Sheer Abandon

by Penny Vincenzi

  The line went suddenly dead; puzzled, he rang off, waited for her to ring him back, and then called Eliot Griers and Chad Lawrence.

  Half an hour later, he rang again. Bob answered the phone.

  “Hello, Bob. I was talking to Janet about half an hour ago, and we were cut off. Could I speak to her?”

  “I’m afraid not.” Bob sounded awkward. “She’s—lying down. Not very well.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. She does too much. I thought she sounded rather odd when I told her about Martha. She was very fond of her, of course.”

  “Indeed.”

  “It was about the funeral. Obviously we should all go. It’s at her father’s church in Suffolk; he’s taking the service, poor man. Next Monday. Chad and Eliot and a great many others will be there. I know Janet will want to come.”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll tell her. I’d like to come myself, if that would be all right. I was very fond of Martha.”

  Bob went into the bedroom that he and Janet occasionally shared. Most of the time he slept in another room, on the next floor. She was lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, ashen-faced, very still. She looked almost lifeless herself.

  “That was Kirkland.”

  She said nothing.

  “It was about the funeral. Martha’s funeral.”

  Silence still.

  “It’s next Monday. Jack said they were all going and naturally would expect you. I said we’d both go.”

  “I can’t go,” she said, her voice as expressionless as her face.

  “Janet,” he said, “you’re going.”

  Martha had not been unlike her in some ways, Bob thought. She had that same capacity for self-control. The same near-fanaticism in pursuit of her own success. But she was a much nicer person. Janet was not a nice person.

  He’d had no clear idea what she was going to tell Nicholas Marshall or the Sun about Martha; but he knew something was going on by simply reading her e-mails, latterly on her BlackBerry. He had been doing that on and off for a while. Thus Bob learnt about a great many tedious things—select committees she was asked to serve on, local planning laws she had pledged to fight, NHS reforms, the Lords Reform, European regulations, important divisions, and a few more interesting ones. Such as this latest, concerning Martha. It astonished him that Janet had never realised he might do so: perhaps she did, and her contempt for him was such that she never thought he would do anything with the knowledge.

  “How did you know?” she said that morning, lying on her bed, white-faced and hollow-eyed.

  “Oh, Janet,” he said in his courteous voice, “you really think I’m very stupid, don’t you? I’ve been reading your e-mails, of course.”

  “But you couldn’t have. The most recent ones hadn’t even been opened.”

  “I’m afraid they had. That latest little gadget of yours, the BlackBerry, I’ve had a lot of fun and games with it. You’d be surprised what you can do with a password and a bit of know-how. Not nice, what you had planned for Martha. Well, I’ll leave you to rest, shall I?”

  As he went back to the garden, he thought sadly that although he might have saved Martha from Janet, it was of little use to her now.

  Gideon Keeble found himself very moist-eyed when Jocasta told him the news. “Silly old fool that I am,” he said to her, “but she was a lovely thing, and so charming and clever. What a waste, what a dreadful waste.”

  “The funeral’s next Monday, Gideon, will you be able to come? Will you be back? I’d so love it if you would.”

  “Of course I’ll come. If that’s what her parents want.”

  “I think the more people who come, the better. Nothing worse than a small funeral. And they’ve invited me, through Ed, who seems to be doing a lot of the organising, and if I’m there, I want you to be.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Thank you. I love you, Gideon.”

  “I love you too, Jocasta. Where are you, incidentally? I’ve been calling the house.”

  “I’m at Nick’s,” she said, without thinking.

  Before Ed went home to Binsmow, he drove back up the A12 to the petrol station where he had filled his car earlier in the day. The same man was on duty.

  “Hi,” said Ed heavily, “remember me?”

  The attendant looked uneasy. “Yeah.”

  “I wondered if you could very kindly give me that twenty-pound note back. Here’s another.”

  He had found his wallet on the floor of the car, under his seat. Had he been calmer, he’d have noticed it.

