The Northern Clemency (74 page)

“Oh, we all know what you thought,” Robert said.

“Was it as obvious as that?” Jane said, as they went into the car park.

“Well, pretty obvious,” Robert said. “Obvious to me, anyway. It was like you’d already put your coat and hat on. Where are we going?”

“To be honest, I was just going to drive around, let off steam a bit,” Jane said. “I suppose lunch was going to come into it at some point.”

They set off in Jane’s new red saloon—she’d argued for a BMW but Russell said they couldn’t stretch to it and they couldn’t justify it just yet.

“How’s Scott?” Robert said. “And the new house?”

“Oh, it’s fine,” Jane said. “He’s fine. So much to do. New curtains, new carpets, the furniture looks all wrong, there’s no bookshelves, new kitchen, new bathroom. Improvement on the Scott front, though, now he’s not the entremetier any more—he gets in before two, these days, and he does something other than sleep on his days off.”

“Remind me.”

“What? Oh, entremetier—it means the vegetable cook,” Jane said. “Sorry, you pick up all this jargon. They made a new job for him, he’s canapier these days.”

“Is that a word?”

“Well, they didn’t know what to call it, but they invented canapier, he’s in charge of canapés and nothing else. People like those best—that and the petit fours. They don’t care much about anything in between. So he’s always thinking up new little canapés for them. What they like is miniature food, tiny versions of proper dinners. Not that the rest of it isn’t fairly miniature anyway. He made a shepherd’s pie the size of your thumbnail, they liked that, and, you know, cold soup in a thimble,
that sort of thing. He keeps trying to get something Australian in there—he had a go at kangaroo carpaccio with a dab of truffle oil, but it kept coming back to the kitchen untouched. They’ll eat anything when it’s that small, but they didn’t like the smell or something. Tripe in a garlic and champagne gravy, that wasn’t a success either.”

“I can’t say I’m all that surprised.”

“The good thing, as I say, is that he does get to come home a bit earlier—he’s really done by eight o’clock.”

“Does he cook for you?”

“Scott? Are you joking? Poor sod, I wouldn’t ask that of him.”

The traffic was quite heavy, for some reason, and then, without warning, it ground to a halt in both directions.

“What’s going on?” Jane said.

“I should have said,” Robert said. “This is my way in, there’s roadworks.”

“Now you say,” Jane said. They sat there for a minute or two, the traffic stationary.

“Where are we going?”

“I thought,” Jane said, “what about that pub in Farringdon, does proper food? You know?”

“Yeah, go on,” Robert said. “At least you don’t get everything with a coulis or a sabayon in a pub.”

“It’s a bit sabayon, strangely enough,” Jane said, “but not that much. Gastro-pub, they call it.”

“Sounds like what you experience in the loo afterwards.”

“It’s all right, it’s nice. I’m going to ask this policewoman what’s going on with the traffic.”

“She looks off-duty,” Robert said. She did. Coming up the hill away from the roadworks, however far away they were, the policewoman was carrying her policewoman’s cap in her hand, and on top of her uniform was a black wet-look PVC raincoat, tightly belted. “That’s not uniform, surely?”

Jane wound down the window and called across the road to the policewoman. She looked around her, then sauntered over, weaving between the unmoving cars facing the other direction. In her tightly belted raincoat, she had an exaggerated figure, heavy on top and bulky below; she was mid-thirties, somewhere between voluptuous youth and the heaviness of middle age. “Did you want me, love?” she said. Her voice was Northern; she was wearing a surprising amount of makeup.

“I just wondered whether you could tell us how bad the traffic is ahead,” Jane said.

“Jammed solid, love,” the policewoman said. “Where are you heading?”

“Clerkenwell,” Jane said.

“That’s a coincidence,” the policewoman said. “That’s exactly where I’m heading. Well, you’d be as well to do as I’m doing and get the tube. You won’t get there any time soon the way you’re going.”

Afterwards, they said to themselves that they’d never seen a policewoman wearing a shiny PVC mackintosh, or taking the underground to get to where they had to go, and probably should have wondered about that. But Jane’s attention was taken by something else; she was looking the policewoman up and down with a puzzled expression.

“Well, you’ll know me again,” the policewoman said, but not in a hostile way.

“You’re not from Sheffield, are you?” Jane said.

“Is it as bad as that?” she said. “Most people say Manchester down here, but they coon’t tell difference between Leeds and Liverpool ‘less you told them direct, like. He’s not from Sheffield.” She pointed.

