Matthew was a simple man, unspoiled by his higher education. Though his degree in Mathematics was as good as Roland’s, for all that Roland had not contended with a dying parent during his finals, he did not come across as a posh-voiced pedagogue with manners to provoke feelings of inadequacy in self-made building contractors. Matthew in workman’s overalls did not stand out inconveniently as a target in the class war. Matthew was the perfect chameleon. He smiled easily and doffed his cap and made exactly the right sort of jokes. He said ‘no worries’, and ‘champion-champion’, and made himself indispensable. The Pillings were naturally delighted with him in every possible way.
For one thing, he was so good for little Alice, who had been so much shaken and disturbed by the accident that (naturally) she had been required, on doctor’s orders, to take out the summer term of her second year and spend it, dosed on little white pills, recovering at home. All through May and half of June, while Matthew toiled and whistled and made patios and laid turf, Alice remained largely recumbent and listless in the pink and white bedroom with the Sindy dolls’ dream-home still evident in the corner; lovingly and relentlessly cared for by the parents who had so nearly lost her.
Roland, meanwhile, when he returned from North Yorkshire, undertook, within the week, to call upon David Morgan. There were belongings of his to be collected from the attic and it seemed to him, in any case, that the visit was a necessary courtesy. When Roland rang the doorbell, David gratefully interrupted his reading of the bedtime story and went downstairs, pursued by the voices of his protesting children. He admitted Roland to his kitchen and gave account of his own somewhat dramatic recent events. It seemed, then, that all was change.
‘Maya,’ David said, ‘has left me.’ It had all of it happened so quickly, so unexpectedly. Maya had encountered Iona in Paul Koplinski’s bed. There had followed an enormous show-down, after which Iona had moved in next door with her leather jacket, her waffle iron, her typewriter and the manuscript of what she was pleased to call her ‘novel’. Maya had promptly followed suit and had moved in with her macramé blouse, her salmon corduroy trousers and the ancient Remington. Paul Koplinski had then fled into Worcestershire, while Iona had escaped to her father in California, taking with her a completed typescript distinguished by the absence of all its aitches.
Maya, in a state of inconsolable distress, had gone off the very next morning on the eight-fifteen to Malvern in the hopes of tracking down Paul Koplinski. She had first given audience to David during which, amid grief and self-torture, she had suddenly set fire to her novel, in the face of David’s loyal but futile attempts to stop her. The children, throughout this anguished confrontation, remained, mercifully, asleep.
Roland listened in subdued silence. By the time David was through with his telling, the children had long since stopped yelling for him to come back and finish their story. The two men then walked briskly to the corner off-licence and brought back some cans of beer.
‘Alice has left me too,’ Roland said, and he then told his own story. He had otherwise told it to nobody, and it seemed odd to him, as he heard himself tell it, that he had chosen to unload on David. But David was a good, kind listener and in many ways deeply understanding. Besides, so many things divided them that it was not, after all, like unloading over anyone who mattered. Only that, by the time they had shaken each other by the hand and had gone to bed, David and Roland had both recognized how very much they liked each other. That was something, at least, to have come out of all that bruising.
Roland spent the night there in David Morgan’s house. It was late, and he no longer had a motor car. Because he could not bear to, he did not sleep in Alice’s bed. Neither did he sleep in Iona’s bed, for fear of taking on the smell of sweat and leather. He slept, uncomfortably, on a pile of sofa cushions on the Morgans’ living-room floor – a couch from which he was woken by four-year-old William hell-bent on conversation.
‘I can make my willie go stiff when I fiddle with it,’ said the child.
‘Oh, jolly good,’ Roland said.
‘I ‘speck my daddy’s willie’s much more bigger’n yours,’ said the child.
‘Possibly,’ Roland said, who had no particular stomach for the competition. He needed to find a razor before he could take himself to work.
