Veil of Darkness (8 page)

‘Hiding from the law.’ One of Avril’s favourite pursuits is watching
Crimewatch
on telly and hoping that she might recognize someone, posing herself that heinous problem: would she snitch on a neighbour? Would she even turn in her dad if she suspected him of some terrible crime such as rape or murder? She has sensibly decided she would talk to him first, and give him the choice between going for treatment or facing the full panoply of the law. But what if it was a child he had hurt?

‘No. From a man. It’s always a man.’ Bernie attacks her other eye. Perhaps Bernie will show Avril how to apply eyeliner properly.

So Bernie had guessed.

‘It’s probably all in this book of yours,’ says Bernie, filling the room with the pear-drop aroma of cheaply perfumed lacquer. ‘That’s probably why you’re obsessed by it, you identify with the story.’

Bernie reckons her Irish blood links her to writers and artists. She brags that she went round with them at Dublin University, she drank with them in candlelit cellar bars, she smoked with them in attic digs, she sat with them beside rivers and made music with guitars and harmonicas. Dominic Coates was an artist, she says, an artist at making love. And then the wretched Bernie cries, but even when she cries she looks charming, unlike Avril, bug-eyed and raw-cheeked.

‘One day I’m going to get even, if it’s the last thing I do.’

Eventually even Avril shared her sad love life with her friends.

At first Avril lied and told them she went out with Guy Fleming, a boy she’d had a crush on when she was in the fourth year at school. ‘We were thinking about getting married, of course,’ Avril ad libbed, ‘but then I thought eighteen was far too young, that we should both see something of the world before we took a decision like that.’

‘So you came down here?’ said Bernie. ‘Jaysus and all the saints, will you look at us.’

‘Well, just to get experience. After this season’s over I might try and get a job on a cruise ship.’

‘Oh yeah? We’re all the victims of men in one way or the other,’ said Bernie, dragging on the tight black dress she wears to the bar in the evenings. ‘Aren’t we? We’ve all been forced into coming here to escape from something we’re afraid of.’

‘Well I certainly haven’t,’ Avril retorted defensively, so relieved that she wasn’t having to get dressed again and go off to work.

How could Bernie be so shamelessly frank about her humiliation? How could she feel comfortable advertising to the world the way she was spurned, betrayed, made a fool of by a man she worshipped? If that ever happened to Avril she would keep her lips sealed, just as she never told a soul about the note she left in Guy Fleming’s bicycle bag, the note declaring her love and her availability. She left it there just before the end-of-summer-term disco, suspecting that, once again, she would be the only girl in the class there without a boy. Perhaps if Guy Fleming, dark, tanned and athletic, realized she was prepared to open her legs for him, he would make an exception just this once for the sake of an easy lay.

Well, Mother made it perfectly clear that sex was the main thing boys were after, and that after they’d used you they despised you, thinking you cheap and tarty. Avril would happily be despised for the sake of having a partner at the end-of-term disco.

Her note read, ‘Dear Guy. I think you are the most attractive boy in the school. Sometimes I watch you at break time and wish I was with you. I would do anything for you,
and I mean anything
. If you want to see how true this is, meet me at the end-of-term disco. Love from Avril Stott.’

That night she hardly slept for excitement and tantalizing hope. ‘You’re in an odd mood, Avril,’ said Mother, eagle-eyed. Avril felt a huge sense of fondness, not just for Mother, but for her whole family, even the hapless Graham. She had such energy she changed her own sheets, tidied her room and even her drawers.

Shame on him.

They were gathered round the school gates when she arrived the next day, Guy Fleming and his crowd, all smirking and messing about. Dear God, she had never in her worst dreams imagined that Guy would stoop so low as to show her letter to all his friends, surely he understood that her words came straight from the heart, and that to do this was to crucify her.

Her hope and happiness melted away and lay like boulders in her stomach.

‘Hey, Aaaavril,’ they shouted in silly voices, ‘what d’you mean by
anything
? Come on, fatty, show us what you mean by
anything
.’

‘How about the art room in break?’

‘Give you ten p for a feel of yer muff.’

‘For a wank.’

‘Show us yer titties, jumbo.’

Then one of them held out a condom and snapped it in front of her eyes.

Shaking all over she walked on.

