“I’ve told you all I can. Don’t you think I’d have told you more if I could?”
“Mr Maynard?”
“I’d have to say the same as my wife.”
“I’ll leave you then if you’ll excuse me. Perhaps it might be worth your discussing what I asked when I’m gone. I hope, Mrs Maynard . . .” Bairns was out of his chair and had one foot in the hall before he said “I hope at least you can accept we’re doing everything the law allows.”
She did, and her rage focused itself again, letting her accompany him to the gate and send him on his way. The closing of his car door sounded like a single decisive blow of a weapon, and was followed by the reddening of the rear lights. The car was shrinking along the road when she saw Duncan Gummer at the junction - saw him wave to Bairns as if he was giving him a comradely sign. The next moment his patrolling took him out of view, but she could still see him, as close and clear in her mind as her rage.
* * * *
“Who is this? Hello?”
“It’s Claire Maynard.”
“It wasn’t you that kept ringing off when my mother answered, was it?”
“Why would I have done that, Mr Gummer?”
“No reason at all, of course. My apologies. It’s got us both a little, well, not her any longer, she’s sound asleep. What can I do for you?”
“I wanted to discuss an idea I had which I think might be profitable.”
“I don’t normally talk business outside business hours, but with you I’m happy to make an exception. Would you like to meet now?”
“Why don’t you come here and keep me company. We can talk over a couple of drinks.”
“That sounds ideal. Give me ten minutes.”
“No more than that, I hope. And I shouldn’t bother troubling your mother if she needs her sleep.”
“Don’t worry, I’m with you. Softly does it. I’m all in favour of not disturbing anyone who doesn’t have to be.”
“I’ll be waiting,” Claire said with a sweetness she imagined she could taste. It made her sick. She heard him terminate the call, and listened to the contented purring of the receiver, the sound of a cat which had trapped its prey. When she became aware of holding the receiver for something to do while she risked growing unhelpfully tense she hooked it and went to pour herself a necessary drink.
She loaded ice into the tumbler, the silver teeth of the tongs grating on the cubes, then filled the remaining two-thirds of the glass almost to the top. More room needed to be made for tonic, and she saw the best way to do that. The tumbler was nearly at her lips when she opened the gin bottle and returned the contents to it. She mustn’t lose control now. To prove she had it, she crunched the ice cubes one by one, each of them sending an intensified chill through her jaw into her skull until her brain felt composed of impregnable metal. She had just popped the last cube into her mouth when she saw Gummer’s glossy black Rover draw up outside the house. She bit the cube into three chunks which she was just able to swallow, bringing tears to her eyes. They were going to be the last tears Gummer would cause her to shed, and her knuckles dealt with them as she went to let him in before he could ring the bell.
Whether his grin was meant to express surprise or pleasure at her apparent scramble to greet him, it bared even more of his lower lip than usual until he produced a sympathetic look. “I’m glad you felt able to call,” he said.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Well, indeed,” he said as though to compliment her on being reasonable, and she had to turn away in order to clench her teeth. “Close the door,” she said once she could.
The finality of the slam gave her strength, and by the time he followed her into the front room she was able to gaze steadily at him. “What’s your taste?” she said, indicating the bottles on the sideboard.
“The same as you’ll be having.”
“I’m sure you’ll have a large one,” she told him, and managed to hitch up one corner of her mouth.
“You’ve found me out.”
Whatever answer that might have provoked she trapped behind her teeth as she busied herself at the sideboard. Perhaps after all she would have a real drink instead of pretending a tonic was gin; his presence was even harder to bear than she’d anticipated. Already the room smelled as though it was steeped in the aftershave he must have slapped on for her benefit. When she moved away from the sideboard with a glass of gin and tonic in each hand she found him at the window through which she didn’t know how many times he might have spied on Laura. “Please do sit down,” she said, masking her face with a gulp of her drink.
“Where will you have me?”
“Wherever you’re comfortable,” said Claire, retreating to the armchair closest to the door. As she’d handed him his glass she’d touched his fingertips, which were hot and hardly less moist than his underlip. The thought of them on Laura almost flung her at him. She forced herself to sit back and watch him perch on the edge of the nearer end of the couch.
“Strong stuff,” he said, having sipped his drink, and put it on the floor between his wide legs. “So it’s a financial discussion you’re after, was that what I understood you to say?”
