Fifth Member

by Claire Rayner

  ‘My friend’s here to help me,’ George said brightly as Julie, seeing the action, came hurrying up. ‘But don’t worry about the coffee. I just want to look at the stuff. I’m kinda fixing up a trousseau, you know? I’m getting married soon and I thought I’d have a better chance of getting some really gorgeous scanties here rather than back home in – um – Minneapolis.’

  ‘I’m sure you will,’ the woman said heartily, leading the way into her shop. Even more spotlights burst into life as the girl Maria scurried around attacking switches and in no time Julie and George were settled in armchairs, which were narrow, covered in gilt and exceedingly uncomfortable, while the woman chattered at them. ‘A trousseau – well, where do we start? Maria, bring the far rack, will you, with the Italian labels. Yes, that’s the one. Now, my dear, which colours are you planning? Classic white? Or outrageous black? Or some of the jewel colours that are so in this season?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ George said, trying to sound prettily confused. ‘What do you think, Julie, honey?’ She turned back to the woman not waiting for an answer. ‘This is my friend Julie and I’m – er – Vanny.’ Her mother’s name would fit in better here than her own, she decided. ‘Evadne, you know?’ And she thrust out her hand.

  ‘I’m Alice,’ the woman said, accepting it, and George relaxed a little. Until now she had not been absolutely sure. Now she could really get to work.

  And work she did. Alice chattered and displayed, draping nightdresses and teddies and lacy wisps of bras and panties over her arms as Maria handed them to her and after a while Julie, who had been included in all George’s chatter at first, realized she was being deliberately left out and responded as George wanted her to. She got to her feet and went wandering about the shop, which meant that the girl Maria had perforce to go with her. George could hear them talking right over in the far corner, and complimented herself on her choice of ally. Julie was clearly making the best of her opportunities.

  ‘It’s so hard to know what a man will like, isn’t it?’ she said artlessly to Alice, who was displaying a slip in a rather sour yellow. ‘What do you think, Alice? I’m sure you’ve more experience than I have, being married and all.’ And she looked pointedly at the wedding ring on Alice’s finger. ‘What does your husband like?’

  Alice hesitated for a moment. ‘He’s dead,’ she said.

  George opened her eyes wide and clasped her hands together. ‘Oh, I am so sorry! Gee, the last thing I would want to do is upset you with questions. Oh, do please forgive me. Um – did he pass away – er – recently? Or have you had time to –’

  ‘Very recently,’ Alice said brusquely. ‘Now about this colour. What do you think?’

  ‘Oh, I am just mortified!’ George put her hands to her face. ‘To be so clumsy and … forgive me. Please, do come and sit down and let me apologize properly.’

  She reached for Alice’s hand and, in spite of her resistance, made her sit down on the adjoining armchair so that George could look earnestly into her eyes. ‘You must be absolutely devastated. And still here at work? How brave of you.’

  ‘Well, life goes on,’ Alice said and looked at her directly. Now her face was in repose for the first time – she had been too busy providing sales talk for George to see her properly – it was clear that she was watchful. And there was distress there too, George decided. Her eyes had the faintly puffy look of someone who may have wept, but who certainly had not slept; and she put out a hand and said with genuine concern, ‘You’re not sleeping at all well, are you?’

  ‘Jesus,’ Alice said. ‘Does it show that much?’ She put her own hands to her face and shook her head.

  ‘I worked as a nurse,’ George said. ‘I’m trained to see these things. Was it very recent, then?’

  ‘This week,’ the woman said. ‘Just this week.’

  ‘Then you’ve had to cope with a funeral,’ George said, still sympathetic. ‘How horrible for you.’

  ‘No, not yet. Next week maybe. If – Next week.’

  ‘You mean, you don’t know? How can that be? The sooner the funeral the sooner you’ll be able to pick up the pieces of your life.’ She used the cliché deliberately. This was no time for clever talk. ‘It kinda puts a full stop to things and you can get yourself together again. I know how it was when my Daddy died …’ Somewhere deep inside shame grew. If this woman was a genuine mourner this treatment of her was obscene. But her husband had been murdered, George reminded herself, and wives usually have more to do with husbands’ untimely deaths than most people realize. Also, she had behaved oddly over her baggage at the airport, and furthermore, others had been murdered too. No, even at the risk of hurting her unjustly, George felt she had to go on.

