Blind Date (18 page)

“The man who used to send the flowers is dead,” she explained patiently. “To all intents and purposes, I mean. Dead. I may as well have killed him. Do you still want to stay?”

Trouble, dreadful trouble, as if he did not have enough of that working out what kind of man he was with which kind of future. Rootless, lonely sometimes, a soft enemy, a good friend, drifting from one thing to another with the sole motivation of curiosity. Examining everything objectively, this creature included, generally avoiding trouble: He had no real obligation. Only his own bit of guilt and the half-promise to Jenkins. This was the point when he should leave with his plastic sacks and broken camera, forget about the mortally ill clock and this fractured spirit, and he did not want to do it.

“Yes, please,” he said. “I won't be around much, but I want to mend that clock.” He was referring to something else. Maybe he was an enemy, but she did not care. All this time, craving to be alone, and now, when it happened, she was letting someone else in, on the basis of a whim and her own, utterly flawed judgement. Because Matt said he sounded nice and because she was a coward who could not face solitude after all.

“There's a condition, of course,” she stated, businesslike in one of those sudden changes of mood, “which is perfectly simple. I know you have a studio, some
little room somewhere, and I know you aren't a journalist, because I've been through all your things, including your wallet and I would have found a clue. Even I would have found a clue. So I don't need to know who you are. But I do need to know what you want.”

Joe was not sure he could answer that. People had been asking him the same question since the age of three and it always seemed to require a serious reply, such as how he would like to save the world, or at least the whale.

“From me, I mean,” she prompted. “No, I don't mean from
me
, I mean from this place.” She waved her hand airily, encompassing the whole tower. There were strange sounds coming through the wall from the main body of the church below. Only sounds of a certain resonance could penetrate the walls; telephones, the noise of a tuneless trumpet, followed by a few notes from a clarinet. Elisabeth looked at her watch for guidance.

“British Legion band practice,” she said, sighing. “Can you answer the question, please? Almost anything will do.”

I want to look after people and things which are damaged, he almost said. I want to know why Emma was killed and you, almost killed. I want to know about Jack and who showed the photograph. I want the whole story and for some, unaccountable reason, I want to look after you, ever since I saw you on that hospital gurney and watched you make them laugh. He pretended to deliberate.

“I want some exquisite photographs,” he said. “Of broken bells and other things which can be mended, if only anyone would bother.”

“I want to be content,” she said fiercely, not listening. “Not happy; that's asking too much.” She stopped, puzzled by her own outburst, then went on in a murmur, “That's why I left home. I might have
stopped Matthew being content. I should never have gone back. One day he'll have a new mother. I'm not brave enough to take that. Not brave at all.”

The music beyond the walls grew louder. Laughter penetrated the brickwork far more easily than speech.

“But it's all so ugly,” she finished, apologetically. “So very ugly.”

“No,” he said, thinking slowly of corpses and jewels and paintings, and all the inanimate things of which the lens was witness. “It isn't. Very few things are ugly, you know. You've been ill. You just can't see.”

D
iana Kennedy had not quite liked to go into her elder daughter's room after she had left with those two frightful girls, nor had she asked Mary to do so, and for all these days, it had fretted her. But with the evening light still strong and the house quiet while her guests were all out to eat, the time seemed right and she had little else to do. They had passed the longest day of summer weeks before, and the prospect of darkening evenings was a relief, because it would be easier to sit in front of a fire, read, sew and do all those contemplative things; whereas the light demanded that she should be more active. She could remember being scolded for reading in the afternoon. Sitting still in daylight seemed almost immoral.

