Killing a Unicorn

by Marjorie Eccles

  ‘Don’t you ever get fed up, all this being on the move?’

  He shrugged, suddenly cagey. ‘Don’t have much choice, do I? Goes with the territory. And anyway, I wouldn’t want it any other way, it’s the life I’ve chosen, after all. I’ve no responsibilities,’ he added, ‘it’s not as though I was a family man.’

  She watched him as he took a nonchalant swig of coffee. Was that the way the wind was blowing? Could it be that Jilly was pressurizing him to settle down, give up this killing pace and take a nice teaching job somewhere? He was sounding defensive, slightly guilty, as if he’d been through all this before. Don’t, Jilly, Fran warned her silently, that wasn’t the way to go with Jonathan, any more than it was with Mark. It wasn’t an easy life he led — and nor, of course, by extension, was Jilly’s — but did he really have any choice, did anyone, with his gifts? What alternative was there to this peripatetic life he had to live, while spreading his shining talent round the world? To deny it would be wilful, shameful. She should talk to Jilly, Fran decided.

  ‘Fran …’

  Here it came. They’d skirted around the main issue, the reason he was here, for long enough. No way was it possible to avoid talking about what had happened. It was going to dominate all their lives for a long time to come, the ripples of it were going to extend far beyond the present, that she could already see. But no, she still didn’t want to talk about it. Before she could head him off, however, he asked, ‘Fran, is everything all right between you and Mark?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She’d been too quick. He was looking at her steadily, reading her mind. It was a disconcerting habit he had. ‘He needs his backside kicking.’

  ‘Most men do, at times.’ She stood up, smiled brightly and began to stack the tray. ‘You really should be on your way, you know.’ She pushed her sleeve up. Damn, she must have left her watch at the office again. The clasp had proved faulty once before, so she’d slipped it off for safety, and then forgotten it. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Never mind the time, and put that tray down,’ he ordered, ‘there’s no rush. I’m not leaving you on your own tonight. I’ll doss down on the floor somewhere, save you making up a bed. Someone should be with you, after a shock like that.’

  She read into his words the implication, however unfair, that the person with her should have been Mark, but she dismissed this as paranoia, and to her relief, he dropped the subject, having seen, perhaps, the stubbornness on her face. He held up his hands, as if in surrender, and smiled. Mark’s smile, Alyssa’s smile. And suddenly, to her shame, his kindness broke down her defences, and the tears she hadn’t allowed herself until then began to pour down her face. He let her have her cry out, not attempting to touch her, until she’d finally mopped her face with a scrabbled-up handful of tissues from the box he found for her in the bathroom. Only then did he reach out and take her hand.

  ‘Better?’

  ‘I suppose. But Jonathan, how bloody all this is! What could have possessed Bibi to think of climbing down that way to see me? If she’d changed her mind, I would’ve driven up for her.’

  ‘What do you mean, changed her mind?’

  ‘She rang me at work this afternoon and said she’d something she wanted to talk over urgently with me. I was going to drive round and pick her up. But when I got in, I found a note to say she couldn’t make it — perhaps because of her headache coming on.’ Bibi’s headaches were legendary — migraines, that prostrated her, sometimes for a couple of days.

  He thought for a moment. ‘So maybe she began to feel better, and decided to come down after all. When she rang you, did she say what it was she wanted to see you about?’

  ‘No.’ Fran felt upset, recalling the odd, almost frantic note, in Bibi’s voice — which at the time she’d put down to her own imagination or a bad phone line. ‘I think she might have been very worried about something though, Jonathan.’

  He frowned. ‘How did she get the note to you? And why send one, anyway? Why not just ring? Or leave a message on the answerphone?’

  ‘I expect she asked Gary Brooker to drop it in on his way home. I’d probably left the office when she decided not to come and see me, and my mobile would be switched off in the train. Maybe she didn’t leave a message because — well, she knows I don’t always pick messages up immediately,’ she admitted. ‘Then after she’d sent the note perhaps she felt better but didn’t want to mess me about, fetching her, and thought it wouldn’t be a problem, getting down the path.’ She stopped. She was sounding garbled, even to her own ears, but she thought he’d know what she meant. ‘If only she hadn’t tried!’

