Facing the Tank (14 page)

‘Men cluster to me like moths around a flame.’

‘Ah-
ha!
’ laughed Deirdre, and joined in. ‘And if their wings burn I know I’m not to blame!’

While Miss McCreery and the other observers in the shop scurried off to tell their friends (and Marge Delaney-Siedentrop) that they had seen the Bishop’s mother purchase the cardigan that no one else could afford and then impersonate Gracie Fields impersonating Marlene Dietrich, Deirdre Chattock showed her gratitude by inviting Mercy to dinner the following evening.

Dinner had been a great success – they had listened to a stack of old records – and after a prompt reciprocation, gave way to less formal, more intimate lunches and then to downright confidential elevenses and cups of tea. Before Mr Tree had been in office a month, Mrs Merluza was the only woman in Barrowcester on ‘popping-in’ terms with his mother. Now every Barrowcesterian slight, every ungracious innuendo could be written off by Mercy as mere envy. Whatever sly disapprovals were stretched across her path, she had a friend to help her face them. Needless to say, she was the first after Gavin Tree at Deirdre’s sickbed last year (he had found her a room to herself on the NHS) and had heard long before him of her momentous ‘plugging in’. The meditation classes that attracted so many were little more than a smokescreen; Mercy was the only Barrower to have been a party to Mrs Chattock’s secret dalliance with powers beyond her control.

Her skin prickling slightly, for despite the sunshine the day was not as warm as she had at first supposed, Mercy turned off Scholar Street into the drive of the Palace. She saw Deirdre at a first-floor window and raised a hand in greeting. Deirdre waved back and slipped from view only to reappear at the front door as Mercy drew near.

‘Mercy, Petal, I didn’t think you’d come! How are you coping?’ She spoke as though Mercy had just tossed away crutches and were inadvisedly walking too far too soon.

‘I’m fine thanks. How are …?’

‘You’re so brave! I said as much to our Gavin over breakfast and he thinks so too.’ Mercy was baffled at this sudden solicitous outburst which was quite out of character, but then Deirdre was always slightly larger than life. ‘And I’m so touched that you’ve come despite everything,’ her friend continued. They kissed. Although her last husband, the late Mr Chattock had proved a martyr to tobacco, Deirdre remained a compulsive smoker of Players Navy Cut and had a gravelly voice to prove it. ‘Come in, Flower,’ she said, waving her friend through the porch.

She shut the door and they walked side by side across the huge parqueted hall watched by the portraits of some ten past bishops, and started the slow climb up the stairs to Deirdre’s apartment on the first floor. Deirdre had regular visits from a town masseuse to tend her stiff joints, but she was still a painfully stately mover. A typewriter clattered from behind a door on their way.

‘Our poor Gavin slaving away,’ coughed Deirdre. ‘He has to prepare all his arguments for
Faith Forum
on Friday and write a piece on the vision for the
Church Times, and
answer any number of cranky letters.’

‘Does he get many?’ asked Mercy.

‘Oh my dear, they arrive by the score. I’d toss them in the Aga if I was him but he insists that every opinion is important and that every voice deserves a hearing and a reply. You thought it all a fake, I gather.’

‘Well I wouldn’t say that, exactly.’

‘No? I heard all about your views from Marge Delaney-Siedentrop who didn’t see a thing and is heaping coals on the anti-Roman fire.’ Deirdre poked discreet fun by pronouncing Siedentrop with a silent P. ‘I can quite see your point of view,’ she went on, ‘but I can assure you it was the Real Thing.’

‘Have you … er … then?’

‘Yes, Petal, I have asked my guides and they all say it was real.’

‘Goodness.’

‘Quite. And of course it’s doing wonders for the appeal fund. I was speaking to the dear Dean yesterday and he’s had approaches from two TV channels and all the major papers. People are
pouring
in. There’s nothing to see now, mind you – even less than normal in fact because of the builders – but that doesn’t seem to stop them.’

She broke down in a fit of coughing at the turn in the stairs. Well-versed, Mercy thumped her vigorously on the bony back to help loosen the phlegm. She was no youthful widow herself, but Deirdre was so much her senior as to make her feel at times agreeably like a young and favoured nurse. When she had recovered, Deirdre continued, leading the way to her sitting room.

