George Barnabas - 04 - Fourth Attempt (26 page)

She caught Gus’s eye and he winked at her. ‘Hi, doll! Why didn’t you tell me this man was such an expert on ice hockey? I used to know this guy who played in Montreal — way back it was, what was his name?’ He turned back into the conversation as George got on with her chore and the last arrivals, James Corton and Kate Sayers, came in, followed by the only stranger to George, a quiet woman in a rather dowdy dress.

‘There!’ Hattie said brightly behind them. ‘Here we all are, then. Now have you enough almonds to go with the bubbly? No? I’ll go and get some more and put my koulibiac in the oven and then we can all settle down for a nice gossip till dinner’s ready.’

*

Whether it was the saltiness of Hattie’s almonds or the warmth of the summer evening that made them thirsty, it was not possible to say, but the champagne, both bottles, vanished rapidly and were immediately replaced by very cold Chardonnay fetched by Sam from the back porch, dripping with ice water and welcomed vociferously by all of them. They seemed to succumb to the softening influence of alcohol very quickly, George thought, but was glad of it. The barriers seemed to dwindle so low that even she began to relax.

Zack’s behaviour could not have been more perfect. He paid flattering attention to Hattie, his hostess, until she melted like a glacier transferred to the Equator, and seemed completely to forget her ire at being saddled with an unwanted guest. Mike Klein himself was also charming and a very different proposition from the young man George had met at Hunnisett’s party and later in Laburnum Ward. He talked as easily of books and films and music as he did of science — and the conversation ranged comfortably over all those subjects — and showed himself to be a much more interesting person than his rather unprepossessing appearance would have led George to expect. It’s not the first time I’ve done that, she thought, staring a little owlishly into the depths of her glass. Judging people by what they look like is asking for trouble. This guy is very nice: I should be ashamed of myself for making snap judgements about him.

The quietest people at the table were Sam and James Corton. The younger man, though he did talk a little to Heather Pyne, who seemed as shy as he was and even more monosyllabic, mostly sat and crumbled his bread and ate a great deal, blinking at people through his round glasses and clearly listening to all that was said, but contributing little to the general conversation. Sam was an observer, too, but in a very different way. George was used to Sam’s sort of behaviour in a crowd. The man could no more help observing people instead of joining in than he could prevent himself from breathing. He had tried to explain that once to George,
long ago, blaming his novel-writing activities, and George, who found his quietness endearing, assured him she had understood. Now, sitting beside him, she was happy to join in his silent observation.

Kate Sayers was on the quiet side too, lapsing from time to time into little silences, and George felt for her; she adored her Oliver, a most difficult man who had never quite made up his mind what mattered most to him: his job as a radio correspondent for an independent news company, his life with Kate and her children, or the pressures put on him by the children of his first marriage who, according to Kate, did all they could to make his life as complicated as it could be. Kate was often
distraite
when she thought about Oliver. That she should be so now when he was away reporting in the Balkans was fully understandable. George leaned towards her, across the silent Sam, and talked to her whenever she could, leaving the noisy chatter to the men on the other side of the table, and to Hattie, who was, to tell the truth, very slightly drunk, partly with wine and partly with the praise heaped on her for her dinner, which was, quite frankly, superb. Not a scrap of the koulibiac remained and the cherry strudel was a sorry wreck of rich red juice and flakes of crisp pastry long before the coffee came to top it all up.

Sam had found a bottle of good brandy which he set in front of Gus, who looked up at him with a gleam in his eye, and accepted it gracefully, and a bottle of plum schnapps which he offered in general, but only Zack accepted that. He took a small glassful and threw it back in one swallow with an expert twist of his wrist that made Sam laugh aloud.

‘The only other person I ever saw drink schnapps like that was a Hungarian,’ he said in his unexpectedly deep voice. ‘Like you, huh, Zack?’

‘Now, how did you know that?’ Zack looked at him, his eyes very dark and bright above his flushed cheeks. He didn’t look drunk, but he was certainly elevated, George decided. There was an almost dangerous glitter about him and she
caught her breath as he shifted his gaze to her. ‘Did you tell him, George? You’re the only one here who knows my origins. I reckon it must have been you.’

‘No,’ she said as casually as she could. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever talked to anyone about you, Zack. Why should I?’

