A Banquet of Consequences (13 page)

“Entanglements generally are. Which is why I avoid them, preferring animals instead.”

He gazed at her and she met that gaze directly. There was no challenge in her eyes, for that was not her way. Daidre spoke the truth as she knew it. It was part of her appeal. He said, “Right. But let’s not drift in that direction just now. I’ve not said hello to you properly.”

“You’re better off for it. Because of the elephants. I do think the shower’s taken care of that, though.”

“I hope so, although it probably wouldn’t have mattered much.”

“Have you ever smelled elephant?”

“On my bucket list.” He kissed her lightly and then again. He found the scent of her intoxicating, despite its being merely the scent of her soap and shampoo.

She ended the kiss but not all at once, and he found that gratifying. She gazed at him with unmistakable fondness. “You’ve had wine,” she said. “I haven’t. It’s hardly fair.”

“That can, of course, be immediately remedied.”

“A very good idea.” She went to their makeshift table and opened the pizza box. He watched her, noting the unselfconscious nature of her movements as she brushed her damp sandy hair off her face, securing it behind her ears, and then sat and dipped into the olive, mushroom, and mozzarella masterpiece. She took a bite and looked up at him. “After a day with elephants, heaven,” she declared. She gestured with the pizza slice at his own camping stool and at the book that lay next to it on the floor. “So tell me about
Looking for Mr. Darcy
and living happily ever after,” she said. “I note it has the word
myth
in its title.”

CAMBERWELL

SOUTH LONDON

It was half past seven when Charlie Goldacre rang the bell at India’s small house in Benhill Road. There were no lights on, but he told himself that she could be in a back room of the place. She wasn’t.
When no one answered his ring, he stepped back from the tiny front porch to look above at the first-floor windows. Nothing indicated a human presence.

He gazed round the neighbourhood. While it was true that he could have just as well phoned her with the message he wished to deliver, he’d thought it wiser to come in person. Now, however, what to do?

He decided upon a walk to Camberwell Church Street, just at the end of Benhill Road. If he could find a moderately decent pub there, he could while away an hour or so and then return in the hope that India would have arrived home.

He set off up the street. He didn’t get far. He was opposite a nondescript yellow building with the look of a community centre when the sound of raucous, joyful singing burst forth from the open doors. He slowed.

It was gospel music, sung a cappella. The volume of it along with the lyrics arrested him, declaring that
Abel’s blood for vengeance / Pleaded to the skies; / But the blood of Jesus / For our pardon cries
. As the song continued, Charlie crossed over curiously. Then he saw that the building in question wasn’t a community centre at all, but rather Jesus Saviour Pentecostal Church of Camberwell, and what he was hearing was the church’s choir in rehearsal.
Oft as it is sprinkled / On our guilty hearts. / Satan in confusion / Terror struck departs
, they sang.

He peeked in the doorway from the vestibule. At least forty strong, the choir stood on risers in what served as the chancel, their director before them. As Charlie watched, he pointed out a soloist who stepped forward and belted out the next verse. It was a mixed bag of people in the choir, he saw, a real United Nations of church going. They wore their street clothes, as did their director, but Charlie could imagine them as they would be on a Sunday, kitted out in red or blue or gold cassocks and moving rhythmically, as they were at the moment, to the uplifting beat of the song. He was thinking that having a listen to them would be far more enjoyable than whiling away an hour alone in a pub when he saw India.

She was, amazingly, in the choir. She was, as joyfully as the others, clapping and singing the backup notes in accompaniment of the soloist.

To Charlie, it was an astounding sight: India, his self-effacing wife,
in a mixed-race choir, openly enjoying herself. He could not remember ever having seen her like this. He pulled back and looked round the vestibule. There was a window ledge with brochures fanned out on it. He went to this and leaned against it. He would wait for her here and listen.

There were four more songs to be rehearsed. He found they did much to buoy his spirits. When the rehearsal ended, he heard the choir director giving them instructions for Sunday’s service. He concluded with, “And you, Izzy Bolting, had better show up on time because there is no way I’m allowing you to slip into the choir late, fall on your bum, and make us all look like damn fools again.” Someone called out, “Language, Pastor Perkins!” and laughter followed this. Then came the sounds of the choir noisily disbanding. Footsteps trod up the aisle.

Before any of the choir members reached the vestibule, however, a man entered the church, and Charlie shrank back. He recognised him as India’s new bloke, Nat, obviously there to fetch her. The man wouldn’t recognise Charlie, but still Charlie did not come forward. Thus, he saw the greeting between the two of them—India and her bloke—before either one of them knew he was there.

