by Patrick Gale
Seth hurried away before Mother could stop talking and notice that he’d gone. He dismissed the idea of grabbing ham sandwiches as uncool. He climbed the wall and jumped down on to the path on the other side. There was the workplace, the work-in-progress covered by a tarpaulin to protect it from gulls, but no worker. A two-fingered whistle, and Seth saw him standing on the cliff-edge some hundred yards further on. He waved. Seth shouted ‘Hi’ and ran to meet him. He curbed his ardour by a nod and a quiet ‘hello’. The atmosphere was crippled. Roly was so palpably thinking only of what he intended to say when the time was right. They walked side by side, away from the church. There were a few desultory exchanges about the sea, the birds, the angels, and then the seascape was left to speak on its own behalf as they continued in silence. After about five minutes Roly stopped and sat on the grass near the brink. Seth followed suit. A ridge of lemon-spattered gorse bushes hid them from the eye of the church.
‘You don’t get vertigo, or anything?’
‘No. Never.’
‘Good.’ Roly paused, then, ‘Look. I know I said I wouldn’t apologize about what I said, but I do. I’m very sorry. It was an ugly thing to do. Of course I meant what I said, but it was stupid to blurt it out like that. I must have been a bit pissed, I felt I knew you better than I do.’
Seth lacked words so he made a few noises midway between nurtured injury and returned apology.
‘OK, I admit it was rank hypocrisy,’ Roly continued, ‘I’m no less privileged than you. I just needed a scapegoat and happened to be quicker off the aggressive mark than you. I’m very sorry.’ Seth laughed. Roly looked hurt. ‘What’s the joke?’ he demanded.
‘Nothing. Well … it’s just that I spent all night, and most of the morning, planning how to demolish your attack next time we met, and you’ve gone and done it for me, damn you! You’ve taken all the fun for yourself! You must be more self-centred than I’d thought.’
‘Me? Really? Do you really think I’m self-centred?’
‘Oh, you must be, or I wouldn’t like you.’ Seth played shoot-bang-fire-pop with some grass. ‘I find overtly altruistic people unnerving. I can’t fathom them out so I end up suspecting their motives. Mother’s altruistic but she’s the first to admit that she only does it because virtue makes her feel good. It always reflects back on to the self. I think it’s healthier to bring the egotism to the surface and use it constructively. Saints get cancer.’
Roland laughed aloud, the sunlight in his hair.
‘You really are an extraordinary person,’ he said in an off-hand manner.
‘You’re not so dull yourself,’ Seth countered. Roly put a hand on his shoulder and stared in mock amazement.
‘Really?’ he exclaimed. ‘Oh, but that’s wonderful!’ They giggled, staring boldly into each other’s eyes. As the mirth died on his lips, Seth placed his hand on Roly’s thigh. Roly covered it with his own. Seth hoped he wouldn’t have to stand up in a hurry.
‘When do they want you back?’ Roly’s voice was grave.
‘Oh, shit!’ Seth swore as he glanced at Roly’s watch, ‘I’m going to be late, and I’m meant to be leading. Mother’ll kill me.’ He jumped up. Roly started to stand but Seth stopped him. ‘No,’ he mocked, ‘I want to run away and leave you staring soulfully out to sea.’
He chuckled as the sculptor swung his profile out towards the horizon, then he raced back to the church, dodging the rabbit holes as he went and singing All we like sheep to himself. Roly sighed and lay back on the salty grass, his eyes on the intense blue above. A lark, disturbed by the boy’s running, mounted into his field of vision. Her fierce song pierced his ears. He had an idea for a sculpture.
As the first two movements were run through with the chorus, Seth no longer found the thought of Roly a distraction. He no longer sweated with the effort. He was exhilarated by everything about him. Even Grigor’s ‘yokes’ were funny. During the Gloria, however, he rose further into the music. He remembered watching Mother at work during his last half-term. All the pupils stood in a small white huddle in the middle of the sun-splashed gym. She had put the Gloria on the stereo system at full blast. Then she had skipped around the room smiling at the children and singing. ‘Gloria! Gloria in excelsis deo! Come on, Stephanie, let’s dance together! Gloria! Gloria! That’s it! Happy, happy, happy!’ Without being told, they had all seized hands and danced in a circle around her, moaning tunelessly but joyfully, their sandals’ buckles jingling as they went. Gloria in excelsis!
