She knew him so well. And part of what she knew was that less than anyone in the world would he be able to endure her seeing him as the poor shameful thing that was Rintoul. He was taking her to Monty Norman who would hypnotise her into forgetting everything. Why else would he have keys? The idea frightened her, but if giving her their life back was a matter of forgetting, she would forget and be grateful to forget.
Why had he parked the car so far away?
Sitting on the same chair in Monty Norman's room, she held to the hope that the Irish boy was in the kitchen. He would have the television on very loudly. He would be singing too in that funny growling voice. So much noise, it was no wonder he hadn't heard the bell ring.
'No one,' Maitland said coming back. 'Are you all right?'
'Yes.’
'He should have been here by now. May Stewart promised to send him back as soon as he came in. I'll check with her.’
When he went out into the hall, she took the bottle from her pocket. It lay in the palm of her hand and she turned it over with her finger. A little clear plastic bottle with the kind of cap you pushed down and turned, the kind hard for children to open because it held tablets or pills. It was empty.
He came back shaking his head. 'He hasn't come into the office this morning.’
It had not occurred to her Maitland might wish her dead.
'Why don't you lie down?' he said. 'Having come this far, it's worth waiting.’
'No.’ If she lay down she would sleep and not waken again. They would find the bottle he had put into her pocket with its traces of whatever he had given her. Verdict, suicide.
'Maybe Norman's gone,' Maitland was saying. 'Gone off for good. I should have told you, but I wanted you to see how he reacted when I confronted him. Julian Chambers wrote to me about it. Naturally he was for calling in the police at once. I persuaded him to let me deal with it.’
'With. What?’ She drew up each word separately out of herself.
He settled on the edge of the bed, unbuttoning his coat one-handed as he spoke. The heavy cloth slid open over his thighs. 'I gave him authority to set up a contingency account. A mistake as it turns out. He was contacting firms that weren't on our appeal list. Viv Law did publicity for one of them. She wondered about it. Mentioned it to May Stewart, who told Julian. A word to the bank manager – Julian had been at school with his father – a quite unofficial check and there it was. Money in, money out. A simple clumsy embezzlement. As a stranger, our friend didn't realise how small a town this is…So you see it was all coming apart. Finishing…you can hardly keep your eyes open. If we give it another half-hour, you could lie here and rest…’
She shook her head. She must not sleep.
'I have a kind of notion that when he went to the Trust he had some ambition to succeed there,' Maitland said. 'It's not a large job, of course, and perhaps at first he imagined it was. And then, the truth is that whatever its size he couldn't really do it. If he hadn't realised that before, I'd guess getting a tongue-lashing from Viv Law made the point sufficiently. Sitting in this dreary place – Are you warm enough? If you lay down, I could put my coat over you…It wouldn't be impossible to feel sorry for him. No one to talk to. He must have felt the walls closing in.’
Me, Lucy thought, he had me to talk to. He could talk to me about a girl and the sad horrible things he made her do. How he had shared her with friends and how it had all gone wrong for him. Like her a piece of meat, I wasn't going to tell anyone. How could he have known some part of me was awake and how carefully it listened?
She wasn't mad. Even dying some stubborn part of her rejoiced at that. She had seen the scarred man and felt his hands on her throat.
‘…not or hell that's there all…alright' – she sighed and was still.
Maitland got up and went behind her chair. She was too tired to turn her head. He laid his fingers on her forehead, their tips were cold, and gently massaged her temples with his thumbs. 'Poor darling, is it very bad?' Her body recognised the familiar comfort of his voice. It would be easy to give in and sleep. 'Even turning up for regular office hours was beyond him. The rewards of being honest come in small increments. They're real enough, but you need to be brought up to have a taste for them. They were a little subtle for his palate. All the same, just at first for him I suspect the words Gregory and Rintoul Trust had a ring to them. He stepped into it so easily …no effort required…all in one step like a daydream…that would suit nicely…The dreamer in the dosshouse.’
