Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs Read online

  ‘No. He came home in September to rest his nerves. He was serving in Northern Ireland and the tank he was in was blown up.’

  ‘How awful! Was he badly hurt?’ I opened my eyes just as we were yawing towards a tree picked out in hideous detail by the single headlight. I screwed up my face and waited for the crunch of metal and the somersaulting of my stomach as we flew into the abyss.

  ‘Only a few cracked ribs and a broken jaw.’ Dimpsie wrestled with the steering wheel and changed down. The engine screamed in protest but somehow we remained in contact with the road.

  ‘Only?’

  ‘Almost everyone else in the tank was killed. Though it might have caught fire at any minute, Rafe waited inside until the rescue team could get to them and made a tourniquet of his socks to stop the other survivor bleeding to death. He was given a medal for conspicuous gallantry.’

  I imagined Rafe as a war hero with a troubled mind. It added a piquancy to my idea of him, which until now had been too smooth, too bland, to keep the flame of memory burning.

  ‘Evelyn’s delighted to have him home, of course. Not only for his own sake – she’s always adored him, as you know, but Kingsley’s become something of a problem.’

  Kingsley Preston was much older than his wife. I remembered him as a sort of caricature of a country squire. He had not been much interested in children, preferring horses and dogs. We had had the same conversation each holidays.

  ‘Hello, Marigold.’ He would smile and shake my hand. ‘It’s good to see you back. How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine, thank you, sir.’

  ‘Good, good.’

  Then he’d walk quickly away, calling his spaniels to heel. At the end of the holidays, he’d say, ‘Well, well, so you’re off again.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Going to make Margot Fonteyn shake in her shoes, eh?’

  Polite laughter from me. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Jolly good.’ The smile and handshake again. ‘Keep it up.’

  ‘What’s the matter with Kingsley?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s terribly forgetful. He was eighty last birthday, so perhaps it’s not surprising. Evelyn’s marvellous with him, so patient. She never complains, you know how strong she is, but it must get her down all the same.’

  It seemed to me a little forgetfulness in an old man was not much to put up with. But then, in my mother’s eyes, everything Evelyn did, from organizing balls to raise funds for more camels in Africa, to getting poor Mrs Stopes into an old people’s home despite her wish to remain independent, were feats of the highest order. My mother kept on her desk a framed photograph of Evelyn in evening dress and tiara, which had appeared fifteen years ago in the Tatler above the caption The Beautiful Mrs Kingsley Preston, Indefatigable Society Hostess of the North. I was pretty sure the rest of Evelyn’s friends had consigned the offending image to the dustbin before returning indoors to dose themselves with bile beans.

  ‘Could we have the heater on?’

  ‘Sorry, it’s broken. I keep meaning to get the garage to fix it.’

  ‘Will Rafe be there tomorrow, do you know?’

  ‘Yes. And –’ Dimpsie’s voice took on a slightly anxious tone – ‘so will Isobel. She’s come home to be with Rafe, to help him get over it. You know how devoted to him she’s always been. Darling, I do hope you’ll be pleased to see her.’

  Isobel. The rush of memories were a welcome distraction from being cold and frightened. From babyhood to the age of ten she had been my best friend. She was a year and a half older than me, a significant age gap then. Probably she would have preferred an older companion but there were no other girls nearby whom Evelyn considered convenable. My family was not well off but my father was a doctor and my mother had been privately educated, which made me acceptable.

  Naturally Isobel had been the dominant one. She had taught me how to ride a bicycle and how to swim, how to serve overarm, how to make a camp, how to waltz, tie knots and mix invisible inks. Sometimes she had been friendly, sometimes patronizing and sometimes beastly. There had been spats, naturally but most of the time we accepted that we were yoked together, an ill-matched team, seemingly in perpetuity.

  We had started dancing lessons together at Evelyn’s instigation: ‘So good for their deportment, Dimpsie, and the car’s taking Isobel anyway so Marigold may as well go, too.’

