‘Fancy meeting you here.’
Her face betrayed the last traces of her phone call, but quickly settled into surprise instead, and then a smile.
‘Bloody hell, Fergus. How’d you do it? Have you got sonar or something?’
‘Nah, I was just sitting having a quiet time over there, before we met. Nicer in here than out among all those. You’re early yet.’
Her eyes lost focus, although her lips retained their sharpness, and when she spoke it was, at first, only a little above a whisper.
‘Yeah, I like it here too… And yes I am early. Got my shit together quicker than I thought. You know how sometimes the thoughts just fall into the right order without much help from you? Everything in the right place, no scratching around looking for the right word, the idea that makes it all, just… right?’
He had no idea what she meant. To him, thoughts were always where they should be; the words that came to mind were usually the right ones and, if they needed that much wrangling, they were probably the wrong ones anyway. Instead, he thought about how he approached a piece of wood: sometimes, it would take him weeks of working away at its margins before its true nature would emerge, and other times he would feel its purpose as soon as he picked it up, the salt still crusted into the grain.
‘Anyhow, we’re here now. And we’re going that way. Lunch.’
Ruby pointed back across the churchyard and set off, the little bounce of her stride appearing soon after. Fergus followed, catching her at the crossing on a main road, and as they made their way down the hill towards the river he shortened his steps to match her stride for stride. Conversation did not come easily: he wanted to ask about the phone call, but knew that that would be to pry, would reveal that he had been watching her without her knowledge. It was none of his business anyway. Thoughts bounced inside his head, each apprised for suitability.
‘I meant to ask you, Ruby. About Bridget. About that scar…’
They had reached another crossing and, as they waited, Ruby gave him a helpless glance before turning back to face the traffic with a sigh.
‘I don’t know, Fergus. Really. None of us do. I suppose we all knew not to ask. And the longer we’ve lived together the less likely it is that we’ll ever ask. It’d be weird now. Like we’d just noticed. Honestly, Fergus, it’s best you don’t say anything. Ignore it. If she wanted us to know she’d tell us. Sometimes it’s best not to know everything about someone.’
‘But she would’ve nearly died, a cut like that. And it’s that straight that it can’t have been an accident. How can you not ask someone about something like that? You said that the bairn’s father had been a bit of a bastard… do you think that..?’
Ruby’s laugh was as much of release as of amusement. She touched his arm gently with her hand and Fergus resisted the urge to look at it there, her fingers nestled in the indentations created in his sleeve.
‘God, no! Steve is many things, but he’s soft as muck. Besides, they were still together when I met Bridget, and she had it then. You’ve met her. Do you reckon she’s put up with someone who’d tried to slit her throat? Come on. The light’s changed.’
The land fell away towards the water. Above the sky opened up, crisp blue streaked and cross-hatched by high cloud, some grey, some white. Across the river stood a tall tower that rose from a vast brick bunker; between it and them, a narrow bridge curved across the river. Boats plied the river’s course, gliding on or wrestling their way against the current.
29
The knife was loose in his hand, the handle damp with steam and dish water. Fergus was unused to preparing food and the initial thrill had already worn off. He was only two carrots into his allotted task. He surveyed the irregular disks already sliced. He wanted to ask Bridget to approve his work before he continued, but she was busy with meat and string and herbs. From the living room, laughter, then a swinging of doors and the catch of slippers on carpet.
‘How’re the workers getting on?’
Ruby looked brighter than she had any right to be. It had been gone three by the time the housemates had returned from the bar, still buzzing, and while the others had gone to bed, she had sat up with Bridget in the kitchen while she prepared her post-performance meal. Fergus had not heard her go to bed before he had drifted into uneasy, dry-mouthed sleep, the product of which had been a flat, monotone dreaming, devoid of anything but grey menace. Outside, the sky was much the same.
‘We’re getting there. Should all be ready in time.’
