‘Who’s there?’ It was a man’s voice, with a foreign accent.
‘Verona’s cousin.’
Father’s cousin, but too complicated to explain that through a closed door. A long silence then, ‘She’s not here.’
The voice was lazy, a little hostile, as if he’d just been woken up. Bill looked at me and raised his eyebrows.
‘May we come in, please?’
Another silence, then much fiddling with bolts or catches, and a curse in a language I didn’t recognise at first. I’m usually good at foreign curses. By the time the door opened I’d had a chance to think about it. Standing there, eyes half closed, looking far from pleased to see us, was the silent man who’d been sketching Verona with such intense interest. He was older than I’d realised, probably nearer thirty than twenty, and had a world-weary air as if he’d just woken up from a sleep centuries long and found nothing changed. He wore white flannel trousers stained with paint, held up with an even more stained piece of rag knotted round the waistband, a parody of the way university rowing types use their college ties to hold up their trousers. His feet were bare, his toes unusually long and slender and bent like bird’s talons as if he needed to keep a good grip on the floor. The dark hair flopping over his forehead looked as if it hadn’t been washed in a long time. I thought, with a little stab of loss, that when I was silly and romantic and Verona’s age I’d have found him attractive, then with a stab of something else that I refused to recognise I realised that I still did. He pushed his hair back with fingers yellowed with nicotine – elegant fingers though – and stared at us from half-shut eyes as if wondering whether we were worth the trouble of getting in focus. He managed at the same time to be half asleep and so arrogant that I could sense Bill going tense with dislike.
I said ‘Good afternoon’ to him politely – in Hungarian. His dark eyes opened wide and focused. He said, ‘Who are you?’ also in Hungarian. I said in English, ‘As I told you, Verona’s relative. May we come in?’ I only knew five phrases of Hungarian and we’d already got through two of them. Still, it had been enough to wake him up. He turned his back and took a few steps into the passage, leaving the door open. I followed. Bill came behind me and closed the door. The dark man went up the stairs without looking back, into a room on the right. It was where I’d last talked to Verona and seemed to be a common room for everybody in the house. At the time, it had struck me as a cheerful creative sort of place, but today it felt like the inside of dustbin. A thick green blind was drawn over the window. There was a smell of linseed oil, stale beer and wine, and cigarette smoke. Something else too, a smell of human bodies and stale sweat.
‘Must have been quite a party,’ Bill said, sounding unconcerned. I realised that he was talking to me because the dark man had gone. We could hear his bare feet padding back downstairs.
‘We’ll just get Verona’s things and go.’
The Hungarian had said, ‘She’s not here.’ Did he know why? It seemed an age since I’d found Verona, but it was only two days ago.
Bill walked to the window and took hold of the blind. It went up with a rattle like a goods train and something in the room gave a screech of protest. Bill spun round and in other circumstances I’d have laughed at the expression on his face. There was a beautiful half-naked woman lying on the chaise-longue. It was the same broken down chaise-longue where I’d seen Verona posing. The woman had long dark hair, legs bare to the upper thigh and just covered there with a rucked-up net petticoat, white breasts spilling out of a flesh-coloured chemise. You could have toasted bread on Bill’s blush. He backed towards the door, started apologising. The woman, entirely unworried, sat up, pulled down her petticoat and stretched like a lazy lioness.
‘Ah, I see you’ve met Maria.’
The Hungarian was back, bringing with him the young man with the ginger beard, the orange juggler. He too looked as if he’d had a long night and while the dark man carried himself with a kind of jaded glamour, Ginger-beard simply looked ill. His round amiable face was pale, his eyes bloodshot, his hair wet as if he’d just dunked his head in a basin of water. Still, he had the manners of a polite schoolboy and came towards me with his hand out.
‘Miss Bray, isn’t it? Verona’s aunt.’
I didn’t argue. It was horribly clear now that I’d have to break the news to them.
