Francesca and the Mermaid Read online

  ‘It’s too cold for a garden party,’ Henry said, ‘so it’ll have to be indoors. Seven-thirty for eight. Is that all right?’

  ‘You spoil us,’ Molly laughed at him.

  ‘You’re worth spoiling,’ he said. ‘I’ve had three more orders since I put that notice up.’

  ‘That,’ Molly said, grinning at him, ‘is the icing on the cake.’

  ‘Everything’s happening so quickly,’ Francesca said as she and Molly left the canteen together. ‘I can’t take it in. I mean, five orders yesterday and another three this morning. I feel as if I’m dreaming.’

  ‘And this is only the beginning,’ Molly said. ‘What did I tell you? I knew we’d be rushed off our feet once it got started. Don’t you go rushing though. Your work’s too good to spoil by skimping. It’s quality they’ll be looking for.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Francesca told her. ‘I shan’t skimp anything. That’s not my style. I want it to be as good as I can make it. But what a day this is!’

  ‘And it’s not finished yet,’ Molly said happily as they parted.

  Which was true enough, although not in the way either of them could have imagined at that moment. In the middle of the afternoon, when the daylight was beginning to fade, Francesca’s mobile started to trill. It was the first time she’d had a call while she was at work and it rather alarmed her. As she said, ‘Hello?’ she was wondering who it could be and why they were ringing.

  It was Agnes. ‘Me dear,’ she said and her voice sounded faint and far away.

  ‘Agnes,’ Francesca said. ‘What is it? Is something up?’

  ‘I’ve had a little contra temps, me dear,’ the faint voice said. ‘Not too well at the moment.’

  Alarm fluttered in Francesca’s throat. ‘Where are you?’

  Agnes didn’t answer for several seconds but Francesca could hear her panting. Then she said, ‘In the garden.’ And her voice sounded so fragile that Francesca was seriously alarmed. She’s either ill or hurt, she thought, and the thought propelled her into action.

  ‘I’m on my way,’ she said. ‘I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’

  She put down her brush, ran to Henry’s office, knocked much too loudly and walked in as soon as she heard his voice. He was sitting at his desk dictating letters to Yvette.

  ‘Agnes is ill,’ she said. ‘She’s just rung me. Can I go and see. . . .’

  Yvette turned in her seat, looking shocked, and Henry was instantly on his feet. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Do you know what it is?’

  ‘She couldn’t tell me. Sounded bad.’

  ‘Take my mobile number,’ he said, writing it on his notepad and handing it to her. ‘Let me know as soon as you know yourself.’

  She nodded, took the note, and ran again. Out to the car, out to the road, determined and afraid, imagining all sorts of terrible possibilities, each one worse than the last, trying to stay sensible, heart and car racing together. Oh Agnes, dear loving, untidy Agnes, please don’t be too ill.

  The garden was lush with autumn colour and looked like an oil painting. ‘Agnes!’ she called, running past the vegetable patch. ‘Agnes! Where are you? Agnes!’ Past the cherry tree, the soft fruits, the grubby hammock, the meadow crazed with wild flowers, into the shadows of the orchard, pushing intolerable branches aside as she ran. And there she was, lying on the ground under one of the apple trees, ominously still, with a ladder fallen beside her and a basket spilling newly picked apples a few yards away. Oh God! She must have fallen out of the tree.

  She was on her knees beside her friend in seconds, examining her quickly, alarmed by the tracery of dark blood criss-crossing her face, checking quickly to see where it was coming from. She didn’t find any deep gashes but Agnes was cold and obviously in shock and from the awkward angle of her right leg it looked as though she must have either broken her leg or her hip. Now what shall I do? Get her warm or call an ambulance?

  ‘Me dear,’ Agnes said, in that alarmingly faint voice, opening swimmy eyes and struggling to focus them. ‘So stupid.’

  ‘You’re all right,’ Francesca said, leaning forward to kiss her cheek. ‘I’m here. Don’t worry. I’m just going to phone for an ambulance and get you a blanket or something. I’ll be right back.’ Now that she knew she was going to take action, she was in complete control of herself and the situation.

