“Synaesthesia,” I said, beginning to be bored. “Toby’s the same.”
“Is he? Tia said my name was blue and green. Not to me. Odd, these family things. Genetical.
“Anyway,” he droned on, “they stayed about a week and after that we wrote to them and sent Christmas cards, tha’ sorta thing. Then I finished school and it was time for university, but, well, didden do ve’y well in my exams, an’ my parents kept arguing over whether it was the Canadian school or what... In the end they decided I should go to a crammers for a year here. I was still only seventeen an’ secretly I was terrified of being alone in England… Mum got all worried about me living in student digs, so Dad wrote to Adrian and Tia, and of course they said, Why didn’t I live with them, at least for a term or two until I’d ʻfound my feet’. Mum and Dad jumped at the idea, and I was pretty keen too.
“They had this big place, Belgravia. Ve’ posh, butler an all that. They’d given me a room upstairs at the book, back, so it’d be quiet for me to study and I could have some piracy. Privacy. Tia had done up a room for me – fab room – sort of bedsitter, very studenty but posh. They lived ve’y well. I didn’t much take to Age, Adrian, but Jon I liked. I liked him a lot. Good ole Jon.” More champagne. Stick it out, I thought, he’s about due to topple over. “Yeah, liked Jon. Clever, double first at, at thing. Oshford. He was in that metal band, and was always going around hair halfway down his back, leather and hippy clothes. He took me to see a lot of bands and introduced me to all the pop music I’d never heard much of.
“I washn’t doing very well at the crammers, not sure why, but Tia and Jon got me through. Adrian could be a bit ininmitididating at times, and after all he’d never finished his degree, whizz at maths though, anything to do with money but no inellecsh’l, never read anything but thrillersh and shpy novels and The Conomisht. But Tia and Jon helped me lot, taught me how to study properly. Hadda lotta fun that year, parties, famous people...
“And then of courshe it all ended when Adrian… you know about that?”
“That he was murdered? Stabbed to death in the street one night? Yes.”
Quentin shuddered and took another drink. “Yeah, couple attacksh on men walking alone in the posher parts of London at night, but I think Age was the only one who ashly died. Can’t talk about it. Didden know what’d happened till the housekeeper came to wake me – my room was at the back of the houshe and I never heard much noishe from the shtreet. But the housekeeper came in and said I had to get up, been a terrible acc’dent. And I’ll remember to my own dying day, went downstairs and lightsh outside, could see straigh’ out to the front stepsh where Tia was holding Adrian in her armsh and there was blood everywhere, and police cars and I think an ambulance. Tia had to be taken to hospital; I hadn’t known she was pregnant, but she was, until she miscarried from the shock. Then my parents came and took me home, had a sorta collapse for a while, stayed there, only came back yearsh later. Didden see Tia for long time but alwaysh ve’y fond of her. Loved her, I shpose. Not sexually, of course, nothing like that, cousins, after all, just ve’y fond. And of Jon. Glad when they married, he was alwaysh better for her than Ade-ree-anne.” Again he refilled his glass, or at least threw some champagne at it. About five more minutes, I reckoned.
“You said Adrian was a bit intimidating. What was he really like? You must have known him better than anyone but Dad – perhaps even better in those days.”
“Spose I did,” said Quentin. “Tried to like him ’cause he was my cousin’s husband but he was a bit of a bastard in some ways. He was more like his father than he wanted to know, and ol’ Lord Randall was a prick. Think I was one of the few people not surprised when Tia married Jon, they always close, Jon a better friend and companion to her than Age, innerlectual in the way Tia was, and Age washn’t, so if she wanted to talk about sherioush shtuff, booksh or mushic, she talked to Jon. They shuited each other. Don’t mean they were in love or having an affaire or anything like that, just that they were very close and had much more in common that Tia and Age and –”
“A bit of a bastard in what way?” I interrupted him.
