Veil of Darkness

by Gillian White

  ‘I think I know who you mean.’

  ‘I am quite sure you do.’

  ‘Miss Stott is a willing worker if a little inexperienced.’

  ‘She is certainly willing. She is still there now in the back office, typing away, trying to catch up, no doubt.’

  ‘But your immediate problem is with one of the bar staff?’

  ‘Yes,’ nods Miss Vi, her stringy chicken neck expanding like an accordion. ‘That is where we ordered our tea. And all I can say is it wasn’t Charlie. Now Charlie is an excellent barman. No, it’s that Irish person with the absurdly tight dress. She never looks as if she is listening… miles away… dreaming of some chap, no doubt.’

  ‘If you would be so good as to return to the lounge I will bring you your tea myself, ladies.’

  ‘And do we get no compensation for this lackadaisical treatment?’

  ‘The tea is already in with the meal,’ he hastens to remind them.

  ‘Then perhaps a couple of schooners of sweet sherry? Not too much to ask, surely, when my sister and I have been treated with such lamentable negligence?’

  ‘Of course, with my compliments and apologies,’ says Mr Derek, bowing a defeated head as he gets up to open the door.

  Cowbags.

  ‘I passed the order down to the kitchen and then forgot all about it,’ Bernadette apologizes in her husky voice. ‘We’re very busy tonight, Mr Derek. It’s the kitchen’s fault for not bringing it up. If they’d brought it up I would have served it.’

  ‘Pour me a double Scotch please, dear, and I’ll have it when I come back.’

  Thus Mr Derek disappears humbly with a silver tray and a pot of tea and two fluted glasses of sickly sweet Bristol Cream.

  Just how near to the verge of madness is Bernadette Kavanagh creeping? Why are her smouldering green eyes fixed on the door of the bar even now, hoping against hope that the next person through it will be Dominic Coates? She clenches her fists and drives her nails into her hands, fighting against the great hope, but it goes on rising, attacking her throat with an emptiness and anticipation that forms one great, tragic delight. There is not enough going on around here to take her mind off her lost beloved, not even when they are busy, not even when the orders roll in and she’s flirting with some other customer and adding up prices, wiping glasses and working the till at the same time.

  Talking to her friends doesn’t help. Talking about him fuels the passion. God help her.

  ‘You really should be over it by now,’ Kirsty told her unhelpfully last night. ‘After all, it’s been a year. Perhaps you need counselling.’

  ‘What I need is something massive, a war, an earthquake, a hurricane, something so huge that it sits on my head and blots him out completely.’

  ‘Drama queen,’ laughed Kirsty, for once failing to pay proper attention, head down behind that scratched swing mirror narrating her dratted novel. The constant sound of her voice is soothing, as if someone is quietly praying, and it reminds Bernie of how Mammy was after she lost her last.

  ‘I should have been an actress,’ agreed Bernie, ‘somewhere to put my passion. I was good at it at school. I love being somebody else.’

  ‘You should try another relationship.’ Kirsty is trying to cheer her up, but even talking about Dominic seems to bring him closer. ‘Give it a chance. It’s not as if you lack choices.’

  ‘It would be different if I was rich,’ said Bernie, rolling a thin cigarette. ‘If I was rich I’d have so many options. I could travel, couldn’t I just, I could buy a powerful sports car, I could go to posh London clubs and dance the night away.’ She looked around her sadly, taking in the mean little room with its curling wallpaper and patchy rainbow carpet. ‘Go wild. Let my hair down. But if I’d been rich he’d never have left me.’

  This is her garden of Gethsemane.

  Perhaps she should have a little fling with the dandy, superior Mr Derek; he obviously fancies her, and the difference between his attitude to her and to the unfortunate Avril is so obvious it’s embarrassing.

  From the bar she can hear him venting his spleen on her shy friend in the office.

  ‘And what the hell do you think you are doing working at this late hour? The office should be closed by now. The night porter is already on duty. Anyone would think you were keen when all I get are moans and groans about your lazy attitude.’

  ‘I’m sorry Mr Derek…’

  ‘Well pack it up, whatever you’re damn well doing, and when you next see the Miss Lewises it might help if you apologized, and for God’s sake, girl,’ he sighs, ‘smarten yourself up and jump to it in future.’