The oven door clanged shut and Bridget ambled over to where Fergus stood motionless, queasy. She looked at the chopping board and shook her head in disbelief. Gently she displaced her apprentice and took up the knife herself, chopping at an alarming rate and dancing a little as she did so.
‘Go in there and play with the boys, will you? I think I’ll be able to struggle on without you.’
The women exchanged smiles, before Bridget returned to the carrots. For a moment, Fergus watched the knife flash in the kitchen’s fluorescent light and thought of Bridget’s throat, of blood and pain and fear. Ruby’s hand on his elbow steered him from the kitchen and out into the hallway.
There were still thirty five minutes before Steve arrived and the house was already tidied; lunch was in hand. Fergus had been surprised that, despite the ending of their relationship and their inability to live together with their child, Bridget was willing to cook a meal for Steve on alternate Sundays and to sit and eat it with him. That Steve was a friend of Matt’s provided some explanation of the arrangement, but that raised still more questions. He had decided that they should probably, on balance, remain unasked; that Bridget’s life demanded the not asking of questions.
‘Morning! Has she dispensed with your services already? Rule number one around here is don’t volunteer to help Bridge cook. Best just to keep your head down and wait to get fed.’
Matt’s left leg dangled over the arm of the chair, while his right was tucked under him. On his lap wallowed a laptop computer, his fingers poised lazily over the keys. A little way off, the cat sat staring at the imposition. Jacob was by the window, staring out into the lingering gloom: the mist was thicker today and had still not cleared. There was no sign of sunlight.
‘Miserable out there. So dark. Can’t believe it’s gone midday already and I can barely see. In April, too. Doesn’t look like it’s going to clear anytime soon, either.’
‘Jacob, shut the fuck up will you, you miserable bastard? It’s just a bit of cloud. No one is interested.’
Matt reached behind him and launched a cushion in the direction of the window. It missed its target and bounced from the glass back across the floor. The cat scurried out of its way, leaping ultimately into Ruby’s waiting arms. She said nothing, but scowled; Jacob shrugged his innocence, while Matt returned to whatever he was doing with his laptop.
‘You know, your man Maltravers really doesn’t make himself easy to find. I mean, there’s nothing, no Twitter, no Linked-in, no Facebook, nothing on Google, not even a 192 listing. It’s a long time since I’ve seen someone with a profile as low as this. OK, there’s the gallery’s site, but that doesn’t tell you much. Lovely looking, but pretty useless. Just a contact form and some pretty pictures of old stuff. The address, but we know that already. No association with him, that’s for sure. Either he doesn’t believe in computers or he’s keen to stay very private indeed.’
Matt paused. He was used to being able to find his way around the internet and was really very pleased with himself once again. Certain that the stage had been set for his revelation, he shifted in the armchair.
‘But, you see, if you think about things a little differently and approach the subject a little more obliquely, you find out the most fascinating things. So, your Mr Maltravers is going to become much more well-known when his father dies. Here.’
Fergus took the computer. His eyes flicked over the screen for a moment, before he began to make sense of what was written there. It was an ent
ry in the listings of prominent families of Britain; the main entry was for a Simon Maltravers, the sixth viscount of somewhere in the south west of England, but at the end, under a faint emboldened heading, were listed his wife Frances and only son, Nicholas.
‘What? Fergus? What does it say?’
He sat on the sofa and read again the entry, hoping that in so doing the implications would become clearer. Impatient, Ruby poured the cat onto the floor and sat beside him, so close that her cheek pressed against his arm as she read.
‘It seems that we are up against a peer of the realm. Don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. But it is certainly a thing.’
‘What Jake is trying to say is that I am a genius. And that we at least know this Maltravers bloke is real. That’s a start, right?’
Silence followed, each trying to determine what kind of a start it meant. The stillness was only broken by the heavy sound of a buzzer from the hallway. A loud expletive and some clattering followed from the kitchen, then a call for Ruby. Matt slid somehow from the armchair into an upright position and over to the window, where he gave a little wave to someone outside.