‘I don’t think she introduced me last time. Toby’s my name. Toby Menteith. That’s Maria, as you’ve heard, and this is Count something-or-other I can’t pronounce, known to his friends, police and creditors as Rizzo, as in Bloated Arist-o-crat.’
The Hungarian didn’t respond. He was rangeing around the room looking for something.
‘Cur, did we drink all the wine?’
‘We did, Rizzo. We drank all the wine in the whole wide world.’ He explained to us, ‘I’m Cur, as in Dog Toby.’
Bill was looking at a mural on the wall behind Toby. It was done in black, white and greys, a man walking along the street with his shadow stretching across the pavement and up a wall behind him. Only the man and his shadow had changed places so that the shadow was walking upright, the man angled and stretched out behind it.
He asked Toby, ‘Is that yours?’
‘God no. That’s Rizzo’s. He’s a genius whereas my only talent, he assures me, is for being completely devoid of talent.’
The count called Rizzo went on searching, ignoring us. Toby stood looking at us, willing to please but not bringing himself to ask what we wanted. In the end he picked up a Spanish guitar that had been lying on a table and sat himself down cautiously beside Maria. The guitar seemed to comfort him. He plucked a chord or two, inexpertly, and risked a question.
‘Well, how’s Verona?’
I wished I were anywhere but there. I thought it quite likely that one of these men had been Verona’s lover. He didn’t deserve to hear she was dead like this, in the ruins of a party with people around him. The question was, which one? Gentle, reassuring Toby seemed the more likely bet, but there was no telling for certain.
I asked Toby, ‘You haven’t seen her, then?’
‘No. Is she all right?’
Toby, through his hangover, was starting to sense something was wrong. From across the room, Rizzo yelled, ‘Throw them out, Cur! Throw them out!’
‘Rizzo, that’s hardly hospitable.’
‘Beware the family. Beware the family.’
Rizzo was glaring at us but there was something stagey about his anger. He was too self-absorbed to pick up the atmosphere as Toby had.
Toby explained, like a man who’d had to do it before, ‘Rizzo’s an anarchist. We all are.’
I’d met angora rabbits that struck me as being more anarchistic than Toby. It was no more than typical student posing, but it wasn’t helping. I asked Rizzo, ignoring the glare, ‘Why should you beware of Verona’s family?’
He looked at me in silence, then turned away. Again, Toby explained for him.
‘He thinks her family will make her go back home and get married.’
I asked Rizzo’s back, ‘You’re against that?’
‘We’re against marriage, possessing people and so forth.’
That was Toby again, clearly unhappy. He plucked a few more tentative sounds out of the guitar, single notes this time. Beside him, Maria stretched and yawned. Bill caught my eye, questioning. I still couldn’t make up my mind, so there was no choice but to tell the whole roomful of them.
‘I’m sorry, but I’ve got some very bad news for you. Verona was found dead on Thursday.’
For a few seconds, the guitar notes went on, Toby’s fingers working while his mind tried to catch up. In those seconds Rizzo turned slowly, eyes wide. His face had been pale before, now it was grey. He looked like the shadow-man in his picture. Maria asked in Spanish what was up. Nobody answered her. Toby asked: ‘How?’ He was shaking so much he could hardly get the word out.
I said, ‘She was hanging in a boathouse.’
‘H … hanging? You mean
she k … k…?’
‘There’ll have to be an inquest, of course, but it does look as if she might have committed suicide.’
Toby screamed, a high little scream like a child’s. He stood up, unsteady on his feet. His right hand still clutched the guitar. He looked as if he was going to be sick and I expected him to rush for the door. Instead he hurled himself across the room at Rizzo.
‘It’s your fault. You made her go away. It’s your fault.’
