They’d been standing by the buffet where sandwiches and small cakes were arranged. He was drinking punch that someone had thankfully pumped a quart of Jamison into. Baby pictures, wedding pictures, pictures of a holiday by the sea when the kids were little. Birthdays, anniversaries, even newspaper clippings, these surprisingly about Jury himself, his picture at the top. Inspector, chief inspector. Some years ago. Brendan had been telling the truth, then: she must have been proud of him and his job.
Brendan came up to put a hand on Jury’s shoulder. He was drunk or on his way to being.
Jury said to him, ‘It’s quite a crowd, Brendan. All of us should be so well remembered. But, you know, I was a bit surprised Sarah hadn’t become a Catholic.’
Brendan laughed. ‘Not my Sarah, no way. She always said she’d live up here in godforsaken Newcastle, but she was damned if she’d change her religion.’
Brendan was pointing at the picture collage. ‘She clipped all that stuff, sometimes the same story from two different papers. She had a shoebox full of newspaper clippings.’
Absurdly, Jury found himself getting angry with Sarah. ‘Our memories didn’t seem to mesh. She seemed to enjoy making a point of it.’
‘Ah, for God’s sakes, man. I told you last time you were here she’s just takin’ the piss out, is all. Look at you. You’d never have gor to the top of your job without being able to sort people. Why couldn’t you her?’
Jury hardly knew what to say.
Brendan went on: ‘She thought you let her down, Richard. See, she depended on you for the news. That’s what she said.’
Stupidly, Jury said, ‘What news?’
Brendan laughed. ‘Any news. From London, maybe. She put it that way: ‘I wish Richard would come and bring the news.’ I don’t know what she meant, exactly.’
‘Neither do I,’ said Jury, sadly.
His train didn’t leave until six, so he thought he’d grab a taxi and go across the river to the Baltic, a place he’d never been in - well, that was true enough. Where had he been in Newcastle, except to the pub with Brendan or taking the kids Christmas shopping that one year? A long time ago. That was a visit he would never forget, not the part with the kids, but the part before that - Old Washington and Washington Old Hall. Helen Minton and the most adolescent love at first sight, it still made him blush to remember. Well, that hadn’t lasted, had it, mate? Old Hall. It struck him as ironic that George Washington’s forebears would come from a little village slap up against another little one like Washington and its half dozen pubs on its single street. Where they liked to joke and say that wasn’t sawdust on the pub’s floor, but the furniture left from last night’s brawl. Fighting seemed to be a cottage industry; they fought out of frustration and anger at their unemployed plight.
Jury was in the taxi now, looking out over the Tyne and the incredible bridges that spanned it. He bet they could compete with New York and those bridges that linked Manhattan and Brooklyn and the rest.
The driver, reading his mind said, ‘See that new Millennium Bridge is being built. Oh, that’s goin’ t’ be a corker when it’s done.’ He nodded toward the middle distance where huge cranes appeared to be floating on the river. ‘Knock y’r eye out, that will. You’ll be able to spit at any other bridge in the world. You know how it’s going to work?’ The driver was trying to herd Jury’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
‘No. I don’t know anything about it.’
‘Like an eyelid, like an eyelid comin’ slowly up.’
Jury smiled. ‘I can’t picture that.’
‘See, it tilts; the whole bridge tilts so the ships can get through. The blinking eye is what they call it.’
Jury wondered at his accent. ‘You from the south?’
The driver thought this was funny. ‘Not on your life. County Durham, that’s me. You been there? To Durham?’
Jury closed his eyes. Back with Helen Minton. Here came another memory rushing toward him faster than the end of the bridge. Jerusalem Inn. He wondered how it was two people .... Jury shook his head. Was any chapter of one’s life ever irrecoverably closed? Or written off?
‘Here you are, mate.’
‘Big place,’ said Jury, getting out.
‘It’s big all right. Me, I never been. But I figure people that live in a place are the last to see around it.’
‘You’re right.’ He handed over the cab fare and a big tip.
