She put down her beaker and began to make complicated movements with her hands, twisting and turning them, concentrating.
‘It was like that, cat’s cradle. And Mort looked like that with ropes and pulleys on his legs and all those tubes going everywhere, even up his nose, and he talked and talked and they said not to stop him, so I just listened and he told me. There were the telegrams from America and Gibbs asking for more and more and all because of something that didn’t matter all that much. I mean, I suppose if they’d found out at the council about Mort and the boys – they’re all under twenty-one, you see, and that makes it illegal – I suppose there’d have been trouble. But me, I wouldn’t have said anything, would I? And we’d have managed somehow because I’m a good manager. But he thought I’d have left him too, and it was that that was the worst, he said. So he put Gibbs in his car and they went for a drive and he drove the car at the tree. But he did tell me it would have been the worst if I’d left him, so I suppose –’
She picked up her beaker and began to drink again, the tea bag bobbing against her upper lip and leaving a stain there.
‘He loved you a lot, didn’t he?’ Maggy said, gently, trying to sound right, not silly, not sentimental, just right.
‘Do you think so?’ She put the beaker down again, and looked at Maggy with her head on one side. ‘Do you think so?’
‘It sounds like it’ Be careful. Don’t go over the top. ‘I mean, if he said the worst would have been you finding out – he must have.’
Again a silence and then Maggy said, still careful, ‘I can’t see that my coming here had anything to do with it all. Can you?’
Sally shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It was just at that time so I suppose I wondered – I hadn’t thought of it till you came here, this morning. And then, just for a bit, I did wonder. But it doesn’t matter. Does it?’
‘No,’ Maggy said. ‘No, I suppose not. Sally, I’m sorry. About Mort I remember him from so long ago, when he was kind to me.’ And didn’t just like boys with sleek flanks and women with wide hips and heavy breasts but little girls as well. Poor bastard. Poor hungry bewildered bastard. ‘He was really very kind to me.’
‘He was a very kind person. He always tried so hard to please people, you see. That was all he ever really wanted. To keep everyone happy. Silly, really. It was all I could do to make one man happy, and he wanted to make everyone happy!’ She laughed then, an odd ringing little sound in the cold scullery, bouncing off the stone floor. ‘And he wanted to make everyone happy! Well, you can’t say he didn’t try. And he did love me, didn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ Maggy said and stood up. ‘No one could love anyone more, to do what he did for fear of losing you. It must be very good to be loved like that.’
‘I’ll think about that. I’ll think about it a lot. I’m glad you came now. I wasn’t at first.’
‘I’m glad too. Is there anything I can –’
Sally shook her head. ‘No. I’ll manage well enough. I’ve always been a good manager.’
It wasn’t till she was nearly home that it hit her. Andy blackmailing Mort? Because they’d been homosexual together all that time ago? But it was mad. Andy was Adam Lancaster now. Born again. Handsome and polished and looking so young and vibrant, obviously as clean and perfect inside as he was outside. If all those eager people she had seen on the film knew that once he had – what would they say?
And the woman with the broom at the airport; would she work so hard for money to give him if she knew?
So why should Andy blackmail poor Mort until he died in a cat’s cradle of ropes and pulleys and tubes in the clinical stink of a hospital intensive-care unit? Hadn’t he more to lose than Mort had? Mort had only a dreary job in a council home for delinquents to lose, and a lumpy square wife who was a good manager. But Andy – he had California and New York and the whole of his heaven to lose.
‘And all the broom-pusher’s money,’ she whispered, as she drove the last few yards back to the flat. All the broom-pusher’s money. How many broom-pushers in California and New York? How many dollars could they bring to Adam Lancaster’s heaven? Dollars, dollars, dollars – is that why he tormented Mort? As a way to stop Mort from tormenting him? So tortuous, so twisted – how can anyone be so twisted? Andy is, she thought. Adam Andy Kentish Lancaster is.
