Though the Manhattan office of Galsworthy, Bligh, Brinksman, Hamburger was closed for the Christmas and New Year holiday, Amery was trying to track down the partners.
This had proved extremely difficult. Bligh had gone bear shooting; Hamburger was attempting the land speed record; Brinksman was out of town for the weekend, having been booked to guest-present Larry King Live.
Finally he managed to get through to Julian Galsworthy at home – or, at least, at one of his several homes, a ski lodge in a frighteningly expensive part of Vermont.
Ellen’s lawyer sounded pleasant and businesslike, but really, he said, this was now a matter for the courts.
‘But she doesn’t truly want to divorce me,’ said Amery. ‘We’ve just been experiencing some minor problems recently.’
Galsworthy sighed. ‘That’s not my information.’
‘Well, what is?’
‘Doctor Amery, look. Divorce work is expensive and time-consuming. We don’t take it on unless the client truly wants that. I’ve been through all the options with Mrs Amery and I’m sorry to have to tell you, but she definitely wants a divorce.’
‘But she doesn’t . . . She couldn’t.’
‘Unfortunately, Doctor Amery, she does and she could. And as for the financial aspects, well, as the wife of a very wealthy man she’s entitled to an adequate settlement.’
‘An adequate settlement? Four and a half million dollars?’
‘That’s what we would consider adequate, yes. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Doctor Amery, I’m spending time with my children today.’
‘Say if I said I was open to negotiation?’
The lawyer made a strange burbling noise. ‘I don’t really know that Mrs Amery would be. But I suspect not, to be frank with you.’
‘What the hell does she need four and a half million dollars for?’
‘I didn’t ask her that, to be honest. I wouldn’t really see it as my area of specialty.’
‘My wife is dying, for God’s sakes.’
The lawyer chuckled. ‘We’re all doing that, Doctor Amery.’
‘She’s doing it in six months’ time!’
‘Well, her future plans are no concern of ours.’
‘Her . . . what?’
‘And no concern of yours either. At least not as soon as the order goes through.’
‘I’ll fight this, Galsworthy. I will, you know.’
‘Yes. The last witness we placed under subpoena said you probably would.’
‘What witness?’
‘Your girlfriend of some two years? Miss Catherine Kenneally, I believe, from recollection?’
‘Who?’
‘Tell you what, Doctor Amery. Let me just slip out the old file here.’
Jesus Christ, Ellen knew about Cathy. Worse, she had a lawyer who brought his files on vacation.
‘Ah, yes. Here we are. Catherine Jane Kenneally.’
‘I have absolutely no idea who you’re talking about.’
‘Hmm. You do know she was a minor when you first had relations, do you?’
‘We were just friends, for God’s sakes. That’s a dirty lie.’
A low, soft snigger came down the line. ‘We’ve located a number of previous friends too.’
‘Now look . . .’
‘Would you like them in alphabetical order or simply at random?’
‘Now listen . . .’
‘Miss Michelle Nicolson, Mrs Reba Drabble, Mademoiselle Claudia Frenet, Miss Ruth Freud and her twin sister, Ethel. Mrs Marion Astor, Professor Miriam Truffaut . . . Would you like me to go on, Doctor Amery?’
‘No. No. I get the point.’
‘Assistant Commissioner of Police, Jane Hemingway. Miss Taylor, Miss Farrelly, Miss Lewinsky, Miss Norman, Miss Blumenstein, Miss Gomez, Rabbi Sarah Duglacz, Miss Cabot, Fräulein Hoffman, Miss Spanker and Miss Brahms.’
‘I’ve never met anyone called Spanker in my life.’
‘Oh yes. This is good. A person named Spiggot.’
‘Spiggot?’
‘Yes. A Miss Muriel Spiggot of Indianapolis, Indiana. I believe she’s the younger sister of a university friend of yours and Mrs Amery’s?’
‘Muriel says she and I had an affair?’ He cackled. ‘Have you seen her? I wouldn’t touch her with yours, Galsworthy.’
‘Oh no, no, sir, she didn’t say that.’
‘Thank the Lord for that much, at least.’
‘No. She says you and her brother Dick were well-known homosexual lovers. Whilst at college.’
‘She what?
‘Actually I’d heard that said myself. You know, around town.’
‘What?’
‘Look, I really have to go, Doctor Amery. Duty calls, as they say in the movies.’
‘For God’s sake, man. You must have some advice.’
‘I’d advise you to hire a really first-class attorney, Doctor Amery. Believe you me, you’re certainly going to need one.’
