Blind Date (9 page)

“It
is
nice, you know,” he ventured, as if to reassure himself as much as her. “And you don't have to go upstairs to sleep, do you? Not for the time being.” The ghost of another smile lit her features again. She was in the corner, making tea. He felt he ought to help and knew she would refuse.

“Yes,” she said. “It is. And once the diocese can make up its mind what it wants to do with the place, you'll probably be able to sell it for a small fortune. Until then, it's mine.” It was a gentle reminder that she had already lived here for five years, according herself the rights of an occupant. Lived here and suffered here: he knew that. He nursed the tea, then swallowed it in a gulp, burning his mouth. The urge to look at his watch irritated him. He did it all the time, yet punctuality continued to elude him. There was always somewhere to go; some other person in greater need than the one he had seen last: he knew he spread himself too thinly, but could not stop it.

He could fair scamper down those steps, Elisabeth thought, shouting goodbye. He was like an alarmed mouse, scurrying not towards a corner, but to the next crisis. He was saying something as he went. About a cleaner and a key: she missed it. Thought of it when he was gone.

She waited
for the slam of the door, a hollow, echoey sound which was a reminder of how solid it was, almost as solid as the door to this room, and the doors to the chambers above. I love living here, Elisabeth thought. Perhaps having a passion for the place one inhabits means that my mother and I are not so dissimilar, after all. Slowly, she mounted the steps to another closed door, and beyond, to the room which housed the clock and her bed. Father Flynn was right of course: she should ignore these levels of her domain, but not until she had proved she could climb to the top. Upwards again, the stairs steeper, the cobwebs gathering. The door of the belfry opened on oiled hinges. And there, dusty in the glorious light, were the bells which no-one used. Eight bells, provided by a benefactor. Seven treble, one tenor. Inscribed on the one side with the words “Robert Cross made me, 1895” and on the other with a dedication. Elisabeth moved around the awkward space and read each. “To God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit, Three in One, Be honour Praise, And Glory Given, By all on Earth, And all in Heaven.” In the centre of these was the bell for the clock. Elisabeth moved and touched each bell, noting the rotting wood which held them aloft. There were steeply recessed, unglassed windows in the tower: the heat rose up here to a smooth and dusty dryness. On the top step, listening to the breeze which always moaned through the slats covering the narrow openings, Elisabeth Kennedy sat and wept.

She wept for her mother and the things left unsaid. She wept for the sister who had died. She wept for her own ignominious failure to trap the man who had killed her. She wept for herself and the failure which was her life. And she wept for the bells which were not used, like her own heart, rotting away.

Pray for me,
Robert Cross.

P
ray for me. John Jones, known as Owl, had found himself crossing himself as he passed the church on the way back to the office. Stupid. You prayed for the dead, and then only if you were another generation. Or you prayed for something important, like promotion, in the superstitious belief it might help. That was it. You did not pray for success with girls. You were not supposed to take love seriously: it was simply supposed to happen. You were not supposed to live as your parents had lived, with placid devotion; you were supposed to kick over the traces, regard companionship as an optional extra, like bread on the menu. OK, he had beaten the others to it. The thought of a dating agency had dogged his mind as soon as it was mentioned, but he had cleared the hurdle, done it. He felt himself shriven. The Owl adjusted his specs, went back inside the office. He was pleased that Michael was busy and Rob preoccupied. Big shots. They talked about it; he had gone and done it. He had confessed the need. The girl he would meet through the agency would be blonde; she would be shy; she would be beautiful.

P
ray for me, Angela said in the afternoon, thinking of an icon she had once seen, wearing beautiful robes. Her office space was only a desk, with half a screen providing privacy. Inside it, watched by the huge eye of her computer screen, the girl whom Patsy and Hazel treated as a child sat surrounded by carrier bags. So agonized was she about what to wear for this meeting after work, she had carted the lot over the bridge with her in the morning. There would be no prying eyes today: no Patsy and Hazel to ask questions since they were bound for Devon, no insistence that she share the secret of the whole enterprise and ruin it, like exposing a film. There was a teddy bear in the corner with hair the same colour of corn as Angela's own, both of them similarly glassy eyed, as if both were prizes waiting to be won at a fairground. That was what Hazel would say, but Angela was in control, really, she was. She picked up the thick piece of paper, read it once more and stuffed it in her handbag. Then she took it out again, ripped it up and let it fall into the bin, so that no-one else would ever see what she had already memorized.

