December (27 page)

      
'Coincidence,' Shelley said unsteadily, hugging herself.
      
'Sure,' Weasel said. 'You call him
sensitive, Jesus, sometimes I reckon he's the most insensitive bastard I ever
met. Look, Shel, it's getting parky, we could go in the van, make a cuppa ...'

      
'I haven't got time, Weasel. Besides I've said too much already.'

      
'No you ain't. It needs to come out, this does. Go back to what
you was saying. This syndrome bit.'

      
'Oh, Christ ...' Shelley glanced behind her towards the house,
began talking low and quick. 'Look, after ... after Deborah died, as you must've
gathered, he was very bad. He saw Vanessa being Down's Syndrome as a kind of
retribution. I mean, I
don't
know
what happened that night, I convinced myself I didn't
want
to know. I really thought it was just a
phase
. And I thought - arrogantly, I realize that now - that I could
pull him out of it. But it got worse and worse, as you know, he withdrew … You
know about this house, why we had to come here?'

      
Weasel said carefully, 'I seen these geezers, the dowsers?'
      
'Checking out the spot, yes. Making
sure it wasn't on a ley-line or something. Had to be a site nobody had lived on
before - hence the barn conversion. And using new materials, no old stones. And
no old trees - I still don't understand that one.'
      
'You got real problems, Shel. You
oughter've told me before, not been so self, self... proud. I fink a lot about
the big stupid bleeder, you know that.'

      
'I've coined my own phrase for it,' Shelley said. 'The problem.
My own clinical term.'

      
There was a familiar roar from the house. 'Shelley!' A sash window
shot up with a crash. 'Where are you, darlin'?'

      
'I'm out here, Tom.'

      
'Shelley, do I own a fucking tie?'

      
Shelley gave the Weasel a really hopeless smile and turned
back towards the house. 'We'll be leaving at eight-fifteen, OK?' she said
hopefully.

      
'Sure. Don't worry 'bout a fing. Shel ...'

      
She stopped. He could only see the white sweater, grey from this
distance, and the paleness of her hair.

      
'Wossa term?' Weasel said. 'This problem? Wossit called?'

      
Shelley carried on walking until she was just a smudge. Then she
stopped and called back, over her shoulder.

      
'Total
Psychic
Allergy Syndrome. Work it out.'

      
And she disappeared into Tom Storey's ugly, yellow, sterile house.

'This is Meryl,' Martin
Broadbank said. 'She does for me.'
      
She was tall, an inch or so taller
than Martin and maybe a year or two older. Black hair coiled up into something
exotic. A long, tight black dress with a little apron over it.

      
Fantasy figure, Stephen Case thought. Miss Whiplash meets Mrs
Danvers.

      
'How do you do,' Meryl said, and she had a deep, fairly
cultured voice, a voice you'd expect from the mistress of the house, as
distinct from the mistress of its owner.

      
Mistress. Archaic words came easily to mind in this setting,
the baronial hall with the Jacobean panelling and the big, central staircase
and that musty, fruity smell, like old, stored apples.

      
'Interesting place,' Stephen observed, trying not to appear over-impressed.
'How old?'

      
'Mainly seventeenth." Martin Broadbank was casual-formal,
black suit over a white polo shirt. 'With some sixteenth-century bits, or is it
fifteenth, I forget.'

      
Meryl said, with authority, 'There's a core of a smaller
house, at least fifteenth century, possibly earlier. Are you interested in old
buildings, Stephen?'

      
Letting him know with that 'Stephen' that she'd transcended the
paid-retainer stage.

      
'I'm interested in all kinds of old things,' he said, meeting
her eyes, as dark and tranquil as rock pools. He looked away, suddenly uneasy
about her.

      
'Which reminds me,' Broadbank beamed. 'I've invited a couple
of other neighbours, Sir Wilfrid and Lady Tulley. They, too, have a certain
interest in your mate Storey.'

      
Stephen Case wondered what he was getting into here, in this
essentially Addams family setting, the Jacobean farmhouse and the awesome
Meryl. Martin seemed to have developed a disturbing taste for costume drama.

      
'They're not exactly fans, though,' Broadbank said. 'Not of
his music, at least. Come through to the drawing-room, Steve.'

      
Meryl said, 'Excuse me,' and glided away to the side of the staircase.

      
'Dinner to prepare,' Broadbank explained. 'She's an absolute
treasure, that woman. Used to be one of my store managers. Now she manages me.'

      
'I bet she does,' Stephen said, following him into more oak
panelling, wing chairs around a deepset log fire, burgundy velvet curtains,
drawn. Thinking of his open plan flat in Islington: white walls and black
ceilings, three sofas and a bed angled around a £30,000 hi-fi system. Wondering
where he'd gone wrong.

      
'I've always liked older women,' Broadbank said. 'Meryl
understands me. Knows when to be around and when to make herself scarce.
Awfully perceptive. I think this house would be a bit too much for me without
her. They can be quite oppressive, these old places. What is it you chaps
drink, tequila?'

      
'Sherry will be fine, thank you, Martin,' Stephen said
resentfully. He
did
prefer tequila,
actually, fuck it.

      
'Sit down, Steve. We've probably got a few minutes before
anyone shows. Let's plan this thing out. Tell me, what precise result are you
looking for this evening?'

