by Roger Curtis
‘I suppose they’ve all been forewarned?’ she said.
‘Well, no, actually they haven’t. Most don’t even know, so it’s quite a test for you.’
Some of the faces seemed familiar. It took her a while to realise that they must have been at the opening of Brian’s plastics unit at Beckenham. Perhaps they were other consultants or, more likely, benefactors. She thought about her resolutions and set herself the task of determining this for each of them; but at the end of the evening she would have to admit she’d largely failed. The difficulty seemed to lie in their peculiar reticence, but that was at odds with their charm. These, it seemed, were the discreetly rich of the type that Mark’s organisation preyed upon. She reflected on how far Brian had come in the six years or so she had known him: his work, his house, his garden, his… his wife? She looked across to where Alice was being ignored by a diminutive and vociferous Arab and trying, in defence, to make conversation with his strikingly beautiful female companion. What she had long suspected was true: Alice did not quite fit.
Sarah-Jane walked to the edge of the terrace. Beyond the balustrade of weathered sandstone stretched a garden whose conceptual perfection was matched only by the palette of colour from the masses of rhododendrons and azaleas, and the velvet closeness of the turf. Beside the terrace an immaculate swimming pool was tucked in close to the house. Her own garden, larger by far and tended by two gardeners, could not rival it.
She felt the light pressure of a hand against the small of her back. It was the man who had been avoiding Alice.
‘Your friend Brian has exquisite taste, has he not? In all that he does, I believe. Mirabile visu. It is an honour to meet you, Mrs Preston. I am Imran Khasoni.’ He came only to her shoulder. Licking his lower lip before each utterance, only the choicest words were allowed to flow.
‘Brian? A perfectionist, yes.’ She would try her luck. ‘Are you a doctor too?’
‘Shall we say an associate with a particular interest in surgery.’ The same reticence channelled the conversation away from himself. ‘You will forgive my impertinence, Mrs Preston, which I fear is a failing of my race, but you have had a recent accident. May I ask as to its origin?’
Had the questioner been more to her liking the answer would have tumbled out, for she was aching to give it to someone; she told him all the same.
‘Then you are a woman of great fortitude. I truly wish for the miracle that will restore your beauty.’
Sarah-Jane was mildly amused. ‘You believe in miracles?’
‘As a devout Muslim I must believe in them.’ He gave her the most subtle of winks. ‘But I happen also to believe in the refinement of human skill and technological innovation – and their promise for the future. Your face will not always be so, Mrs Preston. You have my word on it.’
‘Mr Khasoni, I’m grateful for you reassurance.’
He answered only with a slight bow, as if a piece of business had been successfully transacted, then withdrew into the gathering.
When darkness fell a score of soft yellow lights turned the garden into a fairyland of arching boughs and dark cushion-like shrubs. Sizzling animal juices from the barbeque, exotically spiced, were carried in the gentle breeze.
They had all been kind, these people. Without knowing her, they had asked and listened; none had turned away. Then, gradually, one by one, they left the garden and the terrace. She noted with pleasure that all took the trouble to say goodbye. Curiously, Alice did not seem to command the same respect. To her, as hostess, their farewells were perfunctory.
But then, Sarah-Jane thought, that was how it had always been with Alice.
The garden was deserted. Alice appeared with two mugs of coffee and they sat at one of the tables on the terrace.
‘Please don’t turn the lights off yet,’ Sarah-Jane said. ‘I want to squeeze the last drop from this evening.’ Suddenly she was puzzled. ‘By the way, where were all their cars?’
Alice laughed. ‘I don’t know much about them, but I do know they don’t drive themselves. Their chauffeurs arrive at agreed times and off they go, back to their pleasure fortresses, or whatever.’
‘You know, Alice, if I didn’t know better I would say this evening has been arranged just for me.’
