The Shape of Snakes (30 page)

Satan and I examined each other cautiously. "He's a good guard dog," I murmured. "I wouldn't fancy my chances much if I were Derek."

"He'd rip his throat out soon as look at him," said Beth. "I used to tie Satan to the pram outside shops when the kids were smaller. He growled at anyone who came closer than six yards, which meant I could do my shopping in peace without worrying about someone stealing my babies."

"Amazing! And he does all that for a biscuit?"

Her grin broadened. "Don't knock it," she said. "It's a damn sight more effective than beating the poor brute with a newspaper. That just made him vicious."

"Mm." Ripping throats out seemed fairly vicious to me, and I wondered how he'd react if I stood up unexpectedly. I glanced at my watch. "I really ought to be going," I said, putting reluctance into my voice. "It's a long journey back to Dorchester and Sam will be wondering where I am."

"Al'll be sorry to have missed you."

I nodded. "It's a shame. I'll phone first another time." I finished my tea and stood up. "Can I say good-bye to the children?"

"You surely can. They're in the sitting room. I'd be interested what you think of it." She pointed to the floor as a growl rose in Satan's throat and he subsided immediately.

"So when does he get the biscuit?" I asked, following her into the hall.

"When I feel like it. That's why he does what I tell him. He's never too sure when the moment will come."

"Does it work with husbands and children as well?"

She flattened her palm and made a rocking gesture. "It depends what the treat is. Biscuits don't work so well on Al. He likes basques and black stockings better." She grinned as I gave a splutter of laughter. "The kids are in here," she said, opening a door. "You'd better like it because it took me two months to finish. I'll phone for a cab while you're looking."

I did like it, although it was totally out of keeping with a 1930s semi. It can't have been bigger than five meters square, but it was decorated in Mexican style with an arched ceiling, tessellated floor, roughly stuccoed walls and an ornate bronze candelabra hanging from the ceiling. French windows opened out onto a tiny patio, and a huge rococo mirror, with a myriad of tilted facets in a scrolled gilt frame, reflected the light in indiscriminate dazzling shafts across every available surface. Even the fireplace had been transformed into something that would have been more at home on a ranch than in a back street in Isleworth, with a brass artillery shell laden with silk flowers standing in the hearth. I wondered why she'd done this room so differently from the rest.

"It's all fake," said Jason from the corner where he and his sister were watching television. "Mum just painted it to make it look real."

I tapped my foot on the tessellated floor and listened to the hollow ring of wood. "She's a clever lady," I said, touching a hand to the rough stucco and feeling the smoothness of plaster. "Did she make the mirror as well?"

"Yup. And the candy-laber."

"What about the picture?" I asked, gazing at the Quetzalcoatl mosaic on the wall.

"That's Dad's."

"The sofa and chairs?"

"Ten quid, job lot, from a junk shop," said Beth proudly behind me. "And five quid for the patchwork throws. I begged, borrowed and stole material ... dresses ... old curtains ... tablecloths ... whatever ... from everyone I knew. The five quid went on the reels of cotton to do the sewing. What do you think?"

"Brilliant," I said honestly.

"But a bit OTT for Isleworth?"

"A bit," I agreed.

"That's what Al thinks, but all I'm doing is setting out my stall. I can create any image you want, and I can do it for peanuts. This whole room cost under three hundred quid. Okay, it doesn't count my time, but you wouldn't believe how many of my friends say they'd pay me a tenner an hour to do it in their houses."

"I bet they would," I said dryly. "They're probably paying their cleaners as much just to Hoover their floors."

She looked crestfallen. "Al doesn't want me to do it at all, says he won't even think about it unless I ask a hundred per hour minimum."

"He's right."

"Except none of my friends can pay a hundred quid per hour."

