Retribution (#3)

by M. M. Mayle

  Without asking any direct questions, the woman does her best to find out why he wants to go to the hospital. She expresses hope that he’s not in need of medical care for himself, that it’s not a sick or injured travel companion he plans to visit there; she supposes that his interest could be professional, that he could be a healthcare worker on a busman’s holiday. When none of that gets her a straight answer, she falls back on guessing he’ll want to look in on a few of the cheerier spots before he’s done with Kent. In a high-pitched voice she cautions him not to miss the black swans and the Dog Collar Museum when he tours nearby Leeds Castle.

  He does his best not to laugh at the doubtful existence of black swans and the outlandish notion of a museum for dog collars. Straight-faced and businesslike he scoops up the fresh supply of maps and folders she shoves at him and walks away unworried that he’s given her anything in return.

  The only worry he feels during the taxicab ride has to do with how much to tip the driver, and that’s nothing to get lathered up about. Nor is wondering how to behave once he gets to the hospital. If he handles himself the way he did at all those checkpoints between New York and London—without sweating or stammering or coming across like a jackassed-fool—there won’t be a problem.

  That thought is uppermost when he’s dropped off at the main entrance to the low-slung building that reminds him of the Sawyer Manor Nursing Home back in New Jersey. The inside looks like someplace he’s been before, too. The desk where visitors present themselves could pass for the one in the West Village hospital where it was Sid Kaplan he was after, and it even looks a little like the one at Portage St. Mary Memorial, the first place he ever tried to visit a bedridden patient.

  With that kind of practice behind him, he marches up to the sign-in desk, asks to see Mrs. Laurel Chandler Elliot and maybe lays it on a little thick by calling himself a former client of hers from over in the U.S. of A. He knows he’s right to say client, though; he’s troubled himself to learn that lawyers don’t have customers like in a store. And while he was at it, he found out that a lot of fancy college-schooled women hold on to the names they were born with and just tack on the marriage name like an afterthought, so chances are he got that right as well. But if he did, why is the girl behind the desk looking at him like he’s dripping pond scum and shaking one of her hands in the air like some got on her.

  A husky woman wearing a long white coat and a listening instrument around her neck is right on top of him before he’s got much of anything puzzled out.

  “Better late than never,” she says for hello. “Thinkin’ to check in, were you, or is that the newest thing in camera cases?” The nursewoman glares at the valise he’s holding and spits out more remarks that don’t make sense till she declares that the patient he asked for is long gone and he should be to.

  “Your lot hared off to London soon as word got out she was transferred to a private clinic there,” she says and he catches on that he’s been pegged for a celebrity chaser like Cliff Grant or Sid Kaplan.

  “What were you, then, the rear guard?” she says, crowding him toward the double doors to the outside. “What were you hopin’ to photograph, the sorry remains?”

  He feels her hot damp breath on his face, smells the onions she had for lunch, sees that the two of them are now center of attention for the others in the lobby.

  “Elvis has left the building, luv, so you best carry your sorry arse outta here too.” The automatic doors hiss open and she laughs the way Cliff Grant laughed when he was offered the truth about Audrey and scorned it. She laughs the way Sid Kaplan laughed when he was offered the chance to get extra rich and turned it down.

  Hoop plants himself in the doorway, opens the valise and gropes the insides for the means of answering her the way he answered Grant and Kaplan, but there’s nothing there for his hand to curl around but a bundle of paperbacks and a wad of tourist leaflets.

  This is the biggest mistake yet—thinking, for however many seconds that just went by, that he still had the means of answering this braying donkey of a woman. And it’s the readiness to use a knife right here, right now, in front of watchers, and with every chance of being caught, that has him so seized with worry he barely feels the nursewoman shove him the rest of the way out the door.

  If Laurel Chandler Elliot had still been a patient here and he had gotten in to see her, what was he going to do about the rock star husband who was probably at her side? Didn’t he learn anything from watching the two of them from the peephole in her attic that day? Didn’t he judge then and there that he couldn’t take on both of them with a knife, and didn’t that prove true when he went against that judgment and made the giant mistake in her garage?

  Saying the lawyerwoman had been alone and maybe asleep, was he going to dope her water supply, smother her with a pillow? What was he thinking? Was he thinking at all? How could he not remember that he’s not packing even a pocketknife or so much as a single dose of doctored aspirin? And how could he have been willing to carry out a public execution just now that would have meant immediate capture and breaking the promise made to Audrey?

  He rides a bus back to the Middlestone town center and returns on foot to the train station. His head is swimming when he boards the train back to London; his head is overflowing with forgots and overlookeds. When he stares out a window he sees through his reflection and straight into his failings with nothing in between.

  — TWENTY-TWO —

  Midafternoon, September 15, 1987

  The dull ache seems general in nature, unrelated to the condition of her lower abdomen. Seated in a wheelchair, compulsory transportation for all patients leaving the hospital, Laurel nevertheless favors that area of her body, hesitating even to rest her hands atop the emptied, deflated space. “Dusting and cleaning,” some wag called the D&C procedure undergone yesterday to ensure no remnants of the pregnancy remained. Dusting and cleaning indeed! And precautionary or not, the scraping of her uterus amounted to overkill as far as she was concerned. Too definitive, too final, too much like a deliberate rather than spontaneous abortion.

