Dying Flames

by Robert Barnard

  He wondered how much Terry Telford knew about the situation. Not very much, he guessed. All would surely have been saved for a big revelation scene. Now Terry was sitting at Peggy’s right hand, getting closer to her than necessary, and putting his hand near hers every time they shared a laugh about something, which was often. Looking at the young man, plump, apparently good-humored, Graham decided he had a pleasanter impression of the young man than Christa and Adam seemed to have got.

  He noticed that Peggy was keeping her eyes, when possible, on the waiters. The first course had been cleared away, and when the main courses began to appear, Peggy fingered her glass nervously and kept looking around, up and down “her” table. She’s staging act 1, scene 2, Graham thought.

  When all the main courses had been delivered, Peggy smiled round at everyone and tapped her glass.

  “Now don’t stop eating. This is not a toast, yet. I just want to tell you a story, share a piece of news. I told you how Michael had just asked me to play Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I don’t know how I’m going to play someone who is so twisted by not having children. I’ve been so blessed in that way—by lovely Christabel and wonderful Adam! Such props and stays for me—and joys too!—they’ve been always.”

  Christa smiled coolly, and Adam released not a muscle of his tense, angry face. Graham thought that if he were making the speech, he would have seen these as danger signs.

  “But one or two of you know of an episode long ago. Something happened to me when I was very young—I strayed from the path, as Graham might put it in one of his lovely novels.”

  “I’m not Barbara Cartland,” protested Graham.

  “But you have a heart, Graham, however much you may try to put on this hard cynicism which is fashionable. Anyway, I knew so little then”—not so ingenue as you’re painting yourself, thought Graham—“and that meant that we moved from our lovely little Essex village to Romford. Believe me, it was something that I’ve never regretted, thanks to all the lovely, lovely friends I’ve made here, particularly my dramatic friends as I may call them.” A special glance was shot at Michael and Vesta. “But the early heartbreak was that I had to give up the baby that I bore—such a love! So small and helpless! Things were different then, you know, and there were pressures…”

  “There were no pressures from us,” muttered Ted Somers.

  “I’m not accusing anyone, Dad…. So all my life I’ve carried around in me this heartbreak, this something that I’ve had and then lost and thought I could never find again. Perhaps this heartbreak has added something to my performances onstage—it’s not for me to say…. Anyway, it just shows how one has to have faith. Because one day, three weeks ago—September the tenth it was, and I’ll never forget the date—I had a phone call, and there was something in the voice, and I knew from the moment I heard it that this was one of the most important phone calls of my life. He asked me if I had been Peggy Somers, and”—she smiled roguishly—“to cut a long story not very short, he announced that he was the child I’d given up for adoption all those weary years ago, when I was eighteen. Christa and Adam have met him, we all love him already, and I wanted to introduce him to all my family and friends, so we can all be open about it, all welcome him.”

  She stood up, looked around at them all, and raised her glass.

  “To Terry Telford, my son.”

  Not just an echoing of the sentiments but applause seemed to be called for, and that presented problems. Who was to be applauded, and what for? Graham tried to solve the matter when he put down his glass, having sipped, and extended his hand over the table, saying, “Welcome.” Michael and Vesta followed his example, and so, after a moment’s hesitation, did Ted Somers.

  “I suppose I’m your grandfather,” he said. “Welcome.”

  Graham was beginning to wonder, with dread, when all this loving was going to lead to the inevitable revelation. He looked at Peggy, but all she did was respond with an enigmatic smile. He felt he was only ministering to her self-absorption, and he looked away in disgust. As he did so, his eye rested on the other end of the table. Adam was sitting there, his face twisting with real fury—genuine feeling, as opposed to all the actressy falseness emanating from Peggy and from her newfound son, who was again caressing her hand on the table and looking into her eyes, while both were masticating their main courses. Graham felt the intensity of Adam’s feelings was a relief, but he had to recognize that it was a threat as well. He had helped to initiate a train of events that could end in catastrophe for Peggy and her fragile family.