Seth glimpsed Roly sitting at the back of the gallery. A shaft of stained light lying across his face and hair. Angel hair. Seth threw him a smile and promptly missed an entry. When he next glanced that way, Roly was laughing.
At the end of the afternoon Evelyn came over with Jemima.
‘Well done, Poppet,’ she said, ‘you must be whacked.’
‘I’m bullying Evelyn into coming with my godson to have a drink and a bite to eat,’ said Jemima, ‘maybe he can persuade her.’
‘Oh, do let’s!’ Seth enthused. ‘An evening at J’s would be funny.’
‘So I’m a gas as well as talented,’ laughed J.
‘Well what about Netia, all alone, poor lamb?’ asked Mother.
‘I’d love to see her too.’
‘No, honestly, Ma. She’ll be fine,’ Seth said, ‘she loves being alone; she can read in peace, and there’s no-one to make her eat fattening food when she’d rather have a bit of lettuce.’
‘Tempter, I succumb,’ said Mother. ‘Yes please, J.’
‘Jolly dee,’ said J. ‘Incidentally, Seth, your mother was asking me who the gorgeous person was you were sharing a private joke with up in the gallery. I told her she must have been seeing things – there’s never anyone gorgeous sitting up there. God knows, I’ve looked often enough.’
‘Well who was it, then?’ asked Mother.
‘The angel-maker.’
‘Oh,’ she said, a wry smile reaching into her face, ‘I see.’
SUNDAY two
As she slept with Hope in her arms, Mo dreamed of her former lover. She was in a panic, standing in the hall at the flat in Earls Court trying to open the door into the street. She had Maggie’s driving gloves with her and it was vital that she called Maggie back to get them because a blizzard was blowing. Maggie had just left and Mo was standing there tugging at the door and calling her name. The door bell rang and the door opened. That policewoman was standing there again. Her mouth didn’t move but there was a soothing voice, ‘Yes, of course I’ll give them to her. If you’ll just sign here.’
Mo had signed and the young officer had walked briskly back to the car, Mag’s little car, and climbed in. Someone else had driven her off, then the door had slammed back. Mo woke with a start. The front door slammed. It was morning. Eight o’clock and no Hope.
As her head began to throb into consciousness, Mo took the telephone in an unsteady hand and dialled.
‘Jack? … Hi … Yes … I’ll be a bit late, love … No. No problem; just a crisis with the plumbing, I’m waiting for him now … Yeah. OK. See you. ‘Bye.’ She dressed, splashed her face with cold water and threw a couple of Alka-Seltzer into a glass. For the first time in a decade she left the bed unmade. As she picked the papers off the mat and walked through to put the kettle on, Andy slipped in through the cat-flap.
‘Hello, And. Yeah, I know, don’t say it. Here.’ She poured him a saucer of milk then shut her eyes tight as she stood up again, to wait for the giddiness to pass. She took a breath then drank the Alka-Seltzer. The grains left at the bottom of the glass sent a shudder through her frame. She took a swig from a carton of orange juice to kill the taste and noticed the message.
The Klimt book was lying open by the breadbin. Her wallet lay open on top of it, pressing down the front cover to stop it folding shut again. On the page where Mag’s rounded writing wished Mo a happy birthday was scrawled, ‘Why didn’t you tell me you was a bluddy piglet? Thanks for the bluey. See you round, maybe.’
; Mo snatched up the wallet. Her ID card stared from its plastic window. A fiver had gone. She dropped the wallet, swearing, and ripped out the defaced page of the book. It caught half-way and she had to shake the whole thing. The page tore completely and, as the book fell to the floor, a few pages of glossy prints slipped out. Mo swore again and trod on the wreckage, grinding it with her heel. Andy mewed and ran back into the garden. Mo bit her lip, dropped to her knees and, picking up the scattered and distorted pages, held them to her chest. A lump gathered in her throat as she rocked to and fro by the saucepan cupboard.
‘Shit, shit, shit and shit,’ she murmured and briskly used the back of her hand to catch a rebellious tear on the top of her cheek.
The kettle came to the boil, its lid bouncing lamely. Mo stood, sliding what was left of the book to one side, and started to make some tea. She felt sick. Andy came in again and jumped on to the chair to her left, with a mew.
‘All right, go on and laugh at me you cold bastard. See if I care!’ She held out her hand and let him butt at it with his forehead. The telephone rang. It was The Perm.
‘Boss?’
‘McEnery, good morning.’
