Dancing Backwards (15 page)

‘Do you think I could have one of your cigarettes?’

‘Sure.’ Des tried to light it for her. ‘It’s not the best weather.’ He was wary, Vi could tell, of using her name.

‘I rather like it,’ Vi said, thinking that the wind had so blown about her hair that she might well look a little deranged.

‘Me too. I like all weathers as a matter of fact.’ He had dropped his dance host manners with his Italian accent and sounded younger, less sophisticated.

‘Desmond,’ Vi said. ‘Would you like to come up to my room for a drink?’

‘It’s not really allowed. I could get into trouble for less.’

‘How about if I were to say, if asked, that I was overtaken with sickness and you were escorting me to my room?’

‘Right. If you like.’

They walked up the red-carpeted stairs with Vi, for the sake of show, holding on to his arm. There was no one about, and they made their way along the corridor to Vi’s room without meeting a soul.

‘Nice flowers,’ he said, looking at Renato’s ice cream-coloured carnations.

‘My steward left them for me. He is mortified about the ring.’

‘The ring?’

‘My diamond,’ said Vi. ‘What would you like to drink? I have a complete minibar here which is woefully untouched.’

‘I’ll have a beer, please.’

‘You can have a short if you’d prefer.’

‘No, beer’s fine, thanks.’

‘A glass, or do you prefer the bottle?’

She suspected he would prefer the latter but he accepted a glass.

Vi poured herself a brandy. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said, ‘and I feel sure that I was wearing the diamond ring when we smoked that evening on deck. Would you have a think for me and see if you can remember it?’

‘I’ll try.’

‘Thank you. Only my poor steward is in a state over this. He’s afraid he will be accused of theft. But I know that he didn’t take it.’

‘Who else could have?’

‘I think it may have dropped off my finger. My hands tend to shrink when they’re cold. My husband used to warn me that I might lose a ring one day. Of course, when he was around I had the wedding ring on to secure the diamond. He would say it’s my own fault for taking my wedding ring off.’

‘But it’s insured?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Vi, ‘it’s insured. But with something like this it is not the money which matters.’ She looked levelly at Des. ‘Do you see?’

‘Yeah, I do.’

‘So what I thought was this: you might very kindly institute a search among your colleagues, in case some sharp-eyed person spots it, on a ledge or under something. The ship’s so big I can’t possibly undertake to search everywhere myself. There would be a reward.’

‘Sure,’ said Des. ‘How much would that be, if you don’t mind my asking?’

‘The amount it is insured for.’

‘And that’s…? Just so’s I can say.’

‘I don’t have the insurance papers with me. But you have my promise that whoever finds the ring will get the same sum.’

‘Righto. I’ll ask about.’

‘You see, there is only the rest of today left, really, before we reach New York. So if I’m to have any hope of finding it I need to get a move on. You might start looking around the area where we were sitting that night. Would you do that for me?’

‘Sure.’

‘Thank you. Another beer?’

‘No, I’d best be getting back.’

‘I’ll check to see that all’s safe.’

When Vi opened the door she saw Renato hurrying down the corridor. ‘Renato.’

‘Madam, you have found your ring?’

‘Sadly not. One of the dance hosts has just escorted me to my room. I went dancing, perhaps unwisely, and wasn’t feeling too well.’

‘Oh madam. You like I fetch the doctor?’

‘I’m fine now, thank you. He’s just leaving. And he has very kindly offered to help in the search for my ring. Dino,’ she called into the room where he was standing looking awkward. ‘I’ve explained to Renato that you kindly saw me back to my room.’

He had jumped up and was smiling eagerly. ‘Are you sure you are all right now, Mrs Hetherington?’

‘Thank you, Dino. Renato will see to me if I need anything.’

Vi rang directory enquiries and asked for the number of St Aldate’s police station. When she got through, half an hour later, she asked for Edwin.

‘I’m afraid you can’t speak to him, miss.’

‘He rang me from this station about half an hour ago.’

‘Mr Chadwick has been detained, miss.’

