Kissing the Gunner's Daughter (18 page)

"Your mother went on being friends with Joanne Garland in spite of your grandmother's disapproval?"

"Oh, Mum had had Davina disapproving of her and sort of laughing at her all her life. She

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knew there was nothing she could do that would be right, so she'd got to do what she liked. She'd even stopped rising when Davina poked fun at her. Working in that shop suited her. You probably don't know this -- why should you? -- but Mum tried to be a painter for years and years. When I was little I can remember her painting and Davina coming into this studio they'd made for her and -- well, criticising. I remember one thing she said, I didn't know what it meant at the time. She said, 'Well, Naomi, I don't know what school you belong to but I think we could call you a Pre-Raphaelite Cubist.'

"Davina wanted me to be all the things Mum wasn't. Maybe she wanted me to be all the -things she wasn't too. But you don't want to hear about that. Mum loved that gallery and earning her own money and being -- well, what she called 'my own woman'." v For the time being Daisy's tears were in Abeyance. Talking did her good. He doubted iwhether she was right when she said the best thing for her was to be alone. "How long had j$hey worked together?"

? "Mum and Joanne? About four years. But they'd been friends for ever, since before I ^as born. Joanne had a shop in Queen Street,

d that was where Mum first started with her,

en she got that place for the gallery when the tre was built. Did you say she'd gone away?

e. didn't mean to go away. I remember Mum g -- well, on the day, that's how I think of

as the day -- Mum said she'd wanted to take

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Friday off for something but Joanne wouldn't let her because they'd got the VAT inspector coming in and she'd have to go through the books with him, I mean Joanne would. It took hours and hours and Mum would have to see to clients -- they didn't call them customers."

"Your mother phoned her and left a message on her answering machine not to come before eight thirty."

"J

�1

Daisy said indifferently, "I expect she did. She often did but it never seemed to make much difference."

'Joanne didn't phone during the evening?" 'No one phoned. Joanne wouldn't phone to say she'd come later. I don't think she could have come later even if she'd tried. Those extra-punctual people can't, they can't help themselves."

He watched her. A little colour had come into her face. She was perspicacious, she was interested in people, their compulsions, how they behaved. He wondered what they talked about, she and these Virsons, when they were alone together, at meals, in the evening. What had she in common with them? As if she read his mind, she said, "Joyce -- Mrs Virson -- is arranging about the funeral. Some undertakers came today. She'll speak to you, I expect. I mean, we can have a funeral, can we?"

"Yes, yes. Of course."

"I didn't know. I thought it might be different for murdered people. I hadn't thought anything about it till Joyce said. It gave us something to talk about. It's not easy talking when there's

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only one thing in your life to talk about and I* that's the one you have to avoid." I "It's fortunate you can talk about it with c me."

"Yes."

She tried to smile. "You see, there aren't any | family left. Harvey hadn't any relations, except a brother who died four years ago. Davina was 'the youngest wren of nine' and nearly all the rest are dead. Someone has to organise things and I wouldn't know how on my own. But I'll say what I want the service to be and I'll go to the funeral, I will do that."

"No one would expect you to." "I think you may be wrong there," she said thoughtfully, and then, "Have you found anyone yet? I mean, have you got any clues to who it | was that -- did it?"

|t "I want to ask you if you are quite sure of the f description you gave me of the man you saw." | ? Indignation made her frown, her dark eyebrows |msh together. "What makes you ask? Of course Pm sure. I'll tell you it again, if you like." "No, that won't be necessary, Daisy. I'm ing to leave you now but I'm afraid this 't likely to be the last time I'll want to talk you."

She turned away from him, twisting her body a child turning its back out of shyness. "I ," she said, "I wish there was someone, just person, I could pour out my heart to. I'm alone. Oh, if I could only open my heart to eone ..." e temptation to say, 'Open it to me' was

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resisted. He knew better than that. She had called him old and implied he was wise. He said, perhaps too lightly, "You're talking of hearts a lot today, Daisy."

"Because," she faced him, "he tried to kill me in my heart. He aimed at my heart, didn't he?"

"You mustn't think of that. You need someone to help you not to," he said. "It's not for me to advise you, I'm not competent to do that, but do you think you need some counselling? Would you consider it?"

