Walking in Darkness (7 page)

All his life, his parents had been active in neighbourhood politics: his mother was on a whole raft of committees, the local PT Association, Mother’s Union, raising money for charities, and his father, a New England academic, had campaigned for his local congressman most of his adult lifetime, a stalwart Republican and boyhood friend at school of Eddie Ramsey’s eldest son. Fred Colbourne had even thought of standing for Congress, himself, until a mild heart attack in his mid-fifties put paid to that idea. His doctor had warned that although he might live another twenty years if he was sensible and took care of himself, he would be asking for trouble if he didn’t slow down. He certainly wouldn’t be fit to cope with the tensions and strain of a political career.

‘Well, that’s the end of the road for me, but one day I’d like to see you in Congress, son,’ he had told Steve wistfully, on his first day back home from hospital, resting on a daybed by a window downstairs in their three-bedroomed white frame Norman Rockwell look-alike house above Chesapeake Bay, Easton, a few miles from the Ramsey family home.

Steve had laughed, grimaced, shaken his head. ‘I’m no politician, Dad. I’ve seen too much of them too close. Call me fussy, but I don’t want to get my hands that dirty.’

His father had bristled. ‘That isn’t fair, Steve. I know plenty of decent politicians. OK, there’s some corruption, there always is in government, but there are plenty of honest men in Washington.’

‘Like the wonderful guys who didn’t come to visit you in hospital?’ Steve knew none of the politicians his father had done so much to help over the years had shown up to see him after his heart attack, and that that had hurt his father, even though he had never said a word about them.

‘They’re busy men. And they probably felt it was a time for family only, and didn’t want to intrude. They’re my friends, Steve, I know them better than you do!’

Steve had heard Fred Colbourne’s voice rasp with distress and anger, and too late remembered his mother sternly warning him not to upset his father. Quickly, he said, ‘I know they’re your friends, and some of them are decent guys. And somebody has to do the job, like somebody has to take out the garbage. We have to be governed, but it isn’t ever going to be me, Dad. Sorry to disappoint you, but keeping an eye on what they get up to is more my style.’

From his teens Steve had been out on the hoof, stuffing campaign messages into letter boxes, selling party newspapers, acting as a steward at local meetings, listening in on late-night drinking sessions where his father and various other local party bigwigs talked more freely than they ever would in public. He was disillusioned before he was twenty, and nothing he had seen since had changed his view of politicians.

His father had looked at him reproachfully, rather than angrily. ‘I’ve never got my hands dirty, Steve.’

‘No, of course not,’ Steve had hurriedly agreed, his voice soothing, then went on, ‘But you’ve had to turn a blind eye to a lot of stuff you didn’t really approve of, Dad. We both know that.’ Then he had leaned over to pat his father’s shoulder. ‘Dad, don’t look that way. In the real world we all have to live with what we don’t like. I do, myself – there’s corruption and sleaze enough in TV, God knows. But at least nobody pretends to be perfect. It’s hypocrisy I can’t stand; all the sanctimonious humbug.’

From the doorway his mother had asked sharply, ‘What are you talking about? I thought I told you no politics? Your father mustn’t overdo things, he isn’t out of the wood yet. Time he took his nap now, anyway. I’ve just made some coffee and hot muffins, Steve. Come back downstairs.’

She came over and made a fuss of tucking a warm patchwork quilt around his father, as if he was a child, adjusting his pillows, pulling down the blind to shut out the noonday sun, stroking back his thinning grey hair and smiling down at him maternally.

‘Now, you get some sleep, you hear?’

‘She finally got what she wanted, son,’ his father had complained. ‘I’m at her mercy, helpless as a newborn babe. Talk about politicians wanting power! It’s women who’re power-hungry, they’re control freaks, every last one of them.’

‘You hush,’ Marcia Colbourne said indulgently, bending to kiss his forehead before she walked quietly back out of the room, taking Steve with her.

When she got him alone in the kitchen, she turned on him angrily. ‘I won’t tell you again, Steve! He may look as if he’s back to normal, but he’s still recovering, and I don’t want him upset. Keep off the subject of politics. Talk to him about books, or the garden, or music, but no politics! And don’t ever let me hear you lecturing your father again.’

Steve had been taken aback, his face flushing. His mother rarely raised her voice but when she did you knew you were really in the doghouse. ‘Sorry,’ he had muttered, and meant it. ‘I didn’t think. Stupid of me.’