I don’t know if Rizzo’s failure to defend himself was due to arrogance or surprise. Before we could do anything Toby lifted the guitar in the air like a man doing a serve at tennis and brought it down with a splintering crash on Rizzo’s head. Then they were both on the floor, Rizzo with the remains of the guitar round his head, Toby apparently trying to strangle him, not very effectively. Between us, Bill and I got them apart. Rizzo simply stood up, picked bits of wood off himself and walked out of the room without a word. Toby leaned against Bill, crying unashamedly, tears running down his beard. ‘I loved her. I loved her.’
* * *
With the help of Maria, who seemed to have woken up at last, we got Toby upstairs to bed. It was a sparsely furnished cubicle on the top floor, like a boarding school bedroom. The only thing by way of decoration was a charcoal sketch of a girl on a bed, barefoot, smoking a cigarette. I saw Bill looking at it and mouthed, ‘Verona.’
It was the sketch Rizzo had been doing when I was there. The paper had been crumpled and carefully smoothed out – probably rejected by the artist and retrieved by Toby. When we’d got him quiet, Bill and I left him in the care of Maria and went out onto the landing.
‘So what now? Do we still want to collect her things?’
I was about to say no, we’d leave it, when a door across the landing opened and a girl stuck her head out, looking annoyed.
‘What’s going on now? Are they fighting again?’
I said Toby had had some bad news.
‘Oh God, there’s always something in this house.’
‘Have you been here long?’
‘Three weeks, and it’s a lifetime too long already. I’m moving out tomorrow.’
‘Did you know Verona North?’
‘No. I’ve got her room, but I never met her. Are you looking for her?’
I explained. She was apologetic, introduced herself as Janie, asked us in. It was just like Toby’s bleak little room opposite, except it had a skylight in the roof that gave good light. Janie had a table exactly under the skylight with a box of watercolours, a jar of fine brushes and a spray of marsh marigold in a vase. There was a half-finished picture of it on an easel, done with beautiful precision.
‘There’s nowhere to sit but the bed, I’m afraid.’ The accent was Home Counties. She seemed a world away from the chaos downstairs. ‘You won’t mind if I go on with this? I’m supposed to have it done by tomorrow.’
The bed was a pallet against the wall, narrower than in a prison cell. She must have trained herself to sleep without turning over. I sat on it and after a moment’s doubt, Bill joined me. I asked if she was at the Slade too.
‘Yes. Was Verona? We don’t tend to socialise much with the first-year people and I’ve been busy. First commission.’
‘You say this was her room?’
‘That’s right. I was sharing with somebody, but when I got this commission I needed somewhere to work on my own. I heard on the grapevine that this was vacant so in I came. Serious mistake. It’s like trying to work in the middle of Trafalgar Square.’
‘On the grapevine? Can you remember how exactly?’
‘Not sure. I think I heard about it from a woman who went to life class with somebody who knew the man they call Rizzo…’
‘The aristocratic Hungarian anarchist?’
She snorted. ‘Egoist, you mean.’
Bill said unexpectedly, ‘I thought his painting was good.’
‘Oh he paints well enough. He’d be even better if he stopped posturing and did some work.’
I asked, ‘And Toby?’
Another snort. ‘No talent whatsover. He should go home and be a vicar, which is what his father is, wouldn’t you have guessed.’
‘Did you get the impression that Toby was in love with Verona?’
Janie looked at me as if I’d asked about the habits of warthogs.
‘Not interested. Even if I were, there wouldn’t be any point in this house.’
Bill asked why.
‘Like trying to draw a map of a desert in a sandstorm. Always people coming and going, shouting at each other, drunk or worse half the time.’
‘Worse?’
Janie picked up another brush and drew an outline of a leaf.
‘Smoking. Going to China, Rizzo calls it. First time I heard it, I said would he bring me back some calligraphy brushes.’
I said, ‘Opium, you mean?’
She nodded.
Bill said, ‘It seems a funny sort of place for a vicar’s son.’
Or for a commodore’s daughter, come to that.
‘Oh, I’m sure Toby thinks he’s seeing life. He’ll grow out of it.’
Grow out of life, did she mean? Which brought us back to Verona. I was going to ask another question, but Bill got in first.
