It was either a real fluke or Patrick had met his match in placing people.
He said, “I was down in the South Atlantic but not with that outfit.”
“So you didn’t tread on a mine,” Fraser responded. “I’ve a confession to make. When the taxi delivered me out front you were on the far side of the garden. You’ve a swing to your step like an oppo of mine who did just that and got his foot blown off. My apologies.”
“Tin right leg below the knee,” Patrick said. “Grenade.”
After dinner and fuelled with rye they yarned solidly for three hours. Everyone listened, me included, for the simple reason that Patrick does not very often talk about his service experiences as he is afraid of boring people. But when he does, like all good stories, one tends to learn more from them about the man recounting them than why Britain had won the wars but lost an Empire.
I went up to bed at a little after midnight leaving Patrick, Chris and Terry still talking. The others had retired earlier and Mark, it appeared, was staying with a friend’s family for the night. After a while I heard Terry come upstairs and yes, it was his own room he went into. The hinges of Emma’s door squeaked, his didn’t.
The frogs, crickets and other rural night life were in fine voice. I tossed and turned, a suspicion growing in my mind that downstairs an age old contest was in progress. Take an intelligent man of moderate habits — well, fairly moderate-place him among his contemporaries, provide alcohol, and lo and behold their collective mental ages plummet to a figure indicated by holding up the fingers of one hand.
I went down.
The empty whisky bottle stood on the table between them, together with several Moosehead beer cans, also empty, and an overflowing ashtray with Fraser’s pipe resting on the top. Fraser himself seemed to be asleep, fists propping up his chin. Patrick lounged back pensively smoking one of McAlister’s half coronas, eyes slitted against the smoke.
“Are you never coming to bed?” I hissed from the doorway.
He considered. “Truly,” he agreed solemnly. “One day I shall come to bed.”
“You can’t even stand,” I informed him heavily. It was yet another clip from one of those bloody cowboy films, the hero drinking all the baddies under the table. The scenario seemed to be falling into the general pattern for suddenly Fraser’s head fell off his fists and thundered into the ashtray. Patrick gazed at him serenely for a moment and then smiled at me, innocent as a newborn boa constrictor.
“The first thing that goes overboard,” I told him, “is the hard won co-ordination of your right leg.”
Patrick laid down the cigar, gripped the edge of the table and stood up. Then he transferred his right hand to the back of the chair, let go of the table with his left and manoeuvred himself behind the chair.
“Use it as a walking frame,” I suggested. “I’ll go in front with a red flag.”
“Ingrid,” he said plaintively. “I’m not drunk.”
I took the chair away and smiled broadly at the inevitable result. “Then why lie on the floor?”
He giggled. Why do I always love him so much when he giggles?
However, under no circumstances does a husband of mine spend the night in the middle of the living room floor. A swift raid and a strategically aimed squirt from a soda siphon got him to his feet with a yell and I piloted him upstairs praying that no one would investigate the noise.
Once upstairs Patrick subsided onto the bed and then in response to my look sheepishly onto the floor where he distastefully set about removing his damp nether garments.
“Fraser’s a soldier,” he murmured, more to himself than to me.
I gave him his bath robe. “So he said.”
“He spent a lot of his childhood in India, is an excellent shot and has been trained in jungle warfare methods. According to Daws he’s very highly thought of in the Territorials.” Even though his eyes weren’t properly focussed it wasn’t the drink talking. “So?”
“What if Andy was going to pinch Fraser’s ideas and make a lot of money out of them?”
“Never. He wasn’t like that. Besides, Paul has the brains.”
“But Quade was the businessman. And he could have persuaded Paul to join him without much trouble. Paul’s a genius but like so many egg-heads a bit naïve. He wouldn’t have taken much convincing that his work would bear more fruit under Andy’s guidance.”
“It’s all supposition.”
“But suppose again that someone told Fraser that he was going to do it?”
“Who, for God’s sake?”
