A City of Strangers (9 page)

Jack Phelan was going to arrange the purchase of The Hollies.

Steven Copperwhite finished his double lecture on Yeats at eleven o'clock.
Tricky
poet Yeats, he felt: elusive. He wasn't meeting Margaret till half past twelve, but he felt unsettled. Perhaps it was Yeats, perhaps it was Margaret. He dumped his books in his office and dawdled down into town.

He loafed around the W. H. Smith and Austell's bookshops for a bit, looking on the shelves for anything relevant to his old-age topic. What a
lot
of fiction was published in paperback these days! Perhaps television was not destroying the reading habit after all. Perhaps people did both at the same time. Outside in the street he gave a coin to a musician playing Bach. He was always sorry for street musicians in Sleate, trying to wrest money out of Yorkshiremen. Remembering how he and Margaret had often sat companionably reading and listening to music, he drifted up to the Classical Record Shop. He riffled through the box of new LPs and wondered what she would like. The Dvořák Violin Concerto? It would make a change from the Cello. The Tchaikovsky Number Two?

Suddenly he remembered that when they had split up he had taken the stereo and the record collection. In fact, he remembered reading somewhere that when marriages break up it is almost always the husband who takes the stereo and records. How odd. Why? In fact, he hardly ever played anything these days.

He drifted down to the Art Gallery. Only just twelve, but perhaps Margaret would get there early. He dallied by the postcard stall, where the attendants, as usual, were struggling to be civil to the public, and failing. He wandered upstairs to look at Kramer's
The Day of Atonement
It had always been one of his and Margaret's favorite pictures. Perhaps, he thought, with an uprush of sentimentality, she would have the same thought and come up and look at it. But though he dallied before it an unconscionable time, she did not show up.

At twenty-five past he went down to the cafeteria and bagged a table. As he was about to sit down a thought struck him, and he looked guiltily round. The Gallery Cafeteria was not one of Evie's haunts—too far from the University at lunchtime—but it could easily be the haunt of some of her circle. It catered to vegetarians and health faddists (as he tried not to think of them). But no, there wasn't anybody he recognized, and he relaxed. At twelve-thirty precisely Margaret showed up. She smiled at him briskly, cast an eye over the plates of food on offer behind glass on the counter, and came over.

“I'll have the vegetarian quiche and lots of that bean and pasta salad,” she said, sitting down. “I'm toying with vegetarianism, not very passionately. And a glass of orange juice. I don't drink at lunchtime these days.”

Steven bustled up, got a tray, and filled plates with this and that. He got orange juice for Margaret and a glass of wine for himself. He didn't see why he shouldn't drink at lunchtime. He wasn't teaching again until three. He distributed things, got rid of the tray, and sat down, grinning tentatively at his former wife. What did one say on these occasions?

“I went to buy you a record,” he began. “Then I remembered I'd got the stereo. What a stupid thing to forget.”

“I've gone over to CD anyway,” she. said, beginning efficently on her salad. “I've only got a few records, but it means I don't use them as aural wallpaper, as we used to.”

“That's very wise. I hardly ever play anything now. . . . I thought CD was expensive?”

“It is rather.”

Silence fell. She wasn't helping him. But—fairness asserted itself—why should she?

“I thought we should get together,” he said, repressing the awkwardness he felt and putting on what came out as a puppyish ingratiatingness. “Too
silly if we can't be friends. No avoiding the fact that we've spent most of our lives together.”

“No-o.”

“Have you seen anything of the children recently?”

“Not since summer. I went down to Peter's, and Susan came to Sleate with the family. But, of course, you know. She went to see you.”

“Yes. . . . And how have you been, then? Getting along? It's difficult for a single woman, isn't it?”

“Yes. But perhaps not so much as it used to be.” A smile wafted briefly over her intelligent middle-aged face. “There are a lot of us around.”

“Ah—you get together, do you? Supportive groups, and all that? Lunches together?”

“Well, no, actually.” She had raised her eyebrows and now looked at her watch. “Not as far as I'm concerned. I haven't much time for that sort of thing. I'm a working woman.”

“Are you?” Steven felt rather foolish. “I hadn't any idea. Where are you working?”

“West Yorkshire Police HQ, actually. Prosecutions. I'm just an administrative assistant, but it's interesting work, as work goes.” She dived into the remains of her salad and quiche, and felt she ought to reciprocate with an interest in him—something which in truth she hardly felt. “What about you? What are you doing these days?”

“Oh—you know: usual stuff. I've got a new project about old age in the contemporary novel.”

“Oh, good. Does that mean that your male domination thing has been taken?”

“Well, no, actually. But it's with Cambridge U.P. at the moment, and I'm very hopeful. Potentially it's very topical.”

“What about the house? What's it called—Ashdene? Is it satisfactory?”

