Blind Date (32 page)

I'll show you Joe. Get off my back. I'll show you how I would defend myself here. I know my terrain: know where to hide, and how. I know better than anyone how to hide and avoid the blows. I know the dangerous bits which a big man would bypass; I know the different heights of each stair, the ones which slip and dip in the centre; I know the height of each door. I know the bells.

She paused in the room level with the clock. The room Joe had sequestered and now made his own by his tidiness. What a domesticated beast he was, to render it so free of dust and, glory of glories, he had attached the pendulum to the mechanism of the clock. In a moment, he would turn back time. If only.

Joe and gems, an odd combination. Jenkins would not have said so. Jenkins knew that everyone was a thief at heart and men who denied materialism might be the worst. She was scrabbling, like a mouse, inside her handbag for Jenkins' number. In here, somewhere, on a piece of paper tucked inside an address book, unless she had destroyed it, wanting to forget him. The sellotaped profile of the man called Michael got in the way; she retrieved it, smoothed it and put it to one side. She dialled the Michael number. It rang and rang. She prowled some more. Mice and birds had been the initial problem here. Birds getting into the bell chamber and beating themselves against the slats with heartbreaking noise, unable to get out, impossible to capture. She had wept to watch them die and then helped a grumbling, unwilling man with no head for heights to put fine net over the windows. Whatever one did, one never owned the place in which one lived, or ever fully controlled its independent life. She thought of her mother's house, never
free from the encroachment of sea and salt and decay… Poor mother, guarding it as she might a child, knowing she would have to let it go. Listening for the sounds of decay.

There were sounds now. Tapping at the big window, a rattling as if someone had thrown gravel.
Slish.
Another shower of sound, like hail. Children had tried to break the windows before she had come to live here—that was how she had met Flynn—they had tried since.
Slish.
Like sharp branches brushing glass, but there were no trees. She looked at the window through the plume of her freshly lit cigarette, inhaled. No rain, no hail, one of the panes cracked. Bastards.

Elisabeth was at the bottom of the steps before she remembered she could not get out. She stood by the door, snarling. In the light from the tiny vestibule window, set high in the wall, she could see the large, wrought iron handle on the door turn a fraction. Then stop, turn back, resettle itself, quietly and carefully.

She kicked the door with both feet in turn, pounded it with one fist, willing it to give way. The sound of her onslaught was puny, without an echo. There was a shuffling outside the door. She took a drag of the cigarette, bent down and blew smoke through the keyhole, stupid, futile gesture. The shuffling stopped: she could hear footsteps, going away. She scampered back up the stairs, pulled a chair and tried to look through the window. Peering in vain through wavy glass, she could see nothing but street lights in an empty street.

For the first time in a long time, she was not afraid. The anger was so intense, it pained her. She paced, smoking without stopping, hearing the time pass. Then the sound of Joe returning. Without his van: in a taxi.

He came in, whistling. Big grin, his arms held aloft in submission
as if he had just been threatened with a gun, anxious to please. One key in each hand.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry. Shouldn't have done that.” He was slightly drunk.

She threw the empty wine bottle at him with as much force as she could muster. It hit his shoulder, bounced, fell to the floor without smashing and rolled away. Not as satisfying as she might have hoped, but the shock on his face mollified her.

“You should see me with a knife.”

“No thanks.”

“Put the keys down. Both of them.”

He did.

“If I were you,” she said. “I would be a very good boy and go straight to my room.”

T
here was some splendid
stuff you could use to clean a chandelier, Audrey said. She had read all about it in a magazine. You sprayed it like spraying flies, and all the bits of dirt dropped off as you waited. Which saved you standing up a ladder and washing it piece by piece, like some poor parlourmaid. She was not sure where you could get it. She would ask them in the posh shop down the road, if she could bear to speak to them.

“No,” Matthew said. “Please.”

“Why, petal? Don't you want everyone to see what a fucking brilliant job you've done? Because I do.”

