Death of a Stranger (2 page)

Tim plunged back into the car, desperately wanting to be reassured and trying to tell himself that his mother's behaviour
vis-à-vis
Simon Shaw was of a different order from her behaviour
vis-à-vis
the other men in whose company she had returned over the years to Guernsey.

Would his mother be living faithfully still with Geoffrey Lorimer, Tim wondered as he drove the short steep way down to Town, if he hadn't died of a heart attack a few months after they had run away to England? And the embittered Constance, the wife he had fled from who, three decades on, still turned aside when she encountered Tim, would she want to confront the woman who in enduring local legend had ruined her life?

Not, please heaven, at his and Anna's wedding, although that would be the one occasion during his mother's short visit when Constance would know where to find the woman who had taken her place …

Tim was glad to find a small and easily-resolved crisis awaiting him at the station, acute enough for half an hour to force him to put his speculations on hold. But when he had raced up the steep stairs of his villa in Rouge Rue and found Anna getting ready for the evening, they came back to him.

“I hope Constance Lorimer keeps herself to herself while my mother's here,'' he mused aloud, when Anna had finished lamenting how much time it took her to free herself of the smell of the surgery before she could start taking positive steps to dress up.

“You said she was a timid soul and that could have been why your mother was able to court her husband and carry him off.''

“Yes. But she's had years to brood and work my mother up in her mind into the ultimate Jezebel.''

“Years could work the other way. Make her feel what the hell now, I can't be bothered.''

“I suppose so. She still ignores me if we're within hailing distance.''

“That could be for your sake as much as for hers. Tim, how do I look? Do you think your mother will approve of me? However carefully I do my hair, I'm still a woman who's only just got her decree absolute.''

“Which may well prepare her to feel at home with you, given her own far more spectacular career.'' Tim moved across to his beloved, put his hands on her shoulders, and gazed at the pale, fine-featured face in its small frame of short, shining dark hair. “Thirty-six hours will be enough for her. To find out that she likes you,'' Tim added, seeing the teasing query in Anna's eyes. “Outside of male/female relationships, she's pretty reliable at getting it right. Anna …'' Thinking about Constance Lorimer had made him forget about Simon Shaw. “I said in a jokey kind of a way that it was on the cards that even for my wedding my mother might bring a man with her. She has done.''

“If you knew it was on the cards you shouldn't look so stricken, Tim. Is there something different?''

“Yes. He's really young. Half her age, I should say. And she rather went out of her way to tell me they were just good friends. And that he has business on the island. But when I asked him what that business was he said it was confidential and he couldn't tell me. But if Mother knows, I'll get it out of her. At least he doesn't look like a gigolo.''

“How does a gigolo look?''

“Stop it. I don't know. But I think you'll know what I mean when you meet him. I found myself agreeing with Mother that we couldn't leave him to eat alone so I'm afraid he's of the party tonight. At least I got the impression that he's unlikely to push himself. And Mother wouldn't let him, anyway, on an occasion like tonight's; despite her lifestyle she has a sense of fitness.''

“So don't worry, Tim. The things that matter are all right.'' She smiled her reassurance as she looked up from fastening a bracelet. “Now, you'd better get a move on.''

They shut the front door on a reproachful dog, and walked to the Duke of Richmond through the soft, warm evening. Up the steep slope of Rouge Rue between serrations of villas as small and stout as Tim's and skyscapes of Edwardian chimney-pots, then as short a way as possible along the Amherst Road before turning off to cross the grassy edge of Cambridge Park and emerge in front of the hotel at the top of L'Hyvreuse.

Temporarily blinded by the change from light to dark as they entered the intimate red gloom of the Saumarez Cabin, Tim was vividly reminded of their entry one icy night at the beginning of the year to celebrate the fiftieth birthday of the senior partner in the veterinary practice where Anna was the junior, which had been their unwitting entry on a series of events that had almost cost Anna her life. The nightmare was so totally over it was hard to believe that less than six months had passed since it began, but Tim gave an involuntary shiver as he took Anna's hand. He had been slightly nervous on that earlier occasion, being brought in as the junior partner's lover, and he was slightly nervous again now, bringing his fiancée to meet his mother …

“Anna! Oh, just as I hoped!''

