Symposium (13 page)

It was ten days before
Chris Donovan’s dinner party.

There
was ‘flu in the air and Roland Sykes had caught it. He sat up in a chair in the
sitting-room of his flat. Annabel had come round to look after him. ‘You should
go to bed,’ she said.

He was
fiddling with a bundle of press cuttings. ‘That person Murchie who is going to
be at Chris Donovan’s dinner,’ he said. ‘I’ve remembered. I worked on some
archives for the solicitor who represented two of her aunts. They were contesting
a will. It was settled out of court. But look at the background — I knew there
was something sensational. The grandmother of the Margaret Murchie who married
the Damien boy was murdered.’

He
sipped his hot whisky and water while Annabel read the press cutting with avid
attention.

‘It
doesn’t do your ‘flu any good but it makes you feel better,’ Roland said,
meaning his drink.

‘My
God! I’ve seen that face before,’ Annabel suddenly said. She had a newspaper
article with a large picture of Margaret, sub-titled ‘Margaret Murchie —
questioned by the police’.

‘It was
all over the papers at the time,’ Roland said.

‘No,
but I’ve seen it since. Somewhere on the television. Within the past year. Nothing
to do with the Murchie murder. It was some kind of popular programme, cultural
programme … I don’t know. I’d have to think, find out.’

‘I
wonder’, said Roland ‘if Hurley and Chris know about the Murchie murder story.’

‘Why?
Do you think of drawing their attention to it?’

‘Well,
it might be interesting.’

‘If I
were in your place,’ she said, ‘I would keep it to myself. It would only make
you out to be bitchy. You don’t want the name of being bitchy, do you?’

‘I
don’t know,’ said Roland, drawing his woollen dressing-gown tight round his
neck. ‘Whisky can’t be a remedy, you know. It only makes you feel better.’

‘I’ll
make you another,’ said Annabel. ‘You shouldn’t ring up Hurley and Chris to
tell them something denigratory about one of their forthcoming guests. It’s
crude.’

‘Maybe,’
said Roland, putting his hand to his head to signify how much the ‘flu was upon
him.

When
Annabel came back from the kitchen with another glass of hot whisky she said,
‘I wish I could remember what programme that girl Murchie was on. It was
something unusual.’

Helen wrote:

Dear Pearl,

Your letter made me laugh so much. I hope you have a
good time at the ball. Brian says he doesn’t mind the postponement of your trip
so long as you’re having a good time. I went to the fashion show at the
Metropole in Brighton, a lot of nothing new. Those starving girls, but still
the men like it when you look like some kind of Barbie doll.

Do you think I have the Stockholm syndrome? You know
what that is. It’s when you’re so grateful to the man that’s holding you
prisoner just because he treats you better sometimes than the other times or
than other people. Then you actually take an affection for the one that knocks
you about the least. I don’t say Brian knocks me about in the real sense, but
he goes on about the robbery. Why else I should stay with your dear father I
really do not know.

He has gone off today thank God to the House of Lords
to express his demented opinions about things that go towards the rule and
government of us his perfectly sane fellow citizens. Then home again tonight
and believe me it will be the robbery again for dinner. After all they left the
Francis Bacon on the wall. Do you know what the next move is? The picture is to
go in the bank. I won’t miss the picture but it’s just the idea of putting
paintings in the bank. Sometimes I feel the age gap is just too wide and
sometimes I don’t.

We’re going to dinner with that fun painter Hurley
Reed. You remember you liked them so much and his wife, I suppose one should
say friend, Chris. After that a trip to Venice, how lovely, I can’t wait.

Encl, is a cheque for you. I had him write it out
before he left for the Lords while he was in the mood. Cash it quick before he
puts the money in a vault.

All love,

Helen

Ella and Ernst were in the
drivers’ lounge of the cross-Channel ferry on the way home from Brussels. It
was the second day of his having his beard removed, and he kept on putting his
hand to his chin, stroking the beard that was.

‘I
hope’, she said, ‘that Luke remembered to turn on the heating.’

‘We can
turn it on and go out to eat.’

‘It
isn’t easy, going out to eat, after Brussels,’ said Ella, who liked her food.

Ernst
was busy with papers in the briefcase open on his knee. ‘Luke,’ he said.

‘What
about Luke?’

‘He
might be there, waiting for us.’ He smiled at her, frankly acknowledging that
she would regard this as a sort of treat.

‘Why,
did you ring him up?’ she said.

‘Yes, I
did.’

‘Well,
we can take him out to dinner with us.’

Ernst
touched his non-existent beard. ‘Yes, we can. That’s what I thought.’

Ella
went to stretch her legs in the dilapidated ferry which chugged its way to
Dover. The windows were coated with oily grey dirt, the painted frames were
chipped. She walked the length of the boat among passengers dressed unsuitably
for the season, in bright holiday colours, as they always did in the fanciful
belief that across the Channel lay summertime. Ella nosed round the duty-free
gift shop and came back.

‘I
could have bought him a Waterman pen,’ she said.

Ernst
smiled. ‘With his looks he can get more than a Waterman pen,’ he said.

Luke
was the main thing they now had in common. It had positively begun to draw them
together, so that they were actually further from separating than they had ever
been in their married life.

