Lonely Hearts

by John Harvey

  “Not that that was sufficient for you to understand. Phone calls, intimidation, threats of violence…”

  “There was no threats of bloody violence!”

  “Then a lot of people are lying.”

  “They’re always lying!”

  “You used your fists against her…”

  “That’s not…”

  “Used your fists against her when you were together…”

  “That’s not true!”

  “Signed statements. You beat her up whenever you felt like it, whenever you thought she’d stepped out of line, and in the end the only thing left for her to do was to get a court order made out against you coming anywhere near her.”

  Macliesh crumbled a cigarette between his fingers. “That vicious whore put her up to it!”

  “Who’s that, Macliesh?”

  “That stupid tart, always putting ideas into her head.”

  “You mean Grace Kelley?” Resnick asked.

  “You sodding know I do!”

  “Miss Kelley says that in addition to being violent, you were unreasonably possessive. That even after Shirley Peters had made it clear that in her eyes your relationship was over, you still continued to make it difficult for her to meet other men.”

  Macliesh twisted round in his chair, wrenching his head from one side to the other.

  “You were jealous, weren’t you, Macliesh?”

  “Stuff it!” Macliesh hissed.

  “You couldn’t live with the thought of her seeing other men.”

  “Stuff it!”

  “Didn’t like the idea of her being alone with them.”

  Macliesh sat with his head back, mouth open, working at the stale air.

  “The chance of her fancying them. Loving them.”

  Macliesh’s chair went cartwheeling backwards and Suzanne Olds let out a shout and her pen went skittering across the floor.

  “Letting them love her.”

  Macliesh’s shoulder hit the wall and then the side of his fist, flat of his hand, fist again.

  “Difficult inside,” Resnick went on as if Macliesh was still sitting across the table from him, “inside, when she never came to visit you. Lincoln.”

  “Shut your fucking mouth!” Macliesh screamed.

  “Thinking about it.”

  Macliesh hit the wall first with both hands, fingers spread wide, then with his head.

  “Difficult not to let those pictures keep forming.”

  Again, and there was blood beginning to seep out on either side of the bandages.

  “Inspector!” shouted Suzanne Olds. “I insist that this is stopped.”

  “‘You as much as sniff another man,’” said Resnick, on his feet now, “‘and I’ll bloody strangle you.’”

  Macliesh charged blindly, knocking the solicitor sideways and almost to the ground. His knee banged into a chair, his hip went hard against the table’s edge. He was already stumbling when he made his lunge at Resnick, who sidestepped him with the contempt of a man outwitting an unfocused bull.

  “‘I’ll bloody strangle you,’ you said, and that was what you did.”

  Resnick’s voice was strong and clear in the confines of the room. Patel had Macliesh’s arm high up behind his back and was forcing the side of his face down against the table. Graham Millington came through the door fast, drawn by the noise, and stood there staring.

  “Charge him,” Resnick said.

  Suzanne Olds was standing with her body bent forward, arms crossed tight across her chest. She was shaking.

  “The murder of Shirley Peters.”

  Eleven

  The house was paid for: not much more than two up and two down, extension built on the back, kitchen and bathroom, garden the size of a snooker table with grass it took Luke about two days to reduce to mud. But no mortgage. He’d settled that, the one thing he did settle, prissying about with lawyers, bank managers, and bits of paper. “I’ll make sure things are right for you, Mary, you and the children. You’ll not want.”

  Not want. Made him sound like one of those hymns she used to sing at Sunday school. He will lay me down in green pastures. Well, Highland Crescent wasn’t exactly green pastures, but aside from the rates, insurance, the normal bills…she knew families who were paying out as much as two hundred a month to the building society. Linda, who worked on electrical, almost two hundred and fifty theirs came to, outgoings, with the loan for the new furniture. Pounds. She didn’t know how they managed. She found coping difficult enough herself, and that was without splashing any around; if they went and stayed in that caravan at Ingoldmels another summer she’d push the wretched thing into the sea.

