A Bouquet of Barbed Wire Read online

  Novelist and screenwriter Andrea Newman changed the face of British culture in the seventies with her steamy television serial A Bouquet of Barbed Wire, based on her novel of the same name. Among her more recent credits are the hugely successful A Sense of Guilt, Imogen’s Face, An Evil Streak and Pretending to be Judith. She was born in Kent and now lives in London.

  Novels by Andrea Newman

  A Share of the World

  Mirage

  The Cage

  Three Into Two Won’t Go

  Alexa

  A Bouquet of Barbed Wire

  Another Bouquet

  An Evil Streak

  Mackenzie

  A Sense of Guilt

  Triangles

  A Gift of Poison

  A BOUQUET OF BARBED WIRE

  Andrea Newman

  A complete catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library on request

  The right of Andrea Newman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  Copyright © 1969 Andrea Newman

  Cover image © Mammoth Screen (Bouquet) Limited and Ingenious Broadcasting 2 LLP 2010. All rights reserved.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, dead or alive, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  First published in 1969 by Triton Books

  First published in this edition in 2010 by Serpent’s Tail,

  an imprint of Profile Books Ltd

  3A Exmouth House

  Pine Street

  London EC1R 0JH

  website: www.serpentstail.com

  ISBN 978 1 84668 772 3

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bookmarque Ltd,

  Croydon, Surrey

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4

  To my parents with love

  1

  IT BEGAN to rain as he entered the park, but not hard enough to make him look round for a taxi. Emerging from the station, he had been tempted by a pale gleam of sunshine, sufficient to convince him of the physical benefits of walking. He needed exercise, he had decided, just as he needed fewer cigarettes and less alcohol: it was pathetic how the habits of sloth and self-indulgence crept up unnoticed, along with middle-age, that unbecoming state which you did not even recognise until events brought it sharply and unkindly home to you. And now the fine Spring rain, for her first day back. He pictured her with painful tenderness, sun-tanned and shivering, getting ready for college in the unfamiliar flat. Was he too late? Would she still be there by the time he was able to phone? He had left home an hour ahead, under Cassie’s indulgent eyes, to catch an earlier train, feeling he could only telephone properly from the office, yet not knowing what he could possibly find to say that would be sufficiently casual when he finally heard her voice.

  In the office Monica was laying mail on his desk as he arrived. They greeted each other with the easy friendship of people who have worked together harmoniously for years. He was fond of Monica: he would miss her.

  ‘How was your weekend?’ he asked her, not really wanting to know but wanting to let her tell him. Her plain face lit up: it really did become glowing and pink as if illumined from inside by a rose-tinted bulb. He hoped life would always seem as good to her as it did now. She was, in his view, a deserving case, but perhaps for that reason all the less likely to be rewarded. Once in a while he had instincts about people and Monica was one of them: he had never felt her to be endowed with luck. In the circumstances he was even surprised that the wedding was still on. He wished, with sudden fervour and the conviction of disaster ahead, that he could give her some luck as a present. That was all she needed, all anyone needed. All the rest was superfluous rubbish. That fairy-tale about all the various gifts—quite unnecessary. In fact even fatal: for the over-endowed, like Prue, the gods meted out special punishment.

  ‘Well, we went to see the house again,’ Monica said, blushing happily, ‘and d’you know, the decorators have nearly finished. Isn’t that amazing? I thought they’d be weeks overdue—everyone always says how slow they are.’

  Of course. They were her first set of decorators. Her own personal decorators working on her own first house. No wonder the poor child was red-faced with pride, dazzled by novelty. ‘That’s marvellous,’ he said.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ She beamed at him. ‘And it really looks good. I mean they’ve done a good job, they haven’t been slapdash. Harry was so pleased. Well, we both were.’

  How tenderly she said his name. Lingering over it, caressing it with her tongue, then rushing on, embarrassed, trying to be casual. It was all so familiar. Wasn’t that how Prue spoke of Gavin?

  ‘That’s splendid, Monica,’ he said heartily, but she stopped, hesitated, a little uncertain, looking at him like a dog trying to gauge its master’s mood. Had the shadow of his thoughts reached her already?

  Something had to be done. He could not bear her to suffer for his state of mind, to go away thinking she had made a fool of herself, or bored him. He sat down at his desk, smiled up at her and said with a deliberate and whole-hearted effort of charm, ‘Monica, d’you think you could do me a favour?’

  She brightened instantly, her smile becoming at once more confident. ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Could you rustle up some coffee—now? And maybe a couple of aspirin. I’ve got the devil of a head—it started on the train.’

  She was happy again. He had made her happy by needing her help. If only it were always so simple. He glanced at his watch: there must still be time. ‘Oh, and Monica—’

  ‘Yes?’ She paused at the door, on her way to the coffee.

  ‘Could you get Mrs. Sorenson on the line for me first?’ He pronounced the name reluctantly, with irony, forcing himself to use it because he ought not to resent it so much, and because Monica, he knew, would have methodically and automatically reclassified Prue with her new name and number. Prue would now occupy a different page in Monica’s office address book. And if Gavin should happen to answer, Monica would say with slight emphasis, ‘Is Mrs. Sorenson there? Mr. Manson would like to speak to her.’ But that should not happen, for Gavin had further to travel than Prue: Manson had seen to that when he helped them with the flat.

