‘Where are we going?’
‘To the lavatory, in case there’s a window.’
I opened the lavatory door and pushed her ahead of me into the tiny space. There was an outer section, just large enough for condom and sanitary-towel machines, a basin, and a vanity top under the wall mirror. Beyond, a door led to the lavatory itself I checked it for a window: there wasn’t one.
‘I’m not walking out past Clive.’
‘We can wait until they go.’
‘It’ll be hours, I expect. Once he’s got to a place, Clive doesn’t like to leave.’ She began to cry again, presumably at the tender memory of Superlimpet Clive.
It wasn’t a moment for sympathy. With sympathy, she’d dissolve into wailing screams, I’d have to carry her out in a fireman’s lift, and even Clive would glance away from Cassie’s eyes and break off his minute-by-minute account of his triumphs at nursery school to watch our progress. The whole street would see. Probably even the dope dealers would stop trading and the undercover policemen stop watching them. And if there were any journalists—
I up-ended my bag on the vanity top, emptied my jeans pockets on top of the pile, and said: ‘That’s it.’
‘What?’ sobbed Polly.
‘That’s what we’ve got. To tart you up, so we can go home.’
Polly’s shaking fingers poked through my organizer, credit cards, money, boiled sweets . . . ‘I can’t do anything with this.’
‘Yes, you can. Think. It’s your job. It’s what you’re good at. Start with the clothes. What can you do with the clothes?’
She looked down at herself, at the worn, baggy jeans and the loose T-shirt. ‘Nothing,’ she said helplessly.
‘Your legs. You’ve got to be able to use the legs. ‘They’re twenty feet long, Polly, they’re luscious and brown and shapely – How about rolling up your jeans?’ Her huge, empty eyes were fixed on me, and I saw the second her brain clicked in.
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, picking up my army knife. ‘Does this thing have scissors?’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Where do I cut?’
She showed me. I started-sawing through the tough material of the jeans legs seven inches above her knee. ‘Is this going to be short enough?’ I asked as I cut.
‘Of course not,’ she said impatiently, ‘then we roll them up to my buttocks – hurry up, Alex, I need to get started on the T-shirt.’ When the second leg fell away she unlaced her trainers, took them off, and kicked the spare denim into a corner. ‘I need your socks,’ she said. ‘And your belt. Give me the scissors.’ She pulled the T-shirt over her head and started hacking away at it. We were standing close together There was no other choice in there. I could smell the soap I’d washed her with, and the room-smell of drains overlaid with air freshener which seemed to suggest a much worse smell underneath. But I didn’t mind, because she was beginning to come back. She was beginning to be alive again.
‘String. Or ribbon,’ she said. ‘I have to tie up my hair.’ Her hair hung, limp and ageing, straight to her shoulders.
‘Strips of the T-shirt?’
‘Could. They’ll look raggy and they won’t grip, and I need colour near my face. How can you not have any make-up in your bag?’
‘I sorted through my change and fed it into the machine. ‘Condoms,’ I said when the packet came clicking out. ‘Different colours. They’ll grip.’
‘Great. Trim them . . . Use the pink.’ I clipped away at two pink condoms while she tied the now much shorter T-shirt just under her breasts and splashed her chest with water. ‘Good,’ she said when the cotton clung. She put on my thick socks, then her trainers, and rolled the socks down so they were thick against her ankles, and made her lower leg seem even slimmer, her calves more curved.
She knotted up her hair with deft twists of her fingers. ‘Now, the face.’ She looked at her face in the mirror and I looked with her. She was chalky pale and her eyes, undefined, looked insignificant. ‘Matches,’ she said. ‘Burn some matches.’
‘What for?’
‘Eye-liner. Don’t burn them too far’ I struck, held, blew out match after match. As I finished each one she took it from me and worked on her eyes.
When she’d finished we both looked at her face again. Her eyes were huge, dark, defined, but her face and lips looked even paler, especially against the warm honey-brown of so much exposed body-skin. ‘I’ve got lip salve,’ I offered. She put it on and then started biting her lips. I watched the colour surge back. ‘The cheeks are easy,’ she said. ‘Just before I go, I slap them. Nearly ready, Alex?’