Diana had given Elisabeth the nicest room on this side, of course, so that she could have space and light and a view of the sea. Speaking for herself, she did not want to look at the water every minute and preferred her own room on the corner, which looked over the side road and received less of the gusty winter wind. Elisabeth had shared this room with her sister when they were children: they had liked frightening themselves with the sound
of the gales, huddled together, shrieking, before they remembered who they were and began to quarrel again. When they went away, it became a grand spare room, ready, by tacit consent, if either of them came back, in particular Emma and her husband. It was time to clean it now, not because there was any urgency, or a prospective new occupant, but because Matthew, whose little room was next door, had begun to appropriate the space, and that was not to be encouraged. Matthew colonized spare space like an invading army, sending forth a battalion by stealth. He was like roots, going underground. At the moment he was in the bathroom. Diana was grateful she did not have to share it, shuddered to think what he was doing in there to the tune of running water.

To give her her due, Elisabeth had not left a mess of any kind: Diana had checked, but it was fairly messy now. The twin beds were rumpled from bouncing, the window ledges littered with shells and pebbles, the cat which seemed to shadow him curled into a chair. There was a cushion in the middle of Elisabeth's bed depressed by an object in the middle, half covered with a once-clean pillow case. Diana approached; the object moved. She bent closer. The cat stretched, mewed a warning.

A tiny pink snout emerged from the cover tucked around it. There was an earthy smell. Removal of the pillow case, done with a shaky hand, revealed the hedgehog, reacting to this sudden exposure by retreating the snout and ruffling its spines. Fascinated, she could see the presence of small red fleas among them. Then she screamed, ran out of the room and banged on the bathroom door.

“Matthew! Matthew! Get rid of it!”

He was prompt to answer, sticking a tousled head around the door, suspiciously fully dressed. What
was he doing with all that water? Didn't he know they had a meter?

“Get rid of it!” she shrieked. He knew exactly what she meant.

“Why?” he asked with an air of injured innocence.

“It's got fleas! I'll have to fumigate the room! It's ugly!”

He marched past her, picked up the hedgehog cusion, pillow case and all, cradled it and tried to kiss it on the nose. He looked at her defiantly.

“It isn't ugly,” he said. “It's lovely. Promise.”

They regarded one another with mutual defiance. Hostilities, hidden for the last few days, were naked, for once. Then the blaze in his eyes faded.

“Lizzie would have given it milk,” he said.

“I am not your Aunt Elisabeth,” Diana screamed. “And I'm not your mummy. I will not have this … INTIMIDATION!”

He thrust the hedgehog towards her, level with her face, so that the twitching nose, briefly, touched her own.

“I know that,” he said. “I hate you. Hate you. HATE YOU!”

N
ow there was a word. In timid
ashun.
There
were no timid ashuns around here, Matthew thought, although there had been at home. London. My friends; my place. The place where I grew crystals in the boiler cupboard, and had to leave them.

You are only as good as the people who love you. Teacher said that. You gotta earn respect. Stoopid. How do you make people love you? What do you have to do? Be good, I'spose, but Lizzie says it wasn't just that. The gooder they are the more boring, sometimes, she said. “Just keep your eyes peeled,” she said. “Try not to hurt anyone, and if you get into trouble, try and see why and say sorry even if you don't mean it. Keeps ‘em quiet.”

“By the way, Matt, I think you're fucking ace. Who gives a shit you aren't good at football? All that
overarm stone throwing, you'll be wicked at tennis.”

No-one but Lizzie wondered if this was
my
home, and now that she's gone, I don't feel right. She was the only one who played with me and said it was OK to laugh: she was the only one who kept wanting me to hug her and even when it hurt, she hugged me.

I don't like my dad, much, because I don't think he likes me. He is afraid of me. They are all afraid of me. They are all timid ashuns. They want to send me away, just like they sent Lizzie away, even though she says it wasn't like that … I don't feel right. They are waiting for something and then they will send me away.

“W
hat she doesn't realize,” Audrey said to Donald as they heaved the usual lumber out of the shop and onto the pavement, pausing to wave in regal acknowledgement at a mid-morning acquaintance, “is that you can't live in a place like this and have secrets. You can't be self-contained.”

“Who are you talking about, dearest?”

“Diana Kennedy, of course.”

“You've got the woman on the brain. Shall we sit outside?”

