Requiem

by Clare Francis

  He started on a muffin, eating with the rapidity and determination of a compulsive eater. Below the fleshy cheeks, a heavy neck strained at its collar and the loose shirt could not hide the swell of a well-padded belly. ‘Oh, plenty of symptoms. Aches, pains, that sort of thing. Bad aches and pains, mind. Very bad. Had to take pills and potions all the time. An absolute slave to them.’

  ‘I see,’ said Daisy, trying to sort her way through this morass of vague information. ‘Would she be willing to come and see us, do you think? To undergo some tests? They’re quite painless. Just blood, that sort of thing.’

  ‘She would have, I’m sure. In fact she’d have been only too pleased. Sadly, though …’ He paused, frowning deeply, and continued in an unsteady voice: ‘… it won’t be possible.’

  ‘Oh. Why not? Is she too ill?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ he said with evident difficulty. ‘No, you see she died last year.’

  It was Daisy’s turn to stare. Until just a moment ago he had been using the present tense. ‘How awful,’ she murmured.

  Momentarily overcome, Maynard looked down at his hands. The fingers were blunt, she noticed, and there were gingery hairs growing thickly along the backs.

  Breaking free of his grief, he picked up the teapot. ‘More tea, Miss Field?’ he asked solicitously.

  ‘It must have been awful, Mr Maynard. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Colin. Please call me Colin.’ He did the trick with his eyes again, crinkling them at the edges to demonstrate his sincerity, before topping up her cup and offering her a muffin. ‘Yes, it was sad, very sad indeed.’

  ‘But surely the matter was investigated. Did they establish the cause of death?’

  ‘Ah. There’s no doubt about how she died, I’m afraid.’ Adopting a reverential tone he confided: ‘Her car went into a tree.’

  Daisy took a moment to absorb this. ‘I see.’ She didn’t like to ask if this mishap was likely to have been a complete accident or not. ‘How awful,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  He accepted her sympathy with a small bow of the head. ‘One has to bear these things, doesn’t one? One has to be brave. No choice really.’ Almost immediately the ingratiating smile was back.

  Daisy made an effort to like him and failed. His desire to please was so palpable, so overdone that her instinctive reaction was to pull up her drawbridge.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘what exactly did you want from me, Mr Maynard?’

  ‘From you?’ He gave a humble little shrug. ‘I thought maybe you could make something of what happened. You know, do something useful with the information. So her death won’t have been in vain.’

  The orchestra sprang into a noisy Charleston. Some of the younger dancers hurled themselves into a frenzy of leg kicking and arm waving. Every table in the room was taken, Daisy noticed, and people were being turned away at the door. Maynard had been lucky to get a booking.

  Daisy raised her voice over the blare of the music. ‘Quite honestly, I’m not sure we can do very much with what you’ve given me. There’s so little to go on, you see.’

  ‘Little to go on? Oh, I see. I hadn’t realized.’ He chewed thoughtfully on a pastry. ‘But now you come to mention it, I suppose there isn’t.’ A regretful chuckle. ‘Oh dear, oh dear. I’m disappointed of course. I mean, I had hoped … She was my sister, after all.’ He popped the last of the pastry into his mouth. ‘Well, well. There we are. There we are. One has to accept these things.’ The smile slid back into place, and Daisy suppressed a sudden urge to wipe it off his face. ‘So tell me, Miss Field, normally – when the person’s available, so to speak – you can do these blood tests, can you? And what do they show exactly?’

  ‘If we’re lucky, if we catch the person soon enough, high levels of pesticide.’

  ‘Just floating around in the blood, are they?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘And you’ve come across a lot of cases, have you?’

  ‘Not as many as I’d like.’ His accent: she had it at last. Unless she was mistaken it was South African or something very similar, an accent that time or determination had all but eradicated.

  ‘Forgive me, but would that be tens of cases? Or hundreds?’

  ‘We’re not sure.’ She explained how some people had been exposed to several pesticides and it was hard to know which individual agent or combination of agents had caused their illness.

  ‘But Aldeb’s the number-one suspect, eh?’ It seemed to Daisy that there was a hint of slyness in his eyes.