‘Yep. That’s them. Early. She will not be happy. Only Steve can cause trouble with women by being early.’
Steve picked the last piece of carrot out of the dish and dropped it into his mouth. His son sat in his lap, clasping a small metal truck that he ran backwards and forwards across the table cloth. Its engine’s grumble bubbled from between Lou’s lips. Father and son seemed oblivious to each other, but when Steve tried to slide out from under him, Lou squealed in displeasure at the separation, his eyes following his father’s retreat to the sofa before slipping from the chair himself to follow.
Bridget watched them. For the thousandth time the thought arose and nagged until her conviction that it just wouldn’t work squashed it back into its lair. She sighed and slowly caught up with the conversation at the table.
‘Look, a man like that, he’s not going to be bothered by threats, or fooled by any cunning plan. No, his weakness is going to be his fascination with the exotic. So, you just have to make yourself exotic.’
Matt stifled a snigger but this only perplexed Fergus more. He had no idea what Jacob was talking about. Ruby too was quizzical. There seemed to be so few courses of action open to their house guest and the suggestions had become ever more unlikely. Steve had advocated a break-in, but Bridget had made him apologise, to assure Lou that he had only been joking, that burglary was not something good people even considered. At this point, Steve had become disinterested in the conversation and had started chasing the scraps of food left over from lunch.
But Jacob’s suggestion, that Fergus should try to make the return of the stone the more interesting outcome, seemed the most plausible by far. Maltravers already had enough money it would seem, and he would likely have enough pieces of ancient stone, wood and metal littering his life; if only a way could be devised to convince him that the act of reuniting the stone and the island were itself part of his collection, then maybe Fergus could return home other than in failure and disgrace.
‘It doesn’t happen often, but I think Jake could be onto something: you can’t buy it, you can’t steal it, so maybe you’re going to have to charm it back. And the only thing we know about him is that he collects rare things. What could be rarer than you and your quest? Give him a big part in that, let him own that, instead of the thing itself.’
There was a momentary silence and Ruby stared at Fergus with a steady insistent gaze. She was sure now that, if only she could hold onto this slippery idea, something could be done to put things right; restitution could be made. But despite Jacob’s nodding and upturned palms, and the murmurs of recognition, Fergus was no clearer about what exactly he should do. While instinctively averse to criminality of any kind, he had much preferred the clarity of Steve’s intervention than this jelly-like idea that was seemingly grasped by everyone except him.
While Ruby waited for him to find his own way to comprehension, Jacob grew impatient.
‘What you need, Fergus, is a good story. Something about the island and the importance of the stone, something superstitious, something mythical. Or failing that, something historical. It’s Columban, yeah? Well, give him an opportunity to be a crucial part in that history. I’ll ask my dad, after Evensong, see if he’s got any ideas.’
Jacob smiled warmly, then stood; he scraped the debris from his plate into an empty dish and stacked it onto the others; these he carried to the kitchen, before disappearing to his room to change. Maybe it was because he didn’t really know what the Tower of London signified, but Fergus had been less surprised than Ruby had expected when he had heard that Jacob’s father was chaplain there, and that his son sang in the choir every Sunday.
‘It’s a bit Temple of Doom, but it might work. Good as anything, I suppose.’
With that, Matt gathered his wrap of tobacco, his papers and lighter and headed off to the back door; Bridget rested her hand briefly of Fergus’s forearm before she too withdrew to join her son and his father by the window. She and Steve ignored each other while both played separately with the boy. Back at the table, Ruby shrugged to Fergus and began to gather the remains of the meal. He helped her, as he helped his mother back home, more in a statement of willingness that in helpfulness itself.