  We had attended Miss Fisher’s ballet classes in Haltwhistle. I had adored it from the moment my fingers made contact with the barre and my pink leather pumps with the splintery floor. After three terms we took our first ballet exam. When I had been awarded a distinction and Isobel a pass, there had been indignation and tears. Evelyn had been cross with her.

  ‘You can’t expect to excel in everything, darling. Marigold is so tiny that she can hop about easily. You should be glad for her that she has done so well, even if it is only in dancing.’

  When Miss Fisher sent letters home with us to say she thought Isobel was ready for grade two but I was to move up several classes and try for my intermediate certificate, Isobel had wanted to give up ballet altogether. Evelyn had told her not to be silly.

  ‘You must learn not to make a fuss about trivial things. It’s very nice for Marigold that she has a little accomplishment. It may come in useful later for balls and dances.’

  After I had passed my intermediate certificate with the highest possible mark, Miss Fisher asked to see my mother and told her she should think seriously about sending me to ballet school. Dimpsie went to Evelyn for advice. I remember Evelyn’s face became rather long as she read the letter the examiner had sent privately to Miss Fisher, commending my physical attributes and technical promise. She was silent for a while as Dimpsie and I stared anxiously at her pinched nostrils and compressed lips, waiting for the oracle to pronounce. Young and unsophisticated though I was, I dimly understood that, because of the Preston supremacy in birth and upbringing, for a child of Evelyn’s to be surpassed in anything was something of a facer. An inward struggle was evidently taking place as she folded the letter into small sections.

  Then her better self got the upper hand. Talent must never be wasted. She had heard of a ballet school in Manchester that had an excellent reputation. She would ring at once and ask them to send a prospectus. She congratulated me very kindly and asked us both to stay to tea. There was no more talk about ‘little accomplishments’ and ‘hopping about’.

  When Isobel heard about the letter she went down to the beck that races through the valley of Gaythwaite and threw in her ballet pumps. Then she put a note through our letterbox. Unless I dropped the whole idea of ballet school she would never speak to me again. Furthermore she would put a curse on me so that my nose would be permanently covered with blackheads.

  After a terrifying audition at Brackenbury House Ballet School, I was awarded a place for the following term. This meant I had only a few weeks mooning about Dumbola Lodge in a state of excommunication, shut out from the paradisial delights of Shottestone Manor – the pony, the swimming pool, the tennis court, the garden, the dogs and Mrs Capstick’s celebrated orange cake, which, being a greedy child, I regretted perhaps most of all.

  The curse had been lifted by Christmas, much to my relief. I had spent anxious moments, in my precious free time at Brackenbury, examining my face for blackheads. Isobel had been sent to a smart boarding school in Berkshire, and she needed an audience during the holidays for tales of her new life and her new friends. It was about then that Isobel began a campaign of pubescent rebellion against her mother and I was drawn in as her sympathizer and support. Fortunately Evelyn was too busy reorganizing Northumberland to take much notice.

  Superficially our relationship had survived the storm. But I had learnt to be guarded. I said almost nothing about my life in Manchester. I played the part of Isobel’s admiring friend, conscious that it behoved me to be generous. Together we celebrated her triumphs, when she was made a school monitor and captain of tennis, when she came top in English, when she was give
n the role of Jo in Little Women. We went shopping for clothes suitable for visiting school friends’ houses, mansions, chateaux, palazzos, once even a yacht. I listened and marvelled and praised without resentment, for I was going to be a dancer and nothing in the world could compare with the glory of that. First Isobel and then I became old enough to go to proper parties and dances. The best bit about these were the post mortems held in her bedroom when we discussed in minute detail and with tremendous scorn the boys we met there.

  When Isobel was sixteen she was sent to school in Switzerland. Eighteen months later I moved to London to join the LBC and the friendship lapsed. I had not seen her for six years. ‘What was Isobel doing before she came home?’ I asked.

  ‘She finished her course in Fine Arts. Did I tell you that? Then she got a job at Sotheby’s. She sent a message to say how much she was looking forward to seeing you.’

