The Company of Saints (5 page)

‘That ghastly thing,' she said. She drank some coffee. Then she looked at her father. ‘I expect Davina will be revelling in it. I couldn't stop thinking about her last night. I didn't get to sleep for hours.'

‘You shouldn't let it get on your nerves,' her father said. ‘Forget about her, Charlie. I've said this over and over to you. She doesn't come here any more. She's stopped writing. Put it out of your mind.'

‘I do,' Charlie insisted. ‘But something like this brings it all back. I thought of her last night, sitting in her bloody office, queen of the heap at last, while the poor little Monster grows up without his father and John sits in Moscow, drinking himself to death. Do you know, Daddy, I've thought about going out to join him?' She saw the alarm on her father's face and then shook her head quickly. ‘No, not seriously, just when I felt so fed up and angry about what happened … when I thought about Fergie. Of course I wouldn't go. I'd loathe it and I'd loathe John too for ruining everything. I shouldn't have said that, I'm sorry.' She got up and put her arms round him.

‘It would kill us if you went,' he said. ‘Remember what he did. You couldn't live with that.'

‘I know I couldn't.' Charlie went back to her chair. ‘Maybe I should get a job, Daddy. Pat can cope with Monster during the week. All I do is drip around here and he doesn't need much now. Mother won't let me near the kitchen.'

‘As you can't boil an egg, darling,' Mrs Graham came back with the toast, ‘it's not surprising. What's she grumbling about, Fergus?'

‘She's not,' he said rather testily. ‘She's had a bad night and she's upset.' He got up and shuffled back into the house. He was far less active than a year ago; age had suddenly encroached upon him. He had never moved like a man of seventy before disaster struck Charlie. Mrs Graham looked after him for a moment.

‘You mustn't worry him,' she said quietly. ‘He hasn't been well lately.
Are
you upset, Charlie? What's the matter?'

‘I was talking about Davina,' her daughter said slowly. ‘She's in her element with this Venice nightmare, isn't she, Mum? I can just imagine her, can't you?'

‘No,' Mrs Graham said, ‘I can't. And that's a terrible thing to say. I know you're bitter and you've every reason, but I won't let you talk about her like that.'

‘If it wasn't for Daddy,' Charlie remarked, ‘you'd still see her, wouldn't you?'

Betty Graham rarely asserted herself, but when she did her family listened. ‘Yes, I would. Davina's my daughter just as much as you are. I think it's time you pulled yourself together, Charlie, and stopped feeling sorry for yourself. Perhaps you should do some voluntary work. Helping other people is the best way of taking one's mind off one's self. I'm going into the village to do some shopping. Do you want to come?'

‘No thanks, Mummy.' Charlie had flushed. For a moment her eyes filled with tears. She wasn't used to being chided and she reacted like a child, resentful and uncertain. For Christ's sake, can't you grow up even now? And back the answer came to her. No, you can't, and you never will so long as you nestle under Daddy's wing. Just as you did with your husband, with every man you've ever known. Poor, helpless, beautiful little me, I must be taken care of. It's time you stood up on your own two feet. She got up and gathered the crockery onto the tray. ‘I'll put these in the dishwasher,' she said.

‘Thank you, darling.' Mrs Graham had said what she felt and it wouldn't be repeated. She wasn't a woman who created an atmosphere.

Charlie went into the kitchen, loaded the dishes, poured the powder and switched on the machine. She went upstairs to her room, not because there was anything to do. Pat cleaned the nursery. Charlie was meticulously tidy about her own surroundings. She went up to be alone and to cry if she felt like it. Her reflection was a comfort; looking at herself diverted her attention from less pleasant things. Still beautiful – not a line, not a blemish on the perfect skin. Damn it, if she cried, it made her eyelids swell. She'd cried enough. Davina wasn't crying. As she had said to her father, her sister was on top of the heap, successful, carrying on an affair with a very rich man, living her life exactly as she wished. The tables had certainly turned for both of them. She had achieved it all at the price of Charlie's happiness. It was easy enough for her mother to reproach her for being bitter. She had the same cool quality of detachment as Davina. Her father understood because he and Charlie felt the same. Voluntary work, her mother had suggested.

