by Unknown
“Nothing you want to hear, Jenny. Believe me.”
She arrived on Saturday afternoon. It was another in a succession of hot airless days. I was in the garden, dozing in a deckchair after too many cold beers, when I heard a car turn in from the lane. She must have guessed where I’d be, because, without pausing to try the doorbell, she walked straight round from the front of the house. I’d struggled to my feet by then and composed something close to a smile to greet her. But she wasn’t smiling. She stopped as soon as she saw me and gazed at me expressionlessly. Only then, after a few seconds of deliberation, did she come closer.
“Hello, Robin.” Still there was no smile. And even the formal kiss she’d normally have bestowed was banished. She was wearing a straw hat, dark glasses she showed no sign of removing, an outsize white shirt over pale blue trousers and sandals. And she was carrying a video cassette in her hand. I didn’t have to see the label on the cardboard case to know what it was.
“Hello, Sarah. I . . .”
“You look as if you’ve been through the mill.”
“A spot of bother at the factory. Did Jenny tell you how it happened?”
“She didn’t need to. Paul told me.”
“Ah. I see.”
“He’s been expecting to hear from the police. But I gather you’ve covered his tracks for him.”
“Well . . .” I shrugged. “I don’t think any useful purpose would have been served by bringing a complaint against him. Do you?”
“No. But it was good of you, even so.”
“Not really. Not after everything else.”
“Daddy doesn’t know. Nor Bella. There seemed no point telling them.”
“About me, you mean? Or about . . .”
“About you.” She stretched out her hand, offering the video to me. I had the strange impression that if I didn’t take it from her straightaway she’d drop it on the grass between us. I took it. “They know about the baby, of course. Daddy’s reacted badly. Paul too, I suppose. But he keeps his feelings bottled up. What happened with you . . . the loss of control . . . was unusual. Unprecedented in my experience.”
“I don’t blame him.”
“Neither do I. But . . . on his behalf . . . and for Rowena’s sake . . . thank you for not taking it further.”
Silence and distance crystallized in the still air. Her mouth didn’t so much as quiver. And what there might be in her eyes to reveal her real opinion of me I couldn’t see. “Would you . . . like a drink?”
“No. I can’t stay.”
“Not even for a few minutes?”
“What would be the point?”
“I don’t know. I just . . .”
“Why did you say those things to Seymour, Robin? I’d like to know that much at least. I really would.” Even if her face remained a mask, her voice had now, at last, betrayed a hint of emotion. “I mean, after making us think of you as a friend, after assuring us of your best intentions . . . After all that. Why?”
“What I said was true.”
“And that excuses everything, does it? That makes Rowena’s death worthwhile?”
“No. Of course it doesn’t.”
“What about Sophie? I gathered from Bella you’d undertaken to find out what she thought her few minutes of character assassination were likely to achieve. I can’t believe she pretends to have been speaking the truth.”
“She does, as a matter of fact.”
“I see.” Sarah sighed and gazed past me up at the hills behind the house, their wooded slopes shimmering in the heat. “Good old Sophie.”
“Sarah—” She looked round at me, daring me, I sensed, to make some attempt at mitigation or apology, almost craving the opportunity to reject whichever I offered. But I knew better than to try. Whatever blame attached to me for Rowena’s death I meant to accept. It was my secret act of mourning. But blame for something even worse than a despairing dive from Clifton Suspension Bridge hovered at the margins of my thoughts. Which Sarah might just be able to help me corner at last. “Sophie claims your mother told her a few weeks before her death that she was planning to leave your father.” No reaction. No response. Just the same blank grief-sapped stare. “You once told me something similar yourself. As a theory. As a suspicion you’d formed. Sophie seemed rather more definite.”
“Did she?”
“But she didn’t know who your mother was planning to leave your father for. Who the man in her life was. Nor did you, as I recall.”
“Why does there have to have been a man?”