“No,” Robert agreed. “I’m from Maidenhead.”

“You’re not Barbara, are you?” Jane said.

The policewoman leant forward, lowering her head to the window in an interested way, as if a suspect had just let drop a valuable admission. “Who are you, then?” Barbara said.

“You used to know my brother,” Jane said. She couldn’t really say that she’d recognized Barbara, not from her face, which had coarsened and grown wide and, anyway, was forced into a general approximation of what women should look like by too much makeup. She’d recognized her in a sort of dim flash of familiarity, from her shape, pulled in and falling out, almost comic, like a drawing of a woman by a twelve-year-old naughty boy; she’d seen that shape waiting outside in the dusk, years before. “My brother Daniel. Daniel Glover.”

“Oh, aye,” Barbara said, leaning back and standing up straight as if she had now won her point. “I remember Daniel.”

That seemed to be all there was to be said on the subject.

“You couldn’t give me a lift, could you?” Barbara said. “I can’t be late. I’ll direct you, I know a better way than this.”

“All right,” Jane said, and leant round to unlock the rear door. Nobody ever sat in the back of her car, and she had to pull her seat forward a little bit to give Barbara leg room.

“Right, do a U-ey,” Barbara said. “And next left, no, next but one. I don’t remember you, love.”

“I was only little,” Jane said. “You probably wouldn’t. You never came in, that’s what I remember about you.”

“Wasn’t allowed to,” Barbara said. “Your brother!”

Jane doubted this, but she said nothing. The car was already full of a chemical, heavy floral smell, more like a room disinfectant than any kind of perfume. “I’d never have thought,” she said, “that you’d end up like this, doing that.”

“Like what?” Barbara said. “Oh, right,” she said, looking down, almost as if in surprise. She laughed. “Oh, I see. That’s surprising, is it?”

“Well, it is a bit,” Jane said. “I must have had the wrong idea of you. Of course,” she said, turning to Robert, who was wearing a questioning expression, “I didn’t really know Barbara. All I knew was she went out for a bit with Daniel, my brother. He was a bit of a ladies’ man, to be honest, even then.”

“He’s a bit of a twat, I know that much,” Barbara said.

“No, he’s not,” Jane said evenly. “He just got through quite a lot of girls. They were throwing themselves at him. Still do. He’s spoken for now, though. Girl called Helen.”

“Good-looking boy, your brother?”

“Throwing themselves away on him,” Barbara said. “What’s he up to, now, then?”

“He’s got his own business,” Jane said. “He used to work for an estate agent’s, then he gave it up. He’s converted an old steel mill, not in town, in the country, really. It’s half a dance school and there’s a restaurant upstairs. It’s doing all right.”

“He’s never teaching dancing,” Barbara said.

“No, it’s his girlfriend’s parents look after all that,” Jane said. “He was a miner, Helen’s father, he put his redundancy package in, Daniel found the rest. It’s doing all right.”

“Strange combination of things,” Robert said. “Restaurant and dance school.”

“I can’t imagine Daniel doing anything like that,” Barbara said. “Still less making a success of it.”

“People change so much, don’t they,” Jane said. “It’s doing all right. It’s a lovely setting, it’s getting to be quite fashionable as a place to go of an evening. Some people go for a dance lesson, some for dinner. Daniel says quite a lot of them do the one then stay on for the other.
It’d been derelict for years, the building—the council owned it, but they weren’t going to do anything much with it. They got quite a good grant just for restoring it.”

There was a little silence in the car. “I didn’t really know Barbara at all,” Jane went on. “You know, if you’d said to me twenty years ago, what Barbara was likely to end up doing for a living, I’d never have guessed.”

“Why’s that, then?” Barbara said.

“Well, it just goes to show what a wrong idea you can have about someone,” Jane said. “To be honest, I thought, because you dressed like you did, and because you didn’t live in such a nice house as we did, and because Daniel would never let you come in and meet us, and because—” meeting offensiveness with the sort of frankness that always won “—because you were having it off with my brother, I just assumed you couldn’t be very good at school.”

“Oh, aye?” Barbara said. “And what’s changed your opinion, then?”

“Well, you know, to get in the police, you need O levels, don’t you? And A levels even? I never thought one of Daniel’s girlfriends would be the type to—”

“Get through them, did he?” Robert said.

“Quite a few,” Jane said. “A month or two and then that was generally it. They used to come and go. You’d not meet three or four in a row, just hear about them. He’s settled down now—Helen’s got him on a leash all right—but he used to just throw them away. I never thought you’d do well at school, Barbara, it never occurred to me.”