  ‘That was kind of her.’

  ‘You were good friends once. I know she could be difficult, but you’re both grownup now … sometimes I think the friendship between women is the most sublime that’s possible between two human beings. Oh, I know the Greeks thought the same about men,’ she dismissed Homer and Plato with a wave and the back wheels skewed as they hit the mound of snow in the middle of the road, ‘but men never really talk to each other, do they?’

  I felt sure a sweat of terror must be breaking out on my benumbed brow. ‘Being women, can we know that?’

  ‘What? Oh, I see what you mean. Well, if Tom’s anything to go by, they never admit to anything more self-revealing than their golf handicap or the size of their socks.’

  I realized she was being merely illustrative. My father despised golf and had never given a second’s thought to his socks, which my mother always bought for him. ‘The men I know are usually only too ready to invite you into their psyches. But I don’t suppose they’re typical. But neither is Tom, would you say? I’ve often wondered why he chose to do something that requires being nice to people. He’d be much happier locked in a laboratory on his own.’

  I was making idle conversation to take my mind off the narrowness of the road and the steepness of the drop as we reached the head of the valley, but I heard a defensiveness in Dimpsie’s reply.

  ‘That would have been a great loss to the community though, wouldn’t it? I mean, he’s the cleverest doctor for miles around …’

  While my mother rambled on in praise of my father’s diagnostic acuity, I indulged in a brief moment of pleasurable nostalgia. This first view of the valley into which we were now descending always moved me by its beauty. At this time of day only the lights of Gaythwaite were visible. Eagleston Crag, the highest point in the circle of hills, was only a darker mass in a sky swollen with inky clouds, but it was so familiar to me that I could have drawn its shape – like a bent old man with a sack on his back – with complete accuracy.

  I closed my eyes tightly and tried to think about other things while we whooshed downwards and bounced over the bridge. ‘Nearly there,’ cried Dimpsie, braking hard to negotiate the sharp turn into our drive. What made it dangerous was a sheer drop of twenty feet into the river below the house. I opened my eyes to see the bright lights of another vehicle approaching. We had lost most of our speed by now and just managed to trickle across the path of a large lorry, with inches to spare. Dimpsie accelerated up the steep drive and ran gently into the mattress placed on its side at the back of the garage to act as a buffer.

  ‘There we are, darling. Home at last!’

  Dumbola Lodge was a solid stone house built in the last century. Going into the hall, I was surprised by the vivid familiarity of things not seen or called to mind for several years. The wallpaper with its pattern of ivy leaves had been put up before I was born. The flagstones undulated at thresholds where generations of footsteps, including my own, had worn them away. Opposite the door was a serpentine chest of drawers to which Dimpsie had applied something caustic in the days when stripped pine was all the rage. Evelyn had been cross with her for ruining a good piece of eighteenth-century mahogany. To the right of it was the longcase clock that had belonged to my maternal grandmother.

  Throughout my childhood I had held this clock in special affection. Above the dial were painted billowing clouds and gilded stars surrounding a cut-out semicircle in which the moon, the size of an orange, appeared according to its phases. It had small, kite-shaped eyes above fat cheeks, with lips curved up into a smile, but as a child I had discovered that when I was sad the moon’s smile became a grimace of sorrow. On the day the letter came offering me a place at Brackenbury Lodge, his bright little eyes had flashed with triumph. I was too old now to believe in the existence of a secret ally. It was my guilty conscience that made me imagine a hint of reproof in the moon’s expression. I sniffed the instantly recognizable smell of wet plaster, rubber mackintoshes and the fainter scent of medicated soap from the downstairs cloakroom.

  ‘Let me look at you.’ Dimpsie pulled off her red tam-o’-shanter and slung it in the direction of the hat stand. ‘Fabulous coat, darling. Evelyn’s always said that you had all the beauty in the family.’

  ‘How unkind of her. Also untrue. You have remarkable eyes.’

