by Tanith Lee
He had been apprehensive this man would return, and then when circumstances changed, had wanted him back but been unable to get hold of him: Pond. Now Pond stands there in the full light of the open door.
“Mr Lewis.”
“Mr Pond.”
“I understood, sir,” says Pond blandly, (Nick had mislaid how neutral Pond’s face is) “that you wished to contact me.”
“I called your mobile. No answer.”
“I was tied up, sir. But now that’s sorted out, and I thought I’d drop by.”
“Come in,” Nick says, and lets Pond in over his threshold. With, again, the same inchoate tinge of misgiving as before.
As before too, Pond flicks a look round, then up at the window, and so sees now the last edge of the moon sliding out of it. Tonight though Pond makes no comment.
“You’re not,” says Nick, “any sort of policeman, are you?”
“Would you say not, sir? Then I’m sure you’re right.”
Nick glances at Pond. “Can I offer you a drink?”
Pond says, as if to be different from last time, “That would be very nice.”
“Hard or soft?”
“Oh, hard tonight, I think, if that’s an offer.”
Nick goes off to the fridge, calls, “Vodka? Wine?”
“Vodka would be the ticket, sir. Straight, no mixer.”
When the drink is poured, Nick adds a splash to his orange juice. As he had opened the flat door, the figure of Pond had not looked, anymore, like that of the break-in drawer-man. Nick’s hands are not shaking, but something inside him somehow is.
They sit down. He stares at Pond, and becomes aware of the two letters, one balled up, and one on the floor where Nick has trodden on it.
But Pond leans back on the couch, his overcoat undone, and looks up instead at the high ceiling. His neutral face changes gear and assumes a fierce expression, and he says to the ceiling, “So how can I help you, Mr Lewis?”
“Let me get something straight first. Angela, my brother’s wife, hired you to try to find him.”
“In a way.”
“How do you mean, in a way? He’d disappeared and she thought the police were slow, so she got hold of you…”
“Not exactly, sir.”
“Then what?”
“I doubt if it will matter now,” says Pond, with gentle regret. “Mrs Lewis hired me less to find where Mr Lewis was, than to find out whom he was with.”
Nick swears softly.
“Yes, sir. Mrs Lewis has long suspected Mr Lewis of infidelity. To paraphrase Mrs Lewis, she did not precisely mind that he saw other women, but objected to the increasing amount of time he spent with them. She was, she told me, extremely aggravated by all the spells he spent away, and the money he spent when away on them. Recently it seems it was often over a long weekend he would be with his various ladies. That is Friday through to Monday. Mrs Lewis told me she had come to the conclusion she would like to have grounds for a divorce, because that way Mr Lewis would have to reimburse her for all the annoyance he was causing her. So she applied to me. I was to watch him and take notes.”
Nick drinks his vodka and orange. He considers all the policeman-like questions Pond had asked him during his first visit. Had Laurence come here? What had he been wearing? All a blind, then. Or just to double check.
“Right,” Nick says. “And did you find him and take notes?”
“Inevitably, sir. First of all a while back, in Manchester with a young lady. Then at a pub near Manchester called the High Heart, with another young lady. On what I must come to call, I’m afraid, the fatal weekend, I followed Mr Lewis by car from this - your - building to a block of flats in the more opulent part of Wimbledon, and there he joined yet another young lady, staying on with her, as ever, through Saturday and Sunday, and only leaving around eleven on Monday morning. Which, in fact, was a little earlier than any of Mr Lewis’s former extramarital departures.”
“So,” Nick pauses. “So - you must have seen him drive on to Richmond.”
“No, I’m afraid I did not. Mrs Lewis had felt by then she had more than enough evidence to supply her lawyers. She requested simply that I take note what time Mr Lewis left the flats, after which my part in the search was over. I duly did note the time and called Mrs Lewis. I then drove to Putney, where there is another very good pub owned by an old friend of mine.”
