‘Down, girl, down, you silly mutt. Get down . . .’ Vain requests against her panting enthusiasm and vapid attempts to reach his face. She was a kissing dog; she feinted and growled like a cat purring, great daft paws on his chest in ecstasy, only ready afterwards for a brief, unconvincing show of obedience.
Impossible to conduct a life of privacy with Dog, out of the question to resist her affection, or remember the frustrations of work in her company, and Malcolm felt a strange belief that this was the point from which he should begin his life afresh, and grow again. Any form of growth but size, he reflected wryly. Dog would bring him luck as he brought her health, but he wondered what he would do with her when he and his parents issued forth in the next week to go to the Ball. He hated the thought of excluding Dog from anything: the only time she suffered distress was from being left alone.
It was late afternoon when Malcolm looked beyond the dust of his office window, felt Dog hidden by his feet, and thought fleetingly of Detective Constable Ryan by the sea. Then he pulled towards himself, for the hundredth time, the Solicitor’s Diary. Eight more calls to go in the daily hunt for Sarah Fortune. He had reached the M’s in the directory, and found, startling in its familiarity, the name of his father’s firm. It was a laughable thought that Sarah Fortune could be working so close to home. He almost abandoned the thought of making the call but, led by a sense of thoroughness, persisted. His voice, if not his mind, suddenly official.
‘Hallo. I wonder if you could help me? My name is Malcolm Cook, solicitor. I was in the High Court last week and a lady in the case after me lent me a good pen, which I’m afraid I failed to return. I believe she was from your firm, but I’m not sure . . . Do you have a solicitor, thirtyish, red-haired . . .? I believe the first name was Sarah, but I didn’t catch the rest. You’ll inquire? Then I could return her pen. Thank you.’
Tapping his fingers while the faceless receptionist was busy with questions. ‘Here, Sylvie, I’ve got this bloke asking for someone like Sarah, what do I say?’ ‘I dunno, put him through to Joan.’
Suspicious, but trained to be helpful. Usually, if a redhead existed within the walls of the office Malcolm was calling, he would be put on to herself or her secretary, and would know within seconds, by a mere detail of the voice or the description, that the trail was cold. This time it was a secretary with a voice breathing the fumes of a hundred cigarettes, and a manner as brusque as a sergeant.
‘Sarah?’ said the voice loudly. ‘Sarah Fortune?’
There was a pause, whilst Malcolm held his breath, maintained the indifference of his tone, and listened with rising hope to the sharp intake of breath.
‘There ain’t no Sarah Fortune here,’ said the voice abruptly. ‘Our Miss Winfield has red hair, but she isn’t called Fortune, and she’s retiring soon. Never goes to the High Court anyway. Must be a different woman.’
‘Thank you,’ said Malcolm, spirits sinking. ‘I’m sorry to have troubled you.’
Joan’s hand trembled as she replaced the receiver. She had not acted in response to orders, only to instinct, an automatic reflex of protection and fear. If Sarah had noticed how subdued her secretary was these days, she had not commented. Knew better from past experience than to try to force Joan out of one of her depressive moods, finding it wiser to grin and wait for the storm to pass into healthier rage before deciding how to help by whatever back door she could find. But there was no help for Joan to seek from Sarah’s generous source, not now. Before her eyes, on the other side of the desk, there lingered the vision of that small, broad man who had found her two weeks before in the office, and whose presence had reduced her to this. Deception and misery, cutting Joan off from all support, Ted’s favourite and most effective practice.
She had shopped late one Thursday night, returned to the office reluctantly to finish some work, a rare enough occurrence and one she would never repeat again. Tapping up the corridor, suddenly awed by the hollowness of the quiet, she had heard him, sensed someone in Sarah’s room. Sudden fear had melted into angry curiosity, and her thin shoulder had pushed the door open wide before she had given herself time to wonder who was this shuffler of paper, or even to consider that he might be sinister. There had been this squat man, with his hands in a drawer and his small feet below the desk, scruffier than when she had seen him last, but still dapper, if thinner and slightly dirty, looking up from his task with something like resignation, well-established in Sarah’s chair.