“Oh – very con. Controlling. Everything alwaysh hadda be just so, way he wanted it. The house had to be perfect and Age was alwaysh redec – re-doin’ it, they had servants but it meant a lot of work for Tia. She had to look jus’ right all the time, clothes and hair and stuff, Age liked her jus’ so. Also she didda lotta work for Ran’all Fyffe Ran’all, reading and editoring for them and Adrian was quite bossy about that. And thingsh like – well, he’d never let her answer the phone or the doorbell. The servants, or me, or him, had to do that. Adrian was quite jealous of her, wooden le’ anyone else touch her – even me, when once I put my arm casually around her when I came home. She went rigid, and Adrian told me off, never touch her he said, though he tried to be nice about it.”
“Was he ever violent to her?”
Quentin turned shocked, owlish eyes on me. “Oh no! Woulda been against his code. Why you ask that?”
“Because it sounds as if you’re describing a typical case of an abusive husband isolating his wife.”
“Oh no no no no no no, nothing like that! Say what y’ like about Age, like he was a horse’s hoof, cos he was a bit, y’ know, pretty queer really, but he wooden have laid a hand on her in that way, violently. No. Just sorta in control of her. Loved her, I think. Mush as he could love a woman. Pretty much of a poof, I reckon. I think he really was fond o’ Tia, but, not to put too fine a point on it, she was better off without him, because then she could do what she liked, and she wrote that first book, and she was much happier with Jon. He suited her. She could shtand up to him. Much happier without Age. Poor old Adrian. For the best, really, though.”
Then he frightened me by taking his teeth out – I hadn’t known he had false snappers – and his eyes closed and quite smoothly, in the boneless way of the really, really drunk, he slid off his chair and onto the floor, out cold. He looked comfy enough, and he was out of the way, so I left him. I’m sorry to say I forgot all about him, but I got pretty drunk myself as the night went on.
Next morning I was out of there at six, before the aftermath of hangovers, recriminations, sentiment and cleaning-up could start. I’d known it’d be bad afterwards, so I’d taken Fleur’s advice and booked a holiday. I had friends to see abroad, and I’d decided to go somewhere I’d never been. I was going to Australia, to take Marian Elder those letters.
Part Two
Fifteen
Australia
I let myself forget about my family. I met up with old friends, partied, ate, drank, slept around a bit, moved on when I felt like it. Vancouver, San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles for work, a couple of possibly OK films and television series coming up. And, as I travelled I knew I was starting to relax, I was getting over Mum, and one day I realised, talking to someone-or-other, that I had done a good deal of quick and probably overdue growing up.
From LA I went to Singapore, because I’d never been there and Granny’s brother is buried there; a PoW, he died in Changi in 1942. Then, because I like trains and my friend Rick, who played my older brother Django in Relative Causes, lives in Australia now and recommended it, I flew to Perth and took the train, the Indian Pacific, to Adelaide. I’d spend a couple of days there, visit Marian Elder, then decide whether to train or fly on to Sydney, to see Rick. For once it didn’t matter where and when I went, I had time and no demands, and being alone suited me.
I’d booked a hotel in the centre of the city, and after a superb dinner and good night’s sleep, I was up early to explore. I thought it a lovely place with its parks and gardens, its greenness, its Victorian buildings – hated some of the mindless 70s and 80s new ones – visited the surprisingly excellent Art Gallery, wandered along the river banks, which Rick and his boyfriend had warned me were notorious gay beats and scene of many gay bashings and killings; not that I cared, at least in daylight, with running shoes on.
That night, a very w
et, thundery night, I rang up Marian Elder to tell her I was here and ask when I could call on her. Sounding younger than I’d for some reason expected, she said eagerly that any time would suit her – tomorrow? For lunch? Great – say twelve thirty? Did I have her address? Could I find my way to Glenelg? Great! Lunch tomorrow, then.
I didn’t know much about Marian Elder except what I’d gleaned from the bits of her book. She was chary about making personal information public; no photographs on her website or Facebook page, and the minimum of detail. Hobbies: reading, history, kickboxing. I knew she had three university degrees and had written two books and a couple of dozen papers and articles. She was a university lecturer. I didn’t know if she was married, single, gay, straight, childless or the mother of six. I figured she was over thirty, but that was a guess.