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  If he was disappointed in her answers he didn’t show it. He offered her the last pastry. When she refused it he slid it onto his plate and raised his pale eyebrows in disapproval at his own self-indulgence. ‘And the organization you work for, Miss Field. I don’t believe you mentioned it.’

  ‘Didn’t I?’

  ‘You said you worked for a charitable organization.’

  ‘Yes, so I did.’ She was tempted to skirt the truth again. There was something about Maynard that did not invite trust, and his questioning, for all its caution, had an edge of relentlessness to it. At the same time she had nothing to apologize for, and certainly nothing to hide.

  ‘I work for Catch,’ she told him. ‘The Campaign Against Toxic Chemicals. We monitor all sorts of chemicals and their impact on health.’

  A look of wonderment came over his face. ‘Really?’

  ‘Some of our work is funded by charitable trusts, as I told you, but mostly we rely on subscriptions.’

  ‘You have a membership, do you?’

  ‘Certainly. Would you like to join? It’s twelve pounds fifty.’

  He gave the briefest hesitation and, though it might have been Daisy’s imagination, she thought she saw a flicker of calculation pass over his face. He beamed: ‘Why, I’d be delighted.’

  He insisted on paying in cash and drew fifteen pounds in notes from his wallet. She couldn’t help noticing that the wallet was well stocked. He wouldn’t accept any change. ‘Let it be an extra little donation,’ he said proudly. ‘You will keep me in touch?’

  She explained about the quarterly newsletters.

  ‘And might I phone you just occasionally?’ he asked. ‘To see how things are going on the Aldeb front. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble? It would mean so much.’ He inclined his head timidly, though Daisy had got the feeling that timidity didn’t come easily to Colin Maynard.

  ‘There won’t be much to report, not for some months anyway.’

  He said hastily: ‘In due course then. In due course.’ He summoned the waiter and paid the thirty-five-pound bill without a murmur. Daisy couldn’t help noticing that his lips moved as he calculated the tip.

  Chapter 6

  SUSAN DRISCOLL WAITED for the driver to hurry round the back of the car and open the door for her. She was perfectly capable of opening it herself, of course, but such perks were still novel enough to gratify and entertain her. Having stepped out, she walked slowly into the house, leaving the driver to unload the baggage and carry it into the hall after her.

  Once inside, any fleeting illusion of high living came to an abrupt end, and her mood darkened. She looked irritatedly for something on which to focus her dissatisfaction, but the hall and the drawing room, glimpsed through the open door beyond, were just as she had left them, the scatter of cushions unruffled, the carefully arranged bric-à -brac unmolested, the picture frames straight. Even the dried flower-burst on the Queen Anne occasional table by the door, which the cleaner usually managed to displace, was for once undisturbed. The place, her painstaking and loving creation of five years, was perfect, and she felt an angry unreasoned resentment against it. However much guests admired it – and they did, lavishly – there was never any escaping the fact that she had exerted all her creativity on a house that was small, hemmed in by ugliness of immense proportion, and wildly inconvenient, being deep in an area which, up-and-coming in the great property boom of five years before, had failed to arrive.
This street and two of its neighbours formed an island of yuppification in a sea of depressing council estates, run-down Victorian terraces and menacing inhabitants, most of whom were coloured, a fact which Susan wasn’t allowed to mention now that Tony was a junior minister. Over the years guests had become infrequent – it was easier and, though Tony wouldn’t admit it, safer to meet them in town – and now the house seemed a laughable, lamentable waste of effort.

  The driver asked if there was anything else she wanted, but she knew better than to take him up on the offer. A shopping trip to Knightsbridge would have been nice – her wardrobe had failed to stand up to the test of two days in Paris – but Tony would need to make cabinet rank before she could get away with anything as frivolous as that. As the other wives had allowed her to discover the hard way, the lines of privilege were not to be overstepped.

  With the driver gone, she flicked through the bills and wandered into the kitchen. Even a cursory glance revealed the reason the dried flowers had been undisturbed: the cleaner, due yesterday morning, had failed to show up. Susan felt a deeper depression: it was really impossible to get things done around here.

