Some Deaths Before Dying (21 page)

How long had the intervals been? She could actually remember taking the photograph, pretending to focus on the outfielder
so as not to distract her quarry out of their speakingly self-conscious poses, that special uncertain swagger…1955, she guessed.
Dick had captained a team against Fish Stadding’s Walthamstow youth club (of course Jocelyn had had to do the actual work
of getting eleven players together). Rachel had gone along to be with them both—Dick consented to be so little at home…

It had been the group, not any of the individuals, that had caught her eye. No reason she should have recognised one of them,
meeting him two years later. Jocelyn had died in’59, so it would have been’61 or’62 when she was working on this album. Only
four or five years, then, since she’d truly seen him, watched and studied him for an hour or so…And she must have looked carefully
at the photograph when she was deciding whether to include it. Perhaps she’d still been mesmerised by the group, not to pick
him out. Yet now, another thirty-five years on, instantly, on a page half glimpsed as it was turned.

“Thank you, Dilys. Rest now.”

As far as possible she blanked her mind while Dilys lowered the bed, peeled back the covers and changed her pad. She was wet,
of course, but to judge by the odours had stayed clean. Dilys had clearly been greatly impressed by Sergeant Fred.

“Funny how different they all go,” she said. “Not that I’ve seen a lot of them like that, looking after themselves and everything,
just the mind a bit wandery—they don’t need my kind of nursing, that sort. There was an old lady I looked after—stuck in a
wheelchair she was, and mostly didn’t know nor care if she was coming or going, but the family used to take her along Sundays
to visit her sister—in a home she was, and her mind gone too, but the two old things would sit together for a couple of hours
on end just holding each other’s hand, and the family swore blind that they both knew whose hand they were holding, and they
were the better for it after. But it wasn’t them I was thinking of. There was another old dear in this home—Lettice her name
was—and she was spry enough but she was the sort who says the same thing over and over and over, like one of those dolls with
a string in its back, only they’re all electronic now, I suppose. Anyway, everyone loved this Lettice, but for one or two
of the snarky old crabs you always get in a home, biting everyone’s heads off ’cause of not being able to bear it, what they’ve
come to, but Lettice was just the other way, she was so happy. And what made her happiest was helping anyone up the stairs,
or down them. Opening doors for them and holding them and closing them after they’d been through was better than nothing,
but stairs were the best. She’d hang around in the hall-way looking at the pictures, which she’d seen over and over and over,
but as soon as anyone showed up she’d take a quick peek at them—she knew not to try and help the ones who could manage, but
if they were using a frame or maybe just a stick, she’d be at their elbow…There, now, that’s a bit better. Last little drinkie?”

“Please.”

Rachel sipped gratefully.

“Thank you. Flora?”

“Mrs. Thomas said to say she was out saving the children, but she’ll look in later if you’re up to it. You want me to put
your parcel back in its hidey hole before she comes?”

“No. Leave it. In drawer. Not secret. Now.”

“Right you are. And she’ll be wanting to hear all about the old gentleman too, won’t she? You have a good rest, and you’ll
be feeling perky for her.”

When Dilys had gone Rachel lay and gazed through the window. The rooks were raucous and active in the tree, but she was too
exhausted to attend to them. Too exhausted for anything…

No! It wouldn’t do. It was another excuse, another shying away, the latest of countless evasions over the years. The thing
must be faced, now, and in detail. If it was there, the answer would lie somewhere in the details, just as the young man’s
image had lain so long unnoticed in the album.

Buried memory, unconsidered for decades, can’t simply be dug up, unpackaged and laid out for inspection. After such a span
in the earth, though the shape may still be plain, the individual parts will at first be unrecognisable, compacted, clogged,
corroded, some of them of stuff too transient to endure, others readable after careful cleaning. Fragments, though, persist
almost unchanged—a coal fire in a half-lit room, the stealthy opening of a door in an empty house, squat fingers uncapping
a bottle, the tweed of a greatcoat against her cheek in a dark car park, Jocelyn pausing at the study door, absorbing what
she’d told him—from such morsels, with willed persistence, Rachel teased out most of the rest of it. All the essentials she
was sure of, though parts she knew to be reconstructions—sequences of minor events, the actual words of a conversation—but
even these didn’t merely ring true but were flecked here and there with the gleam of metals that burial doesn’t corrode.