‘’Ere, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ Joan’s shrill cry rang futile in her own ears before the other instinct made her aware of danger. She stood still, unable to move from the circle of his untroubled gaze, shocked by recognition.
Ted Plumb recognised foe and friend, his mind calculating with speed as he moved towards Joan’s paralysis, holding her eyes until he reached her, then pinning her arms and forcing her down into a chair. He had been in the office for over an hour, slipping in as the stragglers moved out, had seen the children’s photos on Joan’s desk, recognised Jack, knew for the first time where Joan worked, and had also surmised exactly how she stood in relation to Miss Fortune, whose desk had yielded a surprising set of secrets. There were angles in plenty here, levers and weaknesses for blackmail. Feeling Joan’s arms begin to tremble, he knew he could afford to be almost honest, and was suddenly ashamed by the hunted look in her eyes. There she was, his informant.
‘’Allo, doll.’
His own shock had struck and passed when he had seen the photographs and recognised the detritus of his wife’s familiar presence. A new bag on the floor, identical to the old, Joan’s hat, Joan’s bits and pieces in her desk, the lipstick which would always have that chewed appearance, the cheap cosmetics, the colourful scarf over the chair which he had touched in passing, smelt for sentiment, stopped in his tracks by half-regret. Yes, he missed her, more than he had known, wanted to be in those photos, a man with his kids and a careworn, but still striking wife. Better than a bedsit, a pile of dirty clothes and the occasional company of a foreign tart.
Joan struck at the arms holding her still, calmer but still rigid with shock.
‘No need for that, Ted. Get your bleeding hands off me. And fuck off, I’m getting the caretaker.’
He sighed. Work was work, and this was far too important for other loyalties. Act first, make up the ground later. One slap to stop this effort to escape. A loud slap in the silence of the empty corridor, a reminder of her real isolation compared to his physical strength. One blow was enough, the rest was words.
‘Come on, Joan love. Don’t be silly.’
A red patch glowed crudely on one cheek. She did not respond. He pulled the chair from behind Sarah’s desk and placed it next to hers.
‘All right. Don’t speak to me, but listen, will you? I’m not here to spy on you, didn’t even know you were working here, how could I? You never tell me nothing, Joan, do you?’
Silence.
‘Now listen, love. I’ve got this job. Charles Tysall, you know him?’
She did not reply, but he saw the flicker of awareness in her eyes.
‘Poor bloke’s in love, see? Like you and me once.’ Not a good comparison, so he hurried on. ‘Only she won’t have nothing to do with him, your Miss Fortune, I mean. Nice woman, is she? Helps with the kids quite a lot, doesn’t she? Thought she did. I seen her with Jack. Am I right?’
He held Joan’s chin and shook it playfully. She nodded her reply.
‘Now,’ he continued, confident of her full attention. ‘Now. All we want is what’s best for Miss Fortune, what’s best for you and the kids. Quite easy really. You just do as I say, simply speak nicely to Mr Tysall whenever he rings up, tell him what your lady boss is doing, and try to get her to speak to him if you can. Give him a chance, keep telling her what a good bloke he is. Don’t let any other blokes she doesn’t know speak to her either. That’s all, and then no one gets hurt. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.’
Nothing. An empty building, the
light above the desk illuminating dusk in early summer, washing out the workday sanity of the place. Not a sound, apart from his voice, even the street quiet outside. Joan had thought of her own rowdy estate, shrieks, howls and yells, sandwiches thrown to kids through the window, all that lovely, irritating noise. She had looked at the flat eyes in front of her own and known, without needing to reason, how captive he was. In those eyes, in her own street, in this room, prisoner day by day to all the loyalties and necessities. Ted and Sarah: threats to Sarah would threaten the whole of Joan’s life. He knew it, and so did she. Children galloped through her mind; pictures of broken legs, burns, scars, and the emptiness of the place rendered her hopeless before Ted, as hopeless as she had always been when faced with a plea in his eyes. She had loved him, missed him, worthless bastard that he was.
She bent her long spine into the chair, a small gesture of defeat. Trembling, she reached for her bag, looking for the inevitable cigarette which might help her pretend defiance.
