A Clubbable Woman (14 page)

But here there was no one to try to stop him.

Nevertheless he made a few feints out of sheer exuberance, suggested a turn with his hips, moved at right-angles to his forward path with no loss of speed, changed step three times in successive strides, kicking hard on the last change and accelerating away in the joy of being able to run for ever.

The posts did not get nearer.

Suddenly he felt a change. His stride shortened; his legs felt leaden; his breathing, till now perceptible only in a slight flaring of the nostrils, became harsh and ragged, his mouth wide open, his teeth biting desperately at the intangible air.

The sun exploded into whiteness and the muddy grass turned to sand so fine that he sank in it ankle-deep as he ran.

I am in the desert, he thought. At last I am in the desert. And I shall die if I do not reach that rock.

The rock towered on the horizon where the posts had been. The sun sat on top of it like the flame on a black candle.

Desperately, failingly, he ran towards the sun.

Out of the rock’s foot grew a shadow so dark that it contained all colours. Its edges, at first three-dimensionally sharp and rigid, after a while began to wave and shimmer on the red heat of the sand. Soon the undulation spread to the whole shadow and the blackness curved smoothly away from the rock. Then at the crest of each polished wave, the blackness broke for a moment into the dark green of very deep water, and the sun shimmered in it like light varnished over.

The shadow stretched towards him like a great shining path. There was a beating in his ears like the roar of a mighty crowd.

He sat up in bed and heard the singing of a solitary bird in the tree outside his window.

Then that noise stopped too and he was not sure if he had heard even that.

It was still dark. The sun came late in December if it came at all. He sat on the edge of the bed and felt for his slippers.

Soon it will be Christmas, he thought. Not more than a week. Season of promises. Vows that this year it will be different. This year those brief moments of feeling, of affection while sharing the task of putting up the decorations, of humility while listening to carol-singers, of joy when waking on Christmas morning, this year these brief moments will spread and grow and shape themselves to fit the whole year, the whole of our life. But there was scarcely enough to colour the greyness of Christmas Day itself. And this year there was no use even in making promises.

Mary is dead, he told himself, and we are to each other for ever what was bearable only in my intuition of its impermanence. Death doesn’t change things, then. It merely petrifies things for those who go on living.

He stood up and went out on to the landing. As he passed Jenny’s door he paused momentarily, but shook his head at himself and went on down the stairs.

If he is in there, then he is in there, and they might as well bring each other what comfort they can. To know would not help me. To know I know would probably distress Jenny. So I must be careful not to find out. As long as he is capable of tenderness, and I think he is.

He laughed softly to himself.

At least there’ll be no shortage of pillow talk with that one. If kids learn by example, he’ll turn out whole classfuls of pedants.

At the bottom of the stairs he was surprised to find himself putting on his overcoat. He started to take it off again, then sighed and pulled it back over his shoulders.

My body knows more than my mind, he thought. I might as well get it over with.

Shivering a little he went through into the kitchen and opened the back door. The cold morning air struck damply into his face. A familiar but still timid stray cat peered at him from beneath a blackcurrant bush and howled piteously.

‘In a minute,’ he said.

He stepped across the strip of lawn which separated the side of the house from a small garden shed. Inside the shed it was dark. There was a smell of fertilizer and insecticide. Against the wall opposite the door and clearly visible in the shaft of relative light falling through the doorway was a chair. High-backed, comfortable-looking. His mind a careful blank, he reached to the shelf over it and took down a small plastic bag. Then he turned and went out in the garden again, closing the door behind him.

When he got back into the kitchen the cat, finally courageous in its search for food, was sitting in the corner. It made a dart for the door as he came in, but he was too quick for it. Realizing it could not get out, it sat down and started washing itself.

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Breakfast in a minute.’

Then he tipped the contents of the plastic bag on to the kitchen table and began to sort through them.

‘Good morning, Mr Connon,’ said a man’s voice, pitched deliberately softly in order not to startle. Connon was a hard man to startle in any case, as those who knew him well could vouch. Now he hardly glanced up at the dressing-gowned figure standing at the door.

‘Good morning, Antony,’ he said. ‘Sleep well?’