  Last year he’d sent Luke and Sarah a postcard from Corsica.

  She’d torn it up before they came home from school. What did they want to know about him and that po-faced pound of string beans he’d married, sunning themselves in Corsica? The water is clear and warm but you have to keep in the shade in the afternoons. If he had that much cash to throw away, he could pay for Luke’s new shoes, a winter coat for Sarah, one of those recorder things they both kept pestering her about.

  “Luke!”

  It was starting to get dark already, you could see the street lights clearly. Shapes of the cars parked on either side beginning to blur. She hated it when the nights started drawing in so fast.

  “Luke!”

  She’d told him, she’d told him half-a-dozen times if she’d told him once: back indoors by half-past four. What if I don’t know the time, he’d said? What do you think that watch is for? It’s bust. What do you mean, it’s bust? It won’t work any more. Look. Then ask somebody. You’ve got a tongue in your head, haven’t you?

  Oh, Christ!

  She rocked back against the edge of the open door. She shouldn’t…that wasn’t…what was she doing, telling him to go up to some stranger and ask the time? Telling him. All the air seemed to be sucked from her body. Her stomach cramped. Skin was cold to the touch. Goose pimples. Telling him. Please, can you tell me…can you tell me…can you tell me the time?

  Pictures formed at the backs of her eyes and wouldn’t go away.

  “Mummy. Mummy! What’s the matter?”

  She forced herself to breathe, to smile at four-year-old Sarah pulling at the side of her skirt.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. It’s nothing. Come and have your tea.”

  “Luke’s not here.”

  Pushing the child through to the back room. “That’s all right. We don’t have to wait. You can have yours now. Luke eats twice as fast as you do anyway. He’ll soon catch up.”

  “Mummy…”

  She sat the child down in front of a plate, bread and butter cut, spaghetti hoops on the stove, bubbling up the sides of the pan. Six fish fingers under the grill, two for Sarah and…

  Mary’s legs went at the knees, a moment, nothing more, enough to spill her across the narrow room; her hand, catching out, catching at anything, caught the handle of the kettle and sent it clattering across the floor.

  Water pooled about her feet, luke warm.

  She was at the sink, squeezing out a cloth before she realized that Sarah was pressed against the door jamb, tears on her face, staring.

  “It’s all right, darling. Mummy just spilt the water. You go back and get on with your tea and I’ll clean this up. It won’t take a minute.”

  She gave the girl a quick hug, felt her own tears pricking at her eyes. Ask somebody. You’ve got a tongue in your head, haven’t you? Mary bent low with the cloth; the water seemed to have got everywhere. On the third trip back to the sink, she switched on the gas over the grill, tipped half of the spaghetti out on to a plate.

  “Mummy?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Here’s Luke.”

  She spun round and saw him across the room. The street door had been open and he had come running in to stand there, still a little out of breath, head held to one side and a lick of brown hair falling, across it.

/>   “I’m not late, I…”

  The flat of her hand struck sharp across his face. There were seconds when he seemed not to have realized what had happened, rocked back against the wall, feeling needling back to his cheeks, stinging him to screams and tears.

  At the table Sarah sat with her head bowed, not looking, not wanting to look, crying too.

  “Whatever’s the matter with them?”

  “With who?”

  “The children?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Mary, you can’t tell me…”

  “Mother, nothing’s the matter with them.”

  “They’ve scarce said a word since they got here.”

  “That was only ten minutes back. Give them a chance.”

  “You were here at close to six as…”

  “Oh, what does it matter what time we got here? What possible difference does it make?”

  “Mary, it’s not the time I’m concerned with.”

  “Then…then don’t go on about it so.”

  “I am not going on about the time.”

  “All right, you’re not…”

  “It’s my grandchildren that…” If Vera Barnett had been able to get from her chair quickly enough, she would have caught hold of her daughter’s arm and kept her physically in the room. As it was, all she could do was stare at her, will her not to leave, to do as she wanted, just as she had done when Mary had been herself a child of small unvoiced regrets and sullen silences.

