A La Carte

by Jeffrey Archer

  ‘But of course,’ he said, standing up with obvious relief. ‘We are your friends.’

  During the day I managed to see the Frenchwomen and the elderly couple. I asked them whether they thought there was anything odd about the boys. They all said no, they thought them charming. I did not go on.

  I do not know what to do. They might do it again, kill someone I mean.

  October 31st

  I notice them more now. I notice the black hairs on the back of Poney’s hands, and the tight line between the eyebrows on Sig’s white face. I notice how they both have the same strutting walk, how close they walk and how they never touch. I notice the metallic tone in Sig’s voice, the sleepy softness in Poney’s. I notice how light they are on their feet, how controlled; and yet I’ve seen, in Sig’s eyes only and only when he is looking at Poney, an occasional doubt. I think this must be when the veil of fantasy momentarily twitches. I don’t think Poney doubts. He has been handed his myth and he is living it out.

  I watch them. I think they are watching me. I want to go, but I must stay. They are bound to make some move, and then I can send for help and run away myself. But I can’t leave them, knowing what I do. I am not yet so disgusted with the human race. They must be caught, and stopped.

  What will they do? I lurk about the pensione, pretending to read, watching them. The other guests look at me oddly, wondering what I am doing, but I can’t talk, not yet. I feel ill and desperately anxious.

  November 2nd

  And now it is all over.

  The next morning I followed them in the Piazza and sat down a few tables away to drink some coffee. A girl whom I knew slightly in London came up to speak to me. She said that some friends of hers, with whom she was staying, were giving a party that night after dinner. Would I like to come?

  I had not seen anyone from London for some time. Indeed for the last few days I had had no conversation except with other people at the pensione. I said I would go to the party.

  Later when I was in my bedroom changing I heard the voices of the boys and Frau Engels in the next room. I opened the window and leaned out. I heard Frau Engels sobbing, ‘No,’ and the two voices together, one high and one low, repeating, ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes.’

  I finished changing quickly and went downstairs. What else could I do? What could I tell to whom? Who would be concerned to know what went on in a bedroom between a middle-aged proprietress of the pensione and her two young lodgers: who would do more than shrug knowingly?

  I stayed late at the party. Not so much because it was a good party as because I did not want to go back to the pensione. It was a boring party really. My friend’s friends were stuffy Italians who lived in a comfortable little flat at the top of a fine flaking palazzo. One or two of the other people there looked quite interesting, but my Italian was not good enough to find out whether the impression was misleading, and I spent most of the evening talking to an American professor and his wife. I almost forgot about the boys, but not quite. I stayed until I was too tired to stay any longer. Then I walked out into the damp darkness. The vaporetto was still running. I got off at the Accademia bridge and walked towards the pensione, along the narrow way between the houses, over the little canal and up to the door. It was open. No one was at the desk. There was a light on the stairs, none in the hall.

  I moved quietly towards the stairs. There was a sound above me. I stopped. There was silence. I went on. Another soft dragging sound, very slight. I went on. The weak bulb revealed the landing much as usual, shadowy, the faded Turkish carpet, the row of doors, mine, theirs, the Frenchwomen’s, the couple’s, the businessman’s: Frau Engels slept on the top floor.

  The faint sound seemed to come from the businessman’s room. There were shoes outside some of the doors, ready for the maid to clean when she came in in the morning the two Frenchwomen’s and the daughter’s, and the elderly couple’s – there were none outside the businessman’s door, or the boys’, or mine. There were long shadows beside the shoes. They were not shadows. They were marks. Something had been spilt. But beside all the shoes? I moved closer. All the shoes had a long dark stain coming from them. They were neatly placed outside the doors but surrounded by this dark wet stain. But the shoes were not empty. They had feet in them. There was a lot of blood.

  A handle turned quietly. The businessman’s door opened very slightly. A hand came out holding a pair of shoes. It placed them neatly outside the door.

  I ran, stumbling on the stairs.

  I battered on the door of the restaurant.

  At last they came.

  ‘It’s happened. They’ve done it again. They’ve killed everyone in the pensione.’

  ‘All right. Steady now. Come in.’

  Mario and his wife were both there, in their nightclothes, looking startled, and then annoyed. I saw the beginnings of disbelief on their faces and for the first time in my life I collapsed into hysterics.

  They slapped my face, made me swallow several pills, and put me to bed. I kept begging them to hurry, to get the police, to go round there before it was too late. They promised they would, and left me. I must have been quite heavily drugged because I fell asleep almost immediately.

  And in the morning, unbelievably, they had done nothing.

  I woke, heavy-headed, at nine o’clock, dressed as quickly as I could and went downstairs. They were in the kitchen drinking coffee.

  ‘What happened?’ I said.

  The wife did not look at me. Mario said quite kindly, ‘You had a nightmare.’

  ‘But the police …?’

  ‘We didn’t want to wake them in the middle of the night. Now come and have some coffee.’

  I made a great effort and remained calm.

  ‘Please will you come round there with me now.’

  Mario came.

  The pensione seemed very quiet as we approached. The front door was still open. We walked into the dim hall. A figure moved slowly towards us from the kitchen door. It was Frau Engels. Her face was very white except for where several raw red scratches ran down one side of it.

