Chapter Fourteen
It was a terrible sound; she couldn’t think what it was at first. Heavy, muffled, halfway between a groan and a wail. It sounded like an animal in pain. Then she realised: it was Bard. Bard weeping.
Francesca looked at the clock: only one. He had said he was going to sleep in his dressing room, had told her to go to bed early, that she looked exhausted, and feeling at once relieved and faintly ashamed of herself (for what had she to be exhausted about, she had done nothing that day except say foolish vapid things, smile foolish false smiles), she agreed. That had been ten-thirty. He had been in his study since coming in from the office at seven. He had said he didn’t want food. He had been curt, withdrawn from her in his grief; helpless to comfort him, at the same time hurt at the continuing rejection, she hadn’t known what to say. He had carried a bottle of whisky and a jug of coffee upstairs and shut the door.
Barnaby had gone out with Kirsten, it was Sandie’s evening off, Nanny had put the children to bed early, and had retired into her own small sitting room next to the nursery. Francesca felt very alone. Alone with her thoughts. With the memory, too, of the episode with Teresa which, however much she tried to shrug it off, tell herself it had meant nothing, that Teresa had been in an irrational, wretched state of mind, had upset her very much. She hadn’t seem irrational or wretched: simply angry. And almost – no, not almost, actually – enjoying it. Well, Francesca told herself for what seemed like the hundredth time since then, grief took strange forms, did strange things. That was all it had been. Of course. There was no point thinking about it any further. What she had said, or what she had meant. No point at all.
The noise came again, from Bard’s study. This was a far more immediate, real concern. Francesca got out of bed and pulled on a robe; it was a very hot night and she had slept naked. She quailed slightly at what she had to do, but knew, just the same, she couldn’t leave him alone. She walked quietly down the corridor, stood outside the half-open door. The noise went on; he didn’t hear her.
She pushed it open carefully; he was sitting at his desk, his head buried in his arms, his great shoulders heaving. She went forward, moving very steadily, and when she reached him put out her hand, onto the shoulders, said ‘Bard’ quite quietly. She half expected a rebuff even then, was prepared to retreat; but he looked up at her, his face raw with grief, wet with tears, and suddenly put his arms round her waist, burying his head in her breast.
‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘Oh God, Francesca, how am I going to bear this? I loved him so much, he was my only real friend, our entire lives were spent together, the business, everything was ours. I can’t do it alone, I can’t, I feel so alone, so utterly alone.’
She couldn’t think of anything to say; she felt helpless, useless in the face of such pain. She held his head to her, stroking his hair, murmuring wordless nonsense to him as she did to little Jack when he had hurt himself, just listening, letting him talk.
‘It was such a good friendship,’ he said, ‘we were so good for each other. He taught me to be patient, to think before I spoke’ – you could have fooled me, Francesca thought – ‘to wait for people to make their own judgments, and I put some fire in his belly, gave him ambition, drive. He often said if it hadn’t been for me he’d have been a golf pro meandering round some course, spending his evenings at the nineteenth hole. Oh God, Francesca, and if he had, maybe he’d be alive now, maybe I drove him to it, drove him to his death, always forcing him on, demanding things of him, impatient when he was tired or wanted to move into the slow lane for a bit. Christ, what have I done, what have I done?’
‘Bard, you haven’t done anything. No that’s not true, you’ve done a lot, a lot for him. Duggie loved the company, loved being part of it’ – she pushed the memory of Teresa’s words away – ‘Do you think he’d have been happy being a golf pro?’
‘Yes, I do. I really do.’
‘For a little while, maybe. Then he’d have been bored, he’d have atrophied. Duggie liked the good life, Bard, as well as anyone. What you did was help him fulfil his potential, give him – ’
‘No,’ he said, brushing the tears impatiently away, sitting back in his chair, looking up at her, ‘no, that’s not right. He wouldn’t have been bored, and he wouldn’t have minded not being rich. He was a modest fellow, in every way, he had the sweetest, happiest nature. He’d have been perfectly happy in a little Tudor semi somewhere, I know he would.’
‘Well maybe. But – ’ ‘And now I’m on my own. Completely. As I should have been from the beginning, maybe. Maybe this is my punishment – ’ ‘For what?’ she said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Your punishment for what?’
‘Oh – for everything. Everything wrong I’ve ever done.’
‘Bard, you haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘Oh really?’ he said, looking up at her. ‘And how would you know that?’
Francesca didn’t know why, but she found the question frightening; then she told herself he was talking nonsense, that he was drunk . . .
‘Because I know you. That’s how. And I love you.’
‘Oh Christ,’ he said, ‘Christ, I hope you do.’
‘I do.’
He sat back and looked up at her for a moment, his eyes absolutely unreadable, and then he pushed aside her robe and cradled her breasts in his hands with infinite care, as if they were fragile, in danger of breaking.
‘Lovely,’ he said, ‘so lovely, you are.’
