Wexford 6 - No More Dying Then (13 page)

   “I thought,” said her brother, “you were going to be a research scientist”

   “Oh, that. That was ages ago, when I was a child.”

   A cold shadow had touched Burden. “Who did you say?”

   “Leonie West. She’s gone to live in absolute retirement in her flat and her house at the seaside. She broke her leg skiing and couldn’t dance any more, but she was the most wonderful dancer in the world.” Pat considered. “Anyway, I think so,” she said. “I’ve got masses and masses of pictures of her. Shall I show your’

   “Yes, darling, if you like.”

There were indeed masses and masses of pictures. Pat had cut them out of magazines and newspapers. Not all of them were of Leonie West, but most were.

   In the distant shots she was a beautiful woman, but time and perhaps too the exigencies of continual strenuous dancing showed the toll they had taken in close-ups. For Burden that heavily painted heart-shaped face with its smoothly parted black hair held no magic, but he made appreciative comments to please his daughter as he turned the pages.

   There were stills of ballet films, shots of the star at home, at social functions, dancing all the great classical roles. He was nearly at the end now.

   He said, “They’re very nicely arranged, dear,” to Pat, and turned to the last photograph.

   A fan of Leonie West would have seen only her, a magnificent figure in a floor-length cloak stiff with gold embroidery. Burden hardly noticed her. He was looking, his heart knocking dully, at the crowd of friends from which she had emerged. Just behind the dancer, holding a man’s arm and smiling listlessly with a kind of shy anxiety, was a red-haired woman swathed in a black-and-gold shawl.

   He didn’t need the caption to tell him anything, but he read it. “Pictured at the first night of La File Mal Gardee at Covent Garden is Miss Leonie West with (right) actor Matthew Lawrence and his wife Gemina, 23.” He said nothing, but closed the book quickly and leaned back, shutting his eyes, as if he had felt a sudden pain.

   No one took any notice of him. John was repeating the proof of his theorem, learning it by heart. Pat had taken her book away to restore it to some secret treasure chest. It was nine o’clock.

   Grace said, “Come along, my dears. Bed.”

   The usual argument ensued. Burden put in the stern words which were expected of him, but he felt no enthusiasm, no real care whether his children got the required amount of sleep or not. He picked up the evening paper which he hadn’t yet read. The words were just a black-and-white pattern, hieroglyphics as meaningless as they would be to someone who has never learned to read.

   Grace came back from kissing Pat good night. She had combed her hair and put on fresh lipstick He noticed and he felt a shrinking distaste, This was the same woman that, half an hour before, he had considered wooing with a view to making her his second wife. He must have been mad. Suddenly he saw clearly that all his imaginings of the evening had been madness, a fantasy of his own conjuring, and what they had made to appear as madness was his reality.

   He could never marry Grace, for in gazing at her, studying and admiring her, he had forgotten what any happy marriage must have, what Rosalind Swan so evidently had. He liked Grace, was at ease with her. She was his ideal of what a woman should be, but he hadn’t a particle of desire for her. The thought of attempting to kiss her, of going further than a kiss, caused a shrivelling in his flesh.

   She had brought her chair closer to the sofa where he sat and, laying aside her book, looked expectantly at him, waiting for the conversation, the adult exchange of views, which all day long she was denied. His feeling for her was so slight, his acceptance of her as someone content with the world he had provided for her so great, that it hardly occurred to him she would be hurt by anything he did.

   “I’m going out,” he said.

   “What, now?”

   “I’ve got to go out, Grace.”

   He saw it now. Am I so boring? her eyes said. I have done everything for you, kept your house, cared for your children, borne with your moods. Am I so boring that you can’t sit quietly with me for one single evening?

   “Please yourself,” she said aloud.

The rain had stopped and a thick mist settled on the countryside. Water clung to the trees in heavy drops and fell dully and regularly so that it seemed as if it were still raining. Burden swung the car into Fontaine Road and immediately made a U-turn out again. He was suddenly loth to let his car be seen outside her house at night. All the street would be on watch, ready to spread rumours and tell tales.

