Voices in an Empty Room (29 page)

‘You could stay if you wanted.'

‘That's very kind of you. But I told them I'd be there this evening and I think I'd better keep my word.'

She walked slowly beside him as he limped down the drive. ‘I left my car in the lane, I didn't know if you'd want it in your drive.'

She laughed. ‘Why shouldn't I want it there?'

‘I hadn't realized how big your house was.' He sounded embarrassed. ‘Of course, you have lots of room for parking. You could take twenty cars here and not even notice.'

‘We've taken as many as fifty – when we've given parties.'

When they got to the gate, he raised his hand, the stick grasped in it, up to his cheek. He stared aghast down the lane. ‘My God!'

‘What's the matter?'

‘My car. It's vanished. I parked it just there – under those trees. You don't think the police can have towed it away, do you?'

‘Not from here. No. Why should they?'

‘Christ, it must have been stolen! My brand new Polo! And – oh Lord – my jacket was in it, with all my cash and my credit cards and my cheque book … I never imagined in a place like this … One knows that in London …'

‘You'd better get on to the police!'

‘I suppose so.' He was suddenly fatalistic, ‘Not that they'll achieve anything. By now, whoever took the car will probably be at least a hundred miles away.'

‘Come in and telephone.'

‘No, I might as well go to the station. They'll want all kinds of details.'

‘It's quite a walk.'

‘Is it? Well, I must say, in my present condition a walk would not be all that easy.'

‘I could run you down.'

‘No, no. You don't want all that bother. But could you – I hate to ask this – could you perhaps lend me your car?'

‘Of course. I'll run in and get the keys.'

As she raced back towards the house, the thought came to her of Roy's Mercedes, unused since his death. It somehow seemed appropriate that this messenger from him, the bearer of the promised parcel, should drive in his car. It was the keys to the Mercedes, not her own Mini, that eventually she brought.

He gazed admiringly at the car in the garage. ‘Roy used to talk about this car. How he loved it!'

She laughed. ‘I sometimes used to think he loved it more than me.'

‘Nonsense. No man could have loved anyone or anything as much as he loved you. I'm telling you that. You've got to believe me.'

He climbed into the car, adjusted the mirror, wound down the window beside him. He was wholly at his ease in it, clearly he had driven such a car or one like it before.

‘Tell me the way,' he said.

She told him.

‘Fine. I'll be back. As quickly as possible – though, knowing the way police stations work, I should guess that'll be a long time.'

Still exhilarated, she returned to the house and began to clear the table and stack the dirty crockery and cutlery in the dishwasher. She had a curious sensation that Roy, who had for so long been totally dead to her, had been suddenly resurrected. The boys had never wished to talk about him to her; her relatives and friends had been too embarrassed to do so. Only this stranger had been prepared to turn the key on that loft in which their shared memories had been gathering dust.

When she heard the car squealing to a stop outside the porch, she hurried out to it.

‘Well?'

‘Pretty useless. They're sending out a call to all the neighbouring forces. But, unlike this one, the car's not one anyone would notice or remember. And if he's a professional thief, well, he's sure to change the number. The funny thing is that only two or three days ago I was thinking that I must really get some kind of alarm.'

As he clambered out of the car, Bridget put out a hand to help him, her hand to his elbow.

‘Thanks.' He smiled at her and, as he did so, she thought, in a totally asexual way, ‘ How beautiful he is! What wonderful eyes!' He held out the key. ‘I'm going to have to do something extremely embarrassing now.'

‘Yes?'

‘I haven't got a bean.' He put his hand in his trouser pocket. ‘Well, that's not strictly true. I have a few beans.' He peered down at the coins which he had taken out. ‘To be precise, I have two pennies and three 10p pieces. But that's the lot.'

‘I could lend you something.'

‘Could you? Could you really? I'll send it back to you just as soon as I've been on to my bank in London and. got things sorted out.'

‘How much would you like?'

‘As much as you can spare.' He laughed. ‘ Coutts's are a wonderful bank but they can seem awfully, awfully slow when one has an emergency like this.'

‘I'll see what I have.'