He bent forward and kissed them, one at a time, his tongue lingering on the nipples, and then moved his mouth down, down to her stomach, her pubic hair. She felt his tongue working at her clitoris, felt the sharp, leaping streaks of desire; she closed her eyes, concentrating utterly on the moment, the sensation of it, the deep, rich, unfurling pleasure: and then he stood up briefly, dragging impatiently at his clothes, kissing her hard, fiercely, and then she was on him, astride him, his penis forcing into her, savagely, sweetly strong, and she rode him, rode the pleasure of him, felt each push, each thrust, felt herself growing, moulding round him, felt the great circles spreading, reaching on and on, out and out, felt herself travelling with them, with him, felt the great dark force of release begin, and she threw back her head and cried out aloud, heard herself, a strange wild cry, the cry of sex, the cry of love.
She stayed there for a long while, holding him, holding him to her; in the months that followed she thought of it often, that night, an isolated piece of happiness preserved, suspended in time, to be looked at, treasured, wondered at.
In the morning he came in, kissed her briefly, said he had to go; he had never followed her to bed, as he had said he would.
‘Will you be back tonight?’
‘Yes, but very late. Don’t wait dinner for me.’
‘No, all right.’ Her voice sounded even to her forlorn, disappointed. The distance between them was there again, increasing fast.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m not going to be around much for a while. Why don’t you go to Greece for a few weeks? The house is there, the staff are there. Take your mother maybe.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘it will be terribly hot and anyway, I don’t want to be so far from Kitty’s doctor. And I’m not getting on too well with my mother.’
‘Oh really? Why on earth not?’
‘Oh – she’s acting very oddly. I suppose she’s got some new boyfriend, won’t talk about it, doesn’t have any time for me, lied about where she was going one day, said she was going to stay with an old friend and she wasn’t there at all …’
‘Yes?’ He was bending over, putting on his shoes. ‘Well, she’s a law unto herself, your mother. Always has been.’
‘Yes. Incidentally, Bard, I’m sorry about her pestering you for money for that convent place of hers. I’ve told her to back off.’
There was a silence. Then he said, very casually, ‘Oh, it didn’t matter. It was only a cheque. Don’t worry about it. I’ll see you later.’
‘Yes. And Bard – ’
‘Yes?’
She had been going to say something loving, make some reference to the previous night, but his expression was impatient, distant.
‘Nothing. Doesn’t matter. Goodbye.’
When he had gone she lay staring at the door after he had closed it, feeling absolutely desolate, no longer loved, warmed, comforted as she had done just a little earlier. And something worse even than desolate: she felt used.
On the other side of London Gray Townsend was also lying alone in bed, also staring at a closed door, also feeling used, although less desperately, less unhappily so. Gray’s primary emotion that morning was bafflement, and the person who was baffling him was Kirsten.
She had arrived for dinner the evening before, after the funeral, looking rather subdued, wearing a long, floaty skirt and a white linen shirt: almost girly, Gray thought, apart from the inevitable heavy boots. She was carrying a bottle of wine, and a bunch of flowers.
‘I thought this’d be nice. Toby left a few bottles and he never drank rubbish, and the flowers are to cheer your house up. Female-less houses are always so – oh. Oh Gray. You don’t need a lousy bunch of flowers. What a lovely house.’
She had come into the hall; Gray was particularly proud of the hall, hated the way most people used them as little better than passages; had made a room of it, papered it with brown parcel paper (the striped sort, his own idea), set a low table just underneath the stairs, covered with small silver frames holding sepia pictures of his aunts and uncles and parents and grandparents as children: ‘Great for burglars,’ Briony had often said, ‘seeing them through the letterbox,’ but the burglars hadn’t seem to fancy them, nor the heavy brass pot containing the parlour palm that sat beside them, nor the rather nice Victorian watercolours of churches and country houses that hung on the walls, nor the extremely fine barometer gracing the far wall, nor the oak chest that stood at the bottom of the stairs.
He followed her, smiling modestly as she moved from room to room, exclaiming with pleasure.
‘It’s lovely,’ she said again, wandering out into the conservatory, her tour completed. ‘How clever you are.’
‘I grew up,’ he said, ‘in a very ordinary little 1930s house. It was nice, but even then I knew how I would like it to be. Having my own house has been a great self-indulgence. Anyway, I’m glad you like it. Now then, glass of champagne?’
‘Please,’ she said, ‘I feel I need it.’
And they sat down in the conservatory, and she smiled at him and said, ‘This is so kind of you, cheering me up like this.’
‘Not entirely kind,’ he said, ‘I plan to have a lovely evening.’
He had cooked the promised steak and kidney pie ‘with only a few oysters’ served with potatoes so tiny they were like marbles and almost raw broccoli, and got one of his summer puddings out of the freezer; they had drunk the champagne and then moved onto Toby’s Burgundy which had indeed been extremely good, and had chatted easily about many things, but mostly their childhoods; his had been happy and entirely normal, he said, very dull really, only child, much loved, lived in a country town in Surrey, gone to Charterhouse and then to Warwick, got a 2:1 and then, with extraordinary ease, found his way into Fleet Street via a graduate training scheme. ‘I was on the Guardian, and I loved it, was a sort of jobbing general reporter, moved onto the arts page and then discovered Mammon, or rather Mammon’s pages, and felt I’d come home. Worked on the Observer, the Sunday Times, been on the News four years now. No real traumas, lots of fun, very uninteresting. How about you?’