‘Like a log,’ said the boy. ‘Jenny and I sat up until the early hours chatting.’

‘You’re up early.’

A statement not a question. Connon continued to sort through the objects before him.

‘I’m very good at toast and coffee. May I be permitted… ?’

‘Go ahead.’

Connon now brought his full attention to bear on the objects before him.

There were four groupings on the table top. The first group contained seven pennies and three halfpennies. Some of the coins were almost green with age.

The second group contained pieces of paper. Old bus tickets, theatre-tickets, a golf score-card, a shopping list, the items almost unreadable.

He picked this up, and looked at the writing for a moment, then put it gently down.

The third group contained a variety of items. Hairgrips, a pencil, a bobbin, a teaspoon with an apostolic head.

The fourth group wasn’t really a group at all. There was just one item. A very small piece of lead, like a tiny cupola with a lightly-milled edge.

Connon poked at it with his forefinger. It rolled round a semi-circle and came to rest.

‘Coffee,’ said Antony. ‘Toast follows in a trice.’

He put a large mug of steaming black coffee in front of Connon and looked enquiringly at the stuff which littered the table.

Connon picked up the plastic bag, opened it, put it at the edge of the table and swept the items into it with one efficient movement of his hand. Then he tossed the bag lightly on top of a wall-cabinet behind him.

He sniffed.

‘Do your habits include burning toast?’ he asked.

Antony turned the grill off and looked at the dark brown slices of bread.

‘It is only by going too far sometimes,’ he said, ‘that we know we have gone far enough.’

They drank their coffee and ate their toast (rejuvenated with a sharp knife) in silence at first.

‘Is there any more coffee?’ asked Connon.

‘In a second,’ said Antony.

‘Mr Connon,’ he said as he busied himself with the kettle and the jar of instant coffee, ‘I didn’t really have a chance last night to explain myself to you very fully. I was too occupied in explaining myself legally to that rather brutal man, Dalziel, then in explaining myself emotionally to Jenny, to have much chance of explaining myself rationally to you. Here’s your coffee.’

He sat down again.

‘Explain away,’ said Connon.

‘I was distressed, as were all her friends, to hear the sad news of Jenny’s bereavement. That it was unexpected I knew. I had just been talking with Jenny about her family, yourself and Mrs Connon, that same Saturday night.’

‘Had you now?’ murmured Connon.

‘When I read in the newspapers the details of the matter, I was even more distressed. I determined to contact Jenny, but letters and telephone conversations seemed quite inadequate means of discovering what I wanted to know, that is whether I could be of any use to her. So I vacillated, most uncharacteristically I might add, for several days. Finally I went to the Principal of the college, a sympathetic dame whose ear I have for any amount of services rendered, and told her I had decided that term must end slightly earlier for me than the others. So off I set. My intention was to arrive here during hours of daylight, but the charity of our road-users is not what it used to be. The rest you know. I arrived to find the house empty. I settled down to wait in the passageway between the garage and the house where I was a little protected from the inclemency of the weather and whence I was eventually plucked by the constabulary. More toast?’

‘Thank you, no,’ said Connon, looking reflectively at the youth. ‘How well do you know Jenny?’

‘In terms of time, not well. But in terms of attraction, very well indeed. I am her current beau.’

‘If the archaism is meant to help me understand you, I don’t like the implication,’ said Connon with a smile. Antony looked apologetic but Connon did not let him speak. ‘And now you’ve seen Jenny, have you learned anything that letter or telephone conversation would not have told you?’

‘Possibly not. But what I have learned is absolutely clear, which it might not otherwise have been.’

‘And that is?’

‘That I can be of help, that she is delighted to have me here and that my presence can be of great comfort to her during these very trying times. I would like to have your permission to extend my stay, Mr Connon.’

‘Do I have a choice?’ asked Connon. ‘If I do, which I doubt where Jenny’s concerned, then I unhesitatingly offer you my hospitality for as long as you care to accept it. I also noticed Jenny’s reaction to your arrival. But make sure your presence remains a comfort to her and doesn’t become a complication.’

‘Is this a private party or can anyone join?’ said Jenny’s voice from the door.

