Love Song Read online

  ‘It’s just the book I wanted – absolutely.’

  ‘That’s two books on Renoir you’ve got now, Claire,’ Rose said, starting to plait her dark hair rather tightly. ‘You should be on “Mastermind” any day. Imagine, you may be the first really brainy blonde in this family.’

  Melinda glanced at Rose. It was an old joke between them all that Claire was so bright and Melinda a bit of a plodder, but since it was her birthday she smiled at Claire before holding up her own present to her and urging her to open it.

  It was a beautiful red blouson jacket from Cache, a shop in the high road, with a zip up the front and a fabulous padded black lining.

  ‘How did you know, Mellie? How did you know I wanted this more than anything in the world?’

  ‘Perhaps because you kept stopping in front of the shop and staring at it about a thousand times a day? It really is cool, though, right?’

  ‘Cool, Mellie? It is super-superior-cool—’

  ‘And super-expensive.’

  Alexander’s daughters were so close in age that they often reacted as one person. Now they all stared at him, frowning as one.

  ‘You know I’ve been working at the café at the weekends, Dads.’

  ‘Here’s mine—’ Rose quickly offered Claire her present to cover their embarrassment at Alexander’s remarking on the cost of Mellie’s gift.

  At once Claire ripped off the wrapping to reveal a cap to match the jacket.

  ‘Oh yes, Rose! Brilliant. Really brilliant! Thank you – thank you!’

  She sprang up and down the kitchen to show off how she looked, pretending to model the jacket and cap to the music on the radio.

  As he sat drinking and watching his daughters, it occurred to Alexander that there was nothing they liked better than to make each other laugh. It was a charming sight. When all was said and done, he was very lucky, really.

  ‘I’m off to bed, my darlings,’ he announced with a sudden yawn and another look at his watch. ‘Just the idea of being father to four beautiful daughters can tire a chap out, you know!’

  They stopped laughing at this and kissed him goodnight, each in turn.

  ‘My angels.’

  The following morning as Hope lay still attached to drips and trying to get to grips with the pain of her latest Caesarean, Verna, their newly hired Australian nanny, cooked Alexander and the girls a perfect breakfast, and Hope’s friend and neighbour Imogen paid her an early visit.

  ‘Do they always give Caesareans a private room?’ Imogen asked wonderingly, at the same time looking round for something to tidy in the already immaculate cubicle. ‘Mind you, it’s only sensible, I suppose. I say, love, do you think that drip should actually be like that? Half out of your arm? I’ll ring for a nurse. I was reading some stats in the paper about how many accidents – fatal most of them – occur in hospital due to exactly this sort of thing.’

  Before Hope could protest, Imogen had rung the bell for a nurse.

  ‘It’s only a saline drip, Imogen,’ she muttered, trying to fix the wayward needle herself.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Previous experience let’s say,’ Hope said, staring down at her newest baby in her cot, and making up her mind to love her as much as, if not more than, the others.

  ‘Yes, well, you would know rather more than me about such things, Hope.’ Imogen laughed, showing immaculate and healthy white teeth. ‘Hope four, Imogen nil.’

  ‘You don’t want babies, do you, Imogen?’

  ‘Not yet I don’t. I don’t even want to get married until you can predetermine the sex of babies. Any minute, though, they say, and we shall all be choosing. Alexander was longing for a boy, wasn’t he?’ She stopped, and seeing Hope’s face she reddened and turned her attention to the small bunch of freesias she had brought in for the patient.

  ‘What I mean was having babies needn’t be – shouldn’t be – such a lottery. Not nowadays. Not given the amount of engineering and mucking about they can do. Working mothers should be able to say – OK. What I want is two m one f, or one m one f – or whatever – and go for it. Rather than playing Russian roulette. Do you want a drink or anything? Some more juice? You’re looking a little peaky, sweetie – ah, and here’s the nurse. Nurse—’

  Imogen pointed out what she considered to be the ill-fitting drip, only for the nurse to demonstrate that the drip was still properly in place and that it was only the sticking plaster that had come off.

