Seeing Red

by Roger Ormerod

  ‘I’m not sure of your business,’ Paul added, ignoring his wife as she made a great performance out of taking her seat, smoothing her skirt beneath that pert little bottom, wriggling her shoulders, then sitting on the extreme edge.

  He sat to one side of me. Answering him meant speaking directly to Rena McGaffey, who set her eyes on me behind a pall of cigarette smoke and tried either to hypnotise or seduce me, neither to good effect.

  I explained that I was a friend of his sister, who was concerned about the circumstances of his father’s death.

  ‘I’ve ordered coffee,’ he said. ‘I hope that’s all right.’

  I nodded, wondering whether he’d heard me. It was his wife who answered.

  ‘We see nothing to question, there.’

  Texas, I thought, but I was going only on what I’d heard on television. The flatness of her tone did not necessarily indicate any lack of interest.

  ‘She’s staying at Viewlands,’ I told him, ‘and I thought she seemed upset that you haven’t been to see her.’

  Fortunately, the arrival of the coffee rescued him. He paid attention to that. His wife told me: ‘She never came to visit us, in LA.’

  ‘Los Angeles is some way away.’

  ‘We offered to pay her expenses. The complete package. She could’ve taken time out.’

  ‘She wouldn’t want to leave her husband,’ I offered, accepting a cup.

  ‘You reckon?’ she asked. ‘But — now you correct me if I’m wrong — but she has, hasn’t she?’

  Before I could ask how she knew that, Paul cut in quickly. I felt he was annoyed to have the conversation taken out of his hands, but nervous of retrieving it.

  ‘You came to talk about my father, not about Angie.’ He glanced at his wife. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong.’ The last words took on a Texan twang. I felt he’d heard them too often. She pouted at him, and sat back.

  ‘He visited you here...’

  ‘He did just that,’ she put in.

  ‘And my information is that he drove away in a distressed condition.’

  I was choosing my words carefully, hoping he’d lead me in. He was quite calm and unshaken.

  ‘That was a week before he died. I can’t see the connection.’

  ‘He didn’t mean that, honey,’ Rena said, wagging one finger at him.

  ‘Then what did he mean?’

  I got no chance to say, because they were man and wife, then engaged in what must have been an eternal verbal warfare, and I might not have been there.

  ‘You’re such a trusting fool, Paul,’ she told him dispassionately. ‘Can’t you see he’s a private eye, or something?’

  ‘I see that, I see it. So what?

  ‘He’s not goin’ to lay it on the line, lover, he’s gonna trap you into it.’

  ‘Into what, for God’s sake?’

  ‘The will, honey, the will.’

  ‘There’s no possible reason…’

  ‘You poor idiot,’ she said, smiling her affection, ‘he’s heard the old fool was going to change his will. He’s come to ask if you knew about it. ’Cause if you did, then you’d got a whole week to do something about it. Think about that. He came to ask if you knew.’

  ‘As you clearly did,’ I said firmly. ‘But I’m not a private eye or a dick or whatever’s the current jargon. I’m just a friend. No doubt you’ve got a beautiful alibi for the night he died, but I’m not even going to ask you what it is. All I’m interested in is his state of mind when you saw him.’

  She laughed shrilly and emptily. Paul blinked at me in apology.

  ‘When he came to see you,’ I repeated, not sure it’d got through. ‘His state of mind.’

  She waved her hand, dismissing herself from the conversation, and sat back as though exhausted by battling with two ridiculous men.

  ‘For instance,’ I said, making it easy for him. ‘Why did he come here?’

  ‘Because Rena wouldn’t go there.’

  ‘There was some...’ I thought. ‘...disparity of intellectual interests?’

  ‘I didn’t wish to, either. We were never close, father and me. You’ve heard how we parted — I’m sure you’ll have heard that. So all right, I didn’t do too well at Keele...’

  ‘Or Loughborough.’

  ‘There too. Hell, father expected everybody to be like him.’

  ‘Heaven forbid,’ she put in, staring at the ceiling.

  ‘I didn’t wish to visit my father at my old home,’ said Paul forcefully, each word spaced like heavy feet tramping on her interruptions.