I gave her hand a quick squeeze. "It's a bad mistake to work for friends," I said. "You should photograph each room and put a portfolio together, then go out and sell yourself ... Get some fliers printed ... take out ads in the local newspaper. You're way too good to work for Ł10 an hour." I patted my rucksack. "If you like, I'll take some photographs now and send them to you. I've got my camera with me, and I'd love my husband to see what you've done. We're toying with buying the farmhouse we're renting, and you never know"-
How can you be such a bitch?
I asked myself-"maybe I can persuade Sam that you're the interior decorator we need."

Her face flushed pink with pleasure again. "If you're sure."

"Of course I'm sure." I squatted down beside Jason and Tansy. "Would you two like to be in the pictures?" They nodded solemnly. "Then how about we turn off the telly and you sit on Mum's sofa, one at each end? It might be better if you stood behind me," I told Beth as I sat cross-legged in front of the windows and lined up the shot. "You're blocking the mirror."

She scurried onto the patio. "I hate having my picture taken. I always look so fat."

"It depends how they're done," I said, as I snapped off half a dozen shots of the sofa-side of the room before zooming in on the Quetzlcoatl. "Why don't you sit on one of the chairs with the kids on your lap, and I'll see if I can get a view of the fireplace with the three of you to the left?"

I should have choked on my own duplicity, instead I marveled at how easy it was to cajole her into letting me make a record of everything in the room, including the bangles on her wrist and a collection of small china cats at one end of the mantelpiece. "Who's the cat lover?" I asked, as I tucked my camera back into my rucksack, when the doorbell rang to announce the arrival of the minicab.

"Al. He bought them at a jumble sale years ago." She jumped the children off her lap and stood up. "You never said why you needed to see him," she reminded me, as we went back into the hall.

"I wanted to talk to him about Michael Percy," I lied, dredging up the only excuse I'd been able to come up with. "But you've already told me they lost touch"-I gave a rueful shrug-"so he wouldn't have been able to help me anyway."

"What did you want to talk about?"

"Whether Michael's as bad as he was painted in the newspapers," I said, pulling open the front door and nodding to the cab driver to say I was coming. "I'm thinking of visiting him in prison-he's just down the road from us on Portland-but I'm not sure if it's a sensible thing to do. I rather hoped Alan could give me some advice."

It sounded so weak to my ears that I expected suspicion to bristle out of her like hackles, but she seemed to find it reasonable. "Well, if it's any help, Al said it was well out of character for him to hit that woman. He reckons Michael was a lot less violent than he was when they used to hang out together. They had a fight before they fell out, and Al said Michael took a beating because he wouldn't defend himself."

"What were they fighting about?"

"That girl you mentioned-Bridget. It was when they were in their late teens. Al was so crazy about her he wanted to marry her, then he walked in one day and found her in bed with Michael. He went berserk ... broke Michael's jaw and God knows what else ... even attacked the policemen who arrived to break it up. It was mayhem, apparently. Bridget was screaming in the hall, Michael was half out the window and it took four policemen to get Al off him. He ended up in juvenile detention for it."

"Goodness!"

"He's been straight ever since," she assured me.

"I should hope so."

Beth laughed. "It all worked out for the best. He wouldn't be married to me if he'd stuck with her." A wistful note entered her voice. "But he's never broken anyone's jaw for me ... so I guess I'm not as attractive as Bridget."

I gave her an impulsive hug before heading for the cab. "Just don't test him," I warned over my shoulder. "I have a nasty feeling he'd break more than jaws if he found you in bed with someone else."

I spoke lightly, but the warning was sincere.
 

Letter from Dr. Joseph Ellas, psychiatrist
at the Queen Victoria Hospital, Hong Kong-dated 1985

QUEEN VICTORIA HOSPITAL
Hong Kong
Dept. of Psychiatry

Mrs. M. Ranelagh
12 Greenhough Lane,
Pokfulam

June 12,1985

Dear Mrs. Ranelagh,

I am sad to hear you're leaving Hong Kong. I have enjoyed your letters and those all-too-rare occasions when you have consented to talk to me in person! You will like Sydney. I spent two years there from '72 to '74 and it was a delightful experience. Australia has the enthusiasm and vigor that comes from a mix of different cultures and I'm confident you will enjoy a polygeny where class divides are nonexistent and success depends on merit and not labels. You see, I have come to understand you.