The murmur of his voice came more slowly and his hands lingered and lifted away. Her eyes drifted open in time to see him going out into the hall. He's pretending to answer the door, she thought. He wants me to think I heard someone knocking. But he won't come back. I wish I had been able to tell him it was all right, I don't mind dying. I dreamed there was a prison where no one had ever been imprisoned. In the morning, I told my dream to Maitland and he said, ‘Some Christians believe that out of all creation no soul has ever been sent to Hell. Just that it exists is enough.’ He was telling me not to be afraid.
She had been alone for an endless time. Yet when Maitland came back he was pushed into the room so things must have been happening fast. The man behind held him by the upper arm. The second man crowding in past them didn't stop until he stood over her. She had never seen either of them before. There was a great noise, much of it made by Maitland who was shouting, 'Tell them who I am!' The man bent and put his face into hers so close she saw on the white of his eye a thin yellow line like a crack in porcelain. 'She's not about to say a thing.’ His breath in her mouth was minty as if he had just taken a mouthful of toothpaste. From his cheek there came the tang of aftershave. He was a very clean young man. 'Don't touch her!' she heard Maitland cry out.
As the young man straightened and turned he held his right arm a little behind him so the knife in his hand was concealed. When she saw it she knew what was going to happen and it was very strange since she had thought it was she who was going to die. 'This is for my sister, you bastard, ' he said and there was a scream of agony and when he moved aside there was blood on Maitland's trousers between his legs.
He would have fallen down, but the man behind hooked a finger into each corner of his mouth and held him upright. Like that with his face pulled out of shape and the redness in his hair it would have been hard to tell him apart from Monty Norman. He wrenched his jaw from side to side but there was no way he could bite the fingers that held him up. The upper lip was drawn back and because the gums had receded the teeth seemed unnaturally long. The mouth made a clown shape but it didn't look at all like laughter, instead it began to stretch and narrow and gagging noises came out of it as if trying to tell her, 'I'm sorry' or even 'I love you.’
Or and most likely, 'Tell them who I am.’
And then the young man hid him again for an instant and when he moved back the knife was sticking out of the socket of Maitland's eye.
And even then and all the time and in all the days that were to follow she held to one thought.
She would never let them drive her back into the place of the mad.
BOOK EIGHT
Chapter 28
The Heart's Affections
Some Christians believe that out of all creation no soul has ever been sent to Hell.
Though afterwards, almost at once, he had gone on, – But I expect that was declared a heresy by the Calvinists against the Arminians or by the synod of Carthage just after they condemned Pelagius. Too much mercy has always been heretical.
Driving into the city, she saw a freshening in the colour of the fields and thought before she remembered, I must tell Maitland there's a change towards spring. Storing things to tell him was as habitual as breathing. So much talk over the years. She hadn't ever said that she knew he was disappointed with his life, or asked why he dared to be, or told him how angry it made her. So much talk but not one word that told how something in him wanted to bring down all the world – himself – or that mirror image
of himself which was her – the fading image of a girl who had walked with him hand in hand one summer's day looking at pictures hung on the railings in a park.
They had never talked.
Even now, and that would have been the moment for them, tears wouldn't come. Her discipline was complete. She had begun to impose it upon herself even in the moments before she lost consciousness.
I'll never let them drive me mad again.
The policeman in the hospital told her what she had taken was the same mix of tablets which killed Sophie Lindgren. If that was a mystery, let them solve it. Let them look for Monty Norman and the scarred man and the men who had killed her husband. She knew nothing. It was a doctor who told her, if you hadn't been sick that morning in your car, you would be dead.
Above Princes Street the castle on its hill lay like a cutout against the sky. There's nothing up there, Maitland had said, the group of them standing outside Jenners looking up at it. It's a bit of theatre, just lathe and plaster and painted canvas, that wide. It's not any more or less real than the house in Psycho. The American couple laughing seemed almost half persuaded. Anyway, he said straight-faced, what could be more appropriate? This is the most schizophrenic city I know.
