Facing the Tank (28 page)

Dawn hung up her pinny under Clive’s and Lydia’s expectant gaze. She picked up her bag and a bottle of champagne.

‘I think that’s everything done, then,’ she said. ‘Thanks ever so much for the champagne, Mr Hart.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Clive. ‘You did a wonderful job. Oh, and thanks for the paintwork on the porch!’

‘Don’t forget the rest of the turkey,’ said Lydia. ‘You can make a lovely soup with what’s left.’

‘Actually, I’m not going straight home now. Is it OK if I leave it and pick it up tomorrow?’ asked Dawn.

‘Of course’ and ‘Fine’ said both Harts at once.

‘Thanks. I’ll … er … be off then,’ said Dawn, looking at them with an amused air.

‘Bye,’ they both said. They watched her walk out of the kitchen and through the side door on to the street. As the door closed, Clive slipped a hand towards Lydia’s waist but touched her buttocks instead.

‘Don’t you
dare
touch me!’ she flashed at him. Using her left hand because her rings would make it more painful, she slapped him hard on the jaw, dived into the utility room and locked the door. ‘Ohh you …! Ohh!’ she exclaimed, near speechless with rage, and burst into loud sobs. With the tears flowing she was more relaxed than she had been all day.

‘Lydia?’ queried Clive, a hand nursing his tender jaw. ‘Oh don’t be so childish,’ he continued, raising his voice. ‘Lydia!’

‘Go away,’ she barked, her voice clogged with tears. ‘Go and … Oh God. Go and
do some marking
or something.’

‘Come out and talk properly. I can explain.’

‘No.’ She blew her nose and coughed. ‘Go away,’ she said with a little less enthusiasm.

‘I didn’t touch Gloire, I swear.’

‘Then why did I meet her backing on to the landing like that, telling you to “lay off of her”? Mmh?’

‘I tell you she’s a little minx. We were just talking in there then she heard you coming and put on that absurd charade.’

‘Huh!’

‘She was pissed off because I’d turned her down the other night.’

‘What?’ Lydia opened wide the door. She looked a wreck, but she had been through a great deal in the past few hours.

‘Well not precisely that,’ he qualified, ‘but all through that supper with her and Tobit, she was pawing my leg like a highly sexed demon.’

‘So when you stood up and her …’

‘And her wine spilled, it was because she was half knotted round my knees, that’s what.’

She walked past him into the sitting room, letting this explanation hang unanswered for a good forty seconds so that when she finally said,

‘Doesn’t sound very likely,’ in her I-am-about-to-let-bygones-be-bygones tone, he was inclined to agree with her.

‘No,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t, but neither does Tobit’s marriage to a medical black nympho with right-wing, nay, fascist parents with a dubious export empire and shares in South Africa.’ She chuckled a little at this, in a tired way, so he pressed home his advantage. ‘How about a drink?’ he said.

‘Yes please. No more champagne, though. I’ve got breath like old flower water.’

‘A real drink, then.’

‘That sounds like a really bad idea. Yes please.’

Kicking off his shoes – he had already tossed off jacket and loosened tie when their guests left – he padded through to the dining room sideboard. When he returned with two gin and diet tonics she too had kicked off her shoes and had drawn her feet up beside her on the sofa. He set the drinks on the coffee table.

‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘I’ll get some ice.’

‘Oh don’t bother,’ she said, not reaching for her glass.

‘No problem,’ he assured her, already on his way to the kitchen.

‘Bless you,’ she murmured and half-heartedly plumped out a silk cushion to her left.

The service had gone without a major hitch. No dresses had been torn, no more than the honourable, small hankyful of tears had been shed and most of the food had been eaten. To this extent, Clive and Lydia could call the wedding a success. Rarely, however, had a day been so fraught with embarrassments. The first was when Geoff Dixon, albeit tone deaf, had spontaneously launched into ‘Lord of the Dance’ before the blessing and, since he showed no sign of letting up, they had all been compelled to join in, with much smiling and a little rocking from side to side, as if to show that this was all part of the plan. Their appalling underestimation of the DelMonicas’ income and
savoir vivre
was so apparent to all present that no mention was made of it until Mr DelMonica took one look at the West Indian buffet laid out on the sideboard and said, in his best I-May-Be-Black-But-I-Sho-Am-Faithful accent,

‘Why, Miz Hart, I ain’t seen a spread like this ’un since I wuz lil’ and Mammee’d celebrate harvest home on the plantation!’