And now he knows that I know about him. I told him so. The thought exploded between her eyes as she parked the car and switched off the engine. He knows I know. Will he start to blackmail me? But how can he? What have I got to lose? It is I who could blackmail him –
Which makes me dangerous. Obviously he tried to keep Mort quiet by frightening him. Blackmailing Mort was the best way of keeping him quiet, wasn’t it? They do that in bridge. She remembered Susannah trying to teach her to play bridge. ‘Pre-emptive bidding, dear heart,’ Susannah’s clear tones rang in her head. ‘You bid what they’ve got and then they can’t –’
Stop being so silly. Think. You know something about Andy that could, surely, damage him. Don’t you? Which makes you dangerous. He drove another dangerous part of his past to death. Couldn’t he do the same to you?
Maybe he actually killed Mort? Maybe it was this man Gibbs, who was working for Andy, who drove the car and killed Mort?
Don’t be crazy. That would have meant getting the man to kill himself. ‘Just pop along and drive that man Lang into a tree, will you? Of course you’ll be killed too, but you won’t mind that –’ Maybe a Born Again Gibbs? Could that have been it?
No. Of course not. Gibbs was just a seedy little go-between who had decided to do his own blackmailing. He stopped doing it for Andy which was why Andy had to start doing it himself, sending Mort telegrams. And Gibbs starting too, getting money for himself.
‘Poor bastard.’ She said it aloud, sitting in her car and staring ahead of her at the familiar Crescent. ‘Poor bastard.’ Both of them on his back. What else could he do but drive at a tree?
And now what? Will Andy start on me? Try to find a way to drive me into a tree? He’d be better off if I were dead.
But if that were true, why did he let me go in New York? He could have killed me then and there, dropped me in an alleyway somewhere nearby and I’d have been just another police statistic. Mugging goes on all the time in New York, doesn’t it? What’s another body in an alley down near the spangled waters of the East River? Just a silly tourist wandering where she had no right to be –
Because of Hornby.
The idea slid into her mind slowly, almost insinuatingly, and behind it she could hear his voice as the lift came whispering up to his penthouse. ‘It’s expensive, of course. A lot comes in but a lot goes out. Expensive. I need all the contributions that come to me. I need them for God.’
He wants Dolly’s money. Hornby’s money. He knew about Dolly leaving me the hotel and the debts, and knew I was looking for Hornby, as part of looking for the answer to those debts. It could be a lot of money; I know that, and it’s obvious he does too.
So that was why he let me go. He wants me to find the answer to Dolly’s silly riddle and then he’ll come and get it from me. And then what? Will he just say thank you and tip his hat and go back to New York?
This is mad, absolutely mad. You’re getting more and more embroiled in nonsense. Telling yourself silly stories.
Dolly stories.
She shook her head angrily and turned to open the car door. And then she saw them. Two tall young men, walking down the steps of the next house but one to her own. They were wearing dark suits and sparkling white shirts, and firmly knotted dark ties and their shoes shone smooth and bright on the dusty pavement as they came to street level and then turned sharply right to climb the next little flight of steps to knock on the next door.
I’m getting worse and worse. I thought they were Greening and Salmon, but they’re not. They’re just a pair of neat and tidy young men doing a market survey or something. Market-survey people are always coming, making pests of themselves. Housewives e
arning pin money.
But these are young men. Glossy young men who could have been cut out of the backs of cornflake packets. The sort of young men Lancaster would use to collect people for his Wembley rallies when he gets here. The papers are full of it. Everyone knows he’s coming, the New Voice of America they’re calling him –
She turned back then, fumbling to get the key back into the ignition and started the engine and revved it so that it roared, and one of the young men on the doorstep turned and looked at her. Smooth-faced and young, he looked at her for a moment, and then turned away apparently uninterested, as the door opened. It was the last thing she saw as she drove away round the Crescent, heading back for the main road, and shaking so much that she could hardly keep her feet on the controls.
26
‘You think they were this Andy’s people?’ Theo’s voice came thin and tinny through the phone. ‘Did they try anything? Try to follow you when you drove away?’