‘Couldn’t do better if we had a wobbly virgin like those pathetic Irish,’ she said.

In her sitting room she gestured to Mercy to sit down in her usual chair then took a few deep breaths.

‘Do you mind if we skip coffee, Flower, and get straight down to it? I have a strong feeling about this morning and it’s getting stronger.’

‘But of course. Coffee is so bad for the pancreas, anyway.’

‘Poison. Poison,’ said Deirdre and, having locked the door, set about drawing the curtains. The room, with its clutter of china figurines, brass candlesticks and clustered photograph frames, with its regulation chintz and early nineteenth-century prints of Durham and Barrowcester, had none of the hackneyed trappings of a traditional medium’s parlour, yet it was surprising how effective was the transformation effected by the swish of a curtain and the sparking of a cigarette lighter. As the candle burned more brightly, Deirdre settled back on the sofa, her legs tucked neatly to one side. She nibbled on a biscuit; she always said that a little sugar ‘made for a clearer connection’.

Mercy had watched this many times, only recently with a keen personal interest, but had never ceased to be shocked when the vital moment came. She had visited mediums in both Paris and London. They had used incense and atmospheric music, they had paced up and down or sung songs or gargled eau de cologne. Deirdre used no such gimmicks and it was her complete lack of build-up that proved so startling. She sat, quite still, her breathing slowing. Mercy could hear the birds in the garden; a blackbird’s alarm call, a woodpigeon’s eerie fluting. On account of their tar layer, the motion of Deirdre’s lungs was easily audible at a distance of five or six feet. When it stopped, Mercy habitually tensed herself for a new voice. Sitting stock still on her sofa, the Bishop’s mother had been the mouthpiece for a small girl, a Cockney barrowboy, an elderly priest from Cardiff and, on one alarming occasion, a woman in labour. There was no question of her faking the voices; it actually sounded as if a differently shaped mouth were speaking. In the case of the small girl, one could hear her juvenile lack of teeth.

Last time, at Mercy’s tentative suggestion that they plumb the mystery of her childhood, Deirdre had been inhabited by the soul of Jésus’ vile mother. As the bilious, all too familiar phrases spilled forth, (it was most unlikely that Deirdre alone could have had such a mastery of vulgar Catalan) it had seemed as if Señora Merluza were sitting on the sofa in all her black-mantled flabbiness and not Deirdre at all. She had spoken of her jealousy of the genderless waif that Jésus had brought into the household, of her impotent fury when the child proved a precociously sensuous dancer and was incorporated into his act, of her rage at the drunken cheering of the crowds for little Mercedes. She had spoken of her spiteful secret pettinesses of revenge. Trapped in her armchair on the other side of the coffee table, Mercy had trembled as if she were a nervy twelve again and had sunk back with exhaustion and relief when Deirdre nodded off and began to snore. Although she burned to learn her orgins, she half hoped that Señora Merluza would not be on call today, whatever she might choose to reveal.

Deirdre stopped breathing. Mercy clutched her hands together with excitement then bit her lip with shock as she heard a long, amorous sigh she still recognized after nearly thirty years.

‘Jésus?’ she whispered. ‘Is that you?’ slipping by reflex into Catalan.

‘Mercedes,’ said Jésus and chuckled. ‘My little Mercedes.’

On the sofa in Deirdre’s apartment, Jésus hummed softly the song he had always liked to have played at the beginning of the act. Mercy was a girl again, sitting on the edge of her bed in the house over the nightclub. Jesus was kneeling on the floor before her, humming his song and slowly unfastening the buttons on the front of her dance costume. With the undoing of each button he brushed her unbruised skin with his lips. She could smell his sweat and the pomade on his shiny, black hair. An ugly painting of some fishermen mending nets hung on the wall behind him. Gingerly she reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder. His skin felt hot through the cotton and as she touched him he let his tongue flick like a lizard’s between her tiny breasts. It felt good. It felt like when another dancer, Julia, stood her naked in the bath backstage and tipped a slow jug of warm water over her back and hair to wash away the sweat of dancing. She leaned forward and pressed a kiss on to the nape of his neck. His head, which seemed so huge, lifted and he stared hard. One of his eyes was blue and seemed to stare harder than its dull, brown partner. She could not stare for long so she arched her spine and threw back her head to watch the ceiling where the flies were circling. She heard him sigh again. Such a sad, burdened sigh.