  ‘Aw, come on!’ she cut in with disgust. ‘Tell the man. He didn’t want us. That’s the truth of it. You phoned. Tell the man how you phoned and he didn’t want you there. That’s a nice thing. A father who didn’t want his own son as a house guest. Will you believe that, Mr...’

  I said I would believe it. ‘So he came here instead. You persuaded him?’ I asked this directly to Paul.

  ‘And did I have to crawl!’ he said moodily. ‘But in the end he said he’d come and talk with me.’

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘we’re stuck in this God-awful dump. How far d’you have to go for a Hilton in your damned country, Mr...’

  ‘Kyle, Mrs Griffiths.’ I thought I’d save her the embarrassment of having to slide off it every time. ‘It must have been something important, that you’d crawl to get him here.’

  Paul gave me a bleak grimace. ‘I’ve been lecturing at UCLA. I don’t know how to put this...’ He glanced at his wife, who snorted and tossed her head. ‘But I’ve had my fill of American push and scramble, and between you and me a lecturer out there’s as important as the guy who slaps a hamburger under your nose.’

  ‘Christ, don’t start again,’ she pleaded. In England, she pleaded; in the States she’d have pled.

  ‘There’s the prestige, lover,’ he told her. ‘Mr Kyle, I’d heard there’s a chair of Philosophy coming vacant at Aberystwyth University. I’d be a professor at my father’s old University, Professor of Philosophy.’

  ‘Get him!’ she cried. ‘Now that’s what I call a hypocrite. Left home after a flaming row with his father, hates his father’s guts, has nothing but contempt for him — but he’ll fly six thousand miles for an effing chair of Philosophy in a dump that doesn’t even remember his father’s name.’

  ‘Now Rena, honey.’

  ‘Don’t give me that crap,’ she said flatly, lacing her language now with obscenities with the easy grace of a navvy. ‘What’ve you heard about this shit of a father of his, Mr...er?’ She compressed her lips, chiding herself for having nearly recalled my name. ‘The great man, huh? The University professor whose brilliant career was cut short? Don’t you worry your sweet ass about any of that, my friend. The guy was a washout. You ask me, he was a pain in the butt to the whole bunch of them, and they were glad to see the back of the old fart.’

  There was a brief, contemplative silence. She’d stopped merely to draw a breath, which she did through the length of one of her long, brown cigarettes.

  ‘But all the same, sweetness,’ cut in Paul, his voice like gravel, ‘it’s still a professorship.’

  It mollified her. It seemed she was a career woman, her career being the thrusting forward of her man. Perhaps when he ceased to move forward she might have to dispense with him for a more durable product.

  ‘And your father,’ I murmured, ‘how did he enter into this?’

  ‘It’s his old University,’ he said brightly. ‘He always claimed he’d been a friend of the Dean, and the Warden wasn’t exactly unknown to him. A word in the right ear...you know the way it works.’

  I knew. Paul’s use of his father was a sick reflection of Neville’s. But Neville’s had been blatantly claimed, and so was probably less serious than stated. Paul’s was complacent. He’d been childishly hurt at the outcome.

  ‘And I suppose he refused?’

  ‘We gave him dinner!’ Rena claimed. ‘A good dinner. Wine.’

  I wondered why she claimed t
hat. Would even a vintage Sauternes smooth away six years of separation? I wondered, too, about Neville. What had he done as he waited in the car? Where would he have gone for food and drink?

  ‘He refused to lift a bloody finger,’ said Paul, not so versatile as his wife with his language.

  ‘Do you know why? Did he say?’

  ‘He didn’t have to say,’ put in Rena. ‘I saw through him. I wasn’t going to let him get away with that. You know — all his big words and his prestige. He didn’t even know them, not to expect a favour. That’s the truth of it. The Dean said this, the Warden congratulated me on that! All breeze. He was nothing at that place. Absolutely nothing.’

  I looked at Paul, who was completely miserable.

  ‘If it’s any consolation,’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t think the appointments are made like that.’ I looked at Rena. ‘Whatever the system in the States.’

  ‘You gotta have leverage.’ She pronounced it ‘levverage’.

  ‘My father,’ Paul declared, facing the fact philosophically, ‘was a complete fraud. I knew, of course. But you don’t face these things. He was a professional, all right — a professional martyr.’