‘No.’ She could see her face in the grimy mirror over the phone, see the street outside reflected behind it, cars and buses grinding by, a flower-seller, people hurrying past. No one there who looked at all threatening.
‘No. I looked back when I got to the other end of the Crescent and I could just see them standing on the doorstep talking to someone. They didn’t try to follow me. But Theo – I think I understand it all now. I really do. It’s Mort you see – though he’s dead.’
‘Dead?’ The tinny voice sharpened. ‘What happened? I mean, was it a funny death? Or –’
‘Suicide. Drove into a tree. But he had someone with him, and he was a blackmailer and used to collect money from Mort for Andy. And I think he was the one who used to follow me – oh, Theo, it’s all so bloody complicated. I can’t tell you all about it now – but I thought – look, I am being stupid, aren’t I? I mean, there hasn’t been time for Andy to get anyone over here, from the time he’d have discovered I’d gone? He thought I’d be in New York longer, you see, was going to make me go to one of his rallies. Well, has there been time? Was I imagining those chaps? Could they have been salesmen or something? It was just that they looked so damned sleek. Like the ones who picked us up at the airport –’
‘I don’t know – Maggy, will you stay there? Pretend to make calls or something. Anything. I’ll leave now, get to you as fast as I can –’
‘Don’t be daft. I’m at Marble Arch. It’ll take you ages to get here. And the traffic’s like soup – I – actually I feel better now.’
‘I’m damned if I do. This is getting mad. You stay there. I’ll be there as fast as I can and we’ll go to the police –’
‘No!’ She shouted it. ‘No! What for? To tell them I’m having paranoid nightmares? That there’s this revivalist character who scares me? I can just see it – and anyway, I don’t want to – I’ve got a feeling I can see a way through this –’
‘What sort of way? There isn’t any other way but to get the law involved –’
‘No. I’m going to Cheltenham. It’s obvious that that’s where this money is that Dolly was on about. Mort talked about him and so did Andy – I’m going there.’
‘Then I’ll come with you. At least let me do that! You can’t stop me from –’
‘No, and I don’t want to. Can you get away now? I can be at Paddington in fifteen minutes by underground. Meet you at the ticket office?’
It was really extraordinary how alive she was feeling. The morning’s confused emotion had given way to a taut alertness that was very like the way she felt before a big concert. There was a sureness in her, a total conviction that she could make everything come out the way she wanted, just as she had at Lincoln Center a couple of nights ago. A couple of nights ago? Crazy, crazy, only a couple of nights ago.
‘Do you see, Theo? It’s all to do with this money. And it’s mine. Dolly wanted me to have it, so it’s mine.’
Theo was leaning back in the corner of the compartment, watching her as she sat on the edge of her seat, her face alight and her hands restlessly gesticulating.
‘But you didn’t want it, did you? To start with. You said –’
‘I know what I said!’ She leaned back now, and turned her head to stare out at the passing landscape. It was bucolic and charming, all the tight organized prettiness that was Gloucestershire, but she wasn’t seeing it; her eyes were wide and staring far beyond it. ‘I was confused and I didn’t know – I’ve found out a lot this past few weeks, Theo.’
‘You’ve done incredibly well. I doubt if I could have worked it out as you have. If you’re right about it all, of course.’
‘Oh, I’m sure I’m right. Absolutely sure. But I don’t mean about Andy and the money. I mean about Dolly. And me.’
‘Well? What have you found out?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it. Not yet. But I’ve found out a lot.’
He said nothing, just watching her, and her eyes remained fixed on the passing scenery, and her face was smooth and almost serene, and he sighed softly and closed his eyes. She never looked like that with him. Shut away in her private world she looked like that, but never with him.
She didn’t mean it, ever, Maggy was thinking. Never meant anything to work out the way it did. She was just Dolly, doing what she wanted the moment she wanted to, and trying in her own way to make it what I wanted. I wish it could have worked right. I wish I could go back to the top and play the whole score again. Dolly and me. Dolly and her stories. I’d make her tell me true ones, if I rewrote the score. No romantic soldier for a father, no rich country house owners for grandparents. I’d just play a clean and straight score for Dolly, without any of her grace notes. That was really all it was. She wanted to play the pretty music, not the real raw stuff. Poor dear Dolly.
