‘Well, the rumour is they’re planning some flash new quayside development. With that company up at the old hospital. Trying to reinvent the whole town – attract a better class of visitor. But the council won’t confirm anything.’
Geoffrey again moves the pan under the grill.
‘Millrose Mount Village, you mean?’ Matthew puts his knife and fork together, still hungry and wondering if it would be terribly rude to ask for a second serving. ‘I never liked that bloke.’
‘Sorry? Who?’
‘Oh, nothing. I just went up there. To Millrose Mount – to have a nose. There was a smarmy bloke on sales.’
Geoffrey looks surprised as he moves his own omelette onto a plate and joins Matthew at the table.
‘So are you ready to talk about what happened with your mother, then, Matthew? Is everything really all right?’
26
Kate and Martha have finished their meal as a key in the door confirms Toby is finally home. Nine thirty. Martha gathers up her wool as Kate stands.
‘Sorry, darling. We had risotto. Doesn’t keep. I was thinking I could do you a steak?’
‘It’s OK. I’m not hungry.’ Toby’s face is white as he puts down a large black folio, watching Martha disappear upstairs.
‘We’ve had quite a day, actually. I’ll pour you a drink, shall I? Explain everything.’ Kate is aware of speaking too quickly. She is thinking of opening one of the better bottles of wine, or a Scotch maybe, but Toby is already shaking his head.
‘It’s OK, Kate. Really. I don’t want a drink. And I know about today. That’s why I’m so late.’ His voice is hesitant, face still pale.
‘You know about it? What do you mean you know about it?’
‘I heard from the council.’
‘The council?’
‘I’m so sorry, Kate. I really wanted to tell you this morning. Prepare you all. But I was in the most horrible position and in the end I just couldn’t risk it.’
‘Tell me what? Toby. You’re not making any sense.’
‘The shops, Kate. I knew about the shops. The leases.’
For a moment there is complete stillness – deep furrows in Toby’s forehead. Only when she says nothing does he continue.
‘I wasn’t sure if the letters would arrive today. So I couldn’t risk saying anything. Conflict of interest. I could have got myself sued, plus it would have put you horribly on the spot with your new friends. I knew you would be upset, so I felt it was better not to put you in that position either.’
‘Upset? Toby – I still don’t understand what on earth you are saying here. How do you know about this?’
‘We’re working with the council on some new plans. It’s all still speculative. Confidential. It’s Mark’s baby really, not mine. But of course he’s kept me in the loop. If it comes off it will be a massive job for us. And to be frank we need it, Kate. I had no idea your new friends would… ’
‘You’re involved? You’re telling me you’re involved in this?’
‘I’m an architect, Kate. This is what I do.’
‘So they’re going to demolish the shops? Bulldoze them. The lifeblood of the quay. The wool shop, the piano shop and the café. And you’re involved.’
‘You’re making it sound as if it’s my idea. Believe me, Kate, I would never have taken it on if we’d known about your friends. Like I say, it’s Mark’s project. And we’re just the architects.’
‘But the council has its own architects, surely?’
‘It’s a partnership project. With the Millrose Mount company – the ones developing the hospital site. We’ve been called in by them as consultants.’
‘No, Toby. You’re to have nothing to do with this. Please. This is people’s lives. Wendy lives above that shop. She’s got nowhere else to go. And Maria’s family too. That café has been in the family for generations. You’re to have nothing to do with it. You hear me?’
‘It’s not that simple. Mark’s committed now. Under contract.’ Toby is turning on the lamp over the desk in the corner of the room. ‘I heard about Martha. The scene at the council office. I heard about that too.’
‘So you knew all this was coming. The notices to quit?’ Kate ignores the reference to Martha and sits, her hands trembling. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.’
And then suddenly Toby’s face changes in the lamplight.
‘I thought… I don’t know. I thought we were getting a bit better, Kate. Last night when we were talking, I thought it felt a bit more… ’
‘And yet you knew about this. About the impact on my new friends, and you didn’t say anything.’
