Devices and Desires (11 page)

She had disliked Colin since their first meeting; the relationship at a glance had been fixed in the stereotyped antagonism between newly acquired fiancée and slightly disreputable old schoolmate and drinking partner. He had been best man at their wedding—a formidable pre-nuptial agreement had been necessary for that capitulation—and had carried out his duties with a mixture of incompetence, vulgarity and irreverence which, as she occasionally enjoyed telling Norman, had spoilt for her the memory of her big day. It was typical of him to choose this pub. God knew, it was vulgar enough. But at least she could be certain of one thing: it wasn’t a place where there was a risk of meeting anyone from the power station, at least not anyone who mattered. She disliked everything about the Clarence, the rough scrape of the moquette against her legs, the synthetic velvet which covered the walls, the baskets of ivy spiked with artificial flowers above the bar, the gaudiness of the carpet. Twenty years ago, it had been a cosy Victorian hostelry, seldom visited except by its regulars, with an open fire in winter and horse brasses polished to whiteness hung against the black beams. The lugubrious publican had seen it as his job to repel strangers and had employed to that end an impressive armoury of taciturnity, malevolent glances, warm beer and poor service. But the old pub had burnt down in the 1960s and been replaced by a more profitable and thrusting enterprise. Nothing of the old building remained, and the long extension to the bar, dignified by the name Banqueting Hall, provided for the undiscriminating a venue for weddings and local functions and on other nights served a predictable menu of prawns or soup, steak or chicken, and fruit salad with ice cream. Well, at least she had put her foot down over dinner. They had worked out their monthly budget to the last pound, and if Norman thought she was going to eat this overpriced muck with a perfectly good cold
supper waiting in the refrigerator at home and a decent programme on the telly, he could forget it. And they had better uses for their money than to sit here drinking with Colin and his latest tart, who had opened her legs to half Norwich if rumour was to be believed. There were the hire-purchase repayments on the sitting-room furniture and the car, not to mention the mortgage. She tried again to meet Norman’s eye, but he was rather desperately keeping his attention on that slut Yvonne. And that wasn’t proving difficult. Colin leaned over to her, his bold treacle-brown eyes half-mocking, half-inviting, Colin Lomas, who thought every woman would swoon when he beckoned.

“Relax, darling. Your old man’s enjoying himself. It’s your round, Norm.”

Ignoring Colin, she spoke to Norman: “Look, it’s time we were going. We agreed we’d leave at seven.”

“Oh, come on, Chrissie, give the lad a break. One more round.”

Without meeting her eyes, Norman said: “What’ll you have, Yvonne? The same again? Medium sherry?”

Colin said: “Let’s get on to spirits. I’ll have a Johnnie Walker.”

He was doing it on purpose. She knew that he didn’t even like whisky. She said: “Look, I’ve had enough of this bloody place. The noise has given me a head.”

“A headache? Nine months married and she’s started the headaches. No point in hurrying home tonight, Norm.”

Yvonne giggled.

Christine said, her face burning, “You were always vulgar, Colin Lomas, but now you’re not even funny with it. You three can do what you like. I’m going home. Give me the car keys.”

Colin leaned back and smiled. “You heard what your lady wife said. She wants the car keys.”

Without a word, shame-faced, Norman took them out of his pocket and slid them over the table. She snatched them up, pushed back the table, struggled past Yvonne and rushed to the door. She was almost crying with rage. It took her a minute to unlock the car, and then she sat shaking behind the wheel, waiting until her hands were steady enough to switch on the ignition. She heard her mother’s voice on the day when she had announced her engagement: “Well, you’re thirty-two, and if he’s what you want, I suppose you know your own mind. But you’ll never make anything of him. Weak as water, if you ask me.” But she had thought that she could make something of him, and that small semi-detached house outside Norwich represented nine months of hard work and achievement. Next year he was due for promotion at the insurance office. She would be able to give up her job as secretary in the Medical Physics Department at Larksoken Power Station and start the first of the two children she had planned. She would be thirty-four by then. Everyone knew that you shouldn’t wait too long.