  ‘So when will the funeral be?’ she said.

  Alice took a deep breath, as though it was easier to talk than fight off this inquisitive stranger. ‘There has to be an inquest. And various other things. He was – killed.’

  ‘Oh, how?’ George caught her breath and said no more, trusting to Alice to carry the momentum forward. Behind them they could hear the murmuring voices of Julie and Maria; and after a moment Alice seemed to crumple and give in.

  ‘You’ll probably have seen it in the papers, anyway,’ she said. ‘He was a Member of Parliament and he was – Well, it’s murder. No need for details.’

  ‘A Member of – You mean like a Congressman?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Alice. ‘Anyway, there it is, I’m on my own now.’ She stared into the distance for a moment and George, with genuine concern, put her hand over the curled fingers still holding the yellow slip.

  ‘You have no children? Or other relatives to help?’

  ‘A stepson. He won’t care much. He never liked me, anyway. It was really just Sam and me. We had an understanding. I’ll miss him.’

  ‘Of course you will. When you love someone –’

  ‘Love?’ Alice laughed then, a sharp ugly little sound. ‘I’m not sure what love is. I do know we knew and understood each other and didn’t make judgements and helped each other out. We had our rows, of course. The last time I saw him we had a hell of a fight.’ She took a long shaky breath, and her eyes glazed as she looked back into her memory. ‘God, I wish we hadn’t. He’d have come round to it all in time. I could have made him see …’ She blinked then, refocused her eyes, and gathered herself together. She went on, ‘He won’t be easy to replace. Not with someone who understands the way I do things as well as he did.’

  It was an odd turn of phrase, George thought. She sounds more like an employer who has to replace an essential member of staff than a woman mourning the loss of her life partner.

  Alice Diamond seemed to realize she was talking too much and suddenly got to her feet. ‘But really,’ she said with a return of her original brightness, ‘I mustn’t upset a young bride like you with my troubles! Let’s get back to your trousseau.’

  ‘I’m not such a young bride,’ George said. ‘I’ve been – well, I’ve not married before but I’ve not been lonely, you understand.’ She gave her the look that said, ‘I’m a woman-of-the-world-just-like-you-so-let’s-talk,’ but Alice had recaptured her self-control. She just held out the lemon-coloured garment again.

  George would never cease being grateful for Julie, who timed matters precisely as she should. She suddenly appeared from between the racks with Maria in tow and smiled brightly at George.

  ‘Um, Vanny,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry, but we really have to go. I made that appointment for you to talk to the estate agent, remember? At half past ten.’ She turned to Alice. ‘We thought you’d be open earlier so we’d have enough time. But we have to go now. We’ll be back later. This afternoon perhaps. Though we have to see two flats of course. Come along, Vanny. I really can’t let you be late. You always are, and it does make life so difficult, so let’s be on our way …’

  And chattering busily she extracted George from the shop, leaving Alice and Maria staring after them as they hurried away back towards George
’s car.

  13

  ‘It’s pronounced “Chumley”,’ Gus said. ‘Bloody ridiculous, but there you go.’

  George, who had indeed been trying to decipher ‘Cholmondeley’ on the piece of pasteboard in her hand, grinned. ‘It’s no worse than trying to read Sioux City, I guess. What is this event anyway? And how did you get us invited?’

  ‘Fundraisers never mind how many bodies they have at their parties. There’s always the chance you’ll cough up a few quid. This one’s in aid of the Country Sports Association, but never mind. We can pretend to be landed gentry. Joe Durnell’s acting as host. They have to have one of the lords to get themselves in here, so he fixed it. Come on.’

  He led the way past the little police cubby hole at the entrance to the House of Lords, under the arch into the central square and on to a wide door on the far side. George followed, trying not to be overawed. It looked as though it dripped with antiquity, but she had Gus’s word for it that the whole place was not yet a hundred and fifty years old. The smell was old, though, musty and damp with layers of floor polish and sweating people, and the scent enveloped her as they moved through the doorway into the Cholmondeley Room, which was buzzing with activity.