“No reason, I suppose. Except . . . Lying in hospital most of this week’s given me time to think. And to remember. Ten days after the murders, I drove up to Kington with Bella. We had lunch with Henley Bantock. He told you about it. You said so when you wrote to me in Brussels. You’d been there the same day.”
“What of it?”
“So had somebody else. He nearly drove into Bella and me in Butterbur Lane. Did Henley mention him to you? He did to us.”
“I don’t think so. Why?”
“Because the driver of the car was obviously extremely upset. He might have been . . . well, he could have been . . .”
“The man in Mummy’s life?”
“Well, he could, couldn’t he?”
“Yes. I suppose he could. So, who was he?”
“I don’t know. But it occurred to me you might. If I described him. As a friend or acquaintance of your mother. Of your father too, perhaps. A neighbour. A colleague. An art collector. Something like that. He was—let’s see—a chap in his fifties, with thick silver-grey hair. Round face. Chubby. Well, more flabby really. As if he’d lost weight recently. Of course, it was only—” I stopped. Sarah’s lips had parted in surprise. She plucked off her dark glasses and stared at me intently. “You know him?”
“Maybe. What sort of car was he driving?”
“A Volvo estate.”
“Colour?”
“Maroon.”
“It has to be, then.”
“You do know him?”
“Yes. I think I do. But it can’t be. Not really. Not him and Mummy.”
“Who is he?”
“I’m surprised neither you nor Bella’s met him. But I suppose there’s no reason why you should have. He didn’t come to Rowena’s wedding. Or to Mummy’s funeral. That seemed odd at the time. Disrespectful almost. Even though you could say he was represented by Sophie. But perhaps he was afraid of—”
“What do you mean by represented?”
“She’s married to him, Robin. The man you’ve described is Howard Marsden. Sophie’s husband. To the life.”
It became clear to me in an instant. As if I’d crept into a darkened room and stumbled around in the gloom, navigating by touch and guesswork. Only for the light to be suddenly switched on. And for me to find myself not where I thought at all. Howard Marsden. Sophie’s husband. And Louise’s lover. Yes, of course. It made sense. Sophie must have known all along. So now she was taking her revenge. On Louise by tarnishing her reputation to the best of her ability. And on Howard by cuckolding him at the first opportunity. If I was the first. Her story about the “perfect stranger”; her claim to believe I was the man in question; her expression of doubt about Naylor’s guilt: all were artful pretences designed with a particular purpose in mind. And I didn’t flatter myself that my seduction was it. No, no. Sophie was playing a deeper game, in which her husband’s total humiliation was the goal. He couldn’t object to her infidelity without being told that what was sauce for the gander . . .
“So that’s why Sophie wants to hurt us,” murmured Sarah.
“Looks like it.”
“Oh God. What a mess.”
“I don’t suppose she meant to harm Rowena. Your mother’s good name was what she wanted to—”
“But you can’t pick and choose when you start this sort of thing. You can’t be sure of all the consequences.”
“No. As Rowena once told me, there are too many variables in life to predict an
y outcome with precision.”
Sarah shook her head and rubbed the sides of her nose where the dark glasses had been resting. She looked suddenly tired. “Can I sit down, Robin? I think I would like a drink after all.”
I fetched another chair as well as a drink and we sat there in the garden together for an hour or more as the heat of afternoon turned towards the cool of evening. Our mutual dismay had lowered our defences. Allowing, if not a reconciliation between us, at least a rapprochement. As Sarah admitted, she’d made her own misjudgements. By trying to keep Rowena insulated from reality. By failing to foresee what she’d do if she found out she’d been deceived. The irony was that, even if I’d not given Sarah the video, she’d probably have recorded the programme herself while she was out with Paul and Rowena. Rowena had simply read her sister’s mind more acutely than she’d been given credit for.
