Finding Monsieur Right Read online

  Backstage was utter chaos, a jumble of spaced-out models, near-hysterical dressers and make-up artists, television cameras and androgynous waiters weaving their way through the crowd with trays of glasses. Isabelle sipped pink champagne and stayed close to Jules. The crowd parted and they saw Chrissie sitting in the lap of an enormously tall girl in her underwear, still wearing her gold helmet. They were both giggling helplessly.

  Chrissie leapt up and ran towards Isabelle and Jules with open arms:

  ‘Here you are, my daaar-lings!’ He enfolded them both in a group embrace. ‘Did you like it? How was it? Did it look all right? Was it OK? Did you enjoy it? Tell me honestly.’ He stood back and looked at their faces. ‘Isabelle! I do believe you wept! Bless you, darling!’

  ‘Er, yes. I didn’t expect … it was really …’

  Isabelle’s embarrassed congratulations were soon interrupted by the arrival of a small blonde girl with a side ponytail, who plucked anxiously at Chrissie’s sleeve. She wore leggings and a knee-length T-shirt printed with an image of a psychopathic-looking Mickey Mouse wielding a chainsaw. This, Chrissie explained, was Posy, Savage’s assistant. Posy looked very harassed.

  ‘Hi, how are you?’ she said automatically in Isabelle’s general direction. ‘Chrissie, she’s asking for you. Over there. Now!’

  Chrissie appeared to sober up instantly and hurried away without argument.

  ‘I thought the show was incredible,’ Isabelle said.

  ‘Oh yeah? That’s great,’ Posy said with a wan smile.

  ‘And how is she today?’ Jules asked in a low voice.

  In answer Posy clutched her ears and performed a vivid pantomime of Munch’s Scream.

  ‘She must be relieved now the show is over,’ Isabelle said.

  ‘Yeah, kinda. This is over so now she’s doing her nut about something else. Catch you later. Got to run.’

  Without waiting for Chrissie’s release by his boss, Isabelle and Jules made their way home, as they both had appointments later in the afternoon. Isabelle was being picked up at three to drive to Meredith Quince’s house for tea with the rest of the Society. Before that, at two, Jules was hosting a band meeting to discuss future performance dates and the recording of their next demo.

  At the appointed hour, Jules was upstairs, so it was Isabelle who answered the doorbell. A young man dressed in black stood on the threshold. It took Isabelle half a minute to recognise Karloff. His airborne hairstyle was the same but he looked different and more approachable without his straitjacket, as most people would.

  ‘Oh, hi,’ he said diffidently. ‘Is Jules there?’

  ‘Yes, come in,’ Isabelle said, stepping back to let him in.

  Jules was just coming down the stairs and stopped dead in her tracks when she saw her bandmate.

  ‘Hello, Kazza,’ she said after a moment.

  Karloff cleared his throat, then slowly walked like a man in a dream to the bottom of the stairs and stood there looking at his shoes. Jules stared straight ahead at the wall. There was silence.

  Isabelle considered tiptoeing away from this tongue-tied tableau. Instead she said brightly, ‘So, you are having a meeting about the band?’

  Karloff and Jules looked across at her with gratitude and replied at the same time: ‘Yeah. Yes, we are. Definitely. Yeah.’

  ‘Are the girls still in the van?’ Jules asked in an unusually high voice. She cleared her throat and pushed her glasses to the top of her nose.

  ‘Yeah, about that,’ Karloff said, keeping his eyes on Isabelle. ‘Thing is, Legend’s got a cold.’

  ‘But the others are on their way?’

  ‘No. Ivy had to go in to work today.’

  ‘Bella?’ Jules asked severely, holding on to the banister.

  ‘She’s got, like, a plumbing emergency.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Jules. She slowly walked backwards up one step. ‘Do you mean it’s just … us?’

  Karloff nodded several times.

  At this delicate juncture the front door opened and Chrissie walked in on the scene. ‘Oh hello, Karloff darling. How divinely brooding you look today!’

  At this Jules seemed to come out of her trance. She clomped down the stairs and, grabbing Isabelle, led the way into the kitchen. Karloff and Chrissie followed.

  In the kitchen Isabelle said mischievously, ‘Chrissie and I should leave you alone, so you can have your meeting. I have some work to do in my room.’