  “You want the same note back? You’ll be lucky.”

  “Yes, I realise that, but I’d like you to try. It…was signed. By my girlfriend.”

  “Oh yeah? The one that was in intensive care? S’pose she’s OK now, is she?”

  “No,” said Ed, very quietly, “she isn’t. She died.”

  He hadn’t often seen a jaw drop; he saw it now. And a red flush rising from the man’s neck, up to his forehead.

  “Sorry, mate,” he said, “very sorry.”

  “Yes, well, perhaps you’d be kind enough to look through your till. You’ll know it, if you see it—I’m sure not many of them are signed.”

  The man pulled out the drawer, sorted through the row of notes. After a minute he pulled one out, handed it to Ed in silence. Ed walked back to his car, looking at the note, at the writing, the neatly inscribed “Love from Martha.”

  It wasn’t much to have of someone, but it was something. He had very little else: a few shirts, a couple of books—they, too, were signed the same way, nothing effusive, but then she wasn’t, hadn’t been, effusive—a few CDs. A couple of photographs of the two of them on her balcony and the one in her bed, that he’d framed, all taken with the auto on his camera. And a lot of memories.

  The loss of her suddenly hit him, almost physically; he felt breathless, weak, and absolutely alone. He put his head on his arms on the steering wheel and sobbed like a small child.

  “I think I’d like to go to the funeral,” said Kate.

  Helen stared at her; she was pale, but otherwise composed, not hysterical. “Kate, love, are you sure?”

  “Yes, of course I’m sure. Perfectly sure. Why shouldn’t I be?”

  “But you didn’t know her,” said Helen, realising the absurdity of this statement, even as she made it.

  “Mum! I know that. But I’d like to say goodbye to her. Properly. I…well, I wasn’t very nice to her when I met her. I feel bad about it.”

  “Oh dear.” Helen sighed. She wasn’t at all sure about this. For all sorts of reasons. Not least—“Kate, what do you think Martha’s family will think about it? This is no time for you to be upsetting them.”

  “I’m not going to upset them. What do you think I am, some kind of moron?”

  “But won’t they wonder who you are?”

  “I’ll tell them I’m a friend of Jocasta’s, that I met Martha through her. I’ve thought of that.”

  “I’ll see what your father thinks,” said Helen.

  “I don’t care what he thinks. It’s nothing to do with him. I’m going, OK?”

  “Oh dear,” said Helen again. “Kate, I don’t think I can go. Even if you do. It would be very difficult. I don’t expect you to understand, but—”

  “Oh Mum!” Kate’s expression suddenly softened; she put her arms round her mother. “Of course I understand. You do think I’m a moron, don’t you? Of course you don’t have to come, it’d be hideous for you. I’ll go with Jocasta. She’ll take me. And Fergus will be there. I’ll be fine. Honestly.”

  Jocasta thought it was a good idea for Kate to go to the funeral.

  “I can see it sounds a bit strange, but I think it will help her. And of course she can come with me. It’s kind of final, draws a line for her, as much as anyone.”

  “She’s really not herself,” said Helen. “She’s very quiet, not going out anywhere. Nat’s been banished.”

  “The lovely Nat? Poor little Kate. It’s very difficult for
her, isn’t it? She’s lost her all over again. Without learning anything.”

  “I’m afraid so,” said Helen with a sigh.

  “Beatrice…I know this might sound a bit odd, but—I think I’d like to go to Martha Hartley’s funeral.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Oh, hard to explain. I’d just like to. I feel I should. No need for you to come, of course.”

  “No, it would be out of the question anyway. Well, I suppose if you want to, Josh. It seems totally out of proportion to me.”

  Janet was in a very odd state, even by her own standards, Bob thought. She had hardly emerged from the bedroom in twenty-four hours; she hadn’t left the house on Monday, and had even missed PM’s Question Time on Wednesday. She appeared for family meals, but sat rather silently, listening to the racket but taking no part in it and certainly not instigating the political discussions she managed to dredge up, as Lucy had once rather forcibly put it, from almost any topic.