‘Yes, it was,’ she had said, but, relenting, had poured him strong black coffee and put out a plate of blueberry muffins, his favourites, especially when his mother had made them. She was the best cook he knew; she didn’t cook fussy food, only went for simple dishes, usually traditional New England fare, with home-grown herbs and vegetables, cooked perfectly. Her chowder was something to dream about and her fish melted in your mouth.

Marcia Colbourne still had the looks that had made Fred Colbourne fall for her thirty-six years ago. Until you got close to her you would never believe she was fifty-five; her skin had a smooth texture that made her look half her age, and her dark hair showed just a little elegant grey here and there.

She was as traditional in the way she dressed as she was in her cooking: in winter she wore soft pastel lambswool sweaters with pearls, in the English style, with tweed skirts; in summer she wore Laura Ashley dresses that gave her a cool, understated elegance. Slim, hyperactive, she was always on the move, cooking, working in the house, gardening, swimming, walking the beach in all weathers to hunt for bare, silvery driftwood for her famous flower arrangements.

Her artistic streak came out in many ways: she embroidered tablecloths and traycloths, made tapestry firescreens, painted delicate watercolours, especially of the coast around their home, and when Steve and his sister, Sally, were kids the family often took their summer vacation at the Blackwater wildlife refuge, some twenty miles away, to sail and fish and watch birds, while their mother painted the flocks of water fowl you saw there. Steve associated those holidays with a sense of freedom, a smell of the sea, of fish they caught themselves, cooking over a makeshift barbecue on the sand while his mother threw together a salad with a dressing of lemon juice and a little olive oil.

Staring out of the cab window, Steve came back to the present with a start, realizing they had arrived in the overcrowded multi-ethnic neighbourhood of the Lower East Side, where wave after wave of new immigrants had come to rest over the years: Jews and Italians, Chinese and Poles, all washing together in a colourful mix which filled these grey streets with terrific restaurants, shops which gave off a powerful foreign smell, local markets selling everything from French cheeses to Russian icons, Polish handmade leather shoes to Chinese herbal medicines.

The cab pulled up outside a high apartment building among a row of others. After paying off the driver, Steve stood on the sidewalk, looking around in fast-falling twilight, catching sight of the East River, a bluish slate smudge between the close-set buildings opposite. You were never far from water on Manhattan: on the West Side of the city ran the Hudson, leading out eventually to the Atlantic, while the East River linked up the Atlantic with Long Island Sound.

Traffic churned past. Many shops were still open, he saw a handful of people waiting to be served at a stall selling green bananas, tied bundles of lemon grass, round bronze onions and aubergines, the colours of the vegetables still sharp in the fading light. Steve suddenly felt hungry, realising he hadn’t eaten a proper meal for a day or so. He had had coffee and orange juice for breakfast, a sandwich at lunchtime, nothing in between. He threw a glance up at the freshly painted terracotta façade of the building behind him. Iron fire-escapes gave the row of buildings a skeletal structure. Now at twilight they cast elaborate shadows on the painted walls behind them. Which floor did she live on? With his luck it would probably turn out to be the top, and there would be no lift.

Well, there were plenty of good restaurants within walking distance, he thought, if he could talk her into having dinner with him! She had told him she was living on a shoestring, so the idea of a free meal would probably be too tempting for her to resist. He hoped.

The apartment-house lobby was dank and gloomy, as they often were in this neighbourhood. He checked out the mailboxes first and was relieved to find a first-floor flat had the name Narodni neatly printed in capital letters beside the name Janacek.

He had to ring the doorbell several times before anyone opened up, and even then the chain was left on while a face peered out through the narrow crack. It wasn’t Sophie Narodni. This woman was much older; a very thin, febrile face, without make-up, faintly Oriental-looking, black eyes, slanting a little, a wide mouth and high cheekbones.

‘Yeah?’ Her voice was entirely American, not to say New York. Bronx-born, he decided as she added, ‘Wha’d’yer want?’

‘I’m looking for Sophie Narodni.’

‘She’s not back yet.’

‘Are you Lilli Janacek?’

She gave him a suspicious look. ‘What if I am? I don’t know you. I’m cooking, I can’t stand here talking.’ The door began to close. Steve put his foot into it. The black eyes looked down at his highly polished shoe. ‘I only have to press this panic button, mister, and the apartment security alarm will go off. Get your foot out of my door.’

