Hand In Glove Part 35

A case in point is the doc.u.ment, folded in three, with which Beatrix is fanning herself at this humid and uncertain mid-point of the afternoon. Tristram has drifted into a circle of poets and poseurs during the Trinity term just pa.s.sed. More poseurs, in Beatrix's judgement, than poets, if the selection of their work Tristram has shown her is a fair one. The poor boy has fancied he might emulate them, has put diffident pen to speculative paper during the dog-days of an idle summer and has now sought his sister's dispa.s.sionate a.s.sessment of what he has produced. He will shortly return from the croquet lawn, where she can hear him running a few aimless hoops, to receive it. And she does not know what she will say. The truth will offend him, but blandiloquence is against her nature. Therefore the truth it will have to be. Unless- She unfolds the sheet of paper and casts her eye once more over the lines of verse. Gauche and ill-formed though they unquestionably are, they are not altogether without promise. Tristram has the ability to s.n.a.t.c.h a fitting image from the air, though a regrettable tendency to drain it of poetry while setting it down on the page. And the piece lacks purpose as well as elegance. Its starting-point, a nameless man facing execution in a nameless country, is strong, but its development is weak. The last verse needs rewriting in its entirety and the rest require substantial revision. Subject to all of that, it might be quite a neat and pithy dart at political complacency. Indeed, had the idea been hers, she could, she suspects, have made something of it.

Beatrix leans her head back on the cus.h.i.+ons for a moment. She frowns in concentration, opens her mouth slightly and runs her tongue along her front teeth. Then she reaches across to a low table beside the sofa and picks up the pencil with which she earlier completed the Daily Telegraph crossword. She re-reads Tristram's poem once more, rocking the pencil between index finger and thumb as she does so and reciting the words beneath her breath. Then she smiles faintly, raises the pencil and strikes out the t.i.tle. "The Firing Squad" is altogether too specific. Something more metaphorical is called for. In bold capitals, she writes the t.i.tle she would have chosen. "Blindfold." Then she H A N D I N G L O V E.

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pauses. Why not go further? Why not rewrite the entire poem? It would not be difficult, now Tristram has done the groundwork. He may even enjoy the joke, since egotism is not one of his faults. Yes, why not indeed? It is no great matter, after all, merely a brief light-hearted indulgence. In such a spirit, Beatrix sets to work.

The same day, transplanted by almost sixty years. Far from Staffords.h.i.+re, in an air-conditioned bedroom high above New York's Fifth Avenue, Beatrix Abberley's nephew, Maurice, wakes from a post-coital doze to the cooling caress of silk sheets and a glimpse of his own face reflected in one of the many mirrors his mistress has installed to ensure her beauty need never be overlooked.

He is alone, though he does not expect to remain so for long. He can hear a faint hissing from the direction of the bathroom that tells him Natasha is taking a shower and will soon return, refreshed and receptive to whatever he may have in mind. Glancing down at the floor, he notices one of her black stockings, lying where it must have fallen after he peeled it from her leg and tossed it aside. He smiles, in antic.i.p.ation as well as recollection. A second bite at the cherry-so to speak-may be even more enjoyable than the first-and certainly more leisurely. After an absence of several weeks-much of it spent enduring Ursula's sarcastic smirks and ambiguous asides-he was no sooner inside the apartment this afternoon than he was urging Natasha towards the bedroom and the frantic coupling from which he is only now recovering. They have expended a good deal of breath since his arrival, but none of it on what could be called a conversation.

As a result, Natasha has yet to hear Maurice's confident a.s.sertion that all obstacles to the success of his plans have been removed.

Stretching deliciously beneath the sheets, he reminds himself of what he has achieved. Fairfax-Vane has been framed and his brother silenced. Spicer has been paid off and McKitrick sent packing. Charlotte has been deceived and Ursula appeased. While Beatrix, reaching out from beyond the grave to defy him with her posthumous ploys, has been defeated. She was better prepared than he expected, more devious than he ever antic.i.p.ated. Yet still she was no match for him. It was a relishable contest, but really the old girl should have known better than to embark upon it. She should have accepted the terms he offered her last Christmas and been grateful.

At moments of self-satisfaction such as this, Maurice is able to 212 R O B E R T G O D D A R D.

acknowledge that greed was not the only reason why he was determined to outwit his aunt. Certainly the royalties will help him to maintain Natasha in the luxury she demands, but there was always more to it than that. It was a question of pride, a simple matter of not being prepared to take no for an answer. Beatrix had no right to refuse him, especially not when her reasons for doing so amounted to nothing but selfishness and spite. In the circ.u.mstances, he cannot help wis.h.i.+ng she knew how futile her resistance has proved to be.