“Profile:
John Jones is thirty years old. He describes himself as loyal, trustworthy and homeloving. He works for a successful company and keeps a cat…”

Hardly a mover and shaker, then, Hazel would jeer. Angela shuddered at the thought of scrutiny. A mere three lines and she was trying to convince herself that this might not be love at first sight. What, then? Practice? An adventure? An exercise in hope? The nerves were appalling. She glanced at all the other literature, containing advice. Meet in a public place! Don't invite him home until you know him! Don't forget precautions when meeting a stranger! Forget? They were emblazoned in her memory. The afternoon passed, each hour longer than the last. The clothes were finally planned down to the last detail, although she knew she might still change her mind. Would he like the way she looked? What would an executive want? She would take enormous care with make-up: too much was offputting, too little the sign of a lack of effort, or was it the other way round? First impressions were so important. Meet on the Embankment, six o'clock. He had a nice voice. She could get an hour in at the basement gym, tone everything, appear with the spring in her step and her hair shining, utterly in control.

Late Friday
afternoon, the gym was almost empty. One disgruntled girl with wobbly thighs was leaving as Angela arrived.

“Don't know why you bother,” the girl grumbled, “figure like yours.”

Which had nothing to do with anything, of course. Angela sweated here in order to make herself worthy. She was never comforted by remarks like that, because no-one could see what she saw: a body unduly white and soft, refusing to respond to the kind of punishment which would make it like a ballerina's. All this effort was a way of earning undefined, future rewards, and also of clearing the mind of some of the debris, because as soon as she was on the treadmill, she could think only of her brief sense of superiority for doing it at all. Then she remembered she had not bought shoes to go with the dress in the carrier bag in the locker room; saw as her hands raised in desperation, the vision of herself in the mirror, small, tense, white and shiny with perspiration and her mouth open, a sight so ugly to her own eyes that her legs stopped even as she pressed the button to go faster. The machine went on: Angela catapulted forward, her head cracking against the mirror, the rough surface of the tread moving on, grazing her knees with its inexorable progress, the whirring sound drowning her yells and the one other person in there, laughing loudly before going to help.

The blood washed off in the shower: she was OK, really, yes, fine, but couldn't cancel any more than she could be late, because she only had his office number, not his home, and she couldn't, not at gunpoint, fail to turn up at all, because she knew how that would feel if it was the other way round. She longed for Hazel and Patsy and their teasing; instead there was only the cleaner on the sixth floor. She was shivering in the evening. Fine, totally in control with a bruise and skinned knees, rivetted by the impression she would make. Meet outside Charing Cross on the side of the river. Always meet the man in a public place, dear: we do what we can to safeguard everyone, but we do suggest a busy place for a drink on first acquaintance.
We
screen people for you, but you must take care all the same. She could hear the motherly voice, going on and on.

Angela leant over the wall of the river, ignoring the builders, the meeters and greeters; sick, but suddenly carefree. What did it matter after all? Her hair was yellow tangles, thick and untidy for the lack of time to treat it better. Nor had she managed to cover the bruise beginning to flower level with her hairline along with the small laceration beneath, or to deal with the grazed knees and the two fingers on her right hand where the knuckles were swollen. She looked at these with alarm. There was nowhere in her set of introduction agency instruction which mentioned the kissing of fingers. Men no longer greeted in that fashion.

“I'm
sorry I'm late … It is, isn't it?” He stood there, appealingly awkward. Smaller than she had imagined, but dark-haired, impressively handsome.