  While the two women fussed over her, Hope turned her head away and stared at the wall, thinking about her new unnamed child, yet another little girl. She remembered Alexander’s words – Darling sweetheart. Just this once – this time let’s find out the sex – it’s not as if it’s going to spoil anything? Please?

  But Hope had refused to have the baby’s gender disclosed. After so many miscarriages, after all those years of trying between Claire’s birth and this one, it had seemed utterly wrong to care a jot what sex the baby was! All that had mattered to her was that it should be well, and whole, and be born with all its fingers and toes, and have a happy, healthy life.

  It was only when she was well into her pregnancy that she had discovered just how much it meant to Alexander that this baby should be a male. For some reason, perhaps because she herself had just been so pleased to be healthily pregnant at last, she simply had not seen what she could now see, all too clearly, in retrospect. Alexander had not, as she had, longed for another baby, he had quite simply wanted a boy.

  ‘Hope?’

  She felt Imogen’s hand on her shoulder and turned back to her.

  ‘It was OK. At least the nurse said it was OK, but she still had to check the drip. Don’t worry, your proto-feminist friend is on the case, OK?’

  Hope smiled weakly at her neighbour, finding herself wondering idly what on earth proto-feminist actually meant, just as she sometimes wondered, admittedly without a great deal of interest, what on earth post-modernism could possibly mean. Then she told Mogs – as Alexander liked to call Imogen behind her back – that she was feeling a little tired and would like to rest.

  ‘I haven’t really seen baby, have I?’ Imogen protested into her huge leather sack of a bag as she double-checked her belongings. ‘Can I just have one proper peek before I go, Hope?’

  Hope smiled her assent and, leaning over to the crib close by her bed, took a look for herself at the peacefully sleeping infant.

  ‘Pretty, pretty – no, not just pretty – beautiful,’ Imogen whispered as she stared into the cot.

  ‘Goodness, I am tired. I think I’m getting too old for this lark.’

  ‘Of course you’re tired, Hope darling. Still,’ Imogen straightened up, ‘not as tired as if you’d had it normally, of course. None of that awful pushing and shoving, just a nice slice and out for the count, and all better now.’

  Hope nodded, wondering how anyone who had not had a Caesarean could possibly say all better now. This was her fourth Caesarean, and just at that moment it felt like four too many.

  ‘I’ll look in again later if I can,’ Imogen said, straightening Hope’s sheets. ‘And I’ll pop in and say hi to the children. Meanwhile I’ll say ‘bye, love.’

  As she went clattering out of the room Hope found herself fleetingly envying Imogen her independence, her smart clothes, her career, no operations. Really, when she thought about it, Imogen did not have to be a boy, nor did she have to give birth to them – she had it all.

  Rose too had often thought that she was meant to have been a boy. Not from anything either of her parents had ever said, but because it just seemed so obvious. Melinda was the first-born and their parents would have accepted the fact that she was a girl with a good grace – but when their mother had become pregnant again it was obvious that she and their father would have been hoping for a boy. It was only natural. She and Mellie had often talked about it, wondering what difference it would have made.

  Not that they minded about it or anything, and not that their parents seemed
to mind either, and not that they thought their life needed changing in any way since they were so loved by both their parents, but every now and again they couldn’t help wondering exactly what it might have meant had Rose been born Robert, which was the name they had found underlined in the baby book Hope had bought before she was born. Robert. Rose was tall. She would have been a tall Robert. And dark like their father; and he would have taught her to play cricket, not taken her to dancing class.

  ‘I feel so sorry for Dads,’ Melinda sometimes said. ‘I’m sure he’d like a boy – someone to kick a football around with, or whatever.’

  ‘Except Dads doesn’t like football,’ Rose always reminded her.

  ‘That’s true,’ Melinda had replied. ‘And now I think about it, girls play football now. Do you still want to be a ballerina?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Nothing. Just that the other night Dads said Mums wasn’t all that keen. She thinks it’s a very demanding and difficult world, and she’s not sure she wants you growing up in it.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like Mums.’ Rose pulled a face. ‘I mean, it’s because Mums was a dancer herself that I was so interested in the first place. That can’t be right, surely?’