In an act similar to one he has performed frequently over recent weeks, Maurice extends his arm to his jacket where it is draped over the back of a chair and lifts his wallet from the inside pocket. Holding the wallet in front of him, he slides a tightly folded sheet of paper from one of the interior compartments. It is a banker's receipt for a sealed packet consigned to safe deposit during Maurice's last visit to New York. The time to collect has not yet come and will not come for many months. Until it does, this thin pro forma doc.u.ment must serve as the only token of his victory. But it is sufficient, for patience has always held his greed in check. Besides, less flimsy consolations are on hand. Indeed, if the suspension of hissing in the bathroom is any guide, they will shortly be in hand. Maurice grins at himself in the mirror, slips the receipt back into his wallet and stretches out to replace it in his jacket.

At the same moment, on the other side of the Atlantic, in his office at Fithyan & Co.'s premises in Tunbridge Wells, Derek Fairfax is also inspecting a doc.u.ment, though with exactly the opposite emotion. It is a copy, sent to him by Albion Dredge, of a private detective's report on the whereabouts and activities of Brian Andrew Spicer, chauffeur, until the end of last year, to Maurice Abberley. And it does not make rewarding reading.

Spicer gave a week's notice to his landlady in Marlow on Christmas Eve and moved out before it expired. He did not leave a forwarding address. He said he was going to join a former fellow Royal Marine in a limousine hire business in Manchester. This seems to have been a lie. There is no indication that he has worked as a chauffeur since then. None of his known friends have heard from him. He has, to all intents and purposes, disappeared.

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Derek sighs and turns back to Dredge's covering letter. Brief and neutrally phrased though it is, the solicitor's opinion is clear enough.

The question arises as to whether you wish these enquiries to continue in view of the lack of progress to date and the costs incurred (see interim account attached).

Derek lets letter, report and interim account flutter to rest on his blotter, then leans back in his chair, removes his gla.s.ses and slides one hand down over his face. This, he supposes, is where his efforts on his brother's behalf stumble to their overdue and unavailing conclusion.

This is where he decides that enough is enough. He has done all Colin could reasonably have expected of him and now is the time to call a halt. Replacing his gla.s.ses, he seizes a sheet of sc.r.a.p paper and begins to draft a reply.

Dear Mr Dredge, Thank you for your letter of 26th August. I have considered the position very carefully and have concluded- He breaks off and glances across at the window, where sunlight is streaming through the grimy pane. If there were anything he could usefully do for Colin, he would do it. Of that he is certain. But Colin is not. And now he never will be. Of that too Derek is certain. He looks down at the sheet of paper and raises his pen.

I have considered the position very carefully and have concluded that no purpose would be served by taking this matter any further. I should therefore be grateful if . . .

Even as Derek Fairfax writes what he would much rather not, a door opens a mile away for the first time in a fortnight and Charlotte Ladram makes a reluctant homecoming from a less than successful holiday. She is tired, hot and burdened with luggage, but none of these conditions is what prompts her to lean heavily against the wall in the entrance porch of Ockham House, to close her eyes and to sigh despondently.

An old schoolfriend, Sally Childs, now Sally Boxall, had often asked Charlotte to visit her and her husband, a high-powered form of 214 R O B E R T G O D D A R D.

Eurocrat, at their home near Brussels. Charlotte had taken up the invitation on this occasion because it offered her a bolt-hole when she was badly in need of one. She had hoped two weeks of sightseeing and girl-talk in a country of which she knew nothing would drive thoughts of Beatrix and Maurice and Derek Fairfax from her mind.

But her hopes were not fulfilled. Nor, she now realizes, were they ever likely to be. Sally's endless monologues on Belgian chocolate, her husband's career and the marriages and motherhoods of a dozen half-remembered old girls had succeeded only in casting Charlotte's preoccupations into stark relief.

Stooping to gather up an acc.u.mulation of mail from the mat, she presses on into the hall, encountering at once that smell unique to every building which is neither aroma nor odour and which only several days of emptiness can reveal. Its effect is to remind Charlotte of returning to the house as a child after family holidays of seemingly unalloyed happiness. Resenting the effect as much as the memory, she deposits the mail on the telephone table and begins to sort through it in search of some, indeed any, distraction.

But the distraction she comes upon is, in many ways, worse than what drove her to seek it. A letter, posted three days ago, addressed to her in Ursula's unmistakable hand. Normally a punctilious wielder of the paper-knife, she resorts on this occasion to her thumb, tearing the envelope nearly in half as she pulls out the contents.