They went back into the house and Tim sat in the hall, his hands resting on his stick, while Bridget ran upstairs and searched in her bag and in the desk drawer in which she also kept money.

She reappeared. ‘ I can manage forty-five. If you need more desperately, then I could go to the cash dispenser.'

‘No, no, that'll be fine. At least it'll enable me to buy some basic things. All my luggage has gone too.'

‘You could borrow anything of Roy's you wanted.'

‘Oh, I wouldn't dream of it. No, no!'

‘I'm sure he'd be only too happy to think of your doing so. Come upstairs and have a look.'

Eventually, with a show of reluctance, Tim had chosen a pair of pyjamas, two shirts, two ties, a blazer, three pairs of socks and half-a-dozen handkerchiefs. Bridget then pressed on him an electric razor (‘But I can easily buy a cheap razor with blades'), some slippers, a spare, toothbrush, found at the back of the bathroom cupboard, and an unused tube of toothpaste. She fetched down a suitcase and began to pack for him, while he looked on, smilingly grateful.

At the end he said, ‘I wonder if you could do just one other thing? You've been so kind to me.'

‘Yes, of course.'

‘It's difficult to carry a suitcase with this.' He tapped with his stick on the plaster cast. ‘I'm sure that someone will help me off the train and on and off the boat. People are so good about such things, aren't they? But I wonder if you could possibly run me down to the station.'

‘Oh, yes, certainly.' Then on an impulse, thinking of this delicate boy – he seemed little more – humping Roy's semi-conscious body under murderous enemy fire, she suggested, ‘Why don't you take the car? I never use it, I'm frightened of driving something so huge. I have my Mini.'

‘But I couldn't possibly …'

‘Please! You can return it on your way back from Osborne.'

‘But I'll be there two weeks.'

‘That doesn't matter. I'd been meaning to sell it. Eric wanted it – he's taking his test – which is why I hesitated to put it on the market. But a car of that size would be far too expensive for him to run. He'd be better off with a Metro or something of that kind.'

‘Well, if you honestly think … It's marvellous of you.'

‘It's only a way of making some small return for – for what you did for Roy. And for me too. I'll never forget that. Never.'

He heaved the suitcase off the bed. Then she insisted on taking it from him. ‘You'll find it easier to get down the stairs without it to obstruct you. I can manage it. It's no weight at all. And I'm good at carrying things. Roy trained me on our hikes.'

‘He even tried to train
us!
' He laughed. ‘God, how we sometimes hated that
keenness
of his – even while we loved him.'

She put the suitcase into the boot of the Mercedes, suddenly sad, after her previous exhilaration, that Roy's messenger would drive off now, that she would go back into an empty house, and that, except when he returned briefly to give back the car, she might never again see him.

He looked into her face, stooping slightly, with the tender concern of a parent looking into the face of an unhappy child. ‘You've been so kind to me. So welcoming and hospitable. I'll write from Osborne – with my cheque of course – just as soon as everything is sorted out. But don't be too impatient. As I said, it may take a day or two.'

‘Oh, don't worry.'

‘At all events, I'll be back with the car and the suitcase and the other things this time two weeks hence.'

‘Oh, don't bother about the suitcase and the things. Just be sure to bring back the car,' she answered in joke.

‘Of course. Everything … Goodbye.' Then he did a startling thing. He moved shyly towards her, bent down and kissed her on the forehead. ‘Thanks.'

She stood on the porch, one hand shielding her eyes against the late evening sun, as the car crunched round the half-oval of the drive and then gathered speed towards the gate. A hand came out of the window, it waved. She could not see him, with the sunlight flashing on the back window. She raised her hand, she waved it from side to side. Her hand felt strangely heavy, as though it were not a part of her.

The days passed. No letter came from Osborne. Could it be that he had not arrived there safely? Eventually she telephoned. A brisk woman's voice answered. ‘Lieutenant Michelmore? One moment please.' A silence. Then, ‘There's no one of that name here, I'm afraid.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘Yes, quite sure. I've just been through the list.'

‘He'd have arrived, oh, on Monday of last week.'

‘One moment, please.' Another silence. Then, ‘No, I'm afraid we've no note of a Lieutenant Michelmore arriving that day – or since. I think there must have been some mistake.'