She had only passed her driving test after her marriage, and this was the first time that she had driven unaccompanied at night. She drove slowly and carefully, her anxious eyes peering ahead, glad that, at least, the route home was familiar. She wondered what Norman would do when he saw that the car had gone. Almost certainly he would expect to find her sitting there, fuming but ready to be driven home. Now he’d have to rely for a lift on Colin, who wouldn’t be so keen on coming out of his way. And if they thought that she was going to invite Colin and Yvonne in for a drink when they arrived, they would get a shock.

The thought of Norman’s discomfiture at finding her gone cheered her a little, and she pressed her foot down on the accelerator, anxious to distance herself from the three of
them, to reach the safety of home. But suddenly the car gave a stutter and the engine died. She must have been driving more erratically than she thought, for she found herself half-slewed across the road. It was a bad place to be stranded, a lonely stretch of country lane with a thin band of trees on either side, and it was deserted. And then she remembered. Norman had mentioned that they needed to fill up with petrol and must be sure to call at the all-night garage after they left the Clarence. It was ridiculous to have let the tank get so low, but they had had an argument only three days earlier on whose turn it was to call at the garage and pay for the petrol. All her anger and frustration returned. For a moment she sat there, beating her hands impotently on the wheel, desperately turning the key in the ignition, willing the engine to start. But there was no response. And then irritation began to give way to the first tricklings of fear. The road was deserted and, even if a motorist came by and drew up, could she be certain that he wasn’t a kidnapper, a rapist, even the Whistler? There had been that horrible murder on the A3 only this year. Nowadays you could trust no one. And she could hardly leave the car where it was, slewed across the road. She tried to recall when she had last passed a house, an AA box, a public telephone, but it seemed to her that she had been driving through deserted countryside for at least ten minutes. Even if she left the dubious sanctuary of the car, she had no clue to the best direction in which to seek help. Suddenly a wave of total panic swept across her like nausea and she had to resist the urge to dash from the car and hide herself among the trees. But what good would that do? He might be lurking even there.

And then, miraculously, she heard footsteps and, looking round, saw a woman approaching. She was dressed in trousers and a trench coat and had a mane of fair hair beneath a
tight-fitting beret. At her side, on a leash, trotted a small, smooth-haired dog. Immediately all her anxiety vanished. Here was someone who would help her push the car into the side of the road, who would know in which direction lay the nearest house, who would be a companion on her walk. Without even troubling to slam the door of the car, she called out happily and ran smiling towards the horror of her death.

The dinner had been excellent and the wine, a Château Potensac ’78, an interesting choice with the main course. Although Dalgliesh knew of Alice Mair’s reputation as a cookery writer, he had never read any of her books and had no idea to what culinary school, if any, she belonged. He had hardly feared being presented with the usual artistic creation swimming in a pool of sauce and accompanied by one or two undercooked carrots and mangetouts elegantly arranged on a side plate. But the wild ducks carved by Alex Mair had been recognizably ducks, the piquant sauce, new to him, enhanced rather than dominated the taste of the birds and the small mounds of creamed turnip and parsnip were an agreeable addition to green peas. Afterwards they had eaten orange sorbet followed by cheese and fruit. It was a conventional menu but one intended, he felt, to please the guests rather than to demonstrate the ingenuity of the cook.

The expected fourth guest, Miles Lessingham, had unaccountably failed to arrive, but Alice Mair hadn’t rearranged her table, and the empty chair and unfilled wineglass were
uncomfortably evocative of Banquo’s ghost. Dalgliesh was seated opposite Hilary Robarts. The portrait, he thought, must have been even more powerful than he realized if it could so dominate his physical reaction to the living woman. It was the first time they had met, although he had known of her existence, as he had of all the handful of people who lived, as the Lydsett villagers said, “t’other side of the gate.” And it was a little strange that this was their first meeting; her red Golf was a frequent sight on the headland, her cottage had frequently met his eyes from the top storey of the mill. Now, physically close for the first time, he found it difficult to keep his eyes off her, living flesh and remembered image seeming to fuse into a presence both potent and disturbing. It was a handsome face, a model’s face, he thought, with its high cheekbones, long, slightly concave nose, wide full lips and dark angry eyes deeply set under the strong brows. Her crimped springing hair, held back with two combs, fell over her shoulders. He could imagine her posed, mouth moistly open, hips jutting, and staring at the cameras with that apparently obligatory look of arrogant resentment. As she leaned forward to twitch another grape from the bunch and almost toss it into her mouth, he could see the faint freckles which smudged the dark forehead, the glisten of hairs above a carved upper lip.