As for the act of suicide itself, maybe that didn’t have the clear and simple motive it had comforted Sarah to believe. Why had Rowena not told Paul she was pregnant? Why had she seemed so depressed? Because motherhood wasn’t necessarily the future she had in her sights? Yet it had been going to arrive whether she liked it or not. Until the shock of her mother’s rewritten past had given her a way out. And she’d yielded to temptation.
“I wonder if that’s why Paul lashed out at you. Because he’s afraid that might be the truth of it. He won’t admit it, of course. I wouldn’t ask him to. But I think it may be there, even so.”
“How is he now?”
“Subdued. Self-controlled. A little remorseful, I think. A little ashamed of what he did. But don’t expect an apology. Or any kind of thanks for not preferring charges. It isn’t in his nature.”
“Will you tell him about Howard Marsden?”
“Oh yes. If Rowena’s death has taught me anything, it’s the danger of secrecy.”
“And your father?”
“He may already know. He may always have known. Maybe it’s what was in the note he destroyed.”
“But if not?”
“I’ll leave Bella to solve the problem. Isn’t that what stepmothers are for?”
“Will you let Sophie know we’ve found out?”
“Only if she asks. Which is unlikely, since I don’t intend to seek her company. Or her husband’s.”
“What sort of a man is he?”
“Well, there’s another irony. Cautious and conventional sums him up. Rather dull, I’d always thought. Not at all Mummy’s type. So I’d have said, anyway. But what would I know? More and more, my mother seems like a stranger to me. Or an impostor. Somebody who was never what she came across as. But what she really was . . . I’ve no idea.”
“You’re not saying you believe Naylor may be innocent?”
“Oh no. That’s the worst of this. The very worst. Seymour and his kind will go on pressing for that bastard’s release. And Rowena’s suicide will only help them. They’ll say she had a guilty conscience, won’t they? They’ll say it was her way of avoiding the truth.”
“Surely not.”
“I’m afraid so. The bandwagon’s only just started rolling. There’ll be more books. More programmes. More articles. There’ll be a committee formed before long to coordinate the campaign for his release. Questions will be asked in the House. Pressure will mount for a re-trial. Or a reference to the Appeal Court at the very least. And they’ll never stop. They’ll never be satisfied. Until the day Naylor walks out of the Royal Courts of Justice a free man and is carried away down the Strand in the arms of his adoring supporters.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“You’d better. Because it’ll happen. Eventually. Inevitably. Whether we like it or not. There’s nothing we can do to stop it. We can only . . .”
“Yes?”
“Lead our lives, Robin. What else?”
There was nothing else. No corner to turn. No redoubt to defend. No stand to take. Sarah would go on with her life. And so would I. When she drove away from Greenhayes that evening, I sensed it was a final parting, whatever the technicalities of time and chance might subsequently dictate. She was heading into her future. And into my past.
I went down to the Cricketers after she’d gone and drank so much I had to be driven the short distance home by the landlord. And though I woke next morning with a thick head, my prospects were clearer in my mind than they’d been for weeks. If Bushranger Sports took over Timariot & Small, I’d quit before they could sack me and return to Brussels at the expiry of my congé. I’d turn my back on a disastrous diversion in my career. I’d give up chasing shadows and revert to the pursuit of wealth and leisure. I’d bid Louise Paxton an overdue farewell. I’d walk away. And forget. Even though
Those two words shut a door
Between me and the blessed rain
That was never shut before
And will not open again.
Rowena was buried in Sapperton on Monday the twenty-eighth of June. I stayed in Petersfield, putting in a gingerly half-day at the factory to keep myself occupied. But the media weren’t about to let me off the hook. That night, on the television news, there was a filmed report from outside St. Kenelm’s Church, hymn-singing audible above the commentary. “As speculation mounts that Rowena Bryant killed herself rather than face the thought that her testimony helped convict an innocent man, a spokesman for West Mercia Police insisted they had no intention of reopening their inquiries into the Kington killings.” Before the scene switched to the cemetery I could picture so easily, I switched off.