  He went through his mail. Monica had pencilled in suggested answers for him to accept or amend. In the middle of it, the phone. Prue.

  ‘Hullo.’ How faint she sounded.

  ‘Hullo, darling. I’m so glad I’ve caught you. I was afraid you might have left for college.’

  ‘Well, I would’ve done, only I’m cutting the first lecture.’

  ‘Oh. No good?’

  ‘It’s not that, it’s me. I’m no good. I’ve been so terribly sick.’

  Monica put coffee on his desk, smiled, and went out. Two aspirins lay in the saucer.

  ‘Are you all right now?’ How hard it was not to betray insane anxiety.

  ‘Oh yes.’ She sounded very tired. ‘Well, better, anyway. Just terribly limp. I went back to sleep actually.’

  ‘And I woke you up.’

  ‘Oh, no. Well, sort of, but it’s just as well. I’ve only got an hour to spare.’

  He hesitated. ‘Why not take the whole morning off? May be what you need—do you good. After all your health’s more important …’ She should be laughing, going to parties, studying for fun; shopping and spending his money and ringing up to tell him about it. Not being sick in that flat.

  ‘Oh, I can’t. We’ve got Partridge at eleven and I mustn’t miss him. What were you phoning about before I started telling you my troubles?’

  He couldn’t ask about the honeymoon. Not yet. He knew he ought to but the words just refused to come. ‘Well, it seems a little inappropriate in the circumstances.’ He drank some of the coffee and threw the aspirins in the waste bin. ‘I was going to invite you to lunch.’

  There was a pause. Then: ‘Oh.’ The old familiar sound, a cross between ‘oh’ and ‘ooh’, full of childish excitement and adult mystery. It was a very feminine sound to him, his reward for offering her a treat. ‘Would you think me a terrible pig if I accept?’

  ‘Not at all, I’d be delighted. But will you feel up to it?’ He was obliged to ask and yet if she said no it would be another twenty-four hours at least before he could see her. He held his breath.

  ‘Well, that’s just it. Right now, no, the very thought makes me shudder, but by one o’clock I just know I’ll be ravenous. That’s the way it goes.’ She laughed apologetically. ‘I’m getting to know the new me.’

  He brushed that aside: it was too much for him. “Then I’ll pick you up at one, outside the main entrance. Will that do?’

  ‘Lovely. You are sweet. Where are we going?’

  He shook his head, forgetting she could not see him, drunk with the pleasure in her voice. ‘Surprise.’ When he put the phone down he buzzed Monica and asked her to book a table for two at the Mirabelle for one-fifteen. He added, as an afterthought, that the coffee was excellent and the aspirins had worked wonders already: his headache was nearly gone.

  2

  ‘TAXI, NO LESS,’ she said, impressed and disapproving, as she stepped into it. ‘You are extravagant. I thought you must have brought the car when you said you’d p
ick me up.’

  They kissed. He searched her face for signs of illness and recovery but the suntan masked it. Otherwise she looked the same, dark and thin. It did not show yet. She was wearing a pretty grey dress at the latest fashionable length—he thought it was new but could not be sure—and her hair was scraped back and tied with a red ribbon. She wore no make-up, except for stuff round her eyes. She was absurdly young and it hurt him to see her.

  ‘Well,’ she said under his scrutiny, ‘how do I look?’

  He had to make an effort. ‘Fine. Perfectly fine. I think you were shamming.’

  She laughed triumphantly. ‘There you are. In the morning the Dying Swan, by lunch time the Hungry Horse. Where are we going, by the way?’

  He smiled. ‘You’ll see. How was Partridge? Worth getting up for?’

  She glowed. ‘Oh yes, he always is. But Judson wasn’t. He came afterwards. I nearly went to sleep. People had to keep nudging me. That’s the other awful thing: apart from being sick in the mornings, I keep falling asleep all over the place. D’you know, I actually fell asleep in the bus queue this morning. Yes, really. Or very nearly. You know the sort of sleep you have in church, when you let your head sink lower and lower and your eyes close and maybe you sleep for ten seconds or so, I don’t know, and then your head jerks up with a terrible jolt and you wonder if anyone’s noticed. Well, I did that, sort of, only in a bus queue. I just started drooping and drooping until I finally keeled over on the man in front and then of course I woke up and he was holding me and people were crowding round saying are you all right and other people were pretending not to notice. And I said yes of course I was all right, just pregnant and liable to go to sleep anywhere, and they all said oh well, and hum, and that’s different then, and they all got back in their places and we pretended it hadn’t happened, only the bus was ages coming and I had to make a real effort to make sure it didn’t happen again.’ She giggled. ‘That would have been really embarrassing.’

  He said soberly, ‘You shouldn’t have been in a bus queue.’

  ‘Oh now really.’ She was unconcerned, even teasing. ‘I can’t take taxis everywhere, like some people.’