‘Mercedes,’ he said, almost in a whisper, ‘let’s pretend you’re my sweet, secret little wife,’ and he slipped the costume off her shoulders. Did he sigh or was that the sound of slithering cloth?

On the way home from the Palace, Mercy dropped in at Farquarson’s, the newsagents, to ask about their failure to deliver her
Telegraph
that morning. She never registered a complaint however, but simply bought a copy of a tabloid which she sometimes read in secret and which today had no trouble in catching her eye. Madeleine’s face was spread over the front page under the headline, ‘TOP CARDINAL PREGNANCY SHOCK!’

When her alarm woke her soon after seven o’clock on Tuesday morning, Madeleine forced herself to stay awake by sitting bolt upright against her headboard with the bedside light switched on and the latest copy of
Apollo
open in her lap. With her window open, she could hear at last the steady approach of the girl on her paper round. Bicycling, stopping, posting, bicycling, stopping and posting. Bicycling again. When the sounds were only a house away, she snatched about her the dressing gown of her teens, preserved for the homecoming modesty of an habitually naked sleeper, and crept down as quietly as old stairs would permit. No sooner was her mother’s
Daily Telegraph
through the door than Madeleine was hurrying back upstairs with it clutched inside her wrap. In the safety of her room, she tossed the dressing gown aside, and clambered back into bed to open out the paper.

She found that she felt nauseous with excitement in the same, not unpleasant way that she had felt when Madge had rung her to say that their collaboration had been reviewed in
The Guardian
. She decided to start on page three and work her way back to the front. There was nothing on page three. A baby had been eaten by greyhounds. The country’s oldest postmistress had received a visit from the Queen Mother who had bought a stamp. Nothing. Surely she and Edmund were not a national incident. Were they? She scanned page two. There was a large photograph of the Princess of Wales visiting an innovative, old people’s home, a report of industrial action being taken in a Welsh chemicals plant and the details of a large survey on education; nothing about papist illegitimacies. Gingerly Madeleine turned to the front page. Nothing. She whirled the paper over to the back. Nothing. Feverishly she leafed through it page by page, even scanning the foreign news in case their misconduct were thought to pertain more to the Vatican than to Westminster. Her heart leaped at the word ‘pregnancy’ then she saw that it lay in a generalized piece on schoolgirls and contraception. Nothing. Someone had pulled the plug on the scandal; either that or the
Telegraph
had not thought Edmund newsworthy. Madeleine was almost affronted. She wondered if perhaps Edmund had made a clean breast of things to superior powers and caused some archaic right of veto to be exercised. She tossed the paper to one side and lay back, hands black with newsprint, to think. If by any wonderful chance
The Times
and
The Guardian
had also scorned to cover the story, she could dismiss the tabloid campaign as foundless gossip; she was engaged in legitimate work for Edmund after all. The more she thought about it, the less likely it seemed that they would print anything; it was scarcely a newsworthy event. Edmund was a Cardinal, not a politician and she was just another apolitical, art historical, bachelor girl with an impending baby. Those reporters had panicked her. She would stay in Barrowcester to beat down the scandal for her mother’s sake and until she could decide what to do about the baby, then she would take a holiday somewhere wild, woolly and unglamorous where she could rest and maybe do some writing.

There was a knock at the door. It was Mum to say she was on her way out and to ask if she would make Evan Kirby some breakfast when he appeared. She was probably on the sniff for morning sickness too, so Madeleine scared her off by opening the door in the nude, with her hair ruffled up like a witch. As soon as she heard the front door close, she flung back the covers and took a long, thoughtful bath. She dressed in a full brown skirt, white blouse and childish brown sandals. The ensemble, though still gypsyish, was less conspicuous than the scarlet of last night.

She was glad to have Evan Kirby to herself and hoped that the lie-in he had taken meant that he would not be rushing off. He was a tonic, being cynical and avuncular in roughly equal parts. He seemed above any interest in women, which could make him a restful sounding board. She suspected that he found her mother appalling and had only failed to appear for breakfast because he was hiding from her. This seemed to be confirmed when he flung wide the door to the granny flat just as Madeleine had rounded the bottom of the stairs and was heading for the kitchen.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I fear I’m too late for your mother’s wonderful English breakfast.’