On the other side of their host sat Meg Dennison, delicately but unfussily peeling her grapes with pink-tipped fingers. Hilary Robarts’s sultry handsomeness emphasized her own very different look, an old-fashioned, carefully tended but unself-conscious prettiness which reminded him of photographs of the late 1930s. Their clothes pointed up the contrast. Hilary wore a shirt-waister dress in multicoloured Indian cotton, three buttons at the neck undone. Meg Dennison was in a long black skirt and a blue-patterned silk blouse with a bow at the neck.
But it was their hostess who was the most elegant. The long shift in fine dark-brown wool worn with a heavy necklace of silver and amber hid her angularity and emphasized the strength and regularity of the strong features. Beside her Meg Dennison’s prettiness was diminished almost to insipidity and Hilary Robarts’s strong-coloured cotton looked tawdry.

The room in which they were dining must, he thought, have been part of the original cottage. From these smoke-blackened beams Agnes Poley had hung her sides of bacon, her bundles of dried herbs. In a post slung over that huge hearth she had cooked her family’s meals and, perhaps, at the end had heard in its roaring flames the crackling fagots of her dreadful martyrdom. Outside the long window had passed the helmets of marching men. But only in the name of the cottage was there a memory of the past. The oval dining table and the chairs were modern, as were the Wedgwood dinner service and the elegant glasses. In the drawing room, where they had drunk their pre-dinner sherry, Dalgliesh had a sense of a room which deliberately rejected the past, containing nothing which could violate the owner’s essential privacy: no family history in photograph or portrait, no shabby heirlooms given room out of nostalgia, sentimentality or family piety, no antiques collected over the years. Even the few pictures, three recognizably by John Piper, were modern. The furniture was expensive, comfortable, well designed, too elegantly simple to be offensively out of place. But the heart of the cottage wasn’t there. It was in that large, warm-smelling and welcoming kitchen.

He had only been half-listening to the conversation, but now he forced himself to be a more accommodating guest. The talk was general, candlelit faces leaned across the table and the hands which peeled the fruit or fidgeted with the glasses were as individual as the faces. Alice Mair’s strong but elegant
hands with their short nails, Hilary Robarts’s long, knobbled fingers, the delicacy of Meg Dennison’s pink-tipped fingers, a little reddened with housework. Alex Mair was saying: “All right, let’s take a modern dilemma. We know that we can use human tissue from aborted foetuses to treat Parkinson’s disease and probably Alzheimer’s. Presumably you’d find that ethically acceptable if the abortion were natural or legal but not if it were induced for the purpose of providing the tissue. But you can argue that a woman has a right to the use that she makes of her own body. If she’s particularly fond of someone who has Alzheimer’s and wants to help him by producing a foetus, who has the right to say no? A foetus isn’t a child.”

Hilary Robarts said: “I notice that you assume the sufferer to be helped is a man. I suppose he’d feel entitled to use a woman’s body for this purpose, as he would any other. But why the hell should he? I can’t imagine that a woman who’s actually had an abortion wants to go through that again for any man’s convenience.”

The words were spoken with extreme bitterness. There was a pause; then Mair said quietly: “Alzheimer’s is rather more than an inconvenience. But I’m not advocating it. In any case, under present law, it would be illegal.”

“Would that worry you?”

He looked into her angry eyes. “Naturally it would worry me. Happily it isn’t a decision that I shall ever be required to make. But we’re not talking about legality, we’re talking about morality.”

His sister asked: “Are they different?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it? Are they, Adam?”

It was the first time he had used Dalgliesh’s Christian name. Dalgliesh said: “You’re assuming there’s an absolute morality independent of time or circumstance.”

“Wouldn’t you make that assumption?”

“Yes, I think I would, but I’m not a moral philosopher.”