A Clear Conscience (24 page)

‘Don't suppose she has any idea of what Joe might have done,' Ryan suggested.

‘Don't suppose you have much hard fact either,' Mary replied, but he could tell she was hooked. She could see Joe Boyce as a murderer all right. She could see all husbands as potential murderers; the job had got to her brain.

‘You going back to see her again? Like, over the next twenty-four hours?' he asked.

‘Could do, I suppose,' she said, stretching and yawning like a glorious, aerobic-exercised cat. Think of that in a leotard, Ryan told himself; better than no clothes at all, leotards.

‘Fancy a curry?'

She seemed to recover herself, shuffle slightly like someone who had heard these unseductive lines before.

‘What's your wife doing this evening, Mike?'

‘Spanish class.'

‘I thought,' she said as she swept up her good handbag from the table, planted a kiss on his forehead and stroked his cheek in a way which made him feel dizzy, ‘she might have been home, ironing your shirts. You're a star, Mike. Thanks for the drink.'

A
listair Eliot went to the pub on his way home. He knew that he did not stop at the Spoon as a panacea, or even because two days without a professional cleaner had turned his house into a minefield of things on which the average man could break his neck. He stopped because he no longer wanted to get home, on account of a row with Emily which had passed all boundaries known before, and because if home was no longer a source of comfort, his conscience was worse. How could she have sacked that poor woman for stealing perfume? Perfume was simply not important enough to warrant such action against someone so loyal. In a proper job Cath would have been given warning. His
anger had been one of bewilderment, a disappointment in his wife, even before he remembered that Emily had not known exactly how unfortunate Cath was. It did not matter, he had said, who possessed the perfume hidden in his desk drawer; sacking Cath still stank. Poor Cath, he had kept on repeating to Emily's evident displeasure; poor Cath. She is not poor Cath. She smells, she's irritating, she has bad table-manners and she's a thief!, Emily had yelled, aggressive and defensive. A thief!

And you are scarcely better, he said gravely, to treat her in such a fashion without a second chance or any attempt to find out the truth, listen, evaluate or learn why someone who so clearly loves and reveres you should behave in such a way, for so little.

I gave her a hundred pounds and she took it, Emily flashed back. Isn't that what you lawyers call an admission? Only an admission of need, he replied: supposing you were innocent as charged, wouldn't you have taken the money? What finished it was when he told her of Cath's situation, bereaved of a close brother, beaten by an otherwise loving husband. To Alistair's amazement, Emily had said that made no difference at all. She was not duty bound to take on other people's problems; she did not want them in her house any more than she wanted carpet beetles. Which all explained why Alistair went to the Spoon, with some vague and woolly idea of doing good by explanation. Or parting with another hundred pounds, something along the lines of atonement by word or deed, in full recognition that whatever he did would be clumsy. It was a cloudy, muggy evening; the flowers in the window-boxes drooped, reminders of how everything comes to an end, even summer, slipping slowly past the sell-by date. Alistair sat by their suffocating smell.

J
oe Boyce had watched his hesitant steps down the street as he stood by the mullioned windows polishing glasses. In contrast to the days before, his mood had become benign. He thought of Mickey Gat, in here yesterday, purringly kind, saying now, now, Joe, I got news for you. Joe had somehow forgotten to take offence at the fact that Mickey Gat knew the whereabouts of his
wife while he himself did not: it seemed perfectly acceptable in the order of things, this female solidarity, a reminder that Mickey was one of them, after all. Condescending, yes, but also acceptable as long as Mickey Gat did not lord it, only said, humbly, that she was acting as go-between and wouldn't it be a good idea if the two of them started all over again? Joe and Cath, starting with a clean slate and a special night out, Monday? She misses you something dreadful, Mickey Gat said; she does, really, Joe, she keeps saying so, but you gotta behave these days if you want to keep a wife, and you gotta start as you mean to go on, so next Monday, evening off, show her the town. Joe nodded, sweating with relief, trying not to laugh when the paw produced perfume again. If only Mickey would not do that, forgetting the last time and the time before.