He had been afraid hers would be tedious, a catalogue of neglect and misfortune, but she was funny about it, sent herself up, describing the horrors of Nanny, of Benenden, even of her mother’s alcoholism with a sweetly considered maturity. She adored her brother, she said, while half resenting his charm. ‘Even my father thinks he’s wonderful’ – and loved Victoria ‘like an old mother hen. But the person I love best, I suppose, who we all do, is Granny Jess. She was so good to us, so loving and forgiving, so stern and strict, and she had such ambitions for us, encouraged us, urged us on. I don’t think there is anything, anything at all that she doesn’t know about any of us,’ she added, ‘and that includes my father. And nothing shocks her, and she never judges us. But even she was no match for the rest.’
‘The rest?’
‘Oh, you know, the bad things,’ she said vaguely. ‘I’ve failed her dreadfully I’m afraid, she so wanted me to be good.’
Then, without warning, she started to cry, heavy bitter tears, her face dropped in her hands; Gray sat staring at her, and then tentatively put an arm round her
‘Kirsten,’ he said gently, ‘Kirsten, you must not be so hard on yourself.’
‘But I must,’ she said, ‘I’m dreadful, awful, so spoilt, and greedy, I use people all the time, look what I did to you. Oh Gray, I’m so ashamed.’ And she had buried her head in his chest and cried for a long time.
‘You don’t have to be sorry,’ he had said, smiling down at her, stroking back the wild hair, when she had finally stopped. ‘I’m over twenty-one, you know, I can take care of myself. I could have gone home that night, but I didn’t, I chose to stay. And it was very nice. Well, I thought so, anyway.’
‘Really?’ she said, looking up at him in a kind of wonder, hiccuping slightly. ‘Did you really not despise me afterwards?’
‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘It was the last thing I thought to do. I think you’re lovely, and I was flattered and pleased, and you were very honest with me in the morning, you didn’t fudge it – ’
‘I’ll go to hell,’ she said miserably, chewing on one of her strands of hair, ‘I know I will, I was thinking about it this morning in that foul chapel; when I die, I’ll go to hell – ’
‘Kirsten, really! You don’t believe all that – ’
‘Of course I do. I’m a good – well, a bad – Catholic girl. I’ve committed most of the mortal sins already. There’s no hope for me.’
‘You really are ridiculous,’ he said and then, because she looked so sad, so forlorn, he bent to kiss her gently; and then, somehow, she had kissed him back, and then, well, then he had started stroking her breasts (which were rather clearly visible through the fine linen) and she had started to respond, and a little less than half an hour later, he was leading her upstairs. ‘This is not to make me feel better, is it?’ Kirsten had said.
‘No, it’s to make me feel better,’ he said, laughing, ‘but only if you really want to.’
‘I really want to.’
It had been so different this time, so different from that wild, hard night; this time he had led and she had followed, her body soft, pliable, infinitely willing, wonderfully, gloriously responsive, her orgasms greeting his in what seemed an endless rising, falling, movement and stillness, capture, and release; and when finally they were done, she lay, smiling sweetly, her eyes closed, her hair splayed wild across the pillow, and said simply ‘Oh Gray, that was good’ and fell fast asleep.
And then in the morning she left, quickly, almost hastily, still slightly distanced from him: said she had to get home, she had so much to do, and promised to phone him later in the day.
Well, perhaps she would.
‘Francesca? This is Liam.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh Liam, hallo.’
‘You sound rotten.’
‘I feel it,’ she said. She was too miserable to pretend.
‘What’s the matter? Tell me.’
‘Oh – no. I can’t. I’m just being – silly.’
‘I doubt that,’ he said and his voice was very gentle, very concerned. A most poignant contrast to Bard’s brusque, impatient tones, an hour earlier.
‘Yes I am. I’m just – upset about yesterday. About the funeral.’
‘How was it? That was why I phoned.’
‘Oh – you know. Very dreadful really. So sad. And Teresa Booth delivered what Barnaby would have called a bollocking to us all. For cutting Duggie off, after she married him.’
‘What, in the church?’
‘Yes. It was awful.’
‘Golly,’ said Liam. ‘I wish I’d been there.’
‘No, Liam, it was awful. We all felt bad, I think. Because it was true.’
‘Did my father speak?’
‘Yes he did. Incredibly well.’
She tried not to think about Teresa’s words on that particular subject. She felt better about that at least this morning, more able to dismiss it. But it was still there, at the back of her mind, troubling her.
‘He’s very good on those occasions,’ he said. ‘I can still remember when my mother died, how he spoke at her funeral. I was crying, all the time, and somehow I stopped then. He made me feel I could be brave.’
