Tales of the City 04 - Babycakes

… I guess … well, I don’t know. That’s funny, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Very.”
“Anyway … if I can show you anything.”
The woman’s eyes widened. “I beg your pardon.”
“I mean … like … around the house.”
The woman’s laughter was a total surprise, like a tractor trailer honking on a hairpin curve. “My dear Moira … I came to Christmas parties in this house when I was eight years old.”
“Oh … I see.”
The woman picked up the Polaroid and aimed it toward the minstrels’ gallery. Click. Whir. She looked at Mona again. “I’ve been watching Easley’s sad decline for many, many years.” Shielding herself with a simpering smile, she removed the print and laid it daintily on the window seat. “He hasn’t told you a thing about me, has he?”
“No,” Mona replied calmly. “Actually, he hasn’t.”
“Well … that’s a pity.”
“Is it?”
The flat smile came back. “If nothing else, Moira, it would make your little charade so much easier. That’s all I meant.” She picked up the print and squinted at it. “The light is rather poor, I’m afraid.”
“It’s Mona,” said Mona.
“Mmm?”
“My name is Mona, not Moira.”
“Oh. Sorry.” She looked down at the print again.
“I take it you don’t need me.”
“Whatever for?” said the woman, smiling.
Mona marched out of the room. She didn’t break stride until she had gone the length of the house and accosted Teddy in the sitting room. “Why the fuck did you do that to me?”
Teddy looked up from his Martin Amis novel with a rueful smile. “Isn’t she a delight?”
“You could’ve told me she knows.”
“Well, I … she does, does she?”
“Yes. You didn’t know that?”
“No … well, I might have guessed. She doesn’t miss much. I’m sorry, Mona. People talk about me. I’ve never been able to prevent that, and … some of it’s bound to rub off on you. Has she left yet?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, “and I don’t care.”
“Neither do I.” He shoved his book aside. “I have a bit of that lovely hash left. Shall we take a stroll along the parapet and leave her to stalk the halls in peace?”
“Great idea,” she said.
She followed him upstairs to the water-spotted bedroom that led to the attic stairway. As they climbed, hunching toward a sliver of light, the roof beams of Easley arched above them like the blackened rib cage of some prehistoric beast. Teddy leaned against the parapet door; they were momentarily blinded by the white April sunshine.
Mona looked toward the western hills and drank in the spring-scented breeze. “This is sort of our place, isn’t it?”
Teddy’s eyes twinkled. “It is, rather.” He poked around in the breast pocket of his salt-and-pepper tweed jacket and produced one of his fat hash-and-tobacco joints. Lighting it with his Bic, he took a toke and handed it to her. “I should warn you about my father,” he said.
Eyeing him suspiciously, she took in smoke and held it.
“I don’t mean warn you, really. Just … an explanation.”
She nodded.
“Daddy … uh … has this mental thing.”
She exhaled.
“It’s quite harmless, I assure you. The doctors say he’s retreated from … the usual reality, as it were, and taken refuge in happier times … his happiest time, actually. He lives it over and over again. There’s a clinical term for it.” He took the joint back. “It escapes me at the moment.”
“What was his happiest moment?” she asked.
“Well, apparently, a fortnight he spent with the Walter Annenbergs.”
“The who?’
“Oh … I thought they were household words in California. Walter and Lee Annenberg. He was ambassador to the Court of Saint James’s when Daddy met him. They hit it off straight away, Daddy and Walter … so Mummy and Daddy spent some time at the Annenbergs’ estate in Palm Springs. And Daddy, I’m afraid, never quite got over it.”
“You mean …?”
He nodded. “He thinks he’s still there.”
She smiled at him. “You’re kidding, aren’t you?”
He shook his head, smiling back.
“He walks around Gloucestershire thinking he’s in Palm Springs?”
He shook his head again. “The Scillies.”
“What?”
“He walks around the Scillies thinking he’s in Palm Springs.”
“Oh.”
He offered her the hash again.
“No, thanks,” she said. “The tobacco makes me dizzy.”
“Most of his major symptoms have subsided, thank God. Mummy’s broken him of the white shoes, the golf togs, that sort of