You mentioned in your last letter that you and Sam have reached a fine understanding where the past remains buried in England. You also tell me he's an excellent father. You do not, however, say you love him. Am I supposed (like Sam?) to take that for granted? My friend the rabbi would say that nothing thrives in a desert. He would also say that whatever lies buried in England will resurface the minute you go home. But perhaps that is the plan? If so, you are a patient woman, my dear, and a little cruel, too, I think.

With best wishes for your future wherever it may be.
Yours affectionately,
J. Elias
Dr. J. Elias

*19*

Sam was sitting in the car outside Dorchester South station when I finally reached it at ten o'clock that evening. I wondered how long he'd been waiting because I hadn't phoned to say which train I was catching, and I feared it couldn't have done his temper much good if he'd been there any length of time. My intention had been to take a taxi home and face the inevitable row behind closed doors but, if his bleak expression when he got out of the car at my approach was anything to go by, he planned to have it in public.

"Jock phoned," he said tersely.

"I thought he might," I murmured, opening the back door and dumping my rucksack on the seat.

"He told me you left him at about four o'clock. What the hell have you been doing? Why the hell didn't you phone? I've been worried sick."

I showed my surprise. "I said I'd make my own way home."

"I didn't even know if you were
coming
home." He stalked angrily round the bonnet to open the passenger door for me, but it was so out of character that I stepped back automatically, assuming he was opening it for himself. "I'm not going to hit you," he snapped, gripping me by the arm and pressing me clumsily into my seat. "I'm not a
complete
bastard."

He slid in behind the steering wheel and we sat for several minutes in silence. The tension in the confined space was palpable, although I had no idea if it was due to anger over my perfidy or concern at my late return. The station was virtually empty at that time of night, but one or two people peered curiously through our windows as they passed, presumably wondering why the two dimly seen occupants were sitting so stiffly and refusing to look at each other.

"Aren't you going to say anything?" he asked at last.

"Like what?"

"Explain?" he suggested. "I still can't believe you'd talk to Jock, and not to me. Why didn't you tell me Annie was beaten up? You know I'd have come clean if I'd realized how serious it all was."

"When?"

"What do you mean, when?"

"When would you have come clean?" I asked evenly. "I told you at the time what PC Quentin said about the bruising-but you just said we were talking bollocks. As I recall your comment was, 'Since when did a neurotic bitch and a disgruntled policeman know the first damn thing about pathology?' You could have told me the truth then and given me and Andrew Quentin a fighting chance against Drury ... but you didn't."

He dropped his head into his hands. "I thought you were wrong," he muttered. "I was pretty stressed out at the time, and you didn't make it easy for me."

"Fine. Then you've nothing to feel guilty about. You were saving me from myself. No one's going to blame you for that." I looked impatiently at my watch. "Can we go now? I'm hungry."

"You're not making this very easy for me," he said. "You must know how awful I feel."

"Actually, I don't," I said honestly. "You've never felt awful before. That year, 1978, was one of those little unpleasantnesses-like where the cutlery drawer is and how to boil eggs-that you manage to erase so successfully from your memory. I've always envied you for it, and if you're troubled now it's probably just a reaction to knowing you've been rumbled. It'll pass. It usually does."

He tried a different tack. "The boys are twitched as hell," he said. "They keep asking me what I've done that's so bad you'd want to run away."

"Oh, for Christ's sake!" I said bluntly. "If you want to make me angry, then hiding behind your children is the surest way to do it. Luke and Tom know damn well I don't run away from things. They also know I wouldn't abandon them unless I was on a life-support machine somewhere. In any case, I told them I wouldn't be home until late so I imagine they're lying in front of the telly, as per normal, wondering why their father has suddenly gone 'round the bend."