‘Hello. Has your plumber come yet?’
‘What? Oh, yeah. He’s just getting on with it.’ Mo looked down at her cat and winked at him.
‘It’s just that some things have come up and Jack, I mean Sergeant Melly, wondered whether you could come and take a look.’
‘What things?’
‘It’s in connection with the burglaries yesterday. There’s been another one that looks as if it’s the same person; same m.o. – seems to be a pattern.’
‘Tell him I’ll be right in.’
‘Great.’
‘Oh … and McEnery?’
‘Yes, Boss?’
‘Be a love and make us a cuppa?’
Mo gave Andy his breakfast, locked the back door and the cat-flap, took down her helmet and went out into the street. Andy followed her then trotted off to greet the milkwoman. Mo set off on her bike, wondering if it were possible to subvert from the inside.
‘Here’s your tea, Serge.’ Sometimes The Perm could be all sugar and spice.
‘Thanks, McEnery. After my job, or something?’ McEnery laughed, and realigned her hat on the mound of tortured hair. ‘Now. What’s the news?’
‘Burglary in a mews house off the Brompton Road; belonging to a Miss Katya Garcia. She’s an astrologer, like Papas and Stazinopolos, but with a difference.’
‘How come? Does she believe in it?’
‘She’s more scientific. She writes for “serious” occult magazines, gives lectures – things like that. She says she had a number of phone calls yesterday morning – silent ones, from a box. Whoever it was didn’t put any money in. She got a bit nervous because she assumed it was someone trying to see if she was out. She had a lunch appointment she couldn’t cancel, though. Just as she was getting into her car she heard the phone ring again, and decided that with so many calls it must simply have been a wrong number.’
‘Silly moo.’
‘She’s next door giving her statement.’
‘Fancy. Go on.’
‘Well, of course she was wrong. She got back from lunch at about three-thirty and didn’t notice anything amiss until she went back to her study to do some work. Someone had carefully rifled her desk and taken all her latest articles and papers. She’s very upset about some lecture she’d been due to give to some society.’
‘Fingerprints?’
‘Nothing. Not even a hair. A meticulous worker.’
‘Why didn’t she report it sooner?’
‘She did – straight away. But Chelsea didn’t think to tell us until Forensic said there was a similarity to the other two. She seems very keen to help – anxious about her papers, I suppose – so I asked her if she wouldn’t mind coming to make a second statement, to see how far they tallied.’
‘She’s in there, is she?’
‘Yes, with Jack … I mean …’
‘You mean with Sergeant Melly.’ A woman’s voice was raised, on cue, from the next room. ‘I’ll go in,’ Mo said, ‘and have a little chat.’
Miss Garcia was facing Jack over a desk, her back to the door. He had evidently given up taking notes, and was nodding sympathetically as she rambled. Her voice was wholly English, Mo noted at once. Perhaps she had been reared in Knightsbridge and had a Norland nanny, or something. She was smartly dressed, though without great show, and a pair of tortoiseshell specs dangled from her neck with her pearls. They bounced on her shallow bosom as she talked. She didn’t seem to hear the door. Jack’s eyes flicked to Mo’s in rapid despair then dropped back to his patient.
‘And you see it really is most important that I have those papers back. This couldn’t have happened at a worse time, you know, just when everybody ought to be told.’
‘Told what, Miss Garcia?’ asked Mo. Garcia swung round in mild surprise.
‘Who are you?’ she asked.
‘Detective Inspector Faithe, at your service, Madam.’
‘How do you do?’
‘Hello. Told what?’
‘Why, my dear woman, that the world is about to change.’
‘Change? How?’
‘It’s hard to explain in layman’s terms, but by a gross generalization I can state categorically that the society we know and love can never be the same after this coming Friday. It’s quite extraordinary – the most concentrated prediction I’ve seen since the start of the last war – supported on all sides, you know. I was due to address the Royal Society of Egyptologists on the matter at a luncheon on Wednesday, and of course, now that that madman has rushed off with all my papers, it’s quite impossible.’
‘Well, can’t you remember it all?’
‘My memory’s not what it was, but I doubt if I could ever have remembered quite so much data – even in my teens. Naturally, I could give the Society the bare bones of the thing, but they’re a suspicious lot – understandably, since there are so many tricksters about nowadays – and I’d need facts and figures for support.’
‘Miss Garcia, can you think of anyone, a professional rival perhaps, who might have wanted to steal your ideas?’
