Palmer-Jones 04 - A Prey to Murder (3 page)

Laurie walked home. His pleasure in the day was spoilt by an unease, a peculiar sense of threat, because an old blue van had been seen near Gorse Hill. His father had driven an old blue van and he had hoped never to see his father again. It was not even that he thought his father was in Sarne. It was that the memory of the van had brought back memories of his father and they made him feel angry and depressed. His father always lingered at the back of his mind as an unresolved and troublesome problem. He tried to bury the memories again and to think instead of Helen.

He had not let himself believe that Helen would meet him. What could she have in common with him? Her parents were rich, she spoke well, passed every exam she sat. He had not come across her in school until they were both in the sixth form. He had spent most of his childhood in Wolverhampton and by the time he arrived at the high school most of the friendships were already established. He mixed in a different group. She seemed aloof. He had heard of her of course from his mother, but he suspected she would look down on him. They had first become friends the Christmas before during the rehearsals for the school play. It was
The Good Woman of Setzuan
by Brecht. He was arranging the music. Helen had a small acting part. They sat in a corner of the hall while the others rehearsed and they talked – first about the play and his music and then about other things. He could not think of her without remembering the smell of the varnish on the floor of the hall and of the rubber gym mats piled in the corners where they sat.

He had come to like her very much. She represented everything he had ever wanted – strength, a real family. He thought about her all the time until he was nearly ill and his mother asked him sharply what was the matter with him. In the end he knew he would have to ask Helen to go out with him even if she turned him down. So the day had been special, unbelievable, until the mention of the old blue van had reminded him of the differences between them.

He lived on a small council estate on the low damp ground near the river. In the winter the river flooded the opposite bank so that the line of pollarded willows there stood in water, and though the houses had never been flooded it smelled of the river and the walls were damp to the touch. Most of the houses on the estate were well looked after, with neat gardens. Only the Llewellyns, tinkers who had a huge number of children all with lousy, matted hair, had a house in a worse state than theirs. Although his mother complained about the Llewellyns, the piles of scrap in the back yard, the wild and smelly children, Laurie thought she was secretly pleased that they were there. It would have hurt her pride immensely if she had had the untidiest garden in the street.

At the end house in the crescent he stopped and opened the door with his own key. The house had been his grandmother’s and even after her death was too small for the family. There was a smell of polish and vegetable and fried food so familiar that it smelled only of home. His mother had just come in from work and was sitting on one of the low chairs in the lounge, rubbing her legs which were swollen and marked with varicose veins. She had been busy at Gorse Hill, and it was all standing. Besides her usual work Mrs Masefield had ordered special cakes for the Open Day. Then she had had to walk back to town. She had a wide face and her eyes were narrow so she looked Mongolian or perhaps like a fat Eskimo. She looked very tired. He sat on the arm of the chair and put his arm around her shoulder.

‘Make me a cup of tea,’ she said.

‘Where are the others?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I can’t keep track of you all. Steve is in, I think.’

There were seven children, five still at home. They had all done well. They were a credit to her. Even when their father was still at home the responsibility for raising them was hers alone. Paul and Tony had good jobs, Laurie and Heather had better than average reports from the high school, Carol and Michael, still in primary school, were polite and well-behaved. Only Steve was unemployed. He was her favourite, a worry to her.

Laurie went into the kitchen to make the tea. He was tempted to ask her if she had heard from his father, but he knew it would only worry her and make her suspicious. It was a coincidence, he thought. He was being silly. The van had been clapped out years before when his father left. It wouldn’t still be going now.

She shouted to him from the living room. Her voice was still different from theirs. She had been born in Sarne and kept the border accent with its hint of Welsh all the time she was away. They still spoke Black Country like their father. They had lived in Wolverhampton, where his work was, until their mother had decided she could tolerate him no longer and they had moved back to live with Grandmother.

‘What have you been doing today?’ she shouted, a trace of accusation in her voice. ‘You promised you’d mend that back fence.’