  Poor Avril. She means to please. She’s right, life is very unfair.

  Mr Derek returns to the bar and downs his Scotch in three desperate gulps.

  ‘Another one, sir?’ Bernie asks him.

  ‘Oh go on then. Why not?’

  Men are nice to Bernie and she knows the effect she has on them. Mr Derek has no intention of tearing the kind of strip off her that he tore off the inoffensive Avril. Poor man. Married to sweet Sophie, only child of Colonel Parker by his third wife, Dulcie. Sweet Sophie, her senile father’s darling, is not a well woman; she requires constant pampering, and is forever reminding Derek that if he hadn’t married her he would have ended up the manager of some tatty little dive in Newquay. No wonder Mr Derek, who loves to lord it as managing owner of a five-star hotel, takes out his many frustrations on those weaker than himself.

  ‘Damn, damn, damn. I might as well deal with it while I’m here.’

  Mr Derek picks up the phone and dials six.

  ‘Mrs Stokes? Ah, you are there. I have had a complaint from the Miss Lewises about members of staff visiting the main hotel in the evening to borrow books from the quiet lounge.’

  There is a pause while he listens impatiently.

  ‘Well, if you did give permission kindly refrain from doing so in future. And have a word with the young lady in question.’ He puts down the phone, ‘My God,’ he says in a strangled voice, ‘that daft old crone, as if I didn’t have enough on my plate.’

  Trawling for sympathy.

  Bernie looks him over. Perhaps she ought to give him the eye. Although in his mid-forties he has taken care of himself, no paunch, smooth-shaven, clear eyes, if vaguely haunted. But she knows his type, she knows how he would perform in bed: automatically, with the striped-pyjama mentality of an English gent, still firmly believing the results of surveys he reads surreptitiously in women’s magazines. What sort of women fill in these surveys? Only men still believe that women are turned on by smoothies posturing, lads with firm arses, that women enjoy arousing their partners by boring and relentless rubbing, swallowing handfuls of sperm, sucking a wrinkled penis dry to the rhythm of a Strauss waltz.

  They know nothing of frenzied African drums. They miss the sultry tragedy of ‘Private Dancer’. They don’t know what can be done with a feather.

  ‘I suppose it’s straight to bed for you when you’ve finished this duty,’ enquires Mr Derek with a randy gleam in his eye.

  ‘Usually, yes,’ says Bernie, casually serving another customer.

  ‘All work and no play…’ suggests Mr Derek transparently, one elbow resting on the bar, one finger running round the rim of his glass.

  ‘It’s all work at the Burleston, for sure, there’s little doubt about that.’

  Mr Derek slowly works himself up. His finger moves faster round his glass till it rings. ‘And anyway, what’s someone with your looks doing in a hotel bar? You could be a model. An actress. I bet you’ve got a good singing voice, too.’

  Bernie draws her tongue round her lips. Her Irish eyes are smiling. What a fool he is making of himself. ‘You’re right. Ah yes. How different life could have been.’

  ‘If…?’ prompts Mr Derek hopefully.

  ‘If I’d stayed away from men,’ says Bernie.

  ‘That woman.’ Kirsty feels like weeping. ‘You’d think we were back in the dark ages. She gave me permission to
look for a book and now she marches in here and suggests that I went into that damned quiet lounge like a Millwall fan on the rampage.’

  It is rare for Kirsty to be awake when Bernie comes off duty. It is even rarer for Kirsty to express any strong feeling, like anger.

  ‘For the love of Jesus, take no notice.’ Bernie is thoroughly ashamed. How had she considered Mr Derek?

  ‘And now I’ve got to replace the books and never darken the quiet lounge again.’

  ‘So what? Sod them. You can keep Magdalene back. They’ll never know it’s missing.’

  Avril, too, is nursing her grievances, hugging her knees in her spartan bed.

  ‘I heard him bullying you,’ Bernie commiserates. ‘He went too far, sad little bastard. But think on it, a few more months and all this will be over.’

  ‘But I don’t think I can stand a few more months,’ Avril wails. ‘If it wasn’t for you two I’d have gone home already.’

  ‘How about you?’ Bernie asks Kirsty.

