A slightly bleaker silence fell.
‘The world is full of mad people,’ said Alix, ‘and I suppose we all come across them from time to time.’
‘Poor chap,’ said Esther. ‘Now I think about him, I feel sorry I’ve never said more than hello and good morning. But he never looked as though he wanted to be spoken to.’
‘If you’d asked him in for a drink,’ said Liz, ‘you’d probably have ended up with your head in a flowerpot. So it’s just as well you didn’t.’
‘Do you think I ought to go upstairs and see how he is?’ asked Esther. ‘I could persuade him to come down. I’m quite good at calming people, and after all, he does know who I am.’
‘I don’t think you should do anything of the sort,’ said Alix. ‘They said he was dangerous.’
‘You’re in no place to talk. Look at you and Jilly Fox.’
‘Poor Jilly,’ said Alix, and sighed. ‘Poor Jilly.’
Esther made another pot of coffee. ‘And as we’re hanging about, I think we could risk just a small drop of Strega,’ she said.
Over the Strega, to entertain them she recited the story of the Dutchman on the aeroplane, which she had never before had occasion to relay. As she told it, she and Alix noticed that Liz was reacting to it with a peculiar excitement, indeed she was turning uncharacteristically pink, and when the anecdote was over, she pressed Esther for more details. How old had he been, the Dutchman? How tall? What was his job? Where did he live? Did Esther know his name?
Flattered by the reception of her tale, Esther was able to satisfy all these queries.
‘In fact,’ she said, at the end of her interrogation, ‘I can tell you a lot more about that man from a two-hour flight than I can tell you from a decade of living in the same house as P. Whitmore. But he was rather a memorable man.’
‘Yes,’ said Liz, and took out her powder compact, looked at herself, and powdered her nose.
‘Whereas poor P. Whitmore is quite insignificant. Does insignificance turn people into murderers, Liz?’
‘Not always, fortunately,’ said Liz. ‘But sometimes, yes.’
Again they were silent, listening to the silence upstairs.
‘This is ridiculous,’ said Liz, as the night wore on. ‘I’ve got to be up at seven.’
‘I suppose I could ring Brian and tell him what’s happened,’ said Alix, ‘but there’s not much point in worrying him, really, is there?’
The phone rang again. The police informed Esther that they were about to move in, and that Esther and her guests should go into the back room and stay there with the light off until told to move.
‘How will we know when to come out?’ Esther wanted to know.
The question caused some confusion. ‘We’ll knock on your door,’ said the police.
‘How will I know it’s you,’ said Esther, ‘and how do I know it’s you anyway? And anyway, who are you? I can’t see your number, or your warrant, or whatever it is you’re supposed to identify yourself with, can I?’
Liz and Alix were much amused with this interchange. Esther put the phone down. ‘I don’t see the point of going into the bedroom in the dark,’ said Esther.
‘We’d better do what we’re told,’ said Alix.
‘They’re as thick as two planks, I told you so,’ said Liz: but they agreed with Alix.
So the three of them progressed into the dark bedroom and sat in a row on Esther’s white crocheted bedcover, admiring her bedroom décor in the half-light. I like your mirror, whispered Liz. Esther, in whispers, described its acquisition. She had bought it in a junk shop on the Seven Sisters Road. This is like being back at school, whispered Esther.
‘I’m going back for my cigarettes,’ said Liz, after three minutes. ‘They didn’t tell us not to smoke, did they?’
She came back, reported she could hear steps in the hallway, raising her voice defiantly to its natural level.
A couple of minutes later, there was a knock on the hall door.
Esther opened it. It was all over, a policeman said. The man upstairs had agreed to go quietly.
Alix, standing by the window, pulled back the curtain, and saw P. Whitmore being led down Esther’s front steps. He was, as Esther had said, an unremarkable man. He looked slightly puzzled. He was put in the back of a police car, handcuffed.
So that, thought Alix, is the murderer of Jilly Fox.