  She clearly wasn’t sleeping, Bob heard her moving around the house in the middle of the night, when it was quiet, and assumed she was working, but when he went to her study to check, she was never there, and he would find her sitting in the drawing room in total darkness. She refused to talk to him. But as the week wore on, she became increasingly distracted, shouting at the children, snapping at anyone else who crossed her path; the only time she became alive and herself again was when she went off on Friday night to make a speech at a charity dinner in the constituency. Then she appeared, wearing her favourite evening trouser suit, her hair done, her makeup immaculate, sparkling at the driver waiting in the hall for her, and came back, flushed with triumph, saying it had been superb and everyone had congratulated her on what she and the rest of Centre Forward were achieving.

  Bob had thought that Saturday might see the more familiar Janet back. It didn’t. What price superwoman now?

  It was Sunday night; with enormous determination, Peter Hartley had taken two of the three Sunday services, but was now lying down, exhausted. Grace, who had hardly slept at all, was pretending to read the papers, and wondering when, if ever, the wild pain she was experiencing might even begin to ease.

  Martha had been brought home; her coffin lay in the church and an enormous number of people had been to pay their respects, some of them spending quite a long time with her, kneeling in prayer. If only she knew, Grace thought, how many there were, how fond people were of her; and then felt guilty, because Peter would have said, of course, that she would know. His faith appeared unshaken; Grace’s was becoming very frail indeed.

  She felt daunted at the thought of what was clearly going to be a large funeral the next day, but comforted too; she had always worried that Martha didn’t have many friends, but clearly an enormous number had loved and admired her. Her boss, Paul Quenell, had phoned Grace and said he would, of course, be there, and that he was bringing several of Martha’s colleagues—including her friend Richard Ashcombe, who was flying over from New York. The thought of someone flying from America to attend Martha’s funeral impressed Grace almost more than anything.

  “I always wondered about Martha and him,” she said to Quenell, “whether something might, well, come of it. She was always talking about him, they seemed so fond of each other.”

  Quenell said, without more than a second’s hesitation, that he too had been struck by their close friendship.

  “But of course we were wrong, she chose a local boy in the end, Ed Forrest, I don’t know if you ever met him?”

  “I didn’t, but I heard he was absolutely charming.” Paul had not even been aware of Ed’s existence until that moment; but he was sure this, too, was what Martha’s mother would want to hear.

  “And of course she thought so much of you. She was always talking about you. It’ll be a pleasure to meet you at last.”

  If only, Paul thought, as he said goodbye to her, if only the meeting could be a pleasure, rather than a dreadful tragic duty.

  There was a ring at the bell: it was Ed. He was pale and didn’t look as if he’d been sleeping much, but he seemed fairly cheerful.

  “I just popped round to see you. And Martha,” he added. “And Mum says is there anything more at all that she can do for tomorrow?”

  Mrs. Forrest had already made ninety-six vol-au-vents; Grace said she had done enough.

  “Are you all right, Ed dear?”

  “Well, you know. I’ll be glad when it’s over. In a way.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Grace. “We’ve still got her at the moment. We haven’t said goodbye yet.”

  She smiled at Ed; if only she’d known that he and Martha had been—well, been in love, she would have been so happy. It had always been her dearest wish that Martha would come home to Binsmow, perhaps work as a solicitor there; her political ambitions had seemed a promising step along that road. And with Ed—so handsome, so charming, such a wonderful son—it would have been too good to be true. As it exactly had been: too good to be true. She looked at him now and her eyes filled with tears; he put his arms round her and they stood there, the two of them, remembering Martha and thinking how much they had both loved her.

  Later that evening, Gideon phoned. “Jocasta, my darling, I’m going to fail you. I can’t get there in time for tomorrow.”

  She felt disproportionately angry and upset. “Why? What’s happened?”

