A Natural Curiosity (15 page)

‘Yes?’ said Alix.

‘That’s why I know about palms,’ said Paul. ‘Hers was in the salon. It lived for years. But it was always going brown round the edges. She used to trim off the brown bits. It didn’t seem to mind. She had it for years.’

Alix waited.

‘I don’t know where she went, my mother,’ said Paul, inno
cently. He looked directly at Alix. It was an effort for him to do so. Usually he stared at the plastic-topped table, at the chipped ashtray.

‘Fifteen years ago, you say,’ said Alix, picking up threads from older conversations.

‘When I was fifteen,’ he agreed.

Alix paused. She could see no option.

‘And you haven’t heard from her since?’ she asked, stalling.

‘No,’ he said. He looked at her again, then looked away. Pain and defeat and misery oozed out of him.

‘I used to hear you laughing,’ he said, suddenly. ‘I used to hear you and your friends laughing, downstairs. I used to wonder why you were laughing. I liked to hear you. I was always alone, you see. So I liked to hear you all laugh.’

Alix stood condemned. What could she do, what recompense could she make, for this past laughter? For this harmless gaiety?

‘Well,’ said Alix, ‘I wonder if I can help? You’d better give me some idea of where to begin to look.’

‘Extraordinary,’ said Liz. ‘That wretched palm. Deflection tactics. Quite subtle, really. I suppose it died when she ran off with the lorry driver?’

‘I suppose so. I didn’t ask.’

‘And she never surfaced again? None of those investigative journalists managed to dig her up during the trial?’

‘No. Nobody.’

‘“Little sister, little sister”,’ Liz repeated. ‘I wonder if he read fairy tales, as a little boy?’

‘I didn’t ask,’ said Alix.

‘I suppose it’s more likely that he read fairy stories than that he read Isabella and the Pot of Basil,’ said Liz. ‘Whose head was it that Isabella kept? Her brother’s?’

‘No, her lover’s. Her brothers murdered him. In a forest.’

‘What for?’

‘What do you mean, what
fori
People didn’t need a reason for murdering people. In those days. Any more than P. Whitmore did.’

‘Sorry,’ said Liz.

‘Anyway,’ said Alix, ‘he’s right about palms. Horticulturally speaking. I looked them up in my houseplant book when we got back. They do go brown round the edges. Naturally. It’s what they do.’

Liz wasn’t interested in palms, as palms. ‘Amazing,’ Liz continued, ‘the intelligence of dreams. The way quite stupid or unimaginative people can dream dreams of a stunning complexity. People who wouldn’t recognize a symbol in their waking lives, even if they fell over one.’

‘But I’m not quite sure what it’s a symbol
of
,’ said Alix. ‘It’s obviously something to do with his mother, but what?’

‘Who knows? Defective nurture? The castrating shears?’

‘I never worked out what the beheading thing was about, either. You said
that
was castration complex, but I don’t quite see why.’

‘And will you try to find his mother for him?’

‘I suppose I’ll have to. I sort of said I would.’ She paused. ‘And what about you and Shirley, Liz? Will you try to find
her
?’

Liz hesitated, took off her glasses, polished them on her sleeve, and put them back on again.

‘Well, to tell you the truth, I’m not all that keen on finding Shirley. What a mess she’d have to come back to. But I suppose she’ll have to come back. And face the music.’

‘And you still haven’t been able to contact Celia?’

‘Well, you know what it’s like in Oxford, they’re not on the phone, you leave messages at the porter’s lodge, nobody seems to have seen her for days. But that doesn’t mean anything. She’s probably sitting quietly in the Bodleian, with a pile of books. You can’t page the whole of Oxford.’

‘But the boys have been contacted?’

‘Apparently. Steve spoke to Bob in Australia. Didn’t let on about Shirley, just said his father had had an accident. And they’ve got black sheep Barry back from Newcastle.’

‘It’s a bit worrying, about Celia.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. She’s a cold fish, Celia. She’ll survive.’

‘So what happens next?’

‘I’m going to Clive Enderby again in the morning. He seems quite bright.’

Alix poured another cup of coffee, stirred it.

‘And what do
you
think has happened to Shirley?’

Liz laughed, heartlessly, miserably, perplexed.

‘God knows. Maybe she’s dead too. They’re trying to trace her Mini. Apparently she took £400 out of her Midland Bank current account at a cashpoint in Ecclestone three days ago. So perhaps she’s just bolted.’