‘That
watch,’ said Ella. ‘You know there are fakes, copies. There is a big trade in
copies of prestigious goods.’

‘It
might be a fake,’ said Ernst, ‘but knowing Luke I don’t see why it should be.’

‘I hope
he’s all right,’ said Ella. ‘That’s all, I hope he’s all right and takes care
of himself.’

‘That’s
what I hope. There’s something very appealing about his willingness to take
these serving and catering jobs. It shows a decent side.’

‘He
called me’, said Ella, ‘about a couple of likely flats he’d seen, suitable for
us. In Bloomsbury. What do you think of Bloomsbury?’

‘Not a
bad part. It depends on the price. Did he say the price?’

Ella
shook back her long fair hair. ‘The prices are I suppose whatever they are.’

‘You
might miss the room-service,’ said Ernst. ‘It’s convenient to phone down.’

‘Frightful
meals,’ said Ella. ‘And by the time you’ve paid that rent you might as well buy
a flat.’

‘We can
look at these places that Luke has found.’

‘If
they’re not gone already. Luke says Hurley Reed advises to hurry up.’

‘Will
Luke be helping at Hurley’s dinner?’

‘Yes. I
want to get a dress for the dinner.’

‘Oh, I
think that dinner’s going to be quite a simple affair; nothing grand.’

‘Yes,
but I want to look nice,’ said Ella. ‘You always look nice.’

‘I think I’ll get a new
dress for Hurley Reed’s dinner,’ said Margaret.

‘It’s
nothing grand. Quite simple,’ said William.

‘Well,
I want to look nice.’

She had
just made their big double bed. It was a Sunday morning. Very carefully she set
out, along the top of the counterpane, a series of worn-out teddy bears and
other woolly animals, and three much-handled dolls. William as a bachelor had
retained an affection for his old toys, and Margaret, when she realized this,
had added a few of her own to the collection.

William’s
previous girl-friend hadn’t liked William’s old woollen animal-toys. He had
been obliged to hide them in a cupboard all the time they lived together. She
was horrified when she found them there; she had thought he had thrown them
away. When she parted company from William he brought out his teddy bears,
dogs, cats and rabbits again and laid them out along the pillow. It was an
enormous relief to him that Margaret not only tolerated the toys but added some
tattered dolls of her own. It was in keeping with her goodness and sweetness.
He had in the bathroom a plastic duck that swam, quacked and flapped.

‘Inspiration
from nature’, said Margaret, ‘is after all, from what you tell me, the basis of
the study of artificial intelligence.’

‘I
never thought of that,’ said William. ‘Yes, it all ties up with bionics.’ He
seemed relieved at the thought that his indefatigable feeling for his old
cuddly toys might have this serious and respectable connotation.

‘I
always felt’, he told Margaret, ‘that they had some sort of sensing mechanisms.
Absurd as it sounds, I know, when I hid them in the cupboard I felt I was
hurting their feelings.’

‘It’s
so understandable. They have a musky smell, all their smells seem to be a
definition of their life.‘

‘I
wouldn’t like my colleagues to hear that,’ William said. ‘But there’s a certain
something in what you say. It’s not scientific of course.’

‘Is
artificial intelligence a scientific study?’

‘Not
really. It takes a lot of scientific knowledge to study nature, though, and
mimic nature even, and to adapt and apply the way living things work, even with
computers. Snakes, moths, birds, even plants, they all tell us something. It’s
a question of neural conductors, signals, nervous systems.’

‘And
your toy animals?’

‘Symbolic,
to be frank, only symbolic.’

‘I
wonder’, said Margaret, ‘if there’s anything in that practice of sticking pins
into dolls?’

‘We
don’t know enough about it,’ William said. She was combing her long red hair at
the dressing-table mirror while he sat on the new-made bed, watching her.

‘I
wouldn’t like to try it,’ said Margaret. ‘Why stick pins into the poor dolls?’

He went
off to fetch the Sunday newspapers. On the one hand he felt easy after talking
to Margaret and on the other hand he felt uneasy. On the whole, he knew very
little about her. But then, he reflected, she knew very little as yet about
him.

Margaret
finished combing her hair, then looked at the bed with its row of dolls and
teddies. She quoted to herself a couplet from an ancient Border ballad:

Now speak to me, blankets, and speak to me, bed,

And speak, thou sheet, enchanted web.

SHORTLY
after the convent was closed down Margaret had gone home to recover
her equanimity, as she put it. She complained bitterly about her sisters, who
had once again turned on her.

‘What
did I have to do with Sister Rose’s murder?’ she said. ‘I wasn’t there. Nowhere
near. I was with Eunice. And what does Eunice say? She says, “It looks very
fishy, Margaret. You were mixed up with Granny’s murder and now you’re mixed up
with the murder of the nun.” That’s so unfair.’

‘Take
no notice,’ said Dan.

‘What
do you mean, take no notice? She says I’m not to go and visit her any more,
she’s afraid for her squalling brat. She didn’t say squalling brat, of course,
she said darling Mark. And then, that very day, when I get back to the Convent
of Good Hope, who should ring me up but Flora and that husband of hers, the
anal-compulsive bureaucrat. Do you know what she said? She said there had been
too many unfortunate incidents, starting from my schooldays.’

‘So
there have been,’ said Dan. ‘Nobody’s blaming you.’