Blind Date (21 page)

“I often wondered if Emma was killed because of the gems, if there were any gems. If only there had been a motive as clean as that, but there wasn't. There was no motive at all.”

“A stranger?”

“We may never know.” She was guarded again. Ashamed, by now, of talking too much, ready for him to change the subject. “Look!” she said, pointing out of the
window. “Look!”

On the far side of the junction where they waited for a bus. A boy, on roller skates with a spotlight on his hat.

Elisabeth shivered. It was suddenly a boon to be alive. It was not an ugly world at all.

“Y
ou should
be careful about the effect you have on people, Joe,” the Owl said in a hectoring tone.

“My devastating charm, you mean.”

“I was thinking more of your size. It makes it all the more insulting when you aren't listening.”

“Sorry,” Joe said, sincerely. “I've had a nice day. I wasn't paying attention.” He liked the Owl, even though he wished he was elsewhere himself. Of all his old-time friends, (were they really friends or merely habits?) he rated Owl highest, for his sheer, bewildered integrity. An old mate. A remnant of a tribe which grew and then diminished.

“Well, I thought you might want to know the latest,” Owl said. Even to Joe's distracted mind, Owl was hedging slightly around some preoccupations of his own. “Rob's been to that introduction agency. Shaken, but not stirred, old Rob. Says it was like being put through the mill, whatever that means. Michael's been too. Says he thinks the woman in charge is very thorough, smooth bastard. Your turn next. We agreed, remember? You're a mate, remember? We all promised.”

Yup, an
old mate. There were old mates agreements to climb the Matterhorn and get killed; drink sixteen pints of ale; take E; race to the North Pole; risk death, disfigurement and disease and run over cliffs like lemmings. Old mates agreements were bad for the health. They were crap.

“I haven't got the money,” Joe said. “But I'm on my way.”

“Even though you've got a girl? The one who wouldn't let you in?”

“Oh, her? Come off it. I'm a sort of uncle to her. She's not a prospect, more of a liability, but she might have nice friends. I do her garden. Got to make ends meet when the photography work's slow.”

“I'm sure they'd have you back in the firm, you know. Michael always says so.” Owl was always sweetly anxious about other people's income, or lack of it.

“Thanks but no thanks.”

Owl did not know if he was on the brink of confiding in Joe because Joe was so damn feckless, so insecure and so open about it—not a man to gossip, either—or because, even though Joe teased, he never scorned: he was the one who called off the dogs, rather than set them on. He could not confide in Michael, because Mike was so suave, nor in Rob, because Rob would laugh.

“You gotta go to that introduction agency, Joe. Check it out.”

“Course. I've said. C'mon, fella, what's up?”

Owl's face crumpled. Joe wondered why it was always thus: a man going all the way round the houses and two thirds of the way down his second pint before he got to the point with a massive clearing of the throat, as if the words were hidden in there, waiting to be forced out.

“I did. As
it happens. Dated a dead woman, didn't I?”

Owl took off his new tinted glasses with less than a flourish, not sure after all if he managed the gesture with Michael's kind of panache.

“And now I've got another one, to compensate.” He brayed his nervous laugh. “Who knows? I shan't dare phone her. Maybe this one'll stay alive until I meet her.”

S
omewhere inside of me, lurking like a virus, there is the person I once was. A fatter person, Elisabeth concluded. The kind who would buy a chandelier.

There were no flowers outside the door, no more of these practical jokes from her lodger when she came home alone, imagining that when she arrived, her house might be full of people. There had been parties here, once, and also in her mother's house; father resisting them, except for the chance they gave him to show off his daughters. Yes, both his daughters: he had loved her too, in his own way. She was alive: she was lucky, and she had been ungrateful.

Elisabeth phoned her mother. The twist in her neck and the crevice of wasted muscle made a convenient hook for the phone: would it ever get better? Dammit to hell: she still had eyes: she wanted a fuller life, not this depressed shadow of existence shrouded in regrets. Something had opened her eyes. What was done was done, and if her revised life was not going to be the same, she could at least refashion herself into something amiable. Get back that eye for beauty and colour which was returning now as forcefully as the pain of circulation returning to frozen fingers. Wear crazy colours and crystals round her neck, go along clanking, learn a different kind of vanity. Because she did like that huge world out there, and she did love so many of the people in it.