  They were silent, both visualizing Bibi, preoccupied with what was on her mind, not being as careful as she might have been. One false step —

  ‘She couldn’t swim, you know,’ Fran said, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘She was scared of water. Chip wanted to teach her at the same time as he taught Jasie, but she hated the idea, wouldn’t hear of it. It might just have saved her life, if she had.’

  ‘You could never tell Bibi what to do, though, could you? She’d smile and nod and then do exactly as she pleased — or as her stars told her, more likely. Jilly’s right, behind that beautiful façade she was stubborn as a mule.’ He paused. ‘Amongst other things.’ There was an odd, almost bitter note in his voice.

  It was interesting, Fran thought, that he’d used the word ‘façade’. Interesting, too, that he and Jilly should have been discussing Bibi. His face had tightened, and she wondered, for a wild moment, if Jilly had had reason to be jealous of Bibi … but no, Jonathan, of all people, would never cheat on anyone. Yet — there was always a secretiveness, something deep hidden under the surface, a streak of melancholy in him. Hidden for the most part, but surfacing from time to time.

  ‘But it wasn’t just a façade, Jonathan, was it? She was lovely — good. Though I think I know what you’re getting at.’ She didn’t want to remember that blank, frightening, glassy look of Bibi’s. ‘No wonder Chip was in love with her, wouldn’t any man be? She was so …’ Her voice trailed off. ‘Why are you looking at me so old-fashioned?’

  ‘Sexy,’ he said. ‘You thought Bibi was good, too? And sexy?’

  ‘Well, yes.’ What did he mean by that word ‘too’?

  ‘Why is it that women couldn’t see it? She might have looked sensational, Fran, but most men, I’d be willing to bet, didn’t find her attractive. Not in that way. She was OK, beautiful and all that, but sexy? No way! If it wasn’t for Jasie, I’d have sworn — well, think about it.’

  Fran digested this for some time, and presently had to concede he might have a point. Thinking of all the women she knew who were generally regarded as being sexy, beauty didn’t actually seem to come into it all that much. She said eventually, ‘She was a bit of a mystery all round, wasn’t she? The way she never spoke about her life before she came here. Nor does Chip talk about it, though I suppose he must know.’

  ‘Which makes it even more of a mystery. Big brother’s not exactly one for keeping things to himself.’

  Indeed not. Chip was transparent as the day, naive in a way. Not cut out for secrecy — or that’s what one might have said before the advent of Bibi. But it had become obvious, of late, that he had been covering something up - at least that was what Mark thought, saying he had his suspicions as to what sort of thing that might be. All that money he’d been throwing around lately, his talk of speculations, Chip had better be careful. But if Mark was right, what could that have had to do with Bibi? Money had had less meaning for her than anyone else Fran could think of.

  Chapter Five

  Alyssa, deeply asleep in her big downy bed, is dreaming she is young again. Stepping out down the promenade at Brighton, arm-in-arm with her father, who wears a light-coloured suit, a jaunty hat and brown and white co-respondent shoes. She has on her New Look outfit, cherry-red, with a long, full skirt and a peplum on the jacket, high-heeled black suede shoes, and a little feathered slip of a hat which cu
rves round on to her cheek. Her hair is short, gamine-cut like Audrey Hepburn’s. Her skirts swirl as she swings along in a cloud of Coty L’Aimant. She thinks she’s the bee’s knees.

  Oh, but they’re a handsome couple! Tall and dark, making heads of both sexes turn, she with her youth and vitality, and he with his mature, devil-may-care charm.

  No wonder they’re smiling. She is, in fact, blazing with happiness, and he’s happy because she is. They are on their way to meet her soldier boy, returned to be demobilized after finishing his tour of duty in Cyprus, and whom she is to marry in six weeks’ time and live with happily ever after.

  It’s not her soldier boy whom they meet when they get to the hotel, however, but his adjutant, Captain Conrad Calvert, who tells them that Lieutenant Crabtree, waiting to board the tender at Limassol which would ferry him across to the troopship bound for home, has been killed in a stupid accident with a runaway trolley on the dockside. It is, in fact, Captain Calvert whom she marries — but later, several years later. And as for living happily ever after …

  Her eyes flew open, and she found herself bathed in sweat, her heart thumping with some unremembered dread. The night had been hot and sticky and the moonlight was lying across her face because she’d failed to draw the curtains before she went to sleep last night — Lord, no, this morning! After two it had been, what with Chip’s late arrival. That’s why she’d been dreaming, the moonlight on your face does that. She used to leave the curtains open deliberately, before she was married, so that she could dream of Stephen Crabtree, but it never worked. She had to wait many years to dream of him, until the disappointment of her life with Conrad really came home to her.

