A Traitor to Memory (50 page)

“Fine, Fran,” he said. “No problem. I'll stop on my way home from work.”

“If something comes up, you needn't—”

“I'll stop on my way home.”

“Well, only if it's not too much trouble, dear.”

Not too much trouble? Webberly thought, and he hated himself for the disloyalty he was showing even as he allowed himself to experience a momentary swelling of resentment towards his wife. Not too much trouble to see to everything and anything that involved an excursion into the world, Fran? Not too much trouble to shop for groceries, to drop by the chemist, to collect the dry cleaning, to have the car serviced, to see to the garden, to walk the dog, to—Webberly forced himself to stop. He reminded himself that his wife wouldn't have chosen this illness, that she wasn't attempting to make his life a misery, that she was doing her best to cope and so was he, and coping with what was dished onto your plate was what life was all about.

“It's no trouble, Fran,” he told her as he sipped the tasteless drink she'd brought him. “Thanks for the tea.”

“I hope it's all right. Something special this morning. Something a bit different.”

“Good of you,” he said.

He knew why she'd done it. She'd brought him tea for the same reason that she would go downstairs as soon as he was out of bed and
begin to cook him a sumptuous breakfast. It was the only way she could apologise to him for not managing to do what she'd claimed she would do a brief twenty-four hours earlier. Her plan to work in the garden had come to nothing. Even protected behind the walls that marked the boundaries of their property, she hadn't felt safe, so she hadn't left the house. Perhaps she had tried: placing one hand on the doorknob—
I can manage this
—cracking the door open—
yes, I can do this as well
—feeling the fresh air wash against her cheeks—
there's nothing to fear
—and even curling the fingers of one hand round the door jamb before panic claimed her. But that's as far as she'd got and he knew it because—God forgive him for his own insanity—he'd inspected her wellingtons, the tines of the rake, the gardening gloves, and even the rubbish bags for evidence that she'd gone outside, done something, picked up a single leaf, made an inroad into her irrational fears.

He swung out of bed, swilling down the rest of the tea. He could smell the sweat on his pyjamas, and the feel of them was clammy against his skin. He felt weak, oddly off balance, as if he'd come through a long period of fever and was only now recovering from it.

Frances said, “I'm going to make you a proper breakfast, Malcolm Webberly. None of this cornflakes nonsense today.”

“I need a shower,” he said in reply.

“Brilliant. That'll give me just enough time.” She headed to the door.

He said, “Fran,” to stop her. And when she paused, “There's no need for all that.”

“No need?” Her head tilted to one side. She'd combed her red hair—dyed with the colour that she sent him to Boots once a month to fetch so that it would match their daughter's hair, which it never did—and she wore her pink dressing gown precisely belted, with a perfect bow.

“It's all right,” he said. “You don't need to …” To what? Saying the words would take them somewhere neither wanted to go. Webberly settled on, “You don't need to coddle me. I can manage with cornflakes.”

She smiled. “Of course you can
manage
with them, darling. But every once in a while, it's lovely to have a proper breakfast. You've the time, haven't you?”

“There's the dog to walk.”

I'll walk him, Malcolm
. But that was an announcement she could not make. Not after yesterday's proclamation about gardening. Two defeats in a row would be an injury that she wouldn't want to risk
inflicting on herself. Webberly understood that. The hell of it was, he'd always understood it. So he was unsurprised when she said, “Let's see how the time goes, shall we? I expect there's enough. And if there's not, you can cut short Alfie's walk. Just down to the corner and back. He'll survive.”

She crossed the room, kissed him fondly on the top of the head, and left. In less than a minute, he could hear her banging about in the kitchen. She started to sing.

He pushed himself off the edge of the bed and plodded along the corridor to the bathroom. It smelled of mildew from grout round the tub that needed cleaning and a shower curtain that needed replacing, and Webberly shoved open the window fully and stood in front of it, breathing in the sodden morning air. It was the heavy, tubercular air of an approaching winter that promised to be long, cold, wet, and grey. He thought of Spain, of Italy, of Greece, of the countless sundrenched environments round the world that he would never see.

