The Convenience of Lies (9 page)

Fifteen

Men make plans, God laughs -
Jewish proverb
.

Etta’s apparent suicide altered everything. It robbed Benwick of a prime suspect. The course of Lexie’s life would change forever if Ruby turned up alive as she would have to care for her. And McCall’s piece about a missing child’s rare talent now needed a radical re-think.

But
his story might yet be blown away by the tabloids if Etta’s fascination with sex and Satanism leaked out. The manner of her death fed suspicion, not sympathy. Lexie was acutely aware of this as she tried to take in the enormity of what her sister had done - and all its implications.

‘Why
in the name of all that’s holy would any mother kill herself while the police are still searching for her missing child?’

McCall
hadn’t an answer, not when they were surrounded by the paraphernalia of the occult - and possibly prostitution, too. This had to be the story Hoare had hinted at. The old muckraker must have wished he still worked for a Fleet Street red top.

Lexie
had caught the last train from Bristol after McCall rang and told her to get to London quickly and bring her spare key to Etta’s flat. He didn’t tell her the full story till they met at Paddington Station. There were tears then but of anger, not grief.

‘Selfish,
wicked, stupid bitch,’ she said. ‘Never a thought for anyone else. Self, self, self - that’s always been Etta’s way. What’s her poor kid to do now? How’s she going to understand what her mother’s done? I should’ve stayed with her when Ruby disappeared but she didn’t want me to, told me she needed to be on her own. I understand why, now. What’s she been hiding, McCall? What the hell’s been going on in her life?’

They
drove to Etta’s flat and got some answers in her bedroom. Disbelief and alarm broke across Lexie’s face.

‘I’ve
never been in here before,’ she said. ‘What was she getting into?’

‘Lots
of people are interested in all this fortune telling stuff.’

‘Come
on, I read tarot cards for fun but this magic’s much blacker, believe me.’

‘None
of what’s happened is your fault. Your sister was an adult.’

‘On
paper, maybe. No wonder Ruby didn’t have a chance.’

‘She
wouldn’t have understood any of this, even if she’d seen it.’

‘This
is all going to come out at the inquest, isn’t it?’

‘Depends
on how relevant the cops think it is to her death.’

‘If
this gets into the papers and Ruby’s still missing, they’re bound to think Etta was involved in some way.’

‘Let’s
cross that bridge if we come to it.’

They
saw the condoms in Etta’s bedside cabinet - and the nurse’s uniform and a shoe
box
stuffed with bank notes. It all served to prove what Lexie feared most.

‘So
this is how she ended up… my baby sister… on the game.’

McCall
bought a Chinese take-away in the parade of shops along Woodberry Street. They sat in Etta’s uncommonly clean kitchen, careful not to let any of the king prawns or fried rice spill from their plastic forks. Lexie became very quiet. Her fatigue seemed freighted with shame and guilt. She needed the refuge of sleep and left McCall rummaging through a small document box he’d found in Etta’s wardrobe.

It
was ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl and held utility bills, cheap costume jewellery, Etta’s passport and a tenancy agreement.

But
it was an invitation card with gold lettering within a border of church bells and confetti which brought back all the hurt McCall had felt when he’d received his.

*

It is Bea who answers the door when Evan arrives at Garth Hall on the off chance.

‘Mrs
Wrenn, I’m so sorry for not ringing beforehand,’ he says. ‘But I’ve been giving a talk at Shrewsbury School and on the spur of the moment, I thought I’d drive on down here to see Mac - if he’s at home, that is.’

‘Are
you a friend of his?’

‘Yes,
I’m Evan Dunne… from Cambridge.’

‘I
see,’ says Bea. ‘Cambridge.’

‘It’s
all right; I know what’s happened. How is Mac at the moment?’

‘A
worry to us all, to be truthful. He’s not the same boy who went up.’

‘I’m
sorry to hear that. Maybe there’s something I can do to help.’

‘He’s
probably in the woods. He spends a lot of his time down there now.’

McCall
had gone to Francis’s retreat, a corrugated iron dacha painted red oxide and half hidden amid the ash and cherry trees by a stream called the Pigs’ Brook.

‘Take
the path through the woods,’ Bea says. ‘If you hear a record playing, just follow the music because that’s where he should be.’

But
all is quiet save for the bleating of sheep in a distant field. The door of the empty dacha is open. A newspaper on the arm of a scuffed leather armchair reports the hunt for an escaped train robber called Ronnie Biggs.

Evan
finds McCall sitting on a bench staring into the stream.

‘Mac?
Hello… are you all right?’

McCall
turns and stares at him.

‘What
are you doing here? Are you on your own?’

‘Lexie
isn’t with me, if that’s what you mean.’

Evan
sits beside him. He’s not sure what to say. This isn’t the McCall he remembers. His spirit has gone, he looks hollowed out as if on the point of a breakdown.

‘Look,
you can’t hide away like this forever. You’ve got talent, you can write. You’re young. There are things happening in this world that make you angry, that offend your sense of right and wrong. Don’t waste the gifts you’ve been given. There are other routes to go in life.’

‘Where’s
all this leading, Evan?’

‘Wherever
you want it to…. but I’ve a suggestion.’

‘And
what’s that?’

‘Someone
I know has read those pieces you wrote for Varsity. He thinks they show considerable promise and he’d like to meet you.’