  A pan lay in the sink, clumps of congealed spaghetti floating in its oily waters. This meant that Camilla, her student daughter, must be in residence, an unexpected but largely pleasant surprise confirmed by the fact that the answering machine had been turned off and replaced by a stack of pencilled messages.

  Susan brightened up a little and, going into the hall, called up the stairwell to the top floor. It was ten, still a little early for Camilla, and Susan was preparing to call again when her daughter’s head suddenly appeared over the banister rail.

  ‘Mummy! Who’s a clever girl then?’ Camilla shrieked.

  ‘Oh? Am I? That makes a change.’

  ‘And I thought you were kidding.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Susan said, slightly irritated.

  ‘I’m talking about Nick Mackenzie!’

  It took a moment for Susan to absorb the implications of this statement. Incredulous, she said: ‘You mean – he’s called?’

  ‘His agent. Phoned yesterday.’

  Susan hurried back to the kitchen and shuffled through the messages. There it was: David Weinberg Management had called. They wanted to discuss a date for a concert. Would she please call back.

  She stared at the message, read it again, then sat down on the nearest stool.

  Nick hadn’t forgotten her then. He had realized that the unfamiliar-sounding Mrs Susan Driscoll was really her and had said yes; agreed to the impossible, to the one thing they’d said he’d never do.

  The thought filled Susan with vivid exhilaration and a sort of bitter-sweet triumph. It had been a long time since she had seen Nick – incredibly, almost twenty years – but despite everything, despite the number of women who must have been through his life in all that time, despite his marriage to the woman with the strange name, he’d remembered.

  And remembered her kindly, it seemed, despite – no, why did she say that? – because of what had happened so long ago. Yes, and why not? They had been very young. That said it all, really: very young, very selfish. Looking back now, he must feel guilty – yes, and rightly so. He had been awful, awful at the end. Yet she was happy to forgive and forget – it was such a long time ago, after all.

  Even as she convinced herself of this she felt an echo of pain and anxiety, like an old wound. Would he really remember her kindly? Would he?

  Camilla breezed in and enveloped her mother in an embrace that was mostly long hair and floppy T-shirt. Susan kissed her absentmindedly and disentangled herself.

  Camilla gazed admiringly through oversize spectacles. ‘Mummy, you are a dark horse. I’m afraid I didn’t really believe you. I mean, it sounded so unlikely.’

  Susan smoothed out the message and tucked it into her bag. ‘What do you mean – unlikely?’

  ‘Well, you knowing Nick Mackenzie.’

  ‘But I told you. I knew him well.’

  Camilla giggled delightedly. ‘Mummy!’

  Susan gave her a long cool look. ‘We were very close for a time.’

  The laughter fell away from Camilla’s face. She looked respectful. ‘Mummy, I had no idea.’

  Susan gave a small secretive smile. ‘Why should you?’

  ‘Was it … Were you …?’

  ‘We were lovers, if that’s what you’re getting at.’ Susan looked away, out to the small enclosed patio with its scattering of geraniums. She noticed that the white walls, painted only a few months before, were already streaked with grime. ‘We met at a party in Chelsea. It was one of those instant things, across a crowded room. The sort of thing you don’t believe in until it happens to you. Within a week we were living together. It was – well, special. For both of us. We were very much in love.’ She was aware of Camilla’s incredulous stare. Children, selfish creatures that they were, always chose the images of their parents which suited them, and youth and desirability they found very uncomfortable indeed.

  ‘What happened?’ Camilla asked in a hushed voice.

  Susan half turned so her face was in profile. ‘I ended it. I didn’t want that sort of life. It may sound glamorous, a non-stop succession of concerts and parties and travel but, believe me, it was soul-destroying. The band was always touring. The pace was mad, the pressure awful. No one could survive that. It started to destroy me and it certainly started to destroy Nick. He hit the drink, you know. I couldn’t bear to watch it. I wanted it to end while we still had something going for us.’

  ‘Mummy, I can’t bear it. It’s so sad.’

  ‘Oh, not sad really.’ Susan gave a brave little smile. ‘These things happen all the time. Right person, wrong timing. And vice versa. It’s the story of most people’s lives.’