  She dialled 999 as she walked to the house, and gave the details calmly. Then she went upstairs and pulled Agnes’s duvet off her bed and carried it back to the garden.

  ‘They’re on their way,’ she said as she wrapped her now-shivering friend in the warmth of her bedding.

  ‘I’ll get up in a minute,’ Agnes said, thickly. ‘Bit of a shock, that’s all.’

  ‘Yes,’ Francesca said, agreeing with her. And she took her friend’s cold hand and chafed it. ‘They’ll soon be here.’

  They were remarkably quick and wonderfully, reassuringly, gently efficient, both of them bulky in their fluorescent jackets, and sure-footed as cats. They explained what they were going to do before they did it, inserted a cannula into the back of Agnes’s hand and gave her a morphine injection ‘to deal with that pain’, and held her hand until it started to take effect. Then they managed to get her to tell them exactly where she hurt even though her first faint answer had been ‘all over’ and when they’d finally lifted her onto their stretcher-bed and strapped her in very gently, making sure that everything was secure, they pushed it over the rough grass of the orchard as smoothly as they could, telling her every few feet that she would ‘soon be there’. And Francesca, needing to feel useful, righted the ladder and stood it against the tree, gathered the fallen apples into the basket, picked up the duvet and carried the whole lot into the kitchen. When she got back to the garden the paramedics were pushing the stretcher into the ambulance.

  ‘Hop aboard,’ the taller one said to her, when the stretcher was in its place. ‘We’re ready for the off.’

  So she retrieved her bag from the orchard and climbed aboard. It was an impressively smooth ride and while his partner drove, the tall paramedic was busy with Agnes taking her temperature and her blood pressure and checking on any medication she might be taking, smiling at her when she said, ‘I don’t take drugs.’

  ‘That makes a nice change,’ he said. ‘Most people take all sorts of things. I usually get a list as long as my arm.’

  Then he asked a question that took a bit of thought. ‘Can you tell me your date of birth?’

  ‘January,’ she said at last. ‘14th.’

  ‘And the year?’

  ‘Um . . . 1941, I think. Yes. Second year of the war. 1941.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘That’s good. How’s the pain now?’

  ‘Easier,’ Agnes said and closed her eyes.

  She’s over seventy, Francesca thought, looking down at her. She should never have been climbing trees. But then that was Agnes all over wasn’t it. Oh poor Agnes.

  The drive continued and seemed to be going on for rather a long time. Francesca had a vague idea that the hospital in Lewes was at the west end of the town and was worried by the time it was taking to get there, especially as Agnes was so pale. Eventually she decided to ask where they were going.

  ‘Brighton,’ the paramedic said. ‘The Royal Sussex. They don’t set broken bones in the Victoria Hospital.’ And seeing her anxiety, he reassured her. ‘It won’t take long. We’re nearly there. They know we’re coming.’

  She looked at his compassionate face and was comforted, thinking what wonderful people paramedics were, impressed by the way they coped and how calm they were. So she held Agnes’ hand and waited more patiently and presently she felt the ambulance driving up a short incline and knew that they’d arrived. It wasn’t long before the doors were opened and Agnes was wheeled into A&E and all four of them were swallowed up by the life and pace of the hospital and time became expandable and relative.

  Agnes and Francesca waited in their curtained cubicle while the paramedics went to bo
ok them in; a nurse arrived, smiled at Agnes and asked all the same questions as the paramedic had done, which irritated her; then a doctor came through the curtains with another nurse following him and said he’d like to check her over and was that all right, which annoyed her even more.

  ‘Why else am I here?’ she said, truculently.

  ‘Exactly so,’ the doctor agreed smoothly. ‘So let’s have a look at you, shall we.’ He was examining the cuts and bruises on her face as he spoke and taking a close look at her eyes. ‘Do you have any pain?’

  ‘Not as much as I did when it happened,’ Agnes said.

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  Agnes turned her head to one side on the pillow and began to groan as if talking about the pain made it worse.

  Francesca grew alarmed. She’d never seen Agnes truculent before nor heard her groan. She leant forward until her mouth was on a level with Agnes’s ear. ‘Can you tell them where it hurts?’ she said, speaking as gently as she could.