Roughly, he shook off the mental pictures of these places, turning from the window and shedding his pyjamas. He twisted the hot water tap in the tub till the steam rose like an optimist's hope, and when he'd added enough cold water to the mix to make it bearable, he stepped inside and began to work lather vigorously round his body.

He thought of his daughter's reasonable question about insisting that Frances return to the psychiatrist. He asked himself what harm it could do simply to make the suggestion to his wife. He hadn't mentioned her problem for the past two years. On the twenty-fifth anniversary of their marriage—with retirement looming—how unforgivable would it be to imply that the opportunity for a different life was fast approaching them, and in order to have that different life, Frances might want to consider how best to address her problem? We'll want to do some traveling, Frannie, he could tell her. Think of seeing Spain again. Think of Italy. Think of Crete. Why, we could even sell up and move to the country as we once talked of doing.

Her lips would form a smile as he spoke, but her eyes would show the incipient panic. “Why, Malcolm,” she'd say, and her fingers would clutch: the edge of her apron, the belt of her dressing gown, the cuff of her shirt. “Why, Malcolm,” she'd say.

Perhaps she'd make the attempt at that point, seeing that he was in earnest. But she'd make the attempt that she'd made two years ago, and it would doubtless end where that attempt had ended: with panic, tears, a phone call by strangers on the street to nine-nine-nine, paramedics and ambulance and police dispatched to Tesco's, where she'd
taken herself by taxi to
prove
she could do it, darling … and afterwards a hospital, a period of sedation, and reinforcement for every terror she felt. She'd forced herself out of the house to please him. It hadn't worked then. It wouldn't work now.

“She has to want to get well,” the psychiatrist had told him. “Without desire, there is no exigency. And the internal exigency that demands recovery cannot be manufactured.”

So it had been, year after year. The world went on while her world shrank. His world was joined inextricably to her world; sometimes Webberly thought he would suffocate in its smallness.

He rinsed long in the water. He washed his thinning hair. When he was done, he stepped out of the tub into the bone chill of the bathroom where the window still gaped, letting in a last few minutes of the morning air.

Downstairs, he found that Frances had been as good as her word. A full breakfast was laid out on the kitchen table and the air was redolent with the scent of bacon. Alfie was sitting at the corner of the cooker, looking hopefully at the frying pan from which Frances was removing the rashers. The table, however, was laid only for one.

“You aren't eating?” Webberly asked his wife.

“I live to serve you.” She gestured with the frying pan. “One word from you and the eggs go on. When you're ready for them. Any way you want them. Any way you want anything.”

“D'you mean that, Fran?” He pulled out his chair.

“Scrambled, fried, or poached,” she declared. “I'll even do them deviled for you, if you've a mind for that.”

“If I've a mind for it,” he said.

He didn't feel like eating, but he shoveled the food into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed without tasting much. Only the acidic tang of orange juice made the journey from his tongue to his brain.

Frances chatted. What did he think about Randie's weight? She hated to talk to their daughter about it, but didn't he think she was getting just a bit too chunky for a girl her age? And what of this recent plan of hers to have a year in Turkey?
Turkey
, of all places. She was always coming up with a new plan, so of course one didn't want to get oneself in a dither over something that she might not even do, but a girl her age … on her own … in Turkey …? It wasn't wise, it wasn't safe, it wasn't sensible, Malcolm. Last month she was talking about a year in Australia, which was bad enough … all that distance without her family. But this? No. They had to talk her out of this.
And wasn't Helen Lynley looking lovely the other night? She's one of those women who can wear
anything
. Naturally, it's the expense of the clothes that tells the tale. Buy French and you look like a … well, just like a countess, Malcolm. And she
can
buy French, can't she? No one's watching to see who she buys from. Not like the poor old dowdy Queen, who's always dressed by some English upholsterer by the look of her. Clothes do so make a woman, don't they?

Chat. Chat. Chat. It filled a silence that might otherwise be used for a conversation too painful to be endured. It simultaneously wore the guise of warmth and of closeness, offering a portrayal of the long-married couple breaking their fast
à deux
.