That was embarrassment number two, luckily covered up by uproarious laughter from both Josephine DelMonica and her new son-in-law and the discovery that the food, if insulting, was delicious. Embarrassment the third had been when Josephine DelMonica was describing the delights of Martinique and let slip that her namesake, Napoleon’s empress, had come from there. Her tongue loosened by champagne, Lydia had taken this for a joke and, while not finding it immensely funny, had giggled a good deal, thinking to set her guests at ease. After that they lost count. Josephine had taken Lydia on one side and confided that Dawn was a witch and that, being acquainted with such things from childhood, she
knew
. Therefore Lydia could not help noticing her making surreptitious signs to ward off the evil eye whenever Dawn came to top up her glass. Mr DelMonica attacked Clive for daring to be ‘nothing but an English teacher’ when his wife was being so much more ‘go-ahead’, and later Gloire was seen by Lydia apparently being attacked by Clive in the bathroom. Then, drawing fire rather too heroically for the embarrassment over the icing on the Trinidad Wedding Cake, which had misbehaved into Josephine’s ample cleavage because it had failed to set properly, Clive had declared how surprised they had been at the announcement of the day’s marriage.

‘And why’s that?’ asked Josephine, from beneath the ministrations of Lydia and a hot, wet flannel. ‘Because we’re black?’

‘No. Heavens no!’ laughed Clive, puce. ‘Because … well … Tobit … er.’ And dried up under Mr DelMonica’s and Lydia’s withering stares.

‘You mean to tell me that my daughter, our only child, has just thrown herself away on a snowflake faggot?’

‘It’s OK, Dad,’ hushed Gloire.

‘You mean you
knew?
gasped her mother.

‘Well yes. It was obvious. But it isn’t any more, huh?’ said Gloire, chucking her brand new husband under the chin then chasing him, laughing, from the room.

Flapping her flannel for emphasis, Lydia then found herself launching into an argument about whether her son was less of a ‘man’ for having experimented with members of the same sex. The other parents joined in. It was only during a lull after about ten minutes, that somebody thought to ask,

‘Where are the children?’

and it was discovered that the newly-weds had pecked Dawn on the cheek and slipped away unobserved, for their working honeymoon in London. This had the effect of a total deflation and, after a few minutes of standing around like a pair of displaced souls, the DelMonicas had shaken hands all round and fled too. The terrible afternoon was rounded off by the indignant doorstep announcement by their chauffeur that the Bentley had been attacked overnight by some local vandal with a key ring.

Clive returned with two fistfuls of ice for their gins. Lydia murmured her thanks. He flopped into an armchair by the fireplace. She made one of their secret animal noises, wrinkling her nose and patting the sofa beside her. He sighed, stood and flopped at her side instead, resting his head on her shoulder. She was too tired to hold him, so she draped her arm along the back of the sofa and simply gave his head a brief rub with her cheek.

‘I’m glad it’s over,’ she said.

‘Glad they’ve gone.’

‘Well. They were very nice, very … but.’ She took a sip of gin. ‘No they weren’t. They were horrid. I mean, not because they were black, of course, just because …’

‘Well, yes. You can’t like people
simply
because they’re not white and you feel sorry for other white people giving them a hard time.’

‘Quite. I hate lots of white people too.’

‘Some of my worst enemies are white.’

‘You’re laughing at me!’

‘Yes.’

‘Toad,’ she said, almost laughing only she was too tired. ‘You’re glad they’ve gone, too.’

‘Yes.’

‘Especially Tobit.’

‘No? Why do you say that?’

‘You’re jealous of him and me, that’s why.’

‘Well …’

‘You’re like a spoilt little boy,’ she said and started to tickle him.

‘No! Ow! Please, Lydia. No!’ he begged.

She snatched his glass out of his hand, placing it beside hers on the coffee table, and attacked him with both hands, interspersing the tickles with the occasional sincere pinch.

‘I thought we were driving somewhere nice for tea,’ said Dawn as Fergus turned off the High Street and headed for the Roman Bridge and Friary Hill.