‘The man they call Rizzo had done a drawing of her. Do you think he was attracted to her?’
‘What’s the connection? He spent days at a hospital once painting a gangrenous foot.’
Bill persisted. He was good at that. ‘Do you think he’s the kind of man women find attractive?’ (Had he picked up that rogue thought in me? I hoped not.)
‘Perhaps, if they’ve got no sense. Rizzo thinks love is a bourgeois affectation. I expect he offered to deflower her.’
Bill blinked, but rallied. ‘Why do you think so?’
‘He did it to me the first time we met – offered, that is. He says any virgin over fifteen years old is an offence against nature.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Poured a bottle of turps over him. I shouldn’t have reacted like that. Waste of good turps.’
She went on calmly painting the flower. Bill seemed to have run out of questions, so I came in with mine.
‘You say you moved in here three weeks ago. That would be near the start of May?’
‘Monday May the fourth.’
Janie was as precise about dates as in her painting. As far as I could remember, Verona had last written to her mother the day before, May the third, saying she was well and working hard. There’d been nothing said about moving.
‘And you got the impression that Verona had moved out for good, not just gone away for a while?’
‘Nobody’s that definite about anything here, but I certainly got the impression it was vacant for the foreseeable future or I shouldn’t have taken it. I must say I was annoyed, though, to find she’d left some of her things here.’ Bill glanced at me. I asked, ‘What sort of things?’
‘An old jacket, some books, a not particularly good landscape.’
‘Of an estuary?’
‘Yes.’
‘Anything else?’
‘A flag of some kind, a few seashells, a pair of shoes.’
‘What did you do with them?’
‘Put them in a box and shoved it in the corner, out of the way.’
I looked round the room. No sign of a box. I said, ‘If you can find them, we’ll take them away with us and return them to her family.’
‘No need. They’ve come for them already.’
‘When?’
‘Yesterday. I didn’t know she was dead then, or of course I’d have said something. I thought they were just collecting them for her.’
‘They?’
‘Two men.’
‘What sort of men?’
‘Pretty standard bi-pedal hominids, I’d say. One thin with a bowler, one fat with a cap and red muffler.’
‘Working men?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘What did they say?’
‘I can’t remember too clearly because I was working and they were a nuisance. I think the thin man said something like was this Miss North’s room? I suppose I said it had been and he said they’d come to take away her things.’
‘Did they say who they were?’
‘No, and I didn’t care. I just pointed to the box and said there they were and they took it away.’
‘Nothing else said?’
‘The thin one said was there anything else of hers in the house? I said I didn’t suppose so, but if she’d left anything lying around downstairs it wouldn’t have lasted long.’
* * *
She didn’t raise her eyes from the painting as Bill and I let ourselves out. There was no sound coming from Toby’s room across the landing, no sign of anybody on the other two floors. When we got outside we turned without saying anything to the embankment and stood looking down at the river. There was a steam tug pulling a long line of empty barges against the current.
I said, ‘We didn’t find her body until Thursday. On Friday, two men arrive to collect her things?’
‘Some people react like that. Get it over with.’
‘Ben and Alexandra were in a state of shock. Besides, those two sound more like removal men than family.’
‘The coroner’s officer will have to find out if there were letters.’
‘In a room she hadn’t lived in for three weeks? Besides, it would be a job for the police.’
We started walking towards Albert Bridge. There was a man in a striped blazer and yellowish straw boater on the other side of the street, looking as if he’d got separated from his friends. After a while Bill said, ‘She does seem to have got in with a rum crowd.’
‘They’re students!’ For some reason, I needed to defend Verona.
‘Opium smoking and seducing virgins?’
‘More talk than anything, I expect. I went to an opium den in Limehouse when I was about their age.’
Bill gave me one of his looks that I hadn’t learned to interpret yet. I suppose at that stage I was still trying to find out where his limits were.
The Perfect Daughter Page 5