Black Diamond (36 page)

She unfolded the paper. She’d expected to be handed a glossy photograph out of a fashion magazine. What she saw was a pencil sketch of the head-dress and veil from the portrait of St Catherine.

She handed the paper back to him. ‘It’s from the painting in his room,’ she said. ‘Don’t you recognize it?’

He frowned at the picture. ‘I think you’re right. I hadn’t noticed. It isn’t bad, though, is it?’

‘Not at all. It’s beautiful.’

‘Good. You’ll just be kind of medieval. He made an appointment for you to have the first fitting on Monday morning. And he wants a list of guests. And what about bridesmaids?’

‘There’s my friend, Maureen, from the office. And my niece and nephew; they’re still tiny, but they could hold up the train, or whatever they do – carry some flowers around.’

‘Don’t forget to invite that old aunt of yours. She’s our fairy godmother.’

She thought that before they kissed goodnight, he’d tell her what he’d promised earlier in the day. But they went up to her apartment and went to bed. He was getting ready to go back to his house, still with no intention of saying anything, when she realized that unless she made a move, he’d never do anything about it.

‘Please,’ she said, ‘tell me now. You’ve got to, sometime. I don’t want other people hinting at me. Tell me yourself. Tell me about your first wife.’

‘I just don’t want to think about it.’

‘Good. Neither do I. All you have to do is tell me, and then we won’t either of us have to think about it again.’

‘Okay. Right. Well, most of my immediate family succeeded in killing themselves while I was young: in car crashes, getting sick, looking for fights and getting beaten up, suicide – that was only one. I was put in the care of … it’s not important.’

‘That’s all right. I want to hear everything.’

‘I guess it was an act of kindness. Maybe that was why I resented it so much. The community thought it would be a nice idea for one of its decent citizens to give me shelter for a while. So the local optician took me in. But by that time it was too late: I had a grudge against everybody. I didn’t like the way they’d always treated my family. I was very busy biting the hands that fed me. So he took me in and I took him in. I seduced his wife. That would have been all right up to a point. Mutual advantages. But when I won the scholarship and was on my way to the station, she staged a terrific farewell scene. She was a lady of great, suppressed dramatic talents. Threw herself down on the ground and confessed all in terms that would have embarrassed
Casanova
. The doctor got out his pistol. He managed to shoot a hole in a little glass-shaded lamp they had and she was all over him, screaming, “Oh, don’t hurt him, don’t hurt him.” And I ran for it. The only reason this is of any interest is that later on, when I needed as many character references as I could scrape up, the good doctor made it his mission in life to try to send me up the river without a paddle. He got into a plane and came all that way voluntarily just to tell the jury what a conniving, cold-hearted rascal I was. And it didn’t do me any good.’

‘She must have suffered a lot after you left.’

‘Don’t you believe it. She had a good time with me. And after I’d served my purpose, she had the supreme pleasure of throwing it in his face. You could see why she wanted to, too. He wasn’t the kind to forget an injury, or an oversight, or a
misunderstanding, or a mistake, or a badly ironed collar. Anyway, I had the scholarship. I was working nights and looking for weekend jobs. I bought a second-hand pick-up truck and I used to move furniture for people, fix their washing machines, clear the leaves out of their gutters, put the storm windows on, mow the grass – anything. That’s how I met Harriet. Something had gone wrong with her gardener’s back. He needed some extra help with lifting things. In other words, he’d talked her into hiring another man to do his work, while he stood there and gave his mouth a lot of exercise. But we got along all right. I worked there for a long time. It was one of my best places. And I got to know her. She was famous. She owned art collections and gave charity balls and all that. She had millions. You wouldn’t have thought it; she looked like an ordinary woman, nobody special. She was forty-three when I met her. I was almost twenty.’

‘What did she look like?’

‘Medium height and build, short brown hair, going gray. She liked golf and tennis. When she was younger, she used to ride. And she had a pilot’s license. Her family was unbelievably moral and upright for people who’d made millions. She’d been brought up in some old-style ideal of Christian service that made her feel uplifted about life. She was a good sport. Good company, even thought she was teetotal – that was another of their things: no liquor, tobacco, coffee.