“Margaret Howard, for example.”
“You’ve been on the phone to Daws,” I whispered.
“Yes — when I went down to the airport to find out if our friend really did get off the Halifax plane. Margaret Howard was engaged to Andy some years ago and he broke it off because she was seeing another bloke.”
“Fraser!”
“Precisely.”
“So she is a bitch,” I said, and Patrick grinned at my vehemence.
“It has to be fully checked out but according to Daws she now has an East German boyfriend.”
Chapter 12
Paul did not die. At about the same time that he began to respond to the heroic and unrelenting efforts of the nursing staff a weighty and detailed report was presented to Le Blek. It concluded that Paul’s illness had been caused by shellfish poisoning, its severity, taking into account the small amount of poison ingested, the result of a weak constitution and other contributing factors. The author had thoroughly covered the latter, writing at length on such subjects as unseasonal sea temperatures, fluctuations in tide patterns and the patient’s blood pressure.
“But I haven’t a weak constitution,” Paul protested when Patrick read some of it out to him a couple of days later. “Just prone to biliousness — I always have been. Bloody hell, I run marathons.”
“Never mind, old son,” Patrick said. “Just get better and keep well away from everything in shells except eggs.”
As are all who have had a very close brush with death, Paul was vibrant with life when we visited him. He seemed quite oblivious to the drip tube in his arm and if anyone had shown him his reflection in a mirror, a black stubble of beard growing on a gaunt face the colour of tallow, he gave no hint of concern.
“You stayed, didn’t you?” he said to Patrick. “All that first night. I’m sure I didn’t dream it. Did I dream the bit where they tried to make you leave and you drew a gun on them and said that it was your job not to let me out of your sight?”
“Definitely,” Patrick answered with a smile.
Paul smiled back knowingly. “A real dream was that it was weeks that I’d been lying here and I opened my eyes and you were still sitting by my side. There was a nurse as well. I felt sort of numb all over — like just after it first hit me — and then it seemed that I was floating away. Suddenly you grabbed my hand and rested your forehead on it so I couldn’t see your face. The pain came back and even though I thought I was going to die I knew you were praying for me. Then all I could feel was your hand gripping mine. It hurt like hell. Then I woke up and there was a copper by the side of the bed.”
“Hallucinations,” Patrick said. “It’s a symptom of the poisoning. Do you feel up to answering a few questions?”
“Fire away. But it won’t be much help — Le Blek’s already asked them all.”
Patrick quirked an eyebrow at me. “Like where you got the clams, for instance?”
“He already knew that. Commander Hurley had rung him and told him I had had lunch at his place that day. I don’t know what the fuss is all about really, Hurley ate some too. He nigh-on lives on the things at this time of the year. I suppose his body is used to the substance that laid me low.”
I said, “I thought he was staying at the Delta.”
“Was,” Paul replied. “He cleared out a week ago when he realised he was going to be in Port Charles for quite a while. He has a first floor flat in Manawagonish Road. It’
s really nice — looks out over the river.”
“Must get a goodly dose of pong from the pulp mill when the wind’s in the east.” Patrick mused. “Did he cook these things himself or did they come from a take-out?”
“Surely you still don’t suspect anyone of —”
“I’m suspecting anyone who singles out DARE engineers for special treatment, whether it’s for bullets or clam lunches.”
“I was planning on going to Market Square with the others for a lobster roll but Hurley said he had these clams a friend had given him. We’d been talking about sea-food.”
“It does look fairly innocent,” I said. “Especially as he phoned Le Blek when he heard what had caused Paul’s illness and told him.”
“It’s undoubtedly perfectly innocent,” Patrick said with some asperity. “But do remember that all well-planned murders are intended to look that way. Tell me,” he said to Paul, acknowledging a signal from a nurse that it was time to go, “did Andy Quade make any business propositions to you?”
“Business propositions?”
“Offers.”
“You mean set up with him on our own?”
“Anything like that.”
