Dying Fall (24 page)

‘Yes. Very much so.'

‘What does he do now?'

‘He's a priest in inner-city Glasgow.'

‘Priest? Are you a Catholic too?'

‘Yes. But don't worry: I'm one that believes that contraception should be used in every conceivable situation.'

I would not pursue that: flirting is all very well when your heart is disengaged, but the evidence of the past weeks was beginning to suggest that Chris's was not.

‘Do you believe in God, and the Trinity and everything?' I asked instead.

He was silent. We were retracing our way across the square, and our separate sets of footsteps rang out, mine roughly twice to every one of his.

‘Well,' he began, diffidently, ‘I certainly agree with Hamlet, that there's more in heaven and earth than in Horatio's philosophy.'

And at that point I saw George. Shortish for a man. Heavy-shouldered. A flat-footed walk. I gripped Chris's arm and pointed. I couldn't speak. The figure, carrying not a rectangular bassoon case, but a cylindrical one, moved under a street-lamp. Then it approached the parking rank reserved for motorbikes.

We said it together: ‘Jools!'

He wanted to ask me all sorts of sensible questions, of course, but I couldn't form the words, my teeth were chattering so much. As she roared away, I let go of his arm, only to find him taking mine.

‘Supposed to be brandy for shock,' he said. ‘Only I know a pub where they do a very mean single malt.' He dropped his hand and we walked in companionable silence.

I'd never liked him so much: I could feel his effort not to intrude on a renewal of my grief for George. But that wasn't the only thing I was thinking about, and I was glad when we reached a pub I'd never ventured into. For all its dirt and the horrified silence when I walked in, there were twelve or thirteen malts behind the bar. I settled with lamentable lack of enterprise on Laphroaig. He followed suit. The silence deepened agreeably as we swished the whisky round to release the peaty fumes.

He raised his head to look me full in the eyes. ‘How are you getting on with Mayou?'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Mayou. How are you getting on with him?'

‘Tina's told you about the roses,' I said, accusingly.

‘Uncommonly romantic.'

‘Probably the floral equivalent of “have a nice day”,' I countered.

‘Or night?'

‘You know what time of night I was shot at. Hardly time for Khalid's Montego to turn back into a melon.'

‘Are you going to see him again?'

I slammed my glass down on the table. I was up and out of the door, without looking back. Only a couple of hundred yards to Centenary Square and the taxi rank. I'd get home that way.

Only I couldn't go home. I had to go to Tina's, to her incessant music and her Oldbury accent and her whistling boyfriend. Except he probably wasn't a boyfriend. When he stopped whistling there'd be Ian and his cottage-pie-cooking little wife. And Chris.

I was profoundly angry. He never stopped manipulating me. If I'd liked him half an hour ago, I hated and resented him now.

I like teaching my students about bathos. Don't confuse it with pathos, I tell them. It's what you call it when moments of high drama come to a ridiculous conclusion. That's how my evening ended. I'd reached the taxi rank before Chris caught up with me. I'd got in and was leaning forwards to tell the driver to go to Tina's. But I couldn't remember the address – I don't think I ever knew it, to be honest. So I had to wait for him. But at least I went alone. He wasn't leaving the city centre without his new car and I wasn't leaving my taxi.

I had not been at my best on Friday, even for my favourite group. They had reacted to the presence of Tina with some distrust, and refused to contribute with their usual delightful enthusiasm. In fact, the whole session had all the charm of wading through cold porridge. Then there was a lunchtime meeting on some college policy I knew from experience we'd discuss endlessly and never truly implement. This time Tina's presence made the wordy even more verbose, to the point where most of us were yawning, and Tina was quietly but literally asleep. Then there was the usual tussle with my Beauty group. There were only two bright spots in the day – I saw Aftab going into class, still with his surgical collar but at least back on course, and there was a note from Manjit. It was waiting for me on my desk after my attack on the beauticians.

I was confused at first: the writing on the carefully sealed envelope was the counsellor's. I'd know Frances's scrawl anywhere – thick, confident strokes in black, italic felt pen. Stylish but illegible. Inside, however, was another envelope, addressed in small blue-biro letters, with the legend
PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL
in red. At least the envelope was too thin to be another bomb.