  But Jules shot her such a stern look that Isabelle sat down at the table without further teasing. The Coven’s bass player proceeded to fill the kettle crossly, muttering to no one in particular, ‘I can’t believe these girls. I mean, where is their commitment to the band?’

  Isabelle and Chrissie swivelled their heads in the direction of Karloff. He stood silent and downcast by the dresser.

  ‘I’m sure they all intended to be here,’ Isabelle said reasonably.

  ‘Bloody amateurs. I’m just fed up with the whole thing.’

  Jules had now been standing at the sink with her back to everyone for such a long time that Chrissie went over to rescue her.

  ‘I tell you what, honey,’ he said, taking the kettle from her hands, then leading her gently to the table, ‘why don’t you and Karloff make a start? You’re both here: bass guitar, vocals. It seems a shame not to get on with it, hmm? Meanwhile I’ll make some tea.’

  Jules sat down slowly opposite Karloff. Isabelle, seated next to him, noticed that he had somehow managed to cross his black-clad legs twice over, tying them into a knot of anxiety.

  ‘Now, Karloff darling,’ Chrissie continued breezily, ‘you’re the front man. Take charge, darling. Come on! What’s the buzz? How’s it all hanging?’

  Karloff cleared his throat. The two lovelorn goths glanced at one another, then quickly looked away.

  ‘But the thing is, right …’ Karloff said at length, uncertainly. ‘Usually, the others are here as well …’

  ‘Is it the first time you two have met on your own?’ Chrissie asked without turning around. ‘To talk about Coven matters?’

  ‘Well, yeah,’ Karloff said, staring at Jules. ‘We’ve never met without the others before.’

  ‘Really, darling? Well, there’s a first time for everything,’ said Chrissie. ‘Shall I be mother?’ he went on, dropping tea bags into mugs and taking the milk out of the fridge. ‘Sugar, Karloff?’

  ‘Kazza never takes sugar,’ Jules replied before she could stop herself. Karloff blushed scarlet at this mark of attentiveness. Jules began to pull her fringe down over her glasses.

  Chrissie, looking over at Isabelle with wide eyes and pinched nostrils, distributed mugs of tea and placed a packet of dark chocolate digestives before Jules. ‘Open the goodies, will you, darling?’ He sat down and rested his elbows on the table and his chin on interlocked fingers. ‘Actually, I long to know about the origins of the band. How did you guys meet? Tell all.’

  ‘Whitby,’ Karloff said enigmatically.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Isabelle said in confusion.

  Jules turned towards her. ‘Whitby in Yorkshire is where Dracula’s boat landed in England.’

  Isabelle stared at her blankly.

  ‘In the book, darling, the novel by Bram Stoker,’ Chrissie said between sips of tea.

  Jules and Karloff nodded vigorously.

  ‘So Whitby is a place of pilgrimage,’ Chrissie pursued, warming to his theme. ‘Like a gothic Ibiza. Everyone wears black. Everyone is pale, dark and interesting. The sky is leaden. There is a graveyard with higgledy-piggledy tombstones. It’s freezing cold. A great time is had by all.’

  ‘Two years ago,’ Karloff said huskily, ‘I drove up there with Ivy. We shared a flat at the time. She brought her mate Belladonna. In the car the three of us started talking of this and that and maybe getting a band together. Just messing about, really. Then we got to Whitby, went to a party, got really drunk and forgot all about it.’

  Isabelle glanced at Jules. The Coven’s bassist was absen
tmindedly trying to open the biscuits but her nails found no purchase on the packaging.

  Karloff continued: ‘Afterwards we crashed at this B & B, then in the morning we all went to this pub called the Elsinore. I had a stinking hangover by then and was in a right grump. Anyway, in the pub, Ivy ran into these two girls that she vaguely knew. She’d met them at a festival in Sweden the summer before.’

  ‘That was me and Legend,’ Jules said, taking over.

  ‘Then my hangover just went. Just like that. Magic.’

  ‘Ivy began to talk about starting a band and as we went round the table it became apparent that we could all play something. And the rest is history.’ She tugged once more at the biscuits, to no avail. ‘Ah, sod this! I mean, am I the only one who gives a flying sod about The Coven?’

  ‘No! No, you’re not,’ Karloff said in a strangulated voice, ‘I give a flying sod.’