“No. Not yet.”

And yet, he was immensely pround of it, they knew he was. Maybe he had simply acquired their own preference for procrastination, as well as for things more than a little jaded and dirty. Or perhaps,
Donald suggested,
sotto voce
, in case the walls could pick up his own version of classified information, Matthew wanted his granny to see the thing. Wanted to rub her nose in it for throwing it out, like she did the hedgehog, all in the interests of her clear, cool taste. Her taste required the rooms to speak for themselves; all streamlined, no fuss. She used the features of the house and added the minimum of fine furnishings and in the nineteen-seventies she had been ahead of her time in Budley. Or perhaps Matthew was simply being a right little sod, lying to everybody, like he had the day before, and might do again today. Donald could see him doing it. Telling them he was going to be with his father, telling his father he was bidden to them, while telling his grandmother something entirely different and making himself scarce. Having everyone running round, looking for him. Dizzying everyone with lies.

“Not lies, dear,” Audrey said. “Fibs.”

“What's the difference?”

“Been alive all this time and not know the difference? When were you born?”

She was not laughing today.

The chandelier was almost complete, but Matthew seemed unable to fix the last few bits and it was dirtier than it had ever been. He seemed to make it dirtier as he went on; some of the small crystals were grey with grime. Ah, well, let him. It was his. Bless him, it was also rather lopsided, even if it was only a couple of feet from the ground. It was a big, cumbersome, ballroom beast. It would never have looked right in that house. Audrey could see why Diana Kennedy had wanted rid of it, also why they had left it alone so long. It made her feel both sentimental and sick.

“Shall we go somewhere Matthew?” Diana Kennedy said. “What would you like to do?”

“Nothing.”

“Whatever
you like.”

“Don't like anything.”

“We can bring your friends.”

“FUCK OFF!”

“DON'T SPEAK TO ME LIKE THAT!”

It was only another game he had been playing. Going up the cliff path, further away than any eye from the village could see, scrambling down to a new cove only accessed by boats and serious walkers, looking for a cave. That was what he was doing: looking for a fucking cave, so that he could live in it, until Lizzie came back, because then she would have to come back. There were loads of caves along the coast, but Lizzie had shown him this one in the weeks when they had played all day, even after dark and even when it was cold. She would know where to look. That was what happened in stories and he had read lots of stories. Videos were unheard of in either of his houses: telly was rationed.

Breathless and dirty and scratched and slightly frightened, Matthew found
the
cave. Not as he had seen it the winter before, swept clean by high tides, but as it was now. A shallow room, a picnic and trysting spot for the brave. There were beer cans which he kicked aside, cartons and polythene bags, a damp old sweater and a lingering smell. Something glittered in the gloom, but it was only broken glass. Oh, he could dream, but even he knew that he could not stay here, not ever, not alone. So he had scrambled back uphill, slowly, refusing to look back. Going home in the grey afternoon.

Go to your room, Matthew. There's a good boy. Go to your room and play with Mummy's rings. If we had the money if we had treasure, we would send you away. Because we think that would be for your own good, the way it would
always be for his own good, to make him a bit more like other boys and girls.

Home, before four, ravenous. Missing for hours, such a fuss. But nobody would ever hit him, although he almost wished they would. He could tell they wanted to, especially Dad, but they were never going to do that. He looked at all the polished stones in his Granny-house bedroom; did not like them very much any more. Besides, he had given the best of them to Lizzie, and he was getting angrier and angrier with her, too. For being somewhere else when he needed her.

E
lisabeth examined her face in the bathroom mirror, along with millions of other people doing the same thing at the same time: checking they were fit to be seen before going out in the workaday world. She was almost sure the twist to her neck was less pronounced. She simply looked quizzical rather than distorted. She nodded at herself, not allowing hope or vanity to intervene. There were going to be no more mornings of evading the bloody mirror: there was too much else to do, but what? What did one do, when dread lurked like a dental appointment, when life seemed full of threat and recrimination? And yet she was so fed up of being fed up, that the urge to forget it all and go out and play tickled and itched worse than the scar on her back had done. There was only one real imperative for the day, and that would have to wait until after office hours. She patted her face dry, made the pony-tail. Easy.

