‘Well, maybe …’ Belinda shrugged. Rachel scowled. Allie tried a pleading look. Of course, they – the elite, the favoured, the wives of Westwick – did not need to pee in the woods in order to rediscover their husbands, but it might be a valid exercise for less enlightened women. ‘But I mean – what’s to revitalise? If he’s a jerk when he’s washed and shaved, am I going to like him any better when he’s wearing designer stubble and muddy old Levis?’
They nodded. A blanket of smoke rose from the barbecue and rolled over them. They coughed. ‘Sorry, ladies.’ Adam brandished the tongs in apology, his smooth round cheeks shining with pleasure. ‘It’ll burn down in a minute.’
Rachel tossed her cigarette butt into the hedge. ‘Did you hear what the first chicken said to the second chicken?’
‘Not another chicken joke.’ Belinda could look very like Katharine Hepburn, with her square jaw and square smile and thick mane disciplined with combs. Now she did Katharine Hepburn looking down her nose at Cary Grant.
‘The first chicken said to the second chicken, “Why did the man cross the road?”‘
‘And…’
‘And the second chicken, said, “I don’t know – why do men do anything?”‘
They laughed and the men heard the laughter. ‘The girls are enjoying themselves,’ Adam remarked fondly.
He smiled frequently, his thin lips disappearing in a beatific crease which made his rounded cheeks plump like cushions. He stood over the barbecue with the tongs poised, impatient for the charcoal to glow, his blue butcher’s apron tied around his waist area with a manly knot. Adam was a big man, not a fat man, well covered all over, his straight silver hair barbered boyishly short, a picture of substance and prosperity. Joshua Carman felt small beside him. Josh was small and round like his wife, with little, nimble-fingered, restless hands so delicate they could almost take a blood sample from a sleeping patient without waking her. He rolled a beer can nervously between his palms. ‘Ya know,’ he offered the gathering, ‘there’s an enzyme in beer which, has been proven to counteract the carcinogenic properties of burnt meat.’
‘Should I infer something about my cooking here?’ Adam demanded. His sense of humour ran shallow while Josh’s surged deep.
Standing up-wind, Ted Parsons cracked another beer and let his mind drift away from the pantomime. What amused him was that DeSouza, for all his childhood under African skies and his undeniable intellect, had never considered positioning the barbecue so that the prevailing breeze fanned the charcoal and carried the smoke away from the house. As it was, the apparatus shielded the fire basket, flames were half-hearted, and by the time the food was cooked the women were tired, drunk and smoke-cured like a row of Black Forest hams.
‘How’d it go this week?’ Carman was talking about the Oak Hill project. There was no need to name it, it was number one on all their action lists.
‘Pretty good. The study’ll be with us in two months and then we can go back to the county and get a start date.’ It was Ted, through Tudor Homes, who moved things forward for the Oak Hill Development Trust. Adam worked for Chester, Chester controlled Magno. The payoff for Carman would be the health care contracts for Magno Oak Hill and Channel Ten, which condemned him to starve for two more years at least while the trust directors would get their snouts in the trough as soon as the feasibility study was done. Josh defined starving as being unable to justify buying a second home.
‘No hassles?’
‘We’re not expecting any.’ Adam at last speared a boerewors and lovingly laid its succulent length on the grill. He felt that the brief he had prepared for the consulting engineers was his masterwork. It had emphasised concerns about the water table and gravelly sub-soil and segued around the site’s history so elegantly that the only areas of potential difficulty were effortlessly blocked out of the picture. Only a very curious mind would choose to forage, and he had delicately indicated to the engineers that they were not getting paid to be curious. ‘The access thing exercised a few minds, I think, but we’ve handled that and everyone’s happy.’
‘And the BSD is cool?’
‘The BSD is cool,’ Ted confirmed.
Adam moved on to lay out the steaks. They smiled around the fire, the contented bondmen of Chester Pike, who spent weekends at his place on the coast and left the neighbourhood lighter for his absence.
‘So nobody’s fingered the problem?’ Josh savoured the forbidden aroma of the sausage.