  A moment later, the sound of water splashing back from the inside of the kettle, cups and saucers being shuffled along the draining board. Luke knelt before the television, too close to images of black-and-white outlaws waiting for the overland stage, the sound turned too low to hear. Wedged into the corner of the two-seater settee, Sarah gazed at her grandmother’s face, the sucked-in cheeks, the collapse of curls, gray against the gray of her neck.

  When Mary came back into the living-room, it was with the tea things on a patterned metal tray, biscuits tipped out on to a cracked bone china plate. Avoiding her mother’s eyes, she sat on the settee and held saucer in one hand, cup in the other. Over Luke’s shoulder she watched the stage-coach passengers dropping money and valuables into a sack. Sarah, cuddling up alongside her, spilt milky tea on to the flowers of her dress.

  “Well, this is very nice, I must say.”

  Mary tried not to react to her mother’s voice, the cold challenge of its irony.

  “Nobody visits me for over a week and when they do it’s like a morgue.”

  For a moment, Mary closed her eyes and slipped an arm around her daughter, drawing her closer still. It was enough.

  “That’s right, you don’t have to pay any attention to me. Why should you? Bring the children round for tea and sit watching some stupid thing on television. I don’t know why you bother.”

  Mary was up from the settee quickly, leaning past Luke so that he flinched, clicking the set off.

  “That’s not fair,” Luke’s protest started but got no further.

  Vera Barnett’s head was angled towards her daughter in a look of petty triumph.

  “There’s no winning with you, is there?” Mary was unable to keep silent.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “If we don’t come to see you, that’s wrong, and if we do, that’s wrong too.”

  “I don’t sit here to be ignored.”

  “Nobody’s ignoring you.”

  “That’s not what it looks like.”

  “You can’t expect to be made a fuss of all the time.”

  “Fuss! A civil word would be something. A kiss from my own grandchildren.”

  “Mother, they kissed you when they got here. You know very well.”

  “A peck.”

  “Oh, now you’re being ridiculous!”

  “Ridiculous, am I? Well, at least I know how to behave.”

  Mary couldn’t believe it. She was starting this all over again. “Perhaps behaving’s easy when you never get out of your chair from morning till night.”

  “How dare you!”

  Oh, God! thought Mary. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean that.”

  Whether she had meant it or not didn’t matter.

  “I suppose you think I like to sit here every day, day after day? I suppose you think I do it on purpose?”

  Mary shook her head slowly. “No, Mother.”

  Luke switched the television back on in time to see one of the posse tumble sideways from his horse and cartwheel through sagebrush and dust.

  “These bones of mine—you think I’m a cripple through choice?”

  “Mother, you are not a cripple!” Mary was on her feet, standing over her mother, staring down at her. Sarah pushed back against the cushions, watching and listening, making herself small. “I know you have a lot of pain, I know it’s difficult for you to move around, but you are not a cripple.”

  “Well, I’m sorry.”

  “What do you mean, you’re sorry?”

  “That I’m not ill enough for you to do what you’ve been wanting to do ever since…ever since…”

  “Mother!” She had hold of her arms, lifting her forwards in the chair. She could see the envelopes of skin, like chicken flesh, spreading out from the corners of her eyes. After some moments she was conscious of the narrow hardness of her mother’s bones beneath her finger ends.

  Sarah was sucking in air noisily, not quite crying, while Luke pretended to be watching a man with a badge walk into a crowded, brightly lit saloon.

  Mary straightened and looked at her mother, daughter, mother again. She turned away and began to put the cups back on the tray. “I suppose you’ll be going out later,” said her mother, as Mary went towards the kitchen.

  “Yes, Mother, I shall be going out later.”

