The Missing World (30 page)

Not a shell, the breast of one of their father’s homing pigeons.

“I believed you. I caught the bus home next day and I stuck it out. Everything I knew about the future, about being an adult, came from you. Mum and Dad didn’t have a clue. You were the one who came to my shows, who read the reviews, whom I brought Walter—”

Something stung her cheek. Her sister’s pale pink palm had slapped her. “Un-fucking-believable. On top of everything else, you’re drunk.” She picked up Charlotte’s bag, and within a moment extracted the keys and slipped them into her pocket. “Stand up.”

No question, now, of tears or no tears; they poured down her cheeks. She was blubbering like Melissa, saying, “Please, please, please.” Bernadette had grabbed her arm and was dragging her towards the door.

“Mum, what’s happening?”

Through her tears Charlotte saw a pyjama-clad figure. Her arm was suddenly free. She reached down into some deep part of herself. “Hey, Ollie, I’m showing Bernie this part I’ve got in a play. A woman gets awfully upset so I’m practising crying—boo-hoo-hoo. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

Bernie was moving across the room. “Come along, Oliver. Back to bed.”

Charlotte sank back into the chair and searched for a handkerchief. Could one drown in tears? Presumably. All it took was for the lungs to fill with liquid, any liquid, and you were gone. Ah, here were the tissues she’d bought for the audition. She blew her nose. Thank god for Oliver. Surely now Bernie would see she was trustworthy. Everyone made mistakes, even nurses. The important thing was to learn from them. On the television a boat appeared.
“Sail bonnie boat like a bird …”

“Get up. I’ve called you a taxi. They’ll be here in five minutes.” Bernie was shaking her. “Come on.”

In the hall the door was open and Bernadette had already begun to carry the bags into the street.

“What about my toothbrush? My shoes?”

“All here. If by any chance I’ve forgotten something, I can always post it to you.”

“Post it?” Was her sister bonkers? She picked up a surprisingly heavy bag—of course Bernie would’ve crammed everything in—and carried it down the steps to join the others on the pavement. Only three more bags and Bernie was hailing the cab, coming slowly down the street.

The driver climbed out. “Looks like a midnight flit.”

“Can you open the boot?” Bernie said.

She and the driver packed the car as Charlotte watched distantly. The moon had shed its veil of clouds and rode free. Bernie was beckoning towards the open door. Then Charlotte remembered the Chardonnay; whatever was happening next, she might need it. She ducked back inside, pursued by Bernie’s cries, recovered the bottle, and stumbled down the stairs. Without looking at her sister, she swept into the cab.

“Where to?” said the driver.

chapter 17

“She wasn’t being straight with us,” Freddie said. “As for him—” A sudden noise made him look back at the shop, from which he and Mrs. Craig had so recently emerged; on the door of Plantworks,
OPEN
clicked to
CLOSED
.

“As for him,” Mrs. Craig concluded, “porkies flying.”

“Porkies?”

“Pork pies, lies. Shall we?” She pointed towards the nearest pub, a hundred yards down the street, and Freddie fell in beside her. His limbs felt oddly light, as if his whole body had been engaged in that childhood game when you press your hand against a wall, step back, and your arm floats up of its own accord. If Littleton had manhandled that woman, the florist, for one more second—well, he didn’t know what he might have done.

Following Mrs. Craig into the pub, Freddie recognised the kind of place he normally shunned: fake wood panelling, imitation brass rails, copies of twenties posters, everything save the customers out of a kit. “What can I get you?” he said, hoping the coins in his pocket amounted to a drink or two.

“A half of bitter, please.”

She smiled and moved off towards an empty table while Freddie stepped to the bar. He’d have bet fifty bucks she was into white wine. Or something healthy: maybe orange juice to rebalance the system. Up a tree again, he thought, ordering her bitter and after a moment’s dithering—he’d have liked an o.j. himself, but the price in pubs was loony—a half of lager. His pockets disgorged six pounds and twenty pence. Plenty.

“Health and strength.” Mrs. Craig raised her glass. “Well, I feel thoroughly ticked off.”

Ignoring her toast, Freddie asked what about Hazel. Should they phone the police, or the hospital? And the nurse, did Mrs. Craig know her last name? Mrs. Craig made a humming sound. Her hair was pinned on top of her head, and he glimpsed a purple pullover under her coat. “Freddie, I’m sure Hazel’s fine. Maud certainly didn’t seem worried. Or at least not about that. What worried her was our nosy questions. I just didn’t think how it would look, our showing up out of the blue and accusing her.”