  In the moon’s radiance the room looked haunted, the gauzy curtains stirring at the open window were transformed into grey wraiths, here and there were dull, wicked gleams of silver and cut-glass. The dressing-table mirror reflected the room in a long, unfamiliar perspective, making it look even larger than it was, and its shadowed corners deeper, as though they held secrets and impressions of all the people, long dead, who had occupied this room, this very bed.

  The lovely dream, and whatever dread had come to break it, had dispersed and separated into the shadows like curdled cream. But darkness lay on the edge of her consciousness, clamouring to be recognized. She kept it there, she wasn’t ready for it, whatever it was, not yet.

  Instead, she tried to hold on to the cheerful image of her father that the dream had left her with, he was there in the room with her, large as life, exactly as in that old photo she still kept, the one the street photographer took of them walking towards him arm-in-arm, so confidently smiling, on that bright, doom-filled June day.

  A silly dream, with no sense to it, as dreams often are. To begin with, her father had never owned a loud suit like that, hardly ever wore a hat, and certainly not those vulgar co-respondent shoes, which must in any case have been out of fashion for donkey’s years by then. But — a strangled laugh escaped her — he might have wanted to wear them, or he might even have done so in his youth. Like the Duke of Windsor, he was always a natty dresser. Though never quite the gentleman.

  He’d always had aspirations towards her becoming a lady, however, which was why he had — well, yes — bought Conrad for her. No getting away from it, that’s what it was, another of his transactions, an exchange, buying and selling like any other commodity — his name, and an introduction to the county set, for her father’s money. Conrad hadn’t taken much persuading — and to be fair, her father had had no idea what Conrad was like then, any more than she had. They’d both been taken in by his good looks and easy manners, and what they’d seen as thoughtfulness in delivering personally that terrible news about Stephen Crabtree. She later came to realize that was Conrad all over — he’d been going to Brighton, anyway, and it had been less trouble than writing a letter. But at the time, she’d been deceived by the good impression he made, the charm he could exert in spades when he wished, her father by his plausibility. Sharp and acute in business, never missing a trick, Jack Rathbone could be very naive in matters of personal relationships.

  Her mother had died when she was a very small child, and Jack had been mother, father and friend to her while she was growing up. She could hardly bear the sorrow when he died of a stroke, shortly after her marriage, and she’d continued to miss him most dreadfully ever since. He was the man she’d loved more than any other man in her life, more even than any of her sons, which was saying a very great deal, certainly more than Conrad Calvert, who’d done his best to squander every penny made, however questionably, by his wife’s father. The day he’d been found at the foot of the stairs, having fallen down, dead drunk, if not the happiest day of her life, was the beginning of another, richer one.

  It was no use, she was wide awake now and there was no chance of dropping off to sleep again. She rose and pulled on her old yellow Jap silk kimono, its embroidery snagged and rubbed through years of wear, padded about the room in her soft slippers, boiling her small electric kettle for a cup of strong tea. When it was ready she took it to the walnut table in the wide bay window and sank into the velvet armchair, pulling up a footrest and settling a soft cushion behind her back. The older she grew, the more she appreciated small comforts, daily routines.

  The hot tea brought her to life, and as the day lightened and her dreams faded, she was forced to let her mind open to what had happened last night. Nothing short of calamity, coming out of the blue, totally unexpected. Chip, she thought, oh my poor boy! How was he going to cope with this terrible thing? She tried to reassure herself: her firstborn had much in him of his grandfather — his optimism, his cheerful outlook on life, a lot of courage. He wasn’t great on ideas, you always had to tell him what to do (which had made his firmness about Bibi, his ordering everyone to let her be, all the more astonishing) but he was blessed with luck, again like Jack, who’d had the Midas touch, being able to make money without ever having a steady, recognizable occupation. Even if it had sometimes been, Alyssa had discovered as she grew older, perhaps not always in ways that were quite above board. Too old to fight in the war, he’d dabbled in the black market and made his pile, regardless of any illegality. But people winked at it, they had a sneaking admiration for barefaced cheek, getting one up on the authorities, and nearly everyone had bought the odd thing or two illegally during the war years, and afterwards, too, when the shortages were somehow harder to bear.