She came out with the last of the choir. She walked to Nat at once, saying, “You’re here. Lovely. I’ve just got to pop back to the house for five minutes,” and lifting her face to his for a kiss. She said, “Hmm. You taste of chocolate.”

He said, “On purpose. Would you like more?” and she laughed.

She stepped back from him, and that was when she saw Charlie by the window. Immediately all colour drained from her face. At that, Charlie knew that India had begun sleeping with the other man. He felt momentarily paralysed by his own agony.

India said, “Charlie! What are you doing here? How did you know where to find me?”

He took from this that she thought he’d been stalking her again, and he wanted to protest, but at India’s saying of his name, Nat put his arm protectively round her shoulders in a way that made Charlie wonder exactly what she’d said about him. Was it that he hadn’t adjusted yet to the end of things between them? Was it that he’d been trying to reason with her, to explain that he was attempting to
overcome those things about himself that she’d said he needed to overcome? Or was it more than that . . . such as what it was like to be with him when he was at his most pathetic, requiring her to be the Madonna and the whore simultaneously for him so that he could reach one searing moment of forgetting? Charlie couldn’t believe India would have told Nat about that. But it seemed to him that she’d revealed something because knowledge of a sort flashed across the man’s face and with that knowledge a bone-deep contempt.

India said again, “Charlie, what are you doing here?”

He said stupidly albeit honestly, “I was in the neighbourhood.”

“No one’s ‘in the neighbourhood’ who doesn’t live here.”

Charlie said with a nod at Nat, “What about him?”

“You know what I mean,” she said. “You’ve been following me again, haven’t you?”

Nat said, “She hasn’t rung the police yet, but if this doesn’t stop, she will do. You know what stalking is, don’t you?”

Charlie felt the first flush of anger. “Shut up. This doesn’t concern you.”

Nat took a step towards him. India put her hand on his arm. She said not to him but to Charlie, “We’re going out to dinner.”

“I don’t expect you’re inviting me along,” Charlie said. “Third wheel and all that. Just the husband getting in the way of the wife and her fancy man.” And to Nat Thompson, “She did tell you I’m the husband, didn’t she?”

“For now,” Nat said.

At that, Charlie wanted to hurl himself at the bloke. He wanted to smash his fist into his perfectly pleasant face, drag him over to one of the church’s windows, and drive his head straight through it. But he knew at the same time how utterly risible the image was. Although shorter than Charlie by an inch or more, Nat had the body of someone who took care to keep himself fit, and already Charlie could see that his hand—the one not firmly clasping India’s shoulder—had curled into an anticipatory fist.

India said quickly, “Nat, will you wait outside for a moment?”

The man didn’t answer at once. Instead, he did an assessment of Charlie, and Charlie could see that in Nat’s estimation, he was coming
up very short. When India said his name quietly another time, though, he nodded. “If you need me . . . ,” he told her.

“Thank you, darling.” As soon as she said the final word, India’s face flooded crimson. When Nat walked out of the church, she said to Charlie, “That wasn’t deliberate. I’m sorry.”

Despite what he was feeling, an anguish intensified so greatly that his entire body was throbbing with it, Charlie said, “I do know who you are, India.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Now you need to tell me why you’ve come. If this is about Nat, it’s simply not on that you—”

“There’s a memorial meant for Will.” If she didn’t talk about Nat, Charlie could pretend, if only for a moment, that he did not exist. “I thought you might want to come.”

She frowned, looking perplexed. “But before the cremation, we had a service.”

“It’s not that sort of memorial. There’s an actual memorial, a physical memorial, and it’s being dedicated. I hoped you . . .” He cleared his throat, for it had begun to tighten. “It would mean a great deal to me if you came, India.”

“Where?”

“Shaftesbury.”

He saw her defences rise in the way her posture altered, her neck lengthening as her chin lifted. “Not your mum’s house.”

“That’s not where it is. There’s a spring on some land below Bimport Street—”

“Where?”

He waved off her question with, “It’s not important. It’s below the property where Clare Abbott lives. Mum can walk to it—to the spring—on workdays when she wants to think about Will or meditate or something.” He coughed roughly, surprised by the sudden emotion that overcame him. He said, “It’s this thing Clare Abbott’s done for her, just to be kind, I presume. Because of Will. She’s brought in someone to do the design. I think it’s a seating area at the spring along with a stone for Will’s name and I don’t know what else. Clare phoned me up as she’s had it in the works for a while and now it’s ready. She’ll take her there on some sort of pretext and the rest of us will be waiting.”