  “Some kind of breakdown in air traffic control. So I can’t even charter anything. Darling, I am so, so sorry. I’ve been trying to get something sorted for hours. I didn’t want to ring you until I knew it was hopeless.”

  “Yes, well, now you have,” said Jocasta.

  “Darling one, don’t sound so angry.”

  “I am angry. If you’d left a day earlier, as you should have done, anyway, to be sure of getting back in time, you’d be here by now.”

  “Jocasta, I haven’t exactly been on holiday, you know.”

  “I do know, and I shouldn’t think you ever will be. Oh never mind, doesn’t matter. I’ll get by without you.”

  Fergus wondered if he could talk to Kate about her contract with Smith before the funeral and decided he couldn’t. She was, Helen told him, very worked up about everything. Fergus said of course he understood, but it really couldn’t be left much longer.

  “They think we’re playing games and they’re getting impatient,” he had said to Kate earlier in the week.

  “Well, let them. I don’t really care. Honestly. I’ve got the magazine work, haven’t I?”

  Two e-mails from Smith later and he was getting worried. And it wasn’t just that Smith would be disenchanted with Kate soon; word would get round that she was awkward, difficult, played games. She wasn’t so successful that she could afford to mess people around. These were very early days.

  And he had his own agenda, although he tried not to think about it: his commission on the magazine work would be small change compared to the Smith contract. On the other hand…Fergus knew very well what the other hand held: more unwelcome publicity, increasing media pressure on Kate—“How do you feel about not knowing who your mother is, Kate?” “Do you think you’ll ever know who your father is?” He knew in his heart of hearts she would be better without it. But what would three million dollars do for her as a start in life? A very great deal. And he continued to try to crush the thought of what twenty percent of it could do for him.

  He had tried to discuss his dilemma with Clio, but they had already had a fierce argument about it.

  “I don’t know how you can even think of putting pressure on her at a time like this. Beastly people can wait.”

  Fergus said he was trying not to put pressure on her, but that it wasn’t a decision he could take for her, and that Smith, with the best will in the world, could hardly have known Kate was having a difficult time and they simply needed to have the whole thing settled.

  “It’s a commercial matter, Clio, they have deadlines to meet.”

  “Then tell them she’s having a diff
icult time, for heaven’s sake. I’m sure they’ll understand. And if they don’t, they don’t deserve her anyway.”

  It was at such times that Fergus worried about their relationship, so far apart were their attitudes to his career. To Clio it was something distinctly shameful; to him it earned him more than a few crusts in the only way he knew, and for the most part enjoyed.

  The whole thing didn’t quite add up.

  “You two go down together,” said Jocasta to Clio, “and Nick can take Josh. Beatrice isn’t coming and it won’t be much fun for him driving down alone. I really can’t imagine why he’s going at all, but it’s very sweet of him. And I’ll bring Kate. I think it’s best she’s alone with me, she might be very upset. Just as well Gideon isn’t coming, really.”

  “Does Josh know about Kate?” Clio asked. “I mean, who does he think she is?”

  “He knows she’s Baby Bianca, but he has no idea she’s anything to do with Martha. I just told him that she met her at the party and wanted to come. He’s awfully thick, you know, he never thinks anything much at all.”

  “Jocasta,” said Clio, “that’s rubbish! He’s terribly clever, he got a first, didn’t he, and God knows how many A levels when he was about twelve?”

  “Yes, but he’s incredibly stupid when it comes to real life,” said Jocasta, “just misses the point of everything.”

  “Oh I see,” said Clio. “Are you all right, Jocasta?”

  “Yes. Course. I’m fine. Why shouldn’t I be?”

  “I’m not sure. You just don’t seem quite yourself.”

  “I’m absolutely myself.” Clio decided to let it rest.

  The funeral was to start at two. By just after one, cars began to fill St. Andrew’s Road. By one thirty people were standing awkwardly about outside, greeting those they knew, smiling uncertainly at those they didn’t. At twenty to two, they moved into the church.