Dear Dolly?
Yes. She hurt me, and I thought I hated her, but I didn’t really. It was the other side of the same penny, loving her and needing her, and then hating and rejecting her. I’ve never sorted it out, before. Now I’m beginning to.
And when I’ve got the money, and I’ve sorted out the debts and all the hotel stuff, I’m going to do what she really knew she ought to do. I’m going to give it to Ida. I’ll earn what I need. All of it. Ida can have what she’s earned.
Ida. Think about her too. All those years of resentment and hate, and for what? Because of her, or because of me? Was it my fault or her fault that we loathe each other so much?
I can’t think about that now, I can’t. But I’m going to give the hotel to Ida, all the same. It ought to be hers. She did the work, made it all happen. Dolly just – Dolly was just Dolly. Indolent and slaphappy and doing it all wrong. Without Ida we’d have all been out on the street, time and again. It was Ida who kept the place together, and Ida who ought to have it. But I’m going to find that damned money first. I am, I am, I am.
But she still couldn’t really understand why it mattered so much.
They started with the local telephone book. There were quite a few Hornbys in and around the town and she rang them all, as Theo sat beside her on the hotel bed and read out number after number.
‘I wonder if you can help me?’ The words got easier and easier, coming out like a script she’d learned by heart. ‘I’m trying to find an old friend of my father’s. He’d be in his sixties now. James Hornby – they called him Jim. Lived in London, for a while, in Acton –’
Blank after blank after blank. Terse denials of anyone ever called James or Jim in the family alternated with garrulous accounts of every cousin, uncle and nephew who had ever graced a particular family tree. There were the suspicious ones who wanted to know all about her father – and she told a complex tale of shared army services – and the uninterested ones who weren’t even remotely concerned about why a stranger should call them out of the blue asking for a relation they didn’t have. And as the afternoon wore on she became more and more dispirited.
It was Theo who said suddenly, ‘The local paper.’
‘What?’
�
��Newspaper. He must have been written about, surely? Local villain? Went to prison? I would have thought –’
‘Where? Where is it?’ She took the phone book from him, leafing through it almost feverishly. ‘Oh, Christ, what’s the bloody thing called?’
Theo picked up the phone again and the operator, obviously fascinated by the strange behaviour of the couple in seventeen, answered at once.
‘Local paper, sir? The Gazette you mean?’
‘Call them,’ Maggy said, when she found the number. ‘Ask them – no, we’ll go there. Look for ourselves –’
‘Now? It’s gone four! They’ll never let us just wander in like that, go through the back numbers, will they? We’ll have to wait till tomorrow, make an appointment. We’ll have to stay a few days, that’s all. It’s worth it, and it’ll be a rest for you –’
‘Like hell. I’m going now.’ And she reached for her jacket and went, and wearily he followed her. There was little else he could do; she had become almost white-hot with enthusiasm, as eager and as excited as he’d ever seen her in their three years together, and it depressed him. All this for money that she said she didn’t want? All this for Dolly, whom she’d always hated so much? It hurt to see her like it.
‘Back numbers?’ the girl at the reception desk said, dubious and bored at the same time. ‘No, not ’ere. ‘Tisn’t somethin’ we does, I don’t think –’
‘Of course you do,’ Maggy said briskly. ‘Every newspaper does. Fetch me someone who knows a little more about the place, please. Go on now! You’re obviously not the person who can help us, and this is important! Fetch your boss, whoever he is.’
He turned out to be a small woman with very black hair set in tight ripples on each side of her narrow head from a centre parting, and tied in a knot at the back. Her face was bony, with the skin stretched over her cheeks and her teeth very white and even. She looked like a plastic version of Mrs Simpson, the sort of doll tasteless entrepreneurs might have produced to make money out of the Abdication crisis forty years ago.
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