Alice got better very slowly. She was hazy about the accident and seemed more numbed than disturbed by the nature of Roland’s departure. She missed his friendship and she missed David and Thomas and Sophie. And she missed some of her books. But she missed nothing more than mildly and concentrating was difficult. It was all as though these things had happened in another incarnation. She could not quite see them through the fog and she was incapable of much emotion. Her emotions, it seemed, had been anaesthetized. The effect of this was greatly to enhance her prettiness. Her face was undisturbed by any extremes of anxiety, unhappiness or pleasure. She slept a lot and rested. She played cards with Matthew Riley, who visited her most afternoons and let her win. He chatted easily and he occasionally made her smile, but only slightly.
She told him once about Flora and the pink and white brides and the bridegroom doll that the brides had had to share. It was no particular surprise to Alice when Matthew promptly kissed her, because nothing mattered deeply any more, though it was diverting when he called her his ‘pet lamb’ and his ‘rosebud’ and his ‘bonny lass’. It was not even that much of a surprise to wake up one day and find that Matthew’s hand was inside her blouse. There was something so homely about Matthew Riley that it did not seem in any way momentous. He had none of Roland’s rather inhibiting good manners, nor his imposing presence, nor any of that brisk, commandeering style. Besides, she had cared very deeply for Roland, though not, sadly, in the appropriate way. She had cared about him too deeply, perhaps, to enact with him something so intimate without conviction or commitment.
Alice was rosy and sleepy, and the day was warm, and nothing mattered very much any more. And had not Matthew saved her from drowning in the Tees?
‘Let’s have your little drawers off, rosebud,’ Matthew Riley said. The only thought that troubled Alice occurred to her once the act was over.
‘But what if I’m pregnant?’ she said. Matthew was back in his Levis by then, though his chest and his feet were still bare. He smiled at her rather engagingly.
‘No worries, flower petal,’ he said. ‘I’ll make an honest woman of you yet.’ When he laughed and leaned over her and kissed her and spoke again, it was with every semblance of send-up. ‘How to make friends and influence people,’ he said. ‘Marry the boss’s daughter. That’s just for a start.’ It made Alice smile. He had so evidently uttered it in jest.
Chapter 23
In the event, Matthew was rather advanced in his views on marriage. He believed in extended, living-together relationships as a responsible prelude to commitment. None the less, Alice’s parents were delighted with the development. They saw no reason at all why ‘sensible young people these days’ should not live together out of matrimony. In truth they found it reassuring to be in possession of a daughter whose behaviour was at last manifesting itself as firmly of the present. They would have been much more troubled had Matthew begun to manifest signs of sacramental commitment. Had he, for instance, exhibited a sudden Irish-Catholic reversion and sent Alice off to take instruction. But Matthew was resolutely secular, and his gods, like theirs, were all material.
Harry Pilling, on his daughter’s behalf, embarked upon a nest-building programme without any delay. Mr Pilling, largely with his own hands, refurbished one of the more ambitious units, adding moulded features to the ceilings and installing expensive track lighting and dimmer switches. He put his fatherly love into every pre-meditated nook. He carved out a balustraded sleeping gallery and picked out a luxury range in what he called ‘door furniture’ for all the knobs and locks.
Mrs Pilling chose the rest of the furniture. The keynote here – since Alice was an old-fashioned little thing – was mellow cottage pine and
cane. The table linen and bed linen were all coordinated with care, as were the cutlery and the china. In short, Harry and Valerie Pilling built their daughter a dream-home as fine as that of the Sindy dolls, in which she could mercifully give up thinking about Homer and The Tear of Salamis and the Temples of Reason and Wisdom. Alice was now so much better that she could make a festoon blind for the sitting-room window and embark upon a system of index cards as a means of collecting recipes.
‘But, you funny little love,’ her mother said, ‘mine are all on hard disks these days. Why don’t we transcribe yours?’
Indeed Alice was so much better by July that her mother renewed her driving lessons and signed her up for a word processing course which she attended twice a week. Mrs Pilling had also given her daughter a small stop-gap job in the agency as a way of lending interest to her day. It was not long before Alice could take a driving test and she was usefully employed within the brightly lit offices where Jem had once so admired the functional cabinets and the spongy, wall-to-wall carpeting.