Joe was lounging against a wall, waiting. He shot into the bathroom as soon as she came out, desperate. Serve him right.

“Someone tried to get in last night,” she yelled through the door. The phone was ringing. Elisabeth
regarded it with deep suspicion, snatched at it. There was Flynn, burbling. Would she let in the district surveyor, again?

“Again? For what?”

“The bells, my dear. They're rotten.”

“Father, they've always been rotten. Tell him another day. Tomorrow. Day after.”

Get off the line. Let her sort out what to do with her energy. Light a cigarette. Let the caffeine tell her there was nothing important to do, the anger with Joe still boiling, the suspicion worse. He emerged, the sound of running water half-drowning his words. Plumbing in the tower was noisy.

“What did you say, about someone wanting to get in?”

“It's all right. Could have been the fairies. All these men of mine, trying to get in. Could have been anyone. Not the first time. Flynn's got the only other key.”

Daylight made everything so innocent. It could have been anyone. Could have been Flynn, looking for big, burly Joe. And since this was the last day she was going to take Joe at face value, she may as well enjoy it.

“You're going shopping? You?” He looked half-asleep, badly tired and a tad hungover, his hair in tangles, and his movements clumsy. It was endearing in a kind of way, if one liked that kind of thing.

“Yup. What the hell are you doing?”

She was angry with him and still wanted him there, where she could watch him. She wanted to look at him while he did not notice.

“Well, I do work, you know,” he said defensively, lumbering back into the bathroom, slamming the door. “I've got a job.”

“What kind of job, Joe?”

“Taking pictures of someone's broken leg. So they can sue the boss.”

“Oh, nice.”

He was back out again,
trundling upstairs, banging around and coming down again in miraculously tidy clothes. Entirely separate clothes in dry cleaning bags, to be worn for single occasions, stripped off and reincased as soon as he came home. Where is home, Joe? No-one travels as light as you. What do you want?

“I'd cancel it,” he said. “But you don't want me to do that.”

She shrugged, irritated by her own disappointment; feeling like a poor, spoiled little girl, who did not want to be alone while everyone else goes to work and so, takes refuge in sarcasm.

“Presumably you aren't going to fight for the keys and lock me up?”

“Nope. That was a mistake. I'm very, very sorry. Just go shopping will you? Stay with the crowds and come home in daylight. If I work, I get paid. Champagne at five, promise. Lots to talk about. Can I have a key?”

“No. Yes. I suppose so.”

He looked a different animal in professional mode, until he turned round and she could see where the back seam of his nice canvas slacks had been sewn up in darker thread. She was not the only person who needed to go shopping.

“Why the hell do you photograph injuries?”

“It pays,” he said. “Working for lawyers and doctors pays. Something has to.”

After he had gone she remembered the man behind a camera, the first bringer of hope, leaving a pink rose. Where
was
Jenkins? At work. She had found the number; now she could not find the man, only the message on his machine. Available after six. The tower had a certain stillness. She was suddenly homesick for the sea, and for crowds. She took off the sweat suit and put on yesterday's clothes, checked
the door on the way out and found it reassuring.

What did he want?

She had forgotten to phone Matthew. Or her mother.

M
rs. Smythe banged on the door of her son's apartment to wake him up. This was such a regular ritual, she was no longer sure if he resented it or not, but she did it anyway. Punctuality was so important and she recalled that he had hated getting up for both school and college and she presumed it was the same now. No words were exchanged: she simply knocked until she heard movement. Then, as like as not, she went back to bed for an hour. Life did not begin at Select Friends much before eleven. This morning the ritual was the same, only she slid one of her buttermilk envelopes under his door. It went against the grain to put on paper anything pertinent to their own lives, so she had written in code.