Charlie addressed herself in the glass. ‘You're not just miserable,' she said aloud. ‘You're bored to death as well. It's time you did something about it.'

Later that day, when her parents were lulled by an afternoon sitting in the sun and she had set out to be particularly thoughtful and sweet to them, she announced that she was going up to London to buy some new clothes and look up her old friends.

‘Why don't we go down to Sicily for a few days? It'll be perfect, not too hot.'

Davina shook her head. ‘I can't, darling. I wish I could. I can't leave Humphrey in London and Tim coping out here while I swan around finishing my holiday. I've got to go back.' She slipped her arm round him. ‘I may have to fly to Washington – I was thinking about it last night.'

‘To see Brunson?'

‘To see somebody. I'm sure this isn't an isolated assassination. We've got to get together with Langley and try to work out who could be next and why?'

Walden had insisted that they leave Venice. He looked as strained and preoccupied as she did. ‘Davina,' he said, ‘spend one day with me in Paris. One day and a night won't make any difference.'

She didn't hesitate. ‘Of course it won't. You've put off things for me often enough. We'll go to Paris – can we fly direct?'

It was part of the balance in their relationship that Walden always made the travel arrangements, chose the hotels when they went away and took over the organizing of their lives. She said to him, ‘Why Paris, Tony? Any special reason?'

‘I'll tell you when we get there,' he said. ‘You've started smoking again. I wish you wouldn't.'

She didn't answer. Ever since the tragedy the day before, Walden had lost his exuberance. He seemed weighed down and uneasy, quite unlike himself. She stubbed out the cigarette. Something was wrong, something more than the revulsion of a sensitive man to violent death. Knowing him so well, she couldn't account for the sudden change of mood. Paris, for twenty-four hours. Why?

‘We can fly via Milan,' he said. His smile was tense.

While she lay awake, he hadn't slept either. ‘And I suppose you're going to book into the Ritz again?' Davina tried to make it sound lighthearted. ‘No good me suggesting some nice little pension on the Avenue de l'Opéra?'

‘You always suggest it,' he answered. ‘Just because you stayed there once and there weren't any lumps in the mattress. And I always say no. If we can't get a decent room at the Ritz, we'll try the Crillon. Or the Georges V. Go and pack while I get on the telephone.'

Tim Johnson took a launch out to Marco Polo airport. The explosives expert wasn't staying at the Gritti; Johnson booked in with him at a more modest hotel and they went over the routine report Modena had given Davina.

‘We're seeing the Boss Lady after lunch,' Johnson remarked. ‘See if you can dream up a theory or two by then. Our gallant Italian allies are going to tell us fuck-all. So I picked up these odds and ends for you.' He put a plastic bag on the table.

The expert, a genial' man inappropriately named Moody, opened it, sniffed at what was inside and then probed gently. ‘Wood, metal and, er, something else. I know what it feels like.… Where the hell did you get this, sir?'

‘Out of the canal, near enough to where it happened. About a hundred yards away from the actual explosion. I just fished up what I could in the dark. Felt a bit messy. It may be just ordinary garbage and flotsam.'

Moody put his nose to the bag again. ‘I don't think so,' he said. ‘I think you've got something for the lab and the forensic boys as well.'

‘Good,' Johnson said briskly. ‘We'll go and see Miss Graham at three. She's flying back today.'

They arrived at Orly airport at eight o'clock. There was a car to meet them and, as they drove off the Périphérique, she slipped her hand into his and said, ‘The Ritz or the Crillon?'

‘The Ritz,' Walden said. ‘Luckily someone had cancelled. We have our usual suite. I also ordered dinner there. You look tired, my darling.'

‘I am,' she admitted. ‘But I'm curious too. I asked you why Paris, remember?'

‘I know you did.' He glanced out of the window. ‘Isn't it the most beautiful city in the world? And look – how marvellously typically French. Look at that Tricolore! What a sense of theatre!'

The Arc de Triomphe was bathed in floodlights, and between its arches, fanning out in the breeze, there blazed a vast flag.

