Loose Ends

by Susan Moody

  ‘Really? Oh, you are so sweet . . .’ It was a Miss Barker phrase, rather than a Janine phrase: it didn’t sound quite right to her, and from the quizzical look she was giving her, she could see that Belinda also thought it a bit odd, coming out of her mouth.

  At the hotel, she found him at a table in a corner of the bar, wearing a dark suit, a grey silk tie with a diamond pin, a white shirt that gleamed in the dim light of the bar. ‘You look nice,’ he said when she arrived. ‘I like a woman with style, and you’ve got that in spades.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Raising her glass of white wine, she smiled, felt herself trembling on the brink of something, a flare of possibility. Why had he invited her here tonight? She half-expected that he would want her to go to his room after dinner, and had not yet decided whether she would or not. He was much older than she was, more than old enough to be her father, but he kept himself trim, he was good-looking and assured, he dressed well, he had a kind face. She hesitated not because she was a prude, or waiting for true love: she merely wanted to plan her strategy and wasn’t sure if going upstairs with him was a step forward or not. Especially on their first . . . well, date, if that was what this was. She wasn’t a virgin: her brother had seen to that, the bastard (though when she’d told Mum about him coming into her room at night and the things he did to her there, Mum had told her not to tell such filthy lies and slapped her hard across the face), not to mention Mr Retton, though she’d never let him do more than fool around, and of course there’d been other men since then.

  They exchanged a few personal details about themselves over dinner. He told her about his companies (‘not my companies exactly, since the managing director and his wife own them all, lock, stock and barrel’) along with their overseas links, import-export, he told her, which always seemed to her to say nothing and everything. She didn’t ask what he exported or imported, though if it had been anything illegal he wouldn’t have told her anyway. Looking at him over the small arrangement of yellow flowers in the centre of the table, she could imagine him – and the major shareholder, the bantam with his short little bantam legs and vulgar tiepin (she could just imagine Miss Barker’s expression if she saw it!) – deeply mired in something criminal: drugs or girls or guns, or all three, or something else, something quite possibly worse. He had that look about him, as though he worked above or around the law; she found that quite exciting.

  He came up from London about once a month, to oversee the importing – or possibly the exporting – side of his business. She’d looked the company up, but discovered nothing further; when she drove across town to the site of the company’s local offices, there was simply a name on the gate: Import, and underneath, Export Freight. It meant nothing to her and she knew instinctively it would be hugely impolitic to ask.

  It wasn’t until the fourth time they went out for dinner that he suggested going to his hotel room.

  ‘I shall be honest with you, Janine.’ He picked up her hand, which lay on the table, and smoothed his thumb across her knuckles. ‘I am a married man, I have grown-up children, I do not plan to divorce my wife, although we have nothing in common and though there is no more than affection between us – which is all there ever was – it is not the custom where I come from to throw off the old wife and look for a new one, it is dishonourable to both the husband and to the wife. As for you, I admire you, as you know, I find you an excellent companion, someone I am proud to be seen with, and I am also very fond of you. But that is as far as it can go. So if you do not wish to sleep with me – for that, of course, is what I am about to propose – I would quite understand, and there would be no hard feelings between us, we would remain friends and I would continue to ask you to come out to dinner with me, when I am up here.’

  Janine smiled down at the tablecloth. It was not a question of wishing to sleep with him, the sexual spark between them had grown and flared over the past few weeks and was now – at least in her case – a constantly glowing ember. She liked the way he had been honest with her, and at the same time, felt a deep relief. She liked him – maybe even loved him, in a way – but marriage? She thought not: he was too exotic, too obviously foreign. She had never set her sights on the unattainable, merely on the achievable: she had wanted – still did – a nice man whom she could love unreservedly, who would make few demands, who would hold her hand when they went out together, who, above all, thought she was wonderful (‘a pearl of great price’ like it said in the Bible), a couple of kids, one of each. When she examined this wish list, it seemed a modest one, not a lot to ask for, and she lived in hope that this hand-holding man would come along one day in the not too distant future. Meanwhile, sex with a man like her handsome dinner partner had an orchidaceous allure.