‘Can’t I speak to him?’

‘I’m afraid not, miss. He’s detained in the cells.’

‘My God. Why?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t answer that, miss.’

‘Will you give him a message?’

‘I’ll make a note you rang, miss. May I take the name?’

Bruno was waiting on a deserted platform at the station in Knighton. He looked thinner and had gone quite brown. He kissed her distantly on the cheek and picked up her bag.

‘I’ll take this to the car.’

‘Does the car go with the cottage?’

‘You couldn’t manage here without transport.’

‘Bruno,’ she said. ‘Listen, I’m going to have to go back—well, anyway to Oxford. Maybe at once.’

‘Why?’

‘Edwin’s in trouble. He rang me from an Oxford police station just before I left.’

They had reached the car, a pale blue Morris Hillman. Bruno put down her bag with great deliberation and stood with his big hand placed flat on the car’s roof. ‘What kind of trouble?’

‘They wouldn’t tell me.’

‘They?’

‘The police. The one I spoke to was a pig.’

‘Edwin didn’t tell you?’

‘I got the impression he couldn’t talk for long. He sounded frantic. I must go to him.’

‘Why?’

‘Well…’

‘No, Vi, I mean this. Why do you have to go running to Edwin? If he’s in trouble he needs a solicitor not you. What can you do?’

‘He didn’t ring a solicitor, he rang me.’

‘Either he’s been had up for drunkenness or it’s some sex thing. He’s probably been caught picking up boys.’

‘So?’

‘So are you going?’

‘Well…’

Bruno picked up her bag from where he had placed it and moved it about a foot to position it at her feet. ‘If you go then take that.’

‘Meaning…?’

‘I don’t want to see you again.’

‘Bruno, Edwin’s your friend too.’

You knew it would be like this, said the voice.

‘He didn’t ring me.’

‘How could he ring you? You’re not on the phone. I haven’t been able to ring you. No one has been able to ring you for weeks.’

‘Please don’t embarrass me in a public place, Vi.’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ she yelled, ‘you can’t call this a public place. There’s not a living soul in sight.’

An elderly man in a uniform came out of the station into the yard and looked over to see what was going on and then went inside again.

Bruno said, ‘Either you get in the car and come with me to the cottage, or you catch a train to wherever in the world you please. And if you do that I shall not see you again.’

Leave, said the voice. Get on the next train.

‘Bruno, please listen…’

‘No, Vi, you listen. Either get in the car—or go.’

Go, said the voice. Go
now
.

She got in the car.

When Vi woke, the storm had passed and the ship was cradled in a muffling fog. She could see nothing beyond the lifeboat hanging just beneath her, ready for disaster.

She dressed and went down for breakfast in the Alexandria. Patrick was there spooning in cereal.

‘Patrick, I hoped you’d be here.’

‘Violet, are you going to say all the names you don’t like?’

‘Do you want to go first?’

‘I don’t like Jaiden or Lucas or Charles.’

‘That’s interesting. I quite like Charles.’

‘He’s a boy at nursery I don’t like. So are Jaiden and Lucas boys I don’t like.’

‘Any others?’

‘I don’t like Jodie or Tina.’

‘I agree.’

‘Or Gabriella.’

‘Not nice girls?’

‘Jodie pinches people. Gabriella had nits. Tina spits at me.’

‘How horrid of her. Do you spit back?’

‘We don’t spit at people do we, Patrick?’ his mother remonstrated. She was afraid this might be getting out of hand.

‘Your turn to say what names you don’t like.’

Vi said, ‘OK, I don’t like Samantha, Sandra, Lulu, Kylie or Kim…’ she stopped short, aware that she was on the edge of an indiscretion.

Patrick looked at her sharply. ‘You were going to say Kimberley.’

‘I said Kim,’ said Vi.

‘There’s a lady called Kimberley here on the boat. I heard my mummy and daddy talking about her.’

‘And I don’t like Roy, or Karl, or Eric, or Justin or Rex,’ Vi continued, feeling the best policy was to press on.

