A Banquet of Consequences (72 page)

She was fairly knackered. She was also hungry but decidedly unwilling to cook something up. So she went for the cupboard where she stored her Pop-Tarts and rustled through the various boxes for a new flavour she’d found that had sounded intriguing: cupcake. With no one there to cast a disapproving eye upon her choice—namely Winston Nkata—she opened the package, scored two of the tarts, and deposited them within the toaster. She set the kettle to boil, dug the
last sachet of PG Tips from its box, and gave a desultory look to the post that had been collected by her neighbour—the always turbaned Mrs. Silver—while she’d been gone.

It consisted of the usual collection of bills—she gave idle thought to not paying her television licence and then dismissed it since she was, after all, supposed to be a law-abiding member of society—along with three credit card offers, one recommendation that she buy private medical insurance posthaste so as to avoid putting herself in the hands of the NHS, and a greeting card with unfamiliar handwriting upon it. She opened this.

A panda sitting under an umbrella was its cover. A note was inside:

Ciao, Barbara. I ask from Thomas Lynley your address. He gives it to me. You stay well, I hope. Also I. I come to London with Marco and Bianca four days when is Christmas. We practise English together. Bianca talks it well. I not much. If is enough time we would see you. Also Thomas we see and the sights of London. You write to me if you want to meet with us? You see here I learn English some since you are in Lucca.

It was signed only
Salvatore
. Lo Bianco was the rest of his name. Marco and Bianca were his children. She’d met them all during her folly-driven trip to Tuscany in the spring. It was largely down to Salvatore Lo Bianco that her friend Taymullah Azhar and his daughter Hadiyyah—former occupants of the darkened ground-floor flat at the front of the building behind which Barbara lived—had been able to make their escape to Pakistan. Whether they needed to remain there . . . ? Perhaps Salvatore Lo Bianco could tell her that.

She would definitely welcome the Italian and his children to London, she decided. She’d liked the bloke.

She wandered—newly toasted Pop-Tart in hand—to her answer phone, which was blinking to alert her to a message.

“Told Mum about that goulash you made me” was the first. “When she finally stopped laughing, she said you’re meant to come over here for some proper lessons in cooking, innit. Ring me, eh? She’s dead serious, Barb.”

And then, “I know, I know.” It was Dorothea’s voice. “I
said
have
a think and then let me know but I
did
want to tell you that I’ve found a tap class. It’s in Southall of all places, so it’s a bit of a slog, but consider the multicultural experiences we’ll have if we decide to take it on. Plus curry. God knows there’ll be masses of curry.
Guiltless
curry as well because we’ll have all that massive exercise before we sit down and tuck in. There. I’ve said enough. Think about it. The autobiography and all.”

Barbara shook her head with a chuckle. It was odd, she thought, how one could look at this particular form of human contact: an intrusion or an introduction. It was up to her to decide what to call it.

She was about to launch herself onto the daybed to pick up where she’d recently left off in her latest romance novel when she caught sight of the carrier bag that she’d unceremoniously stuffed beneath it upon the conclusion of her sojourn into Middlesex Street with Dorothea. It seemed ages ago, and she’d nearly—but not quite—forgotten the experience. What she
had
forgotten was what Dorothea had purchased for her: those trousers, their accompanying jacket, that shirt.

She reached for the bag and dumped its contents onto the daybed. She had to admit that none of it was half bad. Not what she’d have chosen for herself, but perhaps that had been the point. And it wouldn’t hurt to try everything on. She didn’t have to wear it in public.

All pieces fit, she discovered once she’d shed her old clothes and shimmied into the new ones. Odd, that, as she hadn’t told Dorothea her sizes. But the departmental secretary apparently had an unerring eye when it came to clothing.

She had to stand on the seat of the loo to see herself completely, and when she did this, Barbara found that the colour of the trousers and the jacket was right. So was the cut. It was rather amazing.

She
could
, she reckoned, wear this sort of clobber to work. Of course, a few of her colleagues would take the mickey, but that was only to be expected. It wasn’t the worst thing in the world to amuse one’s fellows in the workplace. It also wasn’t the worst thing in the world to cooperate with her superiors when it came to her manner of dress. She would have vastly preferred to go her own way in this, but she could chalk it up to a new experience, as Dorothea would have put it. There was the
auto
biography to consider, after all.