‘Problem?’ Eat began to run and a burst of yellow flame consumed it, highlighting Adam’s white teeth.
‘It’s not a problem.’ Ted shifted uneasily on his feet. He never followed Carman’s humour. He had argued for his co-option to their talks because the man – no, the couple – had tentacles around certain areas of the community, making them good hostages against local trouble, but a medic did not think the way people in business had to think. He was afraid that one day Carman might rediscover his conscience. For that matter, he could still remember where his own was buried. ‘There’s no problem,’ he said again. ‘We’ve hired the biggest firm of consulting engineers in the country. On what we’re paying them, I think if there was a problem we’d know by now.’
‘So everything’s cool?’
‘They raised the question of a new access road, because the Thirty-one is already at capacity traffic-wise after the interchange with the orbital.’ Adam smiled again and turned the sausages.
‘We anticipated it,’ Ted told him. ‘Crap about vehicle emissions, World Health Organisation guidelines. Acorn Junction is a black spot. They figured a significant increase in the traffic might get us into trouble, but a new road down from the Forty-six will handle it, and we’ve got a choice of two or three routes well away from the conservation area so they don’t see a legal basis for objection.’
‘Suppose some environmental weirdos—’
‘Relax, Josh. This is Westwick. We have no weirdos, none of any kind. There’s too much oxygen, they can’t breathe out here. Have another beer, lick the big C.’ With his free hand, Adam passed him a bottle and took another for himself. For a moment, Ted felt uneasy. Every now and then DeSouza got gung-ho about something about which Ted would have preferred to be cautious. There was his own weakness again; not agressive enough, testosterone-deficient. Until he met Gemma Lieberman. But all that was past; she hadn’t answered his letter.
With jaundiced eyes, the wives watched their husbands standing over the fire.
‘Eat football. Drink football. Breathe football. Screw football. When we can clone people, do you think we’ll bother with men?’ Rachel felt irritable. She was hungry and she was down to two cigarettes, and since the men were drinking she’d have to bully Josh into going down to Mr Singh’s.
‘Oh my, there’s a thought.’ Perplexed, Belinda considered cloning Carlos Moya. She had a purgatorial vision of a tournament of Moyas eternally slamming balls at each other without ever getting two games ahead, and herself eternally waiting for the wild victory sex session without ever knowing to which player she should give her allegiance.
‘I think I’d clone Rod the Bod.’ Allie had been growing dangerously bored. She sat up, suddenly revitalised. ‘But maybe we could get some genetic engineer to block the gene for saying “and another sixteen sit-ups”.’
‘And graft in another half-inch between his eyes. I thought he was a clone already. Those quadriceps can’t be for real.’
‘What do you mean, you think he uses steroids?’
‘Let’s hope not, for your sake.’ Rachel blew smoke into the air. ‘He’ll be no use to us girls if he does. Steroids induce penile atrophy. Believe me, I saw it when I was a junior registrar.’
‘He doesn’t look to me like he’s got penile atrophy.’ Allie raised her voice a little, hoping to bait her husband.
‘I’m with you there. That is one well-packed lunch box.’ Belinda giggled with her hand over her mouth. She was learning, but was still not quite up to speed with this kind of conversation.
>
‘Uh-huh,’ replied Allie. ‘What do you suppose it’s like to fuck something like that?’
Belinda and Rachel exchanged glances. ‘How’s the personal training going?’ Rachel swigged her wine expectantly.
‘Hey, please. Oh no. No, please. I mean, I wish I could say we did more than a zillion step-ups but believe me…’ Allie had one hand on her heart and the other, still holding the half-empty glass, waving away the suggestion. ‘In my position – career suicide, I’d be crazy. I mean, I’d love to, you know, he’s such a studmuffin. I’m sure it’d do Ted good, to feel he had something to compete over. They’re so aggressive, aren’t they? That’s how I’d choose to revitalise my marriage, if I could. But I can’t. Impossible. There it is.’
And she dunked her nose in her glass, hating Rod Fuller for coming around twice a week, behaving with blatant decorum and virtually running out of the house at the end of her hour. He wouldn’t even stay to shower.