“I said profitable. Maybe beneficial would have covered it better.”
“Happy to be of benefit wherever I can,” Gummer said and showed her the underside of his lip, which put her in mind of a brimming gutter. “Do I recall the word company came up?”
“Nothing wrong with your memory.”
“I wouldn’t like to think so. Not like my mother’s,” he said, and glanced down between his legs while he retrieved his glass. Once he’d taken another sip he seemed uncertain how to continue. She wanted him in a state to betray himself by the time Wilf came back. “So what kind of company do you prefer?” she said.
“Various. Depends.”
“Whatever takes your fancy, eh?”
“You could say that if the feeling’s mutual.”
“Suppose it isn’t reciprocated? What happens then?”
“Sometimes it is when you dig a bit deeper. You think there’s nothing, but if you don’t let yourself be put off too soon you find what the other person’s feelings really are.”
Claire brought her glass to her mouth so fast that ice clashed against her teeth. “Suppose you find you’re wrong?” she said, and drank.
“To tell you the truth, and I hope you won’t think I’ve got too big a head, so far I don’t believe I ever have.”
“Would you know?”
“I’m sorry?”
Claire lowered her glass with as much care as she was exerting over her face. “I said, would you know?”
“I hope so this far.”
His gaze was holding hers. He still thought they were discussing a possible relationship. While she swallowed an enraged mirthless laugh she won the struggle to form her expression into an ambiguous smile. “So what are your limits?”
“There’s always one way to find out,” he said, and revealed his wet lip.
“You don’t think you should have any.”
“As long as one takes care, and we know to do that these days. It isn’t as though one’s committed.”
“Wouldn’t it come down to not being found out even if you had a partner? I know you’re good at not being.”
“As good as I need to be, right enough.”
That was almost too much for Claire, especially when, having planted her glass on the carpet to distract herself, she looked up to be met by the sight of his dormant crotch. Wilf ought to be home in a few minutes, she reminded herself. “And what age do you like best?” she managed to ask.
“Nothing wrong with a mature woman. A good deal right with her, as a matter of fact, and if I may say so -”
“Nothing wrong about younger ones either if you’re honest, is that fair?”
“I won’t deny it. Teaching them a thing or two, that’s pretty special. There again, and you’ll tell me if I’m flattering myself, sometimes even when it’s a lady
of our generation -”
“You bastard.”
“Forgive me if I expressed myself badly. It wasn’t meant as any kind of insult, I do assure you. Mature was what I meant, not so much in years as -”
“You swine.”
“I think that’s a little much, Claire, may I call you Claire? I’m sorry if you’re touchy on the subject, but if you’ll allow me to say this, to my eyes you —”
“I remind you of a younger woman.”
“My feelings exactly.”
“A young girl, in fact.”
“Ah.” He faltered, and she saw him realise what he could no longer fail to acknowledge. “In some ways that’s absolutely true, the best ways, may I say, only I suppose I thought that under the circumstances —”
“You loathsome filthy stinking slimy pervert.”
She saw his lip draw itself up haughtily, and was reminded of a snail retreating into its shell. “I fear there’s been some misunderstanding, Mrs Maynard,” he said, and rose stiffly to his feet. “I understand your being so upset still, but my mother will be wondering where I am, so if you’ll excuse me -”
Claire was faster. She swung herself around her chair with the arm she’d used to shove herself out of it, and trundled the heavy piece of furniture into the doorway. Having wedged it there, she sat in it and folded her arms. “I won’t,” she said.
“I really must insist.” He held out his hands as if to demonstrate how, once he crossed the yards of carpet, he would grasp her or the chair. “I’m truly sorry for any error.”
“You think that should make up for it, do you?”
“To be truthful, I don’t know what more you could expect.”
He didn’t believe he had been found out, she saw - perhaps the idea hadn’t even occurred to him. “Maybe you will when you see your mistake,” she said and made her arms relax, because her breasts were aching as they hadn’t since they were last full of milk.
“It’ll be easiest if you tell me.”
“You think I should make it easy for you, do you?” Her mouth had begun to taste as foul as her thoughts of him, and she would have swallowed more than the taste if her glass had been within reach. “Try this for a hint. Maybe you should have kept your mother out of my way.”
“You’ve drifted away from me altogether. Let me suggest in your interest as much as mine -”
“Or found a way to stop her talking. You’re good at that, aren’t you?”