‘Aha,’ he said loudly and took another shot of schnapps. ‘So, I’m not interesting enough?’

‘Nothing of the sort, mate!’ Gus said and leaned forwards. He looked relaxed and happy but George knew he was not one whit affected by alcohol. He may have seemed to keep up with everyone else but in fact had taken rather little. ‘We think you’re fascinating, don’t we? Hungarian, huh? And knows more about Canadian ice-hockey players than any Hungarian has any right to! You’ll have to explain that to us all, mate, won’t you?’

‘I told you I don’t like shop talk,’ Hattie said fretfully as she and George made a third pot of coffee. It was now well past midnight but no one showed any signs of being ready to go. The level in the brandy bottle had dropped, but not as far as that in the plum schnapps; Zack had clearly taken to the stuff like a baby to sweet milk. ‘All this explanation about his research — I’m sure it’s madly exciting to him but for everyone else it’s too, too boring.’

‘I don’t think it is, you know,’ George said. ‘No one seems to mind. Even your friend Heather, who has nothing to do with medical matters, seems interested. She’s been asking as many questions as everyone else.’

‘I didn’t mind him telling us about his childhood — that was fascinating, all the Hungarian stuff — and getting out of Budapest at the revolution and so forth, but the rest of it…’

‘He is rather hogging the conversation, I suppose,’ George said. ‘But —’ She stopped short. The last thing she could do was explain to her friend that it was because Gus wanted Zack to do so that he was talking so much. Had she tried, it would have meant allowing Hattie to know just how very controlling of her party Gus had been from the start. He had set out to make contact with Zack and pump him, and that was precisely what he was doing. George had seen Gus in action many times, of course. She well knew his abilities as a
man on the ground during an investigation, but she had never really seen him interrogating anyone; if his performance here tonight was anything to go by, he was a master. His touch was amazingly delicate, sometimes seeming not to be asking questions at all, but giving gentle guidance in the direction he wanted Zack to take, and Zack had responded like … she couldn’t think of a simile that fitted well but found images of fish being patiently hauled in from foaming water on the end of a line or a rabbit caught in the glare of headlights coming into her mind.

Yet it hadn’t been like that. Zack had been relaxed and easy, a little drunk admittedly, but not in any offensive way. The spirits seemed only to have sharpened him in a way that was rather attractive: his eyes glittered, his face became pleasantly rosy, his very hair seemed to send off cheerful sparks, and he made them all laugh a lot, kept them all rapt in silent fascination at his descriptions of what he was trying to do.

All the time Gus had sat there, leaning back in his chair, murmuring, encouraging and listening, and never for a moment taking his eyes from Zack’s face.

But Hattie was in the mood to grumble. ‘I’ll say he’s hogging it,’ she muttered. ‘Even that chap he brought with him seems nicer than him.’

‘Mike Klein?’ George was glad to change the subject. ‘Yes, I thought he was rather a dull stick, but —’

‘I’m beginning to wonder what it is about that Zack you like,’ Hattie said fretfully, picking up the tray. ‘Too pushy by half for my taste. Stick to Gus, if you want my advice.’

‘I am,’ George said nettled. ‘There was never any suggestion I’d do otherwise.’

‘There’s an old-fashioned word for you, my duck,’ Hattie said as she pushed the kitchen door open with a thrust of her hip. ‘Flirt, that’s what you are. And flirts get into trouble.’ And she sailed off to the dining table before George could answer her.

When the party eventually broke up half an hour later, amid loud protestations over the lateness of the hour and fulsome thanks to Hattie for her superb cooking and Sam for his generosity with the Chardonnay, Hattie seemed to be a little less testy. She pulled George to one side in the welter of farewells and muttered at her, ‘Sorry if I was hateful.’

‘Hateful? Never that, Hattie. You can be bloodyminded, hon, in the best Brit tradition, but never hateful.’

‘He’s all right, I suppose. I guess I was just tired when I slagged him off. Now I’ve got my second wind, I can see why you find him so —’

‘Hattie, shut up,’ George said firmly. ‘I find no one anything, hear me? I’m just me, your old friend and guest this evening. Goodnight, and thanks for a great party.’ She kissed her firmly on both cheeks, and moved to the door where Gus was waiting for her.

