‘Was Malcolm often unfaithful?’
‘Constantly. But he always came back.’
‘And made up for it?’
‘You don’t really ‘‘ make up’’ for infidelity. It becomes a way of life.’
‘Was Malcolm a good lover?’
Her long brown eyes slanted up at me, little points of reflected life sparking in them. ‘ Yes. Why d’you ask?’
‘So that made up for a lot.’
‘Not everything.’
‘What did it not make up for?’
She sighed. ‘Probably for the fact that I never really loved him.’
‘That’s a pity, isn’t it?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Can you explain more?’
‘I’d rather not.’
‘If that’s your decision I have to abide by it.’
‘Yes, you do, don’t you?’
There was a long pause, with no sound except the crackle of the fire.
‘In fact,’ she said, ‘he made love to me once in this room. It was early on, six weeks or so after we were married. There are locks on both doors.’
‘So I’ve noticed.’
‘The window curtains were heavy.’
‘Are heavy.’
‘Yes. The fire was roaring – rather like this. There were plenty of rugs.’
‘Are plenty.’
‘He put out the lights and I took off my clothes and knelt down. Then, he stroked my breasts by the firelight.’
I bent to put another log on. ‘What a splendid idea … Would it seem rather déjà vu? …’
‘What?’
‘To suggest that we might do exactly the same thing now?’
There was an even longer pause. Then she rose and stretched like a pale beautiful cat.
‘Not at all. In fact, David, dear David, I’d twenty times rather it was you than ever Malcolm.’
Chapter Twenty-seven
I
Love (or what you will), Erica
She left at nine before the Coppells got back. She came on Sunday with Trina, and Mrs Coppell took Trina for a walk; we had almost an hour. I went to Lochfiern House for lunch on Monday and couldn’t get out of being shown some more of the military relics: letters, ancient maps with threadbare joints, captured spears, dented helmets. In the afternoon I took Trina for a ride in the Ferrari on her own. That night, just before midnight, Alison arrived at Wester Craig and didn’t leave till four a.m. Somehow we missed only one day in that first week. We drank each other dry and came back for more.
People were bound to know. I said to Alison: ‘What does it matter? Come and stay here.’
‘With Trina?’
‘Ah. Leave her with Mary, who’s mad about her.’
‘Maybe we can expect our relatives to turn a blind eye, David. I hope so, anyway. But that would smack of connivance and encouragement.’
We talked; but not that much. Alison brought Trina with her most afternoons and we went walks together. It was a way of being with me, said Alison, if nothing more. Usually somehow it became something more. Mornings I laboured on the jetty and the boat.
Perhaps the forbidden – or if not forbidden, then something done by stealth – adds an extra zest. And there was never time to indulge to the point of satiety. Every fresh meeting was a new adventure, a new thrill.
We walked down to the mouth of the loch and Alison pointed out the sea pipits and the Arctic terns. We got expert at talking to each other while pretending to talk to Trina. Innuendoes flew over the infant’s head like arrows in a Robin Hood film.
I had another letter from Shona telling me of the plans at present being put together by her accountants and her lawyers for a company flotation. She would like me to be back not later than the week after next, if only to attend one or two of these meetings; whether I remained in London after that was my own affair. She proposed I should receive a substantial slice of the equity, whether I remained with the firm or not. ‘This expansion has been so much your work that that seems only fair.’ Not only fair, but generous! Yes, Shona being generous with money! Was age softening her up? I did a few sums on the back of an envelope and realized, if my figures were approximately right, that I should never again lack for a crust. I had to write to her, and soon. I’d never written about John’s death. Hard to say much about a man I’d never got on with and who so plainly disliked me.
I wrote to Shona saying what I could that was nice about him and telling her I’d probably be in London the week beginning the 5th. I thanked her for the proffered gift and said I’d be glad to accept it. I had a feeling she was banking on my better nature. (Could I really accept a dollop of valuable shares and then not go on working for her? Damned right I could. My better nature is my worst characteristic.)
