Blind Date (25 page)

“Ring the bell,” he said. “What harm? A flea in the ear?”

She was out of the vehicle, stamping on the cigarette, crossing the street, before he finished. Joe hesitated about whether to leave the engine running, decided he would on account of the poor old diesel's reluctance to restart and the lack of risk anyway, since a joyride in this old brute was no joy at all. By the time he joined her, Elisabeth had finished speaking into the entryphone. The door buzzed: he shut it carefully behind them.

Stairs and more stairs. Joe thought it must be a feature of any of Elisabeth's acquaintance, and his own, that they should love the existence of stairs and revel in living at height. Plush, carpeted stairs in patterned red which he did not like. If ever he had a house, there would always be stairs, without carpet, so that he could hear who came up or went down. He had no business here.

A woman was
standing at the door. Without the puffy eyes and smeared make-up, he would have said she was a trifle tarty with her brilliant blue blouse awry, as if she had just got out of bed. She smelt of a mixture of booze, perfume, vomit, and on seeing them, made a valiant effort to change her stance, leaning nonchalantly against the doorjamb, rather than clutching it for support, struggling to find defiance.

“Lizzie, you must be psychic. No! Don't touch me!” She shrank as Elisabeth moved towards her. Looked over Elisabeth's head towards Joe.

“Is that your sodding van out there? The diesel?”

“Yup.”

She sighed. “thank Christ for that. I thought it was an ambulance.” She was winning through, making angry noises, leading them in. There were no signs of disturbance in her expensive, minimalist sitting room. Whatever the argument, it must have been brief. Elisabeth was calm.

“Do you need a doctor, a social worker or another drink?” she asked, so crisp it was callous. Colour flooded Patsy's cheeks. She sank into her own sofa, spoke almost normally.

“I haven't been raped, Lizzie. I'm not good enough for that. I've just been reminded that I'm a one hundred per cent, gold carat, bloody fool.”

T
his time it was not her imagination. She
did
hear the door slam and she abandoned all pretense of sleep. Caroline had left her own door open: she was up and across the room, screaming, before he had time to put his own key in his own lock.

“Come
up here at once! Where have you been, Michael? Where
have
you been?”

He obeyed, and the sight of him, clean tidy, even assuming an expression of injured innocence, was so reassuring, she almost wept. She was careful to be obvious in brushing away the tears pricking her eyelids.

“Don't think I can't
guess
where you've been. I just need you to tell me about it, that's all. Sit down, good boy. Would you like a little drinkie winkie?”

Her head was bare and bent towards him. He had already had a little drinkie winkie, she decided, but nothing excessive. He did not really like it, but sociable drinking was something she had taught him as part of his repertoire. She had also taught him how to loathe that loosening of control. He seemed both distant and receptive, like someone digesting bad news. No scratches on his hands, no smell about his person other than his own smell. She could feel the relief explode inside her skull, making her face flushed. Her hair stood out in ugly tufts.

“Tell me about it, sweetie pie.” He paused, not for long, looked at the brandy glass placed in his hand with curiosity, as if he could not think what it was for. His voice was a whine.

“I don't know what to do when they like me, Mummy. I know what I want to do to them when they don't like me, but I don't know what to do when they do.”

“So what did you do, petal?” she coaxed.

“Hit her, Mummy, but I didn't hurt her, honest. Then I went away.”

The relief again, ebbing and flowing. He could dissemble well enough: he did it all the time, but he could not lie. He could not handle the ambivalence about desire which she had instilled in him, and for a moment, she felt immense regret. God, you could teach a boy a number of things about sex, but not how to do it. Although she had never wanted him to do it, not with anyone.

“And
what
do
we do, honeybunch, when we think we've hurt someone's feelings? Especially a girl?”

“We send them flowers, Mummy. First thing. Lots of flowers. With a note saying we're sorry.”