  ‘I’ve told them,’ Agnes said without opening her eyes. ‘I keep telling them.’

  Francesca prompted her, looking at the doctor. ‘It’s your right leg, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’ve told them.’

  The doctor nodded at Francesca and the nurse eased Agnes’s shoe off her foot very gently and looked at her stocking, which was torn and blood-stained. ‘We’ll have to cut your stocking off,’ she said to Agnes.

  Agnes didn’t open her eyes. ‘Cut it off then,’ she said,

  The stocking was cut away, the doctor took a cursory look at the grazes that were now revealed and then examined the leg. ‘I’m going to send you for an X-ray,’ he said to Agnes. ‘Then we’ll get that leg set and plastered. You might need a few stitches on your face and your head. You’ve got one or two slight cuts there. Nothing terrible. All right?’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ Agnes said and groaned again.

  ‘We’ll give you something for the pain presently,’ the doctor promised, writing on his clipboard. But Agnes wasn’t listening to him.

  ‘We shall keep her in overnight,’ the doctor told Francesca. ‘Delayed concussion is always a possibility after a fall. I don’t think it’s likely but it’s better to be on the safe side. You can’t go with her to X-ray of course but there’s a waiting room along the corridor. It shouldn’t take long.’

  The waiting room was empty, which was a bit off-putting because she’d have liked a bit of company, but sitting there on her own she realized she’d been given the chance to ring Henry and tell him what was happening. It was high time she did and she had promised. But when she heard his familiar voice on the end of the line, she tumbled into a sort of panic. There was so much to tell him she hardly knew where to start. He listened patiently for several minutes while she tried to make sense of it all, stumbling and repeating herself, and feeling cross because her mind wasn’t functioning at all well. Eventually, when she paused to take breath, he said. ‘I think I ought to come and see her.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes. It must still be visiting time. Then you and she can tell me everything and I can ask you both questions. Phones aren’t very good for this sort of thing. Thirty minutes? OK?’

  He was with her in twenty-five and looking so competent and so much in charge she was limp with relief to see him. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I am glad you’re here. She’s been in a lot of pain. I told you didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, you did. Is she still in A&E?’

  Her mind seemed to have stopped functioning completely and now it went into a whirl. She didn’t know. She’d just wandered away from the place as they wheeled poor Agnes out of it. She hadn’t thought to ask what was going to happen next. Or where Agnes was going or anything. Oh dear. ‘They were taking her to have an X-ray when I left her,’ she said. ‘They sent me down here because I wasn’t allowed go with her. Because of the radioactivity I suppose. She might be back there by now. But then they were going to set the bone, so they said. Oh dear, I don’t know where she’ll be.’

  He looked at her puckered, anxious face and felt overpoweringly protective towards her. It was a familiar, almost forgotten emotion, which he hadn’t experienced since Candida died. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s been a long day. We’ll go down to A&E together and see if we can find out what’s happening. There’s bound to be someone there who could tell us.’ And he took her by the arm and followed the signs.

  She allowed him to lead her, suddenly aware that she was very tired and perilously near tears. And there was Agnes, sitting up on her stretcher bed and looking more like herself again, even though she was wearing a voluminous hospital nightgown and had stitches on her cheek and a plastic bracelet round her wrist. She didn’t seem to be in pain so they’d obviously given her more painkillers.

  ‘So ridiculous,’ she said, when she saw Francesca. ‘All this fuss. They’re going to keep me in overnight. I can’t see the necessity. I’m feeling a lot better now. Hello Henry, me dear.’

  Henry kissed her cheek. ‘I hear you’ve been falling out of trees and breaking your legs,’ he said.

  ‘One tree. Singular,’ she told him sternly. ‘And one leg. Don’t exaggerate.’

  A nurse came cheerfully through the curtain. ‘Are you ready to have this bone set then, Agnes?’ she said.

  Agnes growled. ‘If I must.’