Nick thinks. He visualises these sketches, scenes, in half tones. All this explains, or confirms, why Angela had not bothered to call Nick until Monday evening, by which time she must have been wondering where on earth Laurence had now got to, and knowing now the rat would soon be out of the bag, she was ready to hit back. (Why she had the idea Nick had led Laurence astray God knew. Or maybe Serena had got the wrong end of the stick.)
Almost idly Nick says, “You say he left this woman unusually early. Do you know why?”
“I can’t imagine, sir. I saw her - I took care to see all the ladies. And photograph them, too. And this one was by far the most attractive.”
Nick, despite all of it - the writer? - says, “How did you see them? You followed them?”
Pond takes another swallow. He is a slow and thorough drinker.
“In the first case at Manchester, I saw Mr Lewis meet her at a restaurant and then go back to her house. The second young lady in the pub was also there for anyone to see. Later she and Mr Lewis went upstairs for the night, and the same procedure for Saturday and Sunday. The third lady I didn’t see, and it seemed likely I might not. I wanted to be sure. I admit I’ve known cases where the guilty party had simply blamelessly been visiting a friend or business associate. Therefore, since this was to be the last active part of my work for Mrs Lewis, and it wouldn’t matter too much if either of the suspects saw me quite well, I went up to the flat whose bell Mr Lewis had pressed, on Friday evening. Another tenant happened to be going in, and let me in also perfectly happily when I said I was calling on a friend upstairs who was deaf. The lady in question opened the flat door. She was a very charming sight. She had come from the shower I expect, and had on a very short bathrobe. Mr Lewis was in the room at the end of the hall, I could see him too quite clearly, drinking coffee and wearing only a towel. Of course I told her the same story of the deaf friend - and additionally that I’d mistaken the flat number. Two old fools no doubt she thought, deaf and blind, we’d only need a dumb one to make up the set.”
Nick finds he is more depressed than gratified to gain these details. He and Pond need to stop gossiping now. Nick needs to tell Pond about the drawer-man and the break-in. Yet, even as Nick decides this, the whole affair seems childish and a sort of embarrassment delays him - long enough, enough of a lacuna, that Pond continues:
“I took a picture of her too, for my client, even in such close proximity - I find some modern gadgetry very ingenious and helpful. A pity I don’t have the photo on me, to show you. When I was a younger man, sometimes at the cinema, on the screen you’d see a woman like that. Or in old films now, on TV. Vivien Leigh, that kind of type, or softer than that, really. Ah, there was an actress, yes, I saw her in a couple of movies when I was in short pants. What was her name? Classic blonde, slim and curvy, dark blue eyes.”
Nick feels the shaky thing in him all at once rear and lash its tail.
But he hears himself, as he had heard himself laugh at Kit’s letter, say coolly, “Claudia Martin.”
“That’s it.” Pond is pleased. “Claudia Martin. English too. Fancy your knowing, sir.”
And stupidly, since Nick believes Pond must himself already know - or did Angela never mention it, Pond never somehow learn? - Nick says, “She was my mother.”
Pond gazes at him, smiling like a friendly sheep. “You’re joking, Mr Lewis.”
“No. Look her up, you’ll see it there. Laurence was her son, too.”
Pond’s face becomes like a plasticene model, but pressed almost blank.
“That’s very odd, isn’t it, when this woman of your brother’s wa
s so like her.”
Nick’s mind gurns in a welter of insane images. Pond seemss to have just said that Laurence was with Kit Price. Kit Price was the woman Laurence had been with in Wimbledon.
Yet what Nick says and does has nothing to do with this either error or revelation. For Nick says again, “He was Claudia’s son, too.”
And then Nick starts to cry. His whole head, his body, must be full of water, tasting of sea, smelling of bonfires. It gushes out like a nosebleed, silly and disgusting. And worst of all, he does not know if he is finally mourning for Claudia -at last, at last, after more than twelve years - or is it Laurence he is crying for? But he cannot control it. He is bleeding or crying to death. The water is even pooling on the floor now, gleaming there in lamplight, like spilled urine or vodka.
12
During the night he wakes twice.
Each time he is crying again.
This begins to frighten him. It reminds him of the infantile era of childhood, when beset by some now-unrecollected dream, he roused shouting or in tears. Even, sometimes, in fits of hysterical laughter.