30
Tuesdays were the worst days, he decided. Mondays at least had a trace of novelty, a sense of new beginnings; Wednesdays marked a midpoint. Without leaning forwards from his slump, he flipped the photos over in the folder once more, hoping that something would reignite his interest. Tuesdays. Only on a day so lacking in energy could the contents of a minor Anglo-Saxon hoard, ripe for acquisition, hold such little allure. He pushed the folder across the desk and spun in his seat to face the cabinet behind him. There was more diversion in the way the late morning light glanced off a simple curve of ebony than in his work. He picked up the female figure from its shelf, felt its smooth suggestion lead his fingers along its length and watched the white reflection move fluidly over its contours. Worth practically nothing, of course, just a few hundred pounds. But it was pretty enough. He felt its weight as he bounced the piece in his left hand. It would make a nice present, for the right person.
His father always said that, with antiquities, aesthetic pleasure was a secondary consideration, especially if one intended to make a living in the field. He held the same views about women: his mother had been a solid, sensible match, and his father had always ensured that his mistresses were kept well away from the ancestral home, much as he did with the art works he actually enjoyed. Nicholas had learned both lessons well. While he was yet to marry Harriet, he had already mastered sufficient discretion to enable him to continue to enjoy the company of women beyond the monotony of matrimony.
Professionally, he had taken to keeping those pieces that pleased him, regardless of value, in his private collections. Like this African woman. He turned its smoothness in his hands once more, and appreciated the angle of her ankle, which suggested she was about to spring into the air, poised. Then there was that Scottish stone. It looked like nothing so much as an oversized and malformed hot cross bun, but he had found it strangely beautiful. Perhaps it was the smoothness of its lumpy surface, burnished by all those hopeful, hateful hands over the centuries; the contradictions it carried, its ambiguity.
It wasn’t stealing, of course, to take pieces that had been acquired through the business into his personal possession. He was the business after all: his money, his discernment, had built the business. This gallery, much as this foot-long piece of carved ebony, were his possessions. And the point was to possess them and either to take pleasure in their possession or to profit in their disposal.
This Tuesday had gone on too long, and offered neither profit nor pleasure. With the sudden energy of decision, Nicholas Maltravers rose to his full height and took three precise strides to the slender hat stand in the corner of the office. There he rummage
d in the pocket of his jacket for his cigarettes. With a shake of his head, he surveyed the room to ensure he had forgotten nothing of importance, before slipping out of the gallery unseen.
Fergus was early, of course. He had woken sharply. His dream still throbbed in his temples, not yet slowed by wakening. As it receded into its own realm, he understood without the need for interrogation that it had been an anxious dream, and that anxiety continued as he recorded his night’s adventure in his note book; it continued as he had showered, dressed, greeted the cat, greeted Ruby, and eaten a small breakfast of bread and soft cheese. The tea had quivered in his cupped hands. The weekend’s mists had gone and the sky over the green was blue, striped only by the first of the day’s contrails. A gathering breeze raked the infant leaves of trees surrounding the church, in premature anticipation of autumn.
He had not wanted to be late, so had taken the tube to Bond Street station and retraced the route Ruby had shown him. He had hoped to lose himself a while, in order to erode some of his surplus time, but it was surprisingly easy to find his way through the broad streets lined with houses jammed together in unbroken rows. Although most of the buildings were as good as identical, there were still landmarks by which to navigate, fragments from when he had tagged behind Ruby’s determination: the fright-faced painted lion, rampant in its cornered niche; the slinking fox sprayed across the foot of a forgotten wall.
Without his anticipated detours, Fergus had arrived at Half Moon Street forty five minutes before his appointment with Nicholas Maltravers. The blank glass looked no more inviting than it had four days previously, despite the now present lamp light glowing at the back of the gallery. It was unlikely, Fergus concluded, that disturbing Maltravers earlier than arranged would enhance his chances of success. He reasoned that it would be best to await his appointed time in the café at the end of the street.
The Cursing Stone: a gripping mystery and family saga Page 17