‘It’s more a
desayuno Catalan
– she uses olive oil.’

‘So that’s her secret.’

‘She asked me to make you some. What do you like? Bacon and eggs? Grilled tomatoes?’

‘Couldn’t we just have coffee and toast?’

‘Good idea.’

He sat at the kitchen table and watched her fill the percolator and slice bread.

‘One slice or three?’ she asked. ‘I have three. It’s only white.’

‘Two would be fine, unless you’d like me to keep you company. Do you always steal your mother’s newspaper before she gets up?’

She paused, her hand on the grill pan, and turned to stare at him.

‘Do you always spy on your landladies’ daughters?’

‘I didn’t spy on you – I spied on her. I knew she couldn’t have moved up and down stairs so fast and when I next heard steps, I looked through the keyhole to see who was coming down. I saw her fiddling crossly with the letter box.’

‘There was an article I wanted to see. I like reading in bed.’

‘Oh.’

He sounded unconvinced.

‘Where are you working today?’ she asked.

‘Tatham’s. The
Lord
said he’d show me round at twelve then drop me off with the librarian. I suppose I should really ask an Old Girl to give me the tour.’

He grinned up at her.

‘I haven’t set foot in the place since I left.’

‘Unhappy memories?’

‘No. I had a nice time there, but I’m just not the Old Girl type,’ Madeleine replied, taking out her cigarettes.

‘Thank God,’ said Evan Kirby. ‘And thank God you’ve taken those out; I thought you never would.’ He lit one of his own as he spoke. Madeleine smiled to herself. ‘What’s funny?’ he asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘No. What?’

‘It was just the notion of sending the Old Tathamite magazine a résumé of my most recent employment.’

‘Early pornography specialist?’

‘That sort of thing. Yes.’

‘How often do you come home?’ he asked, playing with the butter knife.

‘As often as I can bear,’ she replied, standing to turn the toast, ‘which isn’t often enough.’

She disliked talking at breakfast but could cope with being an ear. He seemed keen to talk, so Madeleine ate her toast and drank her coffee while he let his get cold and held forth. He told her about his mother, who was a neurotic hostess type in Boston. He described how she had practised emotional blackmail on him whenever he was away and had made his life impossible whenever he had gone home. This seemed to confirm Madeleine’s hopes about his comfortable non-availability. Then he told her about his wife and divorce and she decided it was too late to watch her step. She buttered a slice of toast for him as a reward for not being what she thought she wanted.

‘Have you ever wanted to be a mother?’ he asked in abrupt return. ‘I’ve often found the motives for becoming a parent so dubious as to be almost uncivilized.’

Madeleine was spared the difficulty of mustering a reply by the doorbell.

‘Excuse me,’ she said and walked into the hall. As she opened the front door a ring of camera flashes fired, causing her to raise a hand to her eyes. Someone yelled,

‘It’s her!’

She slammed the door.

‘Bugger!’ she shouted.

‘What’s up?’ asked Evan who had run into the hall.

‘Could you walk into the sitting room and pull the curtains on the windows facing the street?’ she asked, beginning to shake. ‘Please? Then I’ll explain.’

As he walked next door, the doorbell rang again and was backed up by a fist rapping on the wood. Flashes lit up the windows as Evan drew the curtains in the granny flat. He came back to the hall.

‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Are you concubine-in-chief to the IRA or what?’

‘Sort of,’ she said. ‘Let’s go back in there and I’ll tell you.’ As she started to move off, some fingers pushed through the letter box and managed to catch hold of her skirt. She gave a grunt of impatience and, tugging free as the doorbell jangled again, kicked the door as hard as she could. The fingers withdrew but the ringing and knocking continued. Evan pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and, reaching to his considerable height, stuffed it between clapper and bell.

‘At least that’ll cut the racket down by half,’ he said.

‘Thanks.’ She walked past him to the kitchen. ‘Thank God Mum’s out.’

‘Look. You really don’t have to tell me anything,’ he said. ‘I mean, I’m only the lodger after all.’

‘You poor sod,’ chuckled Madeleine as if remembering his existence. She lit a cigarette and offered one to him. ‘This isn’t exactly Mon Repos, Eastbourne.’

He sat across the table from her. They had changed sides. She tipped the percolator over her cup, found it empty and started to make a fresh brew.

