a selection of which had as usual been pinned and hung at random over her billowing bosom. As she often says: if you’ve got ’em, flaunt ’em.
This might have had some bearing on the marked effort to be polite to her they made even after she called the waiter over and demanded, pointing at her soup,‘What do you call this?’
‘Chicken soup, madam,’ he’d replied haughtily.
‘If that’s chicken, it walked through on stilts.’
‘How very droll your dear grandmother is,’ Honoria had remarked in an aside to me. ‘A true original. You are her only grandchild, aren’t you?’
‘What? Oh – yes, Dad was her only child.’ I’d replied vaguely, wondering why I found Mother embarrassing whereas I never found Granny so.
Granny is clever, sharp, kind and loving, and if she doesn’t want to put on airs and graces I don’t see why she should. She says herself that Yorkshire folk are as good as any and better than most.
I gave a snort as I recalled James’s expression when Granny had written down a recipe for chicken soup and told the waiter to give it to the chef; then I realised he was still burbling on about my dress sense. Lack of, that is.
It wasn’t doing much for his driving.
‘Not that your taste has improved,’ he was saying. ‘All that black you used to wear was a bit gloomy, but you’ve gone too far the other way now.’
‘Because I’m happy, and I want to wear bright, cheerful colours while I’m still young enough.’
‘I suppose Fergal Rocco liked you in gaudy clothes?’
He liked me best in no clothes at all.
I just managed to button my mouth before it got away from me, and after a brief struggle in which my lips writhed silently, managed to say with supreme self-control, ‘Look, I only went out with him for a few months, then Goneril went to America and he dropped me like a hot potato. I never saw or heard from him again after he left. Satisfied?’
‘You’ve never seen him since?’
‘No!’
Only in my dreams. And let us hope James doesn’t get a sudden urge to read one of my books (unlikely though it seems) wherein all the romantic heroes are remodelled and transmogrified versions of Fergal.
Tish the literary vampire.
Frankenstein Tish, creating a new Fergal each time from the best bits of the old (and there were some choice bits), joined to new parts culled from my imagination. (I’ve got a good one. Lurid, even.)
Wonder if Fergal gets pale and listless every time I write a new novel? I wouldn’t like to think I was draining his batteries …
Who am I kidding? Yes I would! It would serve him right for breaking my heart.
James pulled up outside the flat with an over-dramatic swerve and stalked silently off without opening my door, one of the little old-world courtesies that first endeared him to me.
I only hope he’s not going to brood over this. I don’t know why he’s so upset about it, since he knew I hadn’t lived in an ivory tower before he came along. (A concrete university accommodation tower, actually – the urge to escape Mother overcame me.)
Perhaps it’s just that the type of man I went out with doesn’t match the image of me he’s been cherishing.
Sometimes lately I’ve thought the image he has of me doesn’t match me very much either.
You know, even now I’m not quite sure how I came to be married to James!
I wasn’t actually looking for Mr Right. Not even for
Mr Will-Do-at-a-Push-if-Desperate.
I remember telling him quite plainly that my life was blighted and I intended living quietly in the country devoting myself to my writing, and him saying he’d always wanted to live in the country too (his self-sufficiency phase). Then he just sort of sneaked up on me with flowers and chocolates and stuff. While spontaneity was not his middle name, dependability was: he was always there.
And being older he seemed rather suave and sophisticated. And attractive, even if not exciting, which was a plus point after Fergal: I’d had excitement. In fact James had practically had ‘Good Husband Material, Ready to Settle Down’ stamped on his forehead.
I don’t know what was stamped on my forehead, but it must have been misleading.
He was, in many ways, terribly conventional, and I think, looking back, that he thought I was too. I was so quiet and stay-at-home (or stay-at-digs) after Fergal.
On this reflection the car door was suddenly wrenched open, and I would have fallen out if I hadn’t still been wearing my seat belt.
‘Are you going to sit in the car all night daydreaming about your ex-boyfriend, or are you coming into the house?’ demanded James with icy sarcasm.
Oh dear.
Over his shoulder I observed something like a giant animated white hearth rug leap the area railing and bound off into outer darkness.
‘Bess is out, James,’ I said helpfully.
Fergal: November, 1998
‘ROCCO ROCKS ART WORLD.’
Sun
‘Is this the face of New Renaissance Man?’
Sunday Times
The painting is four foot square.
Step back, she swims out at you from the green depths.
Step forward, she vanishes.
The lady vanishes.
The gallery is crowded, thanks to the papers who have finally made the link between Fergal Rocco (infamous) singer/songwriter, and Rocco the painter.
At least most of the art critics have been kind. The gallery’s been quietly selling my work since I left the Royal College of Art, so there’s none of this ‘pop singer thinks he can paint’ stuff. That would have really pissed me off.
There are two things I’m serious about: my painting and my music.
There used to be three …
‘Oh, Fergal, you’re so clever,’ Nerissa sighs, lifting a face like a cream-skinned, innocent flower. ‘All these hidden talents.’
She’s small, pretty and curvaceous, and, judging from her short, select list of former conquests, finds fame in a man a powerful aphrodisiac. Nineteen going on immoral, and about as determined to get what she wants as Scarlett O’Hara. Sounds like her too, when she’s trying to get round me, all that fake ‘lil’ ol’ me’ stuff.
Daddy’s