‘We are,’ he said, ‘but Marge Delaney-Siedentrop’s friend Polly McCreery was in the Garden of Remembrance this morning and she said the roses didn’t look well.’

‘I thought you were looking a bit perkier,’ Dawn said. ‘Any news from Brooklea?’

‘Yes. I rang them last night. She’s being a devil, of course. It didn’t take long.’

‘What’s she doing? Apart from the obvious.’

‘They weren’t being very specific, but the nurse I spoke with sounded as if she was having great difficulty being civil.’

‘When are you allowed to make your first visit, then?’

‘I agreed to go tomorrow. They were going to make me wait longer, but I think they’ve decided that seeing me might calm her down a bit.’

‘Fat chance of that.’

He parked the car and together they walked into the gardens. The crematorium was tucked off to one side of the car park. It tried to look like a chapel in the Welsh tradition, but the horribly visible red-brick chimney emerging from the shrubbery at its rear and the queues of hearses and families on the busier days, accentuated its industrial purpose. When he and Dawn had come, with a modest gathering, to see what was left of Roger consigned to its flames, they had had to wait while one family filed out and another filed in. They had seen the sudden column of off-white smoke as the first family’s beloved was consumed.

They had barely turned right from a little avenue of cypresses and passed a Friary Hill type who was leaving with a bunch of blue, suspiciously well-fed flowers tucked hastily under one arm, when Dawn asked, with quiet excitement,

‘Do you see what I see?’ She pointed along the leafy alley in which they were walking to where Roger’s roses had been planted. For the first time in their acquaintance, Fergus ran. Caught up in the spirit of the moment and remembering that there was her bottle of champagne chilling nicely in his fridge for when they got back, Dawn ran after him.

Someone had pulled up the hideous pink roses, roots and all. A handful of leaves had fallen into the neat holes that remained. Dawn caught up with him and stood at his side, staring. He took her hand and squeezed it; another first.

‘Oh Harpy, I’m so glad!’ he said. ‘Is that wrong of me?’

‘Don’t be a wally,’ she said, squeezing his hand back then letting it go because the difference in their heights made the posture a difficult one to maintain. ‘Who do you think did it?’

‘Someone very, very kind, with absolutely no taste,’ he said then caught her eye and grinned. ‘Harpy, you
didn’t
…?’

‘Don’t look at me,’ she said. ‘I flatter myself that some of your taste has rubbed off.’ He laughed, turning to go and patting her on the back as she turned to walk beside him. ‘The nursery’s open on Sundays,’ she said. ‘You could go after breakfast and have something new in here by lunchtime.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Something snow white and very old-fashioned with thorns all over.’

‘Be a devil and have some pink.’

‘More pink?’

‘Tasteful ones like that Thomas Hardy you’ve got at home.’

‘Mme Hardy. But she’s white. You’re thinking of Zephirine Drouhin.’

‘Whatever. Pink’s more romantic.’

He laughed at her so she winded him with a flap of her hand.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘But it’s got to be white. Frau Karl Druschki perhaps or Alba Maxima.’

‘Alba who?’

‘Great white. Like the shark.’

Considering his infernal hangover, Emma Dyce-Hamilton had cheered Evan up slightly. The surprise of finding a pretty, young woman where he had expected a sadder, stuffier one buoyed him up. He had flirted a little and proved to himself that he was not going to lose control every time anyone asked him about work. The gaffe about her cousin’s love life was rather awkward, but if he told Jeremy at once he was sure that oil could be poured on troubled maidenly waters and no harm done. The gardens he passed had an anthracite brightness after their recent soaking and he felt slightly drunk. The air was suddenly rent with a tooting horn and the young couple he had seen in Dimity Street the other night, rounded a nearby corner in their open-topped Alfa Romeo. In daylight he was almost as decorative as she. He was dressed for a wedding, his black girlfriend for a cabaret. She was throwing back her head and laughing as if she were high on something.

‘Yeah,’ she whooped. ‘Fast fast fast!’

Evan stood to watch them disappear honking around another corner, caught himself smiling from ear to ear, then remembered his head and stopped.

As soon as he got in, he telephoned the agency and told Jeremy all. He started merely by telling him of lunch with Emma but the sane, non-Barrower sympathy on the other end of the line was such that the horror story of the manuscript came spilling out.