Then Chalmers rang. He’d tried a couple of times before, he said. The arrested men were still in Brixton but were due shortly to come up in the Magistrates’ Court to be committed for trial. Sometimes, Chalmers explained, the defence admitted there was a case and reserved their ammunition for the Crown Court. Then the committal proceedings were a formality. But the defence in this case was proposing to contest the committal, and the hearing might take a couple of days. It would be very useful if I could attend, at least for part of the time, to give evidence if required, possibly with our technical director as well. There were people coming from Chanel, Lancôme, etc., and it would be of assistance to the police.
I said: Where and when? He said, Barking Magistrates’ Court, about Tuesday, the 16th. I hadn’t wanted to show my hand as freely as this, but probably by now one way or another the villains would have come round to the idea that I had had a finger in their pie. So I said, yes, I’d come.
In the second week I paid two visits to Lochfiern House after lights-out. The throaty exhaust of the Ferrari meant parking a distance away; then a burglarious approach to the stone-porched side door where the bolt had been slipped back; tiptoeing up the creaky stairs and along a square, carpeted landing to a door which had been oiled that morning so it wouldn’t groan. Then by the light of a tiny night light the long sensuous eyes of Mrs Malcolm Abden peering over the sheet, watching me undress and knowing she was naked herself.
But after two nights we decided reluctantly that it had to be a home fixture at Wester Craig; it was not nice thinking of her driving back at three in the morning, but there were too many people in her own house, including Trina, who woke on the second night and came tapping at the locked door. But the passion went on just the same; she was a ravishing woman and had been a widow too long.
You could hardly say I’d been a bachelor too long but there it was; I couldn’t have enough of her.
Came time almost for me to go. The roof was finished, the boat was finished, the jetty was repaired and would last groggily a bit longer. The marks of the porch hadn’t been made good but they promised it before I returned.
Returned? Well, yes, it looked like it. Within a week? Probably. I still wasn’t all that taken with Scotland but Alison was here, which brought the scales down with a thump. The simple life and high sex went well together.
She made no demands on me when I said I’d to go to London. The stillness and steadiness of her showed up plain enough then. After I’d made love to her a few times I cottoned on that the poise and balance was mental, not physical; unlike me, she was steady as a rock; she knew exactly what she wanted, and when possible took it.
She said she’d thought of going back to live with her parents, since there was nothing specific to keep her with the Abdens; but the very first time I called she’d changed her mind.
‘Like that?’ I said.
‘Like that.’ She trailed her hand in the water. We were out in the boat near the mouth of the loch fishing – fishing for sillocks; I’d never heard of the damned things but that’s what she said they were called. ‘I knew you’d come back.’
‘Even with the old shoulder-chip, eh?’
‘You must tell me about that sometime.’
/> ‘Haven’t you heard enough?’
‘That your mother was Jewish? That your father was a bit of a wastrel? Doesn’t explain a thing.’
‘All the Abdens are bad news – more or less – aren’t they? It’s what Mary never tires of saying.’
‘She’s got a thing about it. Malcolm was not all that difficult – if you try to be detached about it. Neither are you. Stop playing at being a bad boy.’
I laughed. Trina said: ‘I think this poor little fish is dead, Mummy.’
‘Well, you wouldn’t throw it back,’ said Alison. ‘Let me see … Yes, I think it is. Pity. It’s a tiny baby plaice.’
‘How d’you know that?’ I asked.
‘My parents had a house on Skye when we were young. Used to spend our summer holidays there. Often went fishing with my brothers.’ She turned to Catriona. ‘This is a very baby plaice, Trina. D’you see, it has eyes on both sides of its head. It swims like this.’ She held her hand vertically. ‘But when it gets older both eyes come almost together and it swims on its side.’ Hand held flat. ‘Like that. It always swims on its left side, right side up. But a turbot does the opposite, swims on its right side, left side up.’
‘I don’t believe you!’ I said, laughing again. ‘It’s a fairy story, isn’t it, Trina?’