Once, back in the eighties – she couldn’t remember when, and it didn’t matter now – a stupid story had gotten into the local newspaper about how, according to some medieval astronomer, the world was going to end on the following Saturday night. She had ridiculed it, of course, to allay the children’s fears. As for Milton, he’d banned that newspaper from the house and written o the editor to call him a moron.
Around two that Sunday morning she had happened to wake. It had been raining hard and the bedroom curtains were open. Milton had been beside her, turned away, his joined hands pillowing the side of his head, his troubled breath rising and uneasily falling. He’d had a bad cold, the room smelt of eucalyptus rub. The white lace curtains were moving in the breeze. And suddenly the sky had gone dark. A bolt of jagged lightning had flashed; so long that it seemed to shred the space in the windowframe in two from top to bottom. The crack of thunder seemed to shake the house. A jangle of car alarms began. A gush of rain. Awesome darkness. Well, it was ridiculous. All that had happened was that a cloud had passed in front of the moon and the storm must have blown out the power for the street lamps. But in that darkness, for one fraction of a second, she had imagined that the world was truly about to end, that the earth was on the verge of being plunged back into preternatural, biblical chaos. And in that moment, Ellen Donnelly thought, she had received some revelation of what it would be to die.
She was going to die.
She was going to die.
What would it feel like? Would it hurt? Be pleasant? Would it be a little like falling asleep? But then, when you thought about it, what was falling asleep really like?
Her neighbours, Sarah Peterson and Hope Collins, would wash her body and dress her in grave-clothes. Then Sarah’s husband Murray and their son Peagram would put her in a pine box and screw down the lid. Charlie Tomalin would drive her to the town crematorium in the fin-tailed Chevrolet hearse she’d seen him polish a thousand times on her way to do the Saturday supermarket trip. What a nice man Charlie was. Always ready with a joke, or a friendly wave. His son Charlie Junior had been killed in Vietnam. Charlie’d had bad times then; his wife had taken to drinking. Shortly afterwards she had developed Parkinson’s and had to be put into a home. It had broken Charlie’s heart to be without her, for months he hadn’t been able to work at all. When the bank had tried to confiscate his business, Milton had helped him out financially without letting Ellen know. She had only found out when Charlie had told her. It was so typical of Milton. He was such a generous person. When she’d tried to tell him she was proud of him for doing it, he had shrugged and blushed and gone back to his supper. ‘You don’t stand by and let a man’s dignity be taken away.’
At the chapel of rest all the neighbours would be waiting. Some of her students might be there too. The town choir would sing ‘Abide with Me’ – that was what they always sang at funerals. Mitchum Doyle and Tommy Harris would place her casket on the rolling rubber track that was for all the world like a scaled-down baggage carousel. And then they would burn her.
What a strange thought. Her kindly neighbours – men who had sat opposite her at parent-teacher meetings, whose neat lawns Lee had mown as a Boy Scout, whose chatty wives she would see at the slimming class – would burn her body until it was gone.
And what would happen then? Would she stop existing?
Her mind recalled some lines from a childhood hymn. Will there be any stars in my crown, Sweet Lord? Sunlight streaming through stained-glass windows. Handsome Father Dumoulin holding up the chalice. ‘We, girls, are an Easter people. None of us in this room is ever going to die.’
She pictured her family standing in the garden, Lee and Elizabeth in sweaters and raincoats, Milton in a suit, arms behind his back, rolling gently on the balls of his feet, the way he always did when something was tearing him up so badly he couldn’t even speak. She even knew the suit he would wear, the dark grey stripe they had bought on that vacation in Paris, the one he always took on conference trips because it didn’t crease easily or show the dirt. Reverend Hubbard would officiate at the service. He had married her and Milton one cold spring day under cherry trees, had baptised Lee and Elizabeth, taken them for Sunday school. She had taught his daughter to read and overcome a stammer. One day she had helped drag his wailing seven-year-old son out of the duck pond in the park, had dried him with a bath towel she’d happened to buy just five minutes earlier. Now he would say the prayers over her ashes. The children and Milton would scatter what was left of her over those rose bushes she had planted down near the tennis court. They’d go into the house and sit around. And their lives would simply continue without her.
She wondered if she would be able to see them still? Elizabeth and Lee? She felt a stab of grief at her heart.
Would she see Milton still? See him reading his notes on the train into work, his tender fingers on a patient’s upturned face, see him walking the beautiful streets of Manhattan arm in arm with his latest girlfriend?
All these thoughts went through her mind as she sat alone in the waiting room of Cavan hospital.
Aitken had turned the car around and driven straight back to the town. She had told him she was all right, she wasn’t in pain, but he had insisted. She needed a doctor.
