Child's Play (33 page)

'You'll have to hang around for that,' he said. 'Lexie . . .'

'Yes.'

He knew what he wanted to ask her, and he guessed she knew too. But he couldn't ask without himself answering questions, and there were things in his life he suddenly did not want this girl mixed up with.

He heard himself saying, 'Lexie, do you love your parents?'

That took her by surprise.

She said, 'Love,' as though trying a new taste.

'That's what I said. The other things - gratitude, obedience, dependency and so on - they don't matter, they're for anyone. Parents need love, don't they, otherwise, who'd bother?'

'They fuck you up, your mam and dad. They may not mean to, but they do,' said Lexie.

'Good Lord.'

'Larkin,' she said.

'I know.'

'But you're surprised. Because I've heard of Larkin or because I said fuck?'

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'Old habits. You can't expect me to stop patronizing you just because of one good screw, can you?'

'Two had better do it,' she said. 'But you're right in a way. I'd never heard of Larkin till some lad in the fourth form found this poem with the word fuck in it. It were funny. I could hear it, and worse, any time I wanted in the playground or back home at the pub. But seeing it printed there in a book of poems was still a shock. 'Specially when it said those things about my mam and dad.'

'Not about
your
mum and dad, surely. It's a little more generalized than that.'

'There's no such thing as generalized when you're a lass of fourteen and you've just started having periods. Not when most of the other girls in your class and even your little sister had started a lot sooner. I used to lie, not to be different. I tried asking Mam but she said I should be grateful and not to bother her. No, everything anyone said or did or wrote was about me. Earthquakes in China were about me! Any road, what about you? Do you love your Mam?'

'Old Windypants?' he said with a laugh. 'Yes, I think so. It's always been an artificial relationship in the best sense. A thing of delicate artifice. Up until three years ago I was the marvellous boy of infinite promise. Then Daddy died and soon after I became just another resting actor. Mummy did some quick re-writing, I tell you. Now we're both word perfect in an intimate two-hander in which I don't remind her she's old enough to be my mother and she doesn't remind me that I'm old enough to be earning my own living. Well, not too often anyway.'

'You
are
earning your own living.'

'My own survival, you mean. Chung got me right in the doubling-up part she got me to do. It's not big bold fast-talking Mercutio you're in bed with but the apothecary.
Who calls so loud?
And Romeo replying,
Come hither, man. I see that thou art poor.'

'The trouble with actors,' said Lexie slowly, 'is acting. What was your dad like?'

'Oh, my astute little Lexie! He was the last of the actor-managers. People think I get it from Mummy, but hers is a thin, brittle, strictly non-transferable talent. Pa was different. He moved from role to role with infinite ease. People said he was a con artist, but he conned himself as much as anyone. He believed totally in every role he played and that's the secret of great acting. It was pure accident that he drifted into finance rather than the theatre. Do you know, he couldn't bear to buy things in a sale? Show him a fur coat marked down from four thousand to two and he'd turn his back in disgust. One simply did not buy such things. But show him the same thing at its full price and he would talk it down fifty per cent in as many minutes.'

He paused. For once, Lexie guessed, he was using his own talents to conceal rather than project emotion.

'You miss him,' said Lexie flatly.

'Oh yes, I miss him. Mum's great, we get on fine - most of the time! But Dad was something else.'

'Yes. I'm beginning to see how things must have worked out.'

'What things, Lexie?' asked Lomas.

'Things,' she said.

He looked at her with an expression of bafflement.

'I'm not sure . . .' he began.

'What?'

'Of
anything
! What am I doing here?'

'That's a bit rude.'

'No. I mean . . . Lexie, why did you tell that policeman I was at the opera with you on Friday? And imply that we spent the night together?'

'You've taken long enough to ask,' she said. 'And what is it you're asking? Why I did it? Or why I thought it needed to be done?'

'Oh Lexie, you have been too long already with lawyers! Why you thought it needed to be done, then.'

'Well,' said the girl slowly, 'I guessed why the police were asking. I heard a conversation at work . . . what I mean is, I eavesdropped on the telephone ... I knew that this man, Pontelli, had been staying in Leeds and that a man had turned up there late on Friday looking for him.'

'And what makes you think that has anything to do with me?' wondered Lomas, searching through his drama college ragbag of faces for honest bewilderment.

She regarded him with the courteous blankness of an unimpressed producer and he knew he was not going to get the part.

'It seemed likely,' she said, 'as it was you that put Pontelli up to claiming he was Alexander in the first place, wasn't it?'

He shook his head not in denial but like a boxer who has just taken a sharp hook. Then he slipped out of the bed and stood looking down at her in a pose which could easily have passed for menacing.

'Oh Lexie,' he said. 'Oh, little, little Lexie!'

Chapter 7

It took Rod Lomas a turn round the room and a cigarette and a half to bring him to the talking point.

He didn't deny her accusation then, but demanded, 'How did you know?'

'I was at the funeral,' she said. 'I saw everyone's face when Pontelli showed up. Shock, bewilderment, outrage, that's what I saw. Except on yours.'

'And on mine?'

'Amusement. You were enjoying it.'

'My warped sense of humour, perhaps.'

'Mebbe. But I saw your first night too. You were awful'

'Gee, thanks.'

'I'd looked for you in your dressing-room before I went on stage to the party. There was a copy of the
Evening Post
there. It had Pontelli's picture in it. I reckoned you must've seen it not long before you went on and that was the first you knew he was dead.'

'At least you don't think I killed him, then!' he said with a slight sneer.

