Murder Most Fab (34 page)

The house in Blackheath
was exactly the same.

As the
butler led the way to the drawing room, I expected to see Grandma Rita sitting
there, straight-backed as she presided over a pot of tea, but the room was
empty and had about it an air of disuse . We went into the conservatory, where
the heat was turned up to boiling. Within seconds I was breathless and sweaty.

On a
large wicker daybed there lay what appeared at first to be a pile of blankets
and pillows until I saw in the middle, like a sleeping kitten, an oval white
face. It took me a moment to recognize my grandmother.

‘Master
Johnny,’ said the butler, in a low voice.

A
strange sound came from my grandmother: harsh, rattly and rather frightening. I
realized it was a long exhalation. Her eyes opened. The steel blue had gone,
replaced by a watery-puddle colour.

‘Grandma?’
I said. It was awful to see her like this.

‘Johnny,
my boy. You’ve come. Good. Sit down.’ She gestured with a movement of her bony
wrist that I should take one of the wicker chairs near her bed.

I
kissed her soft, cool cheek and sat down. The butler disappeared, bowing
reverently, like a priest before the tabernacle.

‘You
can see that I’m not well,’ Grandma said. Her voice sounded a little stronger,
and I could understand now why I had noticed nothing on the telephone. ‘Your
mother is going to come here the day after tomorrow. I have plenty to talk to
her about and, no doubt, when I’ve finished, she will not leave. So before that
happens, I wanted us to have some time alone.’

‘You’re
making this all sound very sinister.’ I tried to sound as cheerful as I could,
although it was obvious she wasn’t long for this world. How like Grandma Rita
to want her affairs in order before the time came.

Grandma
flashed me a kook that reminded me of her old self. ‘I know you’re very grand
now, very important, but I’m going to ask you to shut up and listen.

‘It
must be perfectly obvious to you that I’m dying. I’ve not got long left. Organ
failure, the doctors tell me. Apparently my darling kidneys are calling it a
day. Then the liver and the heart. It’s a one-out-all-out situation. I wasn’t
going to bother anyone —least of all you, with your busy, busy career — I was
planning to disappear overnight, like a family grocer from the high street.
And, in my experience, other people’s diseases are very boring indeed. The
doctors say I have about a month, which is generous of them.’ She cleared her
throat. ‘I saw you on television the other night.’

‘Oh,
Grandma,’ I whispered. I felt utterly bereft, even though she was still lying
in front of me, alive.

Grandma’s
account of her illness seemed to have worn her out. She closed her eyes for a
few moments. She looked like a frail, wrinkled child, her skin clinging to her
cheekbones like a wet airmail envelope wrapped round a Queen Anne chair leg. My
eyes filled with tears at the thought of losing her. I had left it too late to
be the grandson she might have hoped for. Our tea-time chats, five-star
holidays and Christmas dinners would never happen now. Just when I thought she
might be asleep, her eyes opened and she looked at me.

‘I
don’t like to see you sad. That’s not why I called you here. ‘She gave me a
grandmotherly smile, although her mouth was dry and her lips were pale.

‘I
lured you here on the pretence of lunch, but I’ve gone off eating. Maria will
bring you a sandwich. Now, about this programme of yours.’

‘Did
you enjoy it?’

‘No, I
did not. People were laughing at you, not with you. Has no one told you?’

I was
taken aback. ‘Is there something wrong with your television set, Grandma? My
producers couldn’t be more thrilled. They threw a huge party for me straight
afterwards in the green room. If there was something amiss I’m sure they’d tell
me. I’m amazed that you should say that.’

‘You
made a fool of yourself in front of Liza Minnelli! Quite an achievement for
anyone, given the competition. I saw you slurring and leaping about, your eyes
wandering and your body quivering, and I realized that things are far worse
with you than I could ever have imagined.’

I was
surprised to find myself blushing.

‘What’s
happened to you?’ she went on. ‘What about that lovelorn young man who arrived
here at the age of seventeen and asked me what he should do with his life? Is
this what he wanted?’

It
wasn’t easy to be cross with someone who wasn’t long for this world, but I had
a stab at it. I was understandably indignant.

‘If you
mean, did he want fame, recognition, money and luxury then, yes, he did! I’ve
exceeded my wildest dreams. I’ve done better than I could ever have imagined.
People would kill themselves to have what I have!’

I had
raised my voice without meaning to, and she turned up the volume too, croaking
rather than rasping. With a piercing stare she said, ‘What do you have? Fame,
money and an all-consuming addiction to narcotics?’

‘Why,
I— I—’ How did she guess? Old ladies weren’t supposed to know about such
things.

She
rested her head on the pillow, a shaft of sunlight suddenly illuminating her
hair so that I could see how thin it had become. She must have noticed me
looking. ‘Like a tinderbox now,’ she said, patting it as of old, but this time
a couple of inches closer to her visible skull. ‘Listen to me, Johnny. Your
television programme and everything else will be taken away from you in due
course if you carry on as you are. There is only so much patience everyone will
have with a public figure who is out of their mind. Look at the Queen Mother.’

‘No! My
audience loves me! My producers are always saying how wonderful I am, how
brilliant the show is …”

‘And
they will go on telling you so until the moment your viewing figures drop, when
they will tear up your contract and show you the door.’

‘Everybody
has a drug habit,’ I said, a little weakly. ‘It’s rather fashionable.‘

‘No,
Johnny. It’s not a habit, it’s a problem. What is fashionable is to
overcome
a drug problem, so I advise you to do just that immediately. Before you
lose your looks and your sanity.’

