The Water's Lovely (34 page)

The girl looked like a famine victim or a camp survivor, pale, wan, her eyes dark-ringed. Marion said a sprightly ‘Good morning' and put out her hand for the money, her left hand so that Ismay could see the ring on the third finger, a beautiful ruby ring Barry said came from Delhi. An envelope was put into it in silence. ‘As you can see, I got engaged since I last saw you. I shall soon be Mrs Barry Fenix. I'm telling you so as you know who it is when I'm giving you a ring.'

Whatever reaction Marion hoped to provoke in her victim, it wasn't to make her break into a flood of tears and run away across the bridge. Marion shrugged,
smiling, catching the eye of several passers-by to show them how mature, sensible and restrained she was.

Ismay got a bus home. She had been back no more than ten minutes when Andrew walked in. She gave a little involuntary cry. She allowed him to hold her in his arms and kiss her but that was all she did, resting her head limply against his shoulder, trembling from so many tears. When she finally lifted her head she made herself say, and the effort was enormous, ‘Andrew, we have to talk.'

‘Oh, darling,' he said, ‘not that awful cliché, please. I can't bear it. Come on, do something about your poor face. I'm taking you out to lunch at the Fat Duck.'

‘We've had an invitation to Marion Melville's engagement party,' Heather said to her husband. He was putting up bookshelves in their new living room. ‘The man she's marrying lives next door to your mother. Did you know about it?'

‘I know my mother hoped he was marrying
her
.'

‘You don't want to go, do you?'

‘Wild horses might drag me. Especially if you were riding them. When I've finished here we've got to talk about our honeymoon.'

He didn't finish there because a phone call from his mother, gasping that she was having a panic attack, fetched him to Chudleigh Hill, and in fact the shelves were destined never to be completed or to contain a single book. Irene was lying on the floor with, beside her, the party invitation which had either fallen or been placed there. Edmund felt her pulse, listened to her heart and said there was nothing wrong with her. He helped her to her feet while she muttered to him that he wasn't a doctor.

‘It's breach of promise,' she said when she was seated in an armchair. ‘I shall definitely go. To this travesty of an engagement party, I mean. I shall tell everyone how he – well, he …'

‘Trifled with your affections,' Edmund said. ‘No you won't. Because if you continue to make these threats I shall tell Barry he'd be wise to cancel the party
or postpone it and not invite you next time. And I'll tell him why. Is that clear?'

She looked up at him, perplexed, and he knew that at last he had won. He threw the invitation into the waste bin. ‘Heather and I', he said, ‘would like it very much if you'd come to tea tomorrow. I know you'll remember it's Heather's home and you're the guest. See you about four.'

She said, ‘That will be nice, dear.'

Leaving her, he thought a little kindness was called for before they parted or perhaps he was simply reverting to his old cowardice. ‘It's a secret where we're going for our honeymoon but I can tell you. In the strictest confidence. No one else knows, least of all Heather.'

It was pathetic, her very obvious joy. ‘I won't tell her.'

‘It's a place called Kanda. In Sumatra. Beaches and sunshine and beautiful green forest. Quite exotic for two people who have never been east of Greece.'

The invitation to Mr Hussein and Mrs Iqbal was accepted, Mr Hussein remarking to her that it would be ‘good for a laugh'. His sons were not invited. Marion had admitted to Barry that she had a brother but said he was a recluse, almost a hermit. He wouldn't come if asked. She invited Avice Conroy, reasoning that there was nothing damaging Avice could say about her except that she had invented a sick father and no one said that sort of thing at parties. Avice sent an abusive letter declining and telling Marion she had changed her will.

Marion made her by now regular phone call to Ismay. It was answered by a man she guessed to be the boyfriend she had seen on her visit to Clapham. She put the phone down without speaking and before trying again considered what the consequences might be if the boyfriend, who sounded a masterful man, were to squeeze the truth
out of Ismay and
take steps
. He might. He was a lawyer, she had said. And Ismay was a poor little thing with no spirit. Take no risks, Marion, but keep trying till you get her. She realised she was addressing herself by name the way Fowler had once told her was his habit. Her evening attempt was answered by Ismay and, mindful of the additional expenses she must incur as a bride, she again asked for two hundred pounds.

