The Water's Lovely (6 page)

Heather was sometimes the fifth angel and sometimes the second, the one ‘who poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man'. There was no doubt Beatrix was mad but Ismay thought the author of Revelation was mad too, and probably in a worse state than her mother. Fortunately, Pamela usually managed to get Beatrix's pills down her and, apart from the occasional foray into St John the Divine, she was quiet and dull and staring. The dosage had been carefully administered on Christmas morning well before Ismay and Heather came upstairs with bags full of presents and food, for Beatrix hadn't cooked
anything for years and Pamela called herself an expert in microwaving ready meals.

They had only been there five minutes when Edmund phoned. Ismay, unloading everything in the kitchen, a large glass of Sauvignon already beside her, heard Heather whispering, then laughing, then saying, ‘Me too.' This obvious response to a declaration of love was quite unlike her sister, or unlike how she used to be. Ismay knew she ought to be pleased for Heather and she was in one way. As far as she knew, her sister had never before had a happy love affair, one which wasn't a case of one loving and the other permitting the loving, but mutual pleasure and happiness. It was developing in just the way these things did when they were going to lead to engagement and marriage. And then … ?

In the living room Beatrix sat under the influence of a calming drug, a drowsy skeleton with shoulder-length grey hair and staring pale eyes, dressed in the kind of robes worn by Dürer's
Melancholia
. She never drank alcohol, never seemed to want to, which was a blessing as it might have reacted with the drug. She was a prey to obsessions, the present one being gum chewing.

Pamela fought a losing battle with the dropped and squashed gum circles on the floor, scraping away from time to time with a blunt knife. She looked the way Beatrix might have looked if Heather hadn't gone into the bathroom that day or perhaps if she had never married Guy in the first place. She was an upright, well-built woman with a young face and white hair discreetly tinted blonde, and alone since Michael's departure, she made no secret of the fact that she wanted a lover. ‘I don't mean a partner,' she said to her nieces. ‘That wouldn't be possible, not with Beatrix the way she is.' And, seeing Ismay's stricken look, ‘I'm perfectly happy living here with Beatrix. It's fine. I don't
think I want to live with a man on a permanent basis but I – well, I would like someone.'

An industrious accountant, modern technology had made it possible for her to work from home and she had enough clients for her needs. An aunt to her nieces when they were children, she had become a friend almost as if she were their contemporary. She got down on her knees and began scraping blackened gum off the floor. ‘It's as bad as the pavement in Bedford Hill down here,' she said and laughed. Beatrix's only sign that she had heard was a shifting of the handbag on her lap.

Heather came back into the room, looking pleased and happy. ‘I told him to ring off,' she said. ‘I thought Andrew might be trying to get you.'

Pamela, who knew nothing about what had happened twelve years before, asked Heather whom she had been talking to. Always calm and self-possessed, Heather said, ‘A friend.'

‘A boyfriend?'

‘Well, yes. There's a difference, isn't there?'

‘A big difference,' said Pamela. ‘I envy you.'

The meal eaten on 25 December, whether at one p.m. or two or four, is always called dinner and never lunch. The turkey was pre-cooked by Heather, the potatoes ready peeled by Heather and the Brussels sprouts cleaned and washed. The bread sauce she had made at home the night before. Pamela, balked of going through the
Spectator
's dating columns, drank a bottle of wine entirely to herself. Beatrix picked at her food, remarked that an angel had told her not to eat sprouts because, though they were like unto an emerald, they came from the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.

The Queen's broadcast was listened to at Beatrix's insistence, not watched, the washing up done by Ismay and Heather. Pamela fell asleep and Beatrix chewed
gum. Ismay watched Heather to see if her eyes strayed to the french windows and the Bonnard but they seemed not to. She even went into what had been the bathroom to place an open box of chocolates on the table there. When it got to five and Andrew hadn't phoned, Ismay began to think whether she should phone him but she didn't much like the idea of one of his parents answering the phone. They had tea with Waitrose mince pies because Heather hadn't had time to make any, and at seven she and Ismay went upstairs.