Brian, overhearing, sat beside her on her good side. ‘I have to admit you’re partly right about that. We’d planned to have it for some while but brought it forward a bit when we knew… well… that you were likely to come. We felt it would help you to mix with people who weren’t – how shall we say – influenced by appearances.’
‘That’s a bit odd. I would say they were people who cared very much about appearances.’ She thought she saw Brian give a little shrug. ‘And they really didn’t know?’
‘They didn’t know. Oh, except one.’
She pinched her arm for not thinking to ask before. ‘Not your friend the psychologist?’
‘Astute of you. He thought it was neither time nor place to dwell on such a dismal subject. Tonight we look forward, not back.’ He reached for a bottle of wine and placed it on the table. Uncharacteristically he began to fumble with a corkscrew. He was holding something back.
‘Brian, if there’s something I should know you must tell me.’
‘Not tonight, Brian,’ Alice said. ‘Don’t spoil it.’
‘Look, you two. If you know something, you’re going to tell me.’ Sarah-Jane’s hollow laugh was nothing if not threatening.
‘Shit, Brian, now you have to.’
‘Okay, Sarah. It was a chance discovery, out of the blue. And nothing to do with our psychologist friend – in fact he doesn’t know. I’ve been going through the correspondence on the new unit at Beckenham, mainly to check that there weren’t people we’d forgotten to thank.’ Sarah sensed a pause for effect. ‘Amongst the letters were some from fundraisers.’
‘From one fundraiser in particular, Brian means!’
‘Alice, please! The typeface – and indeed the paper – was the same as for your letter.’
‘There’s no particular significance in that, surely. Typewriters are common enough objects.’
‘Correct. But I had the texts compared by an expert, under a microscope. The flaws in the print matched exactly. It was the same typewriter, Sarah. There can be no doubt about that.’
Sarah-Jane’s heart beat faster. It was information she needed badly but was afraid to hear. ‘Tell me where.’
‘The fundraising office. The Adams’ house. Jack Adams’ house.’
‘I don’t believe it!’ She was withering under their searching eyes, then rallied. ‘What must I do?’
‘Perhaps if I were to speak to Mark. I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to worry about it. Leave it to us.’ Brian’s eyes narrowed in a way that reminded her of their very first encounter on the wards at Catherine’s. ‘And you’re quite sure there have been no others?’
‘Who would want to harm me now?’
Alice saw her to the car; Brian had unaccountably disappeared.
‘By the way,’ Sarah said, as she climbed in, ‘who was the glamorous female with the greasy Arab? She seemed rather… well… distant from the proceedings.’
‘Her name’s Nicole. Beyond that I really have no idea. I presume one of the companions.’
‘Companions?’
‘Surely you haven’t forgotten the Massingham Tower? Your husband runs it!’
Driving home, Sarah-Jane thought of Maia, standing by the fire in her diaphanous white gown, waiting for an opportunity to please. For a brief moment she regretted that her parting with Edwin had been so final.
By the time she drove into the Dell the conflict in her head had taken control. There was a mismatch, somewhere. If nothing else, it told her she must look further afield than Jack Adams, whatever he might have said to her. But what else was ther
e? Only the dubious sighting of a stranger on the golf course by a hostile neighbour. A painfully considered hundred metres past her own gateway she turned into the driveway leading to the clubhouse.
In the failing light she noticed three cars parked suggestively close at the perimeter of the tarmac. The movements within were barely discernible, but enough, for a few seconds, to divert her thoughts. She parked away from them, picked up a magazine and stared at it, not seeing, while she summoned courage to walk onto the fairway. Others did with their dogs at odd hours, so that was no big deal. She rummaged in the glove compartment for the field glasses that had been a present from Mark two years before when he had tried, unsuccessfully, to interest her in racing. She had no plan, but there was a compulsion to take them.
The path along the trees climbed steeply, then levelled out to follow the same contour as that occupied by the houses on the opposite side of the Dell. Most of them were visible now only as confections of twinkling lights sporadically visible through the trees. Even in moonlight she had no difficulty in locating the place where Mrs Fowler had claimed to have seen the man with the binoculars.