Esther’s peaceful life in Ladbroke Grove was ruined by this incident. She insisted on staying there that night, despite the offers of accommodation from Liz and Alix, but the harassment over the next few weeks was more than she could bear. Once the story reached the press, the house was perpetually surrounded. Photographers, television cameras, police, journalists, sightseers. The very worst of human nature, said Esther to Liz over the phone, amidst her suitcases. She was off to Somerset, to stay with Peggy and Humphrey. The house appalled her. It was not so much the personal danger that ill-meaning friends suggested she had herself suffered: it was more the revelation by association of the horrible nature of other people’s curiosity. And she herself was horrible, was curious. What had he been doing up there, what had he been thinking? What had the police found, just above her own ceiling? Why had she not more civilly wished him the time of day? Had she asked him in for a drink, could she have saved the life of Jilly Fox?
There will be no more murders, Claudio had said, and Claudio, it seemed, would be right.
‘They stand out there gawping,’ she said to Liz. ‘It’s like Rillington Place. I can’t go on living here. It’s like that story about the house with the Golden Windows. You know, where you find your own house is the one that shines in the distance. But this is the other way round. You find the rot was within.’
‘But not in you, Est,’ said Liz. ‘Not in you.’
Esther laughed, but uncomfortably.
‘In all of us, I thought we thought,’ Esther said. ‘Newspapers have approached me,’ said Esther, ‘for my story. What story, I ask them. I haven’t a story. Anyway, it’s all sub judice. I’m off to Somerset. And eventually, perhaps, to Bologna.’
‘But what about your things?’ asked Liz. ‘It’s so lovely, in your flat. I’ve known your things all my adult life.’
‘I’ll ring you from Peggy’s, when I’ve calmed down,’ said Esther.
P. Whitmore was charged with seven murders.
P. Whitmore, despite the evidence of his alleged penultimate attempted victim (an attack, in fact, never proven), had never had a moustache. Nor was he by any stretch of the imagination a practising member of the aristocracy. Polly Piper was disappointed.
‘I suppose he must be guilty,’ said Alix to Hannah Glover over a nice cup of tea. ‘Otherwise the whole thing would be too bizarre. I hear he’s going to plead guilty. So Edgar Lintot told me.’
‘Well, my dear,’ said Hannah Glover, ‘your friend Esther Breuer had a very lucky escape.’
‘Oh, don’t be absurd, Hannah,’ said Alix, staunchly; although, of course, secretly, she agreed that this was so.
Alix and Polly Piper had their promised farewell lunch at Langan’s. Alix was in bravely high spirits. She drank a dry martini straight up and the other half of a bottle of white wine, ate a spinach soufflé and a plate of fish in a greeny-yellow sauce adorned by some flat leaves, and finished with a small tartlet and a Calvados. Polly outpaced her, and had a second Calvados. They spoke of the murderer and of Esther, of the satanic Claudio Volpe. Perhaps he possessed the spirit of poor P. Whitmore, suggested Polly. Murder by remote control?
They moved on from death to love. Alix tells Polly, as she cannot tell Liz and Esther, that she is in love with Otto Werner. What will you do about it? asks Polly. Nothing, says Alix.
Polly accepts this. She can think of nothing to suggest. She tells Alix of her own passion for an unlikely much-married somewhat disreputable antique dealer. He’s nothing, really, says Polly, I don’t like him, I don’t respect him, I wouldn’t be seen out with him, but I can’t help going to bed with him. He’s a sort
of gigolo figure, I suppose. What does that mean?
They discuss the complications in the sex lives of emancipated women today. Alix becomes confidential. She rarely talks about such matters. Polly nods, smiles, sighs.
‘God, I shall miss you, Alix,’ she says, sentimentally, tearfully. ‘It was great, working with you. We were a good team, weren’t we, Alix?’
And she waves, commandingly, absently, for the bill.
Esther walked up Crowsfoot Hill in the dark December afternoon. It was a sharp, dry day, and there was an occasional small dry patter, as one acorn after another fell on to the crisp earth. In the failing light, a shepherd was gathering sheep in the steep field above her. The hanging wood rose even more steeply. The sunken lane, in spring and summer edged with ferns and primroses and pennywort and wild strawberry, showed now its complex irregular stony little wall-pattern, of man-made, nature-embraced antiquity. The roots of the trees gripped the stones. An owl hooted thrice. The nights were long, in the country.