  They were large, light brown and transparent with good nature.

  ‘Unkind? Evelyn? Darling, how can you say that when she’s been so good to you?’ My mother looked hurt.

  ‘Oh well … all I meant was that you’re still attractive.’ I released one of her dangling silver earrings, which had become hooked on a ringlet that had once been brown and was now greyish.

  Dimpsie peered into the mirror above the chest of drawers and pulled a face. ‘Evelyn ticked me off the other day for letting myself go. She said she’d pay for me to go to her hairdresser but I don’t know that I ought … she says I should use makeup but mascara always makes my eyes puff up … and who’s going to notice anyway?’

  Dimpsie had been my age, twenty-two, when she married my father. He had been in his final year at medical school. Kate’s imminent arrival had been responsible for this catastrophic mistake. The immediate need for money put paid to his plan of specializing in epidemiology. Instead they moved to Northumberland where he went into general practice. My mother suddenly found herself with a hardworking husband, a house and a baby to look after and no idea how to do any of it. In a spirit of noblesse oblige, Evelyn had invited the new GP and his wife to dinner and my mother had wasted no time in pouring out her feelings of loneliness and helplessness.

  This much I had been told by Dimpsie. I guessed that Evelyn might also have been lonely. She liked to rule and the women who stood high enough in the world to be Evelyn’s friends for that reason declined to be bossed. Dimpsie’s unbounded admiration for Evelyn’s beauty, style, strength of character and knowledge of the world must have been flattering. She was thrilled to be asked to fill out invitations, lick stamps and make telephone calls. But I knew that Dimpsie was more than an unpaid secretary. That mysterious chemistry which dictates true friendship operated in their case. Dimpsie was incapable of deceit, she always said exactly what she thought, and I guessed that Evelyn enjoyed being able to do the same without fear of competition or criticism.

  ‘Never mind.’ Dimpsie did some alternate nostril breathing to dispel negative thinking. ‘There are lots of things more important than one’s appearance … being true to one’s inner being … expanding one’s consciousness …’

  When Dimpsie was in her early thirties, some hippies had formed a commune in the ruined farm on the hill behind our house. The local people had complained of drugs, loud music, uncontrolled livestock and neglected children. Dimpsie alone had been enchanted by them. While Evelyn was busy sacking headmasters, reprimanding matrons for dusty windowsills and sending wife-beaters to jail, Dimpsie used to go up to the commune and sit on mattresses covered with Indian bedspreads, smoke joints, eat beans, and have long conversations about the significance of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It was a sort of kindergarten, with nothin
g to do but be self-indulgent, and Dimpsie loved it. For the first time in her life she had found people who accepted her without wanting to change her. The hashish made everyone affectionate and giggly, which must have been in strong contrast to home.

  It was a cause of great sadness when the hippies tired of emptying bucket lavatories and collecting firewood to burn under the pots of beans. One by one they drifted away into advertising and accountancy. The ruined farm was untenanted now but for feral kittens, descendants of the original cats brought by the flower children.

  ‘Oh, blast!’ Dimpsie had picked up the notepad from beside the telephone. ‘Your father’s had to go out on a call. Vanessa Trumball again.’

  ‘Who’s Vanessa Trumball?’

  ‘She moved here about a year ago. She lives up at Roughsike Fell. She must be terribly lonely there on her own – her husband’s left her; such a shame. I thought he was a nice man. Your father has to go up there at least twice a week. It’s lucky for her he’s so dedicated to his profession.’

  I wanted to ask if she was young and pretty but I was afraid of causing pain.

  ‘Never mind.’ Dimpsie hung up our coats, then twirled on the spot with her knee bent and her foot stuck out behind her, a characteristic movement which I had forgotten. ‘We won’t wait for him. Let’s have supper.’

  ‘I must feed Siggy first and let him have a run. He’s been cooped up all day.’

  ‘Siggy?’ My mother looked vaguely about the hall.

  ‘My rabbit.’ I indicated the cage on the flagstones.