It raised the driver’s eyebrows much like Jury now imagined the Millennium Bridge would rise. ‘Listen, how far’s Newcastle Station from here?’
‘Newcastle Central? Ah, you can walk it in fifteen minutes. Signs all along. Y’ can’t miss it.’
Jury was surprised by the Baltic, by the scope of it. It was divided, according to the map, into ‘levels’ rather than floors, and all in all the place housed several restaurants, a cinema, artists’ studios and, most prominently, of course, art.
Jury felt he moved clumsily among the paintings, abstract and indescribable, and strange installations. He felt old hat in his preference for Millais and Rossetti, whose content you could hunger after and feed upon. He wondered, though, if it was the present art’s emptiness or his own he was feeling and excused himself from looking any longer at the paintings. He went up another level to catch a view of Newcastle from the observation room. The enclosure, all windows nearly, jutted out from the west wall of the Baltic and allowed a panoramic look over Newcastle, the Tyne and Gateshead. Night was falling, and the lights across the Tyne had switched on. Jury was slightly stunned by the view of the Newcastle skyline. It was sensational; it was better than any view of Southwark across the Thames, with the fairy lights of the National Theatre complex, Tower Bridge and the docks and quays. Along with most people, he had long identified Newcastle as a scruffy, down-at-the-heel, doleful place - Lord knows, hardly a destination city. But from up here it was anything but; this made Jury feel better about Brendan’s lot; he wasn’t after all living in an environment of unrelenting drabness.
He had to go; he had to catch his train.
Near the exit was a bookshop. He went in and looked through a bin of prints, thinking he might buy one. He came upon one that he was sure wasn’t in the Baltic’s collection. It showed a cartoonish family around a table set for a meal. Their eyes were so dark they looked masked. The dinner table was set in deep grass, swamp or mire, probably, with water in the background. On their plates or in their hands were butterflies. It was called The Butterfly Eaters, He thought about this surreal picture for a moment and wondered if they were feeding on illusion or ambiguity. He returned the print to the bin.
He left the Baltic and began his fifteen-minute walk to Newcastle Central. The driver was right: the way was clearly marked, a trail of signs directing him to the station. One couldn’t take a wrong turn or lose one’s way.
Jury stopped and for a moment, in his mind’s eye, he saw the row of old alders in front of Angel Gate. He saw the white crosses.
He bought a coffee and a dried-out sausage roll from a kiosk at the train station. He hadn’t been able to eat at the reception. He was catching the 6:10 train to King’s Cross. He read a local newspaper and tossed it aside, not wanting to read anymore about the depressed North.
He sat on a bench and after a few sips of coffee - bitter and metallic - fitted the top back over the cup and dropped it in the refuse bin along with the rest of the sausage roll. Then he walked along the platform. He had been in this station several times and found it pretty depressing. But weren’t most railway stations, even those with the bustle and business of King’s Cross or Victoria? They were places to say good-bye; rarely did he witness people saying hello, and he wondered why.
He went back to his bench and watched a nondescript dog without a collar moving around, snuffling the dust bin, and Jury wondered if he smelled the sausage roll in there. It was still lying on top. He reached in and got it and separated sausage from bread (although who’s to say the dog didn’t like bread?). Jury broke the sausage i
nto a couple of pieces and put it down in its paper container in front of the dog. The dog vacuumed it up inside of five seconds. Well, he said to the dog, more or less said to him, That won’t do, will it? He returned to the kiosk and bought another sausage roll, which he waved back and forth a few times to cool it off. Then he again broke it up and put down the pieces. Again, the dog gobbled it up.
Jury sighed, ran his hand along the dog’s bony back and asked him, Will we ever be full, any of us? Because what he felt was a huge emptiness that was only confirmed by the cavernous station, the dog, the endless tracks.
His train came. He wished the dog well, walked along the nearly empty platform and boarded, feeling like a man who had nothing for anyone, a man who never brought the news.