So I didn’t dress up to meet her, but neither did I dress down. I wore my usual jeans, my suede boots, an expensive but noncommittal sweater, and, because it was three degrees Celsius, pissing with rain and threatening thunder, a long overcoat and a rather too woolly scarf. Hair washed, teeth and nails sparkling, clean hanky in pocket, phone charged, those letters in acid-free paper inside a zipped plastic folder, I was ready. Well, except for an umbrella. That retrieved from my room, I was ready.
Ready to drive west into a buggering great storm, complete with horizontal rain off the sea and, when I reached Glenelg, which is right at the beach, fog. I remembered friends of Dad’s who’d abandoned Britain because they’d believed Australia House’s propaganda of endless sun, sea and orange trees, and had arrived in Melbourne in mid-winter, to find it colder than Perth. Perth, Scotland, not Perth, Western Australia. “And no central heating at all!” they had wailed once they were back in Britain’s perpetual 57 degrees Fahrenheit, with central heating.
Despite the fog I found Marian’s house without trouble, and whistled a bit to myself when I saw it. I hadn’t expected it to be quite so big, so beautifully and, obviously, expensively well kept. It was on the corner of two wide, leafy streets (up one of which a wind was howling straight from Antarctica, storm clouds streaming ahead of it). This wasn’t a cheap part of town – all the houses were large, solid, expensive looking, dating from (I’d read) the late nineteenth or very early twentieth centuries. Most had large grounds, protected by high fences and lots of trees. Must be gorgeous in summer, with a beach two minutes away. Marian’s was a sprawling redbrick and sandstone bungalow, the sort Granny called a “chalet bungalow” because it had windows up under the roof. I got a park right outside the gate, and, opening my umbrella, which at once blew inside out, dashed for the gate and then up the front path to ring the bell.
At first I thought the woman who opened the door was elderly, white-haired, but she was quite young, with hair of that very rare palest blonde, almost silver; her natural colour, you can always tell when it’s natural, a shoulder-length mass of corkscrew curls. To go with this hair she had pale sea-coloured eyes, the left a little bluer than the right, and a faint band of freckles across her nose and cheekbones. Surely she never took that pale, pale colouring out into the sun?
I said, “Marian Elder?” and she said, “Jaques! How very nice to meet you. How do you do? Come in, this weather’s ghastly.”
And I fell in love.
*
I don’t believe in love at first sight. Or at least I didn’t until then. Sexual attraction, yes; immediate liking, yes; love, no. Love grows, slowly, out of many things.
But what did I know about it? I’d never been in love before. Yet this not very beautiful, striking but not pretty woman, probably older than me, said sixteen words in a soft, elegant voice, and smiled, and I was in love. I loved her.
And she? Well, her eyes widened a little as she looked at me, then she almost frowned. Perhaps her hands were shaking as she took my umbrella, turned it right-side out, stashed it in a nice Art Nouveau hall stand, and in the same gesture ushered me into the house and took my coat and scarf.
Or perhaps she was simply wondering what sort of gaping idiot she had to deal with.
Dumbly in every sense of the word I followed her down a cream and grey hall with a gorgeous rug on dark red floorboards, a smell of freesias.
“Come through,” she said. “I’m in the back room, I’ve been working. Would you like a drink? We’ve got time before lunch.”
“Yes please.”
“Wine? Or – or – we’ve got almost anything. Coffee?”
“Wine. Please.”
By 'the back room’ she meant a huge family room built across the back of the house, a modern addition with a state of the art kitchen on one side, a dining area, open stairs running up one wall, and a back wall made entirely of glass folding doors. A verandah and a row of trees kept the worst of the rain off the glass, so it was quiet in here. Marian poured me a glass of white wine, and topped up her own glass from an open bottle, and although for all I knew she could have given me battery acid, I was dimly aware that the wine was delicious. I was more aware of the way her hands definitely shook and her eyes widened again as our fingers touched on the glass.
We sat down, facing each other on pale leather sofas. The rest of the room was taken up by the usual plasma TV, sofas, bookshelves and so on, and an old library table with a computer and piles of books and files.
It occurred to me I’d said nothing since I’d asked for wine. Trying to get what felt like my single brain cell to spark into action I remembered those letters, and held out the folder to her. For a moment she looked blank. I said, “The originals of those letters. The ones we emailed about,” and she shook herself as if to shed water from her hair.