  Mary smoothed down her gray skirt and reached around behind to lower the toilet seat. Sitting, she lifted her heeled shoes from the plastic bag she had been carrying and wiped a scuff mark from the upper of one of them with a sheet of toilet paper. Wriggling her feet down into them, she squashed the soft-soled flatties she’d been wearing into her handbag; the striped plastic bag she stuffed down behind the pipe that ran from the cistern to the bowl. She stood then, wincing as the back of her left shoe bit into her skin. Why hadn’t she remembered to bring a plaster that she could have put on beneath her tights? Now she would have to hope that whatever they did, she wouldn’t have to walk too far.

  She flushed the toilet and unbolted the cubicle door.

  Makeup bag resting on the narrow ledge—How did they expect you to balance anything on something that wasn’t wide enough for a cat to walk along?—Mary applied some blusher, wondering again how it was she could still have freckles around her nose this far into autumn.

  Lipstick.

  At least, she hadn’t had to go through this with her mother; the questioning she had had to endure all the time she was at secondary school and beyond. Where are you going? Who are you going to meet? Which pictures? And the hand that would reach out to smear Miners makeup across her face: don’t imagine that’s going to wash with me, young lady, you don’t cover yourself in this just to go to the Odeon with a girlfriend.

  True or false, true or false, it had never mattered.

  You can’t lie to me, I’m your mother.

  Yes, mother. She pressed her lips together tightly and then pulled them apart, making a soft popping sound. Well, it’s just as well you no longer ask.

  An ageless woman in a bulked-out coat like tinted sacking came in, pushing a small boy before her. “In there. Go in. In there, stupid!” The door slammed shut.

  Mary slid the black brush into the mascara and lifted up her eyelid with a finger. That’s what she’d have me looking like, done-for and sexless. Like her. God, she’s not yet sixty herself. Doesn’t she ever think about it? Ever? Mary clicked the mascara shut, pulled a comb a few more times through the ends of her hair. Not that that was why she went with them. Men. It wasn’t
for the sex, which was just as well because half the time there wasn’t much sex at all. Oh, there was the talk, that and a bit of last-minute poking and grabbing when it was all too late and any interest she might have had had fallen away somewhere between the awkward silences and obvious lies.

  “So,” she addressed her reflection aloud, “it’s a good thing I’m not desperate for it, isn’t it?”

  Behind her a toilet flushed, a door banged, and for a moment the woman’s eyes caught hers in the mirror.

  “Look where you’re going,” she said to the boy. “You’re always under my feet.”

  Mary zipped up her makeup bag and put it away. Checking her watch, she saw that she still had twenty minutes, which was as well for she always liked to be there first and waiting. That way she had the advantage: she was always the one to pick them out, make the approach. That was the only way she would have it. That bit of control. Besides which, if she didn’t like the look of them—the least little thing—she’d walk right off and leave them there. Wandering up and down, walk and turn, walk and stop, check the watch, the clock across the square, walk some more.

  Once she’d come back more than two hours later and this whippet of a bloke had still been there, eyes glazed over, cigarette cupped in his hand, waiting in the slow fall of rain.

  Tonight, though—Mary stepped out on to the street, pressing the button at the pedestrian crossing—she had a feeling it was going to be all right. The way he’d written, that had convinced her of that. Not full of himself, the way some were, making out like they were a cross between Sylvester Stallone and Shakespeare. He wasn’t a wimp, either—some of them sounded as if they’d gone down on their hands and knees before they set pen to paper.

  And that was another thing. She turned down past the post office, thankful she didn’t have far to go, there was a blister coming up over her heel already. His writing. Sophisticated, that’s what she’d have to call it. Ink, too, real ink, not biro. Almost fancy. Well, nothing wrong with a man who was a bit fancy. Maybe he’d fancy her.

  Crossing the square between the lager drinkers and the pigeons, Mary smiled: her fancy man.

  She asked for a port and brandy and took it to her usual place, moving a stool along to the curve of the bar so that she had a good view of the door without being right on top of it. That way she had plenty of time to be sure. Behind her the drummer was unfastening his cases, beginning to assemble his kit. Mary sipped her drink and tried to ignore the faint itch of sweat just below her hairline. Relax, she told herself. Relax: you’ll know him when he comes.