  ‘I’ve got to stay because of the kids. If I can get on the caravan site I’ll have a job and a home.’

  ‘I can think of better places. There’s nothing here, it’s shit.’

  ‘Have faith. Five chapters go off tomorrow with Kirsty’s synopsis. That’s what they said they wanted in the yearbook in the library.’

  ‘But we can’t depend on that.’ Bernie leaves her fag to smoke in her bedside ashtray while she undresses. ‘Think how many people write books that never get off the ground.’

  ‘Wait till you read it, Bernie. This is amazing, awesome,’ says Avril, recovering from her dressing down, sniffing only occasionally now, while correcting the last few pages before handing them back to Kirsty.

  ‘I already told you, I won’t like it, I’m not used to books.’ Bernie scrubs off the last of her make-up with some filthy bits of brown cotton wool. ‘They’re too much of an effort. They’re boring. And anyway, how will you get it finished now Avril can’t work in the evenings? And then what if they do accept it, you won’t get much for one old book unless you’re the right sort of glamorous person.’

  ‘Oh yes? And you are, I suppose?’ mocks Avril.

  ‘I am. Or I could be. Just give me the chance.’ Hah. What would the Coates family say if Bernadette Kavanagh turned into a famous author? Almost better than being an actress because it looks as if you’ve got brains. ‘All those first nights. Think of the clothes you’d have to have. Film contracts. Telly appearances. Round-the-world publicity tours. I read about it once in Take a Break. There was this girl who’d never been near the States and she made it all up from brochures…’

  ‘Hardly that,’ says Kirsty, ‘but we could get a couple of grand.’

  ‘We could get more,’ says Avril, seemingly cheered after Mr Derek’s vicious attack. ‘It’s a thousand times better than anything I’ve ever read.’

  ‘Who are we sending it to?’ asks Bernie. ‘How did you decide?’

  ‘I chose the agent who seemed the most friendly and there’s a list of authors under their names. I went for the one with the longest list.’

  ‘What if we don’t hear anything back?’

  ‘We’ll try another; there’s hundreds,’ says Avril.

  ‘So what will we honestly get out of this?’ Bernie tugs at the sheets and blankets provided by the Burleston, who have refused to up-date with duvets. To Avril’s dismay she relights the stub of her old cigarette. ‘Apart from the thrill of doing it?’

  ‘Someone like you wouldn’t understand, but I have enjoyed typing it up, and I’m glad to help Kirsty out.’

  ‘Jesus, Avril, get real, you sound like a nun—sanctimonious prat. God meant us to have some joy, didn’t he? It can’t all be burdens?’

  ‘You are selfish and wicked and full of uncharitable thoughts,’ says Avril. ‘Money’s not the only motive.’

  ‘But it’s all so sad,’ Bernie explodes. ‘Look at us now. Here we are, young and fit and fancy-free, working like nerds in this armpit all summer and making up crazy dreams. Rats in cages. While somewhere out there there’s a whole world waiting; mountains are beckoning, lagoons are calling, exotic, hot lands of camels and spices tease us with every poster we see. Any one of these super-rich cretins who come to the Burleston every year could be languishing on a cruise liner now somewhere off the Maldives for little more than the exorbitant sum they have to pay for a double room here.’

  ‘Yeah. Dickheads.’

  Since the weather has calmed, since the air has turned warm and caressing, the dickheads clamber to the cove each morning with their beach bags and their children. Down in the cove there is waterskiing, snorkelling, surfing and sailing, and the Jack Tar beach bar, run by the Burleston, is doing a steady trade. But although the setting is charming, with its winding pathways of rhododendrons, the clean white sand, the fringe of fir trees and the unexpectedly clear water, although dolphins can sometimes be spied with a pair of expensive binoculars, who the hell would choose Cornwall if you had the whole of the world to explore?

  ‘Not I,’ says Bernie, ‘not I,’ as she slides into sleep, curled up around Boots’ own rose talcum powder and troubled dreams full of passionate hunger.

  Seven

  HIGH IN HER CUBICLE office in Gatsby House, Mayfair, powerfully dressed literary agent Candice Love leans back in her swivel chair. Her designer spectacles slide down her nose as she drags over the slush pile—unsolicited manuscripts that arrive like daily bread and which, when stale, fall to any unfortunate with a spare moment to peruse the first page of each before slapping it back in its stamped addressed envelope along with the standard rejection letter.