And Matthew, who all through the term had been attending a weekly seminar in London prior to his date of registration in the autumn, was already, prematurely, at work on the beginnings of his Ph.D. dissertation.
By August the Pillings were off to their holiday house in Spain. Building operations came to their annual standstill and the young people, due to join their elders for two weeks in early September, were left to keep an eye out at the agency, which was being capably managed by Mrs Pilling’s two highly competent assistants.
‘Goodbye, my darlings and do take care,’ said Mrs Pilling and she embraced Matt and Alice and blew kisses to them from the car.
And then two things happened. The first, which caused her first and only quarrel with Matthew, was that Alice, one day, all on the spur of the moment, bought two expensive tickets for The Magic Flute. The second was that Flora’s grandmother set fire to the superior, heritage-style investment property. She lit up a Woodbine in the fuel cupboard one morning, and she trapped both herself and her daughter-in-law.
The house was not much damaged, since the blaze, though ferocious, was contained within the single-storeyed kitchen wing at the back, but both women were done for almost immediately. A lighted match applied to a cigarette had made swift common cause with a gas leak. The bodies were barely recognizable.
Since almost nobody knew the Fergusson women, who had kept so very much to themselves, Alice had been required to come forward, at the request of the local police. They needed her to help trace living relatives and – since the deaths had not been by natural cause – to be of use in the matter of identification and inquest.
Flora, it seemed, had no telephone number and, though Alice could remember the name of Flora’s art school, Flora proved rather difficult to trace. Either she or Matthew, Alice suggested, ought really to get on an aeroplane and find her. Matthew seemed the more at liberty, since P C Curruthers had said he would have need of Alice at the coroner’s court over the following days. And Matthew, though he knew not much French and had never been abroad before, was jauntier than Alice and less daunted in the face of the unknown. In short, he was very much game to try and confident that he would find her.
After Matthew had gone, P C Curruthers asked all sorts of questions and he thanked Alice politely for bearing up so well. He offered himself to drive her to the coroner’s court next day, which was attached to the local police station. The coroner’s court had benches and a podium, and it had some minor rooms leading off it. P C Curruthers shepherded her into one of these and gave her a cup of tea. Then he got up and left the room for a minute.
When he returned he was carrying two large, bright green plastic garbage bags, just like the one that, years before in The Fisherman’s Grotto, had held the old woman’s vomit.
‘At this point I sometimes have to warn my ladies to pull themselves together,’ said P C Curruthers rather sternly. He had no cause to warn Alice, however, who handled the identification with laudable togetherness. The green plastic bags had luggage labels with names on them tied to the tops with string. P C Curruthers opened the string and asked her to look inside them. Inside were bits of charred clothing welded together with skin and hair.
‘That was her anorak,’ Alice said, who marvelled that, here and there, stray dog hairs from the incontinent canine were still visible on the fabric. ‘She wore it once when we went out to dinner together,’ Alice said. Then she turned to the second plastic bag. The younger Mrs Fergusson was easier. Most of the bits were rather less charred.
‘Those are her shoes,’ Alice said. ‘She always wore them in the Music Room.’
‘Well done,’ said P C Curruthers. ‘You’ve been very helpful, Miss Pilling. Thank you.’ He tied up the two plastic bags again with the labels and the string. ‘Would you care for another cup of tea?’ he said.
It was not Matthew’s fault that he fell in love with Flora, nor Flora’s that she fell in love with Matthew. They had no sooner met than they changed eyes. They felt the instant pang of Cupid’s fiery, poisoned dart. They were like people in a story book.
And Flora had once again metamorphosed. She had become the Christmas fairy. Flora was glittering. She was beautiful. The braces that Fabrice and Thierry had had fixed to her protruding teeth had done their job very well and, when she smiled, each node on their fine metal tracks shone like a tiny jewel. And then her context was extremely advantageous. The window was shuttered, and the chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, glowed on the marble. It glowed also against the ivory, and the lacquered wood.