‘Nothing of the sort!’
‘Yes, yes, yes!’ said Trina, clapping her hands excitedly. ‘It’s a fairy story! Mummy, can I go another ride in Uncle David’s car?’
‘Certainly you cannot if you don’t believe my true stories!’
‘But Uncle David doesn’t.’
‘Uncle David,’ said Alison, ‘is a foolish man. Not yet quite grown up.’
‘My God!’ I said. ‘Many a true word.’ Then I looked her over, carefully and particularly and possessively, from her cropped hair to her fawny eyes, to her open blouse, to her worn blue slacks, to her clean, bare, naked feet. ‘Yes, I’ll take you out, Trina, when we get back, on one condition: that you first have an hour’s walk with Mrs Coppell over the moors.’
II
In my pocket I had a letter I didn’t tell Alison about, a letter from Erica:
Dear David,
Surprise, surprise, a note from little me! I depend for news of your movements on your Russian friend, who tells me you have spent all these weeks in the bonny Highlands acquiring a Gaelic tan; but are shortly returning to London, at least for a visit. Does this mean I should air your pyjamas and put the electric blanket on? We are still officially husband and wife and cohabit according to the law, so I rather assume you’ll make use of Knightsbridge House, no. 24, at least as a pied à terre. Don’t let my presence disturb you; as you know, it’s a large flat with plenty of living space and no need to conjoin unless we feel like it.
The Muscovites are of course long since back, and general opinion is that the selection committee boobed frightfully by not induding me. Consolation? Not much. Except that we could hardly have done worse. Francis wants me to go into strict training again. I’m hanging fire. Maybe we’ve got to get our own lives straightened out a bit first. We can’t just go on living for ever in Dead Pan Alley. Perhaps a jolt or two would get the works moving again. Who knows what a little polite confrontation might do?
It may not have occurred to you – why should it? – that I was born twenty-six years ago next Thursday, and to celebrate an event which certainly has some importance in my life, I’m throwing a dinner party at the Dorchester. Only about eighteen. All our closest friends. Actually seventeen without you. Black tie; but a sweater with your face above it would pass. Time eight. No flowers by request.
PS. I will call you Sunday night for yea or nay.
On the way back to London I stopped in Inverness and Edinburgh to see the estate agents and old Macardle. I told Heeney to withdraw Wester Craig temporarily from the market. (I didn’t want it suddenly whisked away in the present stage of my affairs.) This all took longer than expected and as it was blowing a gale and pelting with rain and the motorways were sure to be gurgling and splashing with traffic on a late Monday afternoon, I decided to get an early night, being sleepy after last night’s long final hours with Alison. I left Edinburgh on Tuesday as dawn was breaking, but it was still a messy journey and I didn’t break any records. I spent some of the driving time chewing over in my mind about the women in my life.
Shona was probably right in saying my marriage with Erica hadn’t ever had a fair field. Her preoccupation with her fencing and my unwillingness to get drawn into another female web had strangled the thing in infancy. Was there any point in trying to revive it? Surely not. If I got a slice of the equity from the flotation of Shona & Co., I wouldn’t need Erica’s money; and Erica was sure of her title whatever happened in the divorce court. Seemed unlikely she’d raise many difficulties.
Yet Shona’s rousing words to me, accusing me of not being willing to give anything to my marriage, scored at least a double ten on the dartboard. I hadn’t given much, I knew I hadn’t given much – I’d relaxed far more with Alison in a few weeks than with Erica in a year; not knowing why; it wasn’t love; they were different women. Alison offered more, was warmer, more sexual, more demanding. Erica lived by the throwaway line. Yet maybe she cared when her throwaway lines were not picked up. Shona had said so, very pointedly, very angrily.
I didn’t think I wanted to stay hitched to Erica, in any event. Her prospects, or lack of them, for producing another sprig of the Abden line was not the most important thing. She was light easy company, cynical, amusing; perhaps as good a person as anyone to choose to spend the rest of one’s life with? But not for me, I thought, not for me.
