by James, Bill
‘Of course, Mrs Iles, you’ll ask how they came to know your name and will suspect I gave it to them. Married to an officer, you will have certainly absorbed a reluctance to take anyone at face value. Please accept that I told them nothing and that they knew it all when they arrived at the club early today.’
She stayed silent.
‘It would be simple to identify Ian. He’s known to many people – known to and liked by, I might say. But having done that, it was possible by diligence to discover your name.’
‘I don’t like it. I’m scared, Ralph.’
‘I can see.’ Perhaps her use of his name in a warm, friendly tone encouraged him: he put out a hand, and seemed about to grip her arm or one of her hands in reassurance, but then drew back, as if still uncertain how she would take it. Possibly he had some sensitivity, or possibly he realized there was no reassurance he could sanely offer. ‘They’re unhappy that you’re the wife of whom you are the wife of, naturally. They regard this as quite phenomenal bad luck.’
‘Who for?’
‘What?’
‘Bad luck – who for?’
Someone in a passing Audi waved and Sarah waved back, though she did not recognize her. Stopping in this street with Ralph, so near the house, could be an unnecessary mistake. Very nervy again, and still offended that he should be up here among Audis and happy gestures, she reacted with what she knew was daft bravado: ‘Too bloody bad they’re unhappy I’m married. What the hell am I supposed to do about it?’
He had another of his beautifully relaxed giggles. ‘Well, exactly. You could put it like that, certainly.’ He gazed from the side window once more, in that fashion people had of looking away when they were about to say something crucial, but wanted it to sound offhand and not too heavy, even though it really couldn’t be heavier. ‘Obviously, what I don’t know is how much you talk to your husband, Mrs Iles, and they don’t know this either. It’s what unsettles them.’
‘Yes, we talk, the way people who live together normally do.’
His voice seemed about to plummet away from geniality again, but then almost instantly reverted. ‘Mrs Iles, for Christ’s sake stop behaving – This is so nice, this conversation, so measured and unblunt, isn’t it? We step around the edges like a cow pat in a field. I’m not saying to you, do you talk to the distinguished officer about the next hols in the Gambia or whether the M25 has adequate traffic signs, am I, dear? What I’ve been sent here to ask you is, have you told your husband what you saw last night at the Monty, and, second, if you haven’t told him yet, do you mean to tell him? And did the fellow in the club last night speak to you, the one in the nice suit who had difficulty standing? My impression, admittedly from a little distance, was that he did.’
‘I hear they’re putting in more and bigger signs on the M25, as it happens, so any discussion of that with Desmond could be immediately obsolete.’ She saw him resist rage.
‘When I say I’ve been sent here, I don’t mean sent just by them. Ian was very keen I should make matters clear to you, also.’
‘Did Ian say the man had spoken?’
‘Why do you ask that? Did the man speak?’
‘Did Ian say he had?’
‘Ian said to ask you. Ian’s not behaving altogether in his usual sensible fashion on this. I think he’s afraid for you.’
‘I see.’
‘Need I fully itemize for you the dangers Ian is in currently, really as a result of your reactions last night?’
‘What dangers is he in? Yes, itemize them.’
‘Have you told your husband anything?’ he asked, quietly. ‘Do you intend to? Or, to put it differently, will you swear that you never will tell him? My own view, and I’ve given it to them forcibly, I want you to believe that, is that you’re not going to tell your husband you’ve been out in the Monty with someone dubious like Ian, if you’ll forgive me, because you’re fond of living up in Rougemont Place and attending municipal glitter functions with the Assistant Chief Constable, whatever he’s like as a husband. I’ve indicated to them that you’re not likely to broadcast material about certain aspects of your life – let’s refer to them as the unconjugal aspects, the spreading yourself aspects. You can’t tell him about the incident without telling him why you were there in the first place and who with. They all see the strength of this reasoning, but they’re still keen I should put things clearly to you, and return with a satisfactory answer.’ And now his tone did break up and he said what he meant. ‘Fucking lives are dependent on your answer, not just Ian’s – mine, possibly my children’s. Your own. For instance, I don’t know whether I’ve been allowed to come up and see you unsupervised. I might have people watching me.’