Seated around were various festive season casualties. A plump, prematurely balding young man in a tartan shirt, his right hand wrapped in a bloodied linen tea towel. An eager little boy in knee-length football shorts, with one of those light-shade bandages around his neck. A slim teenage girl in a ballerina’s tutu, her pale, oval face distended in pain, her graceful arms clutching her stomach as she rocked slowly back and forth, her mother’s arm around her shoulder.
She caught the girl’s glance and smiled sympathetically. The girl rolled her eyes and managed a brave little grin.
‘Hang on in there,’ Ellen said.
Aitken came in with two plastic cups of tea.
‘They’ll be a while yet,’ he said. ‘The doctors are up to their oxters.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Are you OK? You look very pale.’
‘I do feel a little weak today. It tends to come and go.’
‘Have some tea. Put lead in your pencil, eh?’
She took a sip that made her shudder. ‘It’s just a bit of wooziness. Really I’m fine.’
‘Listen, I think we should head on back down to Dublin. Go out to Ranj in Dun Laoghaire, get you looked at properly. These are only culchie mullaghs up this neck of the woods.’
She shook her head. ‘No, I’m fine.’
‘Aren’t you in pain?’
She shook her head again. ‘You get used to it mostly. I had some drugs in my bag to help take care of the worst of it. The one that was stolen.’
A sudden pinch of agony deep in her chest made her wince.
‘Jesus Christ. Hang on, I’ll go get someone right now.’
‘No,’ she said, swallowing hard and bowing her head.
‘If you’re in pain, I . . .’
‘Just stay with me, Martin . . . Just do that.’
The pain seemed to wrap itself around her heart, sharpening from an ache to a bright clean burn. She felt his hand on the back of her neck. The pain flowered up and quickly died away.
He took a sip of tea and grimaced.
‘I’d say they waved a teabag over that two whole times. Would you?’
She laughed.
‘They’ve a certain reputation up here in Cavan,’ he said. ‘They’d peel an orange without takin it out of their pockets.’
Her eyes fell on the mural that stretched the length of the waiting-room wall, with panels of children’s Christmas drawings. A sad-looking camel with three big humps. A cartoon Joseph with a square smiling head, a matchstick Mary on a sky blue donkey, pursued by soldiers in helicopters and tanks. Three streaks of jagged brown crayon representing the manger, with wise men dressed in soccer outfits; leering shepherds watching cotton-wool sheep.
Wot are we going to call our baby, Mary?
Well, Joseph, I was going to call him Mikey but instead
we’re calling him Jesus Christ!
Hurray! Hurray! Happy bertie Jesus!
He put his arm around her and clutched her elbow. Kissed her hair. Sipped his tea.
‘Dad,’ said Lee. ‘I have something to tell you.’
When he looked up from the desk, his son was in the doorway. He saw that his plaster cast had been painted black and red with a circled capital ‘A’ adorning the shin. His hair had been slicked back hard across his scalp. He was wearing a padded skateboard glove on his right hand. He looked different since the accident, more grown-up somehow. It seemed ridiculous to think so, yet Amery couldn’t help it.
‘I had another call from Mom this morning.’
‘You did?’
Lee nodded.
‘Where was she?’
‘I think she’s in Ireland. Not in England.’
‘Why’s that?’
He limped into the study on his single crutch, wincing, holding on to the backs of the chairs.
‘There was crappy Irish music playing on a radio in the background. I think she’s gone to Ireland to find her mom.’
‘Why do you think she’d be doing that all of a sudden?’
He sat down carefully on the edge of the desk. Balanced the crutch across his thighs. ‘I don’t know, Dad. You tell me.’
Amery looked at his son’s face. Sometimes he reminded him so much of himself at that age. But mostly he seemed the incarnation of Ellen. He had her way of moving, of not speaking a thing straight out; the same perpetual almost comic half-frown that made him look suspicious and somehow too alert.
‘Is there something wrong with Mom, Dad?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Is Mom – you know – is she sick or something?’
Amery laughed. ‘Of course she’s not.’
‘Are you scared to tell us, Dad?’
‘My God, no. Where do you get these ideas, Lee?’
His son picked up a snowstorm paperweight and shook it gently. He stared hard at it, refusing to meet Amery’s eyes. ‘Because the first time she called – last week? – I asked her if we could all go to EuroDisney next year.’
‘What did she say?’
‘I just got the feeling we wouldn’t be going.’
He slid down into a chair and regarded Amery closely.
‘Maybe you should call the cops in Ireland, Dad.’
‘I’ll do that tomorrow. First thing.’
‘Maybe you should call ‘em right now, Dad.’
‘It’s night in Ireland now. I’ll call them tomorrow.’
‘OK.’ Lee nodded. ‘Whatever, Milton. Just don’t say I didn’t tell you this time.’