‘Well the first thing you can do,’ said Jeremy, when he had finished oh-my-Godding, ‘is to sketch down a synopsis of how it would have been.’

‘Why bother?’

‘It looks as though we’ve got Queenie Dawson at the Beeb interested in buying
Visions of Hell
for a big documentary or even a little series. If we can show her there’s going to be another, that would clinch it. Who knows, if you really couldn’t face re-writing it all in book form, you could always cobble up a TV script out of what you can remember and the notes that are left.’

‘There aren’t any notes.’

‘Liar.’

‘Well …’

‘God, Evan, you know you could do it standing on your head.’

‘I can’t stand on my head. Never could.’

‘See? You’re cheering up already. Now are you coming back to London?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Or would you rather run away?’

‘Run away.’

‘Take the cottage, then.’

‘Which?’

‘Ours. Well, it’s James’s really but what’s his is mine et cetera. Do you know Pembrokeshire?’

‘No.’

‘It’s very
Tristan
like north Cornwall, only without the beaches and brats.’

‘Fantastic. But don’t you ever go there?’

‘My dear boy, we’ve been every summer since we met and poor J’s been there every summer since he was about eleven so we’ve more than had enough. We can’t be bothered to let it as it’s full of “family” stuff that we’d have to lock up and so on. Keys are with … Have you got a pencil?’

‘Yup,’ said Evan, snatching one.

‘Keys are with Mrs Rees in the post office. Her daughter can drive you up there and show you how to turn on the water and gas and so on. Now I’d better tell you about trains and things. You’ll have to change at Haverfordwest which is always dreary but it’s better than Welwyn Garden City. So take a book. Now …’

Evan rang up the station next, to find out about train times. He could catch a Cardiff train in just under an hour. Packing would not take long, he thought sourly. He rang for a taxi to pick him up in thirty minutes. He tore off the page of Jeremy’s directions then performed a quick sum to work out his board and lodging. In the kitchenette he wrote out a cheque to Mrs Merluza, adding a fiver for telephone calls and cooking brandy. Then he hurried around picking up his things. He was just slinging
Towards a New Mythology
on top of his quickly filled case when he caught sight of a hand just outside the French windows. It was not a normal hand, being caked with mud and having nails as long and thick as dog’s claws. Still clutching the soap he had been about to wrap in a plastic bag, he hurried to open the window.

He found what must once have been a child, lying on its front with one arm thrown forward. It had a great mass of red hair matted up with twigs and leaves. The skin was so grimy that it took a few seconds to see that the child was naked. He slipped the soap into a jacket pocket, crouched and lifted the body a little by its shoulders. It had one of the bowls of poisoned nuts in its grasp. Half had been eaten but it – actually, now that he looked, it was a she – she was not quite dead. She let out a quiet moan as he tried to turn her over. He set her gently down again then raced for the telephone and began to dial nine nine nine. Then a devil in him slammed back the receiver.

What could he tell them? That there was an animal that might once have been a kid in his landlady’s back garden and that he had just poisoned it? Not plausible, certainly, but true. His better nature was just reaching out for the phone again when he thought of the appalling backlash of publicity he might be bringing on to Madeleine. Then the doorbell rang. Evan opened the door a crack like an interrupted murderer, found it was the taxi driver and asked him to wait. Shutting the door he heard a clatter from the garden. He ran back through the granny flat to the French windows and came to a panting halt. She had gone. There was nothing but the poison bowl – now empty, and a little to one side – and a scooped-out trail where she had dragged herself through a flower bed. He checked everywhere, even looking over the fences on each side and checking the little alley at the end of the garden. Nothing. Petra Dixon had explained that the hill was full of tunnels and holes. He was startled by the doorbell, glanced at his watch and saw that he would have to rush for his train. Diary, suitcase and last banana were snatched and soon he was in the taxi.

As they drove down the street towards the Close, he saw someone jumping up and down waving her arms. It was Madeleine. He tried to open the dividing window to ask the driver to stop but it was stiff and by the time he had, they had left her far behind. As the taxi sailed him past the Cathedral for the last time and began the descent down the hill to the station he remembered a girl in a pink dressing gown with a blue swallow on the pocket. Deeply disturbed he toyed once more with the idea of calling the police but the train was already waiting at the platform and it was all he could do to buy a ticket in time. He would come forward if there were anything in the papers.