The tiny Saumarez Cabin was all alcoves, so there was nothing significant in the fact of his mother and Shaw sitting together in one of them. His mother had got to her feet and was advancing towards Tim and Anna, arms outstretched.

“Hello, Lorna.'' Anna put her arms out too, so that their hands met and clasped. By the light of the red lamp at the end of the bar counter, Tim saw an extra sparkle in his mother's eyes.

“Come and sit down!'' Lorna commanded, retaining one of Anna's hands and drawing her towards the alcove. “This is such an important moment for me. Tim temperamentally is unlike me, you see, he's like his father. The same today as yesterday and tomorrow.''

Feeling uncomfortably and uncharacteristically emotional, Tim noted his mother's pleased reaction to Anna's rare smile. “This is Simon Shaw,'' he told her, to distract himself and because Shaw was standing there so quiet and patient. Tim thought he saw something sorrowful in the boy's face – regret that he had no real part in a family celebration? – but as he met Tim's eyes he shyly smiled. “A friend of Mother's who's come over with her because he has business on the island.'' He could only paraphrase what they had both told him, and he was relieved to see Lorna nod her approval. “Now. Drinks.''

When he got to the bar after taking their orders he discovered that Simon Shaw had signed an open chit. Another departure from his mother's usual boyfriends, none of whom Tim had ever seen so much as attempting to override her generosity. Although it could, of course, be no more than a PR exercise if his mother was ultimately paying the bills.

But he must acknowledge it. “ I've just discovered that these are on Simon,'' he said, as he doled out the glasses. “Thank you, Simon.'' As he raised his, Tim saw a look pass between Simon Shaw and his mother that he could only define as satisfied complicity, and his sense of unease returned. The exchange had been without overt sexual content, but he had a few moments' work to discipline his fears and not allow them to obtrude on one of the most important evenings of his life. Simon Shaw was sharing it, there was nothing he could do about that. And his mother's attention, from then on and during dinner, was on Anna as she made it obvious how happily she was embracing his choice of bride. Not that it would have made a jot of difference if she had disliked Anna, Tim reflected unfilially, but her approval was a bonus to his still incredulous joy that Anna had chosen
him
, as was his slower realisation as the evening progressed that she was captivated by his mother's beguiling charm and obvious good intentions.

The wedding reception was to be at the hotel, and there was a flower arrangement on their table that was a happy earnest of how it would be adorned. Tim wondered if it was that or their patent air of celebration which had neighbouring diners smiling at them, then decided it was the presence of his mother who, with her recent and uncelebrated sixtieth birthday, had lost nothing of her unique charisma. He managed quite well during the dinner not to think too precisely about Simon Shaw – and Shaw's own quiet behaviour helped to make that easy – but he was aware of what he found himself defining as a proprietorial element in the boy's obvious enjoyment of Lorna's company which intrigued him at the same time as it evoked in him, to his shocked astonishment, a pang of jealousy. Who the hell was Simon Shaw, to be regarding his, Tim's, mother as if he was her manager?

He was being fanciful, he had to be. It was only because Shaw didn't conform to his mother's usual sexual scenario. And it was so long since he had seen her, anyway, he'd probably forgotten what that scenario was; it wasn't a side of her life he had ever chosen to dwell on.

When they were sitting over their coffee Shaw asked them if they would excuse him, he had some paperwork to do before embarking the next morning on the work that had brought him to Guernsey, and he wanted to break the back of it before going to bed. “ Thank you all so much for this evening, I've enjoyed it.''

Shaw bent to kiss Lorna's cheek before leaving the table, and watching her face as the tall, fair-haired figure swung across the dining-room, Tim saw yearning in it and gave up his struggle to persuade himself that Simon Shaw was no more to his mother than a travelling companion.