It is an expensively printed invitation to Samantha's twentieth birthday party, to be held at Swans' Meadow on Sat.u.r.day week. Until now, Charlotte has succeeded in forgetting the event. Until now, she has a.s.sumed that many weeks, if not months, will pa.s.s before she is obliged to meet Maurice face to face and to pretend all is well between them. But not so. A confrontation is close at hand. And there is Ursula's scrawled note in the corner of the invitation to prove it.

Charlie-Hope you can make it-Love, U.

The instigator of Charlotte's distress is presently inspecting herself in a fitting-room mirror towards the rear of an exclusive boutique in Beauchamp Place, Knightsbridge. Several dresses lie over a chair-back, but the clinging petrol-blue concoction in which she is precari-ously clad is, her expression implies, the one she will take. It is both dramatic and flattering and should attract a good deal of attention from the handsome young men who bulk so large on her daughter's H A N D I N G L O V E.

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guest-list. Yes, she is going to enjoy this party. Of that there can be no question.

As Ursula steps out of the chosen dress, she pauses to inspect the price-tag and smiles approvingly. Had it been too cheap, she would have been tempted to discard it, however ideal it seemed. But it is far from cheap, even by her standards. And that, she concludes, is as it should be. If Maurice is prepared to go to such lengths to safeguard his royalty income as it seems he has, the least she can do is to ensure his efforts are not wasted.

What else, then, may be required to complete her outfit? She considers the point as she takes the skirt she came in from its hanger. A pair of those extremely brief ivory silk knickers that caught her eye earlier, perhaps, with matching suspender belt and strapless bra? If so, the sheerest of stockings will also be required. Why bother when the evening may be warm enough to go bare-legged? Because, of course, there just is no knowing what opportunities may arise. Beatrix's thoughtfulness in bringing Maurice's New York arrangements to her attention has given Ursula a delectable sense of irresponsibility, a licence, as it were, to exploit the unpredictable. Accordingly, the fifth of September, and its every possibility, cannot come soon enough for her liking. It is as much as she can do not to lick her lips at the prospect.

As Ursula ponders the lubricious potential of silk lingerie, her daughter Samantha takes the momentous decision to turn over on her sunbed in the garden at Swans' Meadow. She does so in a practised movement that ensures her dark gla.s.ses and Walkman remain undisturbed. Then she reaches behind her back to unfasten the strap of her bikini top.

As she does so, she looks up, taking in the vista of weeping willows and placid river, with the roofs of Cookham beyond. There are some children on the opposite bank, feeding the ducks, and also a solitary dark-haired young man in jeans and a white s.h.i.+rt. He is holding what looks like a pair of binoculars in his right hand and is gazing vacantly in her direction.

Samantha stares at the man for several seconds, wondering if he could be the muscular foreigner who stopped her in Station Road yesterday and asked her for directions to Cookham Dean. His accent and olive skin suggested he was from a Mediterranean country-Italy perhaps, or Spain. Yes, she concludes, it could indeed be him. Presumably, he is spending a holiday in the district. Has he, she wonders, 216 R O B E R T G O D D A R D.

been training his binoculars on her? If so, she hopes he approves of what he has seen. Not that it matters. The chances of meeting him again are remote. She lowers her head on to her arms and surrenders herself to the music pounding in her ears.

Half an hour has pa.s.sed since Beatrix Abberley began amending her brother's poem. She is still engaged upon the task when the conservatory door opens and Tristram Abberley walks in, smiling blandly.

He is a slim good-looking man of twenty-one, clad in baggy cream flannels, a white s.h.i.+rt and a striped cravat. His hair is boyishly unruly, but already he has the raised eyebrows and c.o.c.ked chin of the aspiring aesthete, though whether his manner declares or disguises his personality it is impossible to tell.

"Well, Sis," he remarks, "what's the verdict?"

"You tell me," Beatrix replies, handing him the sheet of paper on which she has been working.

Tristram subsides languidly into a chair and scrutinizes the doc.u.ment, his eyebrows descending and bunching into a frown as he does so. "You . . . You've changed it."

"Improved it, I hope."

"But . . . But it was . . ." His words trail into silence. A minute or so pa.s.ses, then he looks up and says: "I call this the bally limit."

"Why?"

"Because you have improved it. Incomparably. It . . . Well, it's . . .

It's very good, isn't it?"

"I'm glad you think so."

"It makes my effort look quite pitiful."

"Not really. The idea is all yours. Without it, I'd have had nothing to improve."