“Oh,
very.
Real character. . . . Mind you, we're under threat at the moment.”

“Threat? Some sort of redevelopment, do you mean?”

“No—an appalling family from the council estate threatening to move in two doors down. The Phelans. Real slum-dwellers, something out of Dickens. Seems they've had a big win on the pools. You know me, I'm no snob, but just to see the front garden of their present house is enough to tell you you wouldn't want them as neighbors. The girl's on the streets, the eldest boy's had a set-to with . . . someone I know, and the man! Loud, obscene, filthy dirty—and as far as we know he's got a criminal record, though we don't know of what kind. I've got an appointment to see the estate agents after this . . . ”

He suddenly caught Margaret looking at him closely.

“You didn't ask me to lunch knowing that I worked at Police HQ and hoping to get something out of me about his record, did you?”

“No!” Steven leaned forward, desperate in his sincerity. “I had no
idea
you worked there. How could I know? Anyway, what would be the point? You can't stop crooks buying houses.”

“No. Doesn't seem to be much point in your going to see the estate agents, does there?” She appeared to have accepted his protestations, but as she forked the last of her quiche into her mouth she looked at him directly and said, “Remember that we all sign the Official Secrets Act.”

This reunion wasn't going at all as Steven had planned.

“But, Dr. Pickering, you must see the terrible consequences to the neighbors of your selling to this man.”

“Yes. Mrs. Bridewell made the same point. I think you may both be exaggerating, but I'd be the first to agree that the family wouldn't be ideal neighbors.”

“But it's much worse than that! He is the most appalling man!”

“I've been the family's doctor for many years so you can be sure I'm not likely to wear rose-colored spectacles where they are concerned.”

“Well, then—”

“As I said to Mrs. Bridewell, I would be willing to alert the estate agents, tell them to be very sure of their money—my money—before they enter into any agreements. That would be in my interest as well as yours.”

“Anyone dealing with the Phelans would be on the alert naturally.”

“Quite. One would hope so.”

“What we are asking—”

“What you are asking is that I refuse to sell to someone who apparently can put up the money. Doesn't it occur to you all that you are asking rather a lot? The house has been on the market for—what?—nearly six months. Naturally I want to get it off my hands. Now, when someone comes along, up come all my old neighbors and apparently demand that only white Anglo-Saxon Protestant buyers should be considered.”

“That's really not fair! We're not trying to tie your hands—”

“Well, it does seem exceptionally like that to me. Mr. Eastlake, I'm a busy man. . . . ”

When your antagonist says he's a busy man, you know you have failed. Adrian Eastlake murmured apologies and rang off, as low in spirits as ever he had been since his mother was . . . attacked. He dreaded the meeting the
next evening at the Packards', with all the fear of a low-spirited man confronted by one much more brutal and determined than himself.

It was the second time that day that Rosamund Eastlake had left her room. She hardly knew how to account for the restlessness that had invaded her recently. While Adrian had been at home over the weekend, her room had begun to feel like a prison, and she had taken the opportunity of his trips to the shops or working in the garden sweeping up leaves to get out of it and to drift round the house, asserting her presence in the whole of it. She had even thought of suggesting that she might come down in the evening now and again, perhaps have a game of Monopoly or Scrabble, as they had done in the old days. Why had she not? A sense, perhaps, that Adrian would not have welcomed it?

What the house meant for her was memories: the memories that were things of nourishment to her. Above all, they were the memories of her short but wonderfully happy marriage, though they were also memories of Adrian in childhood—grave, shy, and loving—that were almost as cherished. But all of a sudden—she could not have put it like this to herself—the memories seemed part of a continuum rather than of something that was over and done with.

Suddenly, looking out of a window, Rosamund thought: I should like to go out into the garden. It was difficult to know what prompted the thought, for the garden was by no means at its most attractive: There were brown bedding plants and dying hydrangeas, and the cherry and lilac trees were beginning to lose their leaves. Her thought surprised, even shocked her, but then she thought: Why not? The garden was well shielded, even from the neighbors. It was nearly lunchtime, and everything around was quiet. She would need do no more than put on a coat over her nightdress, and a pair of shoes. She realized that she no longer knew where her coat and shoes were, or even whether she still had any. But surely Adrian would never have got rid of them without consulting her?

She went to the hall cupboard and there they were, almost as if they were waiting for her to resume life. She wrinkled her nose at the dust and must, but took out her dear old fur coat and found it as good as new. Her husband, Desmond, had bought it for her in the last year of their marriage. A last, splendid present—though this was something he suspected and she did not. She slipped it on: It still fitted perfectly. She had not gained weight during those years of inactivity—if anything, she had got thinner. The shoes, of
course, fitted. Feeling a little tremulous, but determined, she unbolted the kitchen door, turned the key, and went out into the back garden.