  ‘I’m only telling you what I heard Dads saying.’

  ‘But Mums only gave up dancing for us. To have us, rather. She loved dancing at Covent Garden.’

  ‘I know.’ Melinda shrugged. ‘But people change.’

  ‘But I’ve got my audition coming up for the school. If Mums wasn’t keen, surely she wouldn’t be putting me through all this – auditioning and getting my hopes up and everything, not if she’s planning on turning round later and saying I don’t think I want you dancing after all, Rose. I mean – you know me, Mellie! It’s like you and horses! Dancing’s everything to me – it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. And just the thought of not being allowed to do it – I’d kill myself.’

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t, Rose,’ Melinda sighed. ‘But I know just what you mean.’

  ‘Perhaps it was Dads?’

  ‘Dads?’ Melinda stared in astonishment at her sister. ‘Dads? If you wanted to – I don’t know – what’s the worst thing in the world to want to be?’

  ‘A prostitute?’

  ‘No,’ Melinda said slowly with a smile. ‘No, I don’t think even Dads would wear that – but you know what I mean. Dads wouldn’t stop any of us from doing something we really wanted to do. I mean Dads is brilliant like that.’

  Imogen had asked Alexander next door for a ‘kitchen supper’ and plenty of wine and sympathy. Hope knew all about it, Alexander knew all about it, they had all planned that Imogen would ‘look after’ Alexander when Hope was ‘taken in’.

  ‘I suppose you mind dreadfully, you poor sweetie? About having yet another girl?’

  Imogen had always fancied – a very Imogen word – Alexander. Ever since she had moved in next door to the charming Merriott family she had kept a firm eye on him. Tall, ridiculously handsome, and in the habit of smiling at the world as if he was a lazy tiger and the planet his basket, he had been earmarked, all along, for what she thought of as ‘her moment’, and once she saw Hope pregnant, nine long months ago, she had planned that moment. And tonight, thank God, was it.

  Different, of course, if Hope had given birth to a boy – in that case the outcome of this evening would be far from a foregone conclusion. But, bless her cotton socks, Hope was now out of the picture, lying in hospital half a mile away, all doped up after her operation, while Imogen was lying across her Victorian chaise longue in a crushed velvet dress with a thick black ribbon round her throat and soaked in Heartless by Ramona Lacache. There was simply no contest, but even so she had to be at pains to look sympathetic and loving, most of all towards Hope.

  ‘And I suppose Hope, although she is being so brave about it, I suppose she minds too dreadfully too, though she won’t say, because, let’s face it, that’s Hope.’

  ‘What difference does minding make, Imogen?’ Alexander wondered, smiling. ‘Minding hardly ever changed the course of history.’

  ‘Even so, I remember you saying that you were praying for a boy, you told me yourself.’

  ‘There was always a fifty-fifty chance it would be one or the other, and it turned out to be the other. Still, we can always try again.’

  Alexander looked across at their neighbour. Imogen – so opinionated, at times horrendously so – had always rather bored him, but this evening, what with Hope in hospital and yet another girl to bring up, he somehow could not remember how irritating he had always found her. Particularly not after two martinis.

  ‘I’ve cooked your favourite supper – chilli con carne with sour cream and grated cheese. Hope gave me the recipe months ago, and I’ve been practising.’

  Imogen’s scent floated across to Alexander. It was exquisite, musky and subtle.

  ‘What is that perfume you’re wearing?’

  ‘Heartless.’ Imogen looked down at her victim for a few seconds, and then threw back her head and laughed.

  As she did so Alexander could not help noticing the little bumps under her velvet dress where her suspenders were, doubtless, holding up her stockings.

  ‘Heartless,’ he murmured, after she had left the room. And he too laughed, the martinis and the fire making the name of the perfume seem strangely amusing, like an ‘in joke’ that only Imogen and himself could appreciate. ‘Heartless’, he repeated, and once more the name appealed as being inordinately funny.