Claudia had occasionally come to comfort him. But she was not always in the house. There had been a procession of nanny-type women, most of them all right. Once Serena had come in - he had been about six, so Serena about twelve or thirteen. She had scooped him up from the pillows and cuddled him. But he had pushed her away, because Serena as a rule only ever mocked or bullied him, aping Laurence. And when Nick thrust her off she slapped him.
Now there is no one to help or hinder.
Nick gets up, pads downstairs, makes a cup of tea, switches on the TV. Some foreign horror movie with horned masks. He falls asleep again in front of it, and wakes just before eight, (first light) tea undrunk, TV blaring. But dry-eyed.
Pond - at the onslaught had he forgotten Pond? - had behaved surprisingly. He must have crossed to the bathroom and found a box of tissues, which, returning, he placed ready on the table before Nick, like a psychotherapist. Unlike that, he added a stiff glass of vodka.
He put his hand, briefly, on Nick’s shoulder.
“You take your time,” said Pond, in a quiet, matter-of-fact way.
And he had strolled off along the room, and begun to study some Doig prints on the wall.
The tears, the crying, stopped as suddenly as they had started. It was like a cloudburst. It had seemed at the time as if that was all that could be shed.
Nick was not embarrassed. It would be natural to cry, would it not, just after your brother’s unforeseen, shocking death? No, rather Nick had felt ashamed as if he had put on a performance. Acted it. And acted it very well. But if so, for who? Not Pond, surely.
Was it then for her - for Claudia? (Look, I can cry. I do cry. For you. Not for him. Not Laurence. It can’t be for him.)
In a while Pond had come back and sat down, and said something about the Doig prints. He had particularly liked one called Milky Way.
Nick said, perfunctorily, not meaning it nor sounding as if he did, “I’m sorry about the emotion.”
“Don’t worry, Mr Lewis. We all do it. Like all the other things we do. Part of life.”
“Yes.”
They drank vodka. (Pond seemed to have refilled his own glass, or maybe there had still been a lot left) and Nick found himself very business-like, quite prepared after all to tell Pond not only about the break-in, but Kit. Nor did Nick make any bones about how he had met her.
“I’m a male escort. What used to be called a gigolo.” Pond nodded. That was all. “The woman you describe, the one with Laurence in Wimbledon, I’ve slept with her too. As my client. Only once. I’ve only met her once. She called me on that Monday after the first Monday - I mean a week after you say Laurence left her. I knew nothing about her. Nothing about Laurence and her. I did know of course Laurence was supposed to be missing, but I thought he’d turn up. We’d already met, Mr Pond, you and I. I thought you thought Laurence would turn up.”
“It seemed then, going on the evidence, not unlikely, Mr Lewis.”
“There was no way I’d make a connection between her - this Kit, or Kitty - and my brother anyway. And she certainly didn’t mention it.” Nick briefly, and without unnecessary detail, related their evening, the drinks, meal, flat behind Harley Street, payment for services, his return home to find someone had got in during his absence. “I thought then there might be a tie-up between the break-in and the girl. I don’t know if I think that now.” He proceeded to tell Pond about the drawer-man, about how he, Nick, had nicked the drawer, and how everything from it had in fact been burgled - if you could call it that - back, apart from the notebook with his short story in it, and the piece of possible ivory Laurence himself had pocketed. (Nick forgets his moment of doubt the ivory had come from the drawer. It must have done.) “Laurence seemed to think it was a counter from some 18th century Ivory Coast board game. But that was because I’d spun him some yarn.”
“I recollect you mentioned ivory before, sir. That your brother wanted to talk to you about ivory.”
“I’m sorry. That was a lie. I thought you might be the police. I was trying to protect Laurence - or rather Angela. What Laurence had actually wanted to talk about was wanting to have sex with some TV producer woman. I assume Kit. Though she may not be a producer. Someone I know thinks she knew Kit slightly about a year ago, and said she was in commercials, but as a dogsbody. That is, if they’re the same woman. The dogsbody-girl had another name, Kitty Andrew, not Kit Price. My friend wasn’t sure they were the same girl. Neither am I.”