‘Now, we would never do that,' he said. ‘Only the French have the self-confidence to be so magnificently vulgar.'

They had a small suite on the first floor overlooking the Place Vendôme. There was a huge bowl of red roses in the bedroom.

‘Tony,' Davina said, ‘don't tell me they remembered?'

‘No, I did.'

There was a card with the flowers: ‘With all my love always, Tony'. She held it in her hand, and suddenly the luxurious bedroom felt cold.

‘Darling,' she said, ‘what's wrong?'

‘I was going to wait till we got back to England,' he began slowly, hesitating. The bedroom wasn't cold; she shivered and knew that the chill was in her own tense body as she listened. ‘I've been so happy with you, Davina. You're the only woman I've ever loved in my life, do you know that? Darling, don't look at me like that. Sit down, sit down. Come here beside me.'

His distress was making it worse. He took her hand and held it tightly between both of his, while she sat close to him, frozen and sick with anticipation. He stumbled over his words and suddenly Davina couldn't bear it.

‘You're leaving me,' she said. ‘For God's sake, why?'

‘I can't tell you why,' he said. ‘We just can't go on being together any more.'

‘I love you,' she protested. ‘You love me, I know that. Is it your wife? Tony, for Christ's sake, you've got to tell me the reason! It's just not good enough to say we can't go on and you can't tell me – I won't accept that!'

‘No,' he answered. ‘It's nothing to do with Hilary. That would be simple.' He didn't look at her, he kept his head down, gripping her hand in his. ‘I've known for months now that we had to break up. I couldn't face it and I lied to myself. But not now, not after Venice.'

She said, ‘But why? What happened in Venice couldn't happen to me! I told you, I'm safe. You're talking nonsense.'

‘Not nonsense,' Walden said quietly. ‘I'm just finding saying goodbye to you difficult, that's all. Will you listen to me and not interrupt? Please, Davina?'

‘I'll listen,' she said. ‘What else can I do?'

He went on slowly, dragging the words out until she could have screamed. ‘You know I love you. You're the most important person in the world to me. And that is why I wanted to spend our last night together in Paris. I wanted to make it beautiful for you. I wanted to tell you in the place where we've been so happy and had such wonderful times.'

She pulled her hand away and got up. She walked into the sitting room. Such wonderful times. That suite held memories: stolen weekends when they left their responsibilities behind; the joy of exploring Paris together; the sweetness of their nights. She broke down and wept. Not since losing Ivan had she cried aloud as she did then. She heard him say close to her, ‘Even the roses – they were waiting for you the first time we came. It was a mistake, my love. I shouldn't have told you here.'

She turned round to him. ‘Then why did you?' she demanded. ‘Why choose this of all places to tear us both to pieces? You and your bloody roses – you like a bit of theatre yourself, don't you? How could you do this, Tony? How could you hurt me like this?'

He tried to take her in his arms, but she fought fiercely, pushing him away. She saw the anguish on his face and suddenly her anger disappeared. She felt sick and cold and unbearably empty.

‘All right,' she said. ‘You say it's over. I can't argue – I won't beg either, thanks very much. But I want to know why. You owe me that, Tony. I want to know the reason.'

‘I can't answer that,' Walden said.

‘Because you don't love me and you don't have the guts to say so?'

‘You know that's not the reason.' His voice rose. ‘You know I love you! Christ, I need a drink – where do they keep it in this goddamned place?'

Her voice stayed level. ‘In the cupboard over there. You ought to know, it's always in the same place. If it's not because of your wife, and you still love me, what else could it be?'

She watched his back, listened to the awkward clatter as he fumbled with glasses and swore in Polish. ‘I didn't want to get mixed up with you,' she went on. ‘I had a good man who wanted to marry me – you were the one who made the running. You were determined to start something up between us. Now you've had enough, I suppose that's the answer. What am I supposed to do, Tony? Shake hands and say it was fun while it lasted?'

He swung round on her then. She saw that he was angry now. He changed colour, turning very white when he was angry. He came close to her and said, ‘I'll tell you what you do. Give up your job with the SIS. Resign, and there will be no problem. I'll get a divorce and we'll get married!'