I piled everything back into my bag – my things, her discarded bra and jeans-legs – while she threaded my belt through the waistband of her jeans and fastened it tight. ‘Hang on a minute,’ I said, and went in search of David the gorgeous waiter. I paid him for the food and drink we hadn’t used, and then explained the situation, very briefly. ‘Walk her to the end of the road, round the corner, out of sight, OK?’
‘Sure,’ he said eventually. He wasn’t quick, but he was beautiful, and Clive wouldn’t be measuring his IQ,
I opened the door to the lavatory again. ‘Face-slapping time,’ I said. ‘Here’s your prop,’ waving a hand at David, tall, stupid, eye-catching.
‘Holy shit,’ he said as she took his arm. ‘You used to be Polly Coyne.’
She still was. I grabbed the cheese and ham croissants – I’d paid for them, after all – and followed Polly and David at a safe distance. She strutted her stuff along the catwalk of Westbourne Park Road, every eye in the place following her, including Clive’s. He half stood up: Cassie put a hand on his arm, pulled him down again. Polly looked up into David’s face, sharing an intimate joke. They might have been lovers for weeks.
Round the corner we thanked and dismissed David and set off for home. ‘It’s all your fault, Alex. You shouldn’t have made me come out like this,’ said Polly.
I’d been feeling modestly pleased with myself, for thinking of the condoms and David, and the whole tarting-up procedure. My beltless jeans kept sliding down around my hips and, without socks, my boots rubbed. I didn’t say anything. ‘Now you’re being patient with me,’ she said. ‘I can’t stand it.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
The one-sided row went on, more or less, until I waved Polly off only ten minutes before Claudia was due to arrive. I trailed disconsolately round the flat trying not to remember that if my client hadn’t summoned me to France on a whim, I’d have been packing for a weekend with Barty.
I hadn’t told Polly about the change of plan because she’d have used it as fuel for renewed attack on me, and because she might have cancelled her visit to her parents. Better, if she was going to fall apart, that she’d be with them.
Even if I had no grip at all on what was going on at Rissington Abbey, at least I was nearer to understanding what was wrong with her. If I hadn’t liked her so much I’d have seen it sooner.
Ever since I moved in next to Polly and our friendship began, it was always her being kind to me. I’d got used to it. She was the perfect one, I was the gauche outsider from the wrong side of the tracks. I didn’t mind that role. It was nearly true. So I played it, and Polly was Lady Bountiful. What I was beginning to see now was that she couldn’t cope if she wasn’t the one giving all the time. She couldn’t take.
She didn’t want to go back to her family because she didn’t want to take from them, she didn’t want their sympathy. She’d chosen Clive because she always wanted to be in control. Now that had broken down she couldn’t cope with it. Perfect Polly had gone. Perfect Polly, wounded, was a vulnerable flailing bitch. I hoped our friendship would survive it. I didn’t mind her being a bitch. Everyone has the right to be a bitch sometimes. I liked her, if anything, rather more. She’d been too good to be true, before.
But her outburst must have been humiliating for her. People find it difficult to forgive you for watching them behave badly. There was a lot of water under the bridge with Polly and me: I
hoped there was enough to wash away the aftertaste of this.
I looked around for the Rissington Abbey promotional video I’d asked her to watch. She hadn’t mentioned it. I expected she hadn’t even bothered to run it. I’d better have a look at it, I thought. It would be something mindless to do, and at least Claudia would shut up through it. I didn’t want her discussing the case, asking questions I couldn’t answer, and disturbing my thought processes. And as far as I knew videos didn’t contain additives so she couldn’t preach at me either.
I took a superficial look through Polly’s flat but I couldn’t find it, and after all it didn’t matter very much. I considered starting work on cleaning up her flat, but my heart wasn’t in it. I’d have time on Sunday, and I’d do it then, when her abuse of me wasn’t ringing quite so loudly in my ears.
Back in my own flat, I packed for Toulouse. Only a toothbrush, clean underwear, and two clean T-shirts in case we had to stay overnight.
Then Claudia arrived, with her stepfather Dieter.
