A City of Strangers (20 page)

No, if the question of splitting up ever did come up now, it would be raised by her. She could draw up in her mind a kind of balance sheet. On the
one side, there was the fact that Lynn no longer excited her or even pleased her in bed (common enough, no doubt); that she was by now unsure whether she even liked him, let alone loved him; that she was fed up with being an appendage, an automatic support, a nonpersonality hitched to his career. On the other side, there were the boys, who undoubtedly would be unhappy and disorientated if their parents split up; there was the question of where she would go and what she would do (it was so long, so frighteningly long, since she had
done
anything); there was a residual feeling for Lynn that she rather suspected was pity; and there was a terrible doubt in her mind, a feeling that she would be no more happy and fulfilled outside marriage than she was inside it.

She wished she had someone to talk to. Odd all her women friends had somehow fallen away—married, moved, got other interests. Perhaps all domesticated women found this. Or perhaps it was largely her fault: She had been so enthusiastically domestic in those early years, particularly after the births of Gareth and Tristram. She wished she knew better the woman Steven Copperwhite was living with. What was her name? Evie Soames. She looked like the sort one could talk this sort of thing over with.

Margaret Copperwhite realized at once that she had made a big mistake. It had seemed sensible, on consideration, and less painful for her, to invite Steven
out
for a meal, rather than back to the house they had once shared. So easy for him to get the idea that he could treat it as some kind of second home. On no account would she go along with that. She had been twice to the Pot au Feu at lunchtime (once with Mike Oddie, as a matter of fact) and had found it a sensible, streamlined restaurant, catering to busy professional people. She had not realized that in the evening it went in for low, romantic lighting and faint, yearning string music that was probably recycled Mantovani.

“Now this
is
nice,” Steven said, showing she'd got it exactly wrong. Quite apart from the fact that it was a damned sight more expensive than a vegetarian nosh-up at the Art Gallery.

“Mmmm,” she murmured noncommittally.

“This is a luxury,” said Steven when they had ordered. “It's ages since I had dinner out, or—”

He stopped himself in time. He had been going to say “or had dinner cooked for me, come to that.” But he didn't want Margaret to think he was
whingeing. She doubtless would think he had made his bed, and must lie on it. Might even, indeed, crow.

In spite of his constant attempts at honesty with himself, Steven had never quite admitted what his motives were in resuming relations with his ex-wife. He was hedging his bets. At the back of his mind, he knew that Evie, so much younger than he, might well before long walk out on him. Then he would be alone, and slightly ridiculous. In fact, sometimes he thought he might make the first move himself—something in the nature (though he would never have used so militaristic a metaphor) of a preemptive strike. But these thoughts remained at the back of his mind. Steven's honesty with himself was really part of his desire to think well of himself, and if realities were too brutal they were shunned.

“I hear they've g—” he began, and then stopped himself again.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Sorry. As a matter of fact, I was going to say ‘I hear they've got young Phelan, even if it is for something else.' Then I thought you'd probably think I was trying to pump you again. Unfortunate choice of topic.”

“No reason why we shouldn't talk about that,” said Margaret, who saw no other topic on the horizon. “So long as you don't expect any information I've gleaned from my job.”

Steven nodded intelligently.

“I realize now what fools we must have looked,” he said, relaxing. “The middle classes, fighting to defend their patch.”

“It
did
look rather like that.”

“But I still think it's a complete red herring.”

“How do you mean?”

“I think that crime has all the hallmarks of a quite different
sort
of criminal. National Front, bullyboys, terror tactics—that's what it bears the hallmarks of. And that's not really our sort of crime at all.”

“Not middle-class crime you mean?”

“Well—if you want to put it in class terms, yes. I see it more politically. You know what our generation was like.”

“Oh, do I?”

“Of course, you remember. All that marching and demonstrating for causes we believed in. Sit-ins and banner waving. At least in those days idealism and liberalism weren't dirty words.”

“And are the people in Wynton Lane demonstrators and banner wavers?”

“No, no—of course not. What I mean is, all of us there are responsible, thinking individuals, and it just isn't the sort of thing any of us would
do.”

“Of course, I don't know any of the individuals involved, apart from you,” said Margaret. “And I'd certainly pay you the compliment of saying that I
can't see you trying to incinerate an entire family to preserve your life-style intact.”

Her hand was lying on the table, and he put his own hand affectionately over it.

“Bless you, dear old Meg.”

Fortunately the arrival of the waiter with their wine covered her withdrawal of her hand.

When Adrian Eastlake arrived home from work that evening he found his mother in the kitchen, dressed, and preparing vegetables for dinner. It was something he had half-expected would happen soon, but he could not repress his protests.

“Darling, there's really no need for you to do that.”

“Adrian, don't fuss. It's something I want to do. I feel I'm getting better.”