It was from Manjit. She was staying in a refuge on the far side of the city, she said. They were hoping to fix her up at another college, maybe not in Birmingham at all. Would I try to see Aftab and tell him she was all right? If he wanted to write, Frances would pass on a letter. If I wanted to write, she'd pass on a letter for me, too. But she didn't want me to tell anyone where she was. Since there was no address on the note, I could scarcely do that anyway.

Poor kid! Giving up her family, her friends, at sixteen. Goodness knew what she'd been going through at home to drive her to that. I'd write her a chatty letter at the weekend, and try to persuade Tina to take me shopping to buy her a couple of gifts something both nice and practical. And I'd make sure, next time I saw him, I said something positive and private to Aftab.

Choir practice tried poor Tina's patience almost to the limit, and the morning rehearsal, taken by our choirmaster since Stobbard was still swanning round the country doing pre-arranged gigs, drove her still further. Fortunately she turned out to be one of those people who can dissipate bad temper by energetic housework, and she attacked the ravages on my house with a will. I should have been even more grateful had she not compensated for her overindulgence in Orff with a particularly tuneless set of tapes played loudly through my hi-fi. The grate was back in place, thanks to another of Chris's contacts, and by the end of the afternoon our combined efforts had rendered the house more or less back to normal. Except for the gaps where my china had been. I'd spread out the books to try to fill the shelves, and Chris had tried to cheer me up by offering to take me touring antique shops when the insurance money came through, but I was still melancholy at five when the phone rang.

Tony Rossiter.

‘I've been gated for the weekend, Tony, and unless someone takes pity on me I've nothing to do but clean my carpets.' I could say that sort of thing to him. ‘At least I'm back home, though. Got to be thankful for tiny mercies, I suppose.'

‘So you can't go anywhere without protection?' His voice came shrill over the phone.

‘Nope. Well, to be honest, I'm not sure that I even want to. I've got to that state of paranoia where I'm convinced whoever's after me is chasing me when he's probably safely tucked up in bed. I'm afraid to open the post, damn it all.'

‘I'm not surprised, after that letter-bomb business. Poor old you! Tell you what, if you cook me supper, I'll bring some booze – a lot of booze.'

‘But I've got a load of booze. The insurance will pay for all the smashed bottles, and I'm damned if I'm going to claim for plonk. I got Ian Dale – the sergeant who fancies himself as a bit of a wine buff – to go to Majestic, so there's a whole case of Australian and New Zealand in the pantry. Red and white. And some interesting European ones. But, Tony, I've got no proper food.'

‘Never heard of a takeaway?'

But a takeaway meant a stranger delivering it to the house. For a moment I couldn't speak.

‘Or shall I bring something in with me and we'll cook together? Or – tell you what – we'll order and I'll go and collect it just to make sure no one shoves any arsenic in it. How's that?'

Perhaps, after that bit of intuition, he wouldn't be surprised by the fervour of my voice when I agreed. Thank God for old friends!

Tony arrived clutching a couple of Safeway's carrier bags.

‘There,' he said, delving. ‘I can't be your taster all the time, Sophie, but you at least see if anyone tampers with these!'

‘These' were ready-mixed drinks – gin and tonics, and so on and a huge variety of miniature liqueurs. At the bottom were two large boxes of individually wrapped chocolates. Tony is not usually the most generous of men, but when he splurges, he is unbeatable. Once or twice in the past when I've kissed him he's become embarrassingly amorous but I risked it tonight – who wouldn't kiss an out-of-season Santa Claus? His buss on my cheek was refreshingly fraternal. One complication was out of the way, but there were plenty of others to keep us going.

Tina had tactfully and resolutely declined to eat with us. She really didn't like all this fancy food, she said, even curries. She phoned through our order, however, and waited while Tony whizzed off in his posh-mobile to get it. When he got back, we shoved everything in the oven while we sank an aperitif.

‘I propose,' he said, reaching a bottle of Ian's Tio Pepe, ‘to get rather drunk.' I raised an eyebrow: he was normally the most abstemious of men.