‘I didn’t want to spoil things, Kate. That hope. That tiny sense that we might one day be OK again… ’
His expression kills her. His lip trembling. An expression not of anger or blame or disappointment or any of those things that she feels that she deserves but a look of helplessness. Hopelessness. Worse – a man who has, these days, to be grateful that his wife will even hold his hand…
And it is in this moment, this split second, as he stands looking so crushed and so very, very alone – pushed a million miles away from her – that something breaks finally in Kate.
Eight months and two days. Since they made love. Since they felt connected properly. Since they stood any real chance of repairing any row they are ever to have again.
‘Kate. You were the one who wanted to move here. To start again.’
Eight months and two days.
‘So that’s what I’m doing here, Kate. I’m trying to start a business. To start all over again. For you. For us. I’m just doing what you asked me to do.’
And now the room is moving. As if there is some new lens through which she sees it all. Round and round and round. Toby’s voice drifting away as Kate closes her eyes…
She is imagining the water. So very, very cold. Swirling all around her.
27
At the Channel MusicMaker studio in London it is a young man this time wearing the headphones – dispatched to tell Josef Karpati that it is only five minutes to air.
No answer.
The young floor manager named Jack tries again. Earlier he found Mr Karpati stretched out along three of the seats as if asleep, but now the room is empty.
Jack speaks urgently to the studio runner in the corridor that Mr Karpati is not in the green room and he will check the toilets. He can’t be far but warn the director…
The men’s room is at the end of the corridor and Jack is working out how he will excuse the intrusion if tonight’s star guest is simply having a piss, but also what his strategy will be if he’s drunk, high, or worse. It would not be the first time a guest disappeared to the bathroom to ‘settle the nerves’. Just a few weeks earlier Jack discovered two members of a band in the strange new craze that is punk having sex in one of the cubicles.
Today each cubicle door is ajar. No sign of the so-called symphony sex symbol, and as the runner announces three minutes to air, Jack’s heart is working overtime. His neck on the block.
‘Shit. No sign in the toilets.’ Jack joins the runner who uses hand signals to convey the problem to the director who can see them both now across the studio floor. The director and the producer stand in the television gallery, faces red with fury.
‘He was here,’ Jack is gabbling to the runner now. ‘I swear. I showed him to the green room fifteen minutes ago. He was fine. Sober. Friendly. Fine… ’
‘Bloody hell… ’ The runner and Jack are both trying to lip read the director who seems to be saying they should have booked Demis Roussos.
‘Try losing Demis fucking Roussos…’
In a taxi, already five miles away, Josef is stretched out along the back seat, grimacing at the conversation which inevitably lies ahead with his ‘team’.
He did not plan this and feels disorientated. But it is too late for regret now. He just couldn’t face it. Same routine. Same questions. Same farce…
What he is wondering now i
s how long it will be before the press are onto it. A live show, unfortunately, which means he may make tomorrow’s papers unless his press office are on the ball. Damn. He should phone them soon. Feign illness of some kind? Yes.
Josef stares at the blurring shapes of passing cars, trees and shops. It is just beginning to rain. He watches the droplets create patterns on the window as the taxi waits for a time at traffic lights.
He is thinking that perhaps he could get away with faking amnesia?
The comic absurdity cheers him for a moment and he smiles. Yes. He will phone his agent once he gets to Brighton. He’ll think of some story once he finds a hotel – a small place, out of the way, where hopefully he will not be recognised.
He closes his eyes then, remembering his last trip to Brighton not long after his defection. The days spent pacing the streets, looking for Martha. The evening strolls on the pier. The early mornings on the beach, throwing pebbles into the sea. Wondering. Hoping. If he might just get lucky.
Bump into her.
28
Martha and Kate are up very early.