I leant
back in my chair, speechless. Maria came in with the tea-things, and laid them
out neatly on the little table. A large plate of smoked salmon, egg and cress,
and ham and mustard sandwiches, with a generous garnish of healthy-looking
salad, was presented to me.

‘Have
some tea,’ said Grandma Rita. ‘And eat. You need to. Now — there is something
else I want to ask you about. Tell me about your friends.’

‘My
friends?’

‘Yes,
who are they?’

‘Well,
I — I’ve got
lots
of friends.’

‘Name
them. Name a friend who has nothing to do with you professionally but who is
simply your friend for your sake.’

I
thought. Celebrities didn’t count. We were all de facto friends by virtue of
our fame, a bit like the way all Labrador owners or MG drivers or real-ale
drinkers feel kinship. But I knew plenty of people who weren’t celebrities …
Name after name came into my mind, people who were kind, cheerful, polite,
delighted to see me, thrilled with my jokes and my small amber phial, always on
hand if I wanted someone to party with and yet … they were all connected to
me through my work or my fame. But how was I supposed to make friends with
people who didn’t know who I was? I’d have to go to deepest, darkest Peru or a
high-security mental hospital.

‘Catherine!’
I said triumphantly. Of course! How could I forget her? ‘She’s been my friend
since I was a student. She’s been with me every step of the way. She shares a
flat with me, she knows my secrets and she’s my oldest and best friend.’

‘Isn’t
this Catherine your manager?’

I
blinked. ‘Yes — and she’s guided my career wonderfully, but she was my friend
before she was my manager.’

‘And
this friend, your best friend, what does she say about your drugs problem?’

‘Um…’
I thought hard. The last time Catherine had mentioned drugs was to compliment
the quality of our latest delivery.

‘Nothing?’
Grandma Rita frowned. ‘Then she’s no friend of yours, Johnny, I can promise you
that. Get rid of her as fast as you can.’

I
laughed. She didn’t have the first idea what she was asking. Catherine was
utterly entwined in my life and I wouldn’t have dreamt of getting rid of her,
as Grandma Rita so charmingly put it. It wasn’t that simple. Catherine wasn’t a
dose of crabs: she was with me for life . We were shackled together by the
unfortunate deaths on which we had colluded.

‘My
last question,’ said Grandma Rita, before I could dwell too long on this
revelation, ‘what about love? Whom do you love?’ She exhaled noisily. The
energy she was expending on home truths was taking its toll on her. Even I felt
as if I’d gone three rounds with a boxer. Wasn’t there a rule about hitting a
man when he was down? ‘Or is there no love in your life?’

‘Yes,’
I whispered, as if I was pleading guilty.

Grandma
Rita seemed relieved. ‘Well, I’m glad to hear it. At least there’s someone for
you to cling to. Who is it?’

‘It’s
… Tim.’

‘Tim?’
She frowned. ‘That name sounds familiar.’ She thought for a while, her breath
coming in long, slow sighs. ‘Isn’t that the name of the young man you were
carrying on with when you were a boy? The one who broke your heart?’

‘Yes.’
My voice was so small it could barely be heard, but Grandma caught it.

‘Well,
that is good news.’ She gave a happy chortle. ‘So you two found each other and
made it up? How very Barbara Taylor Bradford! And now you’re going to be
together for ever?’ She was perking up. This news had healed her spirits.

‘Er …
no. He’s engaged to a laminate-flooring heiress called Sophie. We steal the
occasional night together when we can, but it’s not really … right.’

Despair
crossed my grandmother’s face. ‘Oh, Johnny — no. No. That’s too much. Laminate
flooring …’ She dabbed her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief. ‘And he has
you on the side, like salad? He doesn’t give you the love and care you need and
deserve? Oh, my poor boy. That will never be good for you.

To my
surprise, tears sprang to my eyes. Something she’d said had touched a nerve. I
knew, at some deeper level, that my life was a sham and a charade. It was full
of fun and excitement, sex and chemical thrills but it was lacking in something
I longed for above all. Love. Real, true love. The sort we were put on this
earth to experience. And the irony was that I knew who my true love was. I just
couldn’t have him.

‘Johnny.’
Grandma pulled herself up into a sitting position, panting, so that she could
kook me squarely in the face. ‘I know you think I’ve disapproved of your
mother, the way she’s lived her life and, by extension, of you — her love
child, the product of some animalistic rutting on a bed of hay, if she was
lucky. But death is approaching. I’m thinking about what really matters — and
do you know? The most surprising thing has happened. I have changed my mind. I
think about Alice, and instead of feeling that she has wasted her life I feel
that she has made the most of it. It is I who have missed out. Early on your
mother freed herself from the chains that bind most of us. She saw what
mattered and what didn’t and, for herself and you, chose happiness. She didn’t
want material goods and money. She found happiness in her garden, her poetry
and in watching her beautiful little boy grow up. I scorned it, you know. I
thought she was ridiculous — an idiot! — when really, she’s the wisest person
I’ve ever met, despite the Hythe town-hall clock, the birds with names and the
supermarket managers in her bed. She got it right.’

She
reached out a long bony hand. ‘Johnny, I’m dying. I see things more clearly
than I ever have. I have to go with the knowledge that I wasn’t brave enough
to love my daughter. Until now. Learn to be brave before it’s too late. Learn
from my mistakes. I thought the sort of love I had for your grandfather was the
only sort that counted: legitimate, respectable love, as witnessed before God.
But you and Tim, that’s just as real. You took a wrong turning, but fate
steered you back on course . You ignore the nudges of destiny, the correct
order of things, at your peril. Love is a sacred egg that you must incubate.
Sit on it, Johnny.’