The ‘talk' with Andrew had never happened. Ismay thought of all the psychotherapists and counsellors and agony aunts she had heard of who advised their clients to ‘talk it through', never apparently understanding that there are some people, many people, who refuse to do this, who simply dismiss the suggestion with a ‘there's nothing to talk about' and clam up or walk away. Andrew was one of them. More than anything she would have liked to sit down with him and tell him frankly how she felt, how terribly his departures made her suffer, and receive from him some explanation, some reason for his using her the way he did. I must be a masochist, she thought, and knew he would tell her she was. Would he admit he could be sadistic? She should also, she confessed to herself, sit down with Heather and finally, after all these years, get the truth from her about Guy's death. And Eva's death. This was beginning to seem more of a possibility than talking to Andrew.

If Marion Melville continued with her demands for money – and there seemed no reason why she shouldn't – the time would come when she would have to talk to Heather. Somehow she knew her sister wouldn't lie to her. If she asked her directly Heather would tell her the truth. And then what to do with the truth when she had heard it? Go to the police? Her thoughts went back to those late summer days when Guy was newly dead and the police
had questioned her mother, Heather and herself. They had been gentle with her and Heather, asking nothing about their relations with their stepfather but concentrating on their whereabouts that afternoon. Two police officers, detective constables, and their superior had briefly appeared to speak to her mother. She couldn't remember their names except that the inspector's had been a bird's. Sparrow or Swift or Parrot. No, none of those. The policemen had believed them when they said they had all been out together, shopping for school uniform. Beatrix, cleverly, had said Heather had been with them but hadn't actually gone into the shop but waited outside.

They would probably be retired by now, those policemen. Why was she thinking of them now when she hadn't for years? Because, if the tape found its way into their hands, she would have to meet them again or their successors. It hardly bore thinking of, yet it was almost preferable to the tape being handed to Andrew. When he had heard it he would leave and this time he wouldn't come back. But the police would come once he had spoken to them.

Her savings were almost used up. One more envelope containing two hundred pounds to Marion Melville and that would be the end. The end of all our lives, mine and Heather's and Edmund's, her mother's and Pam's and maybe even Michael's. Not Andrew's, though. Andrew would leave and find himself a new little blonde. Achieving all this was in Marion's power. Nothing could stop her. Paying out thousands of pounds would keep her silent while it continued – but it couldn't continue. The money wasn't there.

‘You don't want him to meet me, do you?' said Fowler. ‘It's not very kind, not when I've brought you a whole box of floppy discs.'

He had found them in a bin outside the Dorchester, rainbow-coloured ones, apparently unused.

‘They're no use to me,' Marion said. ‘I haven't got a computer.'

‘If I can find one I'll give it to you for a wedding present.'

‘No one throws away computers in waste bins. And, no, I don't want him to meet you. I may be engaged but that's not marriage, is it? Engagements can be broken and you're enough to put any man off.'

Fowler helped himself to the last of the gin from Marion's fridge and the last inch of tonic in the bottle. ‘Have you told him about me? Does he even know I exist?'

‘If you must know, I've told him you're a recluse.'

‘Chance'd be a fine thing,' said Fowler, lighting a cigarette. ‘Do you know what a remittance man is?'

‘No, I don't.'

‘It's someone like me. A wastrel, a ne'er-do-well, a loafer, a layabout, a freeloader, a black sheep, a sluggard, a hobo, a bum, a tramp, a …'

‘Oh, give over, do.'

‘In a minute. A remittance man is all those. His relatives pay him to stay away. Right?'

‘If you reckon on me paying you to stay away from Barry you've got another thing coming.'

‘I'm not asking for money,' said Fowler. ‘Well, I am but no more than usual.' Dirty, unkempt and unshaven as he was, he looked at her with the limpid eyes of innocence. So had he eyed her when he was six years old and in pursuit of a tranche of her pocket money. ‘What I want is this flat.'