Over twenty-four hours, though, the facts got blurred and Joe's old arrogance began to surface. The prospect of next Monday evening had undergone a subtle change. It was no longer a gentle, tentative experiment in which he would treat his little wife like gold dust and let her know how much he cherished her; it was becoming instead a
fait accompli
in which Cath returned to him and said she was sorry, ready to come home and resume normal married life there and then. Joe decided he might accept her apologies, but then again, he might not. It was not himself who required forgiveness: it was her.

So Mr Eliot came at a good time. Joe Boyce was getting back into the driving-seat, feeling magnanimous and perfectly prepared to overlook the fact that a favourite customer had not been in for a while.

‘Hello there, Mr Eliot! How are you? No, stay where you are, sir, I'll bring the usual.' Alistair was nonplussed by the bonhomie. Joe sat with him, the same old scenario, only this time with one of them deeply uncomfortable.

‘I gather my wife wasn't working for your wife last week, Mr Eliot. She was staying with relatives, you see, I hope it wasn't inconvenient. Only one day, can't remember which, I forgot and called with a message for her, something I wanted her to get on the way home. I talked to your daughter,
silly me. Cath will be back in harness, any time now.'

‘Oh.' The expression made Alistair wince.

We are all at cross purposes, he thought, every one of us a little mad, each of us with a piece of puzzle in our hands, while the truth floats up there like that big, black raincloud. Alistair knew part of the story, Bailey knew something, Helen West another thing and this man on the opposite side of the table was in possession of his own version entirely. Alistair drank his token half pint and made small talk, thinking how you could not apologise to someone who was entirely unaware of anything deserving it, even less to a man who hit his wife. He rose to leave, giddy with confusion.

‘Wait a minute, sir,' said Joe, tapping his finger to his nose, Mickey Gat style. ‘Take home a little something for Mrs E, will you?' To Alistair's ill-disguised horror, Joe Boyce presented him with a box of perfume. Ma Griffe.

‘Plenty of that in our house,' Joe whispered conspiratorially with a frightful wink. ‘Not quite the real thing, if you see what I mean, but it does the trick with the wife.'

Alistair could only stammer thanks. He was even more bewildered. Why should Cath steal perfume when she had so much already?

T
here was a mirror in Damien's place: Damien would never have left the house without looking in a mirror, not even if he had been in a state of Saturday-night fever. Now Cath stood in front of the mirror, crying in the way she could only ever have done in private. Helen West had meant well: she had found Cath the promise of three jobs and kept her fully employed painting gloss paint on windows, making a new home, taking up those lovely curtains, keeping up a stream of chat, and then, with the usual carelessness kept for such gestures, doing what Emily Eliot did, turning out her wardrobe in Cath's direction. What made Cath weep now was not the pile of clothes she had brought home on the bus, but the thought that, unlike Emily Eliot, Helen West, whom she had rather despised, did not give away what was
strictly surplus. She gave away her best things, only pretending they were no longer needed, when what she had done was select garments which would fit and look good on Cath's lumpy figure. Cath was finally moved by the subterfuge, and by that underground flat which did not sway with the wind, heat like an oven or reek with loneliness. She had the fleeting notion of asking Helen West to give her the cat, watch the silly woman hesitate for a moment and then say, Yes, of course, Cath, if you treat it nicely and you think it would help. She would, too, the stupid woman.

Crying made her deaf, until the knock on her door made her freeze. She heard shuffling steps outside, a firm rapping repeated. It was too late to put out the light and simply pretend she was not there. Cath shut her eyes in panic: it couldn't be Mickey Gat this time. What was it Damien had told her about what happened here when youths, high on glue or worse, broke in and found nothing to steal? They smashed bones, that's what; old people living here barricaded themselves in, burned to death when they could not get out. The knock was repeated, someone was calling her name, a female voice, soft, but demanding. Cath opened her door to Mary Secura.

‘Just passing,' Mary remarked. Even Cath could tell it was a lie. No-one was ever just passing a place where you had to climb twenty flights of stairs.

