A Private View (12 page)

She looked at her watch. ‘I’ve still got a few minutes,’ she said. ‘There’s your doorbell.’ They looked at each other in amazement, as if the world had suddenly discovered the fact of their careful liaison.

‘I’m not expecting anyone,’ he said.

‘Well, you’d better answer it. What a shame. Well, I’ll leave you to them, whoever they are.’

Bland opened the door to Katy and Mrs Lydiard, whom he saw to be burdened with expensive carrier bags. Mrs Lydiard looked excited and a little dishevelled: behind her back Katy made a small face, her eyes rolling upwards. ‘We’ve been shopping!’ exclaimed Mrs Lydiard. ‘We’ve been frightfully extravagant, I’m afraid.’

‘Well, you have, Moira. I haven’t bought a thing. But I do have this lovely scarf that Moira bought me,’ she added, in response to a sharp glance from Mrs Lydiard. Bland noted that they both smelt of the same asphyxiating scent. He also saw that Katy was not particularly impressed by her gift, saw this as soon as her eyes took in the Hermès silk square that Louise was tying round her throat. He also noticed that they were both tremendously dressed up. Katy, in particular, in a suit of tangerine-coloured wool and soft fawn leather boots, looked somewhat older than she had on previous occasions,
and he was obliged to revise her age upwards. Today he would have put her at thirty-three or -four.

He introduced them. Before he went into the kitchen to make fresh tea he had time to note that Katy had ignored Louise’s outstretched hand and, putting her palms together, had bowed her head in an Indian greeting. Repressing laughter that threatened to become unmanageable—the first that day—he was glad to make his escape, if only for a few minutes.

When he returned it was to find Louise and Mrs Lydiard deep in conversation, delighted to find interests in common, and also perhaps to indulge in the sort of pleasantries they both best appreciated. ‘I do believe appearances are so important,’ said Mrs Lydiard, whom Louise had evidently complimented on her smart navy blue jacket. ‘At my age one dare not let one’s standards drop. The change can be seen immediately.’

‘I do so agree,’ Louise enthused. ‘Although it’s more of a struggle in the country than in town. People don’t seem to bother so much. I have to go quite far afield to find something suitable. Or just that little bit out of the ordinary, you know?’

‘Have you considered colour counselling?’ asked Katy, who had so far contributed nothing to this exchange.

‘Why no,’ said Louise, surprised. ‘I don’t think we have it in Lymington. Is it very expensive?’

‘Louise,’ he said. ‘If you’re going to catch the six-thirty …’

‘Oh, I’ll catch the next one,’ she said, loosening her scarf. ‘Of course you don’t have to worry about such things yet,’ she said to Katy. ‘You’re young! And very pretty,’ she
added, though with some reserve. ‘I wonder we haven’t met before. Are you a new neighbor? I do think these flats are so comfortable …’

‘Katy has been living in America,’ said Bland.

‘Oh, you’re American!’

‘Not really,’ she said, her voice distant and aristocratic. ‘Of course, I’ve lived all over the place. We were an army family.’

For some reason Bland saw an army camp in Germany, on the outskirts of Hannover or Paderborn. He saw dismal married quarters, a young and downtrodden wife, an army sergeant father, sitting down to his evening meal with khaki braces over a khaki shirt, a pretty child hushed into silence while her father ate, and then alternately petted and chastised. He saw all this quite clearly, and knew that although it might be a fantasy it was a fantasy very near to the truth.

‘And where is your father stationed now?’ pursued Louise. Mrs Lydiard was leaning back in her chair, a smile on her face. She glanced at Bland, triumphant, with a look implying shared intelligence.

‘My father’s dead,’ said Katy.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry, my dear. I didn’t mean to pry …’

Bland could almost hear Katy say that that was exactly what Louise had meant to do. But there was no malice in Louise; he if anyone knew that. And the question had been innocent enough.

There was a brief silence. ‘Well,’ said Louise finally. ‘I must be on my way. I could just make the six-thirty. So nice to have met you.’

‘I must be on my way too,’ said Mrs Lydiard. ‘This has been most pleasant. Thank you for tea, Mr Bland. George, I should say. Perhaps you’d like a glass of sherry one evening?
I’ll give you a ring. Goodbye, Katy. Remember what I told you.’