'I'd not have done it if I'd thought that,' she said calmly.

What 'it' referred to wasn't altogether clear. He felt himself in her control and some rubbery imp of resentful ego still twisted in his gut. She was sitting up against the bed-head, naked, her knees drawn up under her chin, watching him. Her steady gaze and her unself-consciousness suddenly made him aware of his own nakedness and

he instinctively dropped his cigaretteless hand to his crotch. A small smile sent the imp bounding again.

'You look like an Oxfam poster!' he mocked.

The gibe was surprisingly productive.

'I don't think that's funny,' she snapped.

'Oh. Sensitive about our body, are we?'

'I'm sensitive about the bodies I see on Oxfam posters,' she said.

It was a rebuke which threatened to bring the imp bounding forth once more, then suddenly it was gone.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I didn't mean anything. I was just putting off talking.'

'Don't,' she advised.

'It's a long story,' he warned.

'Come back to bed and tell it.'

It wasn't after all too long a story that Rod Lomas told Lexie Huby as they lay side by side in the narrow bed that had once belonged to the lost boy who bore both their names. But it was complicated, not simply in its narrative strands but in the threads of guilt and doubt and pride which were twisted into its telling.

'It was my father's idea,' began Lomas. 'I know he's been dead for three years, but something like this doesn't just spring up overnight. Not that I knew anything about it while he was alive. He didn't believe in letting even his dearest and nearest see all his sleight of hand! God, he could have run the world if he'd thought it worth his while!'

Lexie said, 'I don't imagine you think he killed himself, then?'

'Christ, no!' said Lomas angrily. 'All that crap about running his car off the road because his company was collapsing was just gutter press garbage. He beat Micawber for optimism!'

'But the company was in trouble.'

'Yes. Well, he always sailed close to the wind. But as long as he could talk and had a bit of working capital, he would have been OK. No, the company collapsed because he died, not the other way round.'

'And the working capital?'

'Oh yes. He had that too. Well, thirty thousand quids' worth of it. Peanuts of course in terms of the whole operation, but enough to wave in the right faces.'

'You're very precise about the figure.'

'I can be. It's what he got from Aunt Gwen.'

Now Lexie showed surprise.

'Auntie Gwen loaned him money?'

'No way!' he laughed. 'There's no one meaner than the rich, Lexie, you'll find that out. No, Daddy knew better than to come cap in hand begging. Instead he offered to do her a favour. I imagine he told her that what she needed to lure Alexander out of hiding was a proper Italian address. He probably argued that while the lost lad might be reluctant to return to England, and be a bit shy even of writing, or calling at posh hotels, an Italian address could do the trick. During her Italian visit that year, I've no doubt he bumped into her by accident and mentioned that he just happened to have this superb villa in Tuscany, the Villa Boethius, on his books, forty thou for a quick sale, splendid investment, all that. She saw it, liked it, knocked him down the twenty-five per cent, he'd allowed for, and bought it.'

'That doesn't sound like Aunt Gwen, acting on impulse.'

'No impulse. The completion date was set for a week after her return and she left a post-dated cheque with Daddy's lawyer in Florence. Plenty of time for old Eden Thackeray to pull her and her money out of the deal if he didn't like it. But don't you remember, she got back here and her first night home she had a stroke. Mummy was full of tremulous anticipation, but alas, the old girl recovered. And then a couple of weeks later, Daddy had his accident.'

He fell silent, and Lexie wound her thin arms around him till he started again.

'Then the vultures descended. Everything went, the Fraud Squad were sniffing around with their nasty insinuations, creditors were watching Mummy like a rare comet. They'd have had her gold fillings if she'd slept with her mouth open! Mummy knew about the villa deal, though she hadn't been in Florence when it went through, but any hopes she had that Gwen's thirty thou might be stashed away safe were soon shattered. It was in a nice little account in Zurich, but the Fraud Squad and the creditors between them sniffed it out. Don't believe what you read about Swiss Banks. Millions they may hang on to, smaller sums they hand to the first cop who asks nicely.'

'But the villa. There was nothing in the probate accounts about a villa.'

'Don't be impatient. A couple of months passed. One night the telephone rang. It was a call from Italy, a man who said he'd acted as Daddy's agent on several occasions and he now had an Italian family who were interested in renting the Villa Boethius the following spring. He was sorry to trouble Mummy who must still be mourning her great loss, but if he could be of assistance, etcetera, etcetera. Well, Mummy and I just looked at each other with the dawning of faint hope. Daddy had not left us well provided for. Any source of income, however small, was not to be sneezed at. The creditors were still keeping a weather eye on Mummy, so we split forces. I took a train to Florence and Mummy took one to Yorkshire. We spoke on the phone two days later to exchange information. Hers was excellent. It was quite clear that though Gwen was recovering her health steadily, she had no recollection of buying the Villa Boethius.'

'But someone had to know? What about Keech?'

'No way. Auntie Gwen treated her like any good-living Yorkshire lady treats the help - called her a treasure and counted the spoons whenever she'd cleared the table.'

'But a draft for thirty thousand . . .'

'A drop in a pretty large ocean. Also, it would be made out to some very drab-sounding company, not to Daddy personally. There's no evidence that Gwen ever noticed. No, there seemed no reason not to carry on as if the villa were Mummy's by right of inheritance. There's been a steady trickle of rental payments into an account in Dublin ever since.'

'It's fraud,' said Lexie.

'It's a very small fraud.'

'Then it'll be a very small jail sentence. You must have been dead worried when Aunt Gwen died, though.'