“Mother's really attached to that boy,'' he said reluctantly to Anna as they came down the hotel steps into the windless, starry night.

“Yes, she is. Tim, I think we should ask him to the wedding. I think we've seen enough of him not to be afraid he'll take that as an invitation to sit with the bridal party.''

“If he tried to, Mother would go mad. As I've told you probably too often, she has a sense of fitness.''

“I saw it. Tim …'' She held him back as he started across the road. “I've been to the lookout since I was attacked there after Brian's birthday party, but not at night. Can we go there now? I'm ready.''

“Good,'' Tim said, after studying her grave face in the light streaming from the hotel lobby. “ Come on, then.''

Anna ran her arm through his as they started along L'Hyvreuse. “How wise and wonderful of you to have been able to take your mother on her own terms even when you were small and keep her as a friend for life.''

“That wasn't down to me in the early days. Darling Mother never spelled security to me, as I've told you, that came from my father and my grandmother – Mother's mother, believe it or not, who used to tell me when I got older that she sometimes suspected her daughter of being a changeling. So when Mother left and Grandma moved in I'd lost a marvellous, glamorous companion, not my lynchpin. I suppose it's strange, thinking about it now, but I never blamed her, never felt she'd let me down. When Father or Grandma told me she was coming to see us I was so thrilled I could hardly wait.''

“What a disappointment you'd be to a psychiatrist.'' Anna found it strange, too, that she should be feeling a slight sense of envy of Tim's unorthodox relationship with his mother. Perhaps it was because, with her own mother's early death, she had never had a chance to discover what sort of relationship would have been possible between them. She had loved her father but not her stepmother, and had left home as soon as she could to live independently – which might account for the slightly protective feeling that was constantly with her for the more sheltered Tim, a feeling she would never reveal to him.

“In fact I had a very sheltered childhood.'' He looked at her as they passed a street light. “Why are you smiling?'' Anna's face in repose was serious, and he had discovered that she smiled only with reason.

“Because I'm happy.'' It wasn't a lie, she was as happy as she had ever been. She had married Jimmy as a kind friend who had comforted her when her first love had deserted her, and had known within days the dreadful wrong she had done them both. Their son had kept them together as baby and child, but when he was killed on the road she had left her husband, resumed work as a vet, and re-embraced her independence. Now Jimmy had found his true love she could have enjoyed that independence conscience-free, and even after she had told Tim she would marry him she had waited, her soul shivering, in terror of discovering that she was unable to let it go. But the discovery she had made was that Tim and independence were compatible and that with him she would be more her own woman than she would ever be on her own …

“All right?'' Tim was asking cautiously.

“It makes remembering a bit too easy, but yes, it's all right.''

They had reached the place where the attack had come, the wide low stone wall marking the end of L'Hyvreuse. St Peter Port was spread out below them, stabbed with sharp points of light beyond the immediate descent of old houses which was an impressionist jumble of soft smeared colours. The outlines of Herm and Sark were scarcely distinguishable from the unclouded sky, but the base of each island was defined by a blurred line of lights at the water's edge.

They stood in a silence to match the silence surrounding them, Anna routing her bad memories with Tim's hand over hers where it rested on the brass direction dial which, from her first days on the island staying at the Duke, she knew almost by heart. ‘London 180, Alderney 21 …' It was only when below them a door opened and shut and voices began laughing and talking that, still silent, they turned away and started back up the hill.

The cat was sitting patient and upright against the front door, and the dog was hurling himself, breathing noisily, against the far side of it. They changed places as Tim pushed the door open, and by the time he and Anna were inside Duffy had danced three lengths of the short path to the gate and back, and the cat was prowling round the fridge.

“We've got to go away, haven't we?'' Tim said, as Anna opened it and took out some catfood. “ With our home life already under way there's nothing else to mark the arrival of Anna Le Page.''