Webberly shoved his chair back abruptly. He scrubbed the paper napkin across his mouth. “Alfie,” he commanded. “Come. Let's go.” He grabbed the lead from the hook near the door, and the dog padded after him, through the sitting room and out of the front door.

Alfie came to life as soon as paws hit pavement. His tail began to wag, and his ears perked up. He was all at once on the alert for his sworn enemies—cats—and as he and his master headed down the street to Emlyn Road, the Alsatian kept an eye out for anything potentially feline at which he could bark. He sat obediently, as he always did when they came to Stamford Brook Road. Here, the traffic could be heavy depending upon the time of day, and even a zebra crossing didn't guarantee a driver's seeing a pedestrian.

They crossed and made their way to the garden.

The night's rain had made the garden thoroughly sodden. The grass was heavily bent with moisture, tree limbs dripped, and the benches along the perimeter path were shining slickly with water. This was no matter to Webberly. He didn't want to sit beneath the trees, and he had no interest in the lawn across which Alfie gamboled as soon as Webberly had him off the lead. Instead, he took to the perimeter path. He walked determinedly, gravel crunching beneath his soles, but while his body was in the Stamford Brook neighbourhood in which he'd lived for more than twenty years, his mind was centred on Henley-on-Thames.

He'd come this far into his day without thinking once of Eugenie. It seemed something of a miracle to him. She hadn't left his thoughts for an instant during the previous twenty-four hours. He hadn't heard from Eric Leach yet, and he hadn't seen Tommy Lynley at the Yard. He accepted the latter's request for DC Winston Nkata as a sign that progress was being made, but he wanted to know what that progress
was, because knowing something—anything at this point—was better than being left with nothing but images best forgotten from the past.

Without that contact with his fellow officers, though, the images came to him. Unprotected by the claustrophobic confines of his house, by Frances's chatter, by the duties that faced him once he got to work, he was assailed by mental pictures, pictures so distant now as to be fragments only, pieces of a puzzle he'd not been able to complete.

It was summer, sometime after the Regatta. He and Eugenie were rowing on the sluggish river.

Hers had not been the first marriage that had not survived the horror of a violent death in the family. It would not be the last that cracked irreparably under the combined weight of investigation-and-trial and the powerful load of guilt attendant to losing a child to someone in whom trust had been mistakenly placed. But Webberly had
felt
more at the dissolution of this particular marriage. It was many months before he admitted why.

After the trial, the tabloids had gone after her with the same rapacity that had driven their stories about Katja Wolff. Where the Wolff girl had been the reincarnation of every beast, from Mengele to Himmler, responsible in the eyes of the press for everything from the Holocaust to the Blitz, Eugenie had been the indifferent mother: she who worked outside the home, she who had employed an unskilled girl untutored in English and in the ways of the English to care for a badly disabled child. If Katja Wolff had been vilified in the press—and deservedly so, considering her crime—Eugenie had been pilloried.

She'd accepted this public scourging as her due. “I'm to blame,” she'd said. “This is the least I deserve.” She spoke with simple dignity, with neither hope nor desire of being contradicted. Indeed, she would not allow contradiction. “I just want it to end,” she'd said.

He saw her again, two years after the trial, quite by chance at Paddington Station. He was on his way to a conference in Exeter. She was coming into town, she said, for an engagement with someone she did not name.

“Just coming in?” he'd said. “You've moved house, then? To the country? That's good for your boy, I expect.”

But no, they hadn't moved to the country. She'd just moved herself, alone.

He'd said, “Oh. I'm sorry.”

She'd said, “Thank you, Inspector Webberly.”

He'd said, “Malcolm. Please, it's plain Malcolm.”

She'd said, “Plain Malcolm, then,” and her smile was infinitely sad.

He'd said impulsively and in a rush because it was mere minutes before his train left the station, “Would you give me your number, Eugenie? I'd like to check how you're doing now and then. As a friend. If that's all right with you.”

She'd written it on the newspaper he'd been carrying. She'd said, “Thank you for your kindness, Inspector.”