Free Vacillations of Poppy Carew by Mary Wesley Page B

and Victor had loosed the trout. He peered into the water, fearing to see it floating dead on the surface (as well it might after its vicissitudes) but, noting Bolivar sitting still and enigmatic, watching the water, he assumed its survival and went to bed, to sleep and forget his anxieties. It was only when the girls returned in the small hours, with Barnaby yelling and their boyfriends shouting raucous good nights, that he woke to worry as to whether Victor, going off as he had with Poppy, had stolen a march on him. Damn Victor, he thought, and damn those bloody girls.
    ‘Shut up,’ Fergus flung open his window, ‘shut bloody up.’ The laughter trailed away then broke out again into bubbles of high spirits. Slamming his window shut, cracking a pane, Fergus thought they will wake the dead and the dead are my métier, as he drew the covers over his head to deaden the sound.

11
    E ARLY THE NEXT MORNING, deserted by fickle sleep, Poppy lay in the visitors’ bedroom thinking of her father. Although he had spoilt her as a child, never been angry, impatient or unkind, he had been much away leaving her with Esmé.
    There had been between Dad and Esmé, a handsome woman referred to behind her back as ‘The Spirit of Rectitude’ an uneasy truce. She insisted on brushed hair and washed hands, had been known to tell Dad to change his gardening clothes before sitting down to tea. Childhood had been punctuated by sharp commands: ‘wipe your feet’, ‘clean your teeth’, ‘go and have a bath’, ‘don’t bring that filthy thing into my kitchen, take it out at once’. ‘Your mother’ or ‘Mrs Carew’ (depending on which of them she was addressing) ‘would not like that’. When Esmé called on his wife’s name for support Dad would laugh and say, ‘She wouldn’t mind, Esmé. You are inventing her, building her in the image of past glories.’ (Esmé had once been Nanny to a diplomat’s children and was not averse to putting the Carews down a peg. Poppy had never been sure whether Esmé had actually known her mother, her own memories of her were hazy. There were the photographs in Dad’s room, the recollection, vague, of Mum leaving on a trip abroad, of time passing and the eventual realisation that she was not coming back. That somehow she had been negligent, had died. Life had carried on, orderly, rather dull, with Dad constantly away. ‘Another card for you.’ Esmé would sort the post, picking through it with suspicion, sniffing at bills and appeals. Where were those postcards now? Restless, Poppy got out of bed, crossed the landing to her old bedroom, crouched down by the chest-of-drawers and began to search. What a lot of rubbish, old letters, broken toys, odd socks, snapshots of cats and dogs, school groups, junk jewellery and snaps of Edmund. Oh Edmund, did you really have your hair cut like that? And oh, I’d forgotten you tried to grow a moustache (it had been unkind of Dad to laugh). And the postcards, bundles of them, the message always the same, ‘Love from Dad, see you soon.’ Poppy turned them over, looking at the postmarks. Cheltenham, Plumpton, Newcastle, York, Worcester, Wincanton, Newton Abbot, Chepstow, Brighton, Liverpool, Ascot. A litany of racetracks. He had been with those mystery ladies who dealt out Life’s Dividends. Poppy sniffed the cards. Were the ladies beautiful, witty, sexy? Had Esmé known as she sifted the post what he was up to? Where was Esmé now? Alive? Dead? Esmé had liked Edmund, unlike Dad who had taken his instant dislike. She had encouraged Edmund, making him welcome, laying another place at the table (no trouble at all). She never did that for anyone else (can’t have just anyone popping in without so much as a by your leave). Crouching by the drawer full of junk and memories, Poppy remembered Esmé’s expression. She had been defiant, annoying Dad on purpose, getting a kick out of it. ‘Edmund will do you good,’ she had said. What had she meant by that? Had