When she went into the gallery, Anne Macleod was nowhere to be seen. There were display cases with ceramics on shelves and past them to the rear a long room with no one in it though there was a table with two piles of typed sheets and a visitors' book lying open. She stood in the middle of the room and turning looked at the pictures carefully all the way round. They didn't mean anything to her, and since she had expected they would that was a disappointment. When she went up close, however, it was a man who had put his signature on them, and at the table she realised the typed sheets were catalogues, one for this man but the other for Beth Lauriston.
Carrying the typed sheet she went back to the front area and found a stair to an upper floor. It led to a high Lshaped room filled with space and light around a woman seated behind a table like the one in the downstairs gallery. It seemed there was no one else, but as the woman glanced up Anne Macleod came into view from the hidden part of the room, making a desultory progress along the pictures hung on the far wall.
On seeing Lucy she became perfectly still for a moment and then rushed across. Lucy let her hands be taken. 'Are you all right? I've thought about you all this time.’ Her voice echoed shocking the silence. 'Blamed myself.’
'Yes, yes,' Lucy said softly.
She found herself being drawn towards the stair. 'I didn't know whether you'd be at home- or with relatives. I even tried to find out from the police. It was such a relief when you answered the phone – to hear your voice. I was in tears.’
Lucy drew her hands away. 'Could we stay here?'
'Why?'
'Just for a little,' Lucy said. In arranging to meet at the gallery, she had imagined it would be a busy place, but there had been no one downstairs. At least here there was the woman at the table.
'I have to talk to you.’
'I know,' Lucy said. She moved off, hesitating at one painting, stopping before another though she could not have said what was in front of her.
'I want to look after you.’
'I'm not mad.’
'That's not what I meant. You know it's not. I care about you.’
Lucy moved from that painting to the next, Anne following her.
'There's nothing you would want from me,' Lucy said, 'that I could give you.’
'A chance to love you.’ And now her voice trembling she spoke as softly as Lucy, who looked round in a kind of fright at the word love – but the woman behind the table sat with her head bowed in just the same way as before.
'That's over for me.’
'You talk of yourself as if you were an old woman. He made you feel like that. You've lived your life seeing yourself through his eyes.’ As Lucy retreated, still keeping up the pretence of looking at the paintings, the soft insistent voice stayed by her. 'You were unhappier than you knew. And if you stayed with him out of fear of being alone, aren't you alone now?'
Driven into the farthest corner of the gallery, Lucy defended herself. 'When you came to our house it was Maitland I chose. You asked me to go with you then. I didn't. I didn't want to.’
'Oh, my dear.’ She cradled Lucy's face in her hands. Over her shoulder Lucy saw the woman lift her head but without looking round. The private Lucy, Lucy Inside, thought she must imagine we're having a lovers' quarrel, how tactful of her not to look! I would. 'That wasn't you choosing. Don't you know that?'
'Please.’ Lucy gave her head the tiniest shake until she was free of Anne's hands.
'You had been at Monty Norman's flat. Who knows what he told you to do?'
'He wasn't there.’
'Would you remember if he was? If he came back after the other man left? If he'd told you to forget? How long had you been waiting when I found you. Ten minutes? An hour? You don't know what happened.’
'But what is that if it's not madness? To have him in my head, not to know.’ And then the consequences of that. 'Was it me who put those tablets into Sophie Lindgren's drink? You can't tell me it wasn't. How can I ever know it wasn't?'
'Because she put them in herself. Because she was unhappy. Or maybe Monty Norman put them in. Maybe he hypnotised her and told her to do it.’
Consequences. 'I thought Maitland was trying to kill me. I thought he gave me the tablet – But what if I took them myself? You say I might have seen Monty Norman. Suppose he told me to kill myself?'