‘I know you didn’t want to talk – in the night, Kate – but I heard Toby’s car leave and… Well, I’ve been really worried. Are you all right? You look absolutely exhausted. Is there anything… ?’
‘I just need a bit of time. We’ve been having a very rough patch.’ Kate did not go to bed at all. Just lay down fully clothed and cried pretty much the whole of the night, though she will not tell Martha this.
‘This is all my fault, isn’t it?’
‘No, Martha. I promise you that it absolutely isn’t. It’s mine. Not Toby’s. My decision. My fault. No one else’s.’
‘You should stay home. Get back to bed, Kate.’
‘No. That won’t help. Honestly. I need to see you through this. I need to be doing something. Let’s just concentrate on today, Martha. Then we can talk.’
And so they walk in awkward silence, and on arrival at the court precinct there is the shock of placards everywhere. SAVE OUR SHOPS. MILLROSE MOUNT: LOCALS VERSUS LEECHES.
The lawyer is loudly demanding that all litigious banners be moved – we will be done for contempt – and looks nervous as he spots Martha and Maria, and takes them aside to repeat his pep talk.
‘You understand, both of you, that our strategy is one of extreme regret? Yes? You are very, very sorry to have lost control. Mortified. That this behaviour – the frying pan and the streaking – was completely out of character. Born of the trauma. And will not be repeated. Peaceful protest only from this point. Yes?’
He then turns to address the crowd being moved to the other side of the road by the court staff.
‘No stopping traffic. No stepping into the road. Understand? Any nonsense and I mean it: they will have you in the cells for contempt of court. It won’t help your friends. It will make things very, very much worse.’
And then, as they sit in a silent row in the corridor outside court number one, Geoffrey appears, whispering that he has left Matthew in charge of the shop and admitting that for the first time in his life he wishes he smoked.
Kate sits, still in a state of detached shock born of exhaustion, to learn that luck is on their side – the chairman of the magistrates today is Gerald Smith, a self-made man. Twenty five years an ironmonger and leading light in the confederation of small businesses, he retired early only when his prices could not compete with the larger DIY stores springing up all around the neighbourhood. A man who understands shopkeeping.
‘A frying pan?’
‘Yes, sir.’ The prosecutor adjusts his glasses and checks his notes.
‘And this brouhaha followed notices to quit their shops?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Kate has managed to get a seat at the front of the public gallery and forces a smile of encouragement at Martha as she stands alongside Maria to listen to all the evidence. Finally, the spotlight is back on the chairman of the bench.
‘And has your client any history of this kind of behaviour. Streaking?’ Mr Smith removes his glasses to look very directly at Martha.
‘No, sir. Never done anything like this in public before. She is mortified. Embarrassed and mortified. Says it was a spur of the moment publicity stunt. Something she now deeply regrets, sir.’ The defence lawyer tilts up his chin.
‘You realise, do you, that we can’t have people damaging council property and frightening the children?’ Mr Smith is still holding his glasses in his right hand, swinging them to and fro, to and fro, as he speaks.
Martha and Maria bow their heads and link hands. And then suddenly Maria looks up, glancing at Wendy, who is behind Kate in the public gallery.
‘It’s all right, sir. No more nonsense. We’re going to knit a tree.’
‘To knit a tree?’ Gerald Smith glances to his two colleagues.
‘A peaceful protest, sir. No more damage. No more scenes. Just knitting. We promise.’
They are both bound over to keep the peace. Maria given a small fine for the damage caused and Martha warned that she will be supervised by probation and will be back in the dock if she takes one single step out of line again.
And then, outside, it is Maria who steps forward to speak to the reporters – from the Aylesborough Gazette and a local TV crew.
‘And what did you mean… about knitting a tree?’ Several journalists are speaking at once.
‘We are going to be holding a press conference about that,’ Maria is beaming.
Martha exchanges glances with Wendy and Kate, not a clue what she is talking about.
‘Next Monday. Ten a.m. at Wendy’s Wool Shop.’