Long, too, to Alix, seemed the provincial winter nights, and long the evenings in the newly rented house. She stood by the front window, looking out over suburban Northam. The lights twinkled down the slope. Ironic, it was, as others did not fail to point out, that Brian had returned to Northam so soon after his father’s death. Too late had come the summons from Perry Blinkhorn. Too late to cheer the last years of old Fred Bowen. But in time for Alix to pop over to Leeds to see her ageing parents.
Brian worked nights. Alix sat alone. Sam was on holiday, with Nicholas and Ilse: in January, he would start at his new school.
Alix was, in theory, settling in. Buying lampshades, tea towels. Alix was very bad at this kind of thing. They had let their London house. Brian had agreed that it would not be wise to sell. Who knew what the future would hold? A property in London (accepted Brian the extremist) was not to be parted with lightly.
Brian was behaving with a heart-breaking, a humble consideration, treating Alix with a respectful delicacy that she returned in good measure. Very careful they were with one another these days, Alix and Brian. Little was said about the difficulties they might encounter, that even Sam might encounter, but much was thought, much implied.
Alix sat alone through choice. Overtures had been made, social overtures: Sally Blinkhorn had asked her to supper, she had been to a Christmas party at the Town Hall, she had met Northam’s elderly historian at a University event, she had been asked to drinks by the director of the Art Gallery, who proved to be an ex-Feldmann Institute student of Esther. Shirley Harper had asked her to supper. She had taken the initiative herself and visited old Mrs Orme with a paper bag of pikelets. She had been invited to a poetry reading and a lecture. She had been asked to a party to meet Northam’s poet.
But on the whole, she declined her invitations. She preferred to sit here, alone, in a rented house. A solitude, profound, intense, filled it and her: she was afraid, but behind the fear lay what? A sense of expectation? So she had sat alone, as a young woman, all these years ago, and nursed baby Nicholas in a basement.
Now her baby Sam had taken his O levels and was staying with his half-brother Nicholas in Sussex. None of them needed her. Even Brian did not need her much. He was engrossed with his new colleagues, his new work. He talked of this to her, rather than of other things. He was finding it more interesting than either of them had dared to hope.
Alix stared into the dark night, straining her eyes as she searched for the future.
She missed Liz and Esther. In another, sharper, more sickening way, she missed Otto. Otto had accepted the post in Washington. He rang her sometimes of an evening when Brian was out. There was an urgency in his voice when he spoke to her, but Alix would not acknowledge it. The time for urgency was over. He wanted to know if she was all right, he wanted to know when next she was coming to London, he wanted to know about her house, her garden, her peace of mind. Oh, it is peaceful here, said Alix, gazing across the back garden to a patch of suburban wasteland. Otto did not transgress.
I need a job, said Alix to herself sometimes. But a kind of numbness constrained her.
She would have isolated herself completely had she been able. Brian understood this. He understood her well. Silently he gripped her hand over their supper of leeks vinaigrette and fish pie.
‘The fish is wonderful up here,’ said Alix, faintly. ‘The market is wonderful. There isn’t any fish like that in London. Not even in Harrods.’
‘A very good pie,’ said Brian.
‘Shirley rang again,’ said Alix. ‘She invited us to supper, again. We’ll have to go.’
‘Yes,’ said Brian, ‘we’ll have to go.’
‘But Cliff will drive you mad,’ said Alix. ‘And he’s so tactless.’
‘Never mind,’ said Brian. ‘Never mind.’
‘And then we’ll have to have them back,’ said Alix, ‘and then they’ll ask us back. And on, and on, and on.’
‘But you might get to like Shirley,’ said Brian, doubtfully.
‘I don’t think Shirley approves of me,’ said Alix.
‘How could anyone, ever,’ said Brian, warmly, ‘disapprove of you?’
Liz discussed Alix and Brian’s move with Stephen Cox over dinner in Bertorelli’s in Notting Hill. Stephen was going up to give a lecture in Northam, would stay the night with Brian and Alix. ‘Do you know what Alix said?’ Stephen asked Liz. ‘She said, “Oh God, now we’ve moved out of town I suppose everyone will want to come and stay the night, and now I’m not working I really haven’t got the time to be making and unmaking b-b-beds all day. You’ll have to bring a sleeping bag,” said Alix.’
‘In what tone did she say that?’ Liz enquired.
