Playing for the Ashes (92 page)

By the time I had myself arranged upon it with the walker lying on its side and conveniently out of view, Chris had returned.

“She’s not here,” he said. “Not upstairs at least. God, this place gives me the willies, Livie. It feels like a museum. All this stuff everywhere.”

“Her bedroom? Was the door closed?” When he shook his head, I said, “Try the kitchen. Down the corridor, through the door, down the stairs. She wouldn’t have heard us if she’s in there.”

But she would, of course, have heard the doorbell. I didn’t mention this as Chris went off again on a search. A minute passed. Frank Sinatra moved on to “Luck Be a Lady,” which I thought was a prescient sort of piece.

Below me, I heard the opening of the back door that led onto the garden and I thought, Here she is. I took a calming breath, squirmed for a better position on the settee, and hoped Chris didn’t scare her to death when they ran into each other outside the kitchen. But a moment later, I heard Chris calling, “Mrs. Whitelaw?” outside, and I knew he had been the one to open the door. I strained to listen but heard nothing more from him. He seemed to be crossing the garden. I waited impatiently for his return.

She wasn’t anywhere, he told me as he reentered the morning room some three minutes later. But there was a car in the garage, a white BMW, would that be hers?

I had no idea what sort of car she drove, so I said, “It must be. She’s probably just stepped out to a neighbour’s.”

“What about Fleming?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps he’s gone with her. It doesn’t matter. She’ll be back in a moment. She knows I’m coming.” I concentrated on picking at the fringe of an oriental shawl that lay across the back of the settee. “You’ve left the van running,” I reminded him as gently as I could, considering how anxious I was becoming that he leave the house before my mother returned. “You go on. I’ll be fine.”

“I don’t like to leave you alone like this.”

“I’m not alone, Chris. Come on. Don’t be difficult. I’m not an infant. I’ll cope.”

He crossed his arms and studied my face from his position by the door. I knew he was taking a seismic reading to measure the veracity of what I was saying, but in the truth-andlie department, Chris Faraday had never been a match for me.

“Go,” I said. “The assault unit’s waiting for you.”

“You’ll phone Max if there’s trouble?”

“There won’t be trouble.”

“But if there is?”

“I’ll phone Max. Now go. You’ve got business to attend to.”

He came to the settee, bent, kissed my cheek. “Right,” he said. “I’m off, then.” Still he hesitated. I thought he was about to guess the truth, to say, “Your mum doesn’t know a thing about all this, does she, Livie?” when instead he chewed for a moment at his upper lip before saying, “I’ve let you down.”

“Cock,” I said. I touched his
fin
gers with my fist. “Go. Please. What’s going to be said between Mother and me needs to be said without you here.”

Those were the magic words. I held my breath until I heard the front door shut behind him. I leaned back against the heavy walnut scrolling that fanned along the top of the old settee and tried to listen for the gunning of the mini-van’s motor. Over Frank Sinatra, who was going on about luck with ever growing intensity, I couldn’t hear street sounds. But as the minutes ticked by, I felt my body relax against the velvet upholstery, and I knew I’d managed to carry off at least one part of my plan without discovery.

The car was in the garage, Chris had said. The lights were on. The CD was playing. They were somewhere nearby—Kenneth Fleming and my mother. I had the advantage of being inside the house without their knowledge, so I had attained for myself the bene
fit
of surprise. Now, to think of how best to use it.

I began to plan. How to hold myself, what to say, where to ask them to sit, whether to say ALS or merely talk vaguely about my “condition.” Frank Sinatra went on: from “New York, New York,” to “Cabaret,” to “Anything Goes.” Then came silence. I thought, This is it, oh God they were in the house all along, Chris didn’t check the top floor did he, they were in my old room, here they come, on the stairs, in a moment we’ll be face to face, I must—

A tenor began to sing. It was opera, Italian, and the singer’s voice climbed notes dramatically. Each number put the tenor through such rigourous paces that I knew I had to be listening to an operatic version of some composer’s greatest hits. Verdi, perhaps. Who else wrote Italian operas? I wondered about this and tried to come up with names. Eventually another silence fell. Then it was Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman, doing
Phantom
. I looked at my watch. Sinatra and the tenor had sung for more than an hour. It was quarter to twelve.

