The Touch of Innocents (16 page)

‘What appears to be the problem, Miss Dean?’ the Big Banker enquired.

‘No problem. I’m here to pick up my new credit card.’

‘But as I understand it from our Mr Wheelright, you haven’t brought any means of identification.’

‘I have a letter from the American Embassy.’

‘But no
proof
of identity.’

‘The letter asks that you should telephone the Embassy if there are any queries. Mr Pomfritt.’

‘I’m very sorry, madam, but we aren’t allowed to accept telephone verification of identity.’

‘It’s the American Embassy, for goodness sake.’

‘Particularly in the case of
foreign
identity.’

He made it sound like a disease; the shuffling behind was growing more intense.

‘What’s your problem? The credit card company seems sufficiently satisfied to have sent you a new card for me.’

‘But, madam, it is the credit card company itself which insists we obtain sufficient proof of identity before handing the cards on. You’ll be aware, I’m sure, of the huge increase in the fraudulent use of credit cards, particularly at the Christmas season.’

‘That is
my
credit card you have there.
My
name on it. You have a letter of identity from the American Embassy. What more do you want?’

From behind her a querulous female voice was complaining in deep rural tones that she only had a forty-minute lunch break, was already late back and still had Alf’s tea to buy. Izzy was beginning to feel marginally less acceptable than an outbreak of head lice.

‘It’s very difficult for us here to deal with these sort of problems. It would be better, much better, perhaps, if you were to attempt to sort this out in London.’

‘Even better back home in America,’ came the voice behind.

‘What in God’s name …?’ Izzy began, before checking herself. She was more than willing to raise her voice and lower the level of gentility if that helped, but in this case she felt sure it wouldn’t. Another overwrought, hysterical woman, they would say. Just like the doctors. And Benjy, seated on the counter beside her, was sensing the tension and beginning to fret.

‘Let me get this straight. You suggest I go to London to sort this out.’

‘That would be best.’

‘But without my credit card, how do you expect that I should get to London?’

‘To my regret, we run only a bank, not British Rail.’

‘This is ridiculous.’ The blood was rushing now.

‘Perhaps your husband could help?’

Izzy snapped, voice rising. ‘Get me the manager!’

‘Madam,’ pinched lips offered in reply, ‘I
am
the manager.’

She had run out of patience and perseverance, as had those in line behind her. Then Benjy was in tears, tugging at her. A bladder problem. Got to go. Their weapon of last resort had won.

‘Is it because I’m an American, or a woman?’ she spat, trying one last time.

Her only reply was a blank expression.

‘You’re a truly wonderful bunch of people,’ was all she could manage to say as she swept up Benjy and left.

Behind her, someone sniggered.

As she disappeared, the banker smiled tightly, first to himself and then at his customers. He insisted on serving the next two himself, offering apologies as
though it were his fault the irascible foreign woman had caused such a scene, before relinquishing his post to the teller. He retired to his office, where he closed the door and lifted the phone.

‘Yes, she was here. Just as you suggested.’

A pause while he listened.

‘Quite emotional, indeed almost aggressive. But then these American women are.’

Another pause.

‘Of course. No need for thanks. As a banking official it was my duty. And as a friend, my pleasure.’

He replaced the receiver, straightened his uniform, pulled the gold watch from his waistcoat and decided it was time for lunch. Roast turkey. With seasonal stuffing. He felt he’d deserved it.

Izzy’s mood, desirous of drawing blood, did not improve when she discovered Daniel outside the bank, stretching like a contented cat in the unseasonable December sunshine, sharing both a bench and his opinions with an attractive young woman who was in possession of a large, unavoidable chest.

‘You’re supposed to be helping me, Mr Blackheart, not helping yourself,’ she muttered, even as she chastised herself for succumbing to the tug of – impatience? Jealousy? No, surely not jealousy, but he was the only thing approaching a friend she had in this hostile place and she felt in urgent need of his attention. She was grateful when the new arrival was promptly detached and his attention was hers once more.

‘Do I need a drink,’ she exclaimed. ‘Trouble is, I can’t afford to buy you one. Those slimeballs won’t let me have my credit card.’

‘A drink is the easiest problem in the world to
solve,’ he said soothingly, and soon they were sitting in the gravel courtyard outside an inn whose cob walls were clad in ancient lichen and mosses. The Thomas Hardy were premises where the great writer was, according to the legend inscribed above the door, supposed to have slept and supped, but the original rutted cart track that ran alongside it had long ago been turned into a busy public road.

While he drank orange juice, she outlined her story. She held nothing back, not even her more lurid impressions about Devereux’s daughter; she was too downhearted, too frightened to dissemble.

‘Do you know Paulette Devereux?’ she probed. But her hopes were quickly dashed.

‘To be honest, I wasn’t even sure he had a daughter, certainly doesn’t feature in the
Chronicle
. But why would she, why would anyone, want to take your baby?’

‘If I knew that I wouldn’t be here. I keep hoping it’s all no more than a mistake – perhaps even my mistake, that there is no mystery. But every time I ask, I feel as though they’re building a brick wall around me. Every direction I look, another brick is dropped into place, shutting me in prison. Do I make any sense?’

‘They’re not shutting you in, Izzy, they’re shutting you out.’

‘What do you mean? And who are “they”?’

‘“They” is this place, Weschester, and the people who matter here. You’re an outsider, a foreigner. Even more of a bloody foreigner than I am. You’re causing trouble, stirring things up, disordering their lives.’

He leaned across and touched her arm. He was a very tactile person; she was glad of the contact. She desperately needed reassurance.

‘This is a fine place,’ he continued. ‘In the four months I’ve been here I’ve found the people warm and friendly, exceedingly generous. But they live life at their own pace, a pace they’ve been used to for generations. It makes them suspicious of pushy strangers. It can also make them seem insensitive, blind.’