  I had to allow for the fact that he was naturally annoyed. But perhaps his father’s refusal to help had been based not on his lack of friendship with the Dean and the Warden, but on the depth of it. He’d not wish to strain it by implying that their influence could be so lightly bought.

  ‘It wasn’t the impression I’ve received from your sister,’ I told him.

  ‘She always did go round with her head in the air,’ he said distantly. ‘But she’d know — she was up at Aberystwyth at the time. He said he was in charge of the science projects — all he ever had was a section. And that he buggered up, tell the truth. He came down because of mother’s illness, but he’d have found some other excuse if that hadn’t been there. And from then on he never let up on claims of all the great things he’d have accomplished if it hadn’t been for mother. Believe me, he really revelled in it. Everybody spent all their time sympathising. And when Angie dropped out, oh the sighs and the sad shakes of his head! You had to know how much that had upset him, Angie’s failure. But what’d he expect? How’d Angie stand a chance, with mother ill, and all the time getting letters from him complaining he couldn’t manage on his own! All he needed was a housekeeper, so that he could disappear into his blasted lab and play with his instruments, and kid himself he was a great scientist, robbed by fate of his full potential.’

  Rena made a move, leaned forward, was about to speak, but he said: ‘For God’s sake!’ and she desisted.

  ‘He even managed to bugger up Angie and Evan Rees,’ he went on. ‘Evan didn’t see through him, thought he was the greatest. So Evan studied father’s subjects, and when Evan visited Angie at home too much, father put a stopper on it. Dedication, he’d say, dedication, my boy! The bloody fraud. And then we all had to suffer when it broke up, ’cause I don’t think Angie ever knew why Evan called less and less and grew colder and colder. You ought to meet Evan. Now there’s your dedicated scientist. That’s what father made of him — single-minded, and nothing exists that can’t be fed into a computer. But daddy claimed Angie had robbed him of what he’d expected from her. Oh, he didn’t complain to her, just to everybody else. What in God’s name had he expected, when he’d loused it up himself — Pierre and Marie Curie?’

  He’d really worked himself into a stew. And yet this man had asked his father for help, and been surprised not to get it.

  ‘And you?’ I murmured.

  ‘D’you think I wanted his crappy science?’ he demanded. ‘But he got me down for it at Keele. So of course I didn’t do a tap. Oh dear, the lamentations! He’d bred a moron. Another try at Loughborough. “If you knew,” he said to me, “what I’ve had to do to get you accepted!” I did a year, and dropped out. What’d he got to moan about? Wasn’t that what suited him? Everybody letting him down, but look how he carried on, against all odds, making world-shattering discoveries in his little lab! Christ, the hypocrite! And he couldn’t put out a hand to help me.’

  I was making a grand performance of filling my pipe, not caring to look too long at his hot, frantic face. It had stewed for too long in his mind, bubbling away. He was silent. I looked up. Rena was staring coolly into the fire, nearly putting it out. Her face was thin, the cheekbones prominent, her eyes slightly protruding. In a few years she’d be a harridan, and he hag-ridden, and both bitter, intent on destroying each other.

  ‘And of course,’ I observed, ‘you told him what you thought?’

  ‘It needed telling,’ he said defensively.

  ‘Do you think I’d let him leave, and think we didn’t know!’ Rena McGaffey Griffiths flared her nostrils at me. ‘I told him. He’d gotta know what a contemptible piece of garbage he was. I gave him the lot, and he knew right well what we thought of him. Correct me if I’m wrong.’

  I didn’t correct her. There remained nothing useful to ask, so I said I hoped Paul would get the appointment — hypocrisy is infectious — and that they’d continue to enjoy their stay, and drove away before they asked me to join them for lunch, which I didn’t think I could stomach.

  I had another sixty miles to drive in order to meet Phil, which gave me time to attempt to reconcile the opposed views of Gledwyn Griffiths, and eventually I came on a compromise that could fit the facts. Devotion from Lynne and Angie, hatred from Paul, esteem from Evan Rees.