Then, visibly switching on, she at once took them over to her work table and almost reverently lifted them from the folder and spread them out beside the scans I’d sent her. “It’s different when you see and handle original documents. It’s hard to explain why. It sounds a bit strange to say that something of the writer of the document stays in it – but it’s true. There was a particular document once I had my doubts about from the moment I actually handled it, and I was right, later it was proved to be false. Not a forgery, just full of calculated lies. What do you reckon about these?”
That gave me the chance to stand close to her, staring down at the letters. The smell of freesias came from her skin and hair. I wanted to touch her, and of course didn’t dare. After a moment all I could say was, “Well, nothing much. They’re just a girl chatting, aren’t they.”
“She was a good typist, a trained touch-typist.” She sounded disappointed in me. “That’s how the cops knew some of the letters that purported to come from her after she disappeared were fakes. I mean, in the days of manual typewriters you could tell how good someone was at typing.”
“Mmm, all those old crime novels where the detective can recognise what typewriter’s been used.” Apart from reading books like that, I’d been in several TV adaptations; for one, Mum had to come and show me and most of the cast how to use an ancient manual typewriter. Then, noticing it for the first time, I said, “Her writing, her signature, I mean. It’s so small and compressed. Tight. And there are places where the pen’s hardly touched the page.”
“Exactly! But then she was small and repressed, never allowed to express herself or be herself. Poor kid. May I keep these letters for a while, till I’ve finished my book? I’ll give you a receipt, of course.”
“Sure.”
Behind us an oven timer pinged, making us both jump. “Oh – lunch,” Marian said. “I forgot to ask if you’re vegetarian or vegan, if you are I can make some, uh, pasta, we’ve got a lot of, uh, different sauces, but if you’re not there’s what I like to call, uh, boeuf bourguignon but is actually beef stew with pretensions. At least it’s homemade. Organic.”
“Sounds fine. I mean, no, I’m not vegetarian. It smells lovely.”
Halfway to the cooker she turned back and gave me a smile of pure, amazed delight, and although every poet through the ages has put it better, my heart soared. Tr
ying not to trip over my own feet I followed her gesture to the table. It was laid with two places and all the usual fixings. I managed to ask if I could help with anything, but she shook her head, making that gorgeous hair fly around her face. Strands of it stuck to her forehead, and I wanted to lick it back into place.
She put three covered dishes on a tray, brought it to the table, went back for a bottle of red wine, opened it in one smooth movement and took the lids off the dishes. Beef-whatever-you-wanted-to-call-it; rice; green beans with slivered almonds. We went through the help-yourself-no-after-you, got ourselves sorted, and began to eat, chatting a bit as we did so. If she’d made this food, she certainly knew how to cook, for it was delicious. When I said so, she thanked me with a wry smile and said she quite liked cooking, but not every day. “I make a lot of stuff about once a week and freeze it. In between my brother makes stir-fries or pasta, or gets takeaway.” I was trying to think of a tactful way of asking why her brother was the only other one who cooked – I mean, this was a very big house, a family house, and vaguely I’d assumed she still lived at home to save money, or because like me she liked her family – when she went on, “Mum doesn’t like this house much. After Dad died she moved into a smaller place out the other side of town, near her sister. So I share this with my brothers; well, only one of them at the moment, the other’s working at Harvard for three years.”
“Why doesn’t your mother like it? Sorry, that was probably a tactless question. But it’s a lovely place.”
“It is, rather. Dad did a lot of work on it, for years. But Mum was sick of the whole Belinda Tate thing, she thought Dad was obsessed with it, almost dangerously obsessed. She doesn’t want me to write this book.” I suppose I looked blank, for she said, “Sorry – for some reason I thought you realised. This was the Tates’ house. But,” she hurried on, “Dad didn’t buy it because of that, he bought it because it was cheap. You see, after – well, after whatever happened, happened, the Tates never lived here again, and they couldn’t get tenants for it for a long time, and then only students, who trashed it – also there was an OD here once, in the early 70s. People thought it an unlucky house, and it was allowed to get very run down, it was a dump, and Dad knew a bargain when he saw one, and he bought it for eight thousand dollars in the 1970s.”
Missing Christina Page 16