“Can I conclude this friend is female?”
“One of the women I see professionally on a regular basis.”
“Ah.”
“Kit, when she called me, claimed this same friend had recommended me, given my name and so on. The friend swears she didn’t. It would be a breach of confidentiality, both hers and mine, and also of a kind of etiquette, if you see what I mean. Of course I have made contacts through other clients, but they always check with me before anything is said.”
“Yes, I can see that, Mr Lewis.”
“On the other hand, Kit described my friend, and her place of work. She knew my friend’s name.”
Nick then told Pond about going back to the Marylebone flat after the break-in.
“Most enterprising. What happened?”
“I thought someone was there. They wouldn’t let me in. The name on the door was a different one from the one she’d given me. Franks, not Price.”
“But let me see. You say your friend said the woman she thought might be this Kit, had the name Kitty Andrew. Perhaps she is inclined to change her name frequently, an interesting fact in itself. After your unfruitful visit, did the Kit or Kitty woman communicate again?”
“Yes.” Nick had hesitated. He had found he did not want to show the letter to Pond. Which was childish. So he picked it up directly, straightened it and passed it over. “I can only think she’s the one who sent me this. K.P. My first complaint, I have to say,” Nick heard himself add, and felt a fool. Why make lame excuses. All that was irrelevant.
Pond read the letter carefully, once. Nick noted Pond did not have recourse to spectacles, though surely he was over fifty. When Pond had raised his head his face was quite grim.
“What is termed a ball-breaker, sir.”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps I can keep this for now? Thank you.” Pond pocketed the letter. He said again, “Ball-breaker. They come in all types and with all types of reasons. I recall my wife telling me about a girl in her class at school, about fifteen years old, who used to sleep around rather more than a little, then always pin up unfavourable descriptions of each liaison in the girls’ toilets. Also, apparently, now and then in the boys’ toilets too. However.” Pond’s grim face had abruptly set like a cake of granite. “This nasty little example of plume empoisonner suggests to me one reason why she may want to use new names now and then. But also it’s given me a more serious thought.”
N
ick’s mind, he found, had wandered. He had begun to consider the Roman pin under the carpet upstairs. A nagging voiceless voice was commanding him, over and over, to tell Pond about the pin, pull up the carpet, hand it over. Empty all the rubbish bins at once.
And so his reaction was out of synch.
“I’m sorry, Mr Pond. What did you say?”
To which Pond had answered, thoughtfully, “I have an odd apprehension, Mr Lewis, you don’t know how your brother died. Am I correct?”
13
“Nick? If you’re there, please pick up. Oh, Nick, please be there.”
He stands in the kitchen doorway, looking at the midday phone. The ansa-machine is recording the message, which is in a woman’s voice Nick does not recognise.
He had been making a sandwich, and has no intention of speaking to anyone, not at the moment. But he is puzzled. The voice is musical, well-spoken, with the actor’s accent and pitch. It is not Jazz, who for a second he had thought it might be, when it said his name. Certainly not the demented Kit – although…
“Nick… OK. I can understand if you don’t want to speak to me. Or you’re maybe out. Look, you won’t believe this.” There is another gap. Then a sort of rush, a burst “I am so sorry - so fucking sorry for that stupid brainless shit letter I sent you…” The voice is crying now, sobbing, snuffling like a child’s. “Oh Christ, Nick, please call me back! I don’t deserve it, but I’m going off my head. I am off my head. Please - Nick - forgive me and call me - I won’t - I won’t call you any more unless I - I don’t want - make it worse…”
He knows.
This time he does not only surprise himself, he astonishes himself, because he seems to be possessed by a demon which throws him bodily down the two steps and forward to the phone - grabbing it, holding it - “Serena - Reenie - don’t hang up – Serena…” She has not hung up. She is still there, just sobbing along the line. “Ssh,” he says, “it’s all right.” He feels old, weirdly grown up. He waits while she cries, as Pond had waited for him. “Ssh,” he says softly now and then.