   Finally he parked at the bottom of Chiltern Avenue. A footpath, skirting the swings field, joined this cul-de-sac with its neighbour, Fontaine Road. Burden left the car under a street lamp whose light the fog had dimmed to a faintly glowing nimbus and walked slowly towards the path. Tonight its entrance looked like the opening to a black tunnel. There were no lights on in the adjacent houses, no sound in the dark ness but that of water dripping.

   He walked along between bushes whose branches with their wet dying leaves splashed his face and dragged softly at his clothes. Half-way through he found the torch he always carried and switched it on. Then, just as he reached the point where a gate in Mrs. Mitchell’s fence opened into the path, he heard pounding feet behind him. He swung round, directing his torch beam back the way he had come and on to a white face framed in flying wet hair.

   “What is it? What’s the matter?”

   The girl must have recognised him, for she almost threw herself into his arms. He recognised her too. It was Mrs. Crantock’s daughter, a child of about fourteen.

   “Did something frighten you?” he asked.

   “A man,” she said breathlessly. “Standing by a car. He spoke to me. I got in a panic.”

   “You shouldn’t be out alone at night.” He shepherded her into Fontaine Road, then thought better of it. “Come with me,” he said. She hesitated. “You’re all right with me.”

   Back through the black tunnel. Her teeth were chattering. He raised his torch and brought it like a searchlight on to the figure of a man who stood beside the bonnet of Burden’s parked car, The duffel coat he wore with its raised hood gave him enough of a sinister air to alarm any child.

   “Oh, it’s Mr. Rushworth,” She sounded shame-faced.

   Burden had already recognised the man and saw he was recognised too. Frowning a little, he walked towards the husband of the woman who had failed to notify the police after Mrs. Mitchell’s warning.

   “You gave this young lady a bit of a scare.”

   Rushworth blinked in the glare of the torch. “I said hello to her and something about it being an awful night. She scooted off like all the devils in hell were after her. God knows why. She knows me by sight, at any rate.”

   “Everyone round here is a bit nervous at present, sir,” said Burden, “It’s wiser not to speak to people you don’t really know. Good night.”

   “I suppose he was taking his dog out,” the girl said as they came into Fontaine Road. “I didn’t see his dog, though. Did you?”

   Burden hadn’t seen a dog. “You shouldn’t be out alone at this time of night.”

   “I’ve been round to my friends. We were playing records. My friend’s father said he’d see me home, but I wouldn’t let him. It’s only a couple of minutes’ walk. Nothing could happen to me.”

   “But something did, or you thought it did.”

   She digested this in silence. Then she said, “Are you going to see Mrs. Lawrence?”

   Burden nodded, and, realising she couldn’t see his nod, said aloud, “Yes.”

   “She’s in an awful state. My father says he wouldn’t be surprised if she did something silly.”

   “What does that mean?”

   “Well, you know. Committed suicide. I saw her after school in the supermarket. She was just standing in the middle of the shop, crying.” A true daughter of the bourgeoisie, she added with some disapproval, “Everyone was looking at her.”

   Burden opened the gate to the Crantocks’ garden. “Good night,” he said. “Don’t go out alone after dark anymore.”

   There were no lights in Gemma’s house and for once the front door was shut. Very likely she had taken one of Lomax’s sleeping tablets and gone to bed. He peered through the stained glass and made out a faint gleam of light coming from the kitchen. She was still up, then. He rang the bell.

   When the gleam grew no brighter and still she didn’t come, he rang the bell again and banged the lion’s-head door knocker. Behind him, from the branches of the untended trees, came the incessant drip drip of water. He remembered what Martin had said about her drinking and then what the Crantock girl had said and, having rung the bell once more in vain, he made for the side entrance.

   The path was nearly as overgrown as the gardens of Saltram House. He pushed away wet holly and slimy creeper, soaking his hair and his raincoat, His hands were so wet that he could hardly turn the handle on the back door, but the door wasn’t locked and at last he got it open.

   She was slumped at the kitchen table, her head on her outflung arms, and in front of her was an un opened bottle, labelled: “Chianti-type wine, produce of Spain. This week’s offer, 7p off.” He went up to her slowly and laid his hand on her shoulder.

   “Gemma . . .”

