Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (13 page)

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-- a member or a friend or whatever and she always went three times a year. Everything like that she went to, Aldeburgh, the Edinburgh Festival, Salzburg. Anyway, her tickets had come. She was asking Harvey about what she should order for dinner. You have to order your dinner months in advance if you don't want to picnic. We never did picnic, it would be so awful if it rained.

"They were still talking about that when Brenda put her head round the door and said dinner was in the dining room and she was off. I started talking to Davina about going to France in a fortnight's time, she was going to Paris to be in some television book programme and she wanted me to go with her and Harvey. It would have been Easter holidays for me but I didn't much want to go and I was telling her I didn't and -- but you won't want to hear all this."

Daisy put her hand up to her lips. She was looking at him, looking through him. He said, "It is very hard to realise, I know that, even though you were there, even though you saw. It will take you time to accept what has happened."

"No," she said remotely, "it's not hard to accept. I'm not in any doubt. When I woke up this morning I didn't even have a moment before I remembered. You know -- " she shrugged at him " -- how there's always that moment, and then everything comes back. It's not like that. Everything's there all the time. It'll always be there. What Nicholas said, about me being confused, that's absolutely not so. OK, never

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mind, I'll go on, I'm digressing too much.

"My mother usually served dinner. Brenda left it all mere for us on the trolley. We didn't have wine except at the weekends. There was a bottle of Badoit and a jug of apple juice. We had -- let Hie see -- soup, it was potato and leek, sort of vichyssoise, but it was hot. We had that and bread, of course, and then my mother cleared away the plates and served the main course. It was fish, sole something or other. Is it called sole bonne femme when it's in a sauce with creamed potatoes round?"

; "I don't know," Wexford said, amused in spite of everything. "It doesn't matter. I get the picture."

"Well, it was that with carrots and French beans. She'd served us all and sat down and we'd started eating. My mother hadn't even started. She said, 'What's that? It sounds like someone upstairs.'"

a **And you hadn't heard a car? No one had heard a car?"

t '^They'd have said. You see, we were expecting aPCar. Well, not then, not till a quarter past eight, ctaly she's always early. She's one of those people *fao are as bad as the unpunctual ones, always afr least five minutes early." ^Who is? Who are you talking about, Daisy?" I^^Joanne Garland. She was coming to see urn. It was Tuesday, and Joanne and Mum ays did the gallery books on a Tuesday, e couldn't do tiiem on her own, she's less at arithmetic even with a calculator, always brought the books and she and Mum

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worked on them, the VAT and all that/ "All right. I see. Go on, will you?" "Mum said she heard a noise upstairs and Davina said it must be the cat. Then there was quite a lot of noise, more than Queenie usually makes. It was like something crashing on to the floor. I've thought about it since and I've thought maybe it was a drawer being pulled out of Davina's dressing table. Harvey got up and said he'd go and look.

"We just went on eating. We weren't worried -- not then. I remember my mother looked at the clock and said something about how she wished Joanne would make it half an hour later on Tuesdays because she had to eat her meal too fast. Then we heard the shot and then another, a second one. It made this terrible noise.

"We jumped up. My mother and I, Davina went on sitting where she was. My mother sort of cried out, screamed. Davina didn't say anything or move -- well, her hands sort of closed round her napkin. She clutched her napkin. Mum stood staring at the door and I pushed my chair away and started going to the door -- or I think I did, I meant to -- maybe I was just standing there. Mum said, 'No, no' or 'No, don't' or something. I stopped, I was just standing there, I was sort of frozen to the spot. Davina turned her head towards the door. And then he came in.

"Harvey had left the door half-open -- well, a little bit open. The man kicked it open and came in. I've tried to remember if anyone screamed but I can't remember, I don't know. We must

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have. He -- he shot Davina in the head. He held the gun in both hands, like they do. I mean like they do on telly. Then he shot Mum.

"I haven't a clear memory of what happened next. I've tried hard to remember but something blocks it off, I expect it's normal when you've had a thing like that happen, but I wish I could remember.