‘Oh Liam. I can’t begin to think how awful that must have been for you.’
‘Not good,’ he said, ‘but I got through it. Somehow.’
‘You must have been very good for each other. Comforting each other.’
‘Not really,’ he said, and his voice was cool suddenly, surprised. ‘I hardly saw him. He sent me off to school.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I was thinking about that. You were only seven.’
‘Yes. Yes I was.’
‘It must have been terrible. So – so bewildering.’
‘Yes. That’s exactly the word. I didn’t know who or where I was, what I was supposed to be doing.’
‘I feel a bit bewildered,’ she said, ‘this morning. I don’t know why.’
‘Well, come and see me,’ he said. ‘Tell me about it. It might help. And it would be lovely for me.’
‘Well – ’
‘Please! It would take my mind off this afternoon, too.’
‘What’s happening this afternoon?’
‘Visit from the big man, who’s had a look at my latest X-rays. Going to assess my case, tell me how it might turn out. Whether I’m going to have a limp for the rest of my life. Whether I’ve got to have further surgery.’
‘Oh, Liam!’ She hadn’t realised that was a possibility. ‘How horrendous. Well – yes, all right. Of course I’ll come. At about – ’ she looked at her diary, glanced at her watch – ‘eleven.’
‘I’ll be counting the moments.’
‘Mr Channing!’ said the Australian nurse. ‘You’re always on that phone. Come on, I’ve got to check that dressing. Good news about your leg, isn’t it?’
‘I’m sorry?’ said Liam.
‘Well, that it’s healing so well, that you’ll be out of here in another week or so. I heard Mr Bertram telling you when he was on his ward round.’
‘Oh – yes,’ said Liam. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ He had been so engrossed in his fiction about further surgery he had almost come to believe it.
Kirsten didn’t phone. But a letter came, three days later: ‘Dear Gray,’ it said, ‘It was lovely, and you’re very special. But this time, I do mean it. It’s wrong of me to use you like this. We can meet in a little while, when we have both recovered ourselves: meanwhile thank you again and again for being such a true, good friend. Kirsten.’
A friend, he thought, a good friend; not a good lover even, simply a friend. And realised that there was neither future nor reality in their realtionship: he was, to her, a nice man, not of her generation, nor her way of thinking or doing things, and if he were wise, he would set all of it behind him. And felt not so much hurt, not used even, but dreadfully and deeply sad.
She really couldn’t go and see Liam again, Francesca thought: she’d been every day for a week, except the weekend when she and the childen had gone to Stylings and Bard had promised to come if he possibly could and didn’t; it was ridiculous, goodness knows what the nurses must think. He was probably beginning to dread her visits: at this rate they’d run out of things to say. Only every day he said please, please Francesca, come again tomorrow, you’re my only visitor, and it’s an awfully long day, and every day she said she would if she could, only she wasn’t making any promises, and then every day she found she really wanted to go again, and of course she could, she had plenty of time, all the time in the world, Bard was working ridiculous hours, and when he did come home, he went to his study and then told her to go to bed without him, that he would be working late, would sleep in his dressing room.
And since she was really rather lonely, and not actually terribly busy, there didn’t actually seem any reason not to go. She was at least doing something useful, which was more than could be said of much of the rest of her existence.
And there certainly didn’t actually seem to be any danger of their running out of things to say; they chatted easily, endlessly, and every visit she found she had stayed longer. They had much in common, they discovered through those conversations: they found they were charmed and amused by the same things, the same gossipy stories in the papers (both suckers for anything about the Princess of Wales), John Major’s Diary in Private Eye, the News Quiz on the radio, the same films (Best this year so far? Oh, Somersby. Really? Me too) the same music (Not Mozart and Clapton and Ella Fitzgerald, not all three, I don’t believe it); that they were both reduced to tears by any cheap sentimentality (‘I once cried over a wedding on EastEnders, can you believe that?’ said Francesca, ashamedly, and ‘I can believe it, because I did too,’ said Liam, laughing at her shame); the same book – ‘Brideshead, I read it every year, and anything, anything at all by John Updike’ – ‘Which one, don’t tell me, Couples is my all time favourite.’ ‘Mine too, mine too, most people don’t even know that one.’) They liked the same food and there was much talk of it, of Indian carry-outs, and steak tartare and jacket potatoes and apple charlotte – ‘Not crumble, I mean charlotte’ – ‘Yes, yes, I know, I do too, – and raspberries rather than strawberries, pears rather than apples,’ and Liam teased her about her passion for figs – ‘I told a journalist about that the other day, I’m sure it was silly of me, D. H. Lawrence and all that.’ ‘Yes I’m sure it was too’ – all this over the mince and carrots that passed for stew and the dried-up fish and watery mash that was called fish pie and the tinned fruit cocktail that they swore was fruit salad which Liam dutifully swallowed for want of anything better. Except of course for the grapes and the peaches and the nectarines that Francesca brought him, and the oatcakes and the Dolcelatte, and the Mars ice cream she had taken in on the Friday: ‘Next week if you come, we’ll have one of these,’ he had said, indicating a metal blue and gold attaché case, filled with half bottles of Veuve Clicquot; ‘Present from dear old Duggie and Teresa, I feel so terrible, I never thanked him.’