“Your dad as well?”

Charlie snorted. “That would be a real slap in Mum’s face. No, he’s not been invited. It’ll be Clare, Alastair, me . . . I was hoping for you as well. I’ve been looking for Lily to tell her, but no luck there. I think women from the Shaftesbury Women’s League will attend. I don’t know exactly. I was just . . . I know it’s a lot to ask India, what with Nat in the picture.”

He stopped his rambling discourse when he saw that she was softening. He hated the idea that she was softening because she probably felt sorry for him, but he decided he would take that if it meant she would go down to Shaftesbury with him. They could drive together and he’d be able to spend the day with her. He could prove to her . . . something . . . anything . . . whatever needed to be proved to make her consider returning to him.

She said, “Of course I’ll go.” She reached out her hand, but she’d kept her distance, so she did not touch him. “I’m terribly sorry, Charlie. About everything. You know.”

“But not about him,” he said, inclining his head towards the door of the church and the man who waited for India outside.

“I can’t be sorry about Nat.”

“So what does that mean?”

“I don’t know exactly,” she
said.

SHAFTESBURY

DORSET

A
Londoner, Rory Statham always arrived in Shaftesbury with the very same feeling: that she was casting herself adrift from civilization, entering a place where the wind that swept up the stone spur of greensand from the wide, marshy bowl of Blackmore Vale rendered the town bleak in winter and far too exposed to the vicissitudes of English weather the rest of the year. As far as she was concerned, Shaftesbury’s one claim to fame was a picturesque cobbled lane called Gold Hill, and this brief, descending thoroughfare actually offered the casual visitor only two opportunities for delight. The first presented the chance to admire a row of admittedly lovely old cottages that tumbled down the hillside. The second tendered a heart-stopping climb back up to the town centre should one be foolish enough to descend the length of the lane to arrive at the neighbourhood of St. James below. At the top of this climb, a panorama of Blackmore Vale presented itself on a clear day from a tarmac promenade called Park Walk. Here one could see as far as the emerald lumps of Hambledon and Bulbarrow Hills and in the distance the chalk ridges and limestone plateaux of the Isle of Purbeck some thirty-five miles away. But otherwise, as far as Rory could tell, there was nothing at all in the town to enchant.

Clare Abbott always claimed that this conclusion of Rory’s was complete tosh as the town centre had a
quite
decent medieval church plopped down in the marketplace as well as a town hall that, while admittedly only pre-Victorian, was at least built to look like a companion of the ancient church next to it. And yes, yes, although there seemed to be a plethora of charity shops for so small a town, Shaftesbury also had the requisite pubs, tea shops, hotel, supermarket, clothing shops, and police station. All of life’s requirements, she declared. To Rory’s insistent queries about
how
Clare could possibly spend so much time in such a backwater when she had, after all, a home in London, Clare would go on with a dismissive, “Because it
isn’t
London, Rory.” To which she would add that Shaftesbury’s very lack of London’s diversions or—“let us face it”—its lack of even Sherborne’s diversions was precisely why Clare had chosen to live here. King Alfred, she’d declared more than once, had selected well when he established the town. It had excellent defensive properties since its exposed position allowed one to see the approach of the enemy for miles around. To Rory’s pointed demand about enemies from whom Clare thought she needed to be kept safe, Clare laughed and said they were the enemies that shouted in her mind when she attempted to work. The wind outshouts them, she liked to say.

Rory couldn’t disagree with that. There was wind aplenty. Clare’s house in Bimport Street sat in the west part of the town, facing southeast, and while its spacious front garden offered a pleasant lawn from which one could enjoy the sun while lounging upon one of the several mossy deck chairs with the house itself as protection from buffeting, its rear garden suffered the same prospect as did Park Walk: gale-force winds storming across the valley and sweeping like ceaseless tidal waves to beat against the back of Clare’s house. Only in the finest weather could one actually use her back garden. The rest of the time, it was similar to the town itself, victimised by its position in the landscape.

Now Rory pulled up to Clare’s house and opened the wrought iron gate that marked the property as private. Beyond this gate, a short drive led to a parking area for visitors and, beyond this, to the garage
for Clare’s ageing Jetta. High summer, and there was not a breeze stirring in the oak trees standing between the house and the street as Rory got out of her Fiat and went to the car’s hatchback for Arlo’s travel kennel. She let the dog out, and he bounded happily across the lawn, sniffing and marking along the flower beds. It was a bright, warm day of perfect weather with more promised for the morrow, which Clare had chosen as the dedication day for the memorial she’d had built to honour the memory of Caroline Goldacre’s younger son.

