by Susan Moody
‘What?’
‘If you’d bothered to call her while you were—’
‘What?’ Magnus said again, squeezing his eyes shut and opening them again in the hope that the woman would have disappeared and he would not have heard what she’d just told him. ‘What did you—?’
Suddenly the woman (not Lucy) was weeping, bending like a sapling, falling against him and clutching at the sweatshirt which the Oklahoman historian (Marlow? Sligo?) had bought him as a memento of a good time together, her eyes promising him that with any luck there would be many more of them, and not just T-shirts. ‘Kate, it’s Kate, she’s been, she’s . . . oh, those bastards, they – they . . .’ She began sobbing and snuffling, her head lying somewhere around his heart.
Taking the (possibly risky) decision that she was not in fact mad (the tears could be a ploy to bring him within striking distance), he set his coffee cup down on the hall stand and put his arms round her, patted her back, smelled the lemony tang of her hair. ‘Tell me exactly what’s happened,’ he said, as he might have done to an hysterical PhD student, had in fact done (heart in mouth – a few years ago one of the chic black-suited lecturers, a medievalist, if he remembered correctly, had taken him to see Oleanna, at the National and ever since, he’d been very, very careful with female students, kept the door of his office open, encouraged them but tried not to touch them, even if they cried, which they seemed to do with distressing frequency), on three occasions over the years, though his heart was pounding with already-anticipated denouncement, shame, dismissal. Kate? Abducted? Raped – did she say raped?
‘Is . . . is my sister . . .?’ He swallowed. Whatever vile thing he was about to hear, please, God, please let Kate be OK . . . ‘Is she all right?’
‘Depends what you mean by “all right”.’ The girl, woman (he could never keep up with the changing fashion in acceptable ways to refer to females) gulped down the coffee he handed her, wiping away her tears with the back of her hand, smearing mascara over her face so that he wanted to whip out a handkerchief and tenderly clean her face, as she managed to describe what had happened and the presence of mind which had allowed Kate to escape from the house where she was being held prisoner.
‘Oh, my God,’ he said, when he finally understood (not raped, at least). ‘Where is she, what’s going on, did they get the sods, have they—?’
‘She’s OK, as OK as anyone can be after an ordeal like that . . .’ the woman choked again. ‘Those fucking bastards . . .’ She too stood and came round the table to him. ‘It’s Magnus, isn’t it? Listen, Magnus, she’s at my flat at the moment, asleep, doped up to the eyeballs, but she needs you badly, she needs something, someone, come on, I’ll drive you to my place.’
‘You’re Janine,’ he said, pennies dropping at last, as they climbed into the silver sports car parked haphazardly outside his door and the woman (definitely not ‘girl’ he seemed to remember, though this one didn’t look much over eighteen and surely that was still a girl, wasn’t it?) flooring the clutch, pulled away in a squealing of tyres and a blast of exhaust reminiscent of Señor Gonzalez in Quito. ‘You’re the travel agent, where Kate works, it’s you she’s sharing with, I’ve been in your flat, haven’t I?’
‘Yes.’ She seemed to have calmed down a bit.
‘When you were away.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Nice.’ It was nice, too, quite different from his own style, showed a modern sensibility, he told himself, or else that she didn’t have enough money to purchase antiques.
‘Thanks.’
Her tone was dry, rightly so, he thought, curling his fingers into his palms until they hurt. What was he doing? Kate was hurt, damaged, and all he could do was talk about interior decoration. Nonetheless, the image of a purple cushion juxtaposed with a pink one persisted in his mind, a way to blot out this new impairment to his dearest, his unfortunate sister.
Kate lay on her side, facing the doorway, so deeply asleep that she could have pricked her finger on a spindle fifty years ago and still have half a century to go before she woke up. There were oyster-coloured shadows under her eyes and her face was rough, unhealthy-looking, like her hair. Magnus bent to kiss her gently on the forehead, breathing in the sour smell of desolation which rose from her skin. She was clutching a furry pink dog which he recognized immediately as one of Annie’s; she must have salvaged it all those years ago from the apartment in Quito.