‘Rex is the name of a dog!’

‘Well, I don’t like it.’

‘You don’t like Skarloey either, do you?’

‘Most definitely I do not like Skarloey.’

‘But you like Patrick.’

‘I do.’

‘Because you like me.’

‘Exactly.’

‘I don’t like poo poo or bum bum,’ Patrick confided. ‘Do you?’

‘Time we went, Patrick. Say “bye-bye” to Mrs Hetherington.’

‘She’s not called Mrs Hetherington. She’s called Violet. She’s my friend.’

‘Thank you, Patrick,’ Violet said. ‘I am honoured. Goodbye for now.’

‘Good
bye
poo poo wee wee bum bum.’

Vi was enjoying a pot of coffee to herself when Martha Cleever, her hair in a soigné French pleat and wearing lipstick, arrived. She had on a short skirt which revealed a pair of sturdy legs.

‘Oh hi, Vi, if I’d known you were here I’d have brought back the shoes.’

Vi said it didn’t matter a scrap as she had no plans to wear the shoes. Any time before that evening would do.

Martha seemed a little ill at ease. ‘I’m glad to have found you. Baz will be along any minute.’ She paused to pour herself coffee.

Vi, who had an inkling of what was coming, offered to pass the milk and sugar.

‘Thank you, I take neither. I wanted to ask you, I was very late back to our room last night. Ken and I got talking and the time just flew by.’

‘I’m glad you both had such a nice time.’

‘Oh we did,’ Martha said. ‘Not that there was any, you know. We just talked.’

‘Well, that’s often the best fun.’

‘Oh yes. We found we had a lot in common. Ken’s grandmother died in Ravensbrück and both my grandparents died in Dachau. It kind of made a connection between us.’

‘I can see how it might.’

‘Anyway, before I knew it, it was three a.m. and Baz was kind of worried, so I told him, well, to be honest I said that I’d been up talking with you.’

‘Ah.’

‘I said I’d gone with you to your room.’

‘I see.’

‘I don’t know why I said that,’ Martha said. She frowned.

‘You were helping me to my room because I was feeling unwell, perhaps?’

‘You know, I did kind of intimate something like that. It wasn’t that anything happened with Ken but Baz said he’d gotten worried and come looking for me.’

‘And he couldn’t find you?’

‘I kind of panicked and said I was with you…and then there were your shoes,’ Martha added, not entirely logically.

‘Well, Vi said, ‘since last night you were talking to me and, as it happens, I was helped to my room I think if need be we can reassure Baz.’

‘There wasn’t anything…’

Vi interrupted. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s not always a good plan to speak the truth. It can be misleading. People misread the truth quite as often as they believe lies. But my guess is that Baz won’t ask.’

‘He was very pleased to see me last night, I mean this morning,’ Martha said. ‘That was kind of nice.’

‘Good,’ said Vi. ‘Then I suggest we stop worrying. You had a nice time, Ken had a nice time and Baz was very glad to see you. What can be wrong with that?’

‘I hope
you
had a nice time?’ Martha asked.

‘Very nice,’ Vi said. ‘I chatted to Miss Foot.’

‘Oh but…’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Vi. ‘She won’t give us away. And someone did come to my room with me, and he is not likely to spill the beans. So our stories tally.’

Martha looked pleased. ‘I hope it was someone nice.’

‘I am not sure that I would call him nice,’ Vi said. ‘But it was interesting, certainly.’

On their last day at sea, the passengers due to disembark at New York were for the most part in the unsatisfactory half-hearted state of anticipating the end of an event and thus being unable to enjoy the time remaining. They roamed aimlessly about the ship, picking up the extensive trivia sold, at grossly inflated prices, by the ship’s many franchised retailers. Vi, catching sight of her hair, which looked, as her mother would have said, like the wild woman of Borneo’s, went to ‘We Are Hair’, where it was washed and blow-dried by a cheerful New Zealander called Avis.

‘Nice and full we’re doing it today?’