  The way I saw it, he’d simply been a weak man, reaching for the stars and not even touching the branches of the trees around him. His family had been his trees. He’d expected so much from Angie and Paul and been disappointed because he could see them only as an extension of himself. Perhaps Angie, too, had not been a born scientist, but had not dared to say so. She’d maybe inherited from him only the desire not to inflict pain. Paul certainly had not inherited the scientific mind, but he’d fought back, though not with compassion. Angie would have been pleased to drop out of college. It would be a relief, perhaps, one she could disguise in her concern for her mother. And Evan would have to take the place of both of them in Gledwyn’s claim to posterity. Yes, he’d feel martyred, but he’d wield it gently. Gledwyn, I felt, could not bear to witness suffering. He’d claim a martyrdom to cover his distress over his wife’s illness. He’d use the lab as a retreat from it.

  Perhaps Angie realised this, and adored him for it. Perhaps Paul was too blinded by self-interest, and therefore hated him. Evan Rees, the only natural scientist of the lot, quite simply revered him for what Gledwyn had given him, and in repayment worked so hard that he lost sight of Angie.

  This speculation used up the whole of the journey, and even then I was not pleased with it. I’d stopped for lunch, wasting time because Phil had said he wouldn’t be able to reach Shrewsbury before six.

  It was nearer seven when he arrived. I was standing outside the café by that time, calmly smoking but with my brain tossing it all backwards and forwards. He made a bit of a botch of the parking, and seemed to me to be exhausted when he climbed out of the Sierra he was using. Then he saw me and his shoulders straightened, his old grin appeared, and his step became firm.

  ‘Hungry?’ I asked.

  ‘You bet.’

  There was a restaurant I’d located that seemed solid and plain, and therefore would suit Phil. We ordered steak and chips and peas, and he demanded: ‘What’ve you got?’ almost as though I was offering him a part exchange. I stared at the table and collected my thoughts.

  ‘What — d’you think — would persuade Angie to come home?’ I asked.

  ‘You know what. She wants to hear her father was killed.’ He’d baulked at the word ‘murdered’.

  ‘Then I’d better tell you straight out that I can’t see any chance of that. There’re motives, but damn it, Phil, the very circumstances...An accident? Last night I put together a reasonable and solid theory of how he might have killed himself in that car. It was good enough, though I says it missen. But
she rejected it.’

  ‘That’s Angie for you,’ he said with gloomy pride.

  ‘I can put together that final week of his, which was a complete disaster for him, and produce evidence that could lean towards suicide. Now tell me...what effect would that have on her?’

  He treated that as a rhetorical question, too obvious to require discussion. I’d never seen him looking so smart, in a businessman’s fine grey worsted and a blue tie. Usually you got him in soiled overalls, with hypoid all over his hands and a smudge on his forehead. It fools you, you know. Meant to. You get to thinking of him as a greasy, ignorant mechanic, so that when you settle on the shiny banger he’s flogging you, you think you’ve pulled a fast one on him. Technique. He was intelligent behind the show. Now he was twisting an ashtray in his fingers, tapping his cigarette against it every two seconds while we waited for our order. I thought at first he wasn’t going to say anything, but he’d only been arranging his thoughts, considering no doubt how much he dared to offer me. When he did speak, he seemed to have flown off at a tangent.

  ‘I knew him well, you know, Harry. For a while I seemed to live at that house. Angie’s mother was still alive, but terribly ill, and I knew it’d be...ridiculous to mention marriage at that time. But Gledwyn saw what I had in mind. I got the impression he was pleased — it was difficult to tell. A strange man. Has anybody told you how small he was? One of those men with bright eyes and a very quick brain. Chirpy, the way he walked, but if you came on him suddenly...how shall I put it...you got an impression of defeat, which he didn’t want anybody to see.’

  ‘He felt the world hadn’t been kind to him?’ I suggested. ‘Ah, here it is now. Let’s have a bottle of their plonk.’

  We did. He picked up on my question. ‘There’re people,’ he said, with a kind of contemptuous awe, ‘who’re basically kind. I’ve met ’em. They don’t like to upset anybody, just can’t face anybody else’s pain. I suppose it’s something to do with imagination. And there was his wife. I think her condition broke him up, and he didn’t want her to see it. It got to be an act with him, a cheerful kind of martyrdom, if you can have such a thing, only it was so obviously faked that you knew he’d have given his right arm...hell, I’m no good at this sort of thing.’