On the telephone her voice had sounded like a stranger’s: deeper, the flippant words not matching, like a movie out of sync. Had she really tried to make a go of it, was now racing two failures? After the fencing flop she’d needed all the support she could get, and I’d hardly given it her. But could I be blamed since she’d turned on me like a rattlesnake?
Anyway I’d said I’d go to the party. She sounded a bit coy about the people she’d asked, and I wondered whether her closest friends were going to be mine. As an incurable climber, she was likely to have asked all the titles in her address book. But, I said to myself, put a good face on it and play the old homecoming through with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of good will. For a while I’d see how tilings went before dropping the word divorce into our connubial bucket: it would probably hardly create a splash; if it did, if she objected for some unexpected reason, then we could just separate for a time. There was no hurry, and my aunt could wait another decade before I presented her with a suitable heir.
The Ferrari was playing up on the way back, needed a retune after all the taxiing it had done in Scotland, and I thought if there was time I’d try to take it round to the garage for a service, and get a taxi or something out to Barking. But there wasn’t time. I went direct to the court and even then was half an hour late for the kick-off.
I sat next to Parker and Leo Longford but wasn’t called. The culprits were duly arranged in the dock: Vince Bickmaster, Sitram Smith (wearing a turban), Maurice Laval, Matthew Charles and two others. They looked at me and I looked at them. You could pick out a few of their friends both in the court proper and in the public gallery. There was a man in dark glasses at the back of the court who wasn’t unlike Charley Ellis but I couldn’t be sure. Derek was noticeably not there.
When the day was ended Chalmers thanked me for putting in an appearance and said that, the way things had gone, there would be no need for me to turn up on the second day. But he wondered if as a last favour I’d mind coming back to the Yard with him. I had mentioned a man called Roger Manpole once, hadn’t I? There were one or two photographs he would like me to see and comment on.
III
The glass and concrete beehive. The one thing modern architects can certainly do is design anonymous buildings. You could have found twenty like it in Tokyo or Hamburg or Chicago and been puzzled to know what th
e people did who worked there. You might have guessed a hospital or a TV studio before thinking it a police headquarters. Perhaps it had to be a bit of all three these days.
I’d thought Chalmers, though still polite enough, was a shade less regardful of me than when we first met, and after we talked a bit and I’d picked out one or two photos and I told him what I knew about the subjects, I said bluntly: ‘ Maybe you wonder how I know so many of these characters, even by sight and reputation. Or I expect you’ve already had it all printed out, have you?’
He straightened up from the photographs. ‘I imagine you know most of them from the Cellini, don’t you? It’s a well-run gambling club; it’s never stepped out of line by breaking any of the fairly strict regulations governing such places; but it’s known to be a meeting place for a number of the criminal classes. Not the big names perhaps: we look elsewhere for them; but the borderline people, the fringe people who occasionally break out and cause us trouble. I expect a moralist would say that wherever you get high-stake gambling you inevitably attract such people. How long have you been a member, Sir David?’
‘Oh … Sixteen, seventeen years. But what I meant was that I expect by now you’ve run my name through your computer and found that I’ve a record of a sort. One of the fringe people, in fact. In my jolly youth I spent four months in Pentonville.’
He pulled his trousers up over his stomach and went to the window.
‘As a matter of fact, we never did put you through the computer, Sir David.’
‘But you knew?’
‘It was pointed out to us about a month ago.’
‘Who took the trouble to point?’
‘That I’m not at liberty to say. But I have to tell you that it doesn’t carry any weight with us.’
‘You surprise me.’
The telephone rang and he briefly answered it.
‘Don’t get me wrong, sir. Of course our work is all about people with records. The average man who breaks the law more often than not has done it before, often in the same or a similar way, often in his youth; so inevitably we bear this in mind when looking at particular types of crimes and particular types of criminal. But we would be exceeding our brief if we allowed prejudice and suspicion to cloud our judgement in any way. Let me see, when were you – er – in prison?’