Another Sunday. Kenneth playing golf again. Fleur insisting on buying me lunch at Goodwood. Not ideal.
She’d ordered a bottle of Merlot before I arrived. That’s kind of a concession to me, because she prefers to start lunch with white. But a whole bottle. She knows I’ll only drink one glass. She’ll finish the rest. No problem. And then drive the three or four miles back to Chichester. She won’t get stopped by the police, of course. She never is.
Whereas I … I’m convinced if I were one milligram over the limit, the traffic cops would be magnetically drawn to the Yeti. I’d lose my licence. And, with it, SpaceWoman. There are not many things I’m paranoid about, but I’m afraid that’s one.
I’ve seen my mother in many moods. She is an actress, after all. And I have to grant it to her, she can sparkle in company. When she’s in animated, anecdote-telling mode, the years slip away and she naturally takes centre stage. I can recognize and remember the beautiful woman she once was.
When she’s alone with the daughter she didn’t much want in the first place, she makes no such effort. Her lips are permanently downturned in a rictus of martyrdom.
‘Did you hear about Reggie Baldry?’ she asked, after pouring my first (and last) and her second glass of Merlot.
‘No.’ I knew too well the reaction I’d get if I said, ‘Who the hell’s Reggie Baldry?’
‘He died yesterday. At Denville Hall.’ I knew that was a home for retired actors. ‘We go back a long way. He was Florizel to my Perdita at Hornchurch. Winter’s Tale, you know …’
I couldn’t resist saying that I did actually know. Though I never made it to university, I am quite well read.
‘Director, guy called Bill,’ she went on, ‘camp as a row of tents, he really fancied Reggie. And who wouldn’t? Like a young Greek god he was then, Reggie. Bill couldn’t keep his hands off him. But I …’ a sly smile ‘… got there first. He was very good in bed, Reggie you know …’
Children are traditionally supposed to express revolted disbelief at the idea of their parents having sex. To have one of them boasting about her ancient conquests just adds another level of embarrassment.
Fleur wound this up another notch by adding, ‘Takes one to know one.’
‘So, Reggie’s died,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, all the real actors are going now,’ she moaned. ‘The generation who could bring whole theatres to life. The current lot just don’t have the scope; brought up mumbling their lines for television cameras.’
Of course, I’d heard all this many times before. Was her view in any way affected by the fact that, although she’d had her successes on stage and in British films, Fleur had never really conquered television? I was far too polite to ask.
‘Not that anyone cares,’ Fleur emoted on. ‘One is just forgotten. One’s achievements are like so much dust under the wheels of history.’ I wondered from which of the plays she’d been in she’d got that line.
‘Age is cruel. One’s sell-by date, like so much else, vanishes into the past. No one really cares about the old. We’re just the flotsam and jetsam of a forgotten generation, washed up on the shoreline of indifference.’
I wondered if that had come from the same play. But the signs weren’t good. Usually, Fleur resisted any suggestions that she might be old. She’d spout that venerable line, ‘You’re only as old as you feel’, probably, after a snigger, adding. ‘… or as old as the man you feel.’ Or go into that ‘age is just a number’ routine. But if she was actually talking about herself as being part of a ‘forgotten generation’ … it was going to be a long lunch.
‘You just come to the point,’ Fleur resumed, ‘when you realize that you’re no use to anyone. Nobody rings you. You always have to take the initiative if you ever want to see or talk to anyone ever again. I mean, it’s like with you, Ellen. Do you ever ring me? No, I’m always the one who makes the call. Do you invite me out for lunch? No, I’m the one who has to call you. It’s always been like that, hasn’t it?’
This was so grotesquely unfair that I hadn’t the energy to argue.
‘And I thought,’ Fleur continued, ‘I had a close relationship with my granddaughter, but still no response when I contact her. Haven’t you been in touch with her, Ellen?’
‘No.’
‘Well, aren’t you worried about her?’
‘Jools leads her own life. She’ll be in touch when she wants to be in touch.’
‘That may be true for you, Ellen, but I think the fact that she hasn’t contacted me means there’s something wrong. It’s been over a fortnight since I’ve heard from her. I think you should go up to Herne Hill, Ellen, and find out what’s going on.’
‘I’m sure she’s—’
‘That’s what anyone deserving of the name of a mother would do.’
That – from her? From Fleur Bonnier? Sometimes, when I think of Fleur Bonnier’s behaviour towards me, matricide seems to be the only option.
I was still fuming when I got back home. And worried. Not worried about whether my booze-soaked mother had made it back safely to hers, but worried about Jools. Fleur’s harping on about the subject had brought to the surface a number of long-buried anxieties about my daughter. The idea that I should go to Herne Hill to check Jools out, which before lunch had just been a passing fancy, now felt compelling.