  “So that,” came Peggy’s voice, resuming the play, “is how I came to know my firstborn, the son I’d had and never had. And what it proves to me is that happy endings do happen. ‘Sometimes—there’s God—so quickly!’ as Blanche DuBois says.” If Graham had not noticed the rotten Southern accent, Christa’s nudge would have told him. “And from now on, Terry and I are going to make up for all that wasted time. I’ll never be alone again.”

  “Alone?” Adam’s voice came from the end of the table, breaking in anger or contempt. “You’ll never be alone again? Haven’t Christa and I been anyone? Have we just been inconvenient nothings who should never have intruded into your life?”

  Peggy’s hand went to her mouth. “Adam! Darling, you’re misunderstanding. I never meant—”

  “Oh, you meant what you said, Mother! All we’ve been to you is walking maintenance payments. I’m sick of you. I’m sick of living with you, having you near me. I’d rather sleep on the streets and beg. I’d rather sell myself. I’d rather be dead.”

  He kicked back his chair and ran from the restaurant, withholding his tears till he was outside and the door well shut, but then breaking out as if his heart were broken. The restaurant had fallen silent in the last minute or two, and the tears penetrated inside.

  “Oh, the silly boy,” said Peggy. “Don’t let him spoil our evening. He’s still only a child, and he’s not used to the idea of his new, wonderful brother.”

  “Someone should go to him,” Graham whispered to Ted and Christa.

  “His sister would be best,” said Ted. “I’m afraid I’ve never really understood the boy.”

  “I’ll go,” said Christa, wiping her mouth. “I’ll give him a minute or two and then I’ll go.”

  “Tell him living on the streets is out of the question,” said Graham. “He can bunk down at my house while he sorts himself out. Christa, you both can, at any time. You must remember that.”

  Christa nodded and smiled absently, as if the offer had always been assumed by her. The waiters, possibly with earlier experience of Peggy’s celebrations going awry, had hurried the sweets trolley away from a distant table and began a gabble through the alternatives to cover the awkwardness, which in any case was apparently not perceptible to Peggy, who was giggling with Terry in a way that could only be described as flirtatious.

  “I’ll have the strawberry shortcake, or the tiramisu—whatever,” said Christa, and slipped away from the table and out through the door to the street. This left Graham feeling still more marooned in company that was indifferent or positively hostile to him. And with a public revelation by Peggy, delivered in the most cringe-making style and English, still in prospect.

  Peggy had chosen a concoction that was mostly artificial cream, and the plate looked as if all the ingredients had been delivered by cannon. Terry was looking at it and laughing, and Peggy, still in a giggly mood, was forcing a piled-up spoonful into his mouth. Graham was possessed of an almost irresistible urge to push back his chair and go out to join the hunt for Adam, who suddenly seemed to him the most appealing person at the table, because he was possessed of real emotion.

  Peggy, however, self-regarding as she generally was, had a sympathetic understanding when confronted by an emotion that related to herself. She sensed what Graham, hardly seen for twenty-five years, felt about the scene that was being enacted. She tore herself from Terry’s seduction of her and fixed Graham with a smile th
at was not in any way come-hither. Indeed, it was almost basilisk, paralyzing his will.

  “There’s one more thing,” she said.

  The table went quiet. Had they all been expecting this? All eyes were on Peggy, but Graham somehow got the impression that the Halliburtons were desperately trying not to look at him. Egotism, he told himself.

  “Just one more, then Peggy will shut up and let you all relax and enjoy yourselves. You know how honored we all feel that we have with us tonight Graham Broadbent, one of the most talented of that wonderful generation of English novelists that emerged in the eighties and nineties.” Of whom Peggy, Graham suspected, could have named no other. “Graham and I go way back, he to his last year in Grammar School, me to my last months living in those parts—living with my dear old dad here, and Mum, who’s no longer with us. We met in a school play—my first starring role—but we really met a few weeks later, in a churchyard. Graham was wondering whether to go to London University, and I was expecting to do my last year at school, and perhaps be in another play with Colchester Grammar Boys. And we met. It wasn’t love at first sight, or anything like that, but it was attraction, and I know I suspected then what a distinguished figure Graham was to become.”