"I don't need that!" She uttered it scornfully, an adamant denial. He was reminded of a psychotherapist he had once met in the course of an enquiry who had told him that saying you don't need counselling is one sure way of estimating that you do. "I need someone to -- to love me, and there's no one."

"Goodbye." He held out his hand to her. There was Virson to love her. Wexford was sure he did and would. The idea was rather dispiriting. She took his hand and her grip was strong, like a powerful man's. He felt it in the strength of her need, her cry for help. "Goodbye for the time being."

"I'm sorry to be such a bore," she said quietly.

Joyce Virson was not exactly hovering in the passage, though he guessed she had been. She emerged from what was probably a drawing room, into which he wasn't invited. She was a big tall woman, perhaps sixty or rather less. The remarkable thing about her was that she seemed

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altogether on a larger scale than most women, taller, wider, with a bigger face, bigger nose and mouth, a mass of thick curly grey hair, man's hands, surely size nine feet. A shrill, affected upper-class voice went with all this.

"I simply wanted to ask you, I'm sorry but rather a delicate question -- may we go ahead with the -- well, the funeral?"

"Certainly. There's no difficulty about that." "Oh, good. These things must be, mustn't they? In the midst of life we are in death. Poor little Daisy has some wild ideas but she can't do anything, of course, and one wouldn't expect it. I have actually been in touch with Mrs Harrison, that housekeeper person at Tancred House, on this very subject. It seemed tactful to include her in, don't you think? I thought of next Wednesday or Thursday."

Wexford said that seemed a sensible course to tike. He wondered what Daisy's position would be. Would she need a guardian until she was eighteen? When would she be eighteen? Airs parson shut the front door rather sharply on as befitted one who in her estimation uld once, in better days, have been expected *fp-: come and go by a tradesman's entrance. As Up walked to his car, an MG, old but stylish, IJl^ept in through the open gateway and Nicholas Irson got out of it.

e said, "Good evening," which made 7ord look at his watch in alarm, but it only twenty to six. Nicholas let himself the house without a backward glance.

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* * *

Augustine Casey came downstairs in a dinner jacket.

If he had had any fears about the way Sheila's friend might dress himself for dinner at the Cheriton Forest, Wexford would have guessed at jeans and a sweatshirt. Not that he would much have minded. That would have been Casey's business, to have put on the proffered tie the hotel produced or to have refused and the lot of them gone home. Wexford wouldn't have cared either way. But the dinner jacket seemed to invite comment, if only for a comparison with his own not very smart grey suit. He could think of nothing to say beyond offering Casey a drink.

Sheila appeared in a peacock-blue miniskirt and peacock-blue and emerald sequinned top. Wexford didn't much like the way Casey eyed her up and down while she told him how marvellous he looked.

The disquieting thing was that everything went very well for half the evening -- the first half. Casey talked. Wexford was learning that things usually went well while Casey talked, while, that is, he talked about a subject chosen by himself, pausing to allow intelligent and appropriate questions from his audience. Sheila, Wexford noticed, was an adept at these questions, seeming to know the precise points at which to interject them. She had tried to tell them about a new part that had been offered her, a wonderful opportunity for her, the name

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part in Strindberg's Miss Julie, but Casey had little patience with that.

In the lounge, he talked about postmodernism. Sheila said, humbly resigned to no more interest being taken in her career, "Could you give us some examples, please, Gus," and Casey gave a large number of examples. They went into one of the several dining rooms the hotel now boasted. It was full and not one of the men sitting at tables was in a dinner jacket. Casey, who had already drunk two large brandies, ordered another and immediately went to the men's room.

Sheila had always appeared to her father as an intelligent young woman. He hated having to revise this opinion but what else could he do when she said things like this?

"Gus is so brilliant, it makes me wonder what on earth he sees in someone like me. I feel really inferior while I'm with him."

"What a bloody awful basis for a relationship," he said, at which Dora kicked him under the cloth and Sheila looked hurt.

