Ghost Music (16 page)

I had drunk only half a glass of wine when two hands covered my eyes. Two female hands, with rings on—hands that smelled of a light, flowery perfume.

“Guess who-oo?” she teased me.

I lifted her hands away from my eyes and turned around. It was Kate, wearing a putty-colored trench coat and a black beret, which was sparkling with raindrops. Her eyes were wide with amusement.

I stood up, and hugged her close, and kissed her. “When did
you
get here? And how the heck did you know where to find me?”

“You weren't at David and Helena's, so I assumed that you'd gone looking for a drink. My God, I felt
so
sorry for you when I saw you sitting here, all on your own.”

I beckoned to the waitress. “What do you want? This chardonnay's a little on the warm side, but it's just about drinkable.”

She took off her raincoat and sat down close to me. “David and Helena weren't at home, then, when you arrived?”

“No . . . but I'll tell you who was. Malkin.”

She blinked her eyes in exaggerated disbelief. “Malkin? You can't be serious! How could Malkin be here in London?”

“I was going to ask you the same question. But it's definitely Malkin. I'd know that disapproving stare of hers anyplace.”

“Well, Malkin must have a British twin. If I had wanted to bring Malkin here, I would have needed to have her vaccinated against rabies at least six months before she traveled.”

“Okay . . . so maybe I made another mistake. If I can see two Elsas and two Tildas, I don't suppose there's any reason why I can't see two Malkins. Maybe I need to stop drinking so much.”

Kate took hold of my hand. “It's probably Helena's cat. She did tell me that she was thinking of buying one, to keep her company. The Philipses lost their only son Giles about two years ago, and I don't think that Helena ever got over it.”

“That's sad. How old was he?”

“Thirteen. I think he wanted to be an architect when he left school.”

“So how did he die?”

“They never talk about it.”

The waitress brought Kate's wine. I ordered another glass for myself, and paid her. She looked down at the tip that I had given her in the same way that the taxi driver had looked at his.

“Something wrong?” I asked her.

“Oh, no, sir. Seven pence . . . that's more than generous.”

“Okay. Good. Thank you.”

“No, sir. Thank
you
.”

The waitress strutted off and I turned back to Kate. “You look great, you know that? Very European, like Marlene Dietrich.”

“Why, thank you. You're looking pretty cosmopolitan yourself.”

“Just tell me one thing,” I asked her. “Taking me to meet these
friends of yours, the Westerlunds and the Philipses . . . you're trying to
show
me something, aren't you? Because that's the feeling you're giving me.”

“Ah,” she interrupted. “First of all, I have a question for you. Do you know how much seven pence is worth?”

“I have no idea.”

“That's pretty obvious. At today's exchange rate, seven pence is worth a little over fourteen cents. Talk about the last of the big tippers.”

* * *

We walked back to Wetherby Gardens arm in arm. It had stopped raining but the streets still reflected the red and white lights from the traffic, and there was a constant sizzle of tires on wet asphalt. London had a definite smell to it: wet and exhaust fumes and a warm, stale draft from restaurant ventilators.

“Look,” she said. We had reached No. 37 and the living room drapes were drawn, although I could see two lamps shining through them. “David and Helena must be home now.”

She led the way up the steps. I used my key to open the porch door but when we reached the Philipses' front door, Kate knocked on it.

“David! Helena! It's Kate!”

We heard a chain rattling, and two bolts being drawn back. Then the door opened and we were greeted by a tall, fiftyish man with polished chestnut hair and a reddened face.

“Kate, how good to see you!” he said, and kissed her on both cheeks. He turned to me and held out his hand. “And you must be Gideon. I gather we can call you Lolly, if we want to.”

“Lalo, actually, sir. Good to meet you.”

David ushered us inside. He had the lean, long-nosed looks of an upper-class Englishman, with faded blue eyes, as if he had been abroad in the sun for much of his life. He wore a tattersall
check shirt and brown corduroy pants and shiny brown Oxfords. Although he was so lanky, he had the paunch of a man who always ate well, and probably enjoyed a glass or two of port after dinner.