Steve pulled out his press card, held it up. ‘I’m Steve Colbourne, I work for NWTV, maybe you’ve seen my show? If you’re interested in politics you will have. I just saw Sophie at the Gowrie press conference and wanted to talk to her about something important.’

She looked at the photo on his press card, then, closer, at him, her black, thin brows making a perfect semicircle in surprise. ‘Sure. Sure, I’ve seen you on TV, I remember your face now.’

‘Could I wait for Sophie inside, please? It’s chilly enough to freeze the blood out here, and the lobby smells like a urinal.’

She hesitated, then unhooked the chain. ‘I guess so, come in.’

As soon as he had walked past her she put the door back on the chain. ‘I was just going to make some coffee – d’yer want some?’

‘I’d love some.’ He could smell something delicious; frying onions, or garlic, or both. He followed Lilli Janacek into a tiny kitchen. There was a pan on the stove. Lilli stirred its contents, poured in steaming pale golden liquid from a jug, stirred again, then turned down the heat and put a lid on the pan.

‘Chicken stew,’ she told Steve, turning round.

‘Smells wonderful.’

She smiled. ‘It’s an old recipe my mother taught me.’

‘Czech?’

‘No, my mother was American – it was my father who was Czech. How do you like your coffee?’

‘Black and strong, no sugar. Thank you. Any idea where Sophie can have got to? The press conference ended an hour ago. Would she have gone to her office?’

‘What office?’ Lilli Janacek asked with heavy sarcasm. ‘She works from here. You don’t think that old skinflint of a Czech would cough up for an office? Before Sophie came, a friend of mine, Theo, worked for Vladimir, using his own home as an office, and being paid in peanuts. The monkeys in Central Park Zoo have better pay and conditions. Every cent Sophie spends she has to account for – she can just about pay my rent and her fares. If I didn’t feed her once a day, she probably wouldn’t eat.’

Handing him a mug of coffee, Lilli led the way back across the little corridor into a sitting-room so small it just had room for a couple of armchairs and a TV, a dining-table squeezed into a corner with two chairs pushed under it and a set of narrow bookshelves running below the window. The threadbare carpet was a dingy beige but there were jewel-coloured little rugs scattered across it, and the walls were lit by red glass globes which gave the room a warmth and glow that made it look inviting.

‘I don’t allow smoking in here,’ he was firmly informed.

‘I don’t smoke.’ That got him a smile.

Steve asked her, ‘What do you do? Are you a journalist too?’

‘I’m an artist, but I do the odd article for trade magazines. You know the sort of thing; pieces on modern art, on New York galleries, anything to bring in some income. Every little helps.’

Sipping his coffee, Steve began to prowl along the shelves, looking at the books. Hemingway, Thurber, Wallace Stevens, Dorothy Parker, Jack Kerouac, Scott Fitzgerald.

‘Are these all yours, or are some Sophie’s?’

‘Sophie keeps her books in her bedroom. Those are mine, and before you ask, I don’t read contemporary authors, they bore me,’ Lilli told him. ‘Except for Toni Morrison. She’s so good it hurts, but most writers today, they got no style and nothing to say worth reading.’

‘Who does Sophie read?’

‘Are you in love with her?’

He went red and laughed shortly, taken aback by the directness. He was used to giving out questions like knives, not getting them. ‘I only just met her today.’

Lilli’s smile was mocking, a little cynical. ‘So what? It doesn’t take but a minute to fall in love. She’s quite a looker.’

‘She certainly is!’ Steve tried to sound very casual. ‘Has she got a boyfriend?’ Lilli might know about Don Gowrie, might have all the answers to the questions buzzing around his head.

Tartly, she told him, ‘Ask her. I’m not gossiping about her to a guy I only just met.’

He saw he wouldn’t get anything out of her. Undeterred, he asked, ‘How long has she been in America?’

Lilli gave him a narrow stare. ‘What is this? The Spanish Inquisition? You can ask her that, too.’

Steve shrugged and wandered over to the dining-table, stared down at a large black sheet of paper covered with white circles arranged in a wheel, a black and white image of a face in each, in the centre a lightly sketched outline of Sophie’s face which had the same spectral look, and between the circles a vividly painted border in the art nouveau style. The effect was mysterious and striking. ‘What’s this? Did you do it?’ he asked, bending to look at the circles.