‘You look nice,' Mary remarked with unflattering surprise. So I do, in a way, Cath thought, turning back to the old wardrobe door which served as mirror. Nicer than usual in a cream-coloured blouse and a full skirt which twirled round her calves in a rich, dark floral print. She could only think of one thing at a time. She stripped off the blouse and dropped the skirt to her ankles, totally unselfconscious of her semi-nakedness. Mary Secura gasped, then coughed to hide it: she had seen worse by way of violent injury, but her eyes were transfixed by the scar on Cath's belly. Ugly, puckering, disfiguring in the minute it remained revealed, before Cath pulled a loose dress over her head, buttoned the neck and turned a circle.

‘Not as good,' she muttered.

‘You could get that scar fixed, you know,
Cath, if you wanted. Wouldn't cost you,' Mary volunteered, casually.

‘I don't want to, thanks,' said Cath, looking at her for the first time. ‘It's mine. Think I'll keep it. Joe doesn't mind it.'

Mary was not listening. She was in another planet, hovering above the hemisphere, disorientated by the height, remembering how far away she had left the car which might not be there when she went back. She sat on one of the uncomfortable chairs, letting the handbag drop.

‘Cath, how is it you can leave that man and even think of going back? I want to leave mine without ever going back.'

‘Well, more fool you,' Cath said.

‘I came to tell you something. About your man, Joe.'

‘I know all about him.'

‘No, Cath. You think you do, but you don't. What time does he normally come home? What time did he come home when he went out drinking with your brother?'

Cath was fussing with the dress.

‘He always came home just before pub closing. Fridays, he went out. He usually gets time off on Fridays.' She was mumbling, looking slightly alarmed, staring at the mirror and seeing not herself, but the photo she had seen of Damien in Mr Eliot's study. The irritating voice of Mary Secura came from a distance: Cath wished she would simply go.

‘Did he ever carry a weapon, Cath? Like when he was carrying money from the pub? Might have needed one sometimes. He was jealous of your brother, Cath, wasn't he?'

Cath undid the top buttons, turned in front of the mirror.

‘We're going to have a nice time, Monday,' she chanted. ‘Me and Joe. Talk things over. Mickey Gat said. Going out, we are, somewhere special. He promised.'

‘Did Joe ever keep a weapon at home?' Mary continued inexorably. ‘Up in those attics of yours? Something which could just about cut a man in half?'

‘Who asked you here?' Cath shouted. ‘Get out! Get out before I kill you!'

She gestured towards the window with a stubby
finger, but the window would not open. She stood by the glass as Mary's voice continued. It was a long way down: Cath could feel herself wanting to jump, to float before she hit the ground, and still Mary went on talking.

‘O
ut on the piss,' Bailey said, looking across the road. It was what Helen called his loud look full of challenge, the kind of look which would make anyone behave worse. She had long since decided she was a coward. If she met a mugger she would smile and say, of course, have my purse, in the same way she would pretend to laugh if she were teased. She would have skirted round the herd of half-drunk youths who jostled them on the pavement, and although Bailey also preferred stand-off to confrontation, the lines on his face did not indicate the same degree of acceptance. It was a Saturday night out: the place he had chosen to eat was rarely so crowded and the wait for a table irritated him. They should have been dining
chez
Eliot, but words had been spoken between Emily and Helen which had put the invitation into abeyance. Bailey could not understand why Helen did not simply shout down the phone, Emily you got this all wrong, in the same way he would have yelled at Ryan and then forgotten about it, but women were women, and their diplomacies a mystery. In pursuit of food, he had invited Helen well into his own territory, a terrain uneasy on the eye, ugly, craggy, uneven, good in parts, foul for the remainder, the restaurants not for the rich and famous, especially the latter, since no-one would know who they were.

The inside of Arrivederci made Helen sigh with pleasure: Bailey could watch her relax before her long, paint-stained fingers fluttered in indecision over bread and aromatic olives and then fished for a cigarette in guilty postponement of more fattening pleasures. When in this Italian ambience, one ate like a Roman; the plants were dusty and the proprietor a tyrant who could not stand small appetites. Persons who tucked his napkins under their chins, cleaned the dish of olives and ate the bread were served with alacrity.