But he was not immediately to learn what this was. He supposed it to be some well-meaning but irrelevant advice about finding a job while making plans for the future. In any event, by the time he had taken Louise down and put her in a taxi, his train of thought was broken. He was surprised how the day had fatigued and irked him, and looked forward to being alone. There had been a surfeit of women. Louise’s last words to him had been rather tiresome, he thought. She had remarked on what a strange girl Katy had seemed, whereas Bland had wanted to savour this strangeness on his own. How had George met her? Had he known her long? There was a slight reserve, again, in her manner of asking these questions, not quite looking him in the eye. Then, with a sigh, she had turned to him and put up her face for his kiss. ‘Until Sunday,’ she said. ‘Until Sunday,’ he replied. And on Sunday, he reflected, as he went back up the stairs, there would be more questions. And the answers, he knew, he would keep to himself, if indeed there were to be any answers. For Katy was his own private research project, the findings of which he would keep in the equivalent of a locked file, inaccessible to prying eyes.

He mounted the stairs wearily. The open door of his flat seemed unattainable. Just as he prepared to lock himself in for the night the door of the Dunlops’ flat opposite to his own opened to reveal Katy, two patches of red flaring on her cheeks, her anger this time spectacularly in evidence.

‘Is anything wrong?’ he asked.

‘I was getting a lot of negativity back there. I could feel my stress levels going up.’

‘We are too old for you,’ he said gently. ‘Of course you
find us tiresome. You should be with people of your own age. There’s very little to interest you here. My friend was merely asking a few polite questions. You shouldn’t let them upset you.’

‘ “I don’t think we have it in Lymington,” ’ she minced, ‘ “is it very expensive?” ’

‘What did you expect?’ he asked. ‘These things are for smart young women, not elderly widows.’ But she had perhaps been looking for a consultation, he saw, since that was apparently how she earned her living, and if she had hoped to capture Louise, with whom she was barely acquainted, as a client, then she must be seriously short of money. He remembered Mrs Lydiard’s expression, the satisfied expression of one who has given good advice and was not in a position to have it rejected. No doubt she had paid for their lunch, in the course of which she had poured this advice into Katy’s unwilling ear.

‘Was it Mrs Lydiard who upset you?’ he asked. And did she buy you that terrible scent in an attempt to win you over? For he could see it now: Katy’s attempt to annex Mrs Lydiard as a useful ally, followed by her discovery that Mrs Lydiard had no intention of letting herself be annexed. No doubt the giving of advice was Mrs Lydiard’s weakness. That it was probably good advice did not make it any more palatable. Rather less, in fact. He supposed that it had had something to do with money. Mrs Lydiard’s suspicions were therefore not too far from his own. It was an unwelcome discovery.

‘I have plans of my own,’ she said grandly. ‘I have only to make a few phone calls to set up interviews with some of the most important people in the alternative health field.’

‘Then that is what you must do, obviously. Why not do it tomorrow?’

‘I hardly think I need any advice on a matter which I know like the back of my hand. In my business it’s all a matter of personal contacts. I don’t suppose people such as yourself would understand that.’

‘No,’ he agreed, thinking back to his own working life, which had proceeded along the most conventional lines. It had been his destiny to be a company man: he thought of himself as an office boy, even after multiple promotions. Without the company, he thought, he was dying of insignificance. He had been popular because he was blameless; perhaps he had not been valued, as more eccentric or rebarbative characters not infrequently are, but he had been respected, and that respect had been precious to him. The office had represented peace, good order, a place in an acceptable hierarchy. It had also represented work, a work that included judgment, a weighing up of facts on which much depended. He did not believe that work could be done other than in a sober fashion, at a desk, within regular hours, which would keep one in one place and accountable. He did not believe that work was a matter of activating a few contacts. Perhaps actors and journalists lived like that, he thought, but for most people going to work meant just that, going to where the work was, putting in a day’s best effort, and then coming home on the bus or in the train, as others did. And home, at the end of the day, was perceived anew as a reward, the goal of one’s hopes and ambitions.