The lights in the dining room suddenly went out. I started. Had I dozed without realising and missed Mother’s return? I called out, “Mother? Is that you? Hello?” to no response. My heart began to thump. I was saying, “Mother? It’s Olivia. I’m here in the morning—” when the morning room lamp switched off as well. It was on a table in the bay window that overlooks the back garden. It had been lit when I entered the room, and I hadn’t switched on another, so now I sat in absolute darkness and tried to decide what the hell was going on.

For the next five or ten minutes—which seemed to crawl by at the speed of months— nothing more happened. Crawford and Brightman completed their duet of “All I Ask of You” and Crawford made his way into “The Music of the Night.” Some ten bars along, the singing stopped, midnote, as if someone said, “Enough of this wailing!” and pulled the
fle
x out of the socket. Once the music stopped, the silence swept in like autumn leaves blown from a tree to the ground. I waited for another sound—footsteps, hushed laughter, a sigh, the squeak of furniture springs—that would betray a human presence. Nothing followed. It was as if the ghosts of Kenneth Fleming and my mother had taken themselves off to bed.

I called out, “Mother? Are you here? It’s Olivia,” and my voice seemed to fade among the scarves that hung from the
fir
eplace mantel, against the iron and bronze
fir
escreen with its one-legged pelicans gazing at each other upon it, among the hundred and one prints on the walls, within the monstrous arrangements of dried flowers on the table-tops, against the Victorian clutter of that claustrophobic room that seemed, for some reason, to grow more claustrophobic as I sat there in the darkness and told myself to breathe breathe breathe, Livie, breathe.

It was the house, of course. Being thrust into unexpected darkness inside that creepy mausoleum was enough for anyone to forget common sense.

I tried to remember where the closest lamp was to the settee. The light that
fil
tered into the dining room from the street lamps on Staffordshire Terrace formed a wedge of illumination against the carpet of the morning room. Objects began to take shape: a guitar on the wall, a clock on the mantelpiece, the pseudo-Greek sculptures on their marble pedestals in two corners of the room, that hideous floor lamp with the tasselled shade….

Yes. There it was, standing at the other end of the settee. I dragged myself towards it, leaned out, and informed my arms that they would grab it. Which they did. I switched it on.

I pulled myself back to my original position and craned my neck to see past an oversized chesterfield to the table in the bay window on which the lamp sat. I followed the
fle
x with my eyes. It looped to the carpet and climbed to an electrical socket at the edge of the curtains. There I could see the flex was not plugged into the socket but into a timer that was itself plugged into the socket.

I congratulated myself with a “Nice work, Sherlock,” after which I lay against the back of the settee and thought about what to do next. The BMW in the garage aside, they’d obviously gone off with no intention of returning tonight, leaving lights and CD player on electrical timers to give the appearance of being home so as to thwart potential house-breakers. Although it seemed to me that if housebreaking was in order, the lolly would have to be carted directly to the Victoria and Albert. In fact, I thought, had I gone off for a romantic tryst with my young lover, I’d have left the front door standing open in the hope that someone would clear the place out and save me the bother.

For the first time I wondered how I would be able to manipulate a wheelchair round these rooms if that’s what it came down to. Unlike those in the barge, the doorways were wide enough, but the rest of the place was an obstacle course. I felt uneasiness begin to settle over me. It seemed that my future lay not in Staffordshire Terrace with Mother and her lad but in a nursing home or a hospital where the corridors were wide, the rooms were bare, and the terminal patients sat staring at the telly, waiting for the end.

Well, so what, I thought. Who cares? The point is to bring Mother into the picture so that when things get to the stage that Chris and I need help, she’ll be ready to offer it in whatever form she decides. Hospital, nursing home, a flat of my own made over to accommodate the medical paraphernalia I was fast acquiring, a bank account from which I could draw the funds I needed to care for myself, a nice blank cheque arriving in the post once a month. She didn’t need to refurbish this tomb to make room for me. She just needed to help us out. And she would do that, wouldn’t she, once she had all the facts?