Rory and Arlo had come to Shaftesbury for “the ceremony,” as Clare was calling it. Rory had no clue what sort of ceremony was intended, and she would have vastly preferred to skip the entire dedication, for there were far too many unanswered questions in her mind about Caroline Goldacre, and she remained uneasy about all of them. But Clare had been insistent, and when it came to Clare, Rory generally wavered first and caved in second.

“Let’s just say I’d love to have you here as my friend” was how Clare put it. “Please say that you’ll come, Rory. Afterwards, we can . . . I don’t know . . . take a drive to Chesil Beach? Corfe Castle? A long walk for Arlo on Castle Hill? Name your price.”

Rory had told her that there was no price and that she would be there, and so she was. But when she walked along the limestone path to the front door and rang the bell, no one was at home. Rory fished in her bag for her coin purse in which she kept the keys she had to both of Clare’s houses. She whistled for Arlo to cease his explorations among the shrubbery and she let herself in, calling Clare’s name. No reply. She called Caroline’s next. Same result. But it was no matter. Rory knew the house well, so she said, “Come along, then” to her dog and took her overnight case up to the bedroom she always used. There she opened the window. She leaned out to look at the view as Arlo did his best to make sure the room was up to his sniff standards.

She could see from this spot the site that Clare had chosen for the memorial. Some fifty yards beyond her back garden, the landscape fell away to a narrow strip of paving called Breach Lane, and on the north side of this little street and somewhat along the way
of it, Rory could see a white canopy set up and within the canopy a stack of folding chairs waiting to form a seating area. Near those chairs, three people were talking. Rory recognised one of them as Clare. Her arms were crossed and her gaze was directed towards a spring just beyond the tent, where water bubbled into a pool set off by new shrubbery. There, benches of what looked like Purbeck limestone appeared to be a feature of the spot, as did something quite large and covered with sheeting, which was presumably the memorial.

Rory observed this thoughtfully. Why Clare wanted to honour a young man she’d never met was a mystery to her. All she’d been able to get from Clare on the subject was just that she thought it “would please Caroline,” and she’d not asked further questions, deciding it would be best to let this particular dog lie. Please Caroline? had been her thought, though. Why on
earth
did Clare wish to please Caroline?

Rory turned from the window and checked the bed. It wanted sheets and pillowcases, so she went to fetch them from the airing cupboard. Arlo trotted along at her side. She bent to pet him, told him what a good boy he was, and rooted for what she needed in the cupboard. When she had the room set up, she descended the stairs to the kitchen, where she made herself a cup of tea and offered Arlo a bowl of water. She searched out the bed she kept for him in Shaftesbury, found it on top of the washing machine, and got him established in the sitting room, along with her tea and a plate of three lemon biscuits. She’d just placed this on a table in the bay window that overlooked the front garden when she heard the door open and close and footsteps come into the flagstone-floored entry. She went to the sitting room door to see that Caroline Goldacre had arrived, bearing the day’s post and a smallish parcel.

Caroline started with a cry when she saw Rory, although Rory found this reaction odd since her car was in plain sight next to Clare’s and, indeed, Caroline would have had to park behind her anyway. The woman also dropped a handful of letters and the parcel, saying, “Rory! You gave me quite a start.” She ignored Arlo, who came to
greet her, tail wagging in doggy hello. She glanced at him and then away, saying to Rory, “Clare didn’t tell me you were coming down. I would have been here to meet you.”

“I’ve got the key,” Rory told her. “Arlo . . . ,” to the dog, who was busy sniffing Caroline’s ankles, “back to bed please.”

Caroline watched the dog as if to make sure he didn’t take a pillow from the sofa with him in order to chew it to bits. She then said, “Still and all . . . Well, no matter. Obviously, I’ve not seen to the spare room.”

“Not a problem,” Rory said. “I saw to it myself.”

“Oh.” Caroline glanced at the stairs. “It’s very odd that Clare wasn’t here to greet you.” And then after a moment she added carefully, “Rory, forgive me. I must ask. Clare
does
know you’re coming, doesn’t she?” Caroline made the question casual, but there was no masking its probing nature.

“She invited me,” Rory said.

“How strange that she didn’t tell me.”

Rory wanted to ask why Caroline seemed to require knowledge about anyone’s intended visit to Clare, but she merely said, “She’s been busy. I daresay it slipped her mind.”