Outside the bedroom, he gently closed the door and leaned his forehead against it. What Janine had told him was so shocking that it was almost too big to encompass. Abducted, imprisoned, tortured, all for the sake of some little wanker’s pride, as far as anyone could make out. His rage was so huge that it seemed to have inflated him to the size of one of those blow-up figures tethered outside Californian fast-food joints, a sombrero-wearing Mexican waving a taco, twelve feet tall and eight feet wide. He wanted to drive over to the gaol where the man was being held, bend back the bars of the cell with his bare hands, haul him out and kill him. He remembered with a stupefying sense of guilt that Kate had wanted to go to the police about the man, the stalker, and how he himself had dissuaded her, saying it was nothing.
‘The awful thing is,’ Janine said, as she set a tray of coffee in front of him, ‘she told me about this guy, told me he was stalking her, and I told her he wasn’t really. If only I’d taken it more seriously . . .’
‘Me too.’ Magnus said. ‘I did exactly the same.’
‘But even if she had gone to the cops, they likely would have done nothing, which is what I told her, because according to them, until he does something, breaks the law in some way, there’s actually nothing they can do.’
‘There were two of them, though, where’s the other one?’
‘The second one only seems to have been there when they were actually grabbing her, lucky for her, though the first one – he’s called Stefan – kept threatening her with him, told her all sorts of vile things he would do to her when he finally arrived. No-one knows who the other one is or where he went, according to the police, and the one in prison isn’t talking.’
‘Is Kate coping?’
‘Just about. She’s been very brave, very level-headed, but she’ll be so glad to see you when she wakes up.’
Tears welled in Magnus’s eyes and he bent his head so Janine wouldn’t see. She came over and sat beside him, took his hand in both of hers, just held it, so kindly that he could not hold back the sob which worked its way up from the pit of his stomach. ‘Poor Katie,’ he said. ‘Poor sad Kate.’
‘It’s all right,’ Janine said, ‘it’ll be OK.’ Kate had been coming in to work every day, she went on, she’s trying to be normal, as though nothing had happened, doing a fantastic job, even though sometimes it was obvious that the strain was beginning to tell, she’s hugely strong, she’ll get over it. ‘In the long term, she’ll be all right, it’s just getting her through the short term,’ she finished.
‘You’re probably right.’ Magnus took a sip of his coffee and flinched. Dear God, instant coffee, and not even one of the more expensive brands. He couldn’t remember when he had last experienced such an assault on his taste buds. The historian from Oklahoma had shared his taste in coffee, had agreed with him on the importance of getting the right beans, using the very best machine, in fact she’d been even more inflexible than he was, insisting that there were only two coffee-makers in the entire world that were capable of delivering the perfect, the ultimate cup, and what kind of a monster was he anyway that he could even care what he was drinking at a time like this?
‘I hope you don’t mind instant,’ Janine said.
‘Not in the least.’ Magnus took a valiant swallow. ‘Look, we’ve met before, haven’t we?’
‘I think so.’ She put her head on one side and looked at him more closely. ‘Why am I thinking of nurseries?’
‘Um . . .’
‘I know what it was. I sold you your house!’
‘That’s it!’
>
‘I was working in an estate agent’s at the time. You’ve made it so hugely different, I didn’t recognize the place. You must have done an enormous amount of work on it.’
‘You’ll have to come and look at it some time.’
‘I’d love to.’
They gazed at each other for a moment, thinking back eight or nine years, and then, because both of them had been blessed with good teachers at school, thinking of water passing under bridges, of winged chariots, of ever-rolling streams, then looked away at the same time, Magnus considering that after all this time, his wish to show off his house to her seemed likely to be fulfilled, and realizing that she’d been lying through her teeth about the investment potential of the property, not herself believing a word of the spiel she’d handed him, thinking that she wouldn’t have lived there on a bet (estate agents were the second most hated group of people in society, weren’t they, after journalists, or was it politicians?), what she said had nonetheless come to pass, as witness the neat little bay trees up and down the street, the fresh paint, the ceramic pots, the good cars parked at the kerb.
‘Magnus! You’re back.’ Kate appeared at the door, staggered into the room and sagged down beside him. ‘It’s so wonderful to see you.’