The men heard the women laughing again. Their conversation was inaudible, but Ted could read Allie’s face. He heard mirth, he saw smiles but he sensed anger, and malice. Someone had pressed her button tonight.
His wife’s face was extraordinary. True emotions never appeared there, supposing that she had any true emotions. Her face was a screen, on which she projected whatever she felt was appropriate. Unless she was alone with the family, a doll-like vacancy underlay all her expressions. She might be anything – curious, offended, in a fury – but nothing penetrated the bright-eyed mask.
Only the most sensitive observer, and Ted had developed the sensitivity over the years, could detect her feelings. For instance, nobody ever guessed that she hated him. He knew it because he felt it, and of course because in private she told him so, but in public Allie merely acted as if he did not exist. She never looked at him, never spoke to him, never joined any group including him, never touched him. This was done without emphasis, as if it were as involuntary as breathing. If he had to be with her for any space of time, he began to feel that he was fading away to nothing. It was quite possible she had hated him even before she married him but he, carried along by her radiant energy, had never understood that. Now she was angry, and when she was angry she would strike. Probably at him. He felt fear trickling like sweat down his ribs, and despised himself for it.
The two genders had to eat together. The Carmans squabbled over who should buy cigarettes. When she discovered that there was no chicken, Allie recoiled into a sulk and picked at a spoonful of rice. Adam made an attempt at general conversation.
‘Garden’s looking good,’ he nodded at his wife.
‘Yes,’ she said, pinching the pleats in her skirt. Belinda was no gardener. She knew that their plot was charmless and had hired Stephanie to induce some beauty in it the previous year. There had been a number of conversations which Belinda had not understood, and a scheme whose cost had horrified Adam, and in the end for the sake of friendship no bill had been sent and no work commissioned.
‘Yes, where are the Sands tonight?’ Josh liked Stephanie. Precisely, he liked her legs, the more for the fact that she never seemed to realise how much of them she was showing. He packed a chunk of steak into his mouth and reached for a napkin to stop the blood running down his chin.
Rachel pushed away a half-empty plate and lit up from the fresh pack. ‘Don’t you know?’
‘Know what? Nobody tells me anything. I was going to ask him to take a look at our porch.’
‘He’s been kidnapped out in the Ukraine or somewhere.’ Evidently this was an event which put Stephanie in a social exclusion zone.
‘Kidnapped?’ Josh’s eyes popped over the next forkful of meat. ‘Who by?’
His wife shrugged. ‘Terrorists. At least, that’s the story.’ She turned away to blow smoke over the shrubs.
‘When? Was it on the news?’
‘No,’ confirmed Allie sourly. The Helford & Westwick Courier were taking their time. ‘No media. In case the terrorists want the exposure, Stephanie’s being stupid. It’s been two weeks at least.’
‘They should hire a PR firm like decent people.’ Josh was indignant. ‘If that’s what they’re after, why not give it them? If you asked Stewart right now I bet that’s what he’d say. Hell – put’em on TV, put’em on CNN every half-hour. What’s fifteen minutes of fame when a guy’s life is on the line?’
At the end of the table, Allie Parsons sat still, licking her lips, testing the mood of the party like a snake tasting the air with its tongue. Rod Fuller had refused her, Stephanie Sands had refused her. Worse, when Stephanie did go on TV – in Allie’s mind it was inevitable – she would then be gilded with public attention, just as Allie was, except that her spotlight might be brighter. Allie was jealous and her venom rose.
‘The poor woman.’ Ted had stopped eating. ‘I had no idea. And the boys only small, isn’t he? How’s she taking it?’
‘Well…’ Belinda thought about Stephanie’s pleading eyes and felt uncomfortable. The truth was the woman was devastated, but it was wrong to expect any of them to respond to that. People had lives, after all. ‘OK, I suppose. They’re just hoping it’s over soon and he’ll be back home.’
Allie noted her husband’s concern and prepared to strike. ‘A kidnap – that’s some story, isn’t it?’
Idly, Rachel picked up her lead. ‘Yeah, it’s almost too fantastic, isn’t it? I mean, things like that don’t happen, do they?’