And it stopped me from doing what another instinct prompted, namely to pour myself a second large glass of Merlot to obliterate memories of the lunch I had so recently endured.
My dithering was interrupted by the ringing of my SpaceWoman mobile. Detective Inspector Bayles. And in unnervingly jovial mood.
‘Ah, Ellen. You remember our conversation agreeing that the police tend to be a little parsimonious with the amount of information about their investigations which they vouchsafe to the general public?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, wondering where this was going.
‘Well, out of pure generosity of spirit and the goodness of my heart, I thought I’d vouchsafe you some.’
‘Oh?’
‘When we last spoke, you posited the idea that the poison which killed Cedric Waites might have been plant-based.’
‘I remember, yes.’
‘And I – perhaps churlishly, in retrospect – refused to confirm or deny your supposition.’
I didn’t say anything. I was getting a bit tired of his elaborate storytelling routine.
Perhaps he was aware of my feelings, because he cut to the chase. ‘The poison that killed Cedric Waites came from the oleander shrub.’
‘I didn’t know that was poisonous.’
‘A lot of people don’t, Ellen. But yes, the flowers or the leaves will do the business quite effectively. Used to be far more popular as a murder method than it is now. Victorians loved the stuff. Chemical poisons seem to have taken over these days. But, as I say, it works.’
‘So?’ I knew he had more to say.
‘So …’ He extended the monosyllable almost unbearably and then repeated it. ‘So, when we inspected the home of your friend … Mr Dodge … we were interested to find some pots of oleanders.’
‘He cultivates lots of flowers and herbs. Dodge uses them for his herbal potions.’
I shouldn’t have added the second sentence. ‘Yes, that’s rather what we thought,’ said the inspector. ‘Which, taken in conjunction with his sudden disappearance – not to mention his criminal record – does … well, let’s say it doesn’t decrease our suspicions of Mr Dodge.’
‘But, if growing oleanders makes someone a murder suspect, then you’d have to question half the gardeners in the country. Everyone has oleanders. There were some here when I bought the house. Winters here are too cold, so you have to bring the pots inside. But this time of year, mine are thriving outside.’
‘Hm,’ said the inspector wryly. ‘So, you grow oleanders too, Ellen. That’s very interesting.’
My anxiety about Jools was now getting out of control. It’s that atavistic fear all mothers have when they think their child is in danger. It brought back the early panics when ‘the baby isn’t feeding properly’, the terrified waits at St Richard’s Hospital when ‘we’d like to keep her in overnight for observation’, the agony of tension which accompanied her first drive out on her own after passing her test. Nothing every other mother in the world hasn’t experienced to a greater or lesser degree.
And certainly far more powerful and important than the idea that Detective Inspector Bayles might have me marked down as a murder suspect.
I rang Jools’s mobile again. No reply, went to voicemail. I left a message which, while not I hope sounding totally manic, indicated that I would like her to call back as soon as possible. I backed that up with a text, and even sent a message to the email address I knew Jools hardly ever checked. (She had new, trendier communication platforms, ones I didn’t know how to access.)
No argument now. I was going to drive to Herne Hill. I had a key to Jools’s flat. I had to find out what had happened to her.
I wasn’t driving at my best on that journey from Chichester up to London. Not going too fast, just my whole body was jumpy and twitchy. My hands trembled on the Yeti’s steering wheel. Every gear change was a juddering risk. A lot of black looks were directed towards me by other road users in the end-of-weekend crawl back to the working week.
But I got to Herne Hill and parked outside Jools’s building. I had been there a few times, but not as much as a mother in a more relaxed relationship with her daughter might have been. A lot when she first moved in, helping her get stuff together. Not many times since. On the last occasion, a window had opened briefly into her mind; that time she actually talked about Oliver and her reaction to her father’s death. But the thaw had not been maintained. On the rare occasions when we did talk on the phone, her manner was as shallow and brittle as ever.
I didn’t need Fleur’s outrageous criticism to make me feel I hadn’t done a great job as a mother.
I let myself in through the downstairs door into the tiny hallway. The place had been built as an Edwardian family house and turned into flats during one of London’s (many) times of skyrocketing property prices.
There wasn’t a lift. It would have taken too much valuable space from the flats the property developers wanted to sell at the highest price possible.
I tried to control my breathing and ease my tension as I climbed up the stairs. There was a bell-push by Jools’s door. I pressed it, then pressed again. No reaction. I felt physically sick from the stress.
I opened the front door. Two steps took me to Jools’s sitting room. I pushed that door open too.
The light was on. My daughter was lying on the sofa. She looked up in surprise at my entrance. She was as pale as the white wall behind her. She looked desperately frail and vulnerable.
Across her nose, strips of plaster held in place a gauze dressing, through which blood had seeped.