He responded by picking up a poppadom.

‘Tony, I –'

He sighed. ‘OK, I know we need to talk. In fact, I need your help. But let's eat first.'

I wasn't sure about that. Is it better to eat with a sword of Damocles over you or in you? We opened lager and the smallest of the aromatic foil containers.

When it came to main courses, we shared. Chicken tikka masala, golden chicken and a rich vegetable curry. We digested, exhausted, for twenty minutes or more. Then the man demanded pudding. So we ended up, giggling, in the kitchen, concocting a dish in which I tossed bananas in orange juice and caramel and flambéed them in one of his miniature liqueurs, topping the lot with scoops of ice cream. It wasn't until we were finishing our coffee, and a miniature of Amoretti each, that he started to talk. We were both sitting on the floor, but he hunched gnomelike three or four feet from me. I moved into the shadow on the far side of the lamp, trying to merge with the furniture so he could talk freely.

He took me back through our childhood and school-days. Then his face softened as he talked about playing the violin. Studying music at university, he said, was his first mistake. In the shadow, I nodded. He should have been playing, a practising musician, he continued. But at university his ambition had changed. There was more money, he rapidly saw, in administration. So with his First and an appropriate postgraduate management course, he was off. Regular promotions, stamping on the odd finger as he swarmed up the ladder. Nothing new yet. The job with the Midshires Symphony Orchestra was what he'd always wanted. General manager. Power. Money, too – he gestured ironically in the direction of his car. But …

This was important. It was the first time he'd ever used the word ‘but' in connection with his work. So I waited.

‘It's so stupid,' he said, ‘so bloody stupid. I can't possibly leave.'

‘Leave?'

‘I don't want to go and I don't want to stay.'

‘Go? Go where?' He mustn't hear the anxiety in my voice: he'd always been there, part of my life. Now George had gone, I couldn't bear it if Tony left too. And yet if he needed to leave, maybe I'd have to help push him.

‘I'd never even have considered it if it hadn't been for George's death. It was me the police asked, Sophie – I don't know why – to say it was him. Damn it, did they think I'd break down and say I'd killed him? I didn't. I told you the truth. If I say to you, ‘I'll bloody kill you,' you don't expect me to. Do you?'

‘'Course not.'

‘I cared for – loved – that man, you know. Like you did. A friend. I trusted him. He was right all the time, too. Mostly, anyway. Sometimes he'd feed me snippets I ought to know. Like not to be too hard on someone because his wife was miscarrying, or it was time to mention moving someone up a desk, or sometimes down.'

‘Or out altogether?'

He was silent again.

I was desperate for a pee and another drink, in that order. If I got up, would it break his mood?

‘Or out altogether,' he said at last. ‘Jools. You know she's blackmailing me.' His tone was flat, prosaic.

‘No,' I said, quiet, bitter, understanding more at last.

‘Last three years, I should think. Not money. Never asked me for money. Apart from – oh, Sophie, I've been a complete shit. When I started, I didn't realise you had to keep work and pleasure apart. Until George told me, of course. By then – it's all so trite, damn it! I mean, we had a few drinks one night, and somehow ended in the sack. You know what a randy bastard I am. She said it didn't matter – damn it, I wanted to go with her to the Family Planning or whatever for the morning-after pill. But she said she'd got a loop and not to worry. Then I didn't see her again – OK, well, maybe a couple of times. But she came to me a few weeks later. One Tuesday evening. I was just about to run the conductor to New Street to catch the London train. And she comes to me and says she's pregnant. Her loop had shifted or something. Did she – didn't she ever tell you?'

I shook my head.

‘So at least she kept her part of the bargain. I paid, of course. No problem. Flowers. Counselling afterwards. I did all I could, Sophie.'

Then I asked a question I wasn't specially proud of: ‘Did you actually see the hospital bill? Nursing home, or whatever?'

‘No. Why do you ask?'

‘Just interested.' I thought of the flat off Augustus Road, with its expensive furniture, and the David Cox on its beautifully lit wall. ‘But you mentioned blackmail. Blackmail but not money?'