"I've a sort of idea I got on to the floor. I crouched on the floor. I know I heard a car start up. That one, the other one, had been upstairs, I think, he was the one we heard. The one who shot me, he was downstairs all the time, and when he shot us the other one got out fast and started the car. That's just what I think."

"The one who shot you, can you describe him?"

He was holding his breath, expecting her to say, fearing she would say, that she couldn't remember, that this too had been absorbed and destroyed by shock. Her face had been contorted, almost distorted, with the effort of concentration, the recollection of almost intolerably painful events. It seemed to clear as if a little rest had come to her. Alleviation soothed her, like a sigh of relief.

"I can describe him. I can do that. I've willed myself to that. What I could see of him. He was *- well, not too tall but thickset, heavily built, very fair. I mean his hair was fair. I couldn't ^e his face, he had a mask over his face." ^ "A mask? D'you mean a hood? A stocking

er his head?" I don't know. I just don't know. I've been

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trying to remember because I knew you'd ask but I don't know. I could see his hair. I know he had fair hair, shortish, and thick, quite thick fair hair. But I wouldn't have been able to see his hair if he'd had a hood over it, would I? D'you know what's the impression I keep getting?"

He shook his head.

"That it was a mask like the sort people wear in smog, in pollution, whatever you call it. Or even one of those masks the woodsmen wear when they're using a chain saw. I could see his hair and his chin. I could see his ears -- but they were just ordinary ears, not big or sticking out or anything. And his chin was ordinary -- well, it might have had a cleft in it, a sort of shallow cleft."

"Daisy, you've done very well. You've done supremely well to take all this in before he shot you."

At those words she shut her eyes and screwed up her face. The shooting, the attack on herself, he saw was still too much for her to discuss. He understood the terror it must evoke, that she too could so easily have died there in that death room.

A nurse put her head round the door.

"I'm all right," Daisy said. "I'm not tired, I'm not overdoing it. Really."

The head retreated. Daisy took another drink from the bedside glass. "We're going to have a picture made of him, based on what you've been able to tell me," Wexford said. "And when you're better and out of here, I'm going to ask you if you will say this all over again in the

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form of a statement. Also, with your permission, a tape will be made of it. I know it will be hard for you but don't say no now, think about it."

"I don't have to think," she said. "I'll make a statement, of course I will."

"In the meantime, I should like to come back and talk to you again tomorrow. But first, I'd like you to tell me one more thing. Did Joanne Garland in fact come?"

She seemed to be pondering. She was very still. "I don't know," she said at last. "I mean, I didn't hear her ring the bell or anything. But all sorts of things might have happened after <-- after he shot me, and I didn't hear them. I was bleeding, I was thinking of getting to the phone, I was concentrating on crawling to the phone and getting you, the police, an ambulance, before I bled to death, I really thought I'd bleed to death."

"Yes," he said, "yes."

"She could have come after they, the men, after they left. I don't know, it's no use asking me, I just don't know." She hesitated, said very quietly, "Mr Wexford?"

"Yes?"

) For a moment she said nothing. She hung her head and the copious dark-brown hair fell forward, covering face and neck and shoulders liwth its veil. Her right hand went up, that slim �rtiite long-fingered hand, and raked her hair, Jtook a handful of it and threw it back. She

'ked up and looked at him, the expression lit, intense, her upper lip curled back in pain

incredulity.

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'What's going to become of me?" she asked him. "Where will I go? What will I do? I've lost everything, everything's gone, everything that matters."

Now was not the time to remind her she would be rich, that not everything had gone. That which for many makes life worthwhile remained to her in abundance. He had never been a man to believe blindly in the adage which told him that money doesn't bring happiness. But he remained silent.

"I should have died. It would have been better for me if I'd died. I was terrified of dying. I thought I was dying when the blood was pumping out of me and I was terrified --- oh, I was so frightened. The funny thing was, it didn't hurt. It hurts more now than it did then. You'd think something going into your flesh would hurt so terribly but there wasn't any pain. But it would have been best if I'd died, I know that now."