BELSIZE PARK

LONDON

Aside from speaking to her on the phone once, Lynley hadn’t had contact with Daidre in four days. Even then, their contact had been simple. Had he mentioned that Daidre now lived quite near his colleague Barbara Havers? had been the excuse he’d used for ringing her, and the subsequent conversation they’d had after that introductory remark had kept them safely away from any issue more personal than the pressures each of them faced at work: Daidre was ethically opposed to breeding programmes whose intentions were to produce more animals for captivity, and this was putting her into conflict with several powerful members of the zoo’s board of directors. For his part, Lynley reported on the successful conclusion of the case in Dorset. Admittedly, he was still walking carefully round Superintendent Ardery after using the Cambridge police to orchestrate Barbara’s involvement in the investigation. But at least Havers and Nkata had produced a result on the final day they’d been given to produce one prior to being recalled to town. Et cetera, et cetera went the conversation. Lynley knew they were skirting round what needed to be said. He reckoned Daidre knew it as well.

I’m in love with you
hung between them.

He’d had dinner at home in Belgravia on this evening, but he found that there was no pleasure in solitude at the end of the day. He had the morning’s newspapers to finish reading, the day’s post to go through, a phone call from his sister to return, and an invitation to dinner with Simon and Deborah St. James—“I swear I won’t do the cooking, Tommy, and we do long to meet Daidre, you know,” Deborah had said—to consider. All of these activities could have occupied him once he’d eaten his meal. Still, the only activity he wished to pursue was seeing Daidre.

He rang her. He made no excuse. He didn’t lie. “I think we’ve gone off course,” he said. “May I come to see you?”

It was late for a call upon anyone, but Daidre said that she would welcome a visit. “I’ve been missing you,” she added. “Work’s been deadly—when isn’t it, actually?—and you could be the antidote for my anxiety about having taken on this bloody job in the first place.”

“Politics at the zoo?” he said.

“Politics at the zoo. Anyway, do come. Are you nearby?”

“Belgravia, I’m afraid.”

“Well, that can’t be helped, can it? If you don’t mind the trek, I’d love to see you.”

And so he went. He’d had four days to think things over: what he’d meant about being in love with her and how being in love with her—or with anyone—led to having expectations that, frankly, he’d preferred to ignore. Supreme among those expectations were those that had their roots in Daidre’s background and in what she’d tried time and again to communicate to him about that background and its effect on who she was and who she was likely to remain.

When he rang the bell, her voice said, “Shall I assume it’s you?”

“You shall,” he replied and when she admitted him, he pushed open the building’s door to find her waiting in a shaft of light from her sitting room. She was, he saw, attired for bed and it came to him that, exhausted from her day of zoological politicking as she probably was, she might vastly prefer simply to sleep. He said to her, “Perhaps I shouldn’t have come. Did I awaken you with the call?”

“You did. But you take priority over sleep.”

She closed the door and shot the bolt home. She’d opened a bottle of wine, he saw. Along with two glasses and a plate of grapes, it was on the old window-cum-table that they’d been using for ages. She’d not got beyond painting the walls of the sitting room. This dispirited him for all it implied. Lack of progress on the place suggested that she was calling a halt—or at least a hiatus—to them as well. He couldn’t actually blame her, he decided. He’d been pushing her, and she wasn’t the sort of woman who was going to like that.

She poured them each a glass of the wine. It was very good. When he told her this, she said with a smile, “I’ve found that buying wine based strictly on the appearance of the label leads to all sorts of completely delicious surprises.”

“I’ll adopt the practice tomorrow,” he promised.

“Of course, I choose only Italian wines, so there is that,” she admitted. She lifted her glass to him and said, “Congratulations on a case concluded and at least part of your reputation redeemed. Was Superintendent Ardery pleased?”

“She’d have vastly preferred we all go down with the ship.”

“She hasn’t forgiven you yet?”

“She’s a woman who knows how to hold a grudge.”