“So what makes you think I did well at school?”

“As I say, you’ll have had to have got O levels, A levels. They’re strict about that, aren’t they?”

“What—before they’ll let you get your kit off in an Irish pub at lunchtime?” Barbara said. “Left again here.”

“You—”

“You thought I was in the police?” Barbara said. “I tell you what, it’s not me but you that must be a bit thick if you think real policewomen go round dressed like this and looking like this, lot of lesbians. Someone said I could be a model. No, love, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick. I’m a strippergram. I’m a sexy policewoman today—it’s an Irish lad’s twenty-first, his granddad’s laid me on as a treat for him. Other times I can be a sexy traffic warden, or—I tell you what, this is funny—I can be Jane. It’s a double act with a Tarzan. He’s gay, the Tarzan, you’d never know, though, big fella. Hundred quid a time, hundred
and fifty for the double act. Your name’s Jane, in’t it? Or a sexy secretary, dressed up like you, in a suit. I’ll tell you love, no one’s going to pay you to take your clothes off. The next corner’s fine.”

Jane braked abruptly. “You can walk from here,” she said, not turning round. “Nice to meet you. I’ll remember to tell Daniel I bumped into you and that you’re showing your hairy bucket to drunken Irishmen in pubs for a hundred pounds a time. He’ll be so interested, if he can remember who you were.”

“I’ll sithee, love,” Barbara said. “And give my best to, Helen, was it? Poor cow, whoever she is. Bet she’s working her fingers to the bone. And tell him from me, that sounds like a stupid business he’s got himself. Bet he’s happy spending other people’s money, though. Sithee.” She got out quite gracefully, and walked away. As she walked ahead of them, she made one exaggerated movement of her hips, an old-fashioned, insulting bump-and-grind gesture.

“You know the extraordinary thing about getting older?” Robert said. “Police officers, they all start to look like really raddled old strippers.”

“Don’t they just,” Jane said.

“Could I ask you?” Robert said. “Hairy bucket? Where on earth did that come from?”

“Honestly,” Jane said. “Do you know, I almost want to go and watch her act. Did she say what pub it was?”

“No, thank God,” Robert said. “I want my lunch now. I hope she’s not performing in the Eagle.”

“Not very likely,” Jane said. “I can’t wait to tell Daniel. Do you think she had a python concealed about her person?”

“I like the idea of a stripper-policewoman,” Robert said. “Not much worse than a dancer-restaurateur, though, if you think about it.”

“Honestly, it’s doing well, Daniel’s business,” Jane said. “I wouldn’t have thought it, but there you go.”

“But that woman,” Robert said. “Of course, it’s disappointing she wasn’t really a policewoman. Imagine. I was stripping in a northerly direction, when I observed—”

By the time they got to the Eagle, they were laughing raucously about the whole story. The pub had recently been reduced to floorboards and exposed brick; an elaborate kitchen was behind the bar, and on blackboards was listed the sort of food that pubs didn’t sell. Jane had scallops wrapped in prosciutto; Robert had a porcini risotto; she had Pellegrino; he in a nod to their being in a pub had a pint of bitter
from an Ipswich brewery, not finishing it. The subject kept them going all through lunch, and by the end they could start talking seriously about the holiday-camp project. Jane heard herself talking sense, incisively; she was good, really, at what she did, which was handling a lot of nonsense.

Rosalie was loitering a bit as she came up to the entrance to the building. She was sure she’d seen Muriel getting off the same tube train; there had been something characteristically complaining in the set of her shoulders. She knew what that meant for her: ten minutes of Muriel making herself feel better by commiserating about Harold, Rosalie’s son. Muriel always knew what Harold had been up to, or what somebody had told Muriel Harold had been seen getting up to. Rosalie didn’t need it, so she hung back.

If she was arriving after Muriel, she was late. Without thinking about it, she pushed back the cuff of her coat, forgetting that her watch had gone the way of the carriage clock on the mantelpiece, her mother’s set of four silver candlesticks, and, three times, most of the contents of her purse, left around thoughtlessly. It was the candlesticks she’d minded, though she’d not noticed their disappearance for weeks, probably. The watch wouldn’t have fetched much, surely. Well, she hoped he’d got some enjoyment out of it in the end. Brendan, the supervisor, would be sure to point it out if she was late. But Brendan always made a point of finding fault with something; it might as well be lateness tonight as anything else.