  She returns her attention to Colin and his present attempt to vary the order of the apologies he’s recited in a continuous loop ever since he was summoned from the studio night before last.

  “Same song, different verse,” Laurel grumbles under her breath.

  “Sorry?” He steps away from the window, where he was monitoring activity in the parking lot and sits down on the edge of the nearby bed, the better to hover over her.

  “Nothing.” She smoothes the excess fabric—the wasted fabric—of the roomy dress they brought for her to wear home. “I was just going to say . . . this has to stop.”

  “What has to stop, the endless string of disasters I’ve brought you? Damn right it has to stop and I’m—”

  “Colin, listen to me. Please. You have to stop blaming yourself. For everything. You have to get straight in your head that I did not lose the baby because of anything you did or did not do. You were in the room when the doctor said the pregnancy may not have been sustainable under any circumstances.”

  “But he said may not, he put in a qualifier and that leaves room for doubt.”

  “But not the kind of doubt you want to give it. He was discrediting outside influences, he was telling us that if I had experienced nothing but tranquility from day one it still might have happened.”

  “Might! There, you see? Another qualifier. He was just tryin’ to cushion the blow. His was just another example of tryin’ to protect me from the ugly truth. That’s all he was about.”

  “Stop it! I mean it. You stop this now or . . . or . . .”

  “Or what?”

  “Or I won’t go home with you.”

  “Guess I should’ve seen that coming. Only stands to reason, doesn’t it, then. Only figures you’d have a change of heart and a mountain of regrets after all the shit I’ve put you through.”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake. Don’t be silly. Don’t be ridiculous. I�
��ve had no change of heart. I have no regrets. I continue to love you beyond all reason, and because I do, I’m prepared to remain here in this hospital until you regain your senses.”

  “Regain? Who says they’re lost? What’s senseless about being sorry and wanting to make up for all the—”

  “There’s nothing to make up for.”

  “Bleedin’ hell, Laurel, I walked out on you. I wasn’t there when you needed me. You can’t just ignore—”

  “No, I can’t, but I can remind you that when you walked out the need hadn’t yet occurred. And I can forgive you, just as you’ve forgiven me every hour on the hour for not telling you about Rayce the minute I knew. I can also restore some balance to the situation by letting my selfishness for wanting to protect you serve as the tradeoff for your exaggerated sense of . . . of—”

  The ringing of the bedside phone prevents her citing him for self-importance, conceit, vanity, arrogance, and any other rock star characteristic that might come to mind.

  “Saved by the bell,” she says without indicating who was saved.

  Colin takes the call they were waiting for, listens for a minute or two and replaces the receiver. “That was the all-clear. They’re ready for us now.”

  “Then the hospital staff is still cooperating, the ruse is still working.”

  “Apparently so. With one exception. They’re telling me the majority of the paparazzi that gave chase to the decoy ambulance yesterday are now milling round outside the London clinic where you supposedly were transferred, but there was one lone latecomer here in Middlestone. Bold as brass, this straggler was. Waltzed up to reception earlier today and asked for you by name. They said he called himself a former client of yours, but the oversize camera bag he was lugging got him hustled out the door straightaway.”

  “I see,” she says to keep from saying how much that bothers her, how apprehensive she’s been ever since word leaked out that she was a patient at Middlestone Hospital and the media buzzards flocked as though to a roadkill. She bows her head, pretends interest in the condition of her manicure until she’s sure her face won’t give her away, as did the bold imposter’s camera bag. When she’s ready to resume, she picks up the least disturbing thread of the parent discussion.

  “You never said whose idea it was to use a decoy,” she says as if she couldn’t guess.

  “That’s got Nate’s touch. He used to resort to decoys and staged distractions in the old days, but I don’t recall an ambulance ever being involved.”

  “Is that how he kept the press at bay when you were hospitalized?”

  “You’d have to ask him about that.” Colin gathers up her few belongings that include a sealed plastic bag containing the bloodstained nightgown she arrived in. “I only recall the times he relied on subterfuge when . . . she was playing the prankster, when she was tipping the press to our whereabouts, then carrying on about invasion of privacy in a dramatic fashion that brought the front page exposure she craved. Had his hands full in those days, Nate did. Had to foil both her and the press, actually.”

  “You don’t have to avoid saying her name on my account. In fact, I was about to say her name in conjunction with something I forgot to tell you earlier—about how Aurora fit into the context in which Nate figured out how Rayce happened to—”

  This time it’s a soft knock on the door that forestalls a potentially inflammatory remark.

  “Save it, love. Save the talk till later when I’ll be wanting to hear more about this loving me beyond all reason.” He smirks at her, the first positive expression he’s displayed in two days; he puts on the billed cap that’s been dangling from the back pocket of his jeans, tugs it low on his brow and allows an aide to push her wheelchair as part of the ongoing effort to appear as ordinary as possible.