‘Steady on, girl,’ he said quietly and gently. ‘I’ll do that for you. Day’s been long enough. Don’t want to upset you, honest I don’t.’
He had lit her one of his cigarettes, and the sudden kindness unhinged her frayed defences. Ted knew when to vary the strokes. She took the cigarette first, then the hand, then tolerated the arm round the back of the chair. It was a male arm, unlike Sarah’s slender one, convincingly broad. Ted Plumb came from the same frightened place; they had shared too much of it together. It was all so much easier, so much more regrettable than he could have imagined, simply a question of finding by accident another loyal servant, full of weakness.
‘It’s very simple, see? But your Sarah, lovely woman, won’t see sense. Don’t know why. Sorry to rough you up, but you know what I mean. I’ve no business here. I’ll come back in the morning if you like. But I need this job, Joan, really I do. He’ll put me back on my feet. Good money, and then perhaps . . .’
She did not like. Even withdrawing from him, there was a spell, a mystical charm, Ted Plumb’s fatter face transposed on the thinner, handsome face of his master. Whatever she thought in her mix of love and bitterness for Ted, she could not believe wrong of Charles, and she had simply agreed. Guard Miss Fortune, tell me, and tell Mr Tysall whatever she does. Save your husband from the scrap heap in the process, without doing any harm, simply doing Miss Fortune a big favour. Ted always had a way of dignifying a task, rendering betrayal a thing of worthwhile purpose. It was only afterwards Joan began to wonder, but even then she did as she had been told, telling herself it was all for the best, and such was the mixture of hope and reluctant loyalty, she believed it most of the time. Money, he had promised. Money and security after this, soon.
But today was a bad, fitful, trembling day when she knew it could not be so harmless. A strange man asking for Sarah, Sarah’s very existence denied on an impulse. Joan lit another cigarette. Not only that. Bloody Charles Tysall’s now familiar voice. What news for me, Joan my dear – a voice which caressed. Well, she’s going out to lunch, on Saturday she’s going to a ball. Where? Gray’s Inn, something like that. She was talking about a dress. He had found something significant in that. She had tried to keep it brief since she could not see it was useful information at all. Felt all her resentments of Sarah and the world, all the reluctant respect, then put her head in her hands and wept.
CHAPTER TEN
Gray’s Inn Ball, last word in effort on the Bar’s social calendar of which Ryan and Malcolm had spied the first on Temple Lawns, the grandest ball for Cinderellas and Prince Charmings of all ages. Joan envied Sarah the Ball, Sarah dreaded it. There were too many memories, too many complications among all that glitter, and none of it was gold.
Reasons festered in several separate minds for hesitating. Matthewson, invited by Queen’s Counsel as a gesture of thanks for all the expensive litigation brought to the fashionable door of chambers, hated the thought as much as Penelope loved it, and the loathing had driven the ulcer into a frenzy. Penelope wept with frustration at the defeat of her plans to reconcile father and son over the champagne. She and Malcolm would go to the Ball and make the best of it, she with her friends to meet him there. Malcolm placed Dog in his car, fingered his tie, and hoped it would rain.
Charles Tysall, non-practising barrister, had found it easy to organise an invitation through the old school contacts who would prostrate them-selves to please so successful a contemporary. He would find Sarah Fortune, trapped by politeness, unable to refuse to speak to him, or even be touched. So far he knew her instincts well, and dressed for the Ball with easy determination. Porphyria would suit an evening gown.
