Deception and Desire (12 page)

‘Yes, Mummy. ' Bye for now.'

Maggie replaced the receiver and stood for a moment feeling like a wrung-out dish rag. At least her mother was not worrying about Ros. How could she ever have imagined for one moment that she would?

She has the brain of a pea, Maggie thought viciously. How on earth had poor Dad put up with her? No wonder he'd gone to an early grave, disillusioned no doubt with the discovery that the beautiful young woman he'd fallen in love with had turned out to have no real substance beneath that decorative exterior and the excessively charming manner that made fools of sensible men.

‘She's like a baked Alaska,' Ros had said once. ‘It looks good but when you bite into it there's nothing there, just melted ice cream.'

Maggie, who had always admired what she thought of as Ros's sparkling wit, had laughed because it really was very funny, although she was not at all sure, then, that one should say such cutting things about one's own mother. Now, however, she felt she knew exactly what Ros had meant.

‘Thank goodness we take after Daddy!' Ros had said on another occasion, and this was a sentiment Maggie had whole-heartedly agreed with. Just as long as they
did
take after the father they had both adored. Sometimes Maggie had nightmares thinking she had spotted one of her mother's infuriating traits in her own nature …

But at least the conversation had told her one thing, she thought, going back into the kitchen to make another cup of coffee. Whatever impression they had given Mike, the police
were
investigating. At least they had been to see Dulcie – though whether they would pursue their enquiries, now that she had told them she was of the opinion there was nothing whatever to worry about, was quite another matter.

As she drank her coffee Maggie's hand hovered over her cigarette packet. She shouldn't really … it was much too early in the day … but the circumstances were really exceptional. I really will give up when I go home, Maggie decided, then, her conscience pacified, took out a cigarette and lit it.

She'd been right first time, it was too early in the day. The tobacco tasted stale on her tongue but she smoked it anyway, thinking about what she should do next.

Book a hire car – that was a number-one priority. Without transport there was very little she could do. The thought reminded her that Ros's car too was missing – just about the only hopeful indication so far. Had the police circulated the number? she wondered. Would they be keeping a lookout for it? But she couldn't imagine it somehow, and it wasn't as if a Golf GTi would attract much attention. If Ros had had flashy taste in cars it might have been easier. But she didn't. She liked something fast, reliable and easy to park. Functional, like everything else in her life.

Maggie sighed. Perhaps she should take a leaf out of Ros's book and organise herself and her life methodically. She drew one of the envelopes she had opened earlier across the table towards her, scrabbled in the drawer for a pencil, and began to make a list of what she intended to do.

1. Book hire car
2. Phone for taxi, if necessary, to go and collect it
3. See Brendan
4. Go to Vandina
5. Take any information to police and try to shake them

up
6. Confer with Mike
7. Ring Mummy again

She drew on her cigarette, daunted suddenly by the day that lay ahead of her. In Corfu she would have had nothing more taxing to do than helping her mother-in-law with washing the carpet, and then she would have had the rest of the day to sunbathe, swim, read, or anything that took her fancy.

I was right, she thought, to try and organise myself as Ros does. I've become so lazy that if I didn't nothing would get done.

And then the irony of the situation occurred to her. Ros might be the organised one but it was Ros who was missing, whilst she, Maggie, the wanderer, who had never had any particular ambition but to marry the man she loved, was here trying to rationalise a situation that was quite beyond her!

At eleven o'clock Brendan Newman was still in bed. He rarely surfaced before midday and today was no exception. What, after all, was there to get up for? It wasn't as though he had a job to go to – not, of course, that he had been very keen to get up in the days when he
had
had a job.

Brendan was, he had always proudly maintained, a night owl, much at his best after dark. He never really came to life until he had had his first whisky of the day, but when everyone else was ready to fall into bed Brendan would still be going strong, still tipping the bottle and still yarning with anyone who would listen to him. In the old days there had been plenty. His name was familiar to everyone within a forty-mile radius, and the fact that he was a radio personality had given him star status. But even now, when newcomers to the area would ask ‘Brendan
who
?' he could still command an audience at any club or party.

When Brendan was on form there was something almost magical about the way he could talk, the words spilling out in a torrent that could be amusing as well as informative – somehow he managed to sound like an expert on almost any subject that was raised – and to talk to him was to find the conversation hijacked at every turn, but people rarely minded. With his Irish ancestry Brendan was a superb raconteur – ‘Sure an' I kissed the Blarney Stone. What else would a true son of Ireland do?' he would say, exaggerating the rolling lilt so that it sounded as if he had left County Cork just last week instead of when he was five years old.

In the beginning the powers that be at the local radio station where he had worked had been doubtful about employing someone with so marked a ‘foreign'accent. It was their policy to use presenters with a faint local burr – quite the vogue since the demise of the ubiquitous ‘BBC Oxford English' accent. But Brendan had blarneyed his way into the station and into the hearts and homes of the listeners. Without a doubt he would have gone far if he had had as much self-discipline as he had charm. His own programme quickly followed the first tentatively arranged fill-ins, he had acquired a cult following and national stations had begun to show an interest.

But Brendan had let vanity and licentiousness spoil it all for him. Instead of going home to his bed to be fresh for the next day's work he had chosen to hang out in the sort of places where everyone wanted to fête and admire him, buy him drinks and listen to his endless fund of stories. And before long his way of life had caught up with him. Jaded and hung-over he had begun turning in too late to do the proper and very necessary preparations for his programme. He missed interviews, he lost tapes, he was extremely rude on air to some of the people who called with answers for his jokey daily phone-in quiz. Several times he had failed to turn up at the studio at all, and one day when his producer and a reporter went to the bachelor flat in town, which he used during the working week, to find out what had happened to him they had discovered him still fast asleep – not in bed, but in the bath!