“Hullo
, mum? How are you? Yes, yes, I'm fine. Hot, is it? Have you been in the sea? No? Don't go, Mum, don't go, wait a minute.”

Wait a minute, please: don't be so damned efficient and let me tell you something clear and simple. Such as, I'm sorry I was such a lousy patient: you were marvellous to put up with me and it's only now I'm realizing quite how much you did, because I can still scarcely shop and I'm trying to work out a way to wash my own hair. Let me say it, please. But Diana was calling for Matthew.

Elisabeth could see her mother now, standing in the hallway of the house where telephone extensions into rooms were regarded as frivolous, where no expense was spared on polish, calling for her grandson in that imperious voice of hers which always managed to carry without her ever raising it. Diana, looking critical, thinking all the time what she could do to the place if she had money.

I am no compensation, Elisabeth thought. I accept that there is nothing I can ever do about that. You can't make people love you.

“He isn't here!” Diana barked. “In fact he keeps on disappearing. That child! If we had the money, he'd be off to boarding school next term. Tomorrow … oh, here you are. Matthew! Here he is …”

“Mummy, wait …”

“Matthew! It's your aunt.” The dog, barking.

Not
my
daughter; your aunt. Elisabeth was suddenly furious with her mother all over again. Not for the stiff upper lip, but for talking about sending Matthew away when he was able to listen. How could she be so crass? Then, Matt, blythe spirit who, if he had heard, seemed not to mind, although there was a note of hysteria in his voice.

“Allo
, skinny Lizzie aunty!” he was saying. “When can I come and see you?”

“Soon,” she said. “Soon.” Feeling tears at the back of her eyes. Soon: when he had learned that she did not, could not ever replace his mother. Not in his father's eyes, as she had once, fleetingly hoped, and not in his own. The phone receiver, held long after the call ended, felt heavy in her hand.

Think, Lizzie, think. Stop hiding and resenting. Pen, paper: you can't do much, but you can write. She wrote, but she could not write fast. Her mother would not like that chandelier. Too fussy and too ornate. She would say it was pretentious.

D
ear Mum,

If I write this quickly, I may get it right … I
know
you are not as distant as you seem; but I got my warmth from somewhere and I can't believe it was my real father. (I wish you could tell me about my real father, but that's another matter.)

Listen; you have been a good mother; a very good mother indeed and none of my behaviour in the last few months reflects that. You should have shoved me out. And I know that my going last week was insulting, too, even if it was a relief, but I had to go, even if I can scarcely cope now … Because Matthew will never find his feet, (or will grow three of them) unless I am absent. How can I be so arrogant when I can't even wash my hair!

We've been very angry with one another. I never explained to you why I was there so much when Emma was killed and then suddenly absented myself into silence, and it wouldn't do to explain now. I know you wanted more from me: I wasn't entirely truthful, saying I was ignorant of the whole police thing. Enough to say, I couldn't explain, but one day I might, and you were very diplomatic not to persist.

It might
explain, I suppose, the fact you were cold as ice when I came home jobless and I can quite see why. Matt was easy with me, not with you. I mocked your house and your life, and although I can't even
pretend
to say that that swine of a mugger,
(Why
did he do it?), did me a favour with his caustic, he did at least make me sit back and think. And stop drinking, of course.

Why the hell did you never drink, Mumsy? The only time I remember was just after Dad died and I came back to find you getting plastered with Mrs. Smythe. Mother mine, why did we never talk? Why can't we talk now?

S
he chewed on the pen.