It wasn’t long before the whole class knew.

Guy Fleming pinned the note on the board.

She spent the evening of the disco at home watching telly with Mother and Father. She got in the bath that night, eyes red with weeping and wrapped in a dull hopelessness that floated around her with the scummy water. She scrubbed her offending parts with a nail brush until they bled, parts she had been willing to sacrifice, but parts so unworthy that they didn’t even tempt Guy Fleming to be seen with her at the end-of-term disco.

When finally Avril shared this secret, when she felt she trusted her friends, when she confessed in the dark, in whispers, one night, the three of them laughed till they wept, and Avril’s laugh was the worst of all. She was eventually forced to get out of bed and creep down the dark corridor to the loo, giggling and hiccuping all the way. It was a most wonderful cleansing.

But Bernadette has no such inhibitions.

‘Bernadette Kavanagh, you have no pride, and that is your trouble,’ said Avril.

But look, life for poor, homesick Avril is taking on a new meaning. The following day, in her lunch break, she starts to input Kirsty’s novel, copying the first few pages from the author’s own hopeless typing, but continuing at a much faster rate once Kirsty starts using the tapes. She has never been so totally absorbed by anything she has read in her life…

‘No, you go off, I’ll cover for you,’ Avril tells the shirking Rhoda, heart beating, pulses racing.

‘Are you sure?’ Rhoda pauses, peers nosily over her shoulder. ‘What are you doing anyway?’

Avril doesn’t want to share this new, overwhelming experience. ‘Oh nothing important. Just catching up with some stuff…’

Such passion. Such drama. Suddenly she is exhilarated, expectant and alive, almost thrusting.

This author can read Avril’s thoughts. Even ones she never knew she had.

She is enraged when guests come flapping round with their foolish orders. ‘Sod off, you buggers,’ she wants to shout, totally out of character. It is only when Mr Derek returns that Avril reluctantly exits the disk and changes it. She will stay on this evening to finish the tape, and she hopes that Kirsty will have more, a good, long, juicy chunk for her to read tomorrow, because while she is gripped by this novel everything else in her comfortless world fades into pale insignificance.

T
HE ADORED ONE.

Bernie’s
raison d’être
.

Another character we would rather not meet.

Son and heir to a fortune made from the manufacture of cardboard boxes, young, dark and handsome Dominic Coates looks down at the naked woman in his bed whose name he cannot remember.
Shit
. How will he get out of this one? Why do women cling so? They imagine their open legs are church doors, their fannies the rings they desire on their fingers, their grunts and screams of passion the responses they intend to make at the altar. One big mistake last year that almost resulted in disaster and the parents, hung up on ideas of self-discipline, have sent him to Cornwall for the summer… as a lifeguard in St Ives…
I ask you.

‘We have got some serious complaints to make regarding the falling standards in this hotel.’

Mr Derek sighs with professional acceptance as he holds open the door of his office to admit the Miss Lewises—
again.
Why the hell do these two old bitches keep coming here if they’re so bloody pissed off with it? And why stay a month? It’s not as though they enjoy themselves or make use of the facilities: they rarely use the bar or the fridge in their rooms, they never dine à la carte, they pick the same back room every year, the cheapest in the hotel because of its proximity to the lift shaft, and they never tip anyone, ever.

There have been disturbing reports from the staff that they pee in the sink in their room. Mr Derek would rather not know how that rumour came to be.

‘Do come and sit down, ladies.’

‘If it’s not one thing it’s another,’ starts Peg Lewis, warming up to her favourite subject: the hopelessness of the staff.

‘It is the thin end of the wedge,’ her sister, Vi, joins in with shaky, arthritic enthusiasm.

Mr Derek wrings his hands. ‘You know how difficult it is these days to find people with the right sort of attitude. We at the Burleston try our best to ensure…’

‘Don’t try that smarmy political clap-trap on us,’ snaps Miss Peg testily. ‘What’s the time, dear?’ she asks her sister.

‘Nearly nine,’ replies Miss Vi.

Miss Peg does some quick addition in her head. ‘Well, in that case, if it’s nearly nine we have been sitting in the quiet lounge for over an hour and a half waiting for our after-dinner tea. We told the girl we would be in the lounge. We are always in the lounge after dinner.’