  They were introduced to a burly man in his sixties, with suspiciously dark hair, which he wore plastered close to his head like a helmet, and a thin man in the striped trousers and dark jacket of an old-fashioned civil servant. His air of subservience to the burly man made George want to kick him; it was obviously an act, taken straight from Dickens, but he seemed actually to enjoy it.

  The burly man, however, who was Lord Durnell, reassured her greatly. He had an accent as comfortably cockney as Gus’s, and was clearly quite unimpressed both by the thin man and his surroundings. ‘Hope you get what you want, Gus,’ he said. ‘They’re a right shower – get more of a charge out of gutting a bleedin’ fox than rogerin’ their wives, but what do you expect? Still, they’ve got a good turnout so you should get some stuff out of ’em.’

  George couldn’t help it. ‘So you’re not keen on hunting?’

  ‘Do me a favour! It’s never bin my cup o’ tea. Barbarian I call it.’

  ‘Then why act as host for them?’

  He looked at her admiringly. ‘She don’t creep around in carpet slippers, does she, Gus? You got yourself a real one ’ere, ol’ boy. It’s politics, ducky, that’s what it is. I do someone a favour and that someone does one for me when I need it, see?’ He looked at her earnestly. ‘It’s the only way you can operate in a place like this, it’s so crusty. But I’m doin’ all right, so don’t you go making hasty judgements about me. I’m not one of them.’

  George blushed a little and Gus chuckled appreciatively. ‘That’s put you in your place,’ he said, well satisfied. ‘Come on then. Let’s get to work.’ He nodded affably at Lord Durnell and moved forwards into the hubbub. George followed him and was grateful for the glass of wine someone put in her hand, so that she could stand and sip it as she looked around and listened.

  No one seemed to be talking about hunting. As far as she could tell – because words were swallowed by the ambient noise and because when a talker got to an interesting part he tended to drop his voice – they were doing what people who knew each other well always do at a party: they were gossiping about each other. George tried to absorb some of it, but without much success. All she could decipher was that some people were taking hellish risks with other people’s wives and some wives were more trouble than they were worth to the Party, and one of these days someone would – at which point, again tantalizingly, the gossips moved away towards the table which acted as a bar in search of refills, and George missed the rest of it.

  She went after Gus then, slipping between earnestly talking groups, smiling apologetically for disturbing them, and finally saw Gus at the end of the bar, in close conversation with a rather chubby man with thin pale hair who looked vaguely familiar.

  Gus caught her eye and waved at her. ‘Come and be introduced, Dr Barnabas,’ he said and she took the message that she was expected to behave like a colleague and no more. She primmed her face accordingly and joined them.

  ‘Dr Barnabas, the Earl of Durleigh – Lord Durleigh.’

  ‘Oh, hi,’ George said and decided to play the dumb American card again. ‘Glad to meet you. Um – what do I call you? Your lordship?’

  The round face cracked into a smile. ‘Try Richard. I usually answer to that. How d’ye do?’

  ‘Very well, thanks,’ George said. ‘If you’re really asking.’

  Richard Durleigh smiled cheerfully. ‘I agree with you, it’s a rather silly phrase, just as titles and so forth are. But there’s not much I can do about it any more than I can about the way we talk here. I was born to it and I’m stuck with it, as the eldest. I couldn’t do what my brother did.’ His face seemed to tighten and lose some of its chubbiness. ‘He was able to do as his conscience led him.’

  ‘The Earl is the older brother of David Caspar-Wynette-Gondor,’ Gus said quietly.

  George blinked, bit her lip and said, ‘I’m sorry,’ ashamed of her spiky behaviour.

  Richard Durleigh managed a thin smile. ‘It’s all right. I’m – I’m getting used to it. I can’t pretend we were all that close. Miles apart in lots of ways, to tell the truth. Politics can split a family wide open. It certainly did so to ours. But as I told your chaps when they came to interview me, a brother’s a brother when all’s said and done.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Gus said.