“I
s it because you think that Dad bypassed both you and I in favour of the one we both loved best? Look, Mum, be fair: if that's what he planned, you can see his point. The reward of virtue: Emma loved him best. She was the sweetest and kindest, especially to all the people
we
rejected, much nicer than us, so why shouldn't he favour her? He just couldn't stand the fact that you loved the house better than its owner: he wanted you to pay for that. As for his cache of jewels … yes, I do know about that … everyone did. But he was a
dreamer
, Mum, and I doubt if this cache ever existed. Let's face it, he didn't believe in pension plans, couldn't tolerate that stuff; he only believed in tangible things he could pick up and examine, like stones, but he was also a lousy business-man, a failure in trade, and he didn't expect to die, so why the hell would there be anything? Stop looking for it. (I've heard you: we've all heard you.) We wouldn't know it if we found it, would we? So what's the fucking point? Life's not going to get better. This is what there is …”

S
he put
the letter away. To be continued later. There was no way to do this briefly or quickly. Writing was too slow: communication agonizingly difficult; no wonder they had avoided it.

But she still had an urge to go on talking, an urge to mend fences and make resolutions. Make contact. Patsy: yes, Patsy. Suggest going out, as a thank-you for the lift and the patience in the face of lethargy. Let her know about being back in the land of the living, definitely. Talk about nothing, suggest a meal, a drink. Listen for once instead of being afraid of being heard.

She had a fleeting memory of all the phone calls she had made and recorded on tape. How subversive that was; the same sensation of treachery had infected even the most normal conversation, so that, for a while, she could scarcely talk on the phone at all, unable to forget an imaginary audience, listening, breathing hard.…

“Oh, it's you … Gotta rush … you all right? Speak to you tomorrow?” That was Patsy, surprised and evasive.

“Where're you going?” Elisabeth found herself demanding. “Somewhere nice?” scolding herself for a cliché.

A nervous chuckle.

“Mind your own business. A blind date. Wish me luck. I need it.”

“No, you don't. He'll fall at your feet. You're drop-dead gorgeous, Pats. Just act like it. Remember not to be nice.”

Another
nervous giggle, followed by a hesitant sigh.

“Might be a total washout.”

“So? Something better round the corner, in that case. Down to experience.”

“I've had too much experience,” Patsy said. “But thanks.” There was a long pause. “I love you, Lizzie. I'm stupid and I'm shallow, but I love you. Always have.”

Elisabeth swallowed, surprised and embarrassed.

“Good God, stop talking nonsense,” she laughed. “Have a good time. Tell me about it tomorrow. I owe you, Patsy.”

“Lizzie?”

“What?”

“Nothing. Can wait.”

“Take care.”

Elisabeth prowled. Her eyes went back to the wooden ceiling. A chandelier would be glorious. There was comfort in things. For the moment, the bleak past was over. And there was something wrong with Patsy. It worried her. Slowly, Elisabeth began to rewrite the letter to her mother, starting from the top. Remembering to include some words of affection and not to swear. The process was like climbing steep stairs.

T
hose steps again, this time in daylight, and again Joe forgot to count because this time he took them quicker than before, three at a time, the way he took the belfry stairs. As if he was weighted, but inspired, by the scrunched up, stained piece of newspaper report in his pocket, and what dear Owl had said. Joe was like a racehorse carrying extra kilos and frisky with the challenge. It felt like the seventy-fifth floor, let alone the fifth, and the door was locked and barred. “Call any time after nine to five,” Jenkins had said, “I'm always in, if not always welcoming.” Joe knocked. You could knock the skin off your knuckles on this metal-lined door and still it only made a minor rat tap tap of sound, falling into semi-silence. Then a shuffling of movement.

“Who's
that?”

“Me.”

“Go away.”

Joe waited. It seemed as if the story of his life was waiting on the wrong side of a closed door for someone to ask him in. Jenkins was a pale man this evening, ashen, wanting a drink as if there was no tomorrow, and Joe, not really understanding the extent of the craving, worried about him for the first time. He seemed even smaller than he had previously appeared, a little facsimile of his larger self. There was a rancid smell of beer on his breath, and he looked with a glance of intense hunger to see if Joe might have bought supplies, like the last time, hope fading as he turned away.