Dying Flames (3 page)

Graham sat cautiously on the seat facing the director, feeling glad he was beyond being a student.

“Yes, I'll try to do that,” he said. “I'd better tell you what happened to me on Tuesday. I presume anything I tell you will be in total confidence?”

“Of course.” The fingers of the director's hands made a neat triangle on the desk.

“On Tuesday evening I was in the King William Hotel in Colchester. It is my hometown, and I was there for a school reunion. There was a knock on the door, and when I opened it, a girl stood outside. She was a complete stranger to me. The first thing she said was ‘Hello, Dad.' ”

The man's eyes widened. “I can see you must have been disturbed.”

“To put it mildly. In subsequent conversation—”

“You asked her into your room?”

“Yes. I suggested coffee downstairs, but she said wasn't it too public for the conversation we were going to have? I didn't think I had any choice. In that conversation it emerged that she must have been conceived in 1983, when I was working for Christian Aid in Mali.”

“I see…. Do you mind giving me her name?”

“The surname she uses I can't be sure about. Probably Webster. The Christian name is Christa. She said it was short for Christabel.”

“You can never be sure these days. I do seem to remember…” He pressed keys on his computer, then looked intently at the screen. “Yes, we have a Christa Webster. Second year, has been studying Art History. It became popular when Prince William did it at St. Andrews. Quite a lot of dropouts recently…Her birth date is given as August twenty-first, 1984.”

“That's what she told me.”

“And that makes any involvement of yourself unlikely?”

“Inconceivable…. Sorry. Couldn't have chosen a worse word.”

They laughed men-together laughs.

“Well, really, all the information I can give you, you have,” said the director. “So far as we here can tell, she is who she says she is and was born when she says she was born. What does the mother say?”

Graham shifted uneasily in his chair. “She hasn't said anything to me. I haven't contacted her.”

“I see. That seems to be the next step then, doesn't it?”

“Yes…. I'm reluctant to do that.”

He felt himself being looked at hard.

“You knew a woman called Webster in the past?”

“Somers. The girl said that was her mother's maiden name. But that was much further in the past.”

“You didn't meet up with her in Mali?”

“Certainly not. But the fact that I did once know someone who may be her mother makes me reluctant to contact her. I'm afraid of involving myself in something that really has nothing to do with me.”

“I can see that. Well, it would be impertinent for me to advise you what to do. Me a microbiologist, you a novelist with a grasp of motives and character. And you now have all the information that we have here.”

“Yes, and I'm grateful for that,” said Graham, standing up. “And grateful to you for your time.”

“Oh, don't mention it. It has provided a much needed change from adolescent angst. Though perhaps if I knew all the facts, it wouldn't seem so much of a change, eh?”

Graham was aware that his face gave him away, and he merely murmured, “Maybe not.”

“I said I wasn't going to advise you, but the habit is ingrained, with a job like mine. Shouldn't you make a decision: either get to the bottom of this, or get out of it as quickly and completely as possible?”

Graham kept his face as blank as possible and said, “Thank you again.”

But in his heart he was wondering if Christa would allow him to get out of this quickly and completely. He rather thought that Dr. Warhope's choice was no choice at all.

Graham dithered sadly before fixing on a date for a return to Romford. It wasn't as though he were in the middle of a book. The next novel was mulching away in his mind, at the stage where all the crucial events and characters were open to question and revision. Truth to tell, the book was contending with real life: nothing that had happened in Colchester or since could be incorporated into
Events and Their Shadows
(provisional title), so in a sense it was either/or: life or novel. Graham told himself it would be a disaster (artistic and possibly legal) to build a novel on recently experienced events and emotions. And yet—how he was tempted to do just that!

In the end he made a decision about Romford. He remembered Lucetta and Elizabeth in
The Mayor of Casterbridge
agreeing to meet to discuss an important matter “the first fine day next week.” How sensible! How right for the English climate, which most years offers few and isolated fine days—days that should be chosen to do anything interesting in. Hardy was always good on weather. He would go to Romford on the first fine day of next week.

Thursday was fine. It was fine when he got up, and it had been predicted as fine the night before. There was no getting away from it. There was excitement in him, but it contended with fear of disappointment. Nothing was ever uncomplicated and “straight on” with Graham. Meeting up with an old girlfriend was a sort of emotional minefield. The possibilities for disillusion were limitless. Then another thought struck him: had Peggy even been a “girlfriend,” in the usual meaning of the term?

The feeling of unease in the pit of his belly increased as, over a breakfast of toast, he faced up to the fact that he had formulated no plan. He had no idea of how he was going to confront her, or with what.
Was
he going to confront her at all? Couldn't it just be fabricated to seem like a fortuitous meeting, during which they could talk about this and that, mostly things in the past that were innocuous?