Adrian too had seen how things were changing. There had been a stunning picture of the Princess of Wales in a red evening gown, one shoulder bare, in his mother's women's magazine the previous week. It had not been clipped out, and the magazine had been left out for rubbish. From the garden, where he had been clearing up for winter, he had seen his mother in the spare bedroom, going through the wardrobe to which he had long ago consigned all her old day clothes. He had felt a lump in his throat, and had raked vigorously to hide his emotion. Now he said, “You must just do as you want, my darling,” and turned to leave the kitchen.

That evening at dinner, which they ate after a small glass of sherry each, his mother said:

“Somehow I am going to have to get some new clothes. Everything I have is impossibly dated.”

“Good clothes don't date, darling. And you always had good clothes.”

“Well, that's true in a way. But no style lasts forever. And everything smells so musty.”

“I could get hold of some mail order catalogs.”

“Adrian! Have I ever been the sort of person who buys clothes out of catalogs?”

It was a long time since she had rebuked him with such spirit. In her long illness she had become compliant, accepting.

After dinner they played Scrabble, and she played in her old way, with a will to win, chivvying him if he took too long thinking. She did win, and not because he let her.

“I enjoyed that,” she said, standing up. “Now perhaps it
is
time for bed.”

“You are sure you're not overdoing things, aren't you, darling?” asked Adrian anxiously, standing to kiss her goodnight. “So many steps forward, all at once.”

“ ‘I am half sick of shadows,' ” Rosamund quoted. “That's one of your favorite poems, isn't it? Of course, I shall go my own pace. If I find it's too much I shall ease up.”

At the door she paused, wanting to say something, uncertain for the first time that evening.

“Adrian, you said something the other day that at the time I didn't understand . . . something about that man who died. Phelan. Adrian, I had never seen that man in my life before the day when he came round to view The Hollies. Do please get that clear in your mind, Adrian.”

That night, in bed, Adrian Eastlake wept a little, and remained long, long hours sleepless. His mother was coming back to life, and he was not rejoicing over it. What kind of person was he, that he should wish her to remain as she had been—invalid, vegetable, cocooned? But he had to admit—to himself only—that he did wish that. He had enjoyed doing everything for her, enjoyed fussing over her, having her to himself. She had been all-in-all to him. As he had been to her.

Now things were changing. Soon she would start going out, perhaps seeing old friends again, going to church, having coffee in town. What was so dreadful about that? Who could be so selfish as to resent that?

But he did. His mother's emergence into life seemed to make all those long years of her retirement and his selfless love little more than a dream. It made all his devotion, his service, his tender care something a little ridiculous, misplaced. In fact, it made everything he had done for her seem futile.

T
he girl sat opposite Mike Oddie in the headmaster's study, her eyes knowing, secretive, unwise. The headmaster, sitting unobtrusively beside the desk, had told Oddie that she was a strange girl and, seeing her, he knew that he had an uphill, perhaps an impossible task. The girl licked her lips, which somehow she managed to make an oddly unpleasant motion.

“You're good friends with your sister June, aren't you, Cilla?”

For a moment he thought she was going to deny it—a common Phelan tactic, applied indiscriminately—but at length, without a change of expression, the girl settled for evasion.

“She's my sister.”

“That's right, and I expect you talk a lot to each other, don't you?”

She drew a finger across her nose.

“Sometimes.”

“You see, we have a problem, because we don't know where your sister is, and we don't even know if she's heard yet that your Dad is dead.”

A suspicion of a shrug came into Cilla's shoulders, and she kept silent.

“What I wondered was, is there anyone she's particularly friendly with—a, well, a boyfriend or man friend perhaps? Someone she might be . . . staying with?”

He could have sworn her eyes narrowed slightly, betraying a thought, a name that came into her mind.

“She wouldn't tell me things like that.”

She was lying, he knew it. That was just the sort of thing her sister June would tell her. He looked toward the headmaster, whose face was interested but neutral. What sort of tactic, he would have liked to ask, might work with this sort of child? Finding no inspiration in the face—for probably the headmaster
was as much at sea with her as himself—he added a touch of majesty-of-the-law to his manner, leaning forward impressively and raising his voice.

“Cilla, I don't think you're being honest with us. It's very silly to hold things back—silly, and maybe dangerous.”

He knew at once he had made a mistake. All his own experience of parenthood counted for nothing with this girl. He should have coaxed, not threatened. An expression of obstinacy settled on her face.

“I don't know anything. I don't know where she is.”

“I don't think you do. But I do think you've remembered the name of someone, haven't you?”

“No.”

“Someone she's fond of, someone she's going with?”

Cilla leaned forward, and for a moment the closed mask on her face slipped and something more direct showed.

“If I did I wouldn't tell you! Fucking cops!”

It was eerie. Mike Oddie knew he had heard the voice of the dead Jack Phelan.

Back at police headquarters, frustrated, and tantalized by the feeling that Cilla Phelan was concealing more than just the name of one of her sister's men friends, Oddie ran into Malcolm Cray, about to start off on a town beat.

“Bloody Phelans,” he said. “How are you going on with Michael?”