Here it comes, thought Freddie, the British obsession with appearances: Chamberlain and his stupid umbrella. Better to starve, better to watch your best friend writhe on the rack, than to risk embarrassment. On the slenderest of evidence, he’d assumed Mrs. Craig beyond such concerns. A sudden growl—it sounded like Agnes—startled him. Glancing around, he spotted a small brown-and-white dog gnawing a bone under a nearby table. “We didn’t accuse her,” he countered. “You said we were concerned because Hazel hadn’t made her appointment. That’s pretty legit.”

“At least we could’ve pretended to want a plant.” She drank some bitter. “The anemones were lovely.”

Anemones at a time like this. “A few porkies on our side,” Freddie said firmly, “weren’t going to change the bottom line, which is that for some reason Littleton doesn’t want us talking
to Hazel like a normal person. And the florist, Maud, is in his camp.” Underneath the table, the dog snorted and banged his bone against the floor. “What should we do now?”

“Wait.”

Freddie’s gaze blurred until all he saw was the terrier’s head snapping back and forth, breaking the neck of a rat or a rabbit. “That’s how hundreds of people get messed up every year. We’re not the police”—he turned back to Mrs. Craig—“and we don’t have to convince a jury.”

“Why do you think Hazel wants to leave?” She made the humming sound again. “To most people, Jonathan’s a saint. Standing by her in spite of their difficulties, taking time off work to nurse her.”

“He just went ballistic,” Freddie exclaimed. “In Cincinnati, the way he grabbed Maud would be assault.”

“He’s very quick tempered, always has been, but that’s not a crime. Hazel knows we’re here. It’s up to her to come to us.”

Shades of Mr. Early, thought Freddie. Did all middle-aged Brits share this belief that you never helped anyone until they begged? “What if she can’t?”

Mrs. Craig lowered her glass. “You’re in love. Aren’t you?”

He fingered his remaining coins. Heads, yes; tails, no. “Would you like another?” he said.

The streetlight in front of the house had shrunk to a dull cinder, and inside the only illumination came from beneath Kevin’s door. For a moment Freddie was tempted to sit down in front of that golden thread and await whatever it was you waited for when your life had fallen apart. Instead, muscles aching as if from a long day on a steep roof, he groped his way upstairs. What he had told Felicity was true; he was a nothing kind of guy. All this activity had pole-axed him.

At the door to the apartment, he closed his eyes and nudged the key into the lock. As a locksmith he’d learned to listen to the clicks and hesitations that marked the passage round the cylinder. This particular key always hit a snag at three o’clock, where a slight jiggle was needed to get it moving again. Eyes still closed, Freddie stepped inside and caught the faintest whiff of the cleaning products he had used that morning, in an attempt to control the pups’ miasma. They were squealing now, a regular coven of banshees.

“You’ll be lucky,” he muttered. Opening his eyes, he found the flat in darkness. In his haste to meet Mrs. Craig he must’ve forgotten to turn on the lights. He moved towards the switch and barely kept his balance.

The Yellow Pages lay on the floor amid a pile of books. As he went from room to room, Freddie discovered the emptied bookshelves were just the start: the kitchen was a mess of plates and food; his newly washed clothes carpeted the bedroom; in the living-room, the cushions were scattered. A burglar, he thought, taking revenge for his lack of computer, or kids getting their kicks. But he was on the third floor and the lock, he was sure, had been okay. He was bending to retrieve a pillow, when from the kitchen came an especially loud outburst.

Agnes was sitting with her forepaws on the edge of the pen. “What happened, girl?” he asked, stepping over two broken plates.

She pushed her nose damply into his hand. He stooped to pat the puppies, first Virginia, then Connecticut. As he reached for Georgia, he grasped the problem. Arkansas was gone.

Dumbfounded, Freddie leaned back against the table. Recent events rolled over him like eighteen-wheelers. Why was he always the last to learn the news about himself? He would have sworn on the head of his mother that he was simply
helping the sick, playing stretcher bearer to Hazel’s seizures, but Felicity had been right all along. He hadn’t pulled the wool over anyone’s eyes but his own.