‘What the hell are you doing there?' the producer, badly shaken because he had been momentarily convinced that Brendan was dead, of hypothermia, if not an overdose, had demanded.

‘Sleeping! What do you think I'm bloody well doing?' Brendan, who had a thundering headache and cramp in both legs, had roared back.

‘But why in the
bath
, for Chrissakes?'

‘It's nearer the loo if I want to pee or be sick.'

The producer was beginning to realise that Brendan could be as disgusting as he could be charming.

‘Don't you know we are trying to run a radio station and you are supposed to be on air in fifteen minutes?' he had yelled.

‘Don't worry, I'll be there.'

‘You bloody well won't! You're in no fit state. God alone knows what you'd say. Bruce is going to cover for you.'

‘Brace Stapleton? That spineless, boring little git … ?'

‘At least he's there! He's pleasant and he's polite and people like him. He reminds them of their favourite son.'

‘You make me puke!'

‘No, Brendan, the drink does that. And I promise you, if you don't cut it out and start taking your job seriously you'll be out of the station so fast your feet won't touch the ground.'

‘You wouldn't do that to me. I'm Brendan Newman, remember?'

‘I don't care who you are, pal. You can't get away with this sort of carry-on and you'd better start believing it.'

Brendan had sworn at him, using the most colourful and expressive words in his vocabulary, which, even in his present condition, was impressive. It did not impress his producer, however, or the board of directors called together to discuss his case.

It was a pity, they said – Brendan could have been a wonderful asset. He had talent, without a doubt. But the way he was going he was fast becoming a disaster area. Whatever the repercussions he would have to go.

Brendan, marginally more sober, had kicked and argued and threatened, without any success, to sue for wrongful dismissal. He had found himself out of a job and with the sort of reputation that did not bode well for getting another one.

During his glory days in the world of entertainment Brendan had acquired an Equity card and he used it now. At first, because his name was well known, he got a certain amount of work, mostly doing voice-overs for advertisements and trailers, and he had one foray into pantomime, playing the King in a small local professional production of Old King Cole. But as the legend of his unreliability grew and people began to forget his one-time celebrity status, even this work began to dry up and Brendan found he had got what he had always thought he prized most – plenty of time to do exactly what he wanted. If he drank and yarned the night away there was no longer any need to fall out of bed next day, shave the stubble from his increasingly raddled face, and turn in for a day's work.

It had not, however, made him happy. The morose side of his nature, previously well concealed beneath his personable jovial exterior, had begun to take over, and Brendan blamed the rest of the world for his slide into obscurity and the fact that he no longer had the ready money to live the life of luxury he had become accustomed to, wining and dining without a thought to the expense, taking extravagant foreign holidays and running his flashy sports car. He blamed the radio station, he blamed the fickle public, he blamed fate. But most of all he blamed Ros.

‘I hate that bitch,' he would say when the drink was in him. ‘She was nothing when I met her. I gave her everything. God knows I loved her. I set her up on a pedestal and worshipped her. And see what she's done to me!'

‘What did she do?' newcomers to Brendan's circle would ask – old friends knew better than to lead him on.

‘Lied to me, deceived me, cuckolded me and made me look a complete fool. I'd have done anything in the world for that woman – she used me up and when there was nothing left she didn't want me any more. I hate her for what she's done to me, but yet I love her still. Sometimes I think I'll kill her, just so no one else can have her. Sure an' it's the only way I'll ever have any peace of mind now, for the thought of her with another man drives me out of my mind!'

He was a tragic figure, the newcomers would think, his romantic heart broken, his whole life destroyed by his love for a faithless woman.

His old cronies, however, though they still enjoyed his company, took a more pragmatic view. Brendan had no one but himself to blame for losing Ros, they thought, just as he had no one but himself to blame for his ruined career and the mess that was his whole life.

This morning Brendan had woken a little earlier than usual. He came out of his heavy drink-induced slumber to find the sun streaming in, hurting his eyes when he opened them and making his head throb unbearably. He closed his eyes again and swore.

Why the hell did the sun have to be shining this morning just when he was feeling so bloody awful? It hadn't shone for the last week and he didn't suppose it would shine again for another. But this morning here it was, unrelentingly piercing, even with his eyes closed. Of course the worst of it was he hadn't bothered to draw the curtains last night. He couldn't even remember undressing, though he supposed he must have done since he was now clad in nothing but his underwear.

Funny, he thought, the way you could do things and not remember you'd done them. It was happening to him more and more often these days, whole chunks of memory simply disappearing, as if his mind had totally blanked out. It had happened for years, of course, when he'd had too much to drink, and he'd lose a whole evening, have no recollection of where he'd been or who he'd been with, but this was different and more disturbing because it was more far-reaching.

He'd be unable to find something – a book, his wallet, his watch – he'd spend ages looking for it, getting madder and madder, and then when it turned up it would be in a place that only he could have put it. Or he'd begin to say something only to discover he couldn't remember what it was. For a man who loved talking as much as Brendan did, that was infuriating. If he lost his thread in mid-speech he could usually blarney his way out of it but it wasn't funny, all the same, not to him. He forgot arrangements, he forgot that friends had called him, he forgot where he had been on a certain day at a certain time.

It's being inactive that's to blame, he thought. It's not having any work to do. I'm going to seed. Time to do something about it – time to pick myself up out of the gutter where those bloody so-and-sos have kicked me and show them they can't beat Brendan Newman so easily.

His resolve, for the short time it had lasted, had been high. Brendan with an idea could be as enthusiastic as anyone – more enthusiastic than most. No one could doubt his initial keenness – it was staying power Brendan lacked, along with self-discipline.