‘We all feel terrible about Duggie,’ she said, very sadly, and it was true, she did, more terrible every day; and then, making a great effort because after all he needed support, cheering up so much: ‘Liam, we can’t drink champagne here, I’ll be expelled, expelled from your bedside, and then you’ll be sorry,’ and ‘Yes,’ he said, suddenly serious. ‘Yes, I would, so very sorry. But the nurses are all extremely fond of me now,’ he said, grinning at her, ‘and dreading me going, so they won’t actually mind a bit.’
‘Don’t be so sure,’ she said, punching him gently, ‘and be careful, I don’t like conceited men.’
She loved those conversations: they were so unlike any she had had for a long time. Bard never chatted these days, certainly never gossiped, and most certainly never listened to her on such matters as films she liked, food she adored, books that made her laugh aloud. Well, not any more, she told herself, struggling as always to be loyal: what husband of five years did, such comparisons were dangerous, deeply so. She felt quite sure Naomi Channing would hardly recognise her husband from these conversations either. Nevertheless they were wonderfully soothing, marvellously restorative; they soothed her hurts, restored her morale, eased her loneliness. And as he recovered, became more of a person, less of an invalid, she found herself increasingly fascinated by Liam, by his likeness to Bard as well as his unlikeness; it was impossible not to compare them, not to set one against the other.
Physically they were strangely similar, and at the same time utterly different: Liam’s face was in some ways Bard’s only somehow made lighter; the same brilliant dark eyes, the just slightly too long nose, the hard jawline. But Liam’s eyes were wider spaced, the forehead higher, the mouth tauter. Only the hair was exactly the same; thick, dark, unruly hair, that defied every cut, every piece of hairdressing skill. Bard’s was streaked with grey, and Liam’s was longer, but it was the same hair.
Their voices were the same in essence too, deep, strong voices, slightly throaty, but Liam’s was musical, an actor’s voice, shaped into perfection for the Bar, Bard’s faster, rougher, more emotional.
But there the similarities ended; Liam was still where Bard was restless, patient where Bard was impatient, as swiftly interested as Bard was easily bored. Liam was courteous, easily charming; Bard was brusque, frank, dismissive of anyone or thing that did not interest him. But the biggest difference of all, she thought, was that Liam was so straightforward, so easy to read, Bard so complex and inscrutable.
‘Nice weekend?’ he said as she went in that morning to the hospital, found him in the day room, with a suspicious-looking bundle on his lap, under a blanket.
‘Mmm. Quite nice. What on earth have you got there, Liam, it looks like a bedpan.’
‘Ssh,’ he said, ‘did you bring the glasses?’
‘What glasses? Oh, the champagne glasses. Do you know, I did.’
‘Excellent. Let’s go over to the corner and tuck ourselves in. No-one will come anyway, they’re all watching the royals arriving at Ascot.’
She followed him to the corner, smiling indulgently at him. He seemed to her at that moment exactly like Jack.
He removed the blanket, produced two half bottles of the Veuve Clicquot. ‘Even cold. I chatted up the little Indian nurse and she let me put it in the fridge. Here – ’ he eased the cork out of the first one – ‘here’s to us. Thank you for a very happy time.’
She held out the glasses, laughing. ‘Liam honestly! Hardly happy.’
‘Oh, but it has been. I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed a time so much. Only because of you. You’ve been wonderful, Francesca. I feel so ashamed of how I used to treat you, so sad to think of all that wasted time when we could have been friends.’
She smiled at him, sipped at the champagne. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, while regretting it herself.
‘So you forgive me?’
‘Of course I forgive you.’
‘I’m so glad,’ he said. ‘Thank you for that, too. As well as all the rest.’
‘Liam, I haven’t done anything.’
‘Of course you have. Giving up all your precious time – ’
‘Not very precious,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid.’
‘Oh really? Not with two little children and a very demanding husband and some equally demanding stepchildren and – ’
‘Don’t go on, Liam, it makes me feel depressed.’
‘Why?’
‘Because my time isn’t precious. Because quite often I’m bored to tears. Because – oh, it doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t be talking to you like this.’
‘Of course you should. You’ve put up with a lot of shit from me. Let me put up with a bit from you.’
‘No, Liam, it’s not fair. Not to you and not to – well, not to anyone.’
He shrugged. ‘OK. This is nice, isn’t it?’
‘It’s lovely. Let’s drink to dear, dear Duggie.’
‘To Duggie.’ They touched glasses, smiled; she met his eyes then looked away. The expression in them, intent, probing, made her uncomfortable.
‘Tell me about your weekend,’ he said.