“That's right, darling.” Oh Lord, their progress through life had been littered with flowers. She had paid over a fortune in flowers before he even stopped being a child. Now he could pay for his own. Her mind was working rapidly. Was Patsy the sort of girl who would make trouble? Expose herself and her needs and, doubtless, her own stupidity, to the police? She thought not. And if overprivileged Patsy should complain to her, she would express wonderment and ask her if she had complied with the rules. Which the silly bitch would have ignored.

He rose from his seat and came over to hers. She thought he was going to kiss her, but instead, he drew back his hand, balled it into a fist and punched her, below the ribs. Once, before he resumed his seat. Her glass shot out of her hand. It was so sudden, she could not believe it and yet she had expected it, all this time. She struggled for control, kept down the scream. Then she uncurled herself without saying a word. She would behave as if they had simply bumped into one another. Picked up the glass, nursed it. She had always known that one of these years, she would finally lose him. The sight of the results of childish rage no longer worked.

“Like that, Mummy,” he was saying dreamily. “But I like it when they scream. But she wasn't the right one, was she, Mummy?”

She leant towards him, bile in her throat, trying to keep her breathing steady. She reached for his hand and touched it gently. His fingers were colder than hers.

“I
know where the right one lives, Mummy. The one who killed my friend Jack. The nice girl you wanted me to like. But she didn't like us, just like Emma didn't really like me. We gotta pay back when someone is unkind to us, haven't we, Mummy? You told me.”

He had his face turned away from her. The light seemed to hurt his eyes.

“And she's got the jewels, Mummy. Emma didn't have them. I'll get them and I'll get her. And then you'll be happy.”

She pretended to ignore most of that, as if it were not important.

“I'm sure she's got them, Caro, Caro. I asked her when she was down on the ground. I said, just tell me and I'll stop. I gave her a chance, and she said yes, and then she was out like a light Caro, and she couldn't speak.”

Caro shuddered. Distaste, delight, fear. They were two of a kind. Selective magpies for things which glittered, inspired by old hatreds. She wanted to tell him she had liked Jack, because he was one of the same kind when it came to hatred and acting on it.

“Do you like the ring, Mummy? I paid good money for it. Went a long way to get it.”

“Yes, darling,” she said softly. “I love it.”

“This one tonight wore cheap stuff in her ears, Mummy. She wasn't worth it, was she?”

“No, darling one, she wasn't.”

He let her hug him, briefly. She knew she should try to stop him. She also knew she would do no such thing.

“It'll make us both happy, Mummy, won't it?”

“Yes, darling. Yes.”

T
hey drove back, later, as Patsy insisted. She did not want to know where they slept and she did not want a man in the house.

“Why
did you want to go in the first place?”

“I told you, I don't know why.”

“Was it the blind date?”

“Probably.”

“Are you going to talk to me, Elisabeth?”

“Why should I?” She was rigid and cool. The way she had been with her rat-a-tat questions of Patsy. Did you? Why? What next, you fool? What kind of imbecile lets in a man on a blind date? What did he do? If you won't call the police, Pats, and you won't even give us his name, why should any one of us care?

“Talk to me. Because there's no-one else.”

“You flatter yourself.”

“I mean no-one else here and now.”

She did not answer, her feet trailing on the stone steps inside the tower. The same irritation assailed him. What was it with all these people, so slow to talk, the self-appointed keepers of so many secrets which were not even theirs to keep? And, ye gods, if the mother to whom she wrote her letter was cold, this bitch had certainly inherited something. He slammed the keys of the van on the table, let out a “phew” of disgust. Stumbled up the next set of steps … stairs, all these stairs … ready to kick off his shoes and fall into bloody bed. Let them all rot, and all their victims. Save him from people who were broken, but would not bend, articulate, who failed to express emotion, and any woman too sassy to cry.

T
he door to the back of the clock was open. Joe had tinkered with it this morning, same as other mornings, with no real purpose other than his own curiosity about its amazing components. He lay down: a floorboard creaked as the edifice did its breathing routine with a
crick
and
crack
of brick and stone. Then, in defiance of any logic, the clock itself issued an enormous TICK. Another. TICK, TICK, TICK, TUTT, tutt, tutt, and stopped. He looked at the immovable pendulum. No clock could tick without a pendulum. The sound echoed in his ears, a portent of the impossible, something telling him yes, it could be, would be mended. Like the bells,
wanted
to be mended. Joe put his feet back into his boots and went downstairs again.