Dieter was in his forties, small, dark, dapper, bespectacled, and self-important. His scornful glance didn’t think much of my flat. Not expensive enough, probably: you wouldn’t have got much change out of seven thousand pounds for his pinstripe suit, Bond Street shirt and tie, Rolex watch, and hand-made shoes. The aftershave probably cost a bomb as well. It filled the air around him, soaring effortlessly over Claudia’s now-familiar young girl’s perfume – Chloe, perhaps, or Lagerfeld.
He didn’t think much of me either. Who was I? What was I doing with his stepdaughter? Where were we going, the next day, and who would we see? When would we be back?
I kept my temper, just. I didn’t point out that I was doing Claudia a favour, however much she paid me. I didn’t point out that at least, unlike Alan (who he approved of) I wasn’t trying to get into Claudia’s pants, or that I knew several people who had poncy flats and regular jobs with big corporations and were still incompetent, or crooked, or both. I raked up impressive acquaintances for references, wrote down their names and phone numbers, gave him a cup of coffee, and nodded appreciatively while he told me how important he was and therefore how important Claudia was.
I didn’t gather exactly what he did, though it seemed to be connected with banking. I switched off when he started in on the ERM and the weakness of the pound, and the lack of moral fibre and plain economic common sense of the British. I didn’t even chant Two world wars and one world cup, doodah, doodah, though I was tempted.
After he went I smiled at an embarrassed Claudia. ‘I am sorry,’ she began. ‘He’s trying to look after me, at the moment. It’s a difficult time for him.’
‘Why?’
‘My mother’s new lover is an Englishman. Richer, and taller, and more attractive than Dieter, Besides—’
She hesitated. I hadn’t known her hesitate before. ‘Besides?’ I prompted.
‘He desires me. It is difficult, with stepfathers.’
‘How many have you had?’
‘Just two.’
‘Do they both desire you?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘And do you desire them?’
‘Oh, no. I am a virgin.’
The logic escaped me. Myself, I’d been a very randy virgin, and so had my mates at school. Also – ‘What were you doing with that kid at my party then?’
She blushed. ‘Oh, just – messing around. I wanted Alan to think I was unfaithful to him, so he would not mind me leaving—’
‘That poor red-headed kid. You held out on him all evening?’
‘But of course. I am a virgin.’
I left it. Of all the unanswered questions I had on my plate at the moment, Claudia’s sexuality had Priority Z. ‘Tell me what arrangements you’ve made for tomorrow,’ I said.
The arrangements seemed OK. We were on the British Airways 8.25 a.m. flight to Toulouse, due to see the Baron at 2 p.m., and we had reservations in the Wanderotel, Toulouse, in case we had to stay over. She’d brought maps. She wanted to show them to me and explain the route, but I wouldn’t listen.
‘And I’ve got the photocopy of Kelly’s sports day article,’ she said.‘The article isn’t important but I’m sure the photograph means something. I just don’t know what.’
It was a featured piece and the pic was portrait shape, four inches by eight. At the top of the frame, a figure poised on the diving-board. Olivier. Watching him, faces tilted upwards, a group of people.
Some were familiar: the Major, Mrs Ellis, Alistair Brown. One was famous: Peter Hayes the runner, the sports day visiting celebrity. The others looked like parents.
Olivier was in silhouette. ‘There’s our buttocks on the diving-board,’ I said. ‘Probably.’ It might also be our potential blackmail victim, I thought, but I wasn’t going to explain my dark armour theory to her now.
‘So what does it mean?’
‘Don’t know, yet. Are you hungry?’
‘No. I’ve eaten.’
I went to the kitchen, fetched the croissants, and ate them. I was sitting on the sofa: she sat cross-legged on the floor, opposite me, and watched me alertly. ‘Shall we discuss the case?’ she said.
I wanted to do anything but that. My mind works much better when I let things silt down into it. ‘Can you use a word processor?’ I asked.
‘Of course.’
