Poppy's Seed, page 12
“Sit down, sit down,” Poppy says, moving books, papers, newspapers to one side on the sofa. “What can I get you? Wine? Elderflower? Tea?”
“Tea,” Emily says, suddenly overcome with shyness.
They eat at the tiny table-for-two by the window that overlooks the main street. The meal is surprisingly good: quiche from the delicatessen, salad, new potatoes (“The only thing I can cook!” Poppy laughs.) and blackberry cheesecake from the cake shop for dessert. “Deee-licious!” Poppy says in her childlike way, licking the spoon.
“More tea?” she asks.
“Yes, please.”
“You’re quiet tonight.”
Emily laughs. She’s always quiet nowadays. It’s Poppy who talks, yet afterwards she can never remember exactly what she says, just the sound of her voice, her hands waving around, her throaty laugh. It’s either about her work, or her travels, or people Emily has never heard of, different ones every time. The stories are sometimes the same, though, or at least similar. Different settings maybe. A slightly different slant. And Emily has come to realise, although there may be an element of truth lurking somewhere, they are, in fact, more like stories Poppy has fabricated to make a fantastical tale. It doesn’t make them any less appealing and as she listens she inhabits, just for a while, Poppy’s world of fiction and fantasy, a world so different from her own practical life of housework and Peter and classes and shopping that it might be on a different planet and Poppy from a different race.
At half past eight Poppy’s hand predictably flies to the watch on her wrist. “My God!” she says as usual. “Look at the time!”
At Emily’s house this is her cue to gather up her bag, her coat or shawl or cloak or whatever she’s brought with her, press her cheek to Emily’s and fly out of the door. Here in Poppy’s house it is Emily who rises, hovers uncertainly, wondering where Poppy’s put her coat.
“Oh, it’s in the bedroom…” Poppy says, seeing Emily searching amongst the wraps, shawls and blankets heaped up on the sofa.
“Can I just go to the loo?”
“Of course. Through here… Oh damn!” A loud burst of song explodes from her mobile. “Hello? Yes. Hang on…”
Emily follows her out into the tiny landing and Poppy points to a door at the end, disappearing herself behind another door. Emily opens the creaky door, reaches for the light cord. A naked bulb overhead emits a feeble, yellow glow. The room is tiny. Cracked yellow lino on the floor, rimed with dirt. Cracked white tiles on the walls. The loo seat sits at an odd angle, the sort you know will swivel uncomfortably under you when you sit down. Not that Emily has any intention of sitting on it. It looks like it hasn’t been washed for years. A curly, black hair clings to the edge of the rim. The toilet bowl is rimmed brown, a yellowy tinge to the water. Emily hovers uncomfortably above it, washes her hands afterwards in the grimy bowl, wipes them briefly on the damp, frayed grubby-looking towel hanging underneath. There’s no bath, just a shower. A collection of bottles lines the floor alongside. Amongst them she sees a bottle of auburn hair dye. The shower curtain’s half closed, but she can’t help herself hooking the edge back with the tip of her little finger. Brown stains run down the sides of the white tiles, a rusty-looking shower head lies at the bottom of the shower tray, along with a tangle of auburn hair that has obviously been pulled out of the drain hole and left on the side, and greenish grey mould has formed around the edges. She lets the curtain drop, rinses her fingers again, dabbing them against her jeans rather than risking the damp towel again.
Poppy is still on the phone in the bedroom. The door’s closed but she can hear her voice, low, secretive; she doesn’t want Emily to hear what she’s saying. The only other door must lead to the kitchen. Emily hesitates. She doesn’t want Poppy to think she’s snooping. But she can always say she wanted a drink of water. She edges the door open. The room beyond is worse than she possibly could have imagined. Like every other room, it’s tiny. Every surface is laden with stuff: the kettle next to the toaster next to a coffee percolator next to a bread bin next to a vegetable steamer… The china is all on open shelves, higgledy-piggledy, saucepans next to teacups. But nothing can excuse the filth. Even in a quick glance she can see crumbs, smears and bits of food amongst the spoons, plates, dishes and mugs lying around. The draining board is piled high with crockery; saucepans precariously balanced on top. A greasy tea towel and oven glove hang on the back of the chair. The oven door is open. Emily can’t bear to think what it’s like inside. She closes the door quickly, feeling suddenly queasy. She won’t come again. Not to eat anyway, not even to drink, judging by the grubby-looking mugs and the filthy sink.