  She raised her eyes to meet his gentle brown ones. ‘I understand completely,’ she said. ‘And if you were to invite up to your room for a . . . for a nightcap, I would be happy to accept.’

  And that was how it had been between them ever since. That was nearly six years ago, and since then, she had moved on, leaving Parties Unlimited and, with the help of her lover, setting up TaylorMade Travel (Taylor being the useful surname she had chosen when she changed her name to Janine, hoping that Dad, wherever he was, wouldn’t mind, he being so proud of his foreign heritage) which, judging by its success, seemed to be filling an unrealized desire on the part of the inhabitants of the town. At the time, there’d been a low percentage of unemployment, money wasn’t too tight and there was a real craving for locations that were out of the ordinary, none of your Benidorms and Ibizas for the good citizens of the area, thank you very much. An added bonus, as far as Janine was concerned, was that twice a year she was able, for tax purposes, to write off a foreign holiday, staying in good hotels, as research for the business.

  She loved those journeys abroad, her smart luggage, her good clothes, dining alone at the best restaurants which she would later recommend to her clientele, even, occasionally, though not too often, allowing herself to be discreetly picked up by some nice-looking older man, almost a clone of her lover, and enjoying a night or two of unbridled and uncommitted sex, though she’d give all that up at the drop of a Gucci bag if she could only find a man worth giving it up for.

  Magnus

  Five

  Arrangements had already been set in train by the time Magnus came through passport control at Quito airport. Dr Eduardo Gonzalez was small and round, what was left of his dark hair slicked back across a tanned skull. He carried roses, four of them, which he thrust at Magnus, bowing his head for a moment to indicate his distress at being the bearer of such sorrowful news.

  One rose for each of the deceased, Magnus realized. At least there weren’t five, which meant that Kate was still hanging on. ‘Can you tell me more about what happened?’ he said, as Gonzalez, hurling insults at everyone who came within a ten-yard radius of his Mercedes, drove recklessly through the downtown traffic towards the familiarity of Professor Lennox’s apartment.

  ‘Very little is known. The villagers do not speak Spanish, only a few words.’ Gonzalez leaned out of his window and stared backwards at the car behind them for far longer than Magnus felt was anywhere near safe, before flipping the finger and shouting words about the following driver’s virility and what he’d like to do to it, which had Magnus surreptitiously curling his own hand protectively over the crotch of his chinos. ‘As far as we have been able to discover, there was a tree down across the road, or perhaps it was a landslide, this is not entirely clear.’

  ‘Why not?’ Magnus tried to overcome the wooziness of jet lag and think more clearly. ‘There’s quite a difference between the two.’

  ‘This is very true. Cabron!’ yelled Gonzalez, as a small green car on the other side of the road and going in the opposite direction swerved slightly towards him.

  ‘But surely you must know whether . . .’ Magnus gave up. ‘And the car went off the road?’

  ‘Correct. Your father tried to avoid the obstacle, whichever it was, landslide
– there are many landslides in the hills, Dottore Lennox – hijo calvo de una perra!’ screamed Gonzalez at a man in a battered red saloon, which Magnus thought was adding insult to injury. ‘Because it is very wet and damp with the mist, so causing landslide or fallen tree, and unfortunately his vehicle fell over the edge of the ravine and down into the undergrowth. With, as you know, this most unfortunate and tragic loss of life. The roads are primitive up in the hills, you realize. Very steep, many, many bends. As far as we can understand it, the Professore was driving too fast, came to a sharp bend in the road and could not keep control.’

  ‘But didn’t you say he swerved to avoid a tree? Or a landslide?’

  ‘Whichever it was, the car went down the hillside, and . . . and then caught fire.’

  ‘I don’t want to think about it,’ Magnus said harshly. Burned alive. God, what a horrible way to die. He found himself praying that they had at least been unconscious by the time the car finally came to rest and before it burst into flame. ‘And who is – was – Señora Bailey?’