Elisabeth
was by the kitchen sink, her hair a bright orb of brilliant friz. She was rattling away at something and he saw she was making an attempt to sharpen a carving knife. Every knife, large or small, was out of the drawer and onto the table. Her dedication to the task was chilling and ludicrous, as were the knives themselves. She could not sharpen knives with any degree of precision on something like a device for sharpening pencils, and besides all that, she was crying.

A silent sobbing, a private exercise, an exorcism of demons, turning them into gobs of tears so that she could wipe them away, breathe deep, get on with it. Joe was more than a little afraid of her. She was extraordinarily beautiful with all her damage, the spine beneath the scars one of tempered steel, if only she knew. He had never wanted anyone half as much, not a fraction of this. It had been the same, from the first, terrifying moment.

Jenkins' voice. “You've got your wrong eye on the lens, boy. Be like Nelson, give it the blind eye. Stick to the camera, boy. Ignore your prick.”

He put his arms around her and she did not resist. Around and around: he felt he could have spanned her twice, his arms could cross around that spine and meet themselves like a pair of tentacles at the top of the waist-band of her skirt. He was cradling the bird body, feeling the bones, with nothing to say but “Shh, shh, shush,” like the chorus of a song or the ticking of the clock, tut, tut, tut, and wondering with his ever-conscious mind if this were not peculiar, and then coming back down to earth again, because she had not stopped crying, and although it had subsided, she was holding a knife, clenched in her fist.

So he kept
on holding her, one arm cradling her head, the other her waist, until, finally, she dropped the knife and the crying stopped. In that order.

The tower gave another, predawn creak. It was only in his imagination that he heard the clock tick again.

“He is going to kill me,” she said into his collar. “Which would be all right if only I were the last.”

“Shush,” he said. “Shhhhhhhhhh.”

Again, in his imagination, the clock: one, two, three. When the bells sound thrice, you will deny me. He hefted her, arms still around his neck where they had crept, until they both lay on the futon, arranged like one large and one miniature spoon, and he drew the covers over them both.

“Will you talk, Elisabeth? Do you trust me?”

“I don't fucking know what you mean.” There was a sigh. “As much as I can.”

“That'll do.”

He remembered to kick off his boots, before they slept.

T
hundery today,
and about time, too. The weather was the sole topic of conversation. Steven Davey came out of his estate agent's office in Budley, carrying a smart umbrella, his son Matthew following at his heels. The boy was wearing baggy shorts with enough room inside for three of him, a T-shirt, socks and trainers. Each piece of clothing seemed to be quarrelling with the other. The T-shirt was half tucked in, flapped like a tail at the back and looked as if it had been crushed in a fist. The socks were irregular; one reaching halfway up one calf, the other corrugated around the ankle. His hair was unbrushed: he looked like a boy who needed ironing. From the far side of the road, as the shops opened, he could be heard, complaining unpleasantly. Don't want, don't want … Don't WANT.

They stopped
on the street corner opposite the bakers, next to the burbling stream which might have sweetened the mood. Father could be seen confronting son, wagging a finger at him while Matthew stood with his hands deep in the pockets of his shorts and his toes turned inward, looking sulky and stupid. Then he responded to a command and continued to walk downhill to his grandmother's house. Steven Davey watched him for a second, then followed.

His mother-in-law was in the hall of the house and kissed Steven's cheek. She had the same invariable smell of Yardley's lavender, the upswept, white hair resembling a veil.

“Hallo, my dear, I wasn't expecting you. Coffee? The herd have gone.”

The herd had been too large this summer.

“Only a minute.” He was following her into the living room. “I'm busy. That wretched American's back. He's been up and down the coast, looking at anything and everything for sale, and now he's back. I only came in to make sure Matt actually got here without skipping off. He's in the mood, I warn you.”