Anne Macleod stroked her arm. Her voice full of pity, she said, 'That isn't what I meant.’
'If he was in my head then, why shouldn't he be now?'
'No. Now is when you're free, my darling. Free of all of them. The only sure moment is this one.’
'Free? You're talking about my husband being dead. '
'Lucy –'
'How dare you say that to me? What do you think I am that you can say something like that to me? I loved my husband.’
At that Anne Macleod gave a little cry as if she had been struck. She actually put a hand to her heart. As if checking the wound, the idea came unbidden to Lucy Inside, like an actress. My God! And she's the star – in spite of that plain face – and those awful glasses!
It was as if everything had been put into words. They looked at one another with the face of enemies and then Anne Macleod said, 'If you had gone with me that night, he would still be alive.’
If I look at this painting, Lucy thought, she'll stop being here.
And it did happen after a time.
I won't let them, she thought. It isn't any use you trying to make me feel guilty. I won't let that happen to me anymore.
Every night she woke out of dreams in which she saw Maitland's mouth pulled out of shape.
'Do you like it?' a voice said. 'It's my favourite. Though for all the wrong reasons, I suppose.’
It was the woman who had been sitting at the table. Beyond her a man was taking up one of the catalogue leaflets, an elderly couple were leaving.
'You've been studying it for such a long time.’
'I'm all right,' Lucy said. 'Yes. I didn't mean –’
'Only I'm not, of course. My husband died in an accident.’ Tell them who I am, he had said.
'Oh, dear.’
'He left me money. Much more than I expected. I'm going to buy a painting.’
'I think that's a lovely idea.’
'He left a will listing it all. He had accounts in different building societies. If he got money, some unexpected windfall, he would open an account – he didn't take money out. There must have been better ways he could have invested it. But he wasn't good with money, not really. Like a peasant, do you know what I mean?'
'I'm like that myself. Lots of us are.’
'He must have been afraid of not having any. I never knew that about him. Though I knew he had been poor when he was young. He even bought a flat. People rented rooms in it. That wa
s why he had the keys for it.’
The man who had been working his way round had come to a halt beside them. 'Ah…’he said, 'I do like this one.’
'Thank you,' the woman said.
'I mean it, Beth. I'd like to buy it.’
'Well, you can see it's not for sale,' the woman said.
'You wouldn't like to reconsider? I seriously covet this one.’
'Sorry, Tony.’
'Pity. Worth a try. You're depriving the gallery of its forty per cent.’
'Fifty,' the woman said. 'Usurers.’
While they talked about that, Lucy stared at the woman and then turning to the painting saw what had been in front of her all this time.
It was winter. A sky of grey clouds, the paint laid on in thick scoops. By some trick of perspective the boy was clear and close yet you knew he was out there and the ice under him was creaking; knew it, of course, from the look on his face. The look not of anything as simple as fear, though fear was there, the fear of dying, but of excitement too, of being more alive than you'd ever been.
A dark-complexioned boy with a thick tangle of black hair.
And, of course, you knew about the ice and all the rest of it – the lighthouse out of sight over the hill and the way the current ran that would carry you under the ice to the far end where you'd be held until the spring came. And found yellow as the grass. You knew about it because you'd been told.
Maitland. Maitland as a boy, or rather the way someone who knew him as a man might imagine he would have been then.
The woman had gone with the man to look at another painting. When they were finished and he was gone, Lucy went over to the table where she had taken her place again.
'I like that painting, too,' she said, 'the one of the boy.’ The woman raised her head reluctantly. She's decided I'm a nuisance, Lucy thought, or perhaps unstable.
'Not to buy.’ Lucy made herself smile. 'I heard you say it's not for sale. It's just that it's so real, I felt it had to be true.’
'Thank you.’
Lucy laid the catalogue leaflet she had been carrying down beside the pile of them. 'Do you use your married name?'
The Stranger Came Page 21