*

Bea is delighted when Evan agrees to stay the night. She’s taken to him and is clearly charmed. Without Lexie around, McCall sees a different Evan - no longer the cuckold but a raffishly entertaining guest from high table, clever, well read and attentive to an alluring and flirtatious hostess. Bea conducts him through the warren of fading apartments in Garth Hall with its antiques and portraits and legends of love and misfortune. Then it’s supper of rabbit and pigeon pie, served in the drawing room scented by wood smoke and candles and where ghosts from the days of the first Elizabeth might still appear to flit amid the shadows.

‘So,
Mr Dunne… what are we to do with young Mac?’

‘Well,
that’s for him to decide but I think he’s ideally suited for journalism.’

It
is as if McCall isn’t there, allowed only to observe from the sidelines.

‘Journalism?
Wouldn’t that be a rather tawdry business to follow?’

‘Possibly
but he’s just the sort of subversive chap that editors like. Always wanting to show our masters for the fools and knaves they are.’

‘Do
you see that as the purpose of newspapers?’

‘What
else, Mrs Wrenn? Is it better to be led by a drunk like George Brown or a crook
like
Harold Wilson? How would we common folk know about either until a reporter such as Mac might become, ferrets out their secrets?’

Soon,
the long case clock chimes ten from the hall. Bea leaves them sitting in the wingbacks either side of the inglenook.

‘Mrs
Wrenn’s a marvellous tease, isn’t she?’

‘Yes,
everyone falls in love with Bea eventually.’

McCall
shows Evan to a spare bedroom and they say goodnight almost formally. Later, in the dark and where he has slept since childhood - and where Lexie lay with him only days before - McCall finds it impossible not to dwell on the nature of his duplicity and why Evan is showing him such concern.

It
makes life more complicated. He cannot get a fix on Evan’s motives. They defy all male instincts, however base those generally are. But the effect on McCall is for him to think even less of himself, to believe he is wretchedly dishonourable.

*

By coincidence, Francis arrives back from Moscow next morning. He’s driven up from London and parks the Alvis in the stable yard. Bea takes his suitcase and is kissed on both cheeks. She introduces him to Evan. They have coffee together then Francis suggests they walk down to his dacha. He doesn’t change his travelling suit, bird’s eye in grey worsted made for him by Bodenhams of Ludlow.

The
dacha is his place of safety where he can hear the wind move through the trees and the stream bubble over its pebbles. And thus for a while, the perils of his world become as nought.

McCall
thinks he detected an ease between Francis and Evan, a familiarity almost. It contrasts with McCall’s own feeling of Francis being cool towards him since the great disappointment of Cambridge. What else did he expect, though?

He
watches from an upstairs window as they head across the orchard lawn then pass through the wicket gate into Garth woods. Again, McCall feels excluded, as if the grown-ups are deciding important matters about him behind his back. Within an hour they return. Evan has to drive home to Cambridge. McCall sees him to his car.

‘So
are you interested in what I mentioned earlier?’

‘What
was that?’

‘Meeting
the fellow who likes your writing. Mr Wrenn thinks you should.’

‘I
suppose so. Who is he?’

‘He’s
called Roly Vickers, an Oxford man but we shouldn’t hold that against him.’

‘What
does he do?’

‘He
publishes books on international affairs. Has great contacts who’ll help you.’

‘To
become a journalist?’

‘That’s
what you want, isn’t it?’

‘Do
I have much say in the matter?’

‘We
all have free will, Mac. It just depends how we choose to use it.’

Evan
starts his car and winds down the window.

‘There’s
a pub called the Ye Olde Mitre in Holborn,’ Evan says. ‘It’s down an alleyway - Ely Place, I think. Vickers has lunch there most days.’

‘How
will I know him?’

‘You
don’t have to. He knows what you look like.’

With
this, Evan hands him an envelope and drives away. On the card inside are words printed in gold which McCall never wanted to read.

Mr
Evan Dunne and Miss Alexandra Nadin cordially invite you to their wedding at noon on Saturday the 7th of August 1965 in the Cambridge Register Office to be followed by drinks in the RAF bar of The Eagle in Bene’t Street.

So
she is going ahead with it. She will marry Evan as Evan always said she would. McCall’s pleading had only won him a consolation prize - a pint in a pub with a man who might get him a job.

‘Marriage
is only a piece of paper, Mac,’ Lexie had said. ‘Nothing more.’

‘It’s
not nothing. You’ll be legally together and for always.’

‘You’re
a hoot – and so old fashioned.’

Lexie
insists such things don’t matter. McCall cannot agree. For him to attend Lexie’s wedding, to walk the streets of Cambridge again and pass those ancient halls where he’d neither the wit nor wisdom to stay the course, would be to compound his sense of failure. Yet not to see her on such a day cedes all victory to Evan, albeit theirs was never a struggle between equals.

So
he’ll go, tough it out at the ceremony, find a brave face for the reception. He will kiss the bride and shake the groom’s hand. If he gets maudlin drunk then that is what happens at weddings when all that’s on show is the happiness of others.

*

In the week before the wedding, McCall meets Roly Vickers in the snug of the Mitre, a darkly panelled medieval pub at the end of a narrow alley in the diamond quarter. Vickers is ex-army, prematurely grey hair slicked with brilliantine. He’s no Colonel Blimp. Far from it. He claims Labour Party membership though is troubled by the influence wielded by communists who’re covertly infiltrating its branches.

‘But
I’m more interested in your politics,’ Vickers says. ‘I gather you’re a pretty liberal-minded sort of young man.’