‘Perhaps if you had reminded her earlier and not sat waiting for quite so long…’

Miss Peg smiles triumphantly, the lines on her face stretching tautly like bundles of elastic bands. ‘So it’s our fault.’ She turns to her sister. ‘What did I tell you, Vi? Mr Derek, how many times would you suggest that we order our after-dinner tea?
Two, three, four or more
?’

Mr Derek brings a tired hand over a wearied brow. ‘I am sorry. It is quite clear that somebody forgot—’

‘And that is not all,’ goes on Miss Peg. ‘Last week we were in the quiet lounge when a member of your cleaning staff came in quite brazenly and started sorting through the books on the shelves in there. Now, I am no snob, Mr Derek, but when you pay huge sums for exclusivity from the masses, you do expect to find it.’

‘I will speak to the person concerned,’ says Mr Derek sorrowfully. ‘I can assure you that this will not happen again…’

‘Because if every Tom, Dick and Harry came and removed books at whim, the guests’ choice of reading would be reduced severely. What if Vi or I had been in need of some holiday reading? Not that either of us would dream of coming away without our own books; there is something so distasteful about the feel of books leant to all and sundry. Vi and I stopped visiting the local library long ago, as we found so many books torn and stained.’

‘Don’t forget that other girl, Peg. The fat one with the attitude problem.’

‘Ah yes, I was coming to that, Vi dear. There is somebody new in your reception. A slow,
bumbling girl who looks as if she’d be more at home in a cow shed, to be perfectly honest. She has no charm or poise, Mr Derek. Half the time she looks vacant. And the other day, when I chided her for her dilatory attitude, she just stood there gaping like a fish with a hook in its mouth. It is not a good advertisement for your hotel to have a girl like that at the front desk. First impressions are important, and yet she is the first thing you see when you enter the Burleston.’

‘I think I know who you mean.’

‘I am quite sure you do.’

‘Miss Stott is a willing worker if a little inexperienced.’

‘She is certainly willing. She is still there now in the back office, typing away, trying to catch up, no doubt.’

‘But your immediate problem is with one of the bar staff?’

‘Yes,’ nods Miss Vi, her stringy chicken neck expanding like an accordion. ‘That is where we ordered our tea. And all I can say is it wasn’t Charlie. Now Charlie is an excellent barman. No, it’s that Irish person with the absurdly tight dress. She never looks as if she is listening… miles away… dreaming of some chap, no doubt.’

‘If you would be so good as to return to the lounge I will bring you your tea myself, ladies.’

‘And do we get no compensation for this lackadaisical treatment?’

‘The tea is already in with the meal,’ he hastens to remind them.

‘Then perhaps a couple of schooners of sweet sherry? Not too much to ask, surely, when my sister and I have been treated with such lamentable negligence?’

‘Of course, with my compliments and apologies,’ says Mr Derek, bowing a defeated head as he gets up to open the door.

Cowbags.

‘I passed the order down to the kitchen and then forgot all about it,’ Bernadette apologizes in her husky voice. ‘We’re very busy tonight, Mr Derek. It’s the kitchen’s fault for not bringing it up. If they’d brought it up I would have served it.’

‘Pour me a double Scotch please, dear, and I’ll have it when I come back.’

Thus Mr Derek disappears humbly with a silver tray and a pot of tea and two fluted glasses of sickly sweet Bristol Cream.

Just how near to the verge of madness is Bernadette Kavanagh creeping? Why are her smouldering green eyes fixed on the door of the bar even now, hoping against hope that the next person through it will be Dominic Coates? She clenches her fists and drives her nails into her hands, fighting against the great hope, but it goes on rising, attacking her throat with an emptiness and anticipation that forms one great, tragic delight. There is not enough going on around here to take her mind off her lost beloved, not even when they are busy, not even when the orders roll in and she’s flirting with some other customer and adding up prices, wiping glasses and working the till at the same time.

Talking to her friends doesn’t help. Talking about him fuels the passion. God help her.

‘You really should be over it by now,’ Kirsty told her unhelpfully last night. ‘After all, it’s been a year. Perhaps you need counselling.’

‘What I need is something massive, a war, an earthquake, a hurricane, something so huge that it sits on my head and blots him out completely.’