Half an hour later, Sophie rang. I heard her voice purring from the answering machine. But I didn’t pick up the receiver. And I didn’t return her call. She’d made a fool of me once. And that was enough. I didn’t mean to give her the slightest chance of doing so again.
_______
Two days after the funeral, Bella paid me a visit. She and Sir Keith were returning to Biarritz the very next day, so this was in the nature of a goodbye. But not just for that reason.
“It’ll take Keith a long time to recover from the loss he’s suffered, Robin. If he ever does. And it’ll take him a long time to forgive those he holds responsible for that loss.”
“Like me, you mean.”
“Yes. Like you.”
“You never were one to mince your words.”
“Would you want me to?”
“No. I wouldn’t. Sarah told you about Howard Marsden, I suppose?”
“She told me.”
“Mentioned it to Keith, have you?”
“No.”
“So, it’s time to sweep things under the carpet, is it? Time to batten down the hatches?”
“Time to go, Robin. That’s all.”
“Without even a farewell drink?”
And at that she had the decency to smile.
We went out to the Red Lion at Chalton, where she’d taken me in July 1990 to pump me for information about the Kington killings. The three years that had passed since seemed more like ten when I looked at her across our table in the pub garden and saw her eyes drift to the field behind me. A blue drift of linseed, then as now. She too was remembering.
“You said I’d be making a mistake by going back into the company,” I remarked.
“And I was right. Wasn’t I?”
“As it’s turned out, I suppose you were. But you’ve been able to make sure you were right, haven’t you?”
“It’s Adrian’s idea to accept the Bushranger offer. Not mine.”
“But without your support, he can’t force it through, can he?”
“Technically, no. But I haven’t the slightest intention of changing my mind. So don’t waste your breath by—”
“I’m not about to. I’ve learnt my lesson. You see before you a man who isn’t going to swim against the tide any longer. I’ve made a pact with the future. And you should be flattered, Bella, you really should. Because it’s your example I’ll be following.”
“In what sense?”
“I’m going to take the m
oney and run.”
For a moment, I thought she meant to throw her lager in my face. But after staring at me for a few seconds, she merely shook her head and laughed. When all was said and done, she and I understood each other.
Two weeks passed. And the third anniversary of Louise’s death approached. Since it fell on a Saturday, there was nothing to stop me driving up to Kington, as I’d long been tempted to, and walking out once more across Hergest Ridge. It was a day very like its well-remembered counterpart. Yet it could never be the same. And I didn’t want it to be. What I wanted was the stony soil beneath my feet and the gorse-cleansed air in my face to assert the normality of the place. To convince me no magic or mystery was waiting for me there. Nor any perfect stranger. Only turf and sky and sheep. And nature’s placid disregard for mankind’s illusions.
I made my way down into Kington and called at the Swan for a drink, as I had three years before. This time, however, I struck up a conversation with one of the locals, who didn’t seem to mind discussing the murders one little bit. Neither of the victims having been genuine Kingtonians, their memories evidently merited no special protection from outsiders. “More about that to come out, you wait and see. Much more. From what I’ve heard, that Nick Seymour on the telly got it all wrong. Forgery weren’t Oscar Bantock’s game. Oh no. Satanism. That’s what it was. Devil worship. His nephew rents Whistler’s Cot out to holidaymakers, you know. But I wouldn’t spend a night under that roof. Not after everything old Oscar got up to. Not me. No way. ’Course, there’s a lot of it about round here. Black magic, I mean. It’s the Dyke as gets ’em going. Covens. Sacrifices. Black masses. Midnight orgies. You wouldn’t believe the half of it.” And on that last point at least he was absolutely right.
I left the Swan and drove straight out of the town. I’d thought I might take a look at Whistler’s Cot, but, when it came to the point, I no longer needed to. An encounter with some exuberant family on a bargain break delighted to report they hadn’t seen any ghosts would have constituted one dose of reality too many. I’d gone to Kington to close a chapter in my life. And I left confident of having done so.