"You mean Rachel?"
"Come on, come on. Don't play games with me."
For all his bluster, I could have knocked this man down by simply stepping away from him. Of course, it meant we'd got the right John Ogilvy and I couldn't decide if this was good or not.
"You know Rachel?" I asked. And then it registered: he'd said ex wife!
"'Course I know her. Bloody tart shagged her way round this village like bitch on heat."
I swallowed hard, inwardly seething at the insult. "Does she still live in the area?"
"Course she doesn't. Do you think she'd dare show her face round here again?"
"I don't know," I said. "Why shouldn't she?"
By now, Eleanor had realised I wasn't with her and had backtracked, coming at the gent from behind, floating up quietly, as was her way. "Where is she then?" she asked.
He turned, startled by her voice at once so near and was then further startled by her appearance. "She,… . she,… . didn't send you?"
Eleanor smiled - a thin, sinister slit of a smile that sent a chill down my spine. "Would we be looking for her if she'd sent us?"
"I,… I suppose not."
"So, can you help us, or can't you?"
"You're looking for her?"
"Did we say that?"
"Are you the police? "
I brushed the newspaper from my chest. "Look, who are you?"
"I'm John's father," he said. "So just you keep away from him. He's had enough trouble in his life since getting tangled up with her."
John's father!!… and so hostile at the very mention of Rachel. There was a great deal I could have asked him, and much I could have learned, but the landlord intervened. "Come on then Harry," he said with a wink in my direction. Then he guided my drunken assailant out of harm's way. Eleanor locked eyes with me, a single brow curling up quizzically. "You don't like it when people call Rachel a tart, do you?"
The room wasn't as bad as I'd feared. It was at the top of a narrow staircase, right up in the attic with a great beam almost splitting it in two, one bed each side of the beam. The decor was plain but pretty and I could smell fresh paint.
"It's lovely," she said.
"You think we can manage? Really, I'm sorry Eleanor. You deserve better than this. I mean sharing with me."
"It's fine Tom. It's just for the night."
I left her to settle in while I went back down to check the car was okay. When I returned, I knocked and she said it was okay but I pushed my way in to find her peeling off her underwear.
"For pity's sake, Eleanor,… "
"What's up?" She reached round and carelessly unclipped her bra. "You'd better turn around for a moment then if you're shy. But if you recall you've already seen everything I've got."
While I waited for her to finish, I thought back to what she'd told me earlier, on the road, and then I realised the significance of the black - for now I knew she wore only black - black coat, black cardigan, long black dress, black tights and shoes, black bra, black pants - black lipstick and eye liner, black nail varnish.
It was more than a fashion statement, more even than, as she had once tried to tell me, a means of ensuring she was not invisible to people. It was perhaps a thing more deeply coupled with her sense of being,… and the loss of something she could never have again. I undressed in the bathroom and settled down in bed across from her. She was looking at me, smiling. Perhaps it amused her that men still found her alluring, and certain women too, apparently. But could it really be true that for all her warmth and compassion, there was no longer the slightest hint of anything sexual in her own psyche? Was it possible to cut it out, as surely as they had cut out her womb?
"This is stupid," I said.
"I think it's quite cosy. I've always thought we should get to know one another better."
"I mean what we're doing here."
"It's not stupid. It’s actually quite exciting. I had my doubts before, but now I think you'll find her. Then you can say what you have to say and move on."
"I'm not sure I want to find her now."
"You're afraid of something? Afraid of what she's really like?"
"The more I find out, the less she seems like the girl I remember. It doesn't change the way I feel. It just hurts more."
"We can't judge people from what others tell us, Tom. Those who only knew me from what they read in the papers twenty years ago would have formed a very bleak picture, wouldn't you say? A woman who murdered her own child?" She was quiet for a while. "There is one possibility here of course and I'm not sure if you've considered it."
"What's that?"
"How about instead of brushing you off those big, bright eyes of hers light up and she says 'yes'? You must admit, it is a possibility, and we know she's not with John any more."
"I'm not doing this to get myself a woman. I have a woman. I'm still married,… just about. Another woman right now would kill me. That’s not what it’s about at all!"
She turned over and switched off the light. "I know, but Rachel's not likely to understand that, is she?"
For the first time then I felt something and I stared up at the ceiling unable to believe the sudden shift in my feelings. Up until that moment all that had mattered to me, when the time came, was that Rachel proved my idiotic point and said 'no'. But Eleanor was right: it was a possibility. How about instead of brushing you off those big bright eyes of hers light up and she says yes?…
I lay back, stared up into the darkness, and my mouth ran dry at the prospect.
Chapter 15
In the morning, we came down to the bar to find it empty. In its midst stood a single table adorned with crisp linen and carnations and the most delicate china. To my mind, none of it seemed to sit well in a room smelling strongly of stale beer and last nights cigarettes but Eleanor smiled to see it, half turning to me, her lips parted in delight.
"Isn't it lovely? " she said.
"You really should get out more."
A matronly woman was hovering in the doorway to the kitchen. "Sit you down my loves," she said. "You'll be John's old school-pal then. I heard about you, last night."