She was wearing an old dressing-gown, her hair was uncombed, her nose shiny. And her eyes too shone as she looked at the two men sitting there.

Antony rose to his feet and stood gazing intensely at her.

Connon sighed.

‘If you’re going to stay with us, Antony, you’ll have to learn that in this household we don’t pay all that much attention to the courtesies. You’ll have to break yourself of the habit of bobbing up and down every time my daughter appears, especially when she looks like this.’

‘It is not a matter of habit this time,’ replied Antony, it is a small tribute I offer to beauty.’

‘Jesus wept!’ said Connon, laughing loud.

Jenny sat down, laughing even louder and eventually Antony, a pleasant glow of satisfaction in his mind, sat down laughing also.

In the hall the phone rang.

Jenny, nearest the door, turned in her chair, but Connon was up and out in one smooth movement.

As soon as he went through the door, Antony leaned over and kissed Jenny lightly on the lips. She smiled happily at him and took his hand. They sat looking at each other without speaking. Connon’s voice came drifting in from the hall.

‘Hello? Connon speaking.’

A long pause. The youngsters kissed again.

‘Is that all you know? But why?’

Jenny shook her head in mock severity as Antony leaned nearer.

‘Yes, of course we must. What? I don’t know, do I? You’ll have to think that out yourself.’

A very short pause.

‘All right. Later. Goodbye.’

The phone clicked back on to its rest.

Jenny and Antony moved a few inches further apart, then giggled at each other because of the involuntary movement.

Connon came back into the room. One look at his face and Jenny stopped giggling.

‘Daddy,’ she said. ‘What’s the matter? What’s happened?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Connon slowly, it may be nothing, but the police have picked up Arthur Evans. They’ve got him down at the station for questioning. About … about last Saturday night.’

‘Listen, Arthur,’ said Dalziel in his heartiest voice. ‘We’ve known each other a long time. All I want’s a bit of cooperation. Anything you tell me will be in strict confidence if it’s got nothing to do with our enquiries. As I’m sure it hasn’t. I give you my word as a public official, and a friend. I can’t say fairer.’

‘Confidence?’ said Evans. ‘You talk of confidence, do you, with laughing boy sitting here with his pencil and paper at the ready? What’s he doing, then? Sketching the bloody view, is it?’

Dalziel sighed and looked over at Pascoe who was sitting quietly in the furthermost corner of the room. The sergeant raised his eyebrows interrogatively. Dalziel shook his head fractionally.

‘I’m sorry, Arthur. Sergeant Pascoe has to stay. I have to have someone here, you see. It’s the regulations. It’s in your interest, you see. It’s for your protection.’

You bloody old hypocrite, thought Pascoe. You’d lie to your own grandmother. Suddenly it’s regimental Dalziel, the slave of the rule-book. Poor old Bruiser! If he didn’t want me here, I’d be out like a rocket. Though why he does want me here’s a bit of a mystery. Why not try the old pals’ act, just the two of us together, it’ll be off the record? Why not? I’ll tell you why not, you half-wit. Because he knows it wouldn’t work, that’s why not. These two are about as near to being old pals as Judas Iscariot and the Pope. Just look at them. Perhaps Bruiser joined the queue knocking at Gwen Evans’s back door at some time. He’s not promising poor old Arthur silence if he co-operates. He’s threatening him with lots of noise if he doesn’t!

‘If it wasn’t Sergeant Pascoe here, Arthur,’ Dalziel continued, ‘it would have to be someone else. In fact technically I ought to have someone else here as well, but I thought that as the sergeant knew the facts of the enquiry (in fact he was instrumental in getting the information we’d like to question you about), it would keep it in the family so to speak if he acted as my amanuensis, that’s the word, isn’t it, Sergeant Pascoe?’

Pascoe smiled bleakly at the appeal to his erudition. Dalziel nodded enthusiastically as if he had received encouragement.

‘Of course, you’re entitled to have your own legal representative present, if you wish to be really formal about things. Would you like that? It’s Stubby Barnet, isn’t it? It’d be nice to see Stubby again, haven’t seen him since last year’s Club dinner.’