  “I was just a snotty-nosed schoolboy,” said Graham, with that false self-deprecation that gushing speeches often elicit from their victims.

  “If you had been a snotty-nosed schoolboy, I wouldn’t have been interested, darling,” said Peggy. “And I definitely was interested. What we had was short, but it was very beautiful. We weren’t children, but we were young: we were starry-eyed, impulsive, and ill-prepared.” There was a little laugh, Graham thought from Vesta Halliburton. “I am sometimes surprised by how often girls get caught out these days, after all the education, and all the awful warnings in the soaps, but still they do. We—genuinely—knew nothing. Soon after the lovely, brief romance was over, I found I was pregnant. And I think all of you bright, intelligent people will have guessed what I am going to say. It seems like magic—the best, most lovely sort of magic. Suddenly my Terry here has not only a new mum, but a new dad.”

  Graham had been transfixed by Peggy, by the awfulness of the speech, and dread of what was coming. Now he looked at Terry—something Peggy had not done during the entire speech. Terry’s face was fixed on her, but imprinted on it was not joy or euphoric surprise. It was stupefaction, disgust, revulsion. Was it real emotion? Graham wondered. Or acting? Terry was after all Peggy’s son. “Yes, the boy I had by that unexpected pregnancy was Terry, and Terry’s natural father is, happily, with us tonight. It’s a wonderful feeling at last to reunite father and son.”

  There was a clatter. Terry had stood up with a vengeance, his chair flying behind him. The American tourists, perhaps thinking this was a rehearsal for a play, or perhaps that this was a family row involving one of Britain’s foremost actresses, were taking snaps. Terry’s face was certainly a picture—beetroot with rage.

  “What is this crap? You’re talking fucking nonsense—taking me for a fool. This man’s not my natural father. I don’t need a natural father. I know my natural father already.”

  Chapter 8

  Into Thin Air

  For the second time that evening an exit was made.

  Like the first one, it was the exit of a pride-injured male, and it therefore had a similarity—it seemed to the watchers in the nature of a replay. What was quite different was Peggy’s reaction to it. She gazed at the door shutting behind Terry, then looked distractedly round, first at one face, then at another, then to her various “things”—handbag, purse, makeup bag—on the table around her, then to her coat hanging on a stand by the door.

  “I must go after him,” she said, seeming worried and upset. She gathered up the various receptacles, then put them back in a heap while she fetched her coat and put it over all the billowing voile. It was a light coat, in an interesting green, and it suited her. She knew it, and she posed while she looked round to see if there was anything she had forgotten.

  “Adam didn’t get this kind of concern from her,” whispered Graham to Ted Somers.

  “And he’s only fourteen,” said Ted. They watched as Peggy, without good-byes, sailed out of Luigi’s and into the night.

  “I think we’d better go after them,” said Graham. “Have you got your car?”

  “Yes. I’m an old garageman, remember. Driving skills are the last things to go.”

  “It seems like overkill: two perfectly capable young males. Still, Adam at least is still very much underage.”

  “It’s only Adam I’m worrying about. And Christa.”

  “Me too. A twenty-five-year-old male should be perfectly safe in Romford on a Monday night. Still, it seems to be Terry that Peggy is looking for. We’ve got four people looking for two. Surely one of us must strike lucky.”

  “You’d think so. But I’m not sure my eyesight’s up to recognizing this new one.”

  Graham took “this new one” to be Terry Telford and refrained from wondering whether Ted should be driving. They got themselves together and were starting for the door when they were confronted by Luigi and a large waiter who looked as if he’d originated from the north of Luigi’s country—wide, hard-faced, and determined. It was Luigi who was brandishing a piece of paper.

  “The bill, gen’lemen. The bill.”

  Graham and Ted looked at each other.

  “But Mrs. Webster—” Graham began.