"He didn't seem to recognise me."
"Well, I wouldn't read much into that. He was probably just pulling your leg - bit of a character is our John."
"I could see that. What happened to him?"
Our hostess was quiet for a while and then she sighed. "Clever lad was John. Wouldn't credit it now, would you?"
"And Rachel?" I asked, pushing my luck.
She gave another sigh. "People said she should have stuck by him. But what do they know? Well, you've only got to look at him haven't you? Bless him. I think I might have gone off the rails myself. Well,… enough said. What'll it be my loves?"
The damp night had given way to a thick fog that clung to everything. I emerged from the Dog and Gun feeling calm and refreshed, a feeling that vanished on turning the ignition key to find the damp had eaten into the Midget's electrics. It whined pitifully, rocking gently with each turn of the starter motor, but the engine refused to catch.
"Poor thing's still tired," said Eleanor.
I flipped the bonnet up and uncoupled the leads, then dried the plugs with my handkerchief.
"So what do you think happened to John then?" I said.
"Oh, any number of things can do that to a man."
"Could it just be the drink?"
"Something always causes the drink, Tom. Loneliness, despair. Anyway, you've still not told me what was in the box."
"Erm,… Can you give it a try, now?"
The engine fired and restored my mood at a stroke. "Okay, let's go. The sooner we find him, the sooner we can get back home. Dad will probably have strangled Stevie by now."
"You underestimate Jack."
"I know. And he asks for it sometimes. To be honest I just want to spend some time with them."
But of course, a part of me was afraid and wondering if I should go on. In making contact with John Ogi
lvy this had become more than a game I played in my head. For the first time in my search, I had begun to touch people, people who had known Her and I was gripped with a sense that there was no going back, that sooner or later word would reach her,..
… .that I was coming.
I drove slowly, walking pace almost on account of the fog, and barely able to see the kerb as we crawled our way along the little lanes. Eleanor navigated from the map we'd had drawn for us and eventually we found ourselves on what we reckoned must have been the Ely road.
"This is it," she said. "Just turn in here."
After a long muddy drive down a potholed track, we came upon the ghostly grey silhouette of a sagging farmhouse. It looked ancient, seventeenth century perhaps, like something from a movie set. There were dogs barking, not the wiry collie-dogs I was used to from the farms back home, but rottweilers, a pair of them, great ugly brutes yanking fiercely at their chains - not the sort of dogs renowned for their finesse with sheep, nor people.
Eleanor froze when she saw them and I wasn't for moving either. Then a big angry looking woman came out of the house and cowed the dogs into silence with her sharp tongue before greeting us with an abrupt "Well?"
I wound the window down a fraction. "We're looking for John Ogilvy."
The mention of his name didn't do much to improve her mood. "So am I," she scowled. "He didn't come home last night. He's probably lying in a ditch somewhere between here and the Dog and Gun."
"He was in there last night," I confirmed. "I'm Tom. I was supposed to meet him for a chat but he was a bit,… ."
"Drunk?"
"Well,… distracted,… ."
She thought for a while, running a suspicious eye over both of us. "He never mentioned you."
"We were at school together," I said. "I was in the area, so I said I'd drop in for a chat."
"He usually rolls home about ten but I can't guarantee he'll be in much of a better state than when you last saw him."
"Would it be all right to wait?"
She tightened her lips, a gesture I likened to drawing the string on a purse. I felt we were not particularly welcome. Perhaps John's father had telephoned her,… warned her to be on her guard.
"Come from up north have you?"
"That's right."
"Well, all right then. You'd better come in. Dogs won't touch you. They're softies really. I'm Pauline, his wife."
"Erm,… thanks."
And as we followed her inside, I felt Eleanor pinch my arm. "Told you it would be Pauline," she whispered.
On closer inspection, I could see there was money here. Someone had worked hard at renovating the place, but without sacrificing that old world look, and there was a classic Porsche peeping from the barn - early sixties, I thought and worth a fortune.
Inside, the kitchen was modern yet designed to co-ordinate with the low beams and the rustic feel of it all. "Great place," I said, unable to reconcile what I saw with the derelict of a man I'd seen last night - unless all this was hers, that he'd married into it after Rachel had left him.
Pauline sat us down at the table and made coffee. She seemed to have softened a little in her manner, but I sensed that hard edge was never far away and I took it as a warning to tread carefully with her.
"I knew he went to school up north somewhere," she said. "But he doesn't talk about it. In fact he doesn't talk about much these days,… at least nothing that makes any sense."
Eleanor took a copy of the photograph from her bag and laid it on the table. "He's changed a lot," she said. "Tom barely recognised him."
Pauline gazed at the picture for a moment but didn't work up much of an interest, even when I pointed him out. Rachel also escaped her gaze, and seemed to confirm my belief that she must have undergone a dramatic transformation as well.
"Had a bad time, has John," she said.
"I've sort of lost touch really," I replied. "But I remember he was a clever lad,… best in our year."
"Oh he was very clever. He went to Cambridge, you know?"
"Really?"
Pauline seemed proud of this distinction, so I played upon it and gradually she began to respond. "He tutored maths there in the end. But that was before the accident, of course,… "
"He had an accident?"