She’s safely back on the sofa when Poppy reappears. She’s wearing her coat, carrying Emily’s over her arm. “I’m going the opposite way,” she says as she hands it to her. “But I’ll come out with you… oh, unless you’re coming to meet Peter?”
“Coming?” Emily’s puzzled. But maybe she’s misunderstood. “No!” she says aloud, with a little laugh. “He’d hate it! And I couldn’t! Not walk into a pub on my own like that…”
“But I’m going.”
“What?” So she hadn’t misunderstood.
“To the Pilot Boat.”
The inference is impossible. But it can’t be. Poppy says nothing. Her head’s bent. She’s searching in her bag, checking keys, phone…
Emily feels foolish, but she has to say it. “You’re meeting Peter?”
“What would you say if I was?” Poppy laughs. “If we had some sort of clandestine arrangement?”
“I… but you haven’t… you can’t… don’t be silly…”
Poppy’s darting around, in and out, turning off lights, closing doors.
“Poppy,” Emily says, suddenly cross.
“What?” Poppy stands on the threshold, holding the door open for Emily to leave.
“You’re not meeting Peter,” Emily says in a decisive voice. “Are you? Why would you?”
“Why indeed?” Poppy laughs. “Come on. I’m going to be late…”
Emily scarcely feels the peck on her cheek, the brief, warm hug, and as she turns to watch Poppy’s figure hurrying down the street, she wonders if she even said goodbye and thank you. Maybe she should rush after her to make sure. But Poppy’s far too far away now, and anyway she must have done it. She always does. Even when Poppy’s coming to see her she says, “Thank you.”
“For what?” Poppy always laughs. “You were the one doing the cooking!”
“For coming to see me!” she laughs back.
She can’t bear to think of losing this. This friendship. This warmth. Poppy’s the only one here she can count as her friend. Yet it’s a strange friendship: no confidences, no common interests. Even Emily can see it for what it is: a sort of hero worship on her part. And Poppy needs to be hero-worshipped. But if Poppy was seeing Peter. If they were meeting secretly behind Emily’s back, talking about her maybe. Laughing at her. But the idea’s preposterous. Why would Peter see Poppy? To advise her about her work? But then he’d tell her. And yet. And yet. He’s always in such a bad mood when he gets back. And Poppy rushes off so promptly each time. “Gotta go!” She had always assumed this was for the waiting Suzie.
She’s so wrapped up in her thoughts she can scarcely remember walking home and she’s at the door before she realises. She lets herself in, switches on lights, puts the kettle on. She’s just sat down with a cup of tea when she hears the front door opening. She’s so relieved she nearly jumps up and throws her arms around Peter, but one look at his face and she’s glad she didn’t. The black mood is still with him, she sees. But she has to try. “Good meeting?” she asks.
“Tedious,” he says. “I don’t know why I keep going.” But of course he does. If he didn’t, how could he go on seeing Poppy? The fact that she didn’t turn up tonight won’t change anything. He’d forgotten what it felt like to be stood up. Over and over again he checked his phone. Humiliation washed over him. “I’m not doing this again,” he told himself. Yet even as he walked home he found himself making excuses for her. Some sort of emergency maybe. Yes, that was it. And she couldn’t let him know. No signal on her phone maybe. The coverage around here is hopeless. He’s rehearsed this next bit carefully. “Just get myself a drink,” he says, casually.
“Okay,” Emily nods, turning back to her book.
He turns around at the door. “Oh. How was Poppy?”