  Camilla gave an agonized groan. ‘But, Mummy, if he’d been anyone else, I mean if he’d been ordinary, would you – well, still be together?’

  Only an eighteen-year-old could ask a question like that. ‘Darling, who knows?’ she answered enigmatically. ‘One can never tell about these things.’

  ‘Of course, I should be glad – that you married Daddy, I mean. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.’

  Susan’s mind was back on Nick Mackenzie. What memories came into his mind when he thought about her? Good ones hopefully. The others – well, they faded with time, didn’t they? She gave a small shiver.

  ‘Not that Daddy’s ordinary, of course,’ Camilla rattled on.

  ‘No, darling,’ Susan murmured vaguely. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘And he is a minister. Which isn’t at all ordinary, is it?’

  ‘A government minister, Camilla,’ she said briskly. ‘If you say minister people will think he’s a parson.’

  Camilla burst out laughing. ‘Daddy a parson! What a thought!’

  Susan didn’t reply. She was thinking ahead to the night of the concert and the moment when she would face Nick again. She would dress very carefully. None of the staid government wife look, yet nothing too glitzy either. A designer dress, very simple, very dramatic. Very expensive. She would buy it first and argue with Tony later.

  ‘Will you have lots of meetings beforehand?’ Camilla asked. ‘If so, can I be your assistant? Notebook in hand.’

  Susan hadn’t thought of meetings, but of course there would have to be several, maybe as many as three or four. Perhaps one with Nick himself. In which case she might well take Camilla along. But not the entire committee; they didn’t deserve it. Though they were far, far too well bred to say so, they hadn’t really believed she could pull this thing off. She would enjoy announcing her coup at the next meeting.

  Pointing Camilla in the direction of the sink and the unwashed spaghetti pan, Susan hurried upstairs to unpack. Only a few hours before, everything about her clothes had disheartened her: frumpy, frowsy, second-rate. Now she sang as she hung them up. Pausing in front of a mirror, she cast a critical eye at her reflection, pushing her chin forward, turning to half
profile to find her best angle. Not bad, really. She had good bones, and bones always stood the test of time. She didn’t look forty-something, more like thirty-five. There were laugh-lines around her eyes, of course, and the eyelids were going a bit crêpy, but what could you expect. The hair needed attention though. The style, layered but long, like a shaggy lion, really didn’t suit her. Too middle-class. Too middle-aged. She would go for something sleeker, simpler, more classical.

  Normally she made it a rule never to unpack for Tony, just as she made it a rule never to wash and iron his shirts – laundries were the best people to field complaints about creases and late deliveries – but after this news she was feeling light-hearted and decidedly generous. Tony had to work hard in this new job of his; the three-day conference in Paris had been preceded by two days in Strasbourg and, before that, a hectic week in Parliament dispelling fears about contaminated water in Lancashire.

  His case contained a pile of dirty shirts, socks and underclothes. There were an enormous number of them; he must have changed shirts at least twice a day. She bundled them into the laundry basket, hung his spare suit in the wardrobe and placed his unused clean shirts neatly on a shelf. In the bottom of the case were a few loose papers – brochures and circulars – and these she placed on his bedside table.

  His sponge bag she put beside the basin in the bathroom, then, feeling really noble, opened it and hung out his flannel. She noticed his toothpaste was nearly finished and made a mental note to buy him some more.

  She glanced at the brochure on top of the pile. A five-star converted château somewhere in France, complete with moat and drawbridge. Tony must have stayed there on his way from Strasbourg to Paris, before she flew out to join him. It looked gorgeous. How strange that he had said nothing about it. She opened the brochure out. Lying inside it was a slip, the sort they hand you with your key, confirming the room rate. At the top in French script was written: Mme. Smith, and a room number.

  Susan sat down on the bed. It was several minutes before she moved. Then she got up and, going to the wardrobe, systematically went through the pockets of Tony’s suits. Running quickly downstairs, she searched his overcoats hanging in the hall. Returning to the bedroom, she sat on the bed again for quite a time before going into the bathroom and staring at herself in the mirror.