Half an hour later, at Maria’s café, there is the air of a fiesta as Carlo and relatives wrestle huge trays of pasta to thank all their supporters, the placards now lined up neatly along the wall and the room heady with the smell of the best coffee in Aylesborough. There is talk of a petition to the local MP, an all-night vigil on the quay, of sponsored breakfasts and knitathons and moving one of Geoffrey’s pianos out on the quay, maybe even onto a fishing boat, for a sponsored musicathon. Of David and Goliath. Of beating bloody bureaucrats. And someone is wondering whether in fact a piano would actually sink a fishing boat, with Maria all the while insisting that, no, she has not lost her marbles; that they really are going to knit a tree as the central plank of their campaign. And all will be revealed in good time. Trust me, and she is throwing back her head, laughing. Enjoying herself.
It is only Martha who seems to notice the change in Kate in the midst of this. Like a sleepwalker now, her eyes glazed and her smile fixed, taking none of it in. Martha tried so hard to help last night, whispering through the door after Toby left, but Kate wanted to be alone.
Leave me, please. I’m fine.
And now, with the court case done, Kate is like a foreign student in a sea of voices – looking around her, as if trying to make sense of a language she cannot follow.
Toby is gone. Her decision. Her insistence…
It’s for the best, Toby.
I can’t leave you, Kate. There is no way I can leave you like this…
She had imagined it was what she wanted. The right thing to do now; to give at least one of them the small chance of a future. Toby such a good man. A man who deserved better…
‘You all right?’ Martha puts another cup of coffee in front of Kate but she shakes her head, pushing it away.
‘Martha – do you have your key with you?’ Kate stands and heads for the door – not even noticing that Martha has followed her. Outside, the wind is strong and as Kate turns, sensing finally her friend’s shadow, her hair blown across her face and into her mouth, she says, ‘Look. I just need some air. A walk or something.’
‘I’ll come.’
Kate shakes her head, twisting her hair into a ponytail and tucking it into the back of her collar. ‘No. I’m all right. I’ll see you back at the house, Martha. Do you have your key? Sorry – did I ask you that already?’
And then, alon
e at last, Kate is glad of the wind. On the tourist bus once more it makes her eyes water and her cheeks sting. The cold means she is the only one upstairs. The clouds and the gulls all to herself. So that when the bus finally parks in the little square, she feels bereft that the journey and her imaginary swim – out to the lighthouse – should be over so quickly, wishing she could stay up there in the wind forever.
She has not planned this. So tired. Dazed. Forgotten even that it is Mike’s shift. A Wednesday. And then his voice is calling up from the well of the little spiral staircase. How sorry he was. And if it was up to him, she could stay there all day. Really, she could. But the driver needed to take the bus back. Sorry. And are you all right? Would you like a coffee? And can I help? In any way at all? Oh, Kate – you’re crying…
He does not take advantage. It is Kate who takes advantage.
Eight months and three days.
His bedsit is full of books. And they drink tea – good leaf tea which surprises her – and they eat biscuits in bed and then make love again – the crumbs etching little marks in their skin. Sticking to the sweat as Kate watches herself from the ceiling. Hungry. Desperate.
He is gentle. And kind. And utterly bemused. Kate still the foreigner. No language.
And it is not until he sits up, stunned, still with a sheet wrapped around him, explaining all his plans for the future once he’s finished the Open University course. Got his degree. His own business, his own flat – waving his arms in huge and hopeful gestures – that Kate begins to cry, realising just how much he reminds her of Toby, in that doll’s house long ago. The memory vivid again of their student bedsit. With its little Belling cooker. And she feels the wind in her eyes again and shuts them tight, tears dripping down her cheeks.
Eight months and three days.
A pause then in Mike’s dreams.
We’re not going to do this again, are we? He says it softly and Kate keeps her eyes closed. Too tired and too sad to even feel properly ashamed.
Last Kiss Goodnight Page 13