“Some understanding can usually be reached if it has to be. I assume that when you decide to let me go you won’t be telling -”
“Like Laura never did.”
“Well, really, Mrs Maynard, I must say that seems rather an unfortunate -”
“Unfortunate!” Claire ground her shoulders against the chair rather than fly at him - ground them so hard that either the chair or the doorway creaked. “That’s your word for it, is it? How unfortunate would you say she looked the last time you saw her?”
He took a breath to give Claire yet another swift response; then his mouth sagged before clamping shut. He rubbed the side of one hand across his lips, and she imagined how he might have wiped his mouth as he sneaked away from the golf bunker. She stared at his face to see what would come out of it next, until he spoke. “It was you.”
This was far less than the response she wanted, in fact nothing like it, and she continued to stare at him. “It was you who kept ringing off, wasn’t it, till I was there to answer. What didn’t you want my mother to hear?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have rung off. For all I know she’s good at keeping secrets, especially if she thinks she’s protecting her son.”
“Why should she think -” His eyes wobbled and then steadied as though Claire’s gaze had impaled them. “My God, that was you as well. You didn’t just call us.”
“Seems as though I might as well have.”
“You tried to put the police onto me.”
“If only they’d done their job properly. You wouldn’t be here now. You’d be somewhere, but I’d have to put up with that being less than you deserved, I suppose. Only you are here, just the two of us for the moment, so -”
Gummer turned to the window as if he’d observed someone -Wilf? The street was quiet, however, and it occurred to her that he was considering a means of escape. She lurched out of the chair and grabbed the bottle of gin by its neck. “Don’t bother looking there. You’re going nowhere till I’ve finished with you,” she said.
“Mrs Maynard, I want you to listen to me. I know you must -” He was almost facing her when he stopped and rubbed his lip and gave her a sidelong look. “Finished what exactly?”
“Guess.”
“I don’t believe I have to. Profitable was what you said this was going to be when you rang, wasn’t it? If I may say so, God forgive you.”
“You mayn’t. You’d better -”
“Whatever you think about me, you were her mother, for heaven’s sake. You’re expecting me to pay you to keep quiet, aren’t you? You’re trying to make money out of the death of your own child,” he said, and let his mouth droop open.
It was expressing disgust. He was daring to feel contemptuous of her. His wet mouth was all she could see, and she meant to damage it beyond repair. She seemed less to be raising the weapon in her hand than to be borne forward by it as it sailed into the air. His eyes flinched as he saw it coming, but his mouth stayed stupidly open. She had both hands on the weapon now, and swung it with all the force of all the rage that had been gathering for months. “Claire,” he cried, and tried to dodge, lowering his head.
For a moment she thought the bottle had smashed - that she would see it explode into smithereens, as bottles in films always did when they hit someone on the head. Certainly she’d heard an object splintering. When his mouth slackened further and his eyes rolled up like boiled eggs turning in a pan she thought he was acting. Then he fell to a knee which failed to support him, and collapsed on his side with a second heavy thud. As if the position had been necessary for pouring, a great deal of dark red welled out of his left temple.
When it began to stain the carpet she thought of moving him or placing towels under his head, but she didn’t want to touch him. He was taken care of. She peered at the bottle, and having found no trace of him on it, replaced it on the sideboard before returning to her chair. She supposed she ought to move the chair out of the doorway, not least to bring her within reach of her drink, but the slowness that had overtaken her since the night she’d found Laura’s body was becoming absolute, and so she watched the steady accumulation of the twilight.
In time she had a few thoughts. If Mrs Gummer was awake she must be wondering where her son was. She’d had decades more of him than Laura had lived, and soon enough she would learn he was only a lump on the floor. Claire considered drawing the curtains, but nobody would be able to see him from the pavement, and in any case there was no point in delaying the discovery of him. The discoverer was most likely to be Wilf, who would still have to live here once she was taken away, and she oughtn’t to leave him the job of cleaning up after her, though perhaps the carpet was past cleaning. When she narrowed her eyes at the blind mound of rubbish dumped in her front room, she couldn’t determine how far the stain had spread. It annoyed her on Wilf’s behalf, and she was attempting to organise and speed up her thinking sufficiently to deal with it when she saw him appear at the gate.
The Collected Short Fiction Page 130