The clarity of the only lighted window visible was unnerving. Her hands trembled as she raised the field-glasses to her eyes.
There were figures within the uncurtained frame. One was low down, a head just visible above the sill in the position of someone sitting before her dressing table mirror. The other, muscular and powerful, towered above. The first rose and seemed to turn, and the two became an amalgam of passionate life-surging flesh. The mass rotated and heaved, then fell below the level of the sill.
She was not surprised, but it was not what she had expected, or sought. The hurt was that the two of them – for the lesser was certainly Marguerite – could not have cared much about her return.
One of the two policemen at the gate began to tell about the security measures. He seemed to be spinning it out and she became impatient. Then, in her wing mirror, she saw the other slowly retreat into the bushes. She thought she heard his voice, speaking as if into a telephone. An explanation was not difficult to imagine.
‘Officer,’ she said casually, ‘who could your companion possibly be phoning at this hour of the night?’
In his position she too might have handled it as a joke. ‘That would be telling now, wouldn’t it? Good night, Mrs Preston.’
He was standing at the top of the stairs with the same bland and – as she now knew – concealing smile with which he had once charmed her on the terrace above the blue lagoon.
‘You’re back early, darling.’
‘It got quite chilly outside and everyone left early.’
‘By the way, Brian rang.’
‘About Jack? So he doesn’t trust me to tell you myself.’
‘It’s not that, Sarah-Jane. He just thinks you are not ready for a mental assault so soon after the physical one.’
‘But you’ll have me in the witness box all the same, won’t you?’
‘I think it’s inevitable, whatever we do. You want him punished, don’t you?’
‘I want the man who did it caught. That could be a different matter.’
‘I don’t quite follow. Anyway, I’ve already told the police. They’ll be round again in the morning.’
‘So for the moment we can all relax?’
The sarcasm was lost upon him. ‘Then let me get you something. Scotch?’
‘Maybe, but not just yet.’ She passed him in the doorway, brushing his cheek with her hand, and went directly to the dressing table. ‘That’s funny. My pots seem to have been moved.’ It was a lie, but worth telling.
‘That’s not possible.’
‘Why ever not? Marguerite might have been tidying up. Except that she’s no inclination to tidy anything unless she’s asked.’
‘I wouldn’t know. I don’t even know whether she’s about.’
Sarah-Jane walked to the bed and sat on the edge, stroking the coverlet. ‘You know what I’d really like?’
‘What?’
‘For you to make love to me. Now. Just like before my accident, as if it hadn’t happened.’
‘Sarah-Jane, it’s a lovely thought, but I’m tired. I’ve had a tough day.’ He put his arm around her shoulders. ‘This business has taken it out of me too, you know.’
‘It’s not because of my appearance?’
‘Sarah-Jane, no. Good lord no.’
‘That’s all right then, isn’t it?’ She got up abruptly from the bed and left the room. From the corridor she called back, her voice shrill and cracking. ‘When you next lie to me, try opening the window. Then the smell won’t give you away!’
She was already beginning to break the rules she had set herself.
Marguerite found her in the kitchen brooding over a mug of Ovaltine. Milky drinks were less painful in her mouth than tea or coffee.
‘I’m sorry, Miss.’
‘So he told you I’d found out?’
‘I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t to hurt you.’
‘He’s an attractive man. Don’t worry. I understand.’ She patted the seat beside her. ‘Here, sit with me for a moment.’
Marguerite looked on incredulously as Sarah-Jane spooned some of the grey-brown powder into another cup.
‘Have you tried this?’
The girl flicked her black hair aside in disgust and laughed. ‘I shouldn’t think so!’
‘Marguerite, listen carefully. When the man who did this to me passed you on the stairs did he remind you of anyone we know?’