  “Oh, no, sir. This ’as ’appened before. You are friends and family. You ’ave good chance of getting the money. I—never!”

  Ted and Graham looked at each other. Then they burst out laughing.

  “Landed in it again!” said Ted. “At my age too. Only proves there’s no fool like an old fool.”

  They halved the bill, paid it—Ted with cash, Graham with credit card—and then they both went out into the night. A light drizzle was beginning to fall.

  “We’d better keep in touch,” said Graham. “Have you got your mobile with you?”

  “No. I stick to the law about not using a mobile: it’s a sensible one. But I’ll go back home periodically, in case Adam’s there. It’s 88 Silverdale Street. You can leave a note.”

  “And I expect I’ll come back here now and then. Both the lads were a bit hasty—annoying though Peggy is. They could have second thoughts and return to base, thinking we could still be eating.”

  They separated, Graham noting that Ted had an old Jaguar, Ted noting that Graham had a newish Honda Civic. The other big difference between them, Graham decided as he set off, was that Ted knew the roads he was driving, where he did not. He could only cruise around the center and near-center of Romford, registering the odd place he already recognized—the Jeremy Bentham College, Milton Terrace (number twenty-five was shrouded in darkness), the Halliburtons’ shop, and Luigi’s, still busy and throbbing. He looked at the occasional body wrapped in blankets huddled in a shop or office doorway. Surely Adam couldn’t be so well-

  prepared as to be already equipped for sleeping rough? On the other hand, if he had been home, there was no reason why he shouldn’t have grabbed a couple of blankets from a drawer and be getting what sleep he could in an unusual and frightening situation.

  Now and again there was a halfhearted shower of rain. It was not cold, and there was no reason in the weather why a healthy fourteen-year-old shouldn’t fare perfectly well during a night in the open. No reason in most weathers—there was the rub. The dangers came from people. A mixed-up adolescent, picked up by a pedophile or some still more dangerous kind of weirdo—the idea didn’t bear thinking of.

  Now and then in his cruising he raised a hand to Ted Somers doing likewise. Eventually, three-quarters of an hour into his search, he spotted Christa. He pulled to the curb beside her, glad to have found someone he knew, and who knew the area.

  “No luck?” he asked. She shook her head miserably.

  “Why don’t you jump in? I’d be more effective with someone who knows him we
ll, and you’d cover more ground.”

  She thought for a moment, then hopped into the passenger seat.

  “Any theories, any idea what to do next?” Graham asked.

  “Not really. I thought about going to look at one or two of the people sleeping rough—”

  “Risky. You’d very much better not try that. I thought about it, but cried off.”

  “Oh, it wouldn’t worry me,” said Christa airily, as if buxom young women ran no risks in a modern town. “But I just couldn’t imagine Adam sleeping in a doorway. He thinks of himself as a hard man, but really he likes his creature comforts. Anyway, I thought I’d only do it if I recognized the blankets.”

  “I suppose that makes sense. I’ve been past your house. It’s in darkness. I suppose it’s not inconceivable that Adam has simply gone home and gone to bed.”

  “Pride would stop him, I reckon,” said Christa. “But we could go home and see if there’s any sign of either of them.”

  “Either of them? Did Terry have a key to your house?”

  “Not that I know of, but he could have. But why would he go there if he’s pissed off with Mum? I saw Grandad and he told me what happened. He was back at his house, checking up there. I should think Terry just caught the first train home. No, I meant Adam and Mother. If she’s out looking for Terry, I can’t understand why I haven’t caught sight of her.”

  “Right, then let’s go to Milton Terrace. Direct me.”

  It turned out to be an easy journey—a right turn, five minutes straight drive, then a turnoff from just above Halliburton’s greengrocery into the maze of between-the-war semis. When Graham pulled up outside number twenty-five, he was frowning.

  “Isn’t that a light—a dim one?”

  “Yes. I think it could be the light in the big cupboard-like thing Peggy had built in the hall for coats and macs and boots and Adam’s sports things. She was going with a builder at the time.”