“Not really.”
“You don’t sound all that sure.”
Paul frowned. “Some while back he nearly left the company. Had a terrific row with Chris and raged around for a week or so making a lot of noise, saying he was going to leave and take as many of us with him as he could. He was a bit like that.”
“Was it over Margaret Howard?”
“You know about it then.”
“Only from an outsider. So it all blew over?”
“Things usually did with Andy. He’d met his present wife by then.”
I remembered how Peter used to laugh about Andy blowing hot and cold, one day talking non-stop about some scheme or other, the next totally abandoning it.
“You should have asked him if there was still anything between Fraser and Margaret Howard,” I said to Patrick when we were outside.
“There isn’t. Fraser brought up the subject himself the first night he arrived when the whisky began to lubricate his tongue a bit. He can’t stand her now and only keeps her on because she’s good at her job and McAlister has no complaints.”
“Hurley’s been keeping well clear,” I commented.
“Wouldn’t you if you’d been indirectly responsible for someone almost dying?”
“Yes, but is he on the line?”
“Until we find out otherwise we must assume that he is.”
“It’s his country too.”
“Too right. It would be stupid to forget that. Canada might be an old ally but he won’t welcome Brits conducting their own private war on his territory any more than Le Blek does.”
“Hurley’s a very attractive man,” I murmured, again picturing him and Emma together and to my shame experiencing a purely lascivious gut thrill. I instantly wished I hadn’t spoken.
“And not over modest,” came the retort. “Three times a night — so he informed Terry — no problem at all. D’you fancy being …” and here he used a very basic expression he does not normally utter in my presence, “… by a man with no problems?”
“Quite a lot of woman fantasize about men like Leander Hurley,” I told him.
“Do they?” asked Patrick stonily. “While their husbands are making love to them?”
“Some do. I don’t have to.”
From the way he was looking at me I knew he thought I was lying.
“I heard them going hammer and tongs,” I said. “And frankly it turned me on. But I didn’t want him, I wanted you. No one could be a substitute for you.”
*
Mark suggested a small celebration in honour of Paul’s recovery. This found general favour, possibly because every one felt a need to return to some kind of normality. There is nothing like an emergency for bringing out the real characters of people but few desire to remain thus revealed. And we had all been living on our nerves for far too long.
It was a relief to Emma to discover that she was not expected to provide the food. The DARE group and their two minders dug deep in their pockets and I volunteered to do the preparation. Emma, in fact, did turn to on the morning of the party, the following Friday, and made two gigantic Pavlovas: meringue, mountains of thickly whipped cream flavoured with Cointreau and, piled on top, two pounds of fresh Californian strawberries.
Inexplicably, the party mood grew from there. David provided champagne when it became clear that Paul was being discharged from the hospital that same afternoon, Patrick, McAlister and I shopped at the covered market in Port Charles and bought the rest of the food and drink on the way back at a shopping mall while Terry, now called that by everyone, assisted Viv, the daily woman, in cleaning and moving furniture.
“Thirty-three,” said Margaret Howard, squinting at a list without the benefit of her reading glasses. “I counted the dog in too because I understand she always filches things when no one’s looking.”
“Thirty-three!” Emma exclaimed.
“Blame your husband and son,” Margaret said, pulling a face at Mark. “One appreciates that the two secretaries have been recruited from Port Charles and can’t be left out, but their husbands …” She broke off with a sigh.
“Just a couple of friends of mine,” Mark said. “And their girlfriends, of course.”
“And their girlfriends,” Emma echoed in a doom-laden voice. “I hope they’re not like the last bunch who smoked pot.”
“One did,” Mark said, colouring. “I kicked her out. You know I did.”
Emma gave a dramatic shudder and went away to look for paper napkins.
“Dad’s invited the neighbours too,” Mark revealed defiantly to her back. “It saves him from asking them at Christmas in return for the housewarming we went to.”