"Maybe not, but . . . What do I say to the chaps now? 'I'm a duffer, but I have a sister who can knock spots off the lot of you'?"

"I don't think that would go down at all well, Tristram. You're what they think a poet should be. I'm not."

"You won't let me show them this?"

"Oh, you're welcome to. As long as you take the credit. Or the blame, of course."

"But it's not mine."

"What does that matter? They need never know."

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"Never know?" Tristram contorts his face in mock outrage. "I'm surprised at you, Sis. Your suggestion is positively dishonest."

Beatrix smiles. "Well, I shan't force you to take it up. If it offends your artistic integrity, feel free to-"

"I never said that. No, no." Tristram rubs his chin reflectively.

"After all, what harm can possibly come of a little collusion between brother and sister?"

"None whatsoever."

"You're sure?"

"Absolutely."

Tristram grins. "Then . . . Why don't we see what happens?"

And Beatrix grins back at him. "Why not indeed?"

P A R T.

3.

CHAPTER.

ONE.

Six weeks had pa.s.sed since Charlotte's last visit to Swans'

Meadow. The simple act of starting out on the route from Tunbridge Wells to Bourne End was nevertheless sufficient to call to her mind every detail of what she had seen and heard that afternoon. She could only hope-with little confidence-that the riotous atmosphere of Samantha's twentieth birthday party would help her to suppress the memory.

The weather was warm and sunny, with the merest hint of a breeze. Charlotte found herself resenting even this element of her relatives' good fortune. For others the clouds might gather and the rains fall, but never for Maurice and those around him. For them high summer was a permanent condition. Whereas for her- She gripped the steering-wheel tighter and managed to block out the thought.

Anger was useless, she knew, unless it led to a solution. And to her predicament there was no solution.

She had timed her arrival for half an hour after the party was due to commence, calculating that this would find the host and hostess busy with other guests, leaving her free to mingle and, with any luck, to slip away early. She had deliberately chosen an outfit likely to reinforce the general perception of her as Samantha's frumpish maiden aunt-floral-patterned dress and plain cardigan. She did not want to be liked or admired. She especially did not want to enjoy herself.

So absorbed was she in the effort of preparing herself mentally for what lay ahead that she did not glance upstream as she drove across Cookham Bridge and wonder why there were no party-goers 222 R O B E R T G O D D A R D.

gathered round a marquee on the lawn of Swans' Meadow, why indeed there was no marquee pitched on the lawn at all. The silence and emptiness of the scene did not become apparent to her until she turned into the drive of the house and realized there were no other cars parked there, no gaily clad groups tripping towards the garden, no jazz band to summon them nor hired flunkeys to greet them, no pop of champagne corks nor buzz of conversation, no bunting, no bal-loons, no merriment of any kind.

When she had stopped the car and climbed out, she wondered for a moment whether she had come on the wrong day or at the wrong time, though she was sure she had not. She took the invitation out of her handbag and confirmed as much. Mr and Mrs Maurice Abberley request the pleasure of your company at a party in celebration of their daughter's twentieth birthday, to be held at Swans' Meadow, Riversdale, Bourne End, Buckinghams.h.i.+re at three o'clock on the afternoon of Sat.u.r.day 5th September. RSVP. And here she was, at Swans' Meadow, on the day in question. And, when she glanced at her watch, she saw that the time was thirty-two minutes past three. But of a party there was no sign.

Suspecting some bizarre practical joke, Charlotte marched up to the front door and rang the bell. There was no response. She rang again and was about to ring for a third time when the door was pulled abruptly open.

"Charlie!" It was Ursula, dressed in slacks and a loose cotton top.

She was wearing neither jewellery nor makeup. Her hair was tousled and looked in need of brus.h.i.+ng. And she had been crying. Her eyes were red and puffy and the remnant of a tear was still moistening her left cheek. She was so unlike the groomed and unemotional woman Charlotte knew that, for a second, she thought she might actually be somebody else.

"Ursula . . . What . . . What's happening?"

"I wish I knew." Ursula dabbed at her cheek with the back of her hand. "Why are you here?"

"For the party."

"Oh, Christ! Didn't we . . . h.e.l.l, I forgot the family. If you can call it a family."

"What's going on?"

"There's no party, Charlie. You may as well go home. You'll be better off there, believe-" She broke off and turned away, her face gripped by a sob.

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"What's the matter?" Charlotte stepped forward, uncertain whether to offer comfort where it had never previously been needed.

She ended by placing one hand tentatively on Ursula's shoulder.

"The matter?" Ursula retreated into the hall, distancing herself from the gesture, imposing a fraction of her normal self-control.