Yet he had the materials for a confrontation, that was for sure. She had furnished her daughter with a false paternity, and he was the victim of her deception. One of the heroes of his novels would have had a clear idea of how he would conduct himself and what he wanted to get out of the interview, even if he ended the encounter more doubtful and less fired up than when he'd gone into it. Graham on the other hand was quite unsure of his tactics and had to content himself with the feeble resolution that he would “see how things turned out.” It occurred to him as he drove across the boundary of Romford that this could be a recipe for disaster.

He found Milton Terrace again without much difficulty and parked the car outside number twenty-five. No lights were on in the house, but why should there be on a fine September morning at ten thirty? He let himself through the front gate and walked up the path, noting the dead roses that lined its once neat beds. He rang the front doorbell and stood listening to the silence. Of course Peggy could still be in bed. He rang again.

“Are you looking for Mrs. Webster?”

It was the next-door house to his right, where an elderly woman was coming out of her front door with a shopping trolley.

“That's right.”

“She works at Halliburton's mornings—has done for years. Are you a friend?”

“In a way. Let's say a onetime friend.”

“Only you don't look like the usual…” Her voice faded away. “I just thought I shouldn't have said anything about her if you were sort of official. Like a debt collector or something. But if you really are a friend…”

“I am. From years ago in Colchester.”

“Oh, Colchester! That's a
nice
town. I wouldn't have moved here from there, not for the world. But still, they say she had no choice, or her parents didn't. Anyway, you'll find her in Halliburton's.”

“And Halliburton's is…?”

“The greengrocer's in Wayland Road.” She waved a hand to her right. “Only greengrocer's we've got left around here. Nowadays it's all supermarkets, isn't it? Still, their fruit and veg section always looks lovely and clean, doesn't it? Some people don't like a lot of dirt with their potatoes and carrots.”

And she nodded to him and went off to the left.

Graham got into his car and headed in the direction she had indicated. Two minutes later he saw the sign for Wayland Road and drove off into a quiet side street to park.

Wayland Road was a street of shops—not large high-street ones, but fairly busy ones serving that part of Romford. The shopkeepers looked as if they were suffering from shopping precincts and from supermarkets where the vegetables didn't look as if they'd come out of the earth, but were still putting up a brave fight against the modern world. Graham stood on the corner, casting his eyes up and down the shops on the other side of the street. There it was:
HALLIBURTON
'
S GREENGROCERY AND GENERAL STORE
, painted but fading on a board across the door and windows, with a blackboard standing on the pavement advertising prices and special bargains. He dallied his way in its direction, then stood outside the window as if he were fascinated by the displays of carrots and courgettes, along with special Indian and Caribbean delicacies.

Inside the shop, beside and hovering near the till, were a thin, bespectacled couple, who looked more like university lecturers than greengrocers. Probably militant vegetarians, Graham thought, because he had a set of prejudices that he cherished. Serving a customer was a stoutish, fleshy woman with fluttering hands. He edged closer to the door.

“That's a little over a pound, Mrs. Jackson—is that all right? And then it was a cabbage, wasn't it? This looks a nice one, doesn't it? Fifty-five P that one is…”

He still hadn't seen her face, but his heart seemed to have stopped. That was the voice. The one he had listened to offstage, the one with the assumed rural accent, the one that had rung through the Colchester Grammar School hall (he had listened at the back as well)—the voice that had touched every heart. And in particular every male heart.

“Is that all for today?…That's fine…. Oh, hello, Mrs. Woodcruft. What is it for you, then?”

That was the voice that had promised “to crown the Dauphin in Rheims Cathedral…And to make the English leave France.” And when Robert de Baudricourt (that had been Garry McCartney) had sarcastically said, “Anything else?” she had replied with a sweetness that had set Graham's heart jumping in his throat, “Not just at present, thank you, Squire.”

And this was the voice that was now selling cabbages and turnips.

She turned in his direction, without seeing him. The face was plumper, older of course, but still wonderfully attractive. If the neighbor had been implying a succession of male visitors to her house (
had
she been? Graham's brain throbbed at the thought, as it had not when she'd said it), it was not surprising. Graham swallowed hard and pushed open the door of the shop.

Peggy was just finishing serving Mrs. Woodcruft and ushering her in the direction of the cash desk. She turned toward Graham, and her mouth opened to ask what she could get him. But she paused for a second, then said:

“It's Graham, isn't it? Graham Broadbent? This is a nice surprise. I always knew you'd turn up someday.”