  ‘Good morning, Frau Engels,’ said Mario, in English for my sake. ‘Have you had an accident?’

  It was in the fog. I walked into a tree,’ she said brusquely. ‘Have you come to collect your luggage, madame?’

  But I had already passed her without answering and was rushing up the stairs. The stairs were still there. I burst into the boys’ room. It was empty. Their clothes and luggage had gone. I went into the next room, and the next. They were all empty. There was no sign of anyone. Frau Engels and Mario had followed me up the stairs. I confronted them.

  ‘Where are they?’ I said. ‘Where are the boys?’

  ‘They left this morning,’ she said, looking at me with the oddest hatred. ‘Everybody left this morning.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It is November the 1st. I told you. I am closing down.’

  ‘These stains …’

  She explained them away. She said they were varnish, which had run when the wooden boards had been stained brown. I tried to insist that they should send for the police and have the stains tested to prove that they were blood. I asked where the two servants were, but Frau Engels said they had already left for a holiday with their family in Naples. I heard Mario murmur to her in Italian that he would telephone for a doctor.

  ‘I go to get the police,’ he said to me soothingly as he turned to go downstairs.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll take my luggage now and come back later with the British Consul.’

  I packed and left. I went to the hotel where my acquaintance from London was staying. I found her and told her my story. I took her with me back to the pensione. It was locked and shuttered. Frau Engels had left.

  It is of course an impossible story. I can hardly blame people for not wanting to believe it. Only I know it is true. I am not a hysterical or deluded person.

  Frau Engels also knows that I know that it is true. I do not know to what extent she wa
s involved or whether her appalling association with the boys is still going on, but it seems likely that she may somehow or other have told them about my return to the pensione.

  This is the horror with which I have to live.

  They will find me. One day I shall take a train. I shall settle myself in my corner seat, open the paperback I have bought to read on the journey. And I shall look up. And there will be two nice boys sitting opposite me.

  RECIPE FOR VICTORY

  Maeve Binchy

  She always knew when he was starting a new affair. He spoke more quickly, for one thing; there was an intensity about things that normally didn’t matter at all as if some kind of scales had fallen from his eyes. This time he burned indignantly about a planning permission that should never have been granted, and ten minutes later about the way RTE had arranged its summer schedules. When he began to speak his mind on litter bins being uglier than the litter they were meant to contain Rona knew that the affair had begun.

  There was no problem in knowing who the affair was with. Aengus was so predictable. He didn’t seem able to find lovers for himself all on his own. He picked them from amongst his wife’s friends. Or that’s what he had done on the previous occasions. The previous three occasions.

  For a while Rona had tried having no friends. Or not letting him meet her friends. But with young children that was difficult; there were school runs, there were the children’s parties, there were neighbours. She couldn’t impose this kind of isolation on herself just in case. Just in case it happened again. And anyway friends were a huge consolation, it would be insane to deny yourself the company and support of women throughout your life, just because there were a few rotten apples in every barrel. False friends, wives ripe for the flattery and the buzzy adventure of a little fling.

  Rona couldn’t imagine it herself. All that juvenile seventeen-year-old business of wondering would he ring, keeping it a secret despite speaking glances. It had been hard enough keeping things secret from her mother. Fancy having to keep things a secret from your husband. And your children.

  And that is exactly what her friend Finn had to do these days. Make up fictitious shopping trips, convincing explanations of why the car should be parked in unlikely places, give reasons why she couldn’t be at the school’s sale of work. And Finn worked part-time as well. How did she do it, Rona wondered. She was surprised at herself for the detached way she was able to think about it. Almost as if she were up in the air looking down on the feverish activity of mortals below. Like you look at ants and wonder mildly what on earth they are doing.

  Finn was pretty in what Rona’s mother would have called a flashy sort of way. She didn’t wear an ankle bracelet but you felt that any moment she might. She had never danced on a table in their presence but there were overtones of table dancing in the way she talked. She was new to the area, married to George, a megabore who saw everything in terms of money and value. Even those who had been enthusiastic followers of property prices in the neighbourhood said that a lot of the interest had fallen out of it once George got hold of the conversation and ran with it. Fortunately for everyone, George wasn’t around much, to dominate the barbecues and tell them where they could have got the equipment at half the price. George was away making still more money a lot of the time. Which was fortunate for his wife Finn since she didn’t have to listen to him and apologise for him, and indeed have to explain to him what she-was doing with Rona’s handsome husband Aengus.

  It was easy to understand why anyone would be drawn to Aengus. He had deep dark eyes that seemed to look right into your soul. After twelve years of marriage Rona knew that Aengus was often thinking of something very prosaic indeed like how to get a game of golf in on Thursday or whether he had paid the television licence or not. It was just a bonus that he looked so beautifully broody. And of course Rona loved him terribly, just like the women before her time had loved him, and the three women after her marriage. And now Finn. Rona had a set of rules to work to by now. If something happens four times in twelve years you learn how to cope with it.