‘Oh, spirited. Spirited. Nothing to worry about. Or not much.’
‘Alix is a hero,’ said Liz. ‘I couldn’t face it. If I had to move to Northam, it would be the end of me. I love London. This is one of those days when I love London. I love this restaurant, I love the restaurant cat, I love Notting Hill, and I thought that was a great movie.’
‘You are in a good mood,’ said Stephen, admiringly.
The restaurant cat, comically obese, ostentatiously whiskered, black and white and smiling, purred around their ankles. Its portrait adorned the far wall.
‘Yes,’ said Liz, smiling, ‘I am.’
‘Tell me what’s happened to Esther’s house,’ said Stephen.
‘Not even the thought of Esther’s house can depress me at the moment,’ said Liz. ‘I banish the Harrow Road. But if you really want to know, we’ll drive back that way. It’s quite interesting, what’s happening to Esther’s house. It’s being eliminated. Utterly eliminated. As though it had never been. Cut out of the city, like a cancer.’
‘And when does the trial of Paul Whitmore begin?’
‘In a month or two, Edgar says.’
‘And what is Edgar’s opinion of Esther’s friend Paul Whitmore?’
‘Oh, he thinks he’s mad. Barking mad.’
‘Edgar, you say, doesn’t believe in evil.’
‘No. He rather dislikes talk of evil. You should talk to him one day about Pol Pot.’
Stephen smiled, gently, questioningly, as he stirred his coffee.
‘I still rather regret that missed opportunity,’ said Liz. ‘I wish I’d gone up and knocked on P. Whitmore’s door. I was a coward, not to go up.’
‘We are cowards all,’ said Stephen.
Alix and Brian Bowen sipped their sherry, politely. Shirley nervously, aggressively, offered nuts. Cliff lit a cigarette. Celia sat in a corner and watched. Sam sat in another corner and watched.
They spoke of fish and house prices, of pot plants and the weather, of Shirley’s mother’s health.
It was, as Alix had known it would be, difficult to avoid politics. Everything, in a room like this, at a time like this, with men like Brian and Cliff, seemed political, politicized. They could not speak of education, although Alix would have been interested to hear more of the reputation of Sam’s p
rospective state Sixth Form College: education was a divisive issue. They could not speak of Brian’s job, for that would have involved mentioning the Council which financed it, and the high rates paid by Cliff, domestically and commercially, which were in his view financing that finance. Even house prices were tricky, as a topic: Alix and Shirley steered Brian and Cliff away. And Shirley’s mother’s health offered potential contention, although fortunately Cliff refused to see it. Rita Ablewhite was, thanks to Shirley’s half-hearted persistence, gradually improving, and although she still could not speak comprehensibly, she could hear a little better, could indicate understanding, could answer questions by spelling out Y-E-S and N-O. She might eventually reach a stage of mobility where a return home would be possible, so good were the social services in Northam. She wouldn’t be able to manage the stairs in Abercorn Avenue, but there was already a downstairs toilet out the back, and the Council offered generous grants for conversion. . . .
No, pot plants were a safer subject. Those that Shirley had inherited from Fred Bowen were flourishing. Alix admired them, several times.
The conversation limped, lumbered, well meaning, hamstrung.
The two young people stared. Alix sensed from Sam an acute boredom, a restlessness, with which she had the deepest sympathy. Celia was too polite to betray any emotion at all. Celia reminded Alix of evenings of her own childhood. She sympathized with her too.
The house was tidy. Its tidiness was oppressive. Unnatural.
Of Liz, who would have provided a natural point of contact, they could not speak. Shirley’s resentment of Liz was too naked, too raw. Liz had treated Shirley, her mother, and Abercorn Avenue badly. Alix agreed with Shirley’s unspoken proposal that this was so. But nevertheless was cheered, in the back of her mind, to think that selfish, bracing, energetic Liz existed, that she continued to inhabit the other world, the old world, the familiar London world. And the house in Wandsworth was only rented, after all. Not sold.
Alix ate her pork chop. Family supper, Shirley had offered, and family supper it was.
Alix took in the décor. Curtains with pelmets. Things matching. A hotplate, a trolley. No books, in any of the rooms. Perhaps Celia had books, upstairs?
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