“Setting off somewhere, just the two of you then?” Caroline asked. “Or I suppose I should say the three of you as, of course, you will have your little dog, won’t you.”

“I certainly will,” Rory replied pleasantly.

“Well, she didn’t tell me that either, if you
are
setting off. Does she have an event she’s forgotten to tell me about? You aren’t heading to a conference, are you?”

Rory shook her head. “This is just a visit.”

“In the midst of all her publicity work for the Darcy book? Extraordinary.” Caroline flashed her a smile. “Ah, well. As long as you’re sure this isn’t a surprise.”

“As I’ve said. She knows I’m coming.”

“Very odd that she wasn’t here to greet you then.”

“As
you’ve
said,” Rory pointed out. “Twice now.”

“It’s just that . . .” Caroline blew out a breath and shoved her mass of dark hair off her shoulders. “There’s actually not enough food in
the house, Rory. Of course, I’ll go back into town for groceries when I have a moment. But if I’d known in advance . . .”

“I won’t have you do that,” Rory told her. “I’ve had a very long drive, and it’ll be good to have a walk into the town centre. I can pick up what I want. And Arlo needs a walk.”

“Now that
would
be a blessing,” Caroline said. “And if you wouldn’t mind doing it straightaway . . . ? So that I can sort out what needs to be prepared for dinner?”

“Actually, I was just about to have a cup of tea,” Rory said, as pleasantly as she could manage. “And not to worry about tonight. I’m quite happy to take Clare out for a meal.”

That said, Rory turned and went back into the sitting room, leaving Caroline with the day’s post and whatever sorting out she needed to do with it. She was enjoying her tea and her second lemon biscuit along with a copy of
Majesty
that Clare religiously bought for the unintended amusement value of its photo spreads and its breathlessly admiring reportage on obscure royal families round the globe when she heard Caroline at the door to the sitting room. She looked up.

Caroline was holding a tee-shirt before her, still bearing the signs of having been folded. Its colour was black, and across the front of it scrolled the words
On the 8th day, God created clotted cream
, beneath which was the depiction of a mound of that substance with a fanciful serving spoon sticking out of it.

Rory chuckled. “That would be from the woman at the Bishopsgate signing. Was that in the parcel just now?”

Caroline didn’t join in the amusement. She said, “How did this come to be sent here? Clare was merely being polite. You
know
how she is: completely incapable of giving people the casual brush-off. So what I’m employed to do is to brush them off for her. I took Clare’s card back from that person because I knew she didn’t actually want this ridiculous thing, Rory. She was merely offering someone one of those moments in which one human being thinks a connection is being made with another. A feel-good moment, as Americans would call it. So how did this tee-shirt end up being purchased and sent directly here to her home? Because I have to tell you what that suggests.”

“What?”

“That you went behind my back and gave whoever-she-was one of Clare’s cards despite having seen me take it from her. Which, of course, you
had
to have seen or you wouldn’t have given her another card in the first place.”

“If you know all this, what are your questions, Caroline?”

Caroline dropped the tee-shirt over the back of an armchair as she came into the room. “You hate that I work for her, don’t you?” She positioned herself directly in front of Rory, who laid her magazine aside and said, “Actually, no. I don’t understand exactly what it is that you do for her that makes you so indispensable, but Clare can employ anyone she wishes to employ.”

“That’s a rubbish answer. You hate that I do precisely what she’s told me to do because it’s generally something that
you
don’t want her to do at all. So let me ask you this. D’you think I
want
to be her gatekeeper? Do you think I
enjoy
following her round and cleaning up her messes?”

Rory observed the other woman, noting the unmistakable fire in her eyes. She said, “‘Messes’? What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the fact that, despite the however-many-it-is years of your alleged ‘friendship,’ you haven’t yet twigged that Clare Abbott isn’t at
all
who you think she is. How well do you actually know her at the end of the day?”

Rory could see this for what it was, an invitation to a very strange confrontation that she didn’t wish to have. She said mildly, “How well do we ever know another person?”

“Well enough in this case for me to be able to tell you that Clare isn’t who you wish her to be and you can believe that as I live and breathe.”

Rory stood. She’d finished her cup of tea, and although there was another biscuit left, she thought the course of wisdom might be to leave the other woman to do whatever stewing she felt she needed to do on the matter of who knew whom and what sort of difference that made anyway. She said, “I’ll walk to the town centre now. Come along, Arlo. Is there anything at all you’d like me to fetch you, Caroline?”