He said, "I know I risk your thinking of me as one of those who hand out the old placebos. But you won't continue to feel like this. It will pass."

She stared at him, said rather imperiously, "I shall see you tomorrow then."

"Yes."

She held out her hand to him and he shook it. The fingers were cold and very dry.

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9

WEXFORD went home early. His feeling was that this might be the last time he got home by six for a long while.

Dora was in the hall, replacing the phone receiver, as he let himself in. She said, "That was Sheila. If you'd been a second sooner you could have talked to her."

A sardonic retort rose to his lips and he suppressed it. There was no reason for being unpleasant to his wife. None of it was her fault. Indeed, at that dinner on Tuesday, she had done her best to make things easier, to dull the edge of spitefulness and soften sarcasm.

"They are coming," Dora said, her tone neutral.

"Who's coming where?" "Sheila and -- and Gus. For the weekend. You know Sheila said they might on Tuesday." "A lot of things have happened since Tuesday."

.�' At any rate, he probably wouldn't be home inuch during the weekend. But tomorrow was l&e weekend, tomorrow was Friday, and they ould arrive in the evening. He poured himself beer, an Adnam's which a local wine shop had gun to stock, and a dry sherry for Dora. She d her hand on his arm, moved it to enclose e back of his hand. It reminded him of Daisy's

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icy touch. But Dora's was warm.

He burst out, "I've got to have that miscreant here for a whole weekend!"

"Reg, don't. Don't begin like that. We've only met him twice."

"The first time she brought him here," said Wexford, "he stood in this room in front of my books and he took them out one by one. He looked at them in turn with a little contemptuous smile on his face. He took out the Trollope and looked at it like that. He took out the short stories of M. R. James and shook his head. I can see him now, standing there with James in his hand and shaking his head slowly, very slowly from side to side. I expected him to turn his thumbs down. I expected him to do what the Chief Vestal did when the gladiator had the net-man at his mercy in the arena. Kill. That's the verdict of the supreme judge, kill."

"He has a right to his opinion."

"He hasn't a right to despise mine and show he despises it. Besides, Dora, that's not the only thing and you know it isn't. Have you ever met a man with a more arrogant manner? Have you ever -- well, as a friend in your own family circle or that you know well -- have you ever come across anyone who so plainly made you feel he despised you? You and me. Everything he said was designed to show his loftiness, his cleverness, his wit. What does she see in him? What does she see in him? He's small and skinny, he's ugly, he's myopic, he can't see further than the end of his twitching nose ..."

"You know something, darling? Women like

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small men. They find them attractive. I know * big tall ones like you don't believe it, but it's true."

"Burke said ..."

"I know what Burke said. You've told me before. A man's handsomeness resides entirely in his height, or something like that. Burke wasn't a woman. Anyway, I expect Sheila values him for his mind. He's a very clever man, you know, Reg. Perhaps he's a genius." , "God help us if you're going to call everyone who was short-listed for the Booker prize a genius."

"I think we should make allowances for a young man's pride in his own achievements. Augustine Casey is only thirty and he's already seen as one of this country's foremost novelists. Or so I read in the papers. His books get half page reviews in the book section of The Times* His first novel won the Somerset Maugham Award."

"Success should make people humble, modest and kind, as the donor of that prize said somewhere."

"It seldom does. Try to be indulgent towards 5 him, Reg. Try to listen with -- with an older

man's wisdom when he airs his opinions." / ' "And you can say that after what he said to j|you about the pearls? You're a magnanimous l^oman, Dora." Wexford gave a sort of groan. *lf only she doesn't really care for him. If only can come to see what I see." He drank is beer, made a face as if the taste were ter all not congenial to him. "You don't

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think -- " he turned to his wife, appalled " -- you don't think she'd marry him, do you?"

"I think she might live with him, enter into -- what shall I call it? -- a long-term relationship with him. I do think that, Reg, really. You have to face it. She's told me -- oh, Reg, don't look like that. I have to tell you."