‘Did you tell them you were coming here?’ She stared around in horror at this familiar street and at the people in their familiar expensive, casual clothes and expensive cars, trying to spot men who looked wrong and whose only interest was in her and Ralph. She saw nobody who fitted. So was he just pressurizing her, or were these observers clever enough to stay unnoticed?
‘It’s Ian I worry about,’ he said.
‘It’s yourself you worry about.’
‘He’s so exposed. And his carefree way – very winning in other circumstances.’
‘So what dangers?’
‘As they see it, he’s as much involved as you. He might have overheard remarks from the man on the floor. And he was a part of that inconvenient curiosity about the skip as much as you, Mrs Iles. They don’t know it was you who initiated it. You see, it’s not that anything was found – well, I don’t have to tell you. But the action indicated a frame of a mind, an intervening element. What they don’t know is where it might take Ian or you next. Could it lead you into potentially embarrassing conversation with your husband, the officer.’
A yellow Mini sat parked not far ahead of them, the two men in it facing the other way and not appearing to take any notice of her and Ralph, but it made Sarah agitated now.
‘So, can you tell me, am I reading things right, Mrs Iles? It’s funny, I feel I know you very well, seeing you with Ian so often, and I’d call you Sarah, but somehow I don’t believe you’d care for that, like coming to your house.’
‘No, I haven’t said anything to Des.’
‘And not going to?’
‘How could I?’
Now, he did touch her, very briefly allowed a hand to brush hers on the steering wheel, then withdrew it. He began smiling again. The teeth were his own and looked after. He was sinister but clean, and with good bone structure. ‘What I said. How could you? A love affair is one thing, but breaking an important marriage a somewhat other kettle of fish, surely. Oh, I think so.’
Perhaps. It was the kind of question she usually discussed with Margot, not a drinking-club owner, though neither she nor Margot would have used the word ‘important’ about this marriage, or anyone’s. All the same, Ralph might have a point. ‘Will they accept this?’ she asked. ‘Will they leave Ian alone on the strength of that? And yourself, of course.’
‘Don’t forget yourself, Mrs Iles,’ he murmured.
‘Will Ian be all right now? You say carefree, but if he asked you to come up here –’
‘You’re upset he didn’t come himself, or ring you.’
‘Yes. No, but –’
‘They said it would be better if I did it, that’s all. Ian would have liked to come, believe me.’
‘What does that mean? He wasn’t allowed? Why? Who are these people? Can they tell him what to do? Did they stop him coming, did they? You mean they’re holding him somehow?’
He opened the door. ‘I’m going to tell them that it’s all right, Mrs Iles – Sarah. I’m going to stress that you’ve given your word, and that I accept it without question. I’m going to say you heard nothing at all from the man on the floor, and I’ll make it clear that you are highly concerned about Ian – that nothing, nothing at all, would make you increase the dangers he faces as a result of last night. It should be obv
ious to them. What sort of woman would deliberately put in peril the man who – well, someone like Ian? He’s young, and ought to have a decent life ahead of him, with use of all his limbs and his faculties, and so on.’
The yellow Mini moved off.
‘So, why don’t you answer – who the hell are they?’ she asked. ‘I mean, if you’ve seen them again, talked to them you must have some idea, even if you didn’t last night. You talk as if you know them – know how they work, and so on. And what did happen last night? Was there something in the rubble, was that –?’
He laughed. ‘Nothing beyond what you saw, nothing beyond what you’d expect to find in a builder’s skip. As I’ve said, it’s simply that they were a little troubled.’
‘They? Who are they? Who’s the nasty-looking one with the false teeth?’