Ismay fretted rather. It wasn't the first Christmas Andrew had failed to phone. Last year she had been seriously worried because he hadn't been in touch for a week around that time, though he had a perfectly reasonable explanation for why not. That wasn't going to be repeated, was it? She lay awake a long time, thinking he still might call at midnight. When the phone rang at nine next morning she rushed to it, certain it was him. The voice was Edmund's for Heather. Andrew finally phoned just after eleven.

‘What happened to you? I was worried.'

‘Really? Why ever? Such a crowd turned up, I didn't get the chance. There was this chap Charlie Simber my father was at school with and he brought his daughters and my uncle turned up with all his brood. Grandmama was her usual queenly self. Daddy wasn't very well and Ma said I should play the host. My God, it was exhausting. Have you done what you said and thought about moving in with me?'

‘Did I say that?'

‘Indeed you did. You said you'd give some serious thought to leaving the flat to Heather and someone to share with her. Don't you remember, Ismay?'

‘I must have done if you say so,' said Ismay. ‘When am I going to see you?'

‘Probably never if you go on dodging the issue like you do. Sorry, darling, I don't mean that, but do give it some serious thought and I'll see you tomorrow.'

‘Love you.'

‘Love you too,' said Andrew.

Disliking the ornate and elaborate furnishings of his childhood and the Harrods stately home interiors that had been his late wife's taste, Tariq Hussein had sparsely furnished his cottage with Swedish blond wood and stainless steel. His marble floor was bare but for the occasional Kelim. Slatted blinds hung at his windows. For flowers he might have a single lily or a single fern frond in a tall black jar. A Giacometti nude stood alone in one corner.

‘If this place was mine,' Marion was saying, ‘I'd carpet these floors and have some velvet curtains.' The threadbare little rugs were nearly worn out and as for that rusty iron thing, it looked as if it came off a scrap heap. ‘Don't you feel this house needs some warmth?'

‘It is warm enough for me.'

‘Backing up your heating with one of those big gas fires is not to be sneezed at.'

‘Atishoo, atishoo,' said Mr Hussein with heavy humour. ‘I sneeze at it. I don't want it, my dear young lady. I won't do it. My house stays as it is.'

Marion rather liked being called his dear young lady, especially the ‘young' part. Tariq Hussein was old but not very old like Mrs Reinhardt, no more than, say, seventy. He was small and thin with copious white hair and the profile of a handsome hawk. When she called to see him he produced a pot of very strong coffee and they drank it in the living room Marion called a lounge.
She thanked him for his Christmas present and he smiled. Christmas meant little to him, but he kept the custom of the country.

‘When in Rome,' he said, incomprehensibly to Marion, ‘do as the Romans do.'

He had made it a rule some years before never to spend more than five pounds on presents for those people who expected them, the cleaner, for instance, his driver and the paper boy. But inflation had become so shocking that two years ago he had been obliged to raise that ceiling to ten pounds. He had no objection to spending money but he had his priorities. Apart from the value of the house, he had almost five million, appreciating fast, he had made from the bridal garment shops he had owned in Kilburn and Willesden until recently when his eldest son took them over. His eye on Marion, talking now about her friends the Littons and various other people he had never heard of, he wondered what she wanted of him. Was it possible she thought he was poor? Or could the reverse be true and she thought he was rich? Perhaps she hoped he would marry her. He looked no more than sixty or possibly fifty-five and she was forty if she was a day. Although he got a lot of amusement out of her visits, secretly laughing at her, he intended soon to terminate them. He owed it to his sons not to remarry. His money, his house and his home in Derbyshire were reserved for the three of them to share. But even if he had considered remarriage he wouldn't pick her. For one thing, she was as skinny as his Giacometti and far less valuable.

Absently pouring more coffee, Marion chatted away about someone called Joyce and a man called Edmund who had deceived her or betrayed her in some way. She had given these people and several others Christmas presents and all she had got in return was a scarf from
Mrs Litton. This reminded her that she had a gift for him. He was very thin, she was sure he didn't look after himself, so she had taken the liberty of bringing something to eat. She had cooked it herself. All he would have to do was slice it up and eat it with some Branston pickle. She had taken the same thing to the Littons and they were so grateful, it was quite touching.

In the middle of Marion's disquisition on a rabbit keeper who lived in Pinner, Mr Hussein got up and said he must send her away now. ‘Mrs Litton and Mrs Reinhardt and Mrs Pringle will be wondering where you are.'