  Isabelle and Chrissie exchanged a look. The tension in the room had become unendurable.

  ‘We should really leave you …’ Isabelle said, beginning to stand up, but Jules’ hand shot out under the table and closed over Isabelle’s wrist in a vicelike grip. Isabelle sat down again while Chrissie opened the packet of Hob-Nobs. Karloff helped himself. He then looked up, met Jules’ eyes, panicked and crushed his biscuit into a fistful of crumbs.

  ‘Didn’t the sequinned cat’s ears look divine?’ Chrissie asked, tactfully addressing this question to Isabelle.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Isabelle replied. ‘I felt really proud of all the hats. My favourite was the gold helmet.’

  ‘Quite right. The gold helmet is perfect heaven.’

  Jules and Karloff drank their tea in silence. After a few minutes, Karloff said in a lifeless voice, ‘Right. I think I’m gonna … go home. So … I’ll speak to the girls about setting up another meeting. All right?’

  After his departure, Jules went to her room and shut the door. Soon the sound of manic singing and drumming made itself heard.

  ‘Bauhaus, I should think,’ Chrissie said, standing with Isabelle in the hallway. ‘She usually turns to them at times of crisis. Come into my parlour, darling, we need to talk.’ He closed the door behind them and grinned at Isabelle. ‘Honestly, did you ever see anything more excruciating?’

  Isabelle shook her head. ‘It is so strange, because on stage they are really not shy.’

  ‘They are brazen on stage! I put it down to the magic of performance. But offstage they can’t look each other in the eye. Poor little lambs. Or black sheep, I should say, in this case. Now, what shall we do about it?’ He frowned, then snapped his fingers delightedly. ‘Wait! Halloween is coming up! Yes, I know what we’ll do! And the best thing about it is that Jules owns the very thing we need.’

  There was just enough time for him to outline his brilliant plan before the minibus driven by Maud pulled up outside the house to collect Isabelle.

  The members of the Quince Society sat on board in a frenzy of excitement. All the way to Kew, they chattered excitedly at the fabulous prospect of tea in dear Meredith’s house. Looking out of the window, Isabelle wondered how much, if anything, Thomas Quince would know about The Splodge. He was quite old, according to Lucy – at least thirty – but unfortunately not old enough to have known his great-aunt.

  ‘We’re here!’ Maud said. ‘All passengers off, please.’

  The little band of pilgrims filed out of the minibus, stood around for a while exclaiming at the elegance and beauty of Meredith’s house, then huddled on the doorstep. Lucy rang the bell assertively. When the door opened, Isabelle was mildly surprised to recognise the stranger with the playing cards in his hat and the muddy Land Rover. They all filed in and Lucy made the introductions.

  ‘And this is our most recent recruit, Izbl Peppy-on,’ she finally said, her arm around Isabelle’s shoulders. ‘She’s French, you know!’

  ‘Welcome,’ Meredith’s great-nephew said, smiling at Isabelle with vague affability but showing no sign of having seen her before. He probably did not remember her: it had been such a brief encounter.

  The members of the Quince Society were taken upstairs and ushered into a drawing room, where softly faded chintz sofas and armchairs were arranged around a low table laden with tea things. A fire was blazing in the fireplace.

  ‘Please help yourselves,’ Tom Quince said, pushing back his floppy hair. ‘There are two big teapots and enough cups, I think. And I made enough scones for a small army.’

  These stood in an enticing golden pile at the centre of the table. Everyone sat down. At first the guests were bashful. There was a respectful lull while tea was poured, and jam and clotted cream passed around the table. Then, emboldened by their refreshments, they all began at once to fire questions at their host. Was this all Meredith’s original furniture? And what about the pictures on the walls? Which chair did she usually sit in? Did she like China or Indian tea? Did she often visit the botanical gardens? Was that the reason why she wanted to live in Kew? Did Meredith like to knit or embroider? Did she own a television set? Was she fond of animals? Did she keep a dog?

  Isabelle sat on a sofa between Fern and Wendy, keeping her own counsel. During the course of her academic training it had been drummed into her that the important thing wasn’t a writer’s life but their work. I am a narratologist, Isabelle thought primly, and, as such, I do not actually care very much about such fripperies as Meredith’s tastes and hobbies. She looked across the table. Lucy, her grey hair bristling and her blue eyes shining, was barking something enthusiastic at Meredith’s great-nephew, who listened without a trace of impatience or boredom.