Twice Dilys came in and took her pulse, but Rachel closed her eyes, pretended to be asleep and waited until she heard her
leave. By night-fall she had as much as she thought she was going to get.

B
egin at the beginning. A mild, dank October day. Late morning. The telephone call. She took it in the hall.

“Hello?”

The clatter of coins being fed into a public telephone.

“Ray?”

“Oh, it’s you, darling. What’s up?”

“Can’t tell you over the telephone. I’ll be late back—on the eleven-twelve. Don’t meet me. I’ll take a cab. Sorry.”

“Bother. All right. Shall I keep supper?”

“I’ll eat on the train.”

“Is it something serious?”

“Afraid so. Tell you when I see you. Look after yourself.”

“You too, darling.”

“Do my best.”

She put the handset down, disappointed for herself because she wanted him home—yesterday’s lonely evening had been more than
enough—and troubled for him, though mainly about his personal discomforts. The late train was always crowded, the dining car
often full for two sittings. Though what was keeping him in London was obviously important and by the abruptness of his tone
unpleasant, it would be part of his public world, and he would deal with it as such. He would tell her about it, as he’d said,
but by then he would have decided exactly what to do about it, and so would not bring it home in the form of a disruptive
worry.

She sighed and went to the kitchen. Thursday was the Ransons’ afternoon off. Normally Mrs. Ranson would have set out the makings
of a meal, simple enough for Rachel to cope with, before she and her husband went to the bowling club. Rachel told her not
to bother. She’d have cheese and biscuits and tomatoes at her table while she finished the Christmas cards. Her afternoon
was planned, and that would fill the empty evening.

Those plans for the afternoon. She could remember their existence, but not what they’d been. Had she driven somewhere? Yes,
she must have. The trip itself was irrecoverable, but she could remember her sense of utter loneliness as she’d let herself
into the house at dusk and locked the door behind her.

The evening, then. About a quarter to seven—the time not memory but reconstruction, since the train—the one Jocelyn should
have been on—got in at six-eighteen. The study. Curtains closed and a coal fire starting to glow, not for herself, but so
that Jocelyn should have his own warm lair to come home to, where he could sip his scotch and tell her about his day. A pool
of light from his desk lamp, for imaginary company: dark, and he was not in the house; lit, and he could just have gone out
of the room. Her supper tray at the other end of the desk, so that she wouldn’t need to face the ambient emptiness till he
returned.

Her own worktable sharp-lit, cleared for her task and then systematically set out: three stacks of blank cards of different
sizes; their envelopes; a dozen piles of photographs to be selected and pasted in; her card lists for the past three years;
two address books, hers and Jocelyn’s; paste; pen; blotter; stamps. Apart from desk and table the room in deep shadow.

The night silent. Neither she nor Jocelyn listened to music, and used the wireless solely for the early morning news. When
the Ransons were in you might catch the mutter of their television. The house itself stood rock solid. After ninety years
not a floorboard creaked, every door clicked quietly home, and it took a full gale to rattle a window. So the gentle flap
of a flame over the coals was enough to mask the opening of the door, which she’d left an inch ajar for air. She merely sensed
its movement.

Her heart thumped. Dick? Not the Ransons, home early—she’d have heard the car in the yard. Flora or Anne would certainly have
called. Dick was supposedly in Australia, but hadn’t been heard from for three months. This would be typical.

She put the paste brush back in its pot and turned. Her heart thumped again. The head that was peeking round the door, though
hard to make out with lamp-dazzled eyes, wasn’t Dick’s. Before she could speak the man stepped confidently into the room,
closing the door behind him.

“Hello,” she said, now startled but not yet alarmed. “Who are you? This is a private house, I’m afraid.”

Without answering he switched on the overhead light and strolled towards her. A young man—eighteen?—slight, blond, with high
cheekbones and sunken cheeks. Pale blue eyes and a full-lipped mouth. He was wearing a short dark overcoat with heavily padded
shoulders. This, and something in his bearing and look, though his face bore no marks of old blows, suggested he might be
a boxer, or perhaps wish to pass as one.