‘And you. How—?’ He put his arm round her and pulled her closer; he could see she was trying very hard not to dissolve into tears.
‘God, I feel awful, I hate those pills the doctor gave me.’ She glanced at the mug Magnus was holding then looked over at Janine. ‘Oh, Janine . . .’
‘What?’
‘You haven’t given him instant coffee, have you?’
‘Why not? He didn’t seem to mind.’
‘He’s very well-mannered.’ Kate looked at her watch. ‘Six thirty . . . it might be quite a good idea for you to discard your cup, Magnus, and break out that cognac I bought.’
‘Good idea.’
‘It’s what he likes best,’ Kate said to Janine, ‘and it’ll make up for the so-called coffee.’
‘I’ll certainly try to remember that,’ Janine said tartly. Nonetheless, she found two thinly beautiful brandy balloons and a bottle and poured Magnus a shot and, as an afterthought, one for herself, adding, ‘None for you, Kate, I think, not with that medication.’
Under her brother’s arm, Kate vibrated, giving off a faint humming sound, like a fridge. To Magnus, it seemed a long time ago since she’d laughingly pointed out that she’d already had more than her share of terrible blows so was unlikely to have another. Now that it had fallen, would that be it for the rest of her days? Would she lead a charmed life from now on? If only she could meet a nice man, a decent man who would love her and look after her. Wishing the same for himself (though a woman, in his case, not a man, naturally), he smiled faintly at Janine, a woman who, despite evidence all round the room of her ‘good taste’, nonetheless actually thought it acceptable to serve instant coffee to a guest. Was she married? Hard to imagine the kind of man who would drink the stuff on a regular basis, and somewhere at the back of his head a jeering voice muttered ‘Fogey, fogey’. Not everyone shared his esoteric tastes, why should they, though Ms Briscoe (Glasgow? Truro?) appeared to have done – or had she simply been taking the piss, mocking his stick-in-the-mud English ways, tongue-in-cheek in a particularly American manner?
‘So what are you going to do, Katie?’ he said. ‘From what Janine’s been saying, you need to get away, do nothing for a while.’ He was amazed at how ‘normal’ she seemed after her ordeal, though looking closer, the signs of distress were there at the back of her eyes, a certain droop in her shoulders.
‘Laze around on a beach,’ Janine said. ‘Blue skies, white sand.’
‘I’d go mad,’ Kate said. ‘I don’t like sunbathing, anyway.’
‘All right, adventure holiday, trek across the Australian desert with a camel, climb Mount Kilimanjaro, swim with sharks, the Arctic experience, African saf—’
‘Stop! I’ve got the brochures, I’m not sure I didn’t write the brochures,’ Kate said. ‘Actually, there is a place I’d really love to visit again.’ She looked up at her brother. ‘We haven’t been back to the Galápagos since . . . since The Accident.’
‘That’s where Mr Andrewes just went,’ Janine said.
‘I know. It suddenly brought it all back to me, Ecuador, the Islands . . .’ She looked wistful. ‘It’s probably changed completely from when we were younger, and for the worse.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Magnus said.
‘I saw a news item in the paper the other day; they’ve found a pink iguana—’
‘Maybe he’s gay,’ said Janine.
‘—which only exists on Isabela, on the edge of Volcano Wolf, apparently Darwin missed it – that should be worth a visit.’
‘Maybe you could get Mr Andrewes to invite you out for another “business lunch”,’ said Janine.
‘Do I know Mr Andrewes?’ Magnus looked from one to the other.
‘No.’
‘He’s a customer,’ explained Janine. ‘Took a fancy to Kate—’
‘And who wouldn’t?’
‘—and invited her out for a so-called business meeting, to discuss his holiday plans.’