The day progressed at a steady trot until about lunch time when the kitchen had to sacrifice a tray of sandwiches and a quiche as I had forgotten all about interim refreshments. I was regretting that Dot had gone to Prince Edward Island on a rare long weekend visit to her sister. The Newfoundland, presumably eating for at least eight, then gobbled a whole plateful of vol-au-vents which had been laid aside to cool before subsequent re-heating and the cook came to the conclusion that there simply was not enough to eat. I sent Terry out to buy more frozen vol-au-vent cases and my life continued at a brisk canter. Come eight o’clock that night and with the guests arriving thick and fast, the bit was well and truly between the teeth and we were all at a pell-mell gallop. I grabbed Patrick, several French loaves, garlic, parsley butter and a knife and press-ganged him into making garlic bread so I could dash upstairs and get ready.
The food was laid out as a buffet on the extended dining-room table but as with so many gatherings when people stand talking in the way of others trying to find something to eat, three of us had to hand it around or it wouldn’t have been eaten. This job fell to Terry, Jon, a friend of Mark, and myself with the inevitability that all such tasks arrive at the doors of the meek at heart who shall then inherit the washing up.
Paul, inhabiting the sofa from whence he emitted a kind of regal glow, was piled with sensible nourishment by the three of us. At a little before eleven he was put to bed in Mark’s room by Terry when it became clear that the noise, heat and cigarette smoke had exhausted him. He was left with a glass of champagne as a nightcap.
The half-hour I had spent getting ready had been intensely precious. In the mall that morning I had bought a pregnancy testing kit. In one tiny phial of coloured liquid I had stared at a host of imaginings, nightmares and failings. A wash, change of clothes and make-up had been achieved in moments, the rest of the time I had sat on the bed both at peace and numb with shock.
Every atom of my being urged me to go to Patrick and tell him the news. It was what he had always wanted, a dream come true. Since the Falklands War I knew that this yearning had taken on another, deeper dimension for him, and like every oth
er woman on this planet I wanted to be able to tell my husband that he was all man, virile, potent, a child in his wife’s womb to prove it.
I hung back and not because I was not convinced of the accuracy of the testing kit. Do you tell a Grand Master in the middle of a chess tournament that he was won a million in a lottery? In his job, even on this assignment, he uses the same kind of concentration. A moment’s distraction might result in more than the loss of a pawn. I found to my surprise that as far as Patrick was concerned I was on foreign ground. I had never been in a position to give him momentous news. How would he react? My inner voice told me that my velvet hand in the iron glove man would cry.
I decided to choose my moment very carefully, if necessary postponing it for a quite a long time. It was the most difficult decision I had ever made.
I am not really a party person. It gives me satisfaction to plan, cook and then watch the results of my efforts being appreciated but then I expect people to sing for their supper and work at making it successful. But if I am expected to stand for hours on end with a glass in one hand and a plate of jumbled food in the other whilst engaging in polite conversation, I tend to become waspish and bored. When I entertain at home I always make sure it is a dinner party.
Because of this I had every sympathy for a young woman, at a guess one of the secretaries, standing quite on her own in a corner, an empty glass in one hand.
“Follow me,” I said and she did, gratefully.
I refilled her glass, piled her with some eatables and led the way to the conservatory. I had the key in my pocket. Emma had asked me to take charge of it because she didn’t want any horseplay amongst her fragile and very expensive orchid plants. The familiar warm earthy scent welcomed us both.
“Peace, perfect peace,” sighed my new acquaintance. “Sorry — I’m Carol, Mr. Hartland’s secretary when he’s in Port Charles.”
I introduced myself and asked her what she did when he was in Montreal.
Carol laughed. “Oh, dogsbody. Now David’s here most of the time Nasonworth have hired a temp to do what I do normally and most of the time I can give her a hand. The work’s really beginning to hot up now DARE are getting into their stride. There’s the phone, post, stuff coming through on the Fax and telex machines. It’s a mad house most of the time.”
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