  But poor Chip, she thought again, hardly able to bear the remembrance of his unhappiness last night. Even her sympathy couldn’t reach him, he’d shut her out for the first time in his life, he who’d always been the easy one of her three to comfort, his childish despairs soon forgotten. And of course, one mustn’t forget poor, poor little Jasie. And only then was it ‘poor Bibi’. But then she was, after all, beyond sympathy now.

  Alyssa had known from the first, when Chip brought Bibi home, that her arrival signalled some sort of disaster, though as time went by, and nothing happened, her fears were allayed a little. Bibi was gentle, and sweet, if also frustrating. Moody and elusive. Fey was the word that came to mind, a true Pisces.

  There, she was doing it too, thinking in that silly way! Just like Bibi herself, looking for signs, portents, omens. Because of course, one didn’t really believe all that stuff about stars and planets and birth signs ruling one’s life — though it had to be said, Bibi had almost succeeded in convincing her there had to be something in it. Apparently, there was a conjunction of planets approaching — Cancer in the Third House or something equally incomprehensible — that made the time auspicious for Alyssa to make decisions about her future. The timing was so uncanny, given how her thoughts had been running recently, she had been impressed despite herself. She decided not to say anything to anyone about her feeling that Bibi herself was worrying over what her own stars foretold.

  As far as her own personal affairs went, Bibi had seemed more secretive than ever lately. But then, she never gave anything of herself away. You could
neither persuade nor push her. All the same, you had to admire her spirit — like Alyssa before her, she had picked herself up and started over when things had gone against her.

  She had never been made privy to what had caused Bibi’s marriage to go wrong. An invisible barrier was immediately erected whenever anyone got within a mile of that subject. Jasie might have been able to enlighten her, but her own sense of decency and what was right had prevented Alyssa from quizzing a child, who might well have his own miseries on the subject, simply to satisfy her own curiosity.

  Today was one of the days when the garden regularly opened. Alyssa contemplated her course of action and decided, without too much heart-searching, that it would have to remain closed for the time being, if only as a mark of respect. At the back of her mind was a certain relief: she’d be glad of an excuse. The demands the garden made on her were becoming more and more of a burden, despite the help she had, especially from Jane, and dear Humphrey She took less and less pleasure in it, its necessary commercialism, and its relentless demands. You couldn’t afford not to be on your toes all the time when you had visitors walking around looking for signs to enable them to feel superior about their own gardens: every weed must be rooted out, every rose deadheaded, dahlias could not remain unstaked or climbers grow rampant. It must look like a Gardeners’ World garden every day. Wonderful, simply to garden for her own pleasure! She’d known for a long time that she’d have to give up Membery Place Gardens as a commercial proposition sometime, and she was beginning to think it should be sooner rather than later. It had served its purpose and made her financially secure for the time she had left (never mind that Chip thought it was down to him that she was able to keep it going — it did no harm to boost his ego by letting him think this. He had enough on his plate, helping to maintain the house.). Perhaps Bibi had been right, now was the time. It wouldn’t take much persuasion for Alyssa to agree to Humphrey’s suggestion that she should marry him and leave Membery. Which wouldn’t please Jane Arrow one little bit. She’d been throwing out hints for years that Alyssa was more than welcome to share her own house. Well, there was no question that it would be infinitely more agreeable to share with Humphrey, notwithstanding his stipulations. As she grew older, Jane was becoming very trying. The boys just ignored her when she became too overbearing, and went their own way, but Alyssa couldn’t do that. Jane had been with her too long, helped her so much and in so many ways. She couldn’t just be snubbed. All the same, she remained a problem to be solved, and the earlier the better. Meanwhile … Alyssa sighed. She would need to be strong again now, face this other crisis in the family, see to it that life went on despite the intrusion of death — so untimely, so unfair that one so young should have been taken. She couldn’t begin to think how she was going to manage it.