‘You are the officers' convalescent home?'

‘Yes, that's right.'

‘And there's no other one on the island?'

‘No, no other. Of course, there
are
a lot of private convalescent homes.' The woman was trying to be helpful. ‘And a lot of hospitals and nursing homes.'

‘Thank you. Yes.'

Bridget stood for a long time by the telephone, hearing, in memory, that grate of the iron on the flagstones at which she was now staring down. Grate, grate. Hard, remorseless. But surely no one, no one in this world, could be so cruel? Something must have happened to him, there must have been some mistake.

Ellen arrived, swaying up the drive as she pushed the pram before her. She had been lying out in the sun and her face, bare arms and legs were attractively tanned. She was talking to the child, fixedly staring up at her, as though he were an adult. Bridget could hear her through the open window, ‘I must remember to call in at the cleaner's on the way back. I forgot yesterday and the day before that. I must remember. Otherwise Daddy's going to be cross with me.' Ellen was constantly forgetting things.

‘What's the matter?' Ellen asked as soon as she saw Bridget's pale, unhappy face gleaming at her from the chair at the far end of the shadowy hall. ‘Has something happened?'

Bridget put a hand on the telephone beside her, as though to assure herself of its reality and therefore of the reality of the conversation that had just taken place. ‘I've had a shock,' she said.

‘You look as if you had. What is it?'

Ellen, hugging the child to her with one hand, came over and put the other hand, firm and consolatory, on Bridget's shoulder.

Bridget told her.

Ellen, who had now perched, the child still held against her, on a chest in the hall, drew in her breath, her brows knitted. ‘Well, I did wonder,' she said. ‘ But I didn't like to say anything.'

She was always amazed by the extent of Bridget's innocence and credulity. She was now in her forties, she had had three children, she had lived in Hong Kong, Singapore and Kuwait; and yet she believed anything that anyone told her, just as she believed in all that spiritualistic nonsense of hers.

‘Oh, I wish you had!'

‘I didn't feel it was really my place.' Once Ellen had attempted to argue with Bridget about a local medium, and that had been the only occasion on which the two of them. had all but had a row.

‘I wonder what I should do.'

‘Go to the police! That's the first thing.'

‘I find it so hard to believe … Almost impossible … I mean – he was so
convincing
.'

‘Conmen always are. It's their profession, after all.'

Bridget still found it almost impossible to believe after she had been in touch with the police. Two plain clothes men drove round to see her and then, having heard her story, they suggested that she could go down to the station to look at some photographs. She turned over the pages of the album, thinking, in ingenuous amazement, as she looked at one perfectly ordinary face after another, ‘But they all look just like anyone else!' At last she found his. He did not look just like anyone else. He maintained his delicate, aristocratic distinction even in the unflattering photograph, face turned straight to the camera, on the table before her.

The detective said, ‘Yep. That figures.'

Later she learned that the man whom she thought of as ‘Tim Michelmore' had a number of aliases but was really Arthur Ainsworth; that he made a speciality of following up obituary notices in the
The Times;
and that he had been repeatedly convicted for the theft of expensive cars.

‘Was the plaster cast also fake?' she asked the detective who told her all this.

He stared at this pretty, middle-aged woman, obscurely touched, as Ellen always was, by her air of forlorn, childish innocence. ‘What plaster cast?'

‘On his foot.'

He shrugged and looked down at the paper before him. ‘There's nothing here about his being lame.'

Bridget went home. She did not care about the money, the clothes, the electric razor or even the car. But she was profoundly troubled by the chasm into which, once alone in the house, she found herself peering down with a giddy nausea. There were two realities and the chasm plunged between them. There was the reality of that consolatory dream which, unlike all her other dreams of Roy, was still vivid in her mind, of the boy's concern for her, expressed in that final kiss, and of that message that he brought back from Roy and all the other dead ‘Love conquers death and love casts out fear'; and there was the opposing reality of her telephone call to Osborne, of the empty space in the garage, and of that photograph of a fragile, aristocratic-looking youth in an open-necked shirt staring defiantly into the lens of an invisible police camera.