  ‘Puta!’

  A prostitute? ‘Surely not,’ he said.

  Gonzalez finished glaring at the woman driver who’d stopped at the red traffic light in front of him. ‘Señora Bailey was your father’s summer assistant.’

  ‘Where was she from? Did you meet her?’

  ‘I saw only her dead body. I have been told by your father’s colleagues that she had come out from England, perhaps on a grant or bursary, to work on a special project with him, I’m not quite sure of the details.’

  ‘So she was a student, was she?’

  ‘Not unless she was what we call here a mature student. In her case, a very mature one.’ Gonzalez chortled in an unbecoming way, while Magnus briefly considered taking up the feminist cudgels.

  ‘Did she have a family?’ he asked instead.

  ‘We believe she had a child, or maybe children, but they were older, they had . . . flown from the nest, I think you say.’

  Magnus had a brief vision of two, possibly three, nestlings, perched on the edge of some ramshackle collection of leaves and twigs, staring doubtfully down at the ground far below and wondering if they really had enough flying lessons under their belts to avoid dashing themselves to pieces, while behind them their parents, sick to death of foraging for worms and then shoving them down the throats of their offspring, twittered encouragement.

  ‘So what has happened to her . . . um . . . remains?’

  ‘Her husband had them flown back to England. The ashes. She was cremated . . . what was left, that is.’

  Oh God. Magnus was finding this all too painfully graphic. He felt as though he were on the verge of vomiting, and wondered if he should have had so many miniature whiskys on the flight. On the way over, it had seemed the easiest and quickest route to temporarily putting the events in Quito out of his mind. Here in the downtown traffic, it looked a much less sensible solution to his problems. He hated to think what hideous invective Gonzalez would come up with, let alone what violent reaction he might have, were Magnus to throw up inside the Mercedes. On the other hand, persuading him to move over to the inside lane so Magnus could open the door and use the gutter seemed a hopeless proposition.

  He listened dully as Gonzalez said, ‘With regard to the funeral service for your parents and little sister, I have notified as many people as I could. And the university will of course let his colleagues know. The department is to have a small gathering afterwards, which is customary, I believe.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘So I understand. It will be closed coffins, obviously, and cremation – your father always said he wished to be cremated, if and when he died.’

  ‘Did he?’ Magnus hadn’t known that. Horribly, it occurred to him that the cremation could be said to have already taken place: he swallowed hard and gripped the sides of the passenger seat.

  ‘I have presumed that the same would be true for his wife and the young daughter.’

  ‘I’m still not sure exactly what . . .’ Magnus gulped. ‘I mean, apart from this landslide or fallen tree . . .’ Or perhaps it was both – that would make a lot more sense, the landslide down the side of the hill, bringing with it trees and boulders which blocked the road. ‘I can’t believe my father was driving so fast that he had to swerve to avoid a fallen tree. He was a very careful driver.’

  ‘Alas, unless your sister remembers, nobody will ever be quite certain how the accident happened. And she is very . . . how do you say it?’ Gonzalez rocked his hand back and forth to indicate that Kate’s condition could go one way or another. ‘The villagers who managed to rescue her from the . . . from what was left of the car seemed to know nothing. I believe one of the village boys said something about hearing gunshots, but I imagine that was either a mistranslation or a vivid imagination. Boys will be boys, will they not?’ Perilously, Gonzalez took both hands off the steering wheel and aimed them like a pair of Colt.45s at the car in front of them. ‘Pah!’ he said. ‘Pah! Pah!’ Carefully he blew non-existent smoke from his imaginary pistols. ‘Too much cowboy movies.’

  Magnus looked away from the hurtling traffic all around them. ‘Has this boy said anything else?’

  ‘When the police arrived at the family house, the boy was no longer there. Sent away to an aunt in the city. The Indians don’t like to be mixed up with the police, I’m sure you understand.’

  Magnus did not. He’d been brought up to believe that policemen were the good guys, avuncular kindly people, upon whom you could rely to look after you if you were in trouble, who would automatically take your side and help you.