‘Type up your ideas for me. Questions that need answering, leads we need to follow. It’ll help you focus your ideas, and we’ll talk about it tomorrow.’ It was make-work, but it wouldn’t hurt. I introduced her to my old Amstrad, left her getting acquainted, and lay on the sofa with my eyes closed until the printer’s chatter told me Claudia had finished. ‘This machine is very out-of-date,’ she said dismissively.
‘That machine was very cheap,’ I said. ‘And it works.’
‘I have a portable Toshiba that runs MS-DOS. IBM compatible.’
‘Bully for you. We’ll use it when we need to talk to IBM. By the way, Barty’s coming around soon, for a drink. You met at my party—’
‘The man who threw me out?’
‘The very one.’
‘Do you want to be alone? I can sleep at home, tonight.’
‘Stay. Much easier. We’ll have to leave at some ungodly hour tomorrow—’
‘Latest check-in time, seven fifty-five. I ordered a taxi for six-thirty, from here—’
‘There you are then. We’ll leave things as they are.’
‘If you’re sure.’
‘Certain.’
‘Anything else I can do?’ she said briskly.
‘Record a new answering-machine message. We’ll leave the number of the French hotel in case Alan panics or Polly wants to ring.’
‘OK,’ she said, and set about it efficiently. The message she recorded began ‘Alex Tanner and her assistant aren’t available right now . . .’ When she finished, she explained apologetically, ‘I just thought it always sounds good, to have an assistant. The bigger your staff, the better you’re doing. Oh, I forgot. I brought a video to show you.’ She produced it from her overnight bag. ‘Michel Mouche and Freedom Pertwee, and Olivier, about ten years ago.’
‘Olivier? Was he a child singer, or something?’
‘Not really, though he sings on this. How well do you know French television?’
‘Hardly at all.’
‘It’s very in-bred and nepotistic. There aren’t that many Francophone entertainers.’
‘Francophone?’
‘French-speaking. That’s very important in France, where everybody knows that French is the best language and only fools can’t speak it. So when they have a singer or whatever, he or she appears on television all the time, and quite often brings along his relations. The last television award ceremony I watched in France mostly consisted of three families giving each other awards.’
‘How come you’ve got this video?’
‘I was a fan of Mouche’s when I was little – still am, come to that – and this was a birthday present when I
was much younger. I moved all my stuff over to the flat in London when Mummy bought it for me – I wanted a place of my own, if Mummy and Dieter are going to be breaking up, I wanted somewhere of my own to keep out of it – I don’t like the breakups – and I brought everything of mine over. I don’t have enough cupboards, I never throw things away’ – I reminded myself not to ask Claudia any open-ended questions if I wanted to keep her chatter-genie in the bottle. She was just finishing – ‘so I have the video. I thought maybe you would like to see your client when he was just a boy.’
‘And when he was still alive,’ I said. ‘Not that he’s my client.’
‘But he’s your subject, the person all this is about.’
She put in her video and ran it back. ‘We’ll only see it in black and white, though it was made in colour. The TV system is different. And it’s in French, of course, but most of it is singing anyway. I’ll translate if you want – I thought you’d just like to see them.’
I settled myself on the floor with my back to the sofa, my favourite position for telly watching. Claudia came and sat beside me with the remote control.
The first few minutes were typical light entertainment. The host had a wig, a frenetic line in chat, and a false-toothed, omnipresent smile. The set was cramped and dated. ‘When did you say this was?’
‘1982. Ten years ago.’
The set looked more old-fashioned than that. Six chorus girls, wearing less than they would have ten years ago in England, waved their legs about more or less in time to accordion music. ‘Claudia, do they still use that corny music?’
‘Of course. It’s very popular. Typically French.’
The girls danced off. A pop group came on, and sang. ‘The sound quality’s terrible,’ I said.
‘Different system. Pal, or Secam, can’t remember which. Like the colour, it doesn’t travel well. Here’s Michel now. Isn’t he gorgeous?’
He was in his forties, a big man, dark-haired, pale-eyed, shambling, three days unshaven, wearing jeans, a sweater, and what looked like old tennis shoes on bare feet. He began to talk. He was uncoordinated and his face was heavy and sloppy. ‘He looks drunk,’ I said.
In At The Deep End Page 16