by M Mayle
“I thought as much.” Laurel smiles across the short distance separating them on the terrace and takes a healthy sip of the first wine she’s tasted in weeks. “This afternoon, after Emmet laid out the plan—after I got over being gobsmacked—he seemed hesitant about accepting thanks and that’s what made me think you were the instigator.”
“He shouldn’t have been. Even though it was my idea, he gets full marks for the way he’s handling it. And he gets full credit for the way he’s handling the other thing . . . the Rayce thing. That’s strictly his doing. Brilliant it is. Inspired, actually.”
Her smile widens. “Unquestionably.” She drinks to David’s influence before pressing on. “Whose idea was it to send for Bemus and Tom Jensen? That doesn’t strike me as something Emmet came up with on his own.”
“Got me again. And again I didn’t want to come across as overdoing. Rubber-gloving, as I was accused of earlier.”
“You are a goddammed jewel, you know.”
“I’ve been called worse.” Colin grasps her free hand, brings it to his mouth, nuzzles it with unmistakable meaning.
“Three weeks.” She anticipates his question. “Three weeks, barring complications, and three to six months before I can hope to conceive again.”
“I’m marking that on my calendar.” He gives her hand a sharp squeeze before letting go.
For a while they enjoy a silence weighted with nothing more ominous than when Simon’s next squalling fit might occur or when Anthony’s next dramatic plea for independent living quarters might be made. She accepts more wine, drinks it a little faster than is wise. But wise has its place and it’s not here, not now.
“I still can’t get over it,” she says.
“Get over what? There’s been a lot to get over lately.”
“I can’t get over the perfectly logical idea of bringing my father’s body and my mother’s . . . my mother’s remains here, to Kent, to be buried together. Who knew I could be this excited and happy at the prospect of a joint funeral service? But I guess you did, didn’t you?” She lifts her glass and drinks to Colin this time. “When were you first struck with the idea?”
“During the sendoff for David—frenzied affair that turned out to be—I was tryin’ to think of a way to avoid similar when it came time to put your father in the ground. And a bit later I had a chat with one of your brothers, who said you seldom visited your mum’s gravesite because it was so near the spot where your demon grandmother’s planted—that’s what set fire to the idea, actually.”
“But you said nothing to me.”
“No, I didn’t. I wasn’t worried you wouldn’t go for it—no doubts there—but I was worried about disappointing you. I didn’t want to raise your hopes then see them dashed if I couldn’t deliver.”
“I seriously doubt there’s anything you can’t deliver.”
“This’ll be my first with dead bodies—no disrespect. Then again, maybe not. Not if you count . . .”
He divides the rest of the wine between their two glasses. “We’ve never talked about that, have we? That delivery I made to the bottom of the ravine. We’ve never talked about the beheading I had to have witnessed.”
“And we don’t have to now. Not unless you want to. Or need to.”
“I don’t need to, I just feel like I should say what everyone’s thinkin’ . . . that seeing the sodding sonuvabitch hack off her head is more ’n’ likely the reason I went missing. That is what you think, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. I cannot imagine a more horrifying . . . a more traumatizing experience, and coming at a time when your mind and body were already under assault. Tremendous assault. Is it any damn wonder . . . who wouldn’t withdraw under circumstances like that? I don’t see how there could be another reason.”
A fresh silence descends as sunset fades into a gradual gloaming that leaches color from the landscape and encourages talk to resume.
“Does everyone finally know everything there is to know about . . . everything?” Laurel says.
“According to Nate, all who’re supposed to know are in the know—not to make light of it. They’re all on the same page, I’m told, and they’re all well-versed in what to say if called upon.”
Colin ticks off the names of participants who might better be called collaborators. Brilliant or not, inspired or not, harmless or not, they’ve been coached to carry out a deliberate deception—a cold-blooded deception that sends a noticeable shiver through her and the wrong message to Colin, who races off to get her a sweater.
While he’s gone, she can go ahead and feel glad they didn’t ask any of the lingering lunch guests to stay for dinner. Even so, they’re not alone and won’t be for the foreseeable future; Bemus may well be lurking in the arcade, and who’s to say sentries are not posted at intervals around the perimeter, as was sarcastically suggested earlier.
Colin returns with another chilled bottle of her favorite white Bordeaux, a sweater she doesn’t need but graciously accepts, and a plate of canapés she does need and digs into the minute he sets it down.
“I’d just mentioned the writer bloke before I went inside,” Colin reminds while he refills their glasses. “You gonna be all right with him pickin’ up where you left off?”
“Unless I badly misjudged the piece Yates wrote about you for Celebrity Sleuth, I’ll be fine with him. Besides, you have final approval.”
“For the good it’ll do because with or without my go-ahead the story’s gonna read like the worst kind of bleedin’ horror novel once this . . .” He makes a broad dismissive gesture with the hand holding the wineglass and