“Ah.” She reached for some grapes. She said, “Well. Hello, Tommy. Do sit. You have an expression that suggests you’ve something to say.”

He sat. They were thus opposite each other with the old window between them, much as they’d been when consuming the endless pizzas that had been their meals over the past few months. He’d have preferred to be closer to her—all the better to touch her hand as he spoke—but his preferences were what had brought them to this pass, and he was finally able to recognise that.

He said, “I’ve put us in a difficult place. I’d like to alter that, if you’ll allow it.”

She frowned. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I’ll explain if you’ll listen.”

“Of course I’ll listen.”

“I’ve had to think it through, what it means that you’re so fiercely independent, what it means that you’re—truly, Daidre—the most self-reliant woman I’ve ever met.”

“I did try to tell you that, Tommy. From the very first or at least from the moment I considered coming to London.”

“You did. But, of course, ego told me that was all mere talk. I’m attracted to her, I want what I want, she’ll fall into line eventually.”

She nodded and looked regretful, hearing this. “I never do, you know. It
is
my curse. I’m fairly certain I told you that as well. There’s a point beyond which I simply don’t go or can’t be known or . . . call it what you will. It’s been the death of every relationship I’ve had.”

“I remember. You told me. Either that or something very like. But what I want to say to you is that I believe I understand what’s behind it and you and everything. I’ve been expecting you to put aside your past when your past is what created you in the first place. It seems obvious, of course.”

“It
is
an anchor, though. Or perhaps better said, a ball and chain. You do see that, don’t you?”

“I do. But more important is that I expected you somehow just to shed it. But how does one ever put aside one’s past? I’ve never been able to put mine aside, and yet I’d persuaded myself to believe you
could manage to put aside yours and not allow it to affect how you might come to feel about me.”

“It does stand between us. It always will, you know.”

“I do. Now. I do know that.”

“And?” she said. “Or is it
but
?”

He took a sip of wine. He gave a tired chuckle. “I’m not sure. I know that I want you in my life, Daidre. And I want to say that you are free to define us—whatever we’re to be to each other—as you will. You can define us in any way that works for you or gives you comfort or allows you the space or freedom or whatever it is that you need.”

She considered this, her gaze on her wine which was ruby in colour, deeply so, reflective of the Tuscan vineyards where its grapes had grown. “Want,” she said.

“Hmmm?”

“You said you
want
to say all that. But something stops you.”

“Of course. I’m a man who likes his hatches battened, and being with you requires leaving them . . . well, unbattened. God knows for how long, but possibly forever. That, my darling, is not going to be easy for me.”

“You seem to be saying you’re willing to try.”

“I seem to be saying I’m determined to try. I can’t promise you I’ll be successful. But I can promise you my very best effort.”

He saw her swallow. She looked away from him although there was nothing to see through the bay window since the shrubbery there was so overgrown that it acted virtually as a wall. She wasn’t at all a woman who cried, but he fancied he saw the glitter of tears in her hazel eyes.

“You’re a very good person,” she said quietly. “That’s always made everything difficult, Tommy.”

“Difficult but not impossible?” he said.

“That’s something I simply don’t know.”

He was silent. There was, he reckoned, nothing else to be said. He’d done his best to explain himself to her and to make some sort of declaration that might soothe her. The rest was completely up to her. He felt a heavy thudding in his chest. It was wretched, he realised,
to allow the future to be defined in any way by someone else. He saw that as well and at last, he realised. He wanted to tell her, but he suspected he’d said enough.

She stood at last. She placed her glass on their makeshift table. She said to him, “I’ve something to show you,” and she extended her hand.

He allowed himself to be drawn to his feet, setting his own glass down and feeling her fingers twine with his. She led him from the sitting room, past her finished bathroom, and into the bedroom. The walls were still not painted, he saw, the floor was still not refinished or sanded, and the window had yet to be replaced. But where the camp bed had sufficed for her to sleep inside her sleeping bag, a real and blessedly normal bed stood. A floor lamp stood next to it, and a box served as a temporary bedside table with a clock and a glass of water upon it. But the only point was the bed itself, and it was large, not king-sized but more than enough for two people to sleep quite comfortably in it. Together.