‘Oh – it was all right. We went to Stylings.’
‘All of you?’
‘Mmm. Barnaby came too.’
‘How is the little sod?’
‘He’s a little sod. But he’s also a life enhancer. I can’t help liking him. Anyway, he’s fine. Well on the mend now.’
‘How does he get on with my father?’
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Bard adores him. Definitely his favourite. Well, apart from Jack. I – oh Liam, I’m sorry. I didn’t think, how stupid, I just – ’
‘It’s all right,’ he said, and his voice was harsh suddenly, harsh and heavy. ‘I’m quite used to it. Have been for a long time.’
‘Liam, I – I know he’d like to make amends, if you’d – ’
‘Francesca, he wouldn’t. He hates me. It’s all right. Not your fault. Let’s talk about something else.’
But he was very quiet for the rest of the time she was there, and when she left, still anxious, his face was sombre, he hardly smiled, even when, to try and comfort him, she kissed him goodbye. All the way back to the house, she reproached herself, wondered how she could have been so insensitive. When he was so sensitive.
‘What are you looking so cheerful about?’ said Sister. ‘Nice visit from Mrs Channing?’
‘Very nice,’ he said, ‘very nice indeed. Sister, would you like to share a glass of champagne with me? I think I have something to celebrate.’
‘I killed him,’ said Terri Booth. Her voice was very heavy and flat, and she looked exhausted, white and drawn beneath her heavy make-up. She had also clearly lost weight in the ten days since the funeral; she was a very different woman from the defiant one who had stood up and castigated the congregation for being less than good friends to her and Duggie.
‘You did?’ said Gray, his voice carefully, deliberately light. ‘And exactly how did you do it, Terri? Not arsenic, I hope, because – ’
‘Don’t joke, Gray, I did. Of course not arsenic, of course not anything like that. I mean I was responsible for him dying. I caused the heart attack. I nagged and nagged and worried and worried him, and I made it happen. Don’t look at me like that, Gray, it’s true.’
‘I can’t help how I’m looking,’ he said gently, ‘and I know it can’t be true. You just don’t seem like a nag-hag to me; Duggie looked like the cat that had got the cream the last few times I saw him, I reckon you made him very happy. As you always said. I think you’re displaying classic widow’s remorse, you feel guilty just because he’s – dead, and you’re alive. I know that sounds crude, and I’m sorry, and it’s not meant to, but it’s true. My mother adored my father, she worshipped the ground he walked on, and he never had to so much as pick up the paper for himself, or fetch his own slippers from the fireside, but she said exactly the same when he died. She sat with tears pouring down her poor face, just like you are, and told me it was all her fault. So honestly, Terri – ’ he took her hand, stroked it gently – ‘I really think in a little while you’ll know what nonsense you’re talking, and you’ll feel better. It’s all part of the grieving process. As the counsellors say.’
She smiled wearily at him, blew her nose. ‘You’re such a nice man, Graydon. But I’m afraid you’re wrong. I know all that, and I know I made him happy in some ways. But I did worry him to death. Literally. I was – well, I was doing something that was troubling him a lot.’
‘Yes? Tell me. Seeing one of the Chippendales?’
‘Graydon, please don’t joke. It isn’t funny.’ She didn’t look as if it were funny.
‘All right. Tell me. I promise I won’t joke.’
‘I was – well – ’ She hesitated, took a very large slug of the whisky she was drinking. They were sitting in the saloon bar of an extremely vulgar pub, all ruched blinds and elevator music, which she said was her local; Gray, lured some twenty miles and over an hour from his desk by the increasingly urgent sense of a story, had agreed to meet her there.
He leant forward, smiled at her. ‘Go on. Confess. If it’ll make you feel better.’
‘I was trying to find out about – about what happened. To – ’ she hesitated – ‘well, in the early days of the company.’
‘Ye-es? Doesn’t sound so very terrible. You’ll have to do a bit better – or worse – than that.’
‘Well – Graydon, I’m convinced that – well, something suspicious was going on.’
‘When?’ And what sort of suspicious?’
‘In the ’seventies. When – when Nigel Clarke died.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘You know about that, I suppose. I mean what was supposed to have happened?’
‘Yes, I think so,’ said Gray. He felt extremely sick suddenly; he knew what it was. Excitement. Raw, physical excitement. He spoke carefully and calmly. ‘Nigel Clarke was killed, wasn’t he? In his car? I can’t see how Bard Channing could be held responsible for that.’
‘No, I know. And it was a foggy, icy night, and he wasn’t even speeding. And he had been drinking. But – well, I don’t know, Gray. Duggie would never talk about it, always glossed it over just a bit too much. That whole time.’
‘So what do you know?’ said Gray carefully. ‘About it all, I mean.’
‘Well, Duggie just told me Nigel Clarke and Bard had a meeting, late that night in the office. The company was doing really well, they were flying high, it was the peak of the first big property boom, new contracts and buildings going up all over the place; a real success story. They’d had a few whiskies, Bard said, and then Nigel left, and went on his own to a pub. Which was in itself a bit odd; he had a pregnant wife and a baby, and he was by all accounts a real homelover.’