“Angela, Yes. Angela,” she breathed.

A breeze rose on the river. The sluggish tide, so deceptive in its power, turned as the warm air idled round her face, wafting the hair into a halo. The eyes which examined each detail were warm and curious, genuinely concerned. She found herself extending her hand, but when he grasped it, squeezing it as he bowed in mock gallantry and moved to kiss those swollen knuckles, she let out a cry of pain. He desisted in the kiss, squeezed again for reassurance. The pressure, gentle though it was, brought tears to her eyes. He rested her hand on the broader palm of his own, examined it carefully. She was wearing her best ring: a small sapphire glinted, briefly.

“You're hurt,” he said, gravely. “What did you do?”

“Fell over, running,” she muttered.

He laughed.
Not like one of the girls would have laughed, but kindly, her hand still resting in his. She could feel his eyes travel to the red raw knees protruding from the tailored skirt which had been the final choice. No tights and no chance to buy some: she felt a fool.

“Running to, or running from?” he asked.

“I don't know,” she answered, and her eyes filled with tears.

“I think it's best if I just take you home, don't you?”

She nodded, supremely grateful.

Taxis stormed down the middle lane, hell bent on a dozen destinations. A dwindling number of pedestrians tried to attract them, few paused to watch a wilting blonde being helped into a black cab by a solicitous man.

Pray for me.

T
he clock in the tower no longer worked. It had a blue face and two hands stuck permanently at ten to three. Elisabeth obeyed Revd Flynn's orders and slept on the downstairs futon, the dial on her watch telling her what time it was. She had looked at the bells, done her weeping, and that was that. Now, two minutes before midnight, and up above her there was the sound of scrabbling rats. Rats in boots, scrabbling at the edge of her dreams.

There were no rats. There was only the blessed silence she had wanted, until the sounds, teasing first, then insistent. Somebody was there. She sat upright with such an abrupt movement that she felt as if a bone in her twisted neck was broken. There was one way in and one way out, she remembered. This was the safest place on earth, her refuge.

And yet, someone was there.

T
here were many
reasons, past and present, why she loved the bell tower. At first, it was the quirkiness of it, as well as the pathos. The tower had stood above her, demanding occupation, dying to be rescued. And then, once it was inhabited, she could boast about it as a feature of her life, it gave her claim to distinction. No ordinary person would choose to live with spiders and Elisabeth had always been at war with the dual desire to merge with the crowd and also remain dramatically different. She knew no-one else who could dwell thus without fear of ghosts: it was the living she feared.

Then there was the ongoing, agnostic love not only of churches, but also of the bells, which always reminded her of the sea, and although these bells would remain silent, she revered their presence. Latterly, she loved the tower because it made her feel safe, preserving her from the demons outside, although she could do nothing about those within. Like Rapunzel, she could choose for whom to let down her hair, and if her tower were assailed, she could hurl missiles over those dangerous steps and cripple intruders. She could retreat to the pinnacle, with the silent bells, and remain inside the barricade for days. A healing place.

T
here had
always been visitors: the man who had stayed for a while, the people who came to call, including the brave and neutered Reverend Flynn with his pockets full of keys. But no-one arrived without invitation. The tower, with its solid doors which enabled her to lock herself into each room, had become perfect for her needs. A gob of fear, feeling like gristle, surfaced in her throat, tasting of bitter disappointment. She longed for that treacherous moment of peace which had preceded such deep, deep, sleep.

Somebody was there and she knew she could not fight: she was weak. The scar on her back itched still: if touched, she would crack, like porcelain. Perhaps it was a new breed of rats, descendants of those who had eaten the rugs before she had driven them out, seduced them into the main body of the church and then into the scrubby garden behind. Regretfully, she had dealt with the mice, miniature survivors who informed their kin and never came back. There was a big, fat cat, feral, but sleek, prowling the perimeters by night, sitting in a shaft of sunlight inside the church by day, but even the cat could not come up the steps unless someone had opened the door and the sounds above her head were more ominous than that.