  There was a little silence as they all sipped at their glasses, looking rather absurd as they moved in unison. ‘Are you still wanting to talk to me?’ Richard said then. ‘Is that why you’re here?’

  ‘Oh, no. No, no,’ Gus said quickly. ‘I – er – I’m an old friend of Lord Durnell and he suggested we drop in. All for a good cause, he said.’

  Richard raised his brows. ‘Really? I wouldn’t have thought old Durnell was interested in country sports. I thought he was hosting this party because he owed one of the chaps a favour. In fact, I gather he’s a bit of a supporter of animal rights organizations. I’ve had some of his stuff in my pigeon-hole, and –’

  ‘Pigeon-hole?’ Gus looked alert.

  ‘Mail and so forth. Our names, you see? Very alike. Sometimes his mail goes into my hole and mine into his. I’ve seen the stuff because they mark their envelopes with slogans. And to tell the truth the temporary secretaries they send us tend to be less than the brightest; they open all the mail in the pigeon-hole and don’t check the addresses on it first. So I see quite a bit of his. But it evens out.’ He smiled thinly. ‘He sees mine in the same way. I dare say he gets fed up with my copies of Horse and Hound.’

  Someone came up behind George and spoke over her shoulder. ‘Evening, Dick. I’ve been looking for you. There’s something I must talk to you about. It’s to do with Marietta, I’m afraid.’

  George turned her head and looked at the newcomer. He was a slighter version of the man they were talking to, with the same pale hair and round face, but he was a good two inches shorter. George actually had to look down at him, and as she did so she realized where the likeness was that she had recognized earlier in the taller man: this had to be another brother of David Caspar-Wynette-Gondor. Appallingly maimed though the corpse had been, he had the same look as these two, though he had been, she thought, rather younger. These two looked to be well into their forties.

  She put out her hand. ‘Mr Caspar-Wynette-Gondor?’ she said. ‘May I offer my condolences on your loss?’

  The small man blinked and looked at her and Richard said quickly, ‘This is Dr Barnabas, Eddie. And Superintendent Hathaway of the police. My brother Edward, Superintendent.’

  ‘How do,’ Gus said and shook hands. ‘I’m sorry too, about –’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Edward said a little brusquely. ‘It’s a dreadful business, appalling. Are you here to talk about it? I’ve already spent a lot of time with one of your people this afternoon, a chap called Dudle
y, as I recall.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Gus said. ‘This is a purely fortuitous thing. We came because Lord Durnell asked us, and it’s a good cause, isn’t it?’

  ‘Certainly it is. Are you a hunting man. Superintendent? Or perhaps an angler?’

  ‘’Fraid not,’ Gus said. ‘Town chap all the way through to my middle. Country pursuits are a foreign country to me. But I believe strongly that people have the right to do what they want and if country people feel their lifestyle is being damaged by meddling do-gooders, well then, I’m there at the barricades with ’em. Right is right, after all.’

  Edward looked at him for a long moment and then nodded. ‘Very estimable, very. Glad to have the support. It isn’t always forthcoming on our side of the argument, unfortunately.’

  ‘Really?’ Gus said with a disingenuous air that made George glance at him sharply. ‘I’d have thought that the weight of country opinion in favour of field sports would be considerable.’

  ‘It should be.’ Edward showed some signs of animation for the first time. ‘But there are so many incomers now bringing their sentimental townie notions about fluffy bunny-wunnies and good old Brer Fox with ’em that it’s hard for the voice of commonsense to be heard, which says that hunting is the best way of dealing with vermin and at the same time provides the best sort of competitive sport there is. Pity you don’t choose to come and live amongst us. We need a few more sensible voters.’

  Gus set his head on one side. ‘Voters? Are you a Member of this august house too, then?’

  Edward made an odd sound, half sniff of disdain, half snort of disgust. ‘Absolutely not. Not my world at all. Sitting in rows posturing and shouting at each other isn’t my idea of how to get things done.’

  The Earl looked amused. ‘As you see, my brother and I don’t always agree on political matters. He prefers the bureaucratic approach.’