  They go out through the ambulance bay, where they’re met by a drab Volkswagen van manned by a uniformed driver and bodyguard. She’s a little surprised that they are the only security personnel in evidence, but that too must be part of maintaining a low profile.

  Colin helps her from the wheelchair and into the van, settles beside her and confides that the adjacent parking areas are virtually crawling with low profile security enlisted on their behalf. “At Nate’s insistence,” he says. “Even though the primary leak was plugged, he still had some concerns. You know how he feels about any amount of media presence bein’ the next best thing to a homing device.”

  “Who doesn’t?” she says, remembering how strongly this was emphasized during the media frenzy surrounding David’s funeral, where she couldn’t have felt more exposed if she’d been wearing a target on her back. “Who doesn’t?” she echoes herself absently and closes her mind to the possibility of feeling that way now.

  They exit the hospital parking lot without any followers that she can detect—hired or otherwise. Colin slips his arm around her, whispers reassurances that become subordinate to the filler that’s seeping into her mind in place of conscious fear. It’s one of Rayce’s selections that’s crowding out other thoughts, one of Shakespeare’s most memorable, one of her father’s favorites; one that she makes fit the occasion, as she has so many other of Rayce’s finds.

  “This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,” she begins just audibly, trailing off into something less than a whisper.

  “What?” Colin looks at her askance. “What’s that you’re saying? You do know your lips are moving, don’t you?”

  “King Richard’s thoughts on England . . . ‘This fortress built by nature . . . against infection . . . set in the silver sea which serves it as a wall . . . as a moat defensive to a house . . . against the envy of less happier lands.’”

  “Got it. I know that one. It’s the ‘sceptred isle’ one. And it ends with ‘this blessed plot . . . this earth . . . this realm . . . this England.’ Am I right? Am I right thinking you’ve gone quite mad with love of adopted country? What’re we in for next? Rousing chorus of ‘Jerusalem’ will it be, or just a simple straightforward rendition of ‘God Save the Queen?’”

  — TWENTY-THREE —

  Late afternoon, September 15, 1987

  At home, the porte-cochère is otherwise vacant when they enter its shelter. No welcoming committee, for which Laurel is grateful. No dogs bound out to greet them and even Cyril, the rooster, a regular fixture within this graveled precinct, is nowhere in sight. The subdued atmosphere prevails inside the house as well. Rachel can easily be imagined instructing good-intentioned neighbors and household staff to keep their distance—to avoid any overwrought displays pointing up this latest loss.

  On the long walk through the central corridor, the two household staff members they do encounter are both determined in their effort to carry on as usual, offering only polite nods before scurrying away. At the main staircase, Colin is all for carrying her to the bedroom floor. She resists.

  “Don’t push your luck,” Laurel says not unpleasantly. “I think my agreement to go to bed—to at least rest in the bedroom—is enough of a concession, don’t you?”

  He can’t argue with that, but he does succeed in slowing their progress up the double flight of stairs to one hesitant step at a time.

  “That’s two,” she says at the top. “That makes two concessions you’ve squeezed out of me,” she responds to his puzzled look. “I could have taken the stairs at my regular pace, you know, and I really don’t feel the need to rest.”

  “But you will,” Colin says in a whisper as they pass the boys’ rooms, where Simon is presumably napping.

  “Where is Anthony?” She says at the entrance to their own sleeping quarters. “He should be home from school by now, shouldn’t he?”

  “I’m in here,” Anthony answers from within the bedroom. “I’m supposed to mind you whilst Dad meets with this bloke that’s waiting for him in the snug,” he says from a spot near the small sofa, where he’s holding a ragtag bouquet of late summer blooms. The boy is as ill at ease as she’s ever seen him, almost as though he had done something wrong. L
ike father, like son?

  “Come here, darling.” She holds out her arms and swallows hard. “You can hug me, I won’t break,” she says when he sets the flowers aside, takes a few faltering steps then hurries to her. “I’m all right, Anthony. Everything’s going to be all right. I promise.” She kisses the top of his head, tousles his hair and has to bite her bottom lip when his sharp intake of breath sounds for all the world like one of her sob-suppressing hiccoughs.

  “Who’s waiting for you in the snug?” she says to Colin after composures are regained and she’s settled with Anthony on the sofa.

  “Emmet. Something he didn’t want to discuss on the phone.”

  “I see.” Laurel contemplates the sheer number of issues Emmet Hollingsworth could be reluctant to discuss on the phone, the dominant one being her current status regarding the withheld information about Rayce’s probable cause of death.

  “I’ll try not be long,” Colin says, targeting Anthony. “Don’t let her slide on the banisters or swing on the drapery cords. No pitched water battles in the bath, either. And don’t forget to ring the kitchen for a proper tea whether she wants it or not,” he cautions the boy and leaves.

  Without his father’s watchful eye on him, Anthony sinks into a stony silence that’s difficult to read. Plunged again into contemplation, this time with several issues competing for prominence, Laurel makes an educated guess. “I bet I know one of the reasons you’re so quiet,” she says. “I bet you’re wondering if you’re still going to get the room of your own you were promised when we thought a new baby would be crowding you out of the nursery suite.”