‘It’s a bit Gothic, but the basic situation is very straightforward,’ she said, mumbling because her cigarette was still between her lips so as to give her two spare hands. ‘I’m pregnant and the father would seem to be Cardinal Kilpatrick.’

‘The old guy with the crinkly white hair and the pink frock?’ He laughed.

‘He’s not
that
old,’ she rebuked him. ‘He’s only just past fifty. And it’s called a soutane. He’s not much whiter than you, in fact.’

There was a thud on the door. Madeleine scowled, removed her cigarette and shouted,

‘Go away!’

‘How did the press get to find you?’ he asked, accepting the reproof.

‘His housekeeper,’ she said, thudding the percolator on to the stove. She had a suspicion that she might be about to cry. She cried less often then she threw up, but the warning signs were just as unmistakable. There was another thud on the door. ‘I said go
away!
’ she yelled along the hall, clenching her fists with frustration.

‘It’s me!’ her mother yelled back.

‘Bugger. It’s Mum.’

Madeleine hurried to the front door, braced herself with her hands on the knobs, then tried to open it just a fraction. There was a heavy thrust from the other side. Mrs Merluza flew in and fell over, with a muffled whoop. Madeleine was hurled back against the wall and called out in pain as the door struck her left knee. Evan raced forward amid much flashing of bulbs and, kicking various feet and hands out of the way, managed to shut and lock the door again. Madeleine ran to the kitchen, fumbling for a handkerchief and not finding one. The Professor helped his landlady to her feet.

‘Thank you,’ she said, stiffly, then hobbled upstairs fast enough to convey a sense of outrage and was heard slamming the bathroom door behind her.

Slumped against the dresser with a tea towel in her fists, Madeleine had one of the two-minute weeps which had been her speciality since childhood. She was blowing her nose when Evan returned to the kitchen. She heard him pick up the telephone and dial three nines.

‘Police, please,’ he said. ‘Hello? … Yes, I’m staying at number eight, Tracer Lane and we’re being pestered – terrorized in fact – by a crowd of journalists who are trying to break an entry … What’s that? … Oh. Evan Kirby. K.I.R.B.Y. … No, I don’t live here, I’m just the lodger … The Merluzas … M.E.R.L.U.Z.A … Will you? … Thanks.’

‘Thank you,’ said Madeleine as he hung up, not turning so he was spared her puffed face.

‘You’re welcome. Ah. Look. I really have to get to work soon. Does that gate at the end of the garden go any place useful?’

‘Yes. There’s an alley into Scholar Walk. Do you …’ She inhaled deeply to regain her breathing’s balance. ‘Do you know the way from there?’

‘I reckon so.’

He laid a hand on her shoulder and squeezed slightly, then walked round into the granny flat. She heard him open the French windows in there and saw him walk down the garden, slim briefcase in hand. He dipped his head to avoid the branch of an apple tree and kept it dipped much longer than was necessary.

‘Thank you,’ she thought, smiling slightly as he sauntered on to the garden gate.

There was a sudden rise in pitch in the noise outside and the beating on the door stopped. Someone shouted,

‘Pigs!’

Then there was near-silence. She turned to clear away the breakfast things and saw that Evan had left on the table the copy of the paper which her mother had dropped in her fall. She flattened it out and saw her face growling,

‘Bugger off bastard hack,’

from the front page. Under the heading ‘TOP CARDINAL PREGNANCY SHOCK!’ she read, ‘We have exclusive news that sultry brunette Madeleine Merluza, 29, is pregnant by Cardinal Edmund Kilpatrick, 52. Lord have mercy!! The unlikely couple have been indulging in bizarre sex games and most unchristian fun for three months now, says the Cardinal’s shocked housekeeper, Maude Gonaghal, 47. “It’s a scandal,” she added. “They were drawn together by an interest in disgusting old sex books. I used to be forced to dust them.” Outside her Earls Court flat, steamy Miss Merluza made no secret of her happy condition. “I’m absolutely delighted,” she said. “I’m hoping for a boy.” Madeleine has gone to an exclusive clinic in Freyberg, Germany. His Eminence, her lover, was unavailable for comment. Should he make an honest woman of her? Give us your view – see postal vote coupon on page 4. Editorial, page 8.’