‘No. I’d told no-one and, well, at the risk of sounding conceited, I don’t think that anyone who wasn’t a real specialist could possibly have known what track I was following.’
‘What sort of change is on the cards for Friday, exactly? Is the Third World War going to start?’
‘Inspector, you must realize that the stars are not an open book, any more than the Tarot is. They rarely make categorical statements. They are a cryptic language, there to guide, to make suggestions, to provide advice.’
‘Only the blind look for direct answers,’ said Jack, with an air of having had this lesson already. Miss Garcia wheeled on her pupil.
‘Exactly so. The point is …’ The door opened. McEnery.
‘Yeah?’
‘Boss, there’s been another one.’
‘Where?’
‘Kensington, in the Campden Hill area.’
‘Who?’
‘Seamus O’Leary.’
‘Daily Express?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Let’s go.’
‘Oh, thank God you’re here. Come in, please.’ O’Leary’s jewelled hand wandered up to his yellowing hair to reassure it that the callers were friends. He giggled nervously. ‘It’s just like the telly, isn’t it? You never think it’s going to happen to you. I suppose everyone says that to you, don’t they?’ He giggled once more.
‘If you’d just like to tell us exactly what happened,’ said Mo, already taking notes in shorthand. She saw a trail of blood up the stair-carpet. O’Leary followed her gaze in an instant.
‘Oh, that’s his,’ he said.
‘McEnery, get Forensic, would you?’
‘Right.’
‘You haven’t tried to mop this up, have you?’
‘No. I di
dn’t think I was meant to.’
‘Quite right. Old Audrey Fox strikes again.’
‘Do you read her too? I’ve read the lot. Sorry.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well,’ he patted his hair again and took a breath, ‘let’s see.’ His eyes played rapidly across the patterns of the wallpaper as he composed his thoughts. ‘It must have started at about one o’clock, I suppose. I was upstairs in bed. Yes, now that I think of it it must have been about one because I remember setting my alarm radio before I went to sleep, and it was twelve, then.’
Mo was irritated that he couldn’t pronounce his rs.
‘I was woken by a noise,’ he continued. ‘You know that feeling when you wake with a start and you just know that something’s just gone crash?’
She nodded her assent.
‘Well, I sat up and switched on the light and listened, very still. There was another bang. It was someone walking into a chair, ‘cause I heard it fall over and someone saying … well, a man swearing. I kept calm. The only phone is in the study – where the noise was coming from – so I couldn’t call the police or anything.’ O’Leary remembered who he was talking to and smirked. ‘So I crept down, quiet as a mouse, and peered over from the stairs. Look, you can see from here – when the study door’s open you can look in from the landing. Well, I saw him.’ He paused for effect. ‘His back was turned so he couldn’t see me or anything.’
‘What was he doing?’
‘He was standing by my desk and going through all my things. I know it was stupid but, well, quite frankly, when I saw him there, bold as brass, that was it. I saw red, as they say. I came down quick, and went straight into the kitchen and took the carving knife off the wall. I’m not an aggressive person, you know, never hurt a fly, but just this once I was mad, I mean really. So I came and stood in the doorway like this, so he couldn’t escape, and I said, “And what are you doing?” Right? “And what are you doing?” Well, he sprang round like a frightened cat at that. He had this balaclava on back-to-front with holes in for his eyes, so I couldn’t see what he looked like. He had gloves on, too. I’d say he was about forty from his build, but it’s so hard to tell these days, don’t you find? Well, he paused for a moment, then he grabbed a handful of papers and started trying to open the window. You can jump from there down on to the garage roof and down to the road. I wasn’t going to let him get out that way, so I ran for him. He saw me coming and waited till I got close – about here – and then he ran past me and out into the hall. I ran after him and saw he was trying to get the front door open now. As I came up behind him he started up the stairs and I just had time to lash out at him. I got him on the back of the leg, just above the heel, I think. Certainly bled a lot. He shouted anyway, and carried on up and into the bathroom. He was sort of panting. I think he was almost as scared as I was, by now!’ A giggle slipped out with this. ‘Well, then he locked the bathroom door behind him. I ran into my room next door and flung the window up just in time to see him driving off. He must have come in that way. The house is on a very steep hill, as you probably saw, and those back windows are on street level like the front ones. I’d had rather a hot bath and didn’t want to spoil the wallpaper, so I’d left the window open to let the steam escape while I went to bed. Stupid of me, I know.’