“Kate, my darling girl!” Helena came out of the kitchen to embrace her. “It's been far too long, hasn't it?”

“Far too long,” David echoed, patting Kate on the shoulder as if she were his daughter, or a pet dog.

When she was younger, Helena must have been stunning—a real British dolly bird. Now her hair was back-combed and hair-sprayed into a kind of blonde Greek helmet. She had a plump, doll-like face, with a tiny nose and sparkling eyes, although I guessed that the tightness of her eyelids owed something to cosmetic surgery. She was wearing a tailored black velvet suit, which didn't do a whole lot to minimize her very large chest and her very ample hips.

She was warm, though, and garrulous, and funny. David poured us all drinks while she told us about the time she had mistaken the U.S. ambassador for a waiter and sent him off to find her a smoked salmon sandwich.

“Talking of smoked salmon,” I said, “I met your cat when I first arrived.”

“Our
cat
?”

“She's a dead ringer for Kate's cat. In fact I thought she actually
was
Kate's cat.”

Helena gave me a quick little shake of her head. “We don't own a cat, Gideon. She must have been a stray.”

“A stray? She was sitting in the kitchen like she owned the place.”

“No, never owned a cat,” David put in. “Helena thought of it, but never did.” He tugged his nose, and sniffed. “Allergic, don't you know?”

“Well, that's really strange. I mean, if she was a stray, how did she get in?”

“Kitchen window, I expect. Probably came from upstairs.”

“Oh.”

We sat in silence for a while. Then Helena said, “Kate tells me you're a composer, Gideon.”

“Advertising jingles, mostly. Soup, diapers, spaghetti shapes. You name it.”

“But they're very superior advertising jingles,” said Kate. “He's written one for toilet bowl freshener that almost made me cry.”

David poured us some more wine. “What line of business are you in, David?” I asked him, as he filled up my glass.

“Banking,” he said. “International loans, that kind of thing.”

“This credit crunch must be affecting you pretty badly.”

I waited, but he didn't answer. Instead he stared at me with his eyes unfocused, as if he were thinking about something else altogether. Then suddenly he said, “Do excuse me,” and walked quickly out of the room.

I looked across at Kate, raising one eyebrow. Kate shrugged, to indicate that she didn't know what was going on either. Helena was prattling on about the time she had accidentally spilled red wine all down the front of Princess Margaret's white silk evening gown. “My dear, I was
mortified
! But she took it so well! She gave me this sweet, sweet smile and said
fuck
.”

With David temporarily absent, I took the opportunity to go the bathroom. I splashed my face with cold water and combed my hair. I was beginning to feel much more relaxed. In spite of the freakiness of what had happened at the Westerlunds' apartment in Stockholm, maybe this trip was going to be enjoyable after all.

As I came out of the bathroom, however, I heard a mewling noise coming from a room on the other side of the hallway, next to David and Helena's bedroom. I hesitated, and then I crossed over and listened at the door. The noise stopped for a while, but just as I was about to go back to the drawing room, it started again. The door was only an inch ajar, so I pushed it open a little farther, and peered inside.

It was a small bedroom, with a single bed. There were three or
four posters of the Chelsea soccer team stuck to the walls, and a dozen plastic airplanes suspended from the ceiling. Definitely a boy's room.

I heard the mewling again, and I put my head around the door, expecting to see “Malkin” sitting on the bed.

But I couldn't see the cat anywhere, whether it really
had
been Malkin or a look-alike stray from upstairs. What I did see was David standing by the window, with his back turned to me. It was David, making that mewling sound. His head was lowered and he was gripping the windowsill as if he was trying to stop himself from sinking to his knees.

What the hell do you do when you find your host sobbing? Especially if you hardly know the guy. Do you go up to him and gave him a manly hug, or do you simply ask him if everything's okay?

Or do you do what I decided to do—close the door as quietly as you can and return to the living room, rubbing your hands together and smiling cheerily as if nothing were wrong?