“What do you want?” she said.

“Just a pal of old Joss,” he said.

For a moment she couldn’t think who he was talking about.

“You mean my husband, Colonel Matson?”

“You’re on,” he said. “Been a good friend to me, Joss has, a very good friend.”

He looked at her half sideways and smiled. She said nothing, only stared. She was aware of her chest heaving, dragging air
in, forcing it out unused. Not the words but the look had carried the meaning.

“So when he says to me, ‘Why don’t you just run up to Matlock, tell my good lady I’ll be late home?’ I thought, Why not, seeing
it’s old Joss. ‘Here’s a tenner for the ticket and the taxi,’ he says. ‘Tell him Forde Place. And here’s the keys so you don’t
bother the servants.’”

The heaving was replaced by nausea. He was lying, of course. Jocelyn had called. He’d have known the Ransons would be out—he
didn’t forget that sort of thing. He’d never have sprung something like this on Rachel, or given anyone else his key—he’d
even made a fuss about having one cut for Fish Stadding when he’d had a room of his own here…

The young man was watching her, still smiling. She saw that he didn’t expect her to believe him. His confidence lay elsewhere.
In the “friendship.”

“Joss didn’t want you worrying, really he didn’t,” he said. “Very thoughtful, Joss is…Fag anywhere? No, you stay put, lady.”

His right hand, which had so far remained casually in the pocket of his coat, moved as if to withdraw something, and stopped.
A flick knife? Rachel had read about flick knives.

He lounged over to Jocelyn’s desk, took a cigarette out of the ebony box, and lit it one-handed with Jocelyn’s lighter. He
inhaled deeply, confident in his own dominance.

“One for you?” he suggested, teasing.

“I don’t smoke.”

Her voice answered flatly, controlled by some corner of her mind detailed to keep the rest of the system going when the rest
was in shock. It wasn’t thinking, that rest. It was refusing to think, refusing to imagine, huddling down with its eyes uselessly
shut and its hands uselessly over its ears. She had no ideas, no plan. What she had was a vomit-like upsurge of emotions,
disgust, jealousy, hate, rage, bottled up in herself for a dozen frustrated years. She had no doubt that her understanding
was far more than a good guess. If anything, she should have at least guessed before. Jocelyn was a sensual man. He lived
through his body. Younger, she had not believed that of herself, had thought she lived primarily through her eyes and mind.
Without Jocelyn she might never have discovered her other self—only, through his captivity and the years that followed, to
have to put that self back to sleep, and learn to live again just through the eye and the mind. But it was still there, sleeping,
dreaming, dreaming of wakefulness once more. She had shared many of those dreams. But Jocelyn…People don’t change that much.
They don’t. Jocelyn was a sensual man still, living through his body. What had changed was the objects of his sensuality.
Changed when? On the Cambi Road.

“Well, aren’t you going to say nothing?”

The corner of her mind did its duty.

“Sorry…I was surprised…I wasn’t expecting…Do you want anything to eat…? A drink…?”

“What you got?”

“The drinks are in the cabinet there.”

He opened it and drew the bottles out one by one for inspection, standing sideways on to keep an eye on her. He sniffed a
decanter.

“Scotch,” he said. “Can’t stand it. Rotgut. What’s this one?”

The question steadied her.

“It should have a label round its neck. I think it’s Marsala. Sweet. A bit like port.”

“Port’ll do. What’s this? Lemon. Well, I’m happy.”

He poured a couple of fingers into a schooner, uncapped a bottle of bitter lemon and half filled the glass. He tasted, grimaced,
added Marsala and tried again. His hands were small and short-fingered, his movements deft.

“That’s something like,” he said. “What’s yours, then?”

“Scotch,” she said. “Not much. Neat.”

“I’m surprised at you,” he said mockingly, but poured the drink and set it in front of her.

“Thank you,” she said, still speaking like an automaton. Jealousy, disgust and fury screamed inside her, but she isolated
and contained them. More of both mind and body came under control. She was aware of a change in him, a loss of confidence.
He had expected something different.