With some faint hope that the puppy might have escaped, he turned to search the room and caught sight of a sheet of paper propped against the peanut butter. On the top line, neatly printed, was one word:
Paris
.

The candles shimmered against the dark glass. Hazel, calm and beautiful, sat on the floor. She’s back, Jonathan thought. My beloved. He had, after the usual song and dance about money, got rid of the actress; now, at last, they were alone. He crossed the room to kneel on the other side of the Scrabble board. “Piano,” someone had made. “Pot.” Idly he studied Charlotte’s letters: Z A U A B S O. “Saab,” not allowed. “Soba,” maybe.

He could still taste the Scotch he’d drunk with Maud, the second a double, which had meant driving home with tedious caution. Then, of course, nowhere to park, so he shuffled into a space round the corner. Other women had loved him but none so ardently, so secretly. As he locked the car, he had a sudden flash of understanding: that was why she’d sublet Hazel’s flat. Nothing to do with being businesslike; she simply wanted access to him. In the grip of these revelations he barely noticed his progress until 41 came into view.

Lights flickered at the living-room window. My house is on fire, he had thought, hurtling down the pavement. Before his eyes the flames leapt into an all-consuming blaze. Smoke snagged the back of his throat. Who would you save?

A few more strides and his vision had separated into its parts. The bay was lined with candles. As for the smoke, the neighbours opposite were indulging in their new wood stove. That damned actress. A curtain could catch in an instant. Or Hazel. No longer running, not even walking, he had recalled
the morning, two years ago almost to the day, when a sleeve of her nightdress caught in the cooker. He had smothered the flames with his jacket and square by square, throughout the spring, used the nightdress in his smoker.

When Charlotte greeted him in the hall, he had burst out with his fears. She smiled as if at a compliment. “They’re quite safe,” she said. “Glass can’t burn because it’s slow-moving water. In old windows, the bottom is always thicker than the top.”

Was she drunk? wondered Jonathan, resisting the urge to examine the nearest window. With her vivid lipstick and eyeliner she certainly looked different than this morning; her blouse, unbuttoned, offered a tempting glimpse.

He had gone to his study to call a cab. When the doorbell rang, he returned downstairs and found Charlotte embracing Hazel. At the sight of the two women, their arms around each other, Charlotte’s dark hair mingling with Hazel’s fair, something had swarmed up in him, an unexpected, unnameable emotion. “Don’t keep the driver waiting,” he had said.

“Base,” he thought, if he could find an E. Better still, “abase.” For the first time since the accident, Hazel was wearing a sleek dark skirt and black top. Why was she all dressed up? What had made her miss her massage with Mrs. Craig?

But when he opened his mouth, the question that emerged was neither of these. “Do you remember,” he said, “the night I showed you the dances of the bees?”

Hazel frowned. He could almost see her searching the foothills and valleys of the cortex, unwilling to admit defeat.

People had known for centuries, he explained, that bees pass along information about where to find nectar, but no one could figure out how. “In the twenties, Karl Ritter von Frisch, a Bavarian, finally discovered it was by dancing. I must’ve been drunk because I remember prancing round the room. First I did
the Round Dance, for when the nectar is near the hive, then the Wagtail Dance, for when it’s farther away.” He laughed, at once rueful and delighted, and reached for her hand. “You’re cold. Shall I turn up the heating?”

“No.”

“Cold hands, warm heart. I’m sorry I’m late. I had to see Maud.” Hazel’s fingers twitched. “She told me something extraordinary.”

“Did she dance for you?”

“In a manner of speaking.” He laughed again before he could catch himself. Promise you won’t tell Hazel, Maud had said, leaning in his car window. My lips are sealed, he said, and kissed her. “You know how I always used to think she disliked me? Quite the contrary.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Maud is in love with me.” He couldn’t suppress the note of triumph. “She just pretended,” he hurried on, “not to be able to stand me, so you wouldn’t guess—so that neither of us would guess—what she felt.”

“Maud is in love with you?”

He nodded. In the candlelight, Hazel’s face was grave. “You could’ve knocked me down with a feather, but it makes a kind of sense. Not because I’m Valentino, but all that hostility and disapproval—it’s a lot of emotion to squander on someone you don’t give a fig for.”

“She’s in love with you?”

He squeezed her hand, gently rubbing her cold fingers between his warm ones. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you? She is your friend.”