  Some of the authors’ covering letters are so damn illiterate there is no point in starting.

  Everyone has a book in them somewhere, and everyone seems to have picked this point in time in Candice’s busy, busy life to give their one book the fling it deserves.

  Candice, an ambitious young woman, has rarely read further than page one. Few she saw ever merited it. Most of what she sees is crap, but it’s precious crap, she knows that, and it pays to be careful in this business. One never knows when one might pick up a gem. She slithers one leg across the other, confident in her power-dress purple with its snazzy little jacket; her bangles jangle as she pokes back her specs with one well-manicured fingernail and settles down for a no-doubt wasted half hour before lunch.

  While Candice Love tries her hardest to concentrate, the stocky Trevor Hoskins is using his Gas Board van for more personal business than ever before.

  He will get caught if he’s not careful.

  How that miserable cow ever plucked up the courage to get up and leave him is beyond understanding. She hasn’t disobeyed him in years; he can’t remember when she last raised her voice and he’s certain that she has been influenced by some of those lezzy women’s lib bitches you see in curtains and crew-cuts. How they got their hands on Kirsty is a puzzle he is determined to solve.

  But why does Trevor want her back if he despises her to the extent of putting her in hospital and turning her into a quivering wreck?

  That is not the point. The point, as he informs his mate Greg, is that Kirsty is his wife goddammit; she owes him for eight years of support, eight years of working eight to six up other people’s pipes and under their floorboards. OK, she did her bit for £2.42 an hour at the nearby superstore, but it was him, Trevor Hoskins, who fed her and the bleeding kids, gave them a roof over their heads and saw to it that her worst excesses were kept under control.

  Let’s face it, Kirsty was hopeless with money, soft on the kids, a poor cook, a lazy housewife, miserable in bed, and forever sticking her nose in those books that gave her uppity ideas.

  ‘But my wife had no right to take my kiddies from school without my permission.’

  ‘I am sorry, Mr Hoskins,’ says Mrs Barnes the junior-school head when finally he gets to see her after sitting around in a miniature chair. ‘We had no idea the situation was a delicate one. Your wife merely inf
ormed us that she was taking Gemma and Jake on holiday, and as the children broke up that week anyway, we considered their education would not suffer markedly. We have always dealt with your wife in the past, Mr Hoskins, and we saw no reason why this time would be any different.’

  Trevor listens impatiently. Shit. They’ve got answers for every bleeding thing these jumped-up farts. Just because he is wearing overalls. ‘But did she say where they were going?’

  Mrs Barnes thinks for a while. ‘No, no she didn’t mention her destination, I’m afraid. The children might have talked to their friends. We could ask them if you…’

  ‘Don’t bother.’ Kirsty wouldn’t be so careless.

  ‘I am sure she will be in touch soon.’

  His look stops Mrs Barnes in her tracks. ‘And when this is over I’m going to demand a bleeding inquiry into this, make no mistake. I’m not one of your retards, I know my rights and I know bloody well that what you did is negligent.’ Trevor gets up and storms towards the door with a backwards, ‘My wife is off her bleeding chump, in case you didn’t know, Mrs I-know-it-all Barnes, and what d’you think the law is going to make of that?’

  In fact the law are no more helpful. Trevor gives them his name and address, describes the children, gives their ages, but when he is asked for his doctor’s name his patience snaps. ‘What the bleeding hell d’you want with him?’

  ‘If your wife is mentally ill we need to know more about her condition and only her doctor can tell us that.’

  ‘She never went to the bleeding doctor.’

  The policeman’s hand pauses a while over the form on the desk. ‘So your wife never had treatment for this condition of hers?’

  ‘She wouldn’t go for sodding treatment, would she, she was too daft to know she was mad.’

  The policeman’s voice is polite and considerate. It is hard to know which way his mind is going. ‘And you never insisted, for the sake of the children?’

  ‘You didn’t know Kirsty,’ Trevor says darkly, running an angry hand over his close-cropped, fuzzy, action-man hair. ‘What I had to put up with no bugger knows. And my bleeding kids are in danger.’