Fabrice and Thierry, the two adoring, elegant young gays who flanked her like gilded cupidons, were her neighbours in the grey Parisian apartment house where she had her studio in the seventh arrondissement. They were tour guides to the far east and had just that day come back. When they were in Paris they lived together harmoniously in the apartment which was like an enchanted cave; a robber’s den. Matthew, who had climbed the four flights of 300-year-old stairs, had followed the sound of their muffled laughter and had entered through the open door.
The three of them stopped and stared at him. Each had a glass in hand and Thierry, in addition, held a bottle of sirop de cassis.
‘Who are you?’ Flora said.
‘I’m Matthew Riley,’ Matthew said, the Geordie accent sounding with incongruous charm in the enchanter’s cave, and he put down his shoulder bag with its British Airways label. ‘I’m looking for Flora Fergusson.’ Fabrice and Thierry looked at each other over Flora’s head and smiled.
‘Ça va mal!’ Thierry said. ‘Mauvaises nouvelles!’ The two of them tinkled with laughter.
‘Le roi, sire, est mort,’ Fabrice said. ‘Vive la reine!’ And they laughed again and clinked their glasses over Flora’s head. Matthew looked anxiously for a moment from left to right, like a knight in the bower of the belle dame sans merci.
‘I’m not a burglar or anything,’ he said. ‘I’ve come from Alice.’
The room was filled with ebony and ivory. All the chairs had feet and claws. Strange masks winked at Matthew from the walls. Filigree screens had made a labyrinth of the floor as he approached. Behind the throne where Flora sat stood a large, floor-standing dragon with a golden ball in its mouth. Beyond it, suspended before the shuttered window, hung a miniature conservatory full of bonsai trees.
Flora stood up and glided towards him. She offered him her hand.
‘I’m Flora Fergusson,’ she said.
‘ Notre princesse en exil,’ Thierry said. ‘Destinée à bériter le royaume’
‘Your mother and grandmother are dead,’ Matthew said. Flora stood, poised, emotionless, like a person possessed of the future. ‘They died in a fire,’ he said.
Flora and Matthew did not return that night. They spent the time in Flora’s studio which, unlike Fabrice and Thierry’s place, was wholly unadorned. The walls were whitewashed like a puritan church and the window ledge held a row of jam jars with a collection of brushes and penci
ls. Flora’s clothes hung on two coat hangers behind the door and the portfolio, given to her as a present by Mrs Pilling years before, leaned against one wall. There was a small, rough trestle table and in one corner, alongside a glazed sink and a gas ring, was an old ticking mattress on the floor. Matthew, upon entering, had stared around the room in wonder. Then he took her in his arms and kissed her. Flora did not resist.
‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me,’ he said. ‘I’m supposed to be marrying Alice.’ They returned to England late the following afternoon. That was the afternoon of the day on which Alice had identified the bodies.
Chapter 24
When Alice got home from the coroner’s court she set to work at once. It was not very convenient to have Flora come that night when they had tickets for the opera, but Alice was neither affronted nor surprised that Matt had not considered it. He had no interest in The Magic Flute and had made it perfectly clear that the ticket was wasted on him. Now she too would have to forgo it, because Flora was once again bereaved. Under normal circumstances, Flora would have loved to attend the opera, and Matthew would have been delighted to hand over his ticket. But could one possibly propose such a thing to a person whose relatives’ charred remnants were currently residing in emerald plastic bags in the coroner’s refrigerator? No. Surely not! They would eat an early supper and take time to welcome Flora nicely. There was no help for it. That was what duty required of them.
To this purpose, though the day was young, Alice placed a vase of cut flowers on the guest-room bedside table. She drew one of her fitted rose-pink sheets over the mattress and slipped the duvet and the pillows into their co-ordinating rose-pink floral covers. She left a pair of folded rose-pink bath towels on the bed cover and she checked the cupboard for coat hangers. Then she placed a selection of reading matter – soothing, judiciously chosen – upon the bedside table next to the flowers. She adjusted the bedside lamp and the dimmer switch. After that she turned to her cooking.
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