When Janine laughed, which she did quite often, Magnus noticed that she had a dimple, not quite a dimple, a sort of depression in her cheek, which he had to say he found utterly charming. The strains of Big Ben chimed from her leather bag and she fished around in it for her mobile, a tiny little instrument fashioned from purple plastic which Magnus instantly coveted. His students were always telling him to get a life, Dr Lennox, buy a mobile, learn to text, whatever that was; he was often aware that he had failed to get a handle on contemporary life and mores. Tomorrow, he would go out and buy one for himself, a purple one just like the one Janine was now flipping up the lid of, scrutinizing the message which he could see appearing on a miniature screen, sighing and replacing the phone in her bag. ‘Right, folks,’ she said. ‘Time to eat. Do you want to eat with us, Magnus? We could have takeaway, or go out or anything.’
‘Why don’t you give me your orders and I’ll go out for takeaway?’ Magnus asked. ‘I noticed a Chinese place about a block away.’
‘We can telephone.’
‘OK. Then I’ll go and get it when it’s ready.’
Janine looked uncertainly at Kate. ‘Don’t worry,’ Kate said. ‘He spends most of his waking hours in Russia, at the beginning of the last century. He doesn’t know about deliveries, or mobile phones, or iPods, or DVDs. He calls the radio the wireless, and given his druthers, would still be playing records on a wind-up gramophone.’
‘I think that’s rather sweet,’ Janine said. He could see that she really meant it, which pleased him; maybe there were still woman around who didn’t despise anything that hadn’t been invented in the last twelve months, women who still made their own pastry and grew herbs in the garden and made patchwork quilts out of scraps, cooked casseroles and lamb shanks and cauliflower cheese, who didn’t care whether a man was a fogey, as long as he was good and faithful and true.
‘Listen,’ he said, surprising himself, ‘why don’t you two come to my place for supper – not dinner, not tonight; I’m too tied up with university things – but soon, maybe at the weekend?’
‘Love to,’ Kate said. ‘Janine?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Magnus is a terrific cook,’ Kate said.
‘That’s good, because I’m not.’ Janine, red-faced, got up very shortly after saying this and went into the kitchen while Magnus tried to hide the pleasure this announcement gave him, with its promise of a future where he cooked and she didn’t. He fiddled with the third button of his cardigan, or rather, the place where the button used to be, it having somehow gone missing. ‘Then I could show you round the house,’ he added.
‘I’ve looked round it,’ Kate said, pretending bewilderment. ‘Why would I want to . . . I lived there for a while, remember?’
He squeezed her against him
. ‘I didn’t mean you, obviously.’ His heart shifted. She seemed so fragile, so . . . lonely. If only she would allow herself to be vulnerable, for if she went on pretending she was all right, she would never heal.
In bed that night, and in an effort not to dwell too long on what had happened to Kate, Magnus thought back to the terrible days shortly after his father’s death. A still-traumatized Kate had dropped out of university, taken up with Brad, and set off backpacking to India and Tibet, while he (safe, dull, fogeyish) decided to buy a house. Ten or twelve properties in, he found himself shaking hands with an estate agent in front of the garden gate of his current place. ‘It’s an up-and-coming neighbourhood, Mr Lennox,’ she assured him as they walked up the path to the door.
You could have fooled me, Magnus thought. ‘Really?’ he said. He and Kate had agreed that they couldn’t bear to keep on the house which, even though rented long-term to a family from Florida, had once been the family home, before Dr Lennox had headed for Ecuador. When the agent had, with some difficulty, unlocked the front door, the once-handsome, now neglected three-storey house had reeked of rot, both dry and wet; when wrenched open, the cellar door emitted the kind of stench which suggested that several carcasses had been butchered down there not long before and left to decompose; there was no kitchen to speak of, just a few cheap units from which the doors had long ago been ripped and a shallow stone sink with one cold-water tap.
Despite the cobwebs big enough to use as hammocks, the reception rooms were wide and handsome, the plasterwork miraculously seemed mostly intact, egg-and-anchor friezes round the cornices, ornate ceiling-roses, marble fireplaces, chipped here and there but otherwise undamaged. He followed her up the creaking staircase to the first floor where there were four good bedrooms, a box-room, an apology for a bathroom. Up another flight of stairs were three airy attic rooms, each with its original black-painted iron fireplace, each with an entrancing roofscape view, the tops of trees, and, in the distance, low blue hills.
‘This would have been a maid’s bedroom, back when the house was built,’ the agent said, as they entered the first of the attics.