      
Broadbank opened a previously invisible door in the panelling.
Lamplight glinted on bottles. 'Now - sweet, dry, Bristol Cream?'

      
'Dry.' Stephen slipped into a deep, fireside chair. 'It's difficult.
You see, I've acquired some tapes, back from when Storey was a force to be
reckoned with, when people were still talking about the great guitarists of our
time as Hendrix, Clapton, Beck and Storey. After this stuff was recorded -
immediately
after, according to some
sources - Storey started to go downhill.'

      
'Drink? Drugs?'

      
'That's the curious thing, I don't think so. His wife died, as
I mentioned, in difficult circumstances, but when did tragedy stifle
creativity? Look at Clapton, when his child was killed - writes a song which
becomes a kind of anthem for the bereaved.'

      
Stephen stretched his legs, making furrows in the deep, soft
rug. 'No, there's more to it, Plus, there are other people we believe were on
this album. Lee Gibson?'

      
'Even I've heard of him,' Broadbank said, handing him sherry
in a crystal schooner.
         
'And his
women. Piece in the
Mail
, I think,
the other week.'

      
'Yeah, yeah.'

      
'So there's money in this material, is there?'

      
Stephen Case shrugged. 'You can never tell.'

      
'Oh, come on, you wouldn't be going to all this trouble ...'

      
'Well, it's possible, yeah. You discover a missing album connecting
Lee Gibson, even if he
was
only a
drummer in those days, with the fallen idol, Tom Storey, plus whoever else. Sometimes
a mystique forms.'

      
'And if there isn't one already, you'll manufacture one. Don't
look at me like that, I'm a businessman. CDs, tins of soup, what's the difference?
And savoury flans with vegetarian cheese-substitute.'

      
'What?'

      
'Doesn't matter. Why do you need Storey? Why not just do what
you like with the stuff? You don't need his permission, do you?'

      
'No. The band have no rights. They took money up front. It's
our album - we could even sue them for not finishing it. But that's all in the
past. Right now, his co-operation wouldn't go amiss.'

      
'And you're curious, aren't you?'
      
'Just a little,' Stephen said.
      
'Steve, it's burning you up.'

      
'Yeah. Sure.' Better he think that than get the idea Stephen
Case might need a recording coup to save his career, to keep his head above all
the other younger heads with thicker hair.

      
A sudden draught, like a lorry going past, made him glance up;
one of the curtains was quivering.

      
Martin Broadbank smiled. 'You feel that?'

      
'Feel what?'

      
'This is my drawing-room. I went to considerable expense to ensure
it's totally draught-proof.'
      
'What are you saying?'

      
Martin Broadbank was sitting on the opposite side of the fire,
chinking something pale in a brandy balloon. He gave it a swirl.

      
'An old house just doesn't seem like the real thing
at all
without a ghost or two, don't you
think?'

      
Stephen Case smirked. 'That's rather pathetic, Martin.'
      
'We country dwellers keep an open mind
on such matters,' said Broadbank. 'And if I were you I'd keep my scepticism to myself
when Meryl's around. She attends a spiritualist church in Gloucester, every
Friday evening.'
      
'Jesus Christ. She
must
be good in bed.'
      
'The Lady Bluefoot. That's our ghost.
Lost her husband in a hunting accident in eighteen-something. Couldn't come to
terms with it, apparently, and used to have a place laid for him at the dinner
table every night. Now Meryl likes to set out a place for
her,
extra knives and forks and things. Keeps her sweet, she says.'

      
'If this is what living in the country does to you,' Case
said, 'I think I'll put up with the M25.'

      
Martin Broadbank stood up. 'I do hope the Storeys aren't going
to be late. Meryl's putting you next to the living legend himself, by the way.
I shall be next to
Mrs
Storey. Or
rather, next to Mrs Storey's sublime left breast.'

      
'Won't, er, Meryl be jealous?'

      
'Oh no,' said Broadbank. 'Meryl isn't like that at all.'

      
They heard a car approaching along the gravel drive.

X

The Man With Two Mouths

I
t was a fifteen-minute journey, no more than ten, eleven miles beyond
the village. Past the pub and the village hall, which were all lights. Past the
post office, in darkness. Past the pretty Cotswold stone church, floodlit.

      
In the first three-quarters of a mile, Tom Storey made three
attempts to get out of the Volvo.

      
'You bloody idiot,' Shelley yelled, as they crested the last
hill, the one with the sign which had Larkfield St Mary on the other side.

      
She put on the headlights, shoved her foot down on the
accelerator. If he jumped now he'd break his bloody neck and serve him right.

      
Safe in the knowledge that Tom was not a brave man in that
sense, she listened to him pulling the passenger door shut. She could also hear
his breath, like a distant train.

      
'Oh, honey, it'll be all right, trust me. People. You have to rediscover
people
.'

      
'You don't understand,' Tom mumbled sourly. 'You will never
understand.'

      
'I think I do, Tom,' she said, knowing all the same that, in a
sense, he was right.

      
He
had
tried,
though, digging out a quite respectable green cord jacket and a pair of brushed
denim trousers which were almost not jeans. No, he didn't have a tie, but she
did, a black one from when they were in fashion for women a couple of years
back, so he was wearing that; with all the three jacket buttons fastened you
almost couldn't tell the tie ended half-way down his chest. Or, if you could,
it looked like a fashion statement that hadn't quite come off.