“Oh, go on then.” She always responded to an invitation to sit in the sun as if it was a forbidden treat. He dusted a wooden chair with a flourish and bowed to her as she sat with a thump. The chair wobbled. Audrey balanced herself with one hand against the door frame and felt, with the other, for the trinkets around her neck. Freshwater pearls and three rings on a chain, one of them rather sharp.

“You can't live in any place and be self-contained,” he said, joining her on the next-door seat, which wobbled also. “Look at us,
exposing ourselves.” Audrey was hitching her skirt above her knees, to get the sun. “People will talk.”

“People always talk. That's what she doesn't seem to comprehend. Especially if you keep a guest house like a lady of the manor, however upmarket it is. What else do guests do but gossip about the owner? She fascinates them. You wonder what anyone as tight-lipped as that has got to hide.”

“A woman of impeccable reputation, and mixed fortunes,” Donald observed. “Not above financial need; not quite as rich as she looks like a few people round here. Or at least, she wasn't remember. She sold you something, coupla years ago …”

“Oh dear, I thought you'd forgotten. I do so rely on your bad memory. Diamonds, dear. I thought it might have been to pay for her daughter's funeral, but surely Emma's husband would have done that? No, listen, you and I are the only ones around here who exercise discretion—”

“You gossip like mad,” he said indignantly.

“I do not! Well, only about peripherals. Things of strictly common interest and common knowledge, like bus timetables, who's moving house, that thieving butcher, Mrs. Jones' ridiculous hair colour and her old man's toupee, that sort of thing; nothing personal. Not like that woman yesterday, telling us that Diana Kennedy was having a screaming row with Matthew. She said you could hear it all over the house. And the other guest who was in here saying how she heard her later, scuttling round in the attics, like a demented squirrel. Now that doesn't sound like Diana Kennedy to me. I worry about Matthew.”

She shuffled, let go of the door frame. The chair groaned.

“What had he done? And where was he
yesterday? And why is his dad so not like a dad, no punching and teasing. They all the time like uncle and nephew, the one taking the other out on a treat. They don't fight, or anything.”

He watched, with amusement, the way she settled herself.

“Matt's acting up on account of his aunty buggering off back to London,” he suggested. “And, perhaps because it's coming to the end of the season, Diana was searching in the attics for something else to sell. Perhaps he'll tell us. We must find him something
to do.”
Donald looked up, waved to someone else, and then stood, with a decisive sigh.

“I know exactly what. Where are you going, dearest? We've only just sat down.” Audrey disliked getting in and out of seats; so much effort.

“I'm going inside, aren't I? The little lad won't come and talk if we're sitting out here for everyone to see, will he now? It's like gossip, ain't it? Everyone knows what you're doing, but you feel that much better if you can act as if they don't. See?”

He bent and kissed her powdered cheek. It was always such a pleasure; a whole range of pleasures, from the comfortably erotic to the childhood memory of fresh, soft baked, warm rolls. Every boy should have a girl like this. Make him feel like a lion.

M
atthew slunk in around two in the afternoon. He bypassed the chandelier in the armchair, without pausing. We could have sat outside for longer and stayed warm, Donald thought, uncharitably. It could get cool in here, even in the height of summer, cool enough for him to wear a sweater at all times, and there was some compensation for the lack of decision in that. The boy looked furtive, but jubilant, so Audrey went
straight for the jugular.

“Where have you been then?” She asked, calmly enough, keeping her eyes firmly on the sharp ring which she had removed from round her neck. Horrible, spiky thing, fit to tear flesh; a pink stone held in a platinum claw; she could only think of one woman who might like it.

“What d'you think of this, fatface? And why were you rowing with your granny the night before last? Shame on you, if it was your fault. Mind, I love a good row myself. Don't we, Donald, darling? Ice cream would be nice.”

Donald took his cue and shambled off. Matthew held the ring between his fingers, feeling the points of the metal which rose like a miniaure battlement of swords. He looked at it, looked away; felt it again with his eyes closed.