  Without any signal that Magnus could see, Gonzalez turned suddenly across what seemed like five rows of honking, snarling traffic into the wide forecourt of the apartment block where Professor James Lennox and his second family had lived for many years. Small palm trees in a large concrete planter rattled in the breeze, a fountain thrust water into the air, and brightly coloured flowers – he recognized bougainvillea and pelargonium, possibly hibiscus – dripped from pots on the balconies. Coming to a gut-wrenching stop in a parking place, Gonzalez smiled sadly at Magnus. ‘I’m so very sorry, Señor Lennox. This is a terrible tragedy. We shall try to make everything as easy for you as possible.’

  ‘You’re very kind.’

  ‘I will come back for you in two hours and take you to visit your sister.’

  The apartment was so exactly the same as it had always been on his numerous holiday visits that Magnus sank to the carpet, bowed down by the weight of the memories which crowded round him. He looked around him at the familiar marble-floored salon, the single sofa, eight feet long, which overlooked a view of snow-capped mountains and low-hanging clouds, the music centre, the baby grand which Luisa played in the evening, the huge bookcase crammed with books, the birdcage shaped like a maharajah’s palace where Brixton, Annie’s pet cockatiel, a ruggedly handsome bird, used to swing and squawk when he wasn’t flying round the apartment biting things to shreds with his powerful beak (where was he, by the way? He must remember to ask Gonzalez). He buried his head in his hands. It was impossible to believe that all three of them were dead, and that Kate was only hanging on by a thread. (‘Badly burned . . .’ Would she look like a monster, her features melted down into her neck, years of skin-grafts ahead, denied all the things a pretty nineteen-year-old had a right to expect, so hideous that no man could possibly wish to go out with her, let alone marry her? He determined then and there to do the right thing: he would care for her as long as she needed him, and if he found a woman to love who wasn’t prepared to take on his hideously scarred sister as well as himself, well, so be it . . .)

  Luisa had taken them both on. He had at first been inclined to resent this new exotic woman who had been thrust into his life to take the place of his dead mother, the funeral baked meats coldly furnishing forth the marriage table, he’d thought, in the cynical way of a clever adolescent studying Hamlet for GCSE, until good sense prevailed and he reminded himself that his
father had every right to happiness, and indeed Luisa had brought just that into all their lives. To think of her now dead, her lustrous dark hair, her huge black eyes, her loving expression when she looked at her husband or her children, Kate and Magnus as much as Annie . . . He thumbed away more tears.

  He showered in the bathroom full of old-fashioned appliances – the basin big enough to bath in, the bath big enough to hold a dinner party in, the shower head the size of a satellite dish – and changed into clothes more suited to the heat, choosing them from his father’s closets which contained numerous pale jackets, lightweight linen suits, short-sleeved shirts, chinos, feeling a kinship for the father he had never really – because of the vagaries of life rather than desire on the part of either of them – had a chance to know and now never would. Tears welled in his eyes as he contemplated himself in the long free-standing mirror in the darkened bedroom. He could easily have passed for his father and the sight brought back to him more than anything else just how much he had lost and how much, if Kate didn’t survive, there still was to lose.

  When a white-cowled nun showed him into Kate’s private room, Magnus had been surprised (and vastly relieved) to see that her face on the pillow looked more or less as it always had. True there were some abrasions on her temple and her head had been partly shaved so that stitches could be inserted. One side of her face was painted purple (mercurochrome?) and both her eyes were puffy and black, providing a stark contrast to the blindingly white hospital linen. Her arms lying on the white coverlet were thickly wrapped in white bandages. Colour came from the garish red, blue and gold paintings which hung here and there along the corridors and above the beds: Christ with His head on one side, displaying His open chest and bleeding heart; the Virgin Mary with her eyes raised to heaven as though listening for the hundredth time to some tedious joke being recounted by her Son; Saint Michael the Archangel, patron saint of the sick, looking beefy and macho, more athlete than saint, perhaps intended to encourage the patients towards good health.