‘No. Well, no.’
‘No? Then would you say he knew where he was going.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘So might have known the layout of the house. Perhaps have been here before?’
‘Yes. I suppose.’
‘Can you ever remember Jack Adams coming to the house?’
‘Once or twice, never upstairs.’
‘That’s what I think too.’
It was the first time Sarah-Jane had slept in the guest bedroom. Of all the rooms this was the most cosily decorated: a kind of museum in miniature dedicated to the cult of Laura Ashley. The soft furnishings had the substance of puff-balls. The quilted bed invited diving and engulfment.
Was it the girl’s naivety that stopped her from being angry? Or was there something deeper in this developing ménage à trois that had begun to excite her more than it repelled. No, Sarah-Jane, she told herself, it’s that your authority in this household has become assailable and you are beginning to accept your position can be compromised. Yet, had either one of them – Mark or Marguerite – appeared in the doorway at that moment she knew that her spirits would have soared.
The sound of a television somewhere in the house suddenly ceased. The chimes of two longcase clocks called midnight in unison, as Mark had fixed them to do. She set her alarm clock, forgetting that bleak grey mornings were never a time for invited wakefulness. Then she turned off the light.
Her thoughts dwelt on the events of the early evening. She tried to place the characters that had peopled the Putney garden in an intelligible context. They seemed hardly real friends of Brian, still less of Alice. They reminded her of a Francis Ford Coppola film in which the warring Mafia factions might come together at a brief moment in time, like at a funeral, to recognise a bond that was greater than the urge to kill one another. Was the real clue Khasoni’s beautiful companion, singled out by her looks and her composure, and because all the other guests were men? If I were not so charitably disposed, she told herself, I would think that the girl had been put there to humiliate me: as my mirror image, but in a perfect form. That was not quite right though, for no-one had shown the slightest inclination to slight her. Quite the contrary in fact, and to a surprising degree. No, the girl must have been there by chance, as a companion �
�� in the true Massingham sense – of the Arab.
It was right what Alice had snidely hinted at: she was not party to her husband’s business. She wondered as to its origin. He had never concealed his work from her exactly; rather, she had rarely been interested enough to ask him. Yet, at first, there had been an overwhelming fascination, and she had nearly sacrificed herself upon Edwin’s desecrated altar to satisfy her curiosity. That first prying visit to the Tower had been followed by only one other, when, as Mark’s new girlfriend, she had gone in the guise of a companion. ‘You will enjoy yourself,’ he had said with his usual worldly laugh, ‘but keep your wits about you, don’t drink too much… and keep your nightie tied firmly to your toes.’
The mask, she remembered, had been offered in advance, for faces were not allowed to show during the entire evening. She had chosen one of a faun that was neither threatening to others nor constructed so that it required more than a simple adjustment to allow her to eat and drink. Over her scant underwear she had worn a white gown edged in silk the colour of her hair. And under the indiscernible dome that passed from the deep blue of evening to the speckled blackness of night they cavorted and danced around the indigo lagoon. It did not concern her that clothes were shed, or that flesh touched flesh without discrimination or favour.
At one point she had approached the rock face at the end of the lagoon, and peered through one of the apertures giving access. Behind there was another cavernous space, but darker and occupied by less frenzied and more engrossed figures. A girl clad in the same white gown that Maia had once worn emerged from the shadows and led her gently away with a smile that told her she was not permitted there, or at least not yet. Back in the throng she was suddenly bored. She looked for Maia and could not find her; then, at that moment, the fascination ended. ‘You know why it was, Sarah-Jane,’ Mark said afterwards. ‘It’s because without your face to complement it your body could be rivalled by some of those other women. Can you imagine what it means to them, the ones without faces that unlock doors? It’s like being pitched into paradise.’ He’d drained his brandy glass and got up to go. ‘But I’m not surprised you didn’t enjoy it.’ There, as she now realised, the chapter had closed.