  Imogen’s kitchen, like the Merriotts’, was at the back of her semi-detached house, but unlike the Merriotts’ it was spanking new, brimful of the latest magazine ideas. Following her from her all-white drawing room, Alexander appreciated all the more the tasteful pale aqua paint and the units especially carved by Selward and Brimley, the most modish of all kitchen designers. The basket drawers, the old Victorian clock above the small cream Aga, and the array of gleaming copper pots on the shelves above – her kitchen was utterly devoid of homework, nannies, cats and ringing telephones. It was also, thankfully, devoid of girls. Here Alexander could speak and be heard, and goodness Imogen listened. She listened not just with her ears, but with her whole face and body, and Alexander felt grateful to her.

  She understood him, she really understood him. She understood what it was like to get out there and really, really have to struggle – something Hope could not truly understand, because she had never had to do it. She had never had to get out there.

  Imogen kept using the phrase as she poured wine into Alexander’s very tall, very large glass. They both knew what it was like to get out there. The supper was quite excellent. Despite having cooked it, even Imogen was enjoying it, and what was more, in the candlelight, Alexander was looking even more handsome than usual, so handsome that whatever he was feeling for her, she was melting.

  ‘Oh, but should we?’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes, yes!’

  It was the moment that Imogen had imagined for nine whole months, and now it was upon her. Alexander and she were kissing, and then they were undressing, all the way up the stairs and into her incredibly sexy bedroom with its black iron-work four-poster bed, its white drapes – she loved white because it showed up your clothes so beautifully – and its polished Italian tiled floor which had been so expensive, but worth it.

  Just as Alexander’s love-making was worth it. Every single second was just as she had hoped, and feared. He was fantastic. He made love as if it was the first time for him, and for her, and she knew that she would never meet another man with so much to give. She would never have believed it possible, but it was true.

  Imogen lay back against her pillows.

  It had been worth waiting for this. Every single solitary day of the nine months Hope had been pregnant had been worth it.

  Out of the darkness of her satiated state she heard Alexander saying as he started to dress once more, ‘My God, Imogen, I should never, ever, have done this!’

  Imogen could not have agr
eed with him less.

  Hope returned home with her new baby after a week in the hospital, collected by Imogen in her immaculately clean black VW Golf GTI. She sat in the back with the baby in her arms, trying not to breathe in her overpowering scent – Restless or whatever it was called – a passion for which Hope could not share.

  ‘Decided on a name yet?’ Imogen asked, never taking her eyes off the road in front.

  ‘Oh, the girls and I will do that,’ Hope replied, closing her eyes so as not to see the risks Imogen was taking. ‘And Alexander, of course.’

  ‘I hear Alexander was thinking of “Letitia”,’ Imogen said thoughtlessly, then glanced quickly in her driving mirror, seeing Hope catching the look. ‘At least, when I popped in to see the girls the other night, that’s what they said.’

  ‘I like “Letitia”,’ Hope said, and she smiled, knowing that Alexander must have been at her book of baby names, since Letitia had been one of the many names three-starred for Claire, the last time. ‘I had a great friend at—an old friend of mine was called “Letitia”.’

  ‘At where?’ Imogen persisted, on to the fact that Hope was covering up. ‘School, you mean? A school friend, was she?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which school did you go to?’

  ‘Royal Lodge.’

  ‘God – the ballet school, of course. I keep forgetting. You were at Royal Lodge.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I’d forgotten you were going to be a dancer.’

  ‘No, I actually was a dancer, actually!’

  Hope saw Imogen glance up again into her driving mirror.

  ‘Bus,’ Hope called, holding her newborn tight. ‘Turning out in front.’

  ‘It’s OK – I saw it. No panic. Thanks. No problem. How long – how long did you dance? For?’

  ‘Long enough.’

  ‘I’d just forgotten you used to dance, that’s all.’

  ‘Of course – why should you remember?’ She yawned, putting her hand in front of her mouth. ‘Sorry!’

  ‘Hope, darling, please! You’ve just had a baby!’

  No I haven’t, Hope thought. I’ve just had yet another little girl.