‘Yes, but – well, I can easily imagine wanting to go to a pub, if I had a wife and two small children at home,’ said Gray lightly. ‘Doesn’t sound too serious to me, Terri.’
‘No, I know. But – well, that’s not quite the point. Duggie hated talking about it. Hated talking about those days at all, as a matter of fact. Just made it all sound too easy. Which it wasn’t. It really wasn’t. Nobody ever made the fortune those guys did without one hell of a struggle. So I tried talking to Bard.’
‘Yes, but why? I don’t see why you were so suspicious.’
‘It was the Clarkes,’ said Terri. ‘Bard Channing is so terribly good to them. Out of order good.’
‘Well, I expect he felt guilty. A bit like you do.’
‘Yeah, well, maybe. But do you know, for instance, he picks up the tab for the nursing home Heather Clarke is in. And she doesn’t know, she has no idea. None of them does, they all think it’s paid for by some insurance policy.’
‘How on earth did you find that out?’ said Gray slowly.
‘Oh – I’m a very good detective,’ said Terri, smiling complacently at him. She was looking better; telling the story was obviously cheering her up. ‘I snooped about at the office a bit.’
‘You did?’ said Gray, remembering with amusement Kirsten’s story of seeing her at Channing House late one night. ‘You’re quite a girl, aren’t you? Did Duggie know about this – snooping?’
‘Some of it, I’m afraid,’ she said, and her face was sad again; then she visibly pulled herself together. ‘Anyway, it was all done very skilfully, no doubt to cover their tracks, there’s some special fund at the office which paid into an offshore charitable trust. And my God, they’ve got a few of those. All over the place.’
‘Really?’ said Gray. ‘Can you remember where?’
‘Oh – the usual places, Netherland Antilles, Cayman Islands, Bahamas – ’
‘Any in Jersey?’ said Gray, thinking sharply of the large purchase of shares in the Channing corporation, that had restored the share price so efficiently that day.
‘Not that I can remember. Why?’
‘Oh – just wondered. Anyway, there’s nothing illegal about offshore trusts, you know. They’re just nice easy ways of fighting off the taxman.’
‘Yes, I know that. But they’re also nice easy ways of throwing up a smokescreen, moving money around. Lot of that going on at Channing, believe me. Anyway, the money from this particular smokescreen seemed to find its way to various places, but one called Staff Benevolent Care which is actually Mrs Clarke’s nursing home. You’d never have found it if you hadn’t been looking.’
‘Well, I expect the Clarkes are very proud,’ said Gray, ‘Mrs Clarke wouldn’t have taken the money if she’d known.’
‘No, I daresay she wouldn’t. But there were endless other things – he used to give Oliver extra money on top of his university grant, paid for Melinda’s secretarial course, sends them on holiday …’
‘I still think that sounds like just kindness, born of guilt,’ said Gray. ‘I really don’t think you can read much into it.’
‘OK. Maybe not. But my God, Channing was sensitive about it.’
‘He was?’ Gray’s stomach churned harder. He stared at Terri. The room seemed very bright suddenly, and the elevator music (the Carpenters now, for Christ’s sake) had somehow got very loud. ‘What sort of sensitive?’
‘Well, he tried to stop me seeing Heather Clarke. He did stop me seeing her. Via Oliver. Told him it might upset her or something.’
‘Well, I expect he didn’t want her worried,’ said Gray.
‘Didn’t want himself worried, more likely. I talked to her briefly at the funeral. Poor soul. Poor deluded soul. She thinks the sun shines right out of Bard Channing’s over-sized arse.’
‘I still don’t think this adds up to much,’ said Gray, only slightly untruthfully.
‘OK. Forget that for now. There was something else,’ said Terri Booth, ‘something much more interesting.’
‘And what was that?’
‘I found out Duggie only had half the shares Bard did. Between them they hold – held – thirty per cent. I always thought it was fifty – fifty. Not a bit of it. Bard has twenty per cent, Duggie ten. Barbour five. And I didn’t like that.’
‘I can see that,’ said Gray, ‘but maybe – ’
‘I know what you’re thinking. That Bard is the star and Duggie the warm-up act. Well, in a way that’s right. But my God, he’s given his life for that company. Risked his own money several times. Worked his arse off, twenty-five hours a day. And he gets a lousy ten per cent.’
‘Yes, it seems a bit hard.’
‘Duggie didn’t want me to to do anything about it; said he was perfectly happy, that Bard was the brains in the outfit, that we weren’t exactly hard up. But like I said I didn’t like it. It made me very angry. So I talked to Bard about it, told him it stank.’
‘And what did he say?’ ‘He told me to mind my own fucking business,’ she said briefly, ‘that it was nothing to do with me, that he and Duggie had always worked together perfectly fine. That was when I started really disliking him. It was mean, you know? And kind of – patronising. It was as good as saying Duggie wasn’t worth more than ten per cent, that he looked down on him.’