Which meant I was going to have to tell her about ALS, not make veiled references to my condition. Which meant I was going to have to stir her heart and her compassion. Which meant I was going to have to talk to her with Kenneth Fleming sitting in the room. So where was he? she? they? I looked at my watch. Nearly half past twelve.

I let my head loll back against the arm of the settee and I stared at the ceiling, which, like the walls, had been hung with William Morris paper. The pattern, like that in the dining room, was of pomegranates, that magical fruit. Eat a ruby-red seed and…what? Make a wish? Have your dreams come true? I couldn’t remember. But I could have done with a pomegranate or two.

Well, I thought, so much for the plan. Got to phone Max to fetch me. Got to think of something to tell Chris. Got to develop Plan

B. Got to—

The telephone rang, jarring me fully awake from the doze I’d been falling into. It sat across from me on the table in the window. I listened to its trilled double ring and wondered if I should…Well, why not. It might well be either Chris or Max, wondering how I was faring in the lion’s den. Ought to set their minds at rest. Perfect opportunity to lie. I reached for my walker, shoved myself to my feet, dodged past the chesterfield, and reached the phone as it completed its twelfth
brinngg-brinngg
. I picked it up, said, “Yes?”

I heard music in the background, as if at a distance: rapid classical guitar, someone singing in Spanish. Then something clinked against the phone. A harsh gasp came over the wire.

I said, “Yes?” A woman’s voice said, “Bitch. You
fil
thy
bitch
. You got what you wanted.” She sounded

half-drunk. “But it’s not over. It…is…not… over. Do you understand? You’re a hag-face cunt. Who do you think—”

“Who is this?”

A laugh. A sharp, indrawn breath. “You know damn well who it is. Just you wait, granny. Lock your windows and doors. Just…you… wait.”

The caller rang off. I replaced the receiver. I rubbed my hand against the leg of my jeans and stared at the phone. She must have been drunk. She must have needed to vent her spleen. She must have…I didn’t know. I shuddered and wondered why I was shuddering. I had nothing to worry about. Or so I thought.

Still, perhaps I ought to phone Max. Return to the barge. Come back another time. Because it was obvious that Mother and Kenneth were gone for the night, perhaps two or three. I would have to return.

But when,
when
? How many weeks did I really have before the wheelchair was imperative and my life on the barge at an end? How many more opportunities would fall my way before that time, when Chris was out on an assault and I could once again claim to have made an appointment to see Mother alone?

Nothing was working out as I planned. It was maddening to think about going through this charade with Chris another time.

I sighed. If Plan A wasn’t working, Plan B was worth a try. Near the door that led to the dining room sat Mother’s davenport. There would be paper and pens within it. I would write her a letter. It wouldn’t have the same power of surprise, but that couldn’t be helped.

I found what I was looking for and sat down to write. I was tired, my fingers didn’t wish to cooperate. After every paragraph, I had to stop and rest. I was four pages into the project when resting my fingers became resting my eyes became resting my head on the davenport’s sloped writing surface. Five minutes, I thought. Let me take five minutes, then I’ll go on.

The dream took me upstairs to the top floor of the house, into my old bedroom. I had my rucksacks with me, only when I opened them to unpack, they contained no clothes but instead the bodies of those long-ago kittens we’d rescued from the spinal cord experiment. I thought they were dead, but they weren’t. They began to crawl, dragging themselves across the counterpane on the bed with their twisted little back legs stretched out uselessly behind them. I tried to gather them up, these kittens. I knew I had to get them out of sight before Mother came in. But every time I caught one of the kittens, another appeared. They were under the pillows and on the
flo
or. When I opened a drawer in the chest to hide them, they had already multiplied in there as well. And then, in that bizarre scene-switching way of dreams, Richie Brewster was there. We were in my mother’s room now. We were in her bed. Richie was playing his saxophone with a snake on his shoulder. It crawled across his chest and went beneath the covers. Richie smiled and gestured with his saxophone and said, “Blow, baby. Blow, Liv,” and I knew what he wanted but I was afraid of the snake and afraid of what would happen if my mother came in and saw us in her bed but I went beneath the covers anyway and I did what he wanted but when he said, “Huh huh huh,” in a groan, I raised my head and it was my father. He smiled and opened his mouth to speak. The snake slithered out. I gave a gasp and woke up.