Sarah Fortune, poised in front of her mirror, ready for flight, wished for peace and the end of all perplexity, stuck out her tongue at her own image and wished it was a night for a long bath with frivolous book to consume during an evening of wilful inelegance. Wondered too what it was like not to be playing a part. Wished she could recapture excitement, and wished for more than a moment that someone loved her, even that hopeless love in a vacuum once held for a husband, never reciprocated, always denied, finally betrayed. And in the mirror, she still saw a dumpy child, permanently unloved, surprised by the verdict of the world’s attention, begging not to go to the Ball. There in the glass was the reflection of an anxious face, the drawn look irritating her own observation. She hunched her shoulders, scowled at the result. Nothing was going to make her any the less recognisable, the blessing and curse of her own appearance ever since childhood. She could not have left her house with unwashed hair but the clean version shone like a bonfire however she pulled, scraped and twisted it into pins. Nothing could make her unnoticeable, however soberly dressed in this shroud of shapeless black, anonymous below the subdued hair. Maybe a pair of spectacles and a paper bag for the rest of the face would complete the disguise, she thought savagely, but even Simeon would notice that. God, this is going to be awful. Impatience rose in her throat in the form of a few gentle obscenities addressed to the mirror. Damn and blast. I never cared for opinion, good or bad, I will not pretend, I will not. Then the mirror reflected the same ironic smile, same lack of dutiful gratitude which had made Belinda Smythe recoil in surprise two years before. Sarah unbuttoned the high neck fastening with one hand, began to release the hairpins with the other. Hair undone, dress at feet, she pulled from the wardrobe a very different garment of cardinal purple, soft and shimmering, pinched at the waist, flounced at the bare shoulder, still demure, but a dress of curves and vivid subtlety of colour. She left it on one side, went to the kitchen, poured a large gin, then shook her hair and threw away the hairbrush she had used to torture it, stepped into the dress and downed the drink in one. After that she stuffed keys, cigarettes, lipstick and cash into a bag, blew a kiss at the mirror and walked out of the flat into the last of the late evening sun. Striding over the grass towards the road, she resembled a hiker in her long-legged and determined stride, unimpeded by the dress which she held to the knees. Cigarette in hand, she waved down a taxi, failing to notice that three of them, together with one bus and a private car, all stopped in unison. Thank you. Gray’s Inn, please. If I’m going to the Ball I’m going to the bloody Ball. Not creeping there.
Ten o’clock. Gray’s Inn, in splendour for the evening, covering its elegant façades and squares in lights so much more entertaining than its daylight preoccupations allowed. Gray’s Inn Fields, once a meadow, the past only betrayed by the present names, Jockey’s Fields, Field Court, flanking Gray’s Inn Square and South Square, both bordered with Georgian stone and gracious windows. Beyond these were the walks, one and a half acres of pristine lawns with bowed trees, the envy of top-deck bus passengers in the road beyond, who saw from their own captivity a sanctuary of peace railed and protected from the ordinary world. And now, with trees festooned with lights, the grass half-covered by huge marquees and a small fairground, all disguised with the final transformation completed by the entrance of hundreds of revellers in evening clothes. Pipe ba
nds in the walks, orchestra on the marquee dance floor, alternative band in hall, casino in the library, jazz or films in the Arbitration room, dinner out of doors, breakfast in the refectory, and all survivors to assemble for photographs at four-thirty in the morning. High Court judges, Sarah, Mrs Matthewson and others hoped to be home before then.
Tables in one marquee, cramped and cheerful, a crowd as large as New Year in Trafalgar Square, Simeon in earnest conversation with the lady he hoped to impress, Sarah entertaining his guests, and all relatively well. Mrs Penelope Matthewson, instructing her son to replenish the wine supplies before the rigours of dancing, looked as happy as a child at Christmas, and Malcolm ran errands with good grace, pleased to please her for once. Until he stopped in his wide-angled glance across the vista of tables, shocked by the sight of Sarah Fortune, held out of touch by a sea of faces, delightfully familiar all the same. Forgot the wine, and forged towards her as the tables’ parties began to break up and move on to other entertainments, obstructing his path by some ghastly common consent, so that by the time his ‘Excuse me, excuse me’ progress was complete, she was gone and the table empty even of crumbs.
Then he spent the next restless hour looking, seeing her everywhere in the shape of a dozen others, spying her in a distant crowd, whirling past him on the waltzer, moving across the lawns with a group of women, never once seeing him. The crowds moved like sparrows, debating and screaming at each novelty, fluttering on and off dance floors, around the incessant barbecues, the indoor cabaret, the disco, leaving tables empty until exhaustion struck, and whenever he saw her, she was not remotely approachable. He knew it was chance. A kind of weary fatalism overtook him, but still he looked.
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