‘That’s what I mean, you see: so much aggression and curiosity. And itemizing, like that. Take my word, it’s foolish. Oh, I don’t say it’s not understandable. But I’m going to stress to them that you’ve said it’s a closed episode now. They’ll believe it, I know. My standing is fortunately long established, sound. But perhaps you could take a little special care of yourself, Mrs Iles. Look about a lot. Be alert to recurrent, unfamiliar faces. Obviously, avoid going alone to deserted, alien spots in darkness. Keep off the stairs of tower blocks on council estates. But, when would you be in a tower block? If you’re using public car parks try to get a space on the perimeter, not in the middle of a jungle of vehicles, because jungles are, well, jungles. Don’t use multistoreys at all or public toilets, especially not public toilets.’ He eased himself out of the car and stood smiling down at her for a moment before closing the door. His double-breasted suit was steel-coloured, close-fitting, new, possibly Jaeger, and he looked like a pillar of superior ash. ‘I trust that I’ll not need to intrude again on your life, though, of course, that doesn’t mean I shan’t be very disappointed if you do not come soon to the Monty again to see us all. Oh dear, my sweet old mother used to warn me so fiercely against double negatives, and yet listen to that!’
‘Ian worries about them.’
‘What?’
‘Double negatives.’
‘Continuous discussion between us. Basis of our friendship.’ Shutting the door carefully he walked off towards Rougemont Place and his Montego. Once he glanced back and waved cheerfully, still beaming. Something about him reminded her of newsreels of that Prime Minister who came back from seeing Hitler just before the war claiming he had achieved ‘peace in our time’.
Sarah had not stopped shaking when she reached Margot’s flat high in a recently finished redbrick, waterfront development near Valencia Esplanade, with views over the new marina and as far as Young’s Dock, still used by merchant shipping. All coastal Britain was into making part of its dockland bijou and soon there’d be more marinas than hospitals. ‘Poor girl,’ Margot said, ‘you look terrible. You should have called me sooner. Come on, tea first.’ They went into her kitchen and Margot filled a kettle. She was about fifty, tall, big and angular at the shoulders and hips, yet surprisingly nimble. Sarah always thought she looked how a woman prison officer ought to, tough but approachable. Sometimes she affected men’s half-moon, gold-rimmed glasses worn low on her long, straight nose, and when she had these on she made Sarah think more of the kind of face you met irritably selling rail tickets behind a grille at St Lazare.
‘This is something else, not to do with Des. Not much to do with Des, anyway,’ Sarah said.
‘But to do with Ian?’
‘In a sense, yes.’ They waited for the tea.
‘Strikes me, everything is to do with Ian,’ Margot said.
‘In a sense to do with Des, as well, I suppose.’
‘Is it something we should talk about?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps not. No, we mustn’t. But perhaps it will come out when we’re discussing other things.’ She laughed in that loud, spasmodic style she often fell into when feeling especially bad, so as to convince people she wasn’t, though it rarely worked, and never with Margot. ‘Oh, I don’t know where I am, what the hell I’m doing, that’s the truth of it.’
They took the tea into Margot’s disordered, comforting lounge and sat down opposite each other. Margot had on a voluminous, paisley-patterned house coat, buttoned to the neck, and red and white training shoes. Two cats fought unplayfully in one corner, leaping high on furniture and chasing each other across the top of an old, black, upright piano, spitting committedly and scattering score paper.
‘Those buggers make me seem like a witch,’ Margot said, and threw a canister of air freshener at them, missing badly. ‘It’s not like that. Unfortunately, I lack the powers.’ The cats glared at her for a moment and then withdrew in a huff.
‘Everything says to me I ought to finish with Ian,’ Sarah said.
‘Yes? Hasn’t everything been saying that to you for a long while, everything except your will?’
‘There’s extra everything now.’
‘And could you do it, do you think?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve always said I couldn’t, haven’t I?’
‘But obviously things can change: something’s happened between you and him, or between you and Desmond?’
‘Not between me and Desmond. As ever, it’s dead, or dying.’
‘Does he think that, too? As I recall, he never used to.’ Margot was on a little settee and she swung around so her feet in the trainers hung over one padded arm. The mug of tea she balanced on her stomach. On Sarah’s first visit, the informality had shocked her. Now, she recognized it as probably a fairly elementary part of the act, to take any stiffness out of the session, and to do it swiftly: no matter how relaxed Margot might look, she did not miss much.