‘I guess if you choose to do business in Eastern Europe that’s the sort of risk you take.’ Ted considered that anyone who chose to do business more than a hundred miles from his own front door was crazy. OK, two hundred miles. Strankley Ridge was about one-twenty.
‘But does he really do all that travelling? I mean, it’s none of my concern, I don’t know anything about these things, but he’s been away an awful lot this year.’
‘Don’t look at me,’ Josh took a piece of bread to wipe his plate. ‘Generations of Carmans dedicated themselves to getting out of the Ukraine. How can we relate to anyone who actually wants to go over there?’
‘I don’t know.’ Allie raised her eyes to the dark sky as if heaven was due to send down an explanation. ‘It’s always seemed to me – hasn’t it seemed to you? – that there was something … I don’t know…’
‘They’re very quiet.’ Belinda was scanning her memories for abnormality. ‘And they don’t seem to have any family. I mean, they do, of course, but they’re never around, are they?’
‘You never know with people, do you?’ Allie continued. ‘I mean, she’s fair-haired and he’s fair-haired and their little boy is quite dark, isn’t he?’
‘Most of the characteristics of light-haired people are carried on recessive genes.’ If there was to be a witch-burning, Rachel would put her bunch of faggots on the pile.
‘You know she actually wanted us to cut down that hedge?’ Belinda pointed to the barricade of foliage, indicating its blatant necessity.
‘Lauren Pike says she went round there once past eleven in the morning and she was still in her nightdress.’
‘It’s odd, don’t you think?’
‘So what are you saying here, Allie?’
‘Nothing, I … you had some problem with him, didn’t you?’ This was to Adam, who now sat withdrawn from the discussion, wrapped in a film of regret for the gravy. Back home, the maid always made the gravy. He had no idea how.
‘With Stewart? A problem? As I recall,’ he belched gently, ‘he and that partner of his were going to tender for Oak Hill. I was all for it,’ he spread his hands, palms upwards, there was nothing to hide. ‘Then they backed out. For no good reason that they ever gave.’
‘As you say, it was odd.’ Ted felt justified in confirming that much. ‘And embarrassing, frankly. We were about ready to go for the planning consents when they withdrew. But they’re kind of young. For something as big as this. And I think it was all resolved to our advantage. I’m happy with the people we’ve got now. It’s a bigger firm, and,
looking back, Sands and his partner were perhaps a bit out of their league.’
And so it lay on the table before them, a proposition in four parts: one, that Stephanie and Stewart Sands were strange; two, that Stewart’s absence was related to the state of their marriage; three, that their child was not his child; and four, that whatever evil befell them proceeded from their strangeness and irregular lifestyle, and was therefore their own fault.
In this region of shadows and bends, logic itself was elliptical. The forum considered the proposition proved, and restated it often in the days that followed, outside the schools, the church and the synagogue, in the changing rooms at Bon Ton, queueing for the Sunday roast at Catchpole & Forge, foraging the ready-meal counter in the Magno at Helford.
The night was silent. Sounds in the houses were muffled by lavishly interlined curtains and double-glazing. There were no noises on the streets. Only in the very far distance, probably out on the 31, the siren of a police car could be heard.
The party strained their ears and reminded themselves where their children were.
The siren rose as the car turned into the slip down to the Broadway, then cut off. The Carmans relaxed because their au pair was babysitting Ben and Jon. The DeSouzas were sure of Wendy, who was sleeping over with Chalice Parsons, and reasonably sure of Freddie, who was at a party but not often in trouble.
Ted Parsons was despondent, because his heart already knew the truth. Westwick’s police station was over in Helford, where all the community utilities were situated, on the far side of the 31. He was good friends with the chief constable, and a good contributor to the police benevolent fund. When Damon was picked up locally the station called the house. The siren meant he had been picked up in the city. In another ten minutes – thirteen if the lights on The Broadway were against them – the car would be in Church Vale.
Allie also knew the truth as it appeared to her, and looked steadfastly at the ground, because the trouble with Damon was all Ted’s fault. Belinda began to clear up the plates.
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