He poured out the tea and carried a cup in to her.

‘I went for a walk,’ he said lamely. ‘I’m sorry.’ He did not want to tell her about Helen. He could imagine her sneering disapproval. She thought the girls at Gorse Hill were lazy and spoilt.

‘You’ll have to do it tomorrow,’ she said. She was angry. He was old enough to be working, to be bringing in a wage. He took his freedom for granted.

‘Not tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’m playing at the Open Day at Gorse Hill.’

‘You should help more,’ she said, the tiredness making her petulant. ‘I can’t be expected to do it all.’

‘You should ask Steve,’ Laurie said, stung at last by the injustice of her criticism. ‘He’s at home all day.’

‘It’s not his fault he can’t find work.’

She drank her tea, sighed, and the disagreement hung between them.

The door opened and Heather came in, bright and unaware of any tension. She had a Saturday job in a café in the town. She was carrying a wicker basket full of pies and cakes and bread which would be too stale to sell on Monday. She was reliable, good-natured, with her father’s dark hair and eyes.

‘No need to cook tonight, Mom,’ she said. She took the basket into the kitchen and immediately started laying the table there for tea. ‘I saw Carol and Michael on the swings. I told them to come in for their tea. I don’t know what Mike’s been doing. He’s filthy. I’ll put him in the bath after.’

It’s not fair, Laurie thought. She’s fourteen. She should be out enjoying herself on a Saturday night, not looking after them all. I should help more. Steve should help more.

The younger children ran in from the street, squabbling, their voices still pitched for the playground. The door banged behind them. They turned on the television. It was very noisy – the plates banging in the kitchen, the children’s voices, the television. His mother sat in the middle of it, still rubbing her legs.

‘I’ll take a cup of tea up to Steve,’ Laurie said, hoping to restore himself to his mother’s favour and to escape the chaos. He would have liked peace, time alone, to think of Helen.

Steve was in their bedroom, listening to a tape on the stereo system their father had bought them one Christmas in a last desperate gesture to buy their affection or at least to pay for their complicity in his absences.

‘That’s a new tape,’ Laurie said. He sat on his bed, put the cup of tea on the window sill. ‘I thought you were broke.’

‘I was.’

Steve was only a year older than Laurie and they understood each other. Laurie had made the observation about, the tape casually but something about Steve’s reaction made him press the point.

‘Where did the money come from?’ he asked.

Steve shrugged. He pulled four ten-pound notes from his jeans pockets and pushed one towards. Laurie.

‘Dad’s back,’ he said. ‘He gave it to me.’

Laurie was not as surprised as he should have been. It seemed now that the whole day had been leading up to the news of his father’s return.

‘You should give it to Mum.’

‘It’s payment,’ Steve said aggressively. ‘ I’m going to work for Dad.’ Of all of them. Steve had been the most, willing to believe their father’s stories and accept his presents.

‘What sort of work?’

‘I don’t know. It hasn’t started yet.’

‘Where’s Dad staying?’

‘How should I know?’ Steve stood up, his hands thrust into his pockets. Laurie knew he was lying. ‘He’s promised me money,’ Steve said. ‘ Lots of money. It’s nothing to do with you.’

He raged out of the house without telling his mother where he was going and did not return until Laurie was asleep.

In the comfortable disarray of her room Fanny lay on her stomach on the unmade bed and watched a game show on the portable television. Her parents had bought the television to prevent some of the arguments between Eleanor and Fanny and now the child spent most of her free time in her room. She preferred children’s cartoons but would watch anything.

Although Fanny had pretended that she was unmoved by Eleanor’s public rebuke for eating cakes from the kitchen, she brooded about the episode. It was just like her grandmother to cause a scene to make her look small. What a fuss about a couple of meringues! She would never have known if Mrs Oliver hadn’t gone to her, telling tales.