‘One day there was a fire in the kitchen. We got it out, but when I took a look at the place, I could see it was the wiring. The whole house needed to be rehauled.’

‘Go on.’

‘I’m late. I should be getting back.’

‘Not till you tell me. Please.’

‘Right. She’d never had a lover. It’s hard to believe that people still live like that, but some do. I asked her to marry me and she said yes. We were fine together; she was fun. I liked her. She wanted to get married fast, so we did. When I met the rest of them, I understood why. You’ve never seen such a gallery of
stuffed shirts. Of course they hated me. And they thought I was a fortune-hunter, which wasn’t entirely untrue.’

‘But you didn’t marry her for her money.’

‘Not entirely. But partly, yes. Of course. Why not? It wasn’t as if I was planning to walk out on her. I thought we’d be on friendly terms forever. And things went very well. The family had to admit that I made her happy. And then, four years later, when nobody was expecting such a thing, she got pregnant. That was when I began to feel regret – remorse – for the way I’d behaved, because the doctors were all horrified. They didn’t think she stood a chance. They said that the baby was sure to be mongoloid or deformed, or that something would go wrong because of her age. According to them, she shouldn’t have considered pregnancy after the age of thirty-five. A couple of them suggested an abortion.

‘She just swept all the advice aside and said that she felt well and happy, and she was looking forward to bringing up a child. I was scared. I didn’t think she’d make it. She was forty-seven. Even after it was too late for anyone to have done anything about it, they kept telling me how dangerous it was for her. But she was laughing. And when Ricky was born, we were both laughing. When she made me hold him in my arms, I was just overwhelmed; all the years I’d stopped feeling any kind of sentiment: and suddenly it caught up with me. He was smaller than I’d imagined he’d be. And he had a lot of wild red hair. That was when I started to love her.

‘She turned out to be one of those natural mothers, who take it all in their stride and enjoy it. But of course I was seeing other women, off and on. I was also working hard, going up in the world, making a name for myself, making money. Once I’d made enough, people stopped thinking I’d married her for mercenary reasons. And then: the night of the accident. She’d invited about a dozen people for dinner, maybe a few more. About fifteen. For the past year she’d been giving fantastic dinners where she’d have the table decorated like a kind of bower, or a temple, or a bandstand. I don’t know what it was supposed to add to the
evening; I’d come home from work and find myself sitting down to a meal where I had to keep batting rosebuds out of my soup or wondering if a white dove might fall off its perch and land in the salad. Most of these evenings were given over to fundraising for charities, so I guess maybe there was an element of
showmanship
to them. Harriet used to hire all sorts of designers and interior decorators to help her.

‘On this particular evening, she’d had a glass pipeline laid down the table and overhead. It curled up, all over the place. The pipes were filled with water. Colored tropical fish swam through them and they were illuminated by a series of lights that were made to look pretty rather than functional. There was a fountain in the middle of everything and a lot more of the lights. The overall effect was intended to be one of an under-sea
treasure-cave
.

‘Well, I got home early but I went straight upstairs. I looked in on Ricky, took a shower and when I came downstairs, the guests were already arriving. So, the first I saw of this Disneyland table arrangement was when I went in to dinner with everybody else. And the first thing I said was that it looked very nice, but was it safe? “Oh, yes,” she said.

‘I started to check it – all you needed was one loose connection and a little spilled water, and the whole house could be alive. I was still fussing around at my end of the table when I heard her say, “Just this little wire,” and then she screamed. Half the other people there started screaming too. For a minute it was hard to tell what was going on.’

‘She was electrocuted?’