His gaze was earnest and steady, almost uncomfortably so. She sipped her glass of wine; it was revolting, poured from a box.

‘Look at it from their point of view. You arrive here, uninvited, accept their hospitality and their healing. Then you go and create trouble for the hospital, the police, the local newspaper, the social services, even the local MP. You’re rocking their boat, and in a rural community like this they all row in it together.’

‘So what are you telling me to do? Forget it?’

His grip on her arm tightened. ‘Of course not. But you have to understand what you are up against. Know the opposition. And know yourself, too, Izzy. Know that it’s possible – probable, perhaps – that there is no mystery. That, sadly, your child is dead. You realize that, don’t you?’

‘I also realize that if you were certain of that, you wouldn’t be here. You’re not just a Good Samaritan taking care of an emotional cripple.’

‘Maybe I’m here because I was captivated by you as you swept through the office yesterday.’

‘And maybe you’ve forgotten that I’m married with enough years behind me to be … well, at least be your considerably older sister.’

They exchanged a warm glance, grateful for the temporary distraction.

‘I’m also a journalist,’ he continued, ‘like you. Not much of one, I admit, not here in Weschester,
covering scoops like the development of cracks in the ceiling of the public library and the outbreak of rain at the Mayor’s garden party. But … it wasn’t always Weschester, may not always be Weschester for me.’ His voice held a touch of wistfulness, the bruising behind his eyes momentarily more apparent.

‘Why
did
you decide to help me?’

‘Oh, many reasons. You needed help. Isn’t that enough?’

‘No. That’s pretty much what Paul Devereux told me.’

‘And because, shortly before you arrived in the editor’s office yesterday, he received a telephone call. I don’t know from whom, but it mentioned your name.’

‘That’s impossible! I told no one I was going to see him.’

‘Nevertheless, someone was warning him off.’

‘Damn.’ She downed the dregs of the wine, lips pursing on acid. ‘And it’s not been just the editor. There was the hospital. The police inspector. Big Brother at the bank. The social services …’

‘Male prejudice? People not willing to take you seriously?’

‘Not in the case of Katti at the social services.’ She was staring blindly into the distance, her mind swarming with fresh insight and innuendo, mentally scrambling up the brick wall they had built around her, starting for the first time to peer at what might lie beyond. ‘And, dammit, the police inspector knew I intended to stay on. No one knew that, no one …’ She caught her breath. ‘Except Paul Devereux.’

‘Your host.’

‘Or maybe jailer.’

‘But did you tell him you were going to see the police?’

‘No, no, no,’ she insisted. ‘He couldn’t have known.’ Even from her new vantage point atop the wall, all she could see was a maze. Dead ends.

‘Then perhaps all you have is rural insularity, a local community instinctively closing ranks.’

She shook her head emphatically. ‘The police inspector knew about me even before I’d arrived. Your editor, too. Someone told them.’

Their conversation was temporarily drowned by the bellow of a passing heavy goods vehicle, its diesel fumes stinging their nostrils, their glasses vibrating. In the background a telephone rang, insistent but unanswered.

‘That’s it!’ she exclaimed with fervour, diving into the maze. ‘The telephone. Daniel, I arranged to see the inspector by telephone.’

He rubbed the cleft in his chin, ruminating, trying to catch up with her.

‘And your esteemed editor,’ she continued.

He was almost there. ‘And I’ll bet you arranged a new credit card – a card which all of a sudden you can’t get – by telephone.’

‘That’s how I tried to get hold of Katti, too.’

‘Which telephone?’

She had turned a corner and at last the way ahead began to clear.

‘In Devereux’s study,’ she responded, ‘The one he insisted I use.’

Suddenly the sun had lost its warmth.

‘Could Devereux do it, Daniel? Stitch me up?’

‘Stitch you up? That man could embroider an entire tapestry, so he could. The Member of Parliament. A power not only here but throughout the country. One of Wessex’s most famous families. His father a Government Minister. Around here the Devereux name is the social equivalent of God. And
it just so happens that Paul Devereux is a personal friend of my editor. Would be bound to know the police inspector. And almost certainly the bank manager, too.’

‘But not Katti.’

‘No, not Katti. Somehow she doesn’t fit.’

‘Sheeee-it!’ The oath was drawn out, stretched to its limits, full of frustration. She pounded the wooden table, sending her empty glass flying and waking Benjy, who had been dozing peacefully in her lap.

He mocked her lack of restraint. ‘I read somewhere that you Americans have at least thirty different ways of pronouncing that word …’

‘Daniel, what have I done?’ It was her turn to lean across and grasp his arm. ‘The arrangement we made? To meet each other this morning? It was on the same phone. Devereux’s.’

His flippancy subsided rapidly. ‘That might be inconvenient. I told his good friend, my editor, I was going to interview the august chairwoman of the local WI about their forthcoming flower show.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’

A breeze ruffled her hair and she pushed it back into place. Benjy, released both from sleep and her arms, slipped from her lap and began playing on the gravel, trying to fill her shoe with stones. She shooed him away.

‘You seem … very detached about a lot of things, Daniel. Your job. Your life here. People.’

‘Had a lot of practice. At times it’s necessary to be detached, even from yourself. Particularly from yourself.’ For a moment she thought she saw the bruised soul once more, twisting in the winds of memory, before he rescued himself with a shrug and
a self-deprecating smile which lit his face. He had a very fine smile, she decided.

‘Anyway, I hope you don’t mind me attaching myself to you, Miss Dean?’ His gaze was direct, upon her, more than the Good Samaritan, much more than a younger brother. She ducked.