Everyone else was out on the front path now, and there were final goodbyes as people found their cars and started engines. Sam and Hattie stood on the doorstep, silhouetted against the light, and waved at them all as they went. George, leaning back in Gus’s car, waved too, and then sighed.

‘I feel really lousy,’ she said.

‘Mmm?’ Gus was preoccupied as he manoeuvred his way down the heavily parked street.

‘Using Hattie like that. Not a pretty thing to do.’

‘But it worked,’ he said as the car reached the main road and he was able to swing out into the traffic — thin now at this hour of the morning — and relax into his driving. ‘And let’s face it, duckie, you were the one who was worried about the guy and didn’t want to start a —’

‘I know, I know. I went along with it so I’m as bad as you are. Still …’ She stopped, ‘You say it worked … How?’

He smiled into the darkness. ‘I picked up a lot of stuff from him, useful stuff. I can do some searches now, get to know a lot more about him. That was what you wanted, right?’

‘Yes,’ she said uneasily, then frowned, ‘I was listening very carefully, but I didn’t hear anything that made me sit up.’

‘On account of he didn’t say anything startling,’ Gus said. ‘But he gave me a lot of leads. He was at university at McGill in Montreal, he said. He worked later at the Toronto Western Hospital. He did a stint as a researcher at the Banting Institute.’

‘Yes, but that doesn’t mean a great deal. Plenty of people will have the same sort of history.’

‘I’m sure. And maybe we’ll find out he’s no more than he says he is. But a little quiet chatting up of people around these places in Montreal and Toronto should give us a good deal of insight. Listen, doll. Leave it to me, huh? This is my manor we’re on. I know what I’m doing. I’ve got the basic material I wanted, Hattie had a good party and no one’s been harmed at all. Tell me about this guy Mike Klein.’

‘Klein?’ she said, distracted. ‘What’s to tell? You saw as much as I did. I hardly know him.’

‘Are you worried at all about his research?’

She stared at him. ‘Worried? Why should I be?’

‘Well, you’re worried about Zack’s.’

‘No, it’s Zack’s general behaviour that bothers me. I have no difficulty in understanding his research.’ She was puzzled. ‘Any more than I have Mike Klein’s. They describe what they’re doing well, and it makes sense.’

‘Oh.’ He manoeuvred the car into a side street, aiming for the river and home. ‘Well, if you say so. I thought it sounded a bit …’

‘A bit what?’ she said, surprised by his hesitation.

‘I guess I don’t know enough science.’ He sounded unusually self-deprecating. ‘I just thought it sounds like real pie in the sky. Finding a pill that’ll stop kids from getting hooked on crack and pot tobacco. That’ll be the day.’

‘It could happen,’ she said, suddenly defensive of Klein’s work and a little surprised to find herself in such a mind. ‘He explained it clearly to me. It’s a matter of enzyme activity
and enzyme production which are governed by gene threads, which in turn —’

‘Spare me the lecture,’ he said. ‘I just asked if in your opinion the guy’s work was kosher. It is, so OK. Leave it at that.’

She was silent for a while and then said, ‘I hadn’t thought enough about it. The trouble is, Gus, all medical research sounds crazy till it’s done. If you’d have told my professor of Cardiology, who was already an old guy when he gave me my first lectures, that there would come a time when open-heart surgery would be as commonplace as taking out an appendix, he’d have written you off as a complete dumb cluck. As it is …’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I guess so. So, ducks, here we are.’ He stopped the car at the kerb and turned in his seat to look at her. ‘What shall I do? Go home or stay here?’

She looked back at him, deliberately expressionless. ‘It’s up to you, Gus.’

‘No. I want an invitation. Just for a change. Not an assumption, an invitation. Ask me.’

‘Damned if I will,’ she said irritably She stopped and took a breath. ‘Why should you ask for an invitation after all this time? You know perfectly well that you always stay here when you want to.’

‘Yeah, I know. But tonight I want to be coaxed. So coax me.’

‘But why —?’

‘Because I ask you to!’ He seemed angry suddenly and she peered at him in the darkness.

After a moment she held out a hand. ‘Gus, dear, here is my front-door key, all ready, you see? Please will you take it and let us both in?’

He stared at the key and thought. Then he shook his head. ‘It’s a start, but it’s not good enough,’ he said. ‘I want a proper invitation.’