“Fine. We had a great time. Thanks.”
Emily hesitates. Then. “You didn’t see her then? At the pub?”
All Peter’s composure vanishes but somehow he manages a strangled, “What?”
“She said she was going there. To meet someone. I thought it was you!”
Emily is laughing. She doesn’t seem to have noticed anything wrong. Peter laughs too, though he doesn’t know how he manages it.
“No,” he manages to say. “No, I didn’t see her. No, I wasn’t meeting her. Why on earth would I?”
“That’s what she said.”
Alone in the kitchen, Peter finds his hand is shaking as he pours whisky into the glass. He stops. Pours a bit more. Adds ice.
He’s just about to go back in when he feels his phone vibrate. He doesn’t need to look at it to know who it is.
Chapter Eleven
Suddenly it’s summer and Lyme Regis bursts into life. Holidaymakers swarm in the streets. They fill the pavements, the shops. The main street blocks with cars queuing for car parks. Children trail down to the beach with buckets and spades. Boats appear in the harbour. The seafront smells of fish and chips. After months of cold weather they wake day after day to blue skies and sunshine, and when Peter brings Emily her morning tea she drinks it quickly so they can be up and out of the house before the traffic builds up. They go for long drives, taking a packed lunch and a flask of tea. Sometimes they find a nice pub and the sandwiches stay in the boot of the car, thrown away with a guilty pang when they get home. Classes stop for the summer holidays but now, conversely, they go out less. The roads are busier in the school holidays. Instead they sit on their tiny terrace, reading books and magazines, waiting until the holidaymakers have gone back to their hotels in the evening before venturing out for their favourite walks in the town, the ones known only to the locals.
Peter’s in a better mood now. “He seems to have settled into retirement,” Emily tells Grace on the phone. “Thank God for this Rotary Club. He’s always off to something nowadays. He’s on one of the committees. He’s gone to a meeting tonight. Heaven alone knows what it’s all about. He never says…”
She was hoping Poppy might have come over, but she said she was busy. “I’ve got an exhibition coming up,” she told Emily. “I don’t really want to do it but Suzie says I must. It’s such a drag.” She paused. “Emily…” she began.
Emily recognised the tone. “Yes?” she said, tentatively.
“You wouldn’t. I mean…”
“Help with posters? Hand out leaflets? Type something out for you?”
“No,” she laughed. “At least, that would be great. I just wondered… I’d love to paint you.”
“What? Don’t be silly. You don’t mean…” Her mind flew, ridiculously, to Simeon Blackwood painting only nudes.
In that uncanny way she has, Poppy seemed to have read her mind. “Your face, silly!” she laughed. “I’m sure you have a lovely body,” she went on, pausing as if picturing it and Emily’s flush deepened. “But your face is so interesting.”
“I don’t know…”
“Peter would like it. You could give it to him as a birthday present. I could have it finished by October.”
“How d’you know when Peter’s birthday is?”
But there’s a scuffling sound on the end of the phone as if Poppy’s covered the mouthpiece and is talking to someone else. “I’ve got to go,” she says in a low voice. “Someone’s just come in.”
This is the problem with Poppy. She’s hopeless at any real sort of conversation. You never get a straight answer to a straight question. She’s an expert at avoiding things she doesn’t want to talk about.
Not like Grace, who’s happy to talk about anything. “Oh, and Peter’s started painting again,” Emily says now. “He’s been going out with the camera to get some shots. On his own. You’ve got no idea how good it is to have time to myself again…”
She couldn’t believe it the first time. “I thought I’d go out for a walk,” he said.
She had just sat down with a book and her heart sank, but she put it down dutifully. “Okay,” she said.
“You don’t have to come.”
“What? But you want me to, don’t you?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Oh. Are you sure?”
“Well, I’m going to take the camera. See if I can find something to paint. You can come if you like. But it won’t be very interesting for you…”
“No, it’s fine. I’ll stay here. Thanks.”