Vi, who had a horror of big hair, said she liked her hair smooth and very simple.

‘Not a problem. Ever thought of having some nice highlights put in to hide the grey?’

‘There’s not a lot of grey is there?’ Vi was perhaps a little vain about her natural hair colour.

‘Why let the men know our age? Keep them on their toes, I say. Still, yours isn’t too bad.’

Coming out of the salon, she met Ken and Jen, Jen handsome in brief white shorts and high-heeled mules and Ken in dark glasses, burdened with plastic bags marked ‘Duty Free’.

‘Vi, we were just talking about you. Your hair looks nice. I like it full like that. Have you recovered from last night?’

Ken took off his sunglasses.

Vi said, ‘Thank you, yes. I’m afraid I was an awful bother but Ken was kindness itself.’

‘He’d have got the rough side of my tongue if he hadn’t been.’

‘I got it anyway,’ said Ken, looking relieved.

Vi said, ‘Can you do me a favour, Ken? I want to buy someone I’m seeing a special whisky.’

‘He’ll go with you,’ Jen said. ‘Give me the bags, Ken, and take Vi down to the Duty Free.’

Ken squeezed Vi’s arm going down the stairs. ‘That was sweet of you. Very quick.’

‘Ah, well.’

‘That Martha’s a nice woman.’

‘Yes.’

‘Not that there was anything…’

‘I know that,’ Vi said firmly. ‘Now, about the whisky. It’s for
a friend I’ve not seen in years and I want to take him some-thing really special.’

There was some debate among the cognoscenti in the Duty Free over the best malt to buy a whisky drinker with form. Vi left Ken debating with a Greek Orthodox priest from San Francisco, returning, he explained, from a retreat on Mount Athos, about the merits and demerits of single malts from various unpronounceable Scottish islands. She wandered off to look for something suitable for Annie. A Gucci bag? But Annie already had any number of bags and these all appeared hideous. In the end, she bought a plastic train filled with Smarties for Patrick, no less hideous but more reliably acceptable.

On her return to the drinks section, she learned that the priest, who turned out to be a bishop, perhaps pulling rank, had swung the choice of whisky to a sixteen-year-old single Islay malt. Vi paid and then helped him with the choice of stole he was buying for a nun friend.

‘But surely she would only wear black?’

‘I think she likes a spot of colour in private.’

They finally settled on a discreet azure and the bishop gave Vi his card. ‘Do look us up if you are ever in California. I hope your friend enjoys the malt.’

Ken carried the bottle of Lagavulin up toVi’s room. ‘Honestly Ken, I can manage.’

‘I’d like to be able to say I’d been in your room with a clear conscience, Vi. Not that Jen would ever suspect anything.’

He prowled about the room inspecting the balcony and even the bathroom. ‘I’ll mention the swans. Jen’ll like those.’

‘Don’t overdo it,’ Vi advised. ‘Too much detail sounds suspicious.’ She recalled Edwin explaining this in their
Columbo
days.

‘Will you accept a reversed charge call?’ asked the operator. It was hard to imagine where they acquired such voices.

‘Yes.’

Thank God it was Edward Hetherington himself at the other end.

‘Go ahead please, caller.’

‘Edward?’

‘Vi. Are you all right?’

‘I am but a friend of mine isn’t.’

‘What’s up?’

‘I don’t know exactly but he’s in a police station in Oxford. He’s being held in the cells.’

‘Give me his details. Can I ring you back?’

‘I’m in a phone box. There’s one at the bottom of the road near where I’m staying. I can call you back but at present I’ve got no change, only a pound note.’

‘That’s all right. Reverse the charges.’

‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’

‘Quite sure. Where are you?’

‘It’s Tessa Carfield’s cottage in the Welsh Marches. Near somewhere called Knighton. Why?’

‘It’s nice to know where you are. I’ll get on to this. Call me back in an hour.’