Pauline sat across from us and glanced at the long cased clock by the door. "He used to travel over there every day. He had a motorbike. Stupid things, motor bikes. He was doing seventy across the fen when he hit a tractor - foggy morning, bit like this."
"Really? Poor bloke!"
"Nearly died, he did. Might have done too for all his first wife could have cared."
"Oh?"
"She was from up north, too," she said and there was a sneer, for surely nothing good could ever come from up- north. "He brought her down with him. Selfish cow."
"I think I remember her," I said. "What was her name? Was it Evelyn?"
"Rachel," she corrected. "Couldn't handle it - I mean he was a vegetable for years. Me? I lived across at Hampson's Farm in those days. I used to just pop in and see if there was anything I could do - ended up nursing him while she was off with some fancy man of a night - well,… what did she expect?"
"So they lived here then?"
"That's right - not that it was theirs, not then anyway. It belonged to Tom's aunt. She was getting on a bit and they lived with her. Course when the old girl died, John got everything."
I felt a sudden excitement, and for a moment all I could think was that She had lived here. She had sat at this table, and the image of this old farmhouse must have burned itself deep into her memory. "When was all this?"
"Oh, fifteen years ago now, maybe more,… all water under the bridge as far as I'm concerned."
Fifteen years! Rachel had been gone from this place for fifteen years!
"She just up and left him?"
"Went back up north. She was working for a firm over in Norwich. Bexleys. They were expanding and they opened a factory round Salport, or somewhere like that, so she took a job up there. Best thing I'd say and good riddance. She knew her face wasn't welcome round here any more."
"What sort of job did she do?"
"She worked on a machine, as far as I know."
And I was thinking, Salport? Salport? I'd never heard of it. Did she mean Salford? or Southport?
"Bexley's did you say?"
"They make bottles." She glanced at the clock again and I sensed her patience was on the wane - too many questions about Rachel perhaps and not enough about John. "I don't know where John's got to," she said. "What if I gave him your number?"
"Sure. Thanks for your time. I'm sorry to have missed him."
And then we were outside with the dogs barking and Pauline yelling at them to be quiet. I took a last look at the farm and I shook her hand. "Many thanks. I do hope he gets home all right."
Then I took Eleanor by the elbow, and we were off.
"What's the hurry," she said.
"I just wanted to get away. I didn't want John to turn up suddenly and us get stuck with him."
"Charming! But what if he rings?"
"Rings?"
"You did give Pauline your number?"
"Well,.. I may have got some of the digits muddled up when I wrote it down,… you know what I’m like?"
The fog had lifted by now and a watery sun was filtering through. As we turned out onto the Ely road, I saw him ambling along in his shirt sleeves. He'd lost the box and as we passed him, I saw fresh bite-marks all over his face. I didn't acknowledge him and he didn't recognise me. I wondered then how it was that our histories could once have been so bound up and yet leave us, twenty five years down the line, as total strangers.
Eleanor reached into her bag, pulled out Rachel's picture and stared at it for a long time. "How much do you reckon that place was worth?" she said.
"Half a million, maybe more."
"A lot of money."
"Sure."
"And she gave it up, rather than share her
life with someone she no longer knew - someone who looked like the person she loved, but wasn't there any more."
"You're putting it as delicately as you can, and I’m grateful, but basically she ran off and left him to rot."
"On the face of it, yes. And on the face of it, Pauline's an angel, taking on what she did. Or is she?"
"You mean she did it for the money?"
"Why not? If you ask me, I'm with Rachel. It must have been terrible for her."
"Thanks," I said and I meant it, because the bitterness Rachel had left behind had been getting to me. The good people of Lipton had seen only the one side, the darker side, the side whose surface is never scratched by gossip. But Eleanor had pictured her sitting at that kitchen table, a lonely and frightened woman, perhaps crying into the night and not knowing what the hell had hit her.
It was self defence I know but this fitted more my idealistic image of her, an image that had been increasingly tarnished in recent weeks, and I clung to it.
Eleanor leaned over and rested her head against my shoulder. "What now?"
"Home by tea time."
"I mean about her."
"Nothing," I said. "It's over."
"You can't mean that, surely - there's Bexley's Bottles."
"But so much could have changed in fifteen years - it seems a bit foolish to expect that if I find Bexley's Bottles, I'll also find her. She could be anywhere."
"You've come this far. You should see it through."
"No, it's getting too dangerous. Like you said last night, what if she is looking for someone? What if she does say yes? I'm not ready for another woman. I shouldn't even be thinking of it."
"I thought you weren't."
"I'm not. I wasn't,… it's just,… "
"What?… "
How could I explain? It was already clear to me that the closer I came, the less Rachel resembled my image of her. It was to be expected of course, but in continuing to pursue the fantasy it had also begun to dawn on me that I would eventually see the image destroyed. Is that what I wanted, I wondered? Or was there a part of me that desperately needed to go on believing in it? To go on believing in someone who didn't exist any more. Someone who had never existed outside of my own imagination.
The Road From Langholm Avenue Page 11