Guilt settled on Peter the moment he left her. And it hasn’t gone away. We’re not doing anything wrong, he reminds himself each time he sees Poppy. It’s purely professional. And it is. They talk. They walk. She shows him where she paints. They both take photos. Sometimes they go back to her studio and he looks at her work.
“Why d’you sign like that?” he asks her one day.
She’s crouched down, rifling through a pile of canvasses.
“What?” she says, abstractedly.
“The number 7. Why don’t you sign your name?”
“It is my name,” she says.
He laughs. “Don’t be silly. No one’s called Seven.”
“You’d be surprised!” she laughs. “But I’m not Poppy either. It’s a joke. You know it is. The shop. We needed a name to go with Suzie’s surname. Fields. ‘Poppy Fields’. It worked. So I became Poppy.”
“But your surname is James, isn’t it?” he asks. “I Googled you…”
“Oh, I bet you did!” she laughs. “And I bet Emily did too! That’s the trouble with your age group. You believe everything you read online. Oh, here it is!” She holds up a canvas and he takes it from her. “The same view. A year ago maybe. What d’you think?”
He takes it from her. Puts it next to the other. He can see his influence on her, knows he’s doing her good. It makes him feel important again.
He’s stopped asking where Suzie is whenever he goes.
“She’s out,” she always says, vaguely.
He wonders if Suzie knows where Poppy goes and what she does, or if, like him, she’s so bamboozled with half-made plans and half-baked excuses that she’s given up trying to pin her down and just accepts her for what she is.
“I’ve asked Emily,” Poppy greets him with one day.
“What?” Peter’s often confused by Poppy’s abrupt announcements.
“About the portrait. For your birthday. Once I’m done with this exhibition.”
“Portrait?” he repeats, knowing he sounds stupid.
“Of Emily. I thought you’d like it.”
“You said it was for my birthday.”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t she wonder how you knew when my birthday was?”
“You worry too much, Petey.”
“My God, you sound like my ex-wife!”
“Don’t tell me that! Here.” She thrusts a painting at him. “What about this one? Or is it too twee?”
It’s one of her many views of the Cobb, that he’d seen hanging in the shop on his first visit.
“I’d put it in anyway,” he says. “It’ll probably sell.”
“Okay.”
“Poppy. Emily. You’re not going to paint her…?” He hesitates.
“Nude? My God, you’re as bad as she is! What’s wrong with you two?”
“It’s just. Simeon. Jasmine’s… fiancé…” He stumbles over the last word.
“Si Blackwood! He only does nudes. Has he done Jasmine yet?” She bursts into laughter at her own double entendre.
“No. She wouldn’t…”
“I don’t see why not. He did mine…”
“What?” His mind flies to an image of Poppy spreadeagled on a tousled bed.
“He paints all his lovers.”
Now it’s Anusia he sees instead, her dark skin, heavy, nippled breasts, legs slightly open. He can almost smell her musky smell. He clears his throat, pretends to look through the other paintings she’s laid out for him.
“Now I’ve embarrassed you,” she says. “Sorry. Jasmine’s still with him then?”
“Yes. But I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay.” She shrugs her shoulders easily.
Peter’s always surprised Emily doesn’t notice anything unusual about him whenever he gets home. But she’s there as usual with a kiss, an offer of a drink, a brief question about where he’s been, who he’s seen. He always has a ready answer, but she seldom shows more than a passing interest.
The summer comes to an end suddenly at the end of August with a week of heavy rain. Holidaymakers huddle in shops, hoping the rain will stop. By early September with the schools back, they have all but gone; only the parents with pre-school children and the retired haunt the beaches and the seafront in the late summer sunshine.
“I can’t believe we’ve been retired a year,” Emily tells Pam as they stand waiting for Pilates to begin. “I’m so pleased he’s got involved with Rotary. It’s been really good for him. And he’s painting again. Did I tell you? He says he might even exhibit some of his stuff. With Poppy, you know. My friend Poppy James, the artist.”
