Part 9 (1/2)

Pop thought that this milord lark just about took the biscuit and he told Ma all about it as he uncorked the champagne in the bedroom.

'Called me my lord, Ma,' he said. 'What price that?'

Ma, who sat up in bed popping Chanel No. 5 down her bosom, thought it was a scream.

'Lord Larkin,' she said. 'Sounds all right, though. Not half bad. I think it sounds perfick, don't you?'

Pop said he certainly did and, laughing softly, poured out the champagne. In fact it was more than perfick.

'I think it's jolly tres sn.o.b, Ma,' he said, 'don't you? Very tres sn.o.b.'

6.

Pop began to watch events on the plage with growing uneasiness, if not dismay. Things were not going well at all. It was clear as daylight that Mariette and Charley were right off hooks.

Periodically he talked to Ma about it, but Ma seemed quite indifferent, beautifully unperturbed. With great placidity she sat all day watching the sea, the French mammas, the leaping young G.o.ds, the tatty little French girls, and the fis.h.i.+ng boats putting out to sea. She knitted, read magazines, sunbathed, and gave little Oscar the refreshment he needed, serenely unconcerned.

'What's Mariette sulking for?' Pop wanted to know. 'Dammit, she hardly speaks to Charley nowadays.'

Ma made the astonis.h.i.+ng suggestion that it was probably lack of variety.

'Variety?' Pop said. This was beyond him. 'Variety in what?'

'Before she was married she never had less than two or three running after her,' Ma said. 'Now she's only got Charley.'

Pop, who had never looked at it in this way, had nothing to say and Ma went on: 'What do you think I let you run around with Angela Snow and old Edith Pilchester for?'

Pop said blandly he hadn't the foggiest.

'Variety,' Ma said serenely. 'Variety.'

Pop still couldn't understand why Mariette should always seem to be sulking. At this rate he and Ma would be fifty before they had any grand-children: a terrible thing. Why were them two always off hooks? Did Ma think that it was possibly some defect in Charley's technique? And if so should he have a quiet word with Charley on the matter?

'Don't you do no such thing,' Ma said. 'I've had a word already.'

'With Charley?'

'No: with Mariette.'

Setting aside the notion that perhaps the whole matter was bound up in some curious feminine secret, Pop said: 'Give her any ideas?'

'Yes,' Ma said. 'I did. I told her to start flirting.'

Pop whistled. Even he was stunned with surprise.

Ma said she didn't see that there was anything to be surprised about. Even the twins and Primrose flirted. Even Victoria had started. Didn't Pop use his optics nowadays? Hadn't he seen Zinnia and Petunia making eyes at those two little black-eyed French boys who wore such funny little pinafores? They were at it all day. They had them in a tizzy.

'Flirting's good for people,' Ma said. 'It's like a tonic. You ought to know.'

Pop laughed and asked Ma if she'd thought of going in for a little herself.

'I might,' she said. 'Only it's a bit difficult with Oscar.'

Pop was pleased at this and asked Ma if she thought a little drop of flirting now and then would do Charley any harm?

'Flirting with who?' Ma, who was sitting placidly on the sand, huge pale legs outstretched, indicated with a contemptuous wave of her heavily ringed fingers the pallid creatures who populated the plage on every side. 'With this tatty lot? I pity him.'

Pop said he was thinking more of somebody like Angela Snow. She could teach him a thing or two.

'You should know,' she said. 'He's not her type, though. Not like you are.'

'She's got a sister,' Pop said. 'Very religious.'

'Give the poor chap a chance,' she said. 'I'm trying to make it easy for him. Not '

She broke off and looked at her wrist-watch. It was ten o'clock: time to give Oscar a drop of refreshment. With a slight sigh she picked him up from where he had been lying with some of her own reposeful placidity on a large clean napkin and then dropped one side of her magenta bikini top and produced a handsome expanse of bosom like a full-blown milky balloon. Into this Oscar buried himself with eager rapidity while Ma went on: 'Oh, talking about flirting and all that, I think we're going to have trouble with our Primrose.'

Primrose was eleven: even Pop, very faintly surprised, thought that was a bit dodgy.

'Trouble? How?'

'In love. Bad.'

Pop said he'd go to Jericho. In love? How was that?

'How?' Ma said. 'What do you mean, how? Naturally, that's how. Developing early, that's how. Like I did.'

Ah! well, Pop said, that was different. That was the right spirit. Nothing like starting young. Who was it? Not some French boy?

'Two,' Ma said.

Pop, laughing good-naturedly, remarked that he supposed there was safety in numbers, to which Ma firmly shook her head.

'That's just it. Can't sleep at night. She's trying to give one of 'em up and can't decide which one it's got to be.'

'Thought you said it was a good thing?' Pop said.

'Said what was a good thing?'

Pop, feeling himself to be rather sharp, laughed again.

'Variety.'

Instead of laughing in reply Ma regarded him with something like severity over the top of little Oscar's bald dumpling of a head.

'Sometimes I'm surprised at you, Sid Larkin,' she said. It was always a bit of a bad sign when she called him Sid Larkin. 'It's a very tricky age. You'll have to be careful what you say to her.'