THE CHILD THIEF
16
Melrose got out of his rental car–he had decided the Bentley was too showy–and stood on the gravel looking at Angel Gate. It was an impressive great pile of red brick mellowed with age to pink. Georgian, by the look of it. No less impressive was the avenue of beeches along that winding drive up to the house.
He gathered up his pigskin suitcase and made his way to the door.
This was opened rather quickly by a little girl of undetermined age. That is, the age might be a certainty for her, but not for him.
He could never tell. She was just very young, with hair of such a dark brown it looked black. She was wearing unflattering eyeglasses. This welcoming committee was swelled by her dog. Which, Melrose was glad to see, was not in automatic-bark position, one of those dogs that barked and barked whenever something was opened—door, window, package, no matter whether or not someone dangerous was on the other side.
‘Have you come about the gardens?’
‘Yes, I have. I like your little dog.’
‘His name’s Roy.’
‘Peculiar name for a dog.’
It’s not the Roy you’re thinking of.
‘Had I been thinking of one?’
‘It means ‘king’ or ‘your highness’ and it’s spelled R-o-i. It’s French, but nobody says it right, so I just changed it to plain Roy.’ The temperature seemed to have dropped ten degrees since he’d been standing here, but perhaps that was simply the effect of a Melrose-child encounter. He hoped she wasn’t another Debbie-Polly, or he could be stranded here by the door for a week. ‘Look, could we continue this discussion inside? Before we take up the French Revolution?’
Reluctantly (it seemed to him) she held the door wide.
‘Ta, very much.’ He kept telling himself sarcasm should not be wasted on children. ‘I’ll say one thing for your dog–he doesn’t bark.’
‘He doesn’t need to.’
Melrose frowned over this inscrutable explanation.
‘You’re to come to the kitchen. Aunt Rebecca’s making lunch.’
He followed his guide from the lovely marble hall into an equally lovely dining room. Lovely to Melrose because it looked used, comfortably used. The family portraits (if that’s what they were) were not as imposing as portraits usually are. The subjects here all seemed to have been caught doing something and the painter captured the spontaneity, except for the military-looking one up on the horse.
‘Who is Aunt Rebecca?’
‘My aunt.’
‘I gathered that. Is she anything else?’
‘She takes care of me since my mum and dad died.’ (Oh, dear. This was sounding familiar. Would he have to walk softly now?)
‘She’s housekeeper here.’
She had pushed through a swinging door and he quickly raised his hand to keep it from thumping back in his face.
It was a vast kitchen, one of the biggest Melrose had ever seen outside of a hotel. Along one wall ran a row of windows that lent the room a greenhouse effect. Light poured through across a long deal table set with three places.
‘He’s here,’ said the girl. ‘This is him.’ Having done her duty, she went to sit at the table.
The woman who turned at this announcement Melrose supposed was Rebecca Owen. She looked surprised. ‘Lulu, I told you you were to come and get me when Mr. Plant arrived!’ She wiped her hands on a kitchen towel and said, ‘I’m so sorry. I’m Rebecca Owen, Mr. Scott’s housekeeper. He was called away and asked me to be sure you were comfortable. He’ll be back later this afternoon, around teatime.’
Melrose was glad to know he would be staying in a house where tea was still a ritual. It warmed him to know this.
She turned and picked up a platter of sandwiches. ‘I thought you’d like some lunch.’
‘That’s kind of you. You know, what I’d really like is some coffee.’
‘We’ve got that, too. If you’ll just have a seat.’ She nodded toward the long table where Lulu was already ensconced, sitting with her back to the window through which a dazzle of sunlight made her straight dark hair look like licorice.
Melrose took the seat opposite her, the better to survey the grounds beyond. The platter of sandwiches appeared and Lulu helped herself to one from which she took one slow bite after another, handing down little bits to Roy–at least Melrose assumed she wasn’t just throwing them down on the floor.
Rebecca Owen poured Melrose coffee and Lulu what looked like lemonade. She then sat down.