‘So – ?’
‘So, by way of a little exercise, I said I wanted some shares. To even things up a bit. He said there was no way I was getting any, that he didn’t just hand over shares for nothing, and so I told him I was very interested in the early days, in Nigel Clarke’s just slightly mysterious death, in all the things he did for the Clarkes, and a few other things, and I was thinking of doing some investigations. Of getting a private detective on the job. And I said I had contacts in the press who might well be interested. He said I was bluffing, and I told him I’d got your home number and that I intended to ring you.’
‘Which you did,’ said Gray, remembering with horrible sadness that beautiful evening, when the mysterious phone call had come through and Briony had first broached the big B.
‘Yes, I did. And when he realised I meant it, he panicked. And suddenly, do you know, he wanted to invest in my company.’
‘Christ,’ said Gray. He suddenly remembered the riddle of the Scottish golf course.
‘Incidentally, Terri, did Duggie ever mention a golf complex? Up in Scotland.’
‘Hundreds,’ said Teresa, and laughed.
‘No, I mean owned by Channings.’
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘that one. Another little puzzle. I never got to the bottom of it. But there was something fishy about it. They bought some place up there, for a lot of money, and it never came to anything as far as I could make out. Never was developed. Duggie hedged about it, I even asked him to take me up there to see it, but he wouldn’t. Said there was nothing there yet. Bit odd. Channing was very evasive when I asked him about it. Got that dead-eyed look of his, you know? You should take a look into that one as well, Graydon.’
‘Ah. Then I will. Interesting. Because I heard about it from some ex-director of theirs. All happened about three years ago, would that be right? Place called Auchnamultie?’
‘That’s the one. Anyway, back to Channing. Just days before Duggie’s death, he suddenly made over a great slug of shares to him. Five per cent of his holding. Had us both in, to make sure I knew about it, dished out some crap about how he felt bad Duggie hadn’t had more before. Of course Duggie practically wept with gratitude. Now how does that sound to you, Graydon?’
‘Bit funny,’ said Gray. ‘Just a bit funny.’
‘I’ve instructed my solicitor to sell them when they come through,’ she added, smiling.
‘What on earth for?’
‘Oh, anything to reduce Bard Channing’s power over that company. And telling him about it really cheered me up. He was beside himself.’
‘Teresa,’ said Gray, ‘you’re a clever girl.’
He was quite glad he had a longish ride back to London (he had seen the day as a nice litle outing for the Harley Davidson); he had a lot to think about. What Teresa Booth had said made a certain kind of sense, suited his hunches, fitted his instincts. And the facts: it was just about the time of Teresa’s first phone call that Channing had suddenly, and so inexplicably, turned interview-shy. It was good when that happened; it boosted his professional confidence. And if it had been her revelations, or possible revelations, to him that had worried Duggie enough to drive him to inviting him to lunch, then he had almost certainly had something to hide. Or to tell. He had been carefully vague about the lunch to Teresa: had said they were going to meet to discuss the future and Channings’ problems, it seemed safer, wiser, and she seemed to have believed him. It also seemed rather sadly clear that if Duggie had been as worried as that, then there was some truth in Teresa’s claim that she had killed him. God, what he would give now to know what Duggie had been going to tell him! To his shame, frustration had been as powerful an emotion as sadness when he had heard of Duggie’s death.
But poor, dear old Duggie; he didn’t deserve such distress at a time when life should have been made calm, easy for him. Gray thought of him, of his agitated voice on the phone, and sorrowed for him, and hoped Terri had been worth it for him in other ways.
But it was exciting. Exciting and intriguing. There was nothing he loved more than this, stumbling on a story, working, worrying away at it, hacking through the undergrowth of past events, of lies, of misrepresentations, and arriving, slowly and often with great difficulty, at the truth. Or the partial truth: that was the best you could hope for much of the time. And this was a tough one: twenty years of undergrowth to clear. What on earth could have happened, twenty years ago, that Bard Channing was still anxious about, or could be made anxious about, anxious enough to do something as out of character as make over part of his shareholding? Well, he could do it, find out. He would just hack away until he got there. And he would start that night, with the press cuttings: go through them all again, force some answers out of them.
It was a lovely evening; even the M40 looked nice, with great shafts of sun shooting down on miserable, hot carloads of holiday travellers, cars jammed with people and luggage on their way to and from docks and airports, with children and mothers on their way home from picnics and outings; with bored, resentful fathers, driving home from work, sweating in their shirtsleeves. He rode, gloriously free, between the static rows, on and on into London, past the factories, along the flyovers, over the bridges and finally, as he was zooming along the Embankment – for he had no intention of going home; he craved, junkie-like, his files and cuttings and all that they could tell him about Channings in those early days – as he rode up through the City and down towards the docks, a tiny phrase of Kirsten’s came back to him, crystal clear, infinitely important – ‘I don’t think there is anything Granny Jess doesn’t know about any of us.’