Vi walked into Knighton and had a cup of coffee in a depressing hotel. The coffee was mostly milk and tasted of chicory essence. There was a jukebox which took her money and didn’t play ‘Heartbreak Hotel’. When she asked the man behind the bar for her money back he grinned unsympathetically and said she would need to come back Wednesday and have a word with the manager.

She walked up the hill to the chemist where she bought some Nivea cream for her face, which was smarting dreadfully. There
was still twenty minutes before she was due to ring Edward back. So she went into a second-hand bookshop and loitered there, reading one of the various second-hand copies of
A Shropshire Lad
.

‘Will you accept a reversed charge call?’

‘Yes.’

‘Go ahead please, caller.’

‘Vi? It’s Ted.’

‘Oh, Ted. What’s happened?’

‘A colleague’s on his way to Edwin in Oxford.’

‘Why is he there?’

‘We don’t yet know. It’s usually best to sort that out in person. If you ring me later today I can tell you more. Say, between four thirty and five p.m.? I’ll need to leave here by five thirty. Margaret’s not too well.’

Tessa Carfield’s cottage stood by itself on a low rise reached by a long track. It was small and whitewashed and had a large stone fireplace and a flagged floor. There were only two rooms, a living room with a small Belling stove and a primitive sink with a water heater, and a bedroom with a bed with a painted iron frame, the bed-head worked in the form of a Welsh harp. There was no bathroom and an outside WC with a wooden seat that had long lost its varnish and a door that swung open to Housman’s hills. In other circumstances it might have been idyllic.

Bruno was typing frenetically at the only table when Vi came back from the phone box. ‘Shall I unpack?’

‘If you’re staying.’

‘I seem to be.’

‘That’s up to you,’ Bruno said.

‘I’ve rung a solicitor for Edwin.’

‘Who?’

‘Someone I met at Tessa Carfield’s party.’

‘I don’t remember any solicitor.’

‘It was before you arrived.’

‘So what’s Edwin been up to?’

Vi, who hated that form of question, said, ‘I don’t know. I’m ringing Ted back later this afternoon.’

‘“Ted”? I see. Very matey.’

‘I brought the catalogue for you from the Horniman exhib-ition,’ Vi said.

‘Yes, I saw.’

So he’d been through her bag. ‘Bruno, what happened to that strange purse you showed me once? The one made of out of a bat’s wing?’

‘It’s here. Why?’

‘Why is it here?’

Bruno stopped typing. ‘Vi, is it your intention in coming here to interfere with my work?’

‘You asked me to come.’

Bruno got up and went into the bedroom. After some minutes, he came out again. ‘So where is it?’

‘What?’

‘You know.’

‘I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about, Bruno.’

‘The soul-keeper. What you choose to disparage by calling a purse.’

‘I don’t know where it is. You said you had it here.’

Bruno walked into the bedroom and came out with her note-book. ‘If you don’t return the soul-keeper I’ll burn this.’

‘What?’

‘I’ll put your notebook on the fire.’

‘Bruno, I haven’t seen your horrible little purse since the day we went to the Horniman exhibition. This is mad.’

‘You have fifteen minutes to return it. After that, the book goes into the fire.’

Vi began frantically opening the few cupboards and shifting the armchair. She dug her fingers down the crack at the back of the sofa. Nothing but ancient fluff and burned-out matches. She went into the bedroom and searched through all the drawers and then took up the rugs. The only thing she found was any number of woodlice.

This is a set-up, the voice said.

Finally, she felt under the mattress. ‘The missing item seems to be here.’

‘I’m glad you came to your senses.’

‘Bruno,’ she said. She was overcome by a sudden appalling weariness. ‘I didn’t take the bloody thing. I loathe it, as a matter of fact. You know I didn’t take it, nor would I ever hide your possessions. It’s not in me to do that. I can hardly believe it.’

Just as you like, the voice said. He put it there. Take it or leave it.

‘Will you accept a reversed charge call?’

‘Yes.’

‘Go ahead, caller.’

‘Ted, I hope you don’t mind all these reversed charge calls. I do have some change now.’