‘No, he still doesn’t think it’s over,’ Sarah said. ‘He’d like it all to be as it once was. Yes, he wants me, all the time. I can see that. I feel sorry for him, genuinely, but I can’t do it.’
‘If you can’t you can’t.’
Sarah laughed. ‘Look, is that really what you’re supposed to say, Margot?’
‘You mean I should tell you how to put things right, how to make things good with your husband, make all the problems disappear?’
‘At least how to try.’
‘I will if you want to. But I’m not sure you do.’
‘In many ways, Des is a good man. Well, of course he is. I married him, didn’t I? He puts up with a lot. He’s brave, he’s clever, and he’s funny, sometimes. I ought to –’
‘And, Ian?’
‘Who knows what he’s really like, or even what he really does?’
For a moment, Margot did not speak. Then she said: ‘This event that’s upset you – it’s something that makes you wonder more about Ian?’
‘Yes, and about myself. I have to ask, am I like a stupid girl, turning down a decent, solid man because he can’t reach me, and going instead to somebody I don’t know properly, can’t know properly, because the mystery and risk of it are attractive?’
‘And what answer do you get?’
‘Answer?’
‘Yes, when you ask yourself this, what do you reply? Do you come clean?’
That was part of Margot’s technique, perhaps part of all counsellors’ techniques: they let you do the work, hardly told you anything at all, persuaded you into deciding for yourself what you really wanted and into talking about it. What they knew was how to ask questions, and occasionally the procedure annoyed Sarah: she came here looking for guidance, and paying for it, and was prescribed, instead, self-scrutiny. This was counselling? ‘The point is, would I want Ian if I could go off tomorrow and live with him, not meet him at the odd, pinched moment in a down-at-heel pool and booze club?’
‘Yes, that’s the question.’
‘Somebody told me just now that I liked the status of my life with Desmond too much ever to give it up for a lover.’
‘Oh? There’s someone else who knows about Ian and you? I hadn’t realized that.’
She sounded ratty for a moment. ‘Tell me, Sarah, is this related – this person and what he or she said, is it related in any way to the situation that upset you so much?’ She took a drink of the tea but had turned her head and was watching Sarah carefully.
‘Yes, in a way.’ The clarity and speed of Margot’s intuitions must explain how she managed to make a living in this woolly, bull-shitting trade.
Margot waited, and Sarah realized she was giving her the chance to say some more. She did not respond and, in a while, Margot asked: ‘So, is this person right, do you think, the one who did the diagnosis for you: are you too fond of your privileged style of life to put it on the line?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought so, not before this. Now, I’m not so sure. I think I may be a bit of a snob.’
‘And Ian doesn’t fit that social bill, no matter how well he might fit elsewhere?’
Margot liked occasional crudity. It was part of the all-girls-together frankness that she affected.
‘Maybe not,’ Sarah said. She thought for a second. ‘Oh, no, Margot, it’s more than that. I don’t regard Ian as a bit of rough. I don’t need rough, anyway, not my thing at all. Well, I don’t think so. But, how can I explain? Try this: it’s a tussle between right and wrong. Des is a policeman. He’s law and order. I must have wanted that: I married law and order. He’s morality. Theoretically at least I’m in favour of morality. All right, I think Des is a policeman who’s pulled some dirty tricks in his time, exceedingly dirty, I suspect. In fact, often I feel scared even to wonder. But, speaking generally, he’s just about on the side of what we can call good, and he’d say you can’t be on the side of good effectively any longer without a tidy armoury of dirty tricks. He’s not into fighting with one hand behind his back and the other holding the handbook of the Civil Liberties movement – that’s his line.’
‘Ian? Is he on the side of good?’
‘Who knows?’
‘Not you?’
‘Not any longer.’
Again Margot paused, obviously waiting for more information. And again Sarah refused to give it. Instead, for the rest of the session she insisted upon talking about her childhood, and Margot listened but made no credible effort to conceal her disappointment and boredom.