   She said nothing. She didn’t move. He pulled up another chair, pulled it close to her, and took her gently in his arms. She rested against him, not resisting, breathing shallowly and fast, and Burden forgot all his agony of the past week, his battling against temptation, in an overwhelming selfish happiness. He could hold her like this forever, he thought, warmly and wordlessly, without passion or desire or the need for any change.

   She lifted her head. Her face was almost unrecognisable, it was so swollen with crying. “You didn’t come,” she said. “For days and days I waited for you and you didn’t come.” Her voice was thick and strange. “Why didn’t you?”

   “I don’t know.” It was true. He didn’t know, for now his resistance seemed the height of pointless folly.

   “Your hair’s all wet.” She touched his hair and the raindrops on his face. “I’m not drunk,” she said, “but I have been. That stuff is very nasty but it deadens you for a bit. I went out this afternoon to buy some food - I haven’t eaten for days - but I didn’t buy any, I couldn’t. When I came to the sweet counter I kept thinking of how John used to beg me to buy chocolate and I wouldn’t because it was bad for his teeth. And I wished I’d let him have it, all he wanted, because it wouldn’t have made any difference now, would it?”

   She stared at him blankly, the tears pouring down her face.

   “You mustn’t say that.”

   “Why not? He’s dead. You know he’s dead. I keep thinking that sometimes I got cross with him and I smacked him and I wouldn’t let him have the sweets he wanted . . . Oh, Mike! What shall I do? Shall I drink that wine and take all Dr. Lomax’s tablets? Or shall I go out in the rain and just walk and walk till I die? What’s the use of living? I’ve got no one, no one.”

   “You’ve got me,” said Burden.

   For answer she clung to him again, but this time more tightly. “Don’t leave me. Promise you won’t leave me.”

   “You ought to go to bed,” he said. There was, he thought, a sickening irony here. Wasn’t that what he had intended when he left the car in the next street? That he and she should go to bed? He had really imagined that this demented grief-stricken woman would welcome his love-making. You fool, he whispered harshly to himself. But he managed to say calmly, “Go to bed. I’ll make you a hot drink and you can take a tablet and I’ll sit with you till you go to sleep.”

   She nodded. He wiped her eyes on a handkerchief Grace had ironed as carefully as Rosalind Swan ironed her husband’s shirts. “Don’t leave me,” she said again, and then she went, dragging her feet a little.

   The kitchen was in a hideous mess. Nothing had been washed up or put away for days and there was a stale sweetish smell. He found some cocoa and some dried milk and did his best with these unsatisfactory ingredients, mixing them and heating them on a cooker that was black with burned-on fat

   She was sitting up in bed, the black-and-gold shawl around her shoulders, and that magic exotic quality, compounded of colour and strangeness and lack of inhibition, had to some extent returned to her. Her face was calm again, the large still eyes staring. The room was untidy, chaotic even, but its chaos was powerfully feminine, the scattered clothes giving off mingled sweet scents.

   He tipped a sleeping pill out of the bottle and handed it to her with her drink. She gave him a wan smile and took his hand, lifting it first to her lips and then holding it tight.

   “You won’t ever stay away from me like that again?”

   “I am a poor substitute, Gemma,” he said.

   “I need,” she said soffly, “another kind of loving to make me forget.”

   He guessed at what she meant but didn’t know what reply to make, so he sat silently with her, holding her hand, until at last her hand grew limp and she sank back against the pillows. He switched off the bed lamp and stretched himself beside her but on top of the covers. Presently her steady regular breathing told him that she was asleep.

   The luminous dial of his watch showed half past ten. It seemed much later, as if a lifetime had passed since he left Grace and drove out here through the damp, rain-filled mist. The room was cold, perfumed and thick-aired and cold. Her hand lay loosely in his. He slid his hand away and edged across the bed to get up and leave.

   Wary, even in sleep, she murmured, “Don’t leave me, Mike.” Thick with sleep, her voice held a note of terror, of dread that she might again be abandoned.

   “I won’t leave you.” He made up his mind quickly and decisively. “I’ll stay all night.”

   Shivering, be stripped off his clothes and got into bed beside her. It seemed quite natural to lie as he had lain beside Jean, his body curled about hers, his left arm around her waist, clasping the hand which again had grown possessive and demanding. Although cold to him, his body must have felt warm to her, for she sighed with a kind of happiness and relaxed against him.