‘That’s right. It’s a wonder we weren’t all incinerated.
Apparently
the only bit of metal casing that could be dangerous was right in front of Harriet’s place at the table, where she was bound to notice it. The people who’d been responsible for setting up the equipment said that everything had been completely safe but that I had degrees in all sorts of things and, since I’d been in the house for hours, I could have tampered with it. Well, the police thought that that sounded reasonable. I was under arrest and hiring lawyers. There were two hundred reporters camped
outside the doorstep. They wouldn’t even leave Ricky alone. And then, the trial: dear old Dr Danforth getting his chance to dump all over me; I really wished I’d taken the opportunity of laughing in his face before I made my getaway from under his roof. They all thought I’d done it but they couldn’t prove anything, so they had to acquit me. For months afterwards I got letters, telling me that I’d gotten away with murder but that everyone knew I’d done it just the same. Do you believe me?’

There was something in the story, some part of it, that wasn’t true. She’d been waiting so hard to find out how the wife had died, that she couldn’t remember where the moment had come, when she’d heard it in his voice, and had thought:
He’s
lying.

But did it matter? She didn’t really believe that he’d done anything, merely that he might have wanted to. The important question, she thought, was not what terrible things people did, but whether you loved them or not. Since she did love him, he might have done anything at all and it wouldn’t change things for her because her love was like faith: it wouldn’t allow her to accept any other truth. Only the loss of that certainty could make her believe that he’d killed someone. What he wanted to know was whether she loved him.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course.’

*

Her car whizzed along the beltway with the outbound traffic. Every once in a while she looked at the speedometer. Bert had always let himself be pulled in to a faster pace, without realizing what he was doing, especially if he was thinking about
something
else. He’d switch his mind off and follow the crowd; and she’d sit there, not saying anything, but wanting to.

She thought about a church wedding. Maybe the idea wouldn’t have thrown her so much if she’d been given a little preparation. Everything was going fast; that was the way she wanted it, but it seemed dangerous. Years ago, when she’d been trying to choose between two apartments, she’d felt the same mixture of exhilaration and dread. It was as if the more certain she became, the more there was bound to be something wrong with the place. Why was it like that? It didn’t make sense. It
ought to be the other way around. All doubt should vanish, once you knew.

She reached Aunt Marion’s house early, let herself in and packed up a tote bag with the things on her list. Before setting off again, she went into the living room. She sat down in the chair where, just a few days ago, she’d been reading: when the doorbell had rung and there outside had stood a small boy in a suit and tie. It was unbelievable. But after it had happened, it was a fact. And after that it was normal, although possibly still crazy. She should relax. Lots of people did the wrong thing and it turned out all right anyway.

She checked the house, locked up, hid the key, carried the bag to the car and drove out to the hospital.

Aunt Marion looked different; she didn’t like being in a hospital, yet she approved wholeheartedly of the nurses and doctors who, she said, ‘couldn’t have been kinder’. Already she knew all about them: their hopes, their dreams, their families. She seemed inordinately pleased and touched that Sandra had taken the time to come to see her.

‘I’d have come before,’ Sandra explained, ‘but you said that there wasn’t any hurry, and I’ve been so busy with all kinds of things. Aunt Marion, I’ve got some news. I’m getting married.’

‘My dear, how exciting,’ she said. ‘Was that what you had to think over while you looked after the house for me? After you crossed the other one off your list?’

‘In a way it was connected with that. I had to decide what I felt about the man I was turning down. It’s so strange – just as I made up my mind, my future husband appeared. He’s the father of that little boy who was lost – the one who ate up everything in your kitchen.’

‘Wait now, just a minute. Don’t say anything more for the moment. I’m a bit scatterbrained nowadays.’ She rang the bell by her bed. ‘Let me settle down. I’m supposed to have a cup of tea at about this time. Will you join me?’

Two nurses looked into the room. Aunt Marion ordered tea from them as if she were in a restaurant. They chatted and joked with her. She was evidently a favorite patient, despite her
old-fashioned
ways. She introduced Sandra. The nurses were named Carroll and Reba. Carroll had a high, twittering voice and giggled a lot. Reba was tall, ironic, and she gave the impression that she wouldn’t stand for any nonsense. ‘You’re slipping down again,’ she said. Aunt Marion leaned forward to let her plump up the pillows.

‘Sugar and cream?’ Carroll asked.