Melrose said, ‘I have a question about your dog.’ They both looked at him, Rebecca Owen more surprised by this question than Lulu, who probably had a question about every thing on God’s green earth.
‘At night, if a robber came in, how would you know, seeing that Roy doesn’t bark at strangers?’
Lulu looked thoughtful and pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose. ‘I expect Roy would think of something.’ She drank her lemonade, watching Melrose over the rim of the glass.
Definitely a Polly type. He turned to Rebecca Owen. ‘It looks as if Mr. Scott is having extensive work done.’ He nodded toward the wall of windows, which he was facing.
‘He is. Everything had pretty much gone to seed over the last few years, and now he’s decided it wants sprucing up.’ Melrose took umbrage. Was he to be no better than a sprucer? He said, ‘Has he someone overseeing it? Or just the gardeners working?’
‘He has a landscape fellow. I think he’s called a garden architect. It seems everything these days has its specialist, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes. It’s hard to find a general practitioner anymore. They’re all specialists. And specialists within the specialty. The whole thing’s going to hell. Oh, pardon me–’
Lulu smiled.
He said to Miss Owen, ‘And you, do you specialize?’
‘Lord, no. I’m general dogsbody: cook, housekeeper, doorbell answerer – that is, except when Lulu decides to be the welcoming committee herself.’
Rebecca Owen was an attractive woman who didn’t spend a lot of time in front of a mirror. He put her in her late forties or early fifties.
Lulu, who looked as if her weight could be measured by quantities of air, was now eating a watercress sandwich. Roy had come out from under the table to sit stiffly by Melrose’s chair. Why was it that other people made dogs want to frolic, whereas all he provoked in them was this blind staring?
He drank off the rest of his coffee, finished his cheese sandwich, pushed back and said, ‘Tell me where I’m to stay and I’ll be off.’
‘Of course. Lulu can show you to the cottage; it’s just over there.’ She pointed across the gardens.
‘Okay,’ said Lulu. ‘I can carry your suitcase if you like.’
‘Certainly not. I’m much bigger than you.’ Melrose picked up his case and they went out.
The kitchen was in, or perhaps constituted, the short left wing of the house. They crossed a patio and walked down several wide, shallow terraces that gave a sunken garden effect to the land beyond. They passed a bronze statue of two boys with buckets, one lad holding his bucket higher than Melrose’s head and could have doused him had there been water running and had the boy, of course, been animated. Melrose thought this sculptur
e amusing and a pleasant respite from draped and armless maidens.
Lulu pointed off to the bottom of the gardens. ‘We had a murder here.’
Triumph or pride registered in her tone, as if the place had done something wizard.
He expressed surprise. ‘Good lord, who was murdered?’
‘Nobody knows, not even the police.’
They were walking a path that was outlined in yew hedges and crisscrossed with other paths. ‘Your gardens are beautiful.’
‘I like it when it snows. When the snow tops the hedges and shadows move back and forth.’
‘Do you get snow in Cornwall?’
‘Sometimes we get a lot.’
Melrose seriously doubted it. Down toward the bottom of the garden he saw two figures, a man and a woman, planting or hoeing or whatever people did in that world which he would prefer not to mess about in. None of the Ryland experience as (so-called) undergardener seemed to stick except filling and emptying wheelbarrows full of dirt.
‘That’s the Macmillans. He’s her father. They have a big garden shop outside Launceston. Here’s the cottage.’
Architecturally, the cottage bore no resemblance to the main house. It was built of stone and knapped flint in a checkerboard design, with a thatched roof, and even a thatched porch overhanging a wide step flanked by two narrow columns. It was surrounded by a hedge out of which had been carved a topiary to hang over the pebble walk. Only a one-up, one-down, it was the fussiest little place Melrose had ever seen. The fuss continued on the inside with the curtains patterned in blue and pink hydrangeas and sofa and two armchairs covered in a cretonne full of pansies, roses and lilies–a regular flower garden of furniture.
No wonder Lulu liked it. ‘I’m going to live in this someday’.
The Winds of Change Page 11