  ‘You could. I’d be happy to pay.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t use the money for taxis if I gave it to you. Would you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Oh—’ She shrugged, cornered. ‘I just couldn’t. It would seem so extravagant when we need so many other things more.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well—’ She paused, suddenly alert. ‘Now this isn’t one of your—I mean, you promise you aren’t pumping me so you can rush off and do something silly.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, you. I know you.’

  ‘Come on, Prue. Out of purely academic interest. What is it you need more than taxis right now?’

  She shrugged. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Nothing important. Nothing we can’t do without. But Gavin needs a new suit, you know, and some shoes, and if I had taxi money I’d rather buy things for him, or half a pound of steak instead of half a pound of cheese—’

  He said sharply, ‘You mean you’re not getting enough to eat?’ and she laughed.

  ‘Oh, of course we are, it’s all protein. I just mean fun things like Horlicks.’

  ‘Horlicks?’ he repeated stupidly.

  ‘Yes. It’s very expensive, didn’t you know?’ She was proud of her knowledge: a month ago, he reflected, she would not have known the price of such things any more than he did. ‘Oh, and flowers and theatre tickets and all sorts of silly little extravagances. Because that’s what taxis are, after all. Anyway, it’s not going to arise because we’re going to manage as we are, that’s all agreed, and we are managing, too. Heaven knows we should do after all you did to help us over the flat.’

  ‘Wedding present,’ he said automatically. They had had conversations on this theme many times. ‘That’s allowed, after all.’

  ‘When I think what that lease must have cost you,’ she said, serious, ‘I go cold with horror, I really do. I mean, I’ve looked around and I know, well, it just can’t have been less than a thousand pounds.’

  Her eyes searched his face for confirmation and he saw genuine horror and guilt. He did not understand it. How did it happen that a girl, not rich but not poor, all her life accustomed to the best that ordinary professional middle-class standards (if you cared to be technical about it) could provide, how did it happen that this girl had never learnt to spend money with abandon or to take any of these things for granted? He made his face a blank and sat firmly, ‘Now, Prue, presents are presents. You do like the flat, don’t you?’

  To his amazement her eyes went misty. ‘You know I do. I adore it. It’s the most lovely flat in the whole of London.’

  ‘Well then, that’s fine. Just enjoy it. That’s what presents are for. Tell you what, I’ll make a bargain with you. I won’t mention taxis again if you don’t mention the lease. How’s that?’

  ‘It’s a deal.’ She held out her hand and he shook it. A cold hand, even on a warm day, but a firm handshake. There was a lot of decision in her, he thought. Not always for the good, but there.

  ‘Anyway,’ she went on cheerfully, ‘lots of pregnant women walk about and take buses. It doesn’t do them any harm.’

  And what if it did? he thought. They could all choke on their varicose veins or miscarry on the pavement and I would only think what a pity, and maybe donate a little money to some appropriate charity, or increase my subscription to Oxfam, but they would not wring my heart, because they are not you.

  ‘That’s not the point,’ he said lightly.

  ‘What is then?’

  He smiled at her as they reached their destination. ‘The point is, you’re my daughter.’

  * * *

  Prue said, getting out of the taxi, ‘I should have known we were coming here. Oh, you are lovely to bring me. I know you think it’s vulgar but I can’t help loving it.’

  Manson glanced over his shoulder at the doorman. ‘I think he heard you.’

  ‘Oh dear. Will he mind?’

  ‘He’ll be pleased.’

  They went down into the bar and were given the full treatment. Manson had been there often enough on business. Prue had tomato juice while she studied the menu: this was a new development. There had been a time, he reflected, when she could drink him under the table, when she was about seventeen, before she went away to college, and he remembered thinking smugly that no man would ever be able to take advantage of her through drink.

  ‘I don’t know what I want,’ she said rapturously. ‘I could eat it all.’

  ‘If you really could,’ he said, ‘I would let you and I’m sure they wouldn’t charge. It would be such excellent publicity.’

  She smiled up at him and he saw a great vista of meals stretching back into the past. Prue with a bib being fed in her high chair (he had never been squeamish about doing things for her, though less helpful later with the twins), Prue with braces on her teeth being taken out to tea from school, Prue an adolescent with the largest appetite he had ever seen. ‘What are you going to have?’ she asked.

  ‘Avocado, steak and salad. A man of simple tastes.’ He sipped the Scotch he had not meant to order: the drink before lunch that he had thought to cut out.

  ‘Mm, avocado.’ She actually licked her lips. “There’s always that, of course. But how do I decide between that and prawn cocktail?’

  ‘If you choose the prawn cocktail I might just let you share my avocado. Or you could have avocado with prawns.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a lovely solution. But there’s still the smoked salmon, isn’t there?’

  ‘Now there I can’t help you.’

  The waiter smiled tolerantly and moved away. Prue crammed her mouth full of nuts and olives. ‘Oh, it’s so difficult. Maybe I don’t need to eat. Maybe I should just pin a menu on the wall at home and read it three times a day.’

  At home. She meant the flat. He said with an edge to his voice, scarcely perceptible but there, ‘If you could decide on your main course I could order the wine.’

  Her head jerked up from the menu. ‘You’re cross. I’m wasting your time.’