‘For a new life?’

‘A new life, at her age?’

They both contemplated this cold prospect.

‘Out of a
cash
point?’ said Alix, eventually. ‘How come? I can only ever get £50 out of mine. And it won’t always let me have that.’

‘She must have had one of those supercards,’ said Liz, ‘It’s just the sort of thing she and Cliff would have had.’ (Liz, of course, had one herself.) ‘Well, well. I’d never have expected such a thing of Shirley. Though I suppose she was a bit of a rebel, in the old days. But I thought she’d settled down.’

‘And what about Cliff? Would you have expected such a thing of Cliff?’

Liz shrugged her shoulders. ‘I knew he was depressed. But he belongs more to your realm than mine, don’t you think? He’s become a statistic. A victim of the economy. Another failed-small-business suicide. There are hundreds of them a week, probably.’

‘No, not a
week
, surely.’

‘Well, you know what I mean. You can feed him into the counter-attack. Write off to the Employment Institute and present it with Cliff as a small statistic. Poor old Cliff.’

Sadness fell in the pleasant, muddled drawing-room. They nursed their coffee-cups. They could hear Sam on the telephone, upstairs. He had asked permission, like a polite boy, to ring his half-brother Nick.

Your primroses are lovely,’ said Liz, gazing for comfort at the wineglass of yellow deep-cored open reaching faces.

Alix brightened. ‘Do you know what I found, yesterday, at the end of the garden under the chestnut tree? A little clump of tiny tiny cyclamen. I hadn’t the heart to pick them. They are too beautiful.’

They fell silent, contemplating the primroses, summoning the cyclamen.

Alix did not admit that she had fallen to her knees by the miracle of the cyclamen, and spoken to them. She does not want Liz to know she has gone mad.

Liz Headleand paced up and down Clive Enderby’s office. Paced energetically, demonstratively. Clive Enderby watched her with admiration and apprehension. She paused, gestured largely, walked on, speaking the while.

‘My guess,’ said Liz, ‘is that they had some kind of final row, some kind of show-down, and that Shirley walked off, or rather
drove
off, and that Cliff went and filled himself full of carbon monoxide as a result. You say she was here consulting you about her legal position? I imagine she’d just had enough, she just blew up and walked out. In which case, she won’t even know he’s dead. How could she? It’s hardly national news.’

‘And you’ve no idea where she might have gone?’

‘How should
I
know? We weren’t very close. She wouldn’t have come to
me
. Why should she?’

‘And were there friends she might have gone to?’

‘I don’t know if Shirley
had
any friends. No, I’ve no idea where she is. And while we’re on the subject—which we’re not, but maybe we should be—I gather she came to see you a month or so ago to ask about the money from my mother’s will?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

Clive, at his desk, watched Liz intently.

‘And you told her a cheque would be on the way?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘But it’s not come through yet. Or at least, I haven’t had my bit, so I assume she hasn’t had hers. The will left everything to us equally, I believe?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘But the money will be on its way—would have been on its way—soon?’

‘Oh yes. That’s quite correct.’

Impatiently, Liz paused, stared, suddenly sat.

‘And would it be indelicate of me to ask how much it would be?’ She glowered at him, commandingly, then continued, without pausing for an answer, ‘Because it’s odd, isn’t it, that Shirley should have left now, without the money?’

Clive Enderby was looking through a file on his desk. His colour was slightly heightened. His collar was very white, his light suit was very grey.

‘The house,’ he said, ‘was sold for £21,000. Your sister approved the sale.’

‘Really? Is that all? Can you really buy a three-bedroomed house in a desirable suburb for £21,000? You can’t get a bedsit for that in London. Not even in the nastiest parts of London.’

Clive coughed. ‘I think it was quite a good price,’ he said. ‘Your sister seemed to think so too. I know that house prices have been soaring down south, but they’ve actually been drop
ping round here. And the suburb is no longer quite so desirable. And the house was—somewhat neglected.’

Liz smiled. ‘Yes, it was a dump,’ she agreed. ‘And you say Shirley knew the house had been sold? So she’s walked out on ten thousand, or whatever’s left of it when we’ve paid your fees? Was there any more? Did the furniture bring in anything?’

Clive shook his head. ‘We had to pay the house clearers to take it away,’ he said.

‘So that was it,’ said Liz. ‘Ten thou. Give or take a few hundred. I wonder what happened to that silver wine cooler. I don’t suppose my mother had anything in the bank, had she?’