Marion wasn't clear what he meant by this. She had told him several times that Mrs Pringle was dead. Perhaps he was losing it. Perhaps this was the start of Alzheimer's, though of course he was an Asian and it might be no more than that. When she had gone Tariq Hussein opened his present. Inside the red and gold wrapping, the clear plastic and the greaseproof paper, was a knuckle of ham. Recognisably pig, he thought. A good mosque-attending Moslem, he recoiled and pushed it a little way away across the ebony and silver table. He found a long kebab skewer and stabbed the ham, holding it at arm's length and carrying it into the kitchen where he dropped it in the waste bin. He could see the funny side of it now and thought it would make a good story to tell his friends.

Then he called his driver and asked him to bring the Rolls round at one. Elegantly dressed in a light-grey suit with lilac tie, he set off for the Ivy to take his mistress Fozia Iqbal out to lunch.

It was done to protect her from Guy Rolland, to keep her safe. Afterwards Ismay told her mother many things but there was one thing she didn't tell her, that she
wouldn't
have minded
if Guy had made love to her, that she would have
liked
it. He was her mother's husband and it would have been wrong. Those were the considerations that held her back from overtly encouraging Guy, not that she didn't want it, wasn't excited by him, used to hope he would one night come to her bedroom. Heather knew nothing of this. All Heather saw was a man of thirty-four touching and kissing her beloved sister, a girl of fifteen, in an improper way. All Heather assumed was that her sister must dislike it because she herself would have disliked it.

Or that is what I believe happened, thought Ismay. I think it was like that. She realised then that every time she dwelt on those events of twelve years ago, she always prefaced them with that sentence or something like it. That is what I believe. It had to be that way. How else could it have been? She had disclosed it to no one. Only she and her mother knew and it was hard now to tell how much of anything Beatrix knew any more. For all Ismay could tell, the whole thing had passed utterly from her mother's mind. It had marked her mind, wounded it, mutilated it and then slid away as a disease may do, leaving ineradicable scars behind.

Early in their relationship she had considered telling Andrew. She loved him now, would love him for ever, but then her passion was starry-eyed, it was worship. She could find no fault in him and saw him as a just judge, wise, forbearing and kind. Knowing him better now, she told herself she must have been mad even to think of it, even to imagine she could reveal such a thing about Heather who was already his enemy. Anyway, it was basically nothing to do with Andrew and everything to do with Edmund.

But tell him that she was sure Heather had killed their stepfather? She couldn't see herself doing it. She couldn't see him and herself sitting opposite each other
while she told him. Nor could she imagine what the result would be. Almost certainly to split him and Heather up. He seemed a good person but was he good enough, magnanimous enough,
saintly
enough, to take Heather on in spite of what she told him? No man would. And once he knew, other possibilities would arise. Suppose he went to the police? He was a nurse, in a way he was part of the medical establishment, he might see it as his duty to tell the police what she had told him. A terrible urge took hold of her not to tell him. To say nothing and let things take their course.

What was she afraid of if she never told him and he married Heather? That Heather would do it again? Only perhaps if she, Ismay, was in danger as in Heather's eyes she had been then. If someone threatened her as Heather saw Guy as threatening her. But that wasn't going to happen. She was happy. She had Andrew who loved her, a good job, plenty of friends and she was young. Her mother was a perpetual worry, of course, but there was no crisis over her home or her care or her career. The present arrangement worked well and would do so while Pamela was willing to live with Beatrix and her nieces lived on the floor below.

Ismay asked herself if there was anyone else Heather loved and would feel it her duty to protect or avenge but came up only with Edmund himself as the possibility. Was this what she had been afraid of from the start of Heather's love affair? That she would marry Edmund and love him, devote herself to him, and when someone harmed him – this was bound to happen – take revenge on that person? It could be in connection with his job, some figure in authority failing to promote him or sacking him unjustly. Suppose someone brought an action in court against him for negligence? In the compensation culture this was happening all the time. And there would be children. Would
Heather wreak vengeance on a child who bullied her child or fought him in the playground or a teacher who spoke harshly to him? You're letting this get out of hand, she told herself, you're going over the top. This is all conjecture. She's not a psychopath. There's no rule that someone who kills once is bound to kill again, is there?