  ‘And what do you do, Mr Quince?’ asked Maud with a certain amount of emphasis. She had been trying to interrupt Lucy for a while.

  ‘Are you also a writer, perhaps?’ asked Herbert.

  ‘Nothing so exciting. I’m a gardener.’

  Isabelle sighed inwardly. It didn’t sound very encouraging for her purposes.

  ‘Oh, really? How lovely!’ Fern exclaimed.‘Then you must have a spectacular garden!’

  ‘Well, it’s quite a lot of fun, you know,’ he said vaguely. ‘But it needs masses of work. I do have other people’s gardens to attend to, so my own garden suffers as a result, naturally. I would show it to you, such as it is, but it’s really too dark already.’

  ‘So was it garden design you studied when you lived in Italy?’ asked Maud.

  He said yes, it was, and turned to answer Selina’s questions about Mediterranean flora. Munching on a cucumber sandwich, Isabelle scanned Tom Quince for signs of resemblance to his great-aunt. There didn’t seem to be any, apart from general colouring, and even then his hair was actually lighter than hers in the portrait. She took another tiny bite of her sandwich. On the other hand, she thought to herself while examining him, he didn’t somehow look quite contemporary. Perhaps it was those tortoiseshell glasses of his: they looked a bit retro. No, it was more than that. The slant of his cheekbones, perhaps, and the firm sinuous line of his mouth. He had the sort of face that in previous eras would naturally have been adorned with a moustache. A faintly military one, she thought, one that curled up at both ends.

  At that moment their eyes met. He raised his eyebrows slightly and gave her a look that was so direct and ironic that she almost swallowed her sandwich whole. Isabelle turned hastily towards Wendy, who sat in meek, contented silence next to her, as though to respond to something she’d said. When she looked across the table again, Meredith’s great-nephew had resumed his vague and amiable manner, and was responding to Maud’s detailed interrogation about Florentine architecture. Isabelle must have imagined that uncharacteristic glance. He was not, in fact, paying her any particular attention.

  After tea, the members of the Quince Society were at long last able to have a look around the house. They started, thrillingly, with Meredith’s bedroom.

  ‘Oh,’ Fern said, unable to conceal her disappointment.

  ‘Ah yes,’ Tom Quince said apologetically. ‘I’m afraid it’s not �
��just as she left it”. My father turned it into his own study when he took over the house, then stored all kinds of unwanted things in it when they moved out. It does look a little forlorn now. I suppose it might do as a guest bedroom.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Wendy said as loud as she dared, ‘you might like to restore it to what it was in her day?’

  ‘Mmm, yes, that is an idea,’ he said absent-mindedly.

  They looked into the dining room, then went up one more flight of stairs to look at what had been a nursery for Meredith’s younger brother.

  ‘Meredith would have visited my grandfather in here and played with him when he was a small boy. Then it became my room, until I left home in my twenties. And now I have reclaimed it. I’m afraid it’s rather untidy.’

  The room, painted a very dark green, had the look of an attractive masculine den. Isabelle noticed a lovely etching of formal gardens above the bed and a desk piled high with botanical journals. They all went back down the stairs to the ground floor.

  Tom Quince opened a door, saying, ‘And this is the library.’

  Isabelle was briefly reminded of the games of Cluedo she had played as a child: was she about to come face to face with Colonel Mustard (or Moutarde, as in the French version of the game) wielding the candlestick? Instead, she went in behind Herbert and Emily Merryweather and found herself in the exact setting of Meredith Quince’s portrait. There was a chorus of delight from the members of the Quince Society.

  This room, in contrast to the others, appeared to be just as Meredith had left it. Isabelle recognised the bookshelves, the writing desk, the round coffee table, the green-and-red Persian rug. Meredith’s green armchair had been reupholstered in primrose yellow. Beyond the French windows, the garden was plunged in darkness. Tom Quince was explaining to his rapt audience that this was the room where his great-aunt had done most of her writing, at this very desk. They all gazed at this piece of furniture with reverence. Furtively, Herbert ran his hand over it, no doubt thinking of the genesis of Death of a Lady Ventriloquist.