  First: she must refuse to think of him in bed with Finn. The thought must simply not be allowed to enter into her mind. If it did she would become so hurt and betrayed that a great wave of longing would sweep over her. She would cower somewhere like a wounded animal whimpering and railing against a life that had allowed this to happen.

  Second: she must develop an easy, on-going friendship with Finn, making it easy for Aengus to bring her name into the conversation. Rona noticed that when men were in love they always wanted to talk about the loved one, no matter how banal the observation. If Finn were a regular visitor to the home it would be easier and less contrived for him to dredge up references to her.

  Third: she must look out for warning signs that Finn was about to confess everything and head her off at the pass. The great danger in things like this was in letting matters get out into the open. It was almost impossible to cope with something which had been allowed the indulgence and the momentum of being acknowledged. On the two occasions when Finn had begun to look tearful and confiding, Rona changed the mood and the subject with such speed that it even impressed her herself.

  There was a different way of dealing with everyone. Rona knew that you had to play to your own strengths and to the enemy’s weakness. Or some kind of phrase like that. She had heard it around the time of the first infidelity, the year she had to dislodge the ice-cool blonde Camilla. Rona’s strength had been sailing, she had discovered that Camilla’s weakness had been in the same area, she was a woman whose legs buckled and whose stomach heaved when off dry land. Rona had arranged the outing, Camilla had believed the ‘calm as a mill pond, really just like a sheet of glass’ argument that was presented. To this day Rona remembered with some pleasure the retching, the red eyes, the clinging to Aengus, the oh-my-God wails, the near public revelation of past sins in front of everyone including Camilla’s husband.

  It hadn’t been hard really. It was merely a question of waiting for the right opportunity. As with the others. You could study somebody very well, if the person hadn’t an idea you were in there investigating weaknesses. All you had to do was to keep calm, and ignore the signs of embarrassment. Most women, even women who had affairs with your husband, were not ruthless. They felt awkward accepting your kindness and welcome, they would prefer to distance themselves from you as they wrapped themselves closer around your husband. You must prevent the former if you were ever going to stop the latter.

  Finn, it turned out, was a great sailor, no mileage to be gained there. In a superficial sort of way she was well up in books and theatres, there would be no point in trying to expose her as an ignoramus. She went out to work and was successful as a businesswoman open to no charges of being a Mrs Feather. She shared none of the unacceptable money obsessions that made her husband George so unwelcome in their set. Finn was open and straightforward, at least up the point where she had committed herself to someone else’s husband. Rona would have to work on her quite a bit to identify where the weaknesses lay.

  Because of Rule One, about never allowing any image of their lovemaking to come within yards of her, Rona found it easy to entertain her husband’s mistress. She even found Finn good company when she dropped in for a drink on her way home from work. Finn’s children, two dark handsome boys, seemed to be very well able to look after themselves.

  ‘I don’t believe in mollycoddling them too much. They have to grow up to be big strong men,’ Finn said, looking at Rona as she spoke, but really talking to Aengus. She lingered over the words ‘big strong men’. Rona could see her husband fingering his collar nervously. Oh, knowledge is power, Rona thought to herself and wondered, just for a moment, why her mind seemed to be full of little clichés and catchphrases and sayings. Maxims that must have been used a thousand times by other people, and always seemed mint-new to her.

  ‘But don’t you think it’s the one area where men are utterly hopeless?’ Rona was conspiratorial, takin
g Finn into her confidence as if Aengus was not there. ‘I’m all for preserving the mystique of cookery, letting them think they couldn’t get on without us.’

  ‘I think they’d find it pretty difficult all right.’ Finn still addressed the words to Rona but the flirtation went straight across the kitchen to Aengus.

  Rona stood happily amid her shining copper pans and her little kingdom. She smiled as if nothing was amiss.

  ‘I don’t know, I feel men would starve if you left them alone, they invented all kinds of complicated can openers to make life easier … but apart from great chefs and a very few men you don’t see them, experimenting, or being interested in cooking do you …? Does George, for example?’

  Rona saw to her satisfaction that Aengus frowned at the name of George. Good.

  Finn didn’t frown. ‘George is hardly any example of anything,’ she said lightly. ‘He is a law unto himself, as people say. He’s such a workaholic he hardly notices what’s put before him. Just gobbles it up,’

  From anyone’s recollection of George at any gathering this was true. He regarded eating as a necessary interruption in laying down the law.

  ‘That’s hard when you go to trouble preparing things.’ Rona’s murmur was sympathetic but her eyes were sharp. She had a quick stir of excitement. She might be about to discover Finn’s weakness. It could be an important moment.

  ‘Oh, I don’t do a great deal …’ Finn began. Rona didn’t even have time to show the sympathetic look of surprise she had been planning. Aengus rushed in defensively.

  ‘Come on now, Finn, don’t put yourself down, what about that gorgeous pecan pie you were serving when I dropped in to leave those leaflets for George the other night … it was entirely yummy.’

  Rona smiled a grim smile. Yummy indeed. Dropping in leaflets for George no less. Pecan pie out of a deep freeze in a supermarket, obviously. Would Finn admit it? She held her breath.

  ‘Oh, that was only a simple thing,’ Finn said, blushing prettily.