modern, he says. Very challenging."

  "The town will love that."

  "Bugger the town. He's not going to change the outside of the house--so what business is it of theirs?"

  "Since when has something's not being their business stopped anybody around here? The Riviera will make a fuss. It'll be taking their business."

  Mrs. Bernard moved behind her daughter and put the kettle on.

  "The Riviera can barely muster enough c
ustomers to keep it in doilies as it is. I can't see a hotel for London's movers and shakers making a huge difference to them. No, it'll do this town good. Place is dying. It might help put a bit of life back into it."

  "Katie will miss it."

  "Katie will still be welcome to visit it. In fact, he said he wanted to keep the house's links with its past alive. It's what he liked about it in the beginning--all the history." She paused, adding with a faint hint of challenge in her voice, "He's asked me to help advise on some of the restorations."

  "What?"

  "Because I know how it used to look. I've still got the pictures and letters and things. He's not just some blundering developer. He says he wants to keep the character of the place."

  "You sound as if you like him."

  "I do like him. He calls a spade a spade. But he's curious. You don't get many men of that sort who are curious."

  "Like Pops." Camille couldn't help herself.

  "He's younger than your father. But no. You know your father's never been interested in that house."

  Camille shook her head. "I just don't really understand, Mum. I don't understand why, after all these years. I mean, it was the one thing you were always adamant about--even when Pops got fed up--"

  Her mother interrupted. "Oh, you children. You think the world owes you an explanation. It's my business. My house, my business. It's not going to affect any of you, so let's not harp on."

  Camille sipped at her tea, thinking. "So what are you going to do with the money? You must have got a fair bit for it."

  "None of your business."

  "Have you told Pops?"

  "Yes. He made the same silly noises you did."

  "And told you he had a great idea for the money."

  Her mother snorted a laugh. "You still don't miss a trick, do you?"

  Camille dropped her head. Let it slip out apparently innocuously. "You could take Pops on a cruise. Just the two of you."

  "And I could donate it all to NASA to see if there are little green men on Mars. Now I'm going to have this tea, then I'm going to nip to the shops. Do you need anything? I'll take that soppy dog of yours while I'm at it. He looks like he's getting fat."

  "YOU LOOK VERY PRETTY. I LIKE YOUR HAIR LIKE THAT."

  "Thank you."

  "It's like the way you wore it when you worked at the bank."

  Camille put a hand to her head, feeling the sleek chignon that Tess had put in for her before she left. She had a gift for hair, Tess. Camille secretly suspected that she would be gone within a year; too much talent in her hands for a sleepy seaside beauty salon.