Andrew had hired a car and they were going away to a country house hotel for the weekend. From the
brochure it looked a glamorous place, a converted stately home, once a refuge for Charles I, later its owner host to George III. It was surrounded by twenty acres of parkland, it had a spa, a gym and a pool. Before they could leave, Ismay had to pay her weekly hush money to Marion Melville. Two hundred pounds was almost all she had left in her account until her salary was paid into it in a week's time. Leaving Andrew in bed, she walked down to the cash dispenser, feeling that this was the last week of her life. Marion would ask for more next time and she couldn't pay it. Andrew would receive the tape in the post or, more likely, taking no risks, Marion would deliver it to him herself by hand. Ismay imagined the consequences. First of all there would be the kind of inquest he was so good at, the demoralising kind he had instituted over her concealment of Edmund's and Heather's presence in the house, but far far worse. She knew him so well. She envisaged his astonishment, half feigned, his lawyer-like interrogation of her, his threat that of course she understood he couldn't ‘just let this go', then his slow considered decision to go to the police and finally his farewell. Goodbye, this was the end, it couldn't be helped, but she must understand that in the circumstances, in his position, he could hardly be associated with someone whose sister …

She had arranged with Marion for the meeting to take place earlier than usual. And at Clapham Common tube station, not Hungerford Bridge. She couldn't be away too long. Andrew would be suspicious as it was, wanting to know where she had been and what she had been doing. If she had been shopping, what on earth had she bought, knowing they'd be away for the weekend?

She withdrew the money. That made six hundred pounds this woman had extracted from her. It was rare for her to go to Clapham Common station, Clapham
South being much nearer her own home but she had lived here all her life, there was nothing to surprise her. Only perhaps something which had temporarily slipped from her memory. Phoenix Road. She passed the end of it and the pub on the corner called the Phoenix, noted the name and wondered why it suddenly seemed to her so important, so relevant to her life as it now was, so
vital
. Something in the picture on the pub sign? She didn't think so. It was just a bird looking rather like a pheasant rising out of a fire with red and yellow flames. Nothing there …

Of course. It came to her suddenly. Phoenix was the name of the detective inspector who had come to the house just once to talk to her and her mother and Heather. Not Parrot or Swift or Swan but Phoenix, the bird that is reborn from the flames that have incinerated it. Hope sprang, like the fiery bird, and made her breathless as if she had run instead of walked the distance.

Marion was there before her, in ra-ra skirt, tight jumper and kitten heels. She looked pleased with herself.

‘How's Barry?' Ismay said.

‘Goodness, what a memory you've got! He's fine, thanks.'

‘Here's the money.' Ismay passed her the envelope. ‘So you'll be living next door to my sister's mother-in-law.'

‘It looks like it. I'll phone you about next week's instalment.'

Marion went to get a train home. Watching her pass through the barrier, Ismay marvelled at herself. All this was very unlike her. This was the kind of thing people like Marion did, not people like her, but if she didn't go ahead with it she wouldn't enjoy her weekend. Even
being alone with Andrew in that lovely place would mean nothing if this wasn't resolved, or set up to be resolved. She took her mobile out of her bag and asked Directory Enquiries for the number of Phoenix, initial B, at 56 Chudleigh Hill, West Hampstead,
NW
6.

‘How do you spell that?'

‘P,H,O,E,N,I,X.'

‘There's no one of that name.'

She had never seen it written down. Perhaps there were other ways of spelling it. Try beginning with an F. ‘F, double E, N,I,X or maybe F,E,N,I,X.'

One of those must have been right. The recorded voice came on. ‘The number requested is …' and four digits followed the 7624 area code. Ismay dialled it.

A rather deep voice said, ‘Hello?'

‘Is that Detective Inspector Barry Fenix?'

‘Ex-Detective Inspector now, my dear. What can I do for you?'

She cut the connection.

The remittance man was sitting on her doorstep when Marion reached home. She had never changed the locks, so there was no reason for him to be there except, as she put it to herself, out of malice. If he did it often enough the time would come when she had Barry with her. Beautifully dressed Barry in his immaculate car, helping her out, escorting her to her door, to find this piece of human refuse littering the step. And Fowler was looking particularly awful, his face and hands black with dirt. It was months since his hair had been cut and it hung in straggly rats' tails to his shoulders. Now the weather was growing cold, he had resurrected the red wool scarf and wound it round his neck over the collar of a thickly grunge-encrusted black plastic jacket with a broken zip. He had surrounded his seat on the step with a detritus of food packaging, a plastic sandwich case, an empty quarter bottle of gin, several apple cores and the remains of a meat pie on a polystyrene plate.