At least he supposed that ambition came into it. He had had none himself, a fact which had made him trusted. To be accepted was his reward, and he had wanted no other. Putnam
had been the same, and that, in turn, had cemented their friendship. And now it was all gone, all the safety and the pleasure of his working life, his working friendships, and here he was, at the end of an apparently pointless day, having this otiose conversation with a complete stranger, although one for whom he felt mildly sorry, and who had the trick of engaging his curiosity, partly in default of anything more serious, and partly because his professional instincts were not quite dormant, because he saw her as mildly sociopathic, and he wanted to follow the case, as it were, to its conclusion.

‘I like your suit,’ he remarked temperately.

‘This?’ She kicked at the full orange skirt with the toe of one soft kid boot. ‘This is Sharon’s. I always wear Armani myself. That black thing was Armani. Though I have to say her taste has improved since I knew her.’

‘When was that?’

‘Oh, ages ago. We go back a long way.’

‘You didn’t see her in America, did you?’

‘I might have done. Why are you asking me all these questions? Why is everyone so interested in my affairs all of a sudden?’

‘I don’t think that Sharon knows you’re in the flat.’

She shrugged again. ‘Actually she always said that I could stay with her when I was in town.’

‘You’d better tell me the truth,’ he said.

She looked bored and impatient, as if he were importuning her, as perhaps he was. Her cheeks were no longer an angry and, he thought, rather splendid red, but mottled pink and white, as indecisive as her mood. He thought she was uneasy, as well she might be, but what struck him as significant, as it had done in previous conversations, was her inability
to answer a simple question, as if evasion were a technique practised for its own sake, one of Singer’s techniques, no doubt, but one which never incurred the risk of bringing the practitioner within dangerous distance of the truth.

‘The truth?’ she said, as if giving the lie to his conclusions. ‘As I said, we go back a long way.’

Again he admired the ease with which she had evaded his question.

‘When did you last see her?’

‘Oh, now it’s times and dates, is it? If you must know, we used to share a flat. In Muswell Hill.’

‘And more recently than that?’

‘I went to her wedding. When she married that weed.’

‘Tim?’

‘Tim. Though I advised her against it, of course.’

‘Of course,’ he said, reflecting that she was not only antagonistic to women, but antagonistic, on principle, to the men they married. This made her antagonistic to nearly everyone, a fact which he had picked up on earlier. Her attitude to men was predatory but hostile, and if he were to judge by her behaviour, hostile to himself. But no doubt she despised him for being old, while at the same time making a mental note of his attributes. He was tired of this game, which was not entirely a game. He felt foolish, not merely old, but almost in his dotage. To engage himself further would be unseemly: he was not, and could not be, in a position of trust or responsibility. He must shed these pompous illusions. At the same time he noted that his recent interrogation, which she now had a notion of having passed unscathed, had brought a healthier colour to her cheeks, as if she had been expecting a punishment which had not been
meted out. Again he had a vision of the army sergeant, perhaps a man of uncertain temper, alternately cajoling and slapping, even beating, perhaps more than that … He felt pity for her, felt a warmth towards her, felt the beginnings of a need to protect her. From this standpoint he could see that Mrs Lydiard’s complacent advice, made no doubt with the best of intentions, but insensitively, gratingly, might have brought the girl to the point of open rebellion. But now she was mollified, even smiling. Her smiles were rare. Somehow he had earned this brief indulgence. He received it gratefully. Then, feeling ridiculously rewarded, almost embarrassed, he wished her goodnight. ‘Sleep well,’ he added.

She unwound herself from the door-jamb. ‘See you tomorrow,’ she said.

In his bedroom, his fortress, he brooded slightly as he eased his shoes from his feet. He cautioned himself conscientiously against anticipation of further indulgence. All this must stop, he thought. He wished that the Dunlops would come home and take Katy Gibb off his hands. For she did seem to be on his hands. It gave him something to think about, of course, and since the problem would ultimately prove to be self-limiting, he could see no harm in that. The Dunlops would return, and she would leave, and he would be alone again. Here was the position at its most stark. His last thought on the matter, before preparing his evening meal, was that there must be no damage. His role was to help, as it had always been. He sighed, as if life were suddenly a burden to him, and as if he hoped, for a brief but illuminating flash, that help, or at least relief from age, from loneliness, from sadness, might be visited on him, unexpectedly, gratuitously, and without his having earned or even understood the reason for it.