Casey came back laughing, something Wexford hadn't seen him often doing. A guest had taken him for a waiter, had asked for two dry martinis, and Casey had said in an Italian accent that they were coming up, sir. This made Sheila laugh inordinately. Casey drank his brandy, made a big show of ordering some special wine. He was extremely jovial and began to talk of Davina Flory.

All talk of 'keeping mum' and 'funny little cops' was apparently forgotten. Casey had met

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Davina on several occasions, the first time at a launch party for someone else's book, then when she came into his publisher's offices and they encountered each other in the 'atrium', a word for 'hall' which occasioned a disquisition on Casey's part on fashionable words and otiose importations from dead languages. Wexford's interruption was received as well-timed.

"You didn't know I was published by the St Giles Press? I'm not, you're perfectly right. But we're all under the same umbrella now -- or sunshade might be the more appropriate word. Carlyon, St Giles Press, Sheridan and Quick, we're all Carlyon Quick now."

Wexford thought of his friend and Burden's brother-in-law, Amyas Ireland, an editor at Carlyon-Brent. He was still there, as far as he knew. The takeover hadn't squeezed him out. Would there be any point in phoning Amyas for information on Davina Flory?

For Casey's own reminiscences seemed not to amount to much. His third meeting with Davina had been at a party given by Carlyon Quick at their new premises in Battersea -- or the 'boondocks', as Casey called it. Her husband had been with her, a rather too sweet and gracious old 'honey' who had once been the Member for a constituency in which Casey's parents lived. A friend of Casey's had been taught by him some fifteen years before at the LSE. Casey called him a 'cardboard charmer'. Some of this charm had been exercised on the hordes of publicity girls and secretaries who were always at such parties, while poor Davina had

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to talk to boring editors-in-chief and marketing

* directors. Not that she had taken any sort of back seat, but had thrown her opinions about in her nineteen-twenties Oxford voice, boring everyone with east European politics and details ,of some trip she and one of her husbands had made to Mecca in the fifties. Wexford smiled inwardly at this example of projection.

He, Casey, had personally liked none of her

books, with the possible exception of The Hosts

of Midian (this novel Win Carver had described

as the least successful or well-received by the

iferitics) and his own definition of her was as

the undiscerning reader's Rebecca West. What

abft earth made her think she could write novels?

IShe was too bossy and didactic. She had no

imagination. He was pretty sure she was the

r fpaity person at that party who hadn't read

* 4ris own Booker short-listed novel, or at any v^-ibate couldn't be bothered to pretend to have j| isdone so. 1$ Casey laughed self-deprecatingly at this last

*| �emark of his. He tasted the wine. It was then || Jthar things began to go wrong. He tasted the ^ awine, winced and used his second wine-glass as Jt% spittoon for receiving the offending mouthful. W �ien he gave both glasses to the waiter.

H^'This plonk is disgusting. Take it away and """* ' me another bottle."

'Talking about it afterwards with Dora, ford said that it was odd nothing like had happened on the previous Tuesday Primavera. Casey wasn't the host there, said. And, after all, if you tasted wine

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and it was really unpalatable, where were you supposed to spit it out? On the cloth? She was always making excuses for Casey, though she was finding it difficult this time. She hadn't, for instance, much to say in Casey's defence when, after their starters had been sent back, with three waiters and the restaurant manager grouped round the table, he told the head waiter he had about as much idea of nouvelle cuisine as a school dinner-lady with PMT.

Wexford and Dora were not the hosts but the restaurant was in their neighbourhood, they were in a sense responsible for it. Wexford felt too that Casey was not sincere in what he was doing, it was all for effect, or even what in his youth the old people called 'devilment'. The meal proceeded in miserable silence, broken by Casey, after he had pushed aside his main course, saying very loudly that he for one wouldn't let the bastards get him down. He returned to the subject of Davina Flory and began making scurrilous remarks about her sexual history.

Among them was the suggestion that Davina had still been a virgin eight years after her first wedding. Desmond, he said in a loud raucous voice, had never been able 'to get it up', or not with her and who could wonder at it? Naomi, of course, had not been his child. Casey said he wouldn't hazard a guess at who her father might have been and then proceeded to hazard several. He had spotted an elderly man at a distant table, a man who was not, though he strongly resembled him, a distinguished scientist and Master of an Oxford college. Casey began