The incident had made Fanny more determined than ever to have nothing to do with the preparations for the Open Day. She would not be seen to help Eleanor in any way. It seemed especially unfair that the event was to be held on a Sunday – the only day that she had her parents to herself. On Sunday afternoons the three of them would go out together in the car. If it was fine they would go for a walk – not a long walk because Fanny disliked rigorous exercise – then they would stop somewhere for tea and Fanny could eat as many cakes as she wished without Eleanor staring disapprovingly at her. Even her father, usually so quiet and formal, let his hair down on Sunday afternoons and told jokes like other people’s dads. She liked to pretend that she was nearly adult but the Sunday-afternoon treat was a return to the security of her childhood before Gorse Hill, when nothing mattered to her parents but her own happiness. She longed passionately for a time without her grandmother.

Silly old cow, she thought bitterly. I wish she’d drop dead.

That evening dressing for dinner George felt an old adolescent excitement. It had something to do with Gorse Hill. During the tedium of his childhood Gorse Hill had represented glamour and sophistication and an escape from the town. At these times his picture of the house was always the same. It was always winter and a clear, frosty night. All the windows of the house were lit and inside the owners were holding a party. On the still air he could hear music and women’s voices. Large cars drew up outside the house and laughing, well-dressed couples ran up the steps and disappeared inside. In these dreams George was always outside, unseen, looking in. He was sure he had never been present on an occasion like that – as a child nothing exciting ever happened to him and he was never allowed out at night. He thought the picture came more from 1930s Hollywood than from real recollection, but the scene dramatized his image of Gorse Hill at the time he was living at Sarne and he half hoped every social event there would have the same glamour and starlit quality. So his excitement had something to do with his romantic picture of the house. But it had more to do with Eleanor, with her elegant body and her perfume and the vague promise of intimacy.

Molly had dressed in a Laura Ashley skirt and blouse which her daughter had bought at a sale then grown out of. As a concession to the occasion she had put on a pair of evening shoes with a small heel, but she wore them rarely and was unused to them. They made her walk awkwardly and drew attention to themselves so she seemed to have very large feet. She was sitting at the dressing table in their bedroom wondering if she dared try some make-up. She had done her best to conform to the occasion and as he watched her across the large room George thought she looked like a teenager preparing for her first party. He felt an amused, rather patronizing affection for her. Throughout the evening it would be Eleanor Masefield who would hold his attention.

They dined together late when all the other guests had finished. Richard and Veronica sat on one side of the table, he and Molly at the other, and Eleanor dominated them at the head. Helen served them. Eleanor said little and though she welcomed them with suitable pleasure she was so subdued that he wondered if she were ill or tired. George thought he had never seen her so beautiful. He was aware of every movement she made. He was breathless, trembling with admiration. She had a ballerina’s build and grace and fine features. She was tiny. She wore soft grey hair away from her face, a plain cream dress and a smile which made it clear she found him attractive. Beside her the other women at the table seemed bloated and uninteresting.

‘Well then Eleanor, what’s all this about?’ he asked. He realized that he sounded like a hearty family doctor and continued, trying to make his voice more businesslike: ‘What exactly do you want me to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said and that surprised him, because Eleanor always knew her own mind and even if she were undecided she would never admit it. She must have sensed his surprise because she smiled at him. ‘Give me time, George,’ she said. ‘ I’m so tied up with this Open Day tomorrow that I can’t think straight about the peregrines until it’s over. There will be so many people here tomorrow that they can’t possibly be in danger. Enjoy the weekend first and we’ll make some definite plans on Monday morning.’

‘But it seemed so urgent on the phone,’ he said, rejected.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Things have rather changed since then.’ She smiled again but her voice was firm. ‘ I’m sorry, George. I really can’t discuss it now.’ She touched his hand and in the pressure of her fingers he felt she was asking him to forgive her secrecy, her feminine inconsistency.

The notion that she was in some personal trouble came to him again and he would have persisted, but she changed the conversation and was so sparkling and intelligent that it seemed to him that the evening had some of the magic of his dream.

As soon as the meal was over Eleanor left them, without apologizing.