  ‘That’s the style,’ the nurse said, accepting the growl as agreement. ‘Then we can get you settled on the ward and make you more comfortable. Your friends will come in and see you in the morning.’ She gave Francesca a card. ‘There’s the visiting hours,’ she said, ‘and that’s the ward. Just follow the signs.’

  A porter had arrived. Agnes’ bed was being wheeled away. Henry and Francesca could see her hand waving and then she was through the swing doors and they were on their own in the empty cubicle. Francesca felt exhausted.

  ‘I don’t know about you,’ Henry said, as they walked out of the hospital into the autumn darkness, ‘but I could do with a meal.’

  Francesca shivered. It was cold out there under such a black sky. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘So could I. I haven’t had anything to eat since lunch.’

  ‘Nor me,’ he said. ‘I know a good place not far from here. Would you care to join me?’

  ‘I’m not properly dressed,’ she said, doubtfully. ‘I mean, I’m in my work clothes.’

  ‘They don’t stand on ceremony,’ he said. ‘It’s an eccentric sort of place. Very welcoming. French. I think you’d enjoy it. And don’t worry about getting home. I’ll drive you back.’

  ‘Well in that case,’ she said. ‘Yes. I like to. Thank you very much.’

  CHAPTER 10

  The sex seekers were out in South East London that night, prowling the pubs and clubs, sharp eyed, preened, perfumed and predatory. Some prowled in packs, urging one another on; others hunted alone, like a certain Mr Jeffrey Walmesly. He was thoroughly prepared, chin, chest and armpits carefully shaved, wearing skin-tight jeans, a Ralph Lauren chequered shirt, lashings of his favourite aftershave, his Gucci watch, a fake tan and all the bling he possessed. He’d examined his image in the wardrobe mirror with passing anxiety while he was making his final choice of clothing but all in all, when he’d finally decided what to wear, he thought he looked pretty cool. It was the right sort of image, perhaps a tad too suave but interesting and with a bit of mystery about it. Chicks liked a bit of mystery. Now all he had to do was to find the right chick. It had taken him three nights of trial and error before he’d discovered the most likely club but now he was dancing in a close-packed mass of wriggling bodies in the Cuddly Bunny, and he’d reached the point when he could start sizing up the talent. Lots of blondes, all skeletal and heavily made-up and very loud.

  ‘Hi there, gorgeous,’ he said to one particularly pretty one.

  Her answer was a bit off-putting. ‘Yeh, yeh!’ she said and put her arms round the neck of a pimply youth who was gyrating beside her.

  Not her, Jeffrey thought, walking awkwardly away f
rom them through a forest of waving arms. Not to worry. There were plenty of others. Now that he’d finally made his mind up that Fran had got to be replaced, he could play the field. And he had made up his mind. It was no good waiting for her to see sense and come home. He’d given her plenty of time to come to her senses – far more then she deserved – and if she couldn’t see what was good for her that was her hard luck. She’d regret it in the end. Women were all the same. No logic that was their trouble. Needed a good man to guide them.

  The volume of sound in the Cuddly Bunny was so loud it was making his belly shake. Why does this music have to thump so much? he thought as he scanned the talent. It’s enough to turn you deaf. It’s no wonder they all shout. And those flashing lights are murder on the eyes. He had to keep blinking and it was worrying him in case it made him look foolish. A beam of nice steady light was what he wanted. A beam of nice steady light to help him see what he was looking for. He blinked again and saw a possibility. Another blonde and with very nice tits. But very nice tits or no, she looked down her nose at him as if he were something nasty the cat had brought in. And the next girl wasn’t much better. Nor the one after that. He was beginning to think he’d have to give up and choose another venue that wasn’t quite so loud or so full of impossible lighting effects, when he noticed a girl standing all by herself under the exit sign. Pretty in an understated sort of way, brownish sort of hair, big eyes, quite nice legs, very skimpy shirt, and obviously on her own. That was better.

  He sidled up and stood beside her. He even managed to wait until she looked round at him. ‘Crowded isn’t it,’ he shouted above the din. ‘Could you fancy a drink?’

  She turned her head like a sleepwalker, looked away, and then looked at him again. It was rather sexy. ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ she shouted back. ‘Sex on the beach.’