Kate held out her hand to me. “Are you hungry?” she asked me. “Helena was thinking of ordering some Indian takeout.”

“I hope you like it really, really hot,” said Helena. “I love chicken vindaloo, with extra green chilies, but David could never stand it, so we always used to end up with pasanda.”

“Fine by me,” I told her. “Do you know what they call Indian food in India?”

“I don't have a clue.”

“Food.”

“David was crying,” I told her, as Kate crossed her arms and pulled off her tight-ribbed sweater.

“Was he?” she said. She didn't sound very surprised. “When was that?”

I was sitting on the edge of the bed, taking off my socks. “When we were first talking, in the living room. When I went to take a leak. I came out of the bathroom and he was standing by the window in one of the bedrooms, sobbing like a baby. He didn't see me.” I paused. “It looked like their son's room. It had model airplanes hanging from the ceiling. Guess they keep it as kind of a shrine.”

Kate said, “He was okay later, wasn't he, when we had supper. He was even telling jokes.”

I stood up and unbuckled my belt. “It's none of my business. But it was so sudden—the way he walked out of the room like that, and went to have a cry. I mean—what makes a man like David do something like that? He seems, like—so stiff-upper-lip.”

“Grief, probably. Something must have reminded him about losing his son. Grief can suddenly hit you like that, even after years.”

We climbed into bed, and Kate snuggled up close to me. The guest bedroom wasn't as grandiose as the suite we had shared in the Westerlunds' apartment, but all the same the walls were decorated with gold-patterned wallpaper, and the furniture was all genuine English antiques, with a bow-fronted mahogany bureau
and a pair of Sheraton armchairs that must have cost upward of $30,000.

“I remember when my grandmother died,” said Kate. “My parents inherited her house—a really huge colonial, in Sherman, Connecticut. I used to roam around it when I was young and I was sure that I could hear my grandmother walking along the corridor upstairs, or hear her laughing, in another room.

“I used to get so frustrated and upset because no matter how fast I ran upstairs, or hurried into the room next door, I could never catch her. I always had the feeling that I had missed her by a fraction of a second. I could even smell the lavender perfume she used to wear. But I never saw her again, and sometimes I missed her so much that I couldn't stop myself from crying and crying like I was never going to stop.”

“Is that where you spent most of your childhood, Connecticut?”

Kate nodded. “I was very happy, most of the time. My mom and dad were very argumentative, but they did love each other, in spite of all of the fights. I miss them, too, really badly.”

“They're both dead? They must have died pretty young.”

She turned her face away. “Yes, well. Sometimes bad things happen to very good people.”

“I'm sorry.”

She turned back again, and kissed my shoulder. “You don't have to be sorry. If anybody should be sorry, it's me. I just wish I'd visited them more often, after I moved to New York. I just wish I could have one more meal with them, around the kitchen table. I wouldn't even mind if they argued, which they
always
did.”

“Pity you didn't have any brothers or sisters. Somebody to share your memories with.”

“But
you
have a brother, don't you, and you're always telling me what a pain in the ass he is.”

“Toby, yes. But he and me, we couldn't be more different. He's a jock. He thinks that a diminishing chord is a piece of string that you keep cutting bits off.”

Kate laughed. “I think we'd better get ourselves some sleep. I want to take you sightseeing tomorrow, Kensington Gardens. And on Thursday we can go to Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square and the Houses of Parli-ay-ment.”

* * *

Kate fell asleep first, curling herself up into the fetal position, with her back to me. I put my arm around her waist and held her close. The Philips apartment was very hushed, but I could still hear the muffled roaring of London's traffic, like a distant stampede.

I don't know how much longer it took me to fall asleep, but I was right down in the bottom of a well when I heard a phone ringing. At first I thought I was dreaming it, but it went on and on. After it had been ringing for over a minute, I sat up.

Kate was still fast asleep, and breathing heavily. But the phone kept on ringing, with one of those shrill, demanding, old-fashioned rings, and it didn't seem as if anybody was going to answer it.