‘I sent you a statement,’ said Clive. ‘With all the details. Well, an interim statement.’

‘Did you? Oh yes, so you did.’

She relapsed into silence, then fumbled in her bag, found a packet of cigarettes, lit up, laid the dead match in a black and silver ashtray.

They looked at one another. Behind Liz glittered the devastation. Clive wondered whether or not to speak, whether or not to produce the final explanatory document from the drawer at his elbow. Was this the moment? Her incuriosity astonished him. Had she never looked at her mother’s bank statements? Had she never asked herself about her mother’s income? He had photocopied clues and sent them to her, but they seemed to have aroused no suspicions. Perhaps it was better so.

He changed tack.

‘So you’ve no idea,’ repeated Clive, ‘of where your sister might be?’

Liz shrugged her shoulders.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’ve told you. We weren’t a very close family. I haven’t seen much of Shirley for—oh, for years. She resented me. She thought I got off lightly, not having to look after Mother. She would never have confided in me.’

‘But she did ring you, about her husband’s business?’

‘Well, yes. But that wasn’t usual. I was surprised to hear from her.’

‘It did just occur to me,’ said Clive, apologetically, ‘that it was possible that her husband might have . . . attacked her, in some way?’

Liz looked puzzled, then caught on.

‘Murdered her, you mean?’ said Liz, nodding energetically. ‘Done away with her?’

‘Well, yes,’ said Clive. ‘But the police say there’s been a sighting of her since the established time of death. But then, as you point out, she might never have gone near the garage. The police aren’t very bright, in these parts.’

Liz shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Cliff would never have killed anyone. He wasn’t that kind of chap.’ She laughed, a little wildly. ‘No,’ she went on. ‘It’s much more likely that it was the other way round. She vanished, he kills himself. Though that’s not
very
likely either.’

‘Well, there must be some more or less likely explanation,’ said Clive. ‘I’m sure it will all sort itself out in the end. Would you like a drink?’

‘I rather think I would,’ said Liz. And Clive opened the little office refrigerator.

Over the gin and tonic, they talk about Northam, about the Town Council, about the privatization of British Steel, about house prices. And while they talk, Clive watches Liz and wonders. As she is about to drain her glass, he suddenly says to her, ‘I admired your performance on television, a couple of weeks ago. Very brave, I thought it.’

Liz starts, stares, goes into a different mode. She suddenly speaks to him in a different kind of voice, in a different register, as equal to equal. Clive, who is not an insensitive man, notices this, notches it up in his memory. ‘Really?’ she says.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I thought you made your case very well.’

‘Well, that’s more than most people did, and very kind of you to say so,’ said Liz. ‘I got a lot of flak over that programme. You wouldn’t believe the kind of thing people write. Well, perhaps you would. Being a lawyer. You’d think I’d personally tried to rape their own personal infants. People are odd. Deranged, a lot of them, without knowing it.’

‘It’s a disturbing subject,’ said Clive.

‘Yes. But they must have been pretty disturbed beforehand, to write such violent letters. It can’t have been just the sight of me on telly that tipped them over the edge.’

She smiled, boldly, but not wholly comfortably.

‘It’s the sanctity of the family,’ said Clive Enderby. ‘People don’t like to hear it attacked. Or to think they are hearing it attacked.’

‘People talk a lot of nonsense these days about the sanctity of the family,’ said Liz. ‘I don’t know why. If they’d seen some of the cases I’d seen, they wouldn’t think it so sacred. The things people do to one another, in the name of family. Somebody has to speak up against it. For the sake of the outcasts.’

‘But you yourself have a large family,’ said Clive, responding to a vibration of distress in her voice. Offering comfort, requesting explanation?.

‘Yes,’ said Liz, softening. ‘Yes, a large family. Three stepchildren, two children, and now a granddaughter. She’s lovely, my granddaughter. Mine is the new extended family, the new model. We thought we’d do it better, my generation. But I don’t suppose we have.’ She paused, continued, in a sudden spurt of intimacy. ‘I wanted a large family, because mine was so small. So
silent
. And we had no relatives, Shirley and I. None. There must have been some, but our mother hid them all. No father, no aunts, no grandparents, nothing. Oh yes, I wanted a family, I married for family. And I love my children, all of them. But do they love me? No, they judge me, they resent me, they think I have crippled their lives, they think I am making fools of them and of myself.’