She spoke as if it was a delightful coincidence, but also, oddly, as if it had been bound to happen. Graham rather resented the idea that he was bound to turn up in the course of time in a backstreet of Romford. The President of the Immortals had no such plan for him, and she must surely have realized that she was the only reason for his appearance in Halliburton's Greengrocery and General Store.

“Hello, Peggy,” he said, trying to make his voice sound assured and relaxed. “It's been a long time.”

“Yes, time hasn't stood still for either of us,” she said, but with a coquettish tipping of the head as if willing him to say that it had for her. But Graham's moment of heart-stop was over, and he was in no mood to be coquetted by an old flame.

“No, we can't buck the universal trend,” he said firmly.

“Look, I have my coffee break in ten minutes' time,” said Peggy. “We could go to Genevieve's down the road. The coffee's all right, and the cakes are lovely.”

“Take your break now, Peggy,” said the woman at the cash desk. “We're not busy, so you can take your time.”

They know who I am, thought Graham. And they know the connection between us. Or the supposed connection.

“That would be nice,” he said. “There's a lot of catching up to be done in a short time.”

Her face briefly registered disappointment at this, but she went into the back of the shop. Graham saw her reflected in the glass of the door taking off her overall, then touching up her light makeup in a mirror on the wall. It took hardly any time, and no one would begrudge a woman in her forties a few moments to put her face in order, yet Graham felt in his stomach the feeling of a big hand gripping him.

Then she came out, and they walked past nine or ten business premises, then into Genevieve's Coffee Bar, all potted plants and amaryllis. They paused at the counter, where icy cakes, buns, and scones were displayed. Peggy's eyes lit up with what must have been greed or sugar deficiency.

“I'm going to have…the Viennese whirl. Don't they look lovely? Oh, and look at those! They're new…But I mustn't be greedy.”

“No, do have one. Two—what?—cappuccinos, a Viennese whirl, and a caramel-candied-peel bun.”

“I'll bring them to your table,” said the waitress, who had been looking at them with ill-concealed curiosity. But of course Peggy was known here.

“
Such
a long time,” Peggy said now, settling down at the table by the window and casting a glance at the dingy street and the passing shoppers outside. “When was it? 'Seventy-nine or '80, I suppose. Just before we moved here to Romford.”

And why did you do that? wondered Graham.

“Did you move to Milton Terrace then?”

“That's right. Of course it was my parents who bought it, and it's come down to me in the course of time. I wouldn't move now—unless I got a really good price for it. And then you've got to buy something for yourself to live in, haven't you? So really you're no better off.”

“I never met your parents.”

“Didn't you? One forgets. Dad had a good job in the motor trade. He died first, in '93, and my mother two years later. They weren't old, not by a long chalk. His was heart, hers cancer. Life's a pig, isn't it?”

“It must be a bit lonely.”

“Oh, not so you'd notice. I meant it was a pig for them. I manage very nicely.”

They were interrupted by the waitress, bringing the coffees and the two rich cakes, side by side on a doily on a plate. They smiled at each other, but didn't talk till she was out of earshot.

“And you've got Christa, haven't you?”

No wonderment as to how he knew. Of course she knew all about the episode at Colchester.

“That's right. She's a lovely girl. They have so many freedoms we never had, don't they? But in the course of things she'll be moving out before very long.”

“And you have a son too, don't you? Adam was it?”

She shot him a glance, but answered at once.

“That's right. He's fourteen. I don't expect
he'll
be moving out before he has to. They don't, boys. I've known mothers desperate to get rid of sons, but can't find a way to do it. As long as they can do what they want in the way of girlfriends, and get better cooking from their mothers, they stay put. It's a different world, isn't it?”

“It certainly is. Why did you tell Christa I was her father?” Graham had often found that in emotionally charged situations shock tactics worked well. Peggy bridled.

“Oh, I expect she got it all mixed up. You know what teenagers are like. Their hormones or testosterone or whatever it is are fizzing away inside them, and they don't know whether they're coming or going half the time.”

Graham left a moment's silence. Peggy took advantage of it to start in on her second cake. It was the Viennese whirl, and it left a lacy border of cream and chocolate around her lips. Suddenly for the second time Graham caught an intimation of the charm that had enthralled him as an adolescent and captured his soul for the months of rehearsal and performance of
St. Joan.
He felt a cad for saying:

“Is it true that you were expecting a child when you moved here?”

Peggy put down her cake thoughtfully, and wiped her paper napkin around her lips. When she spoke, she was almost schoolmistressy.

“Graham, we haven't got very long. You did say you hadn't got long, didn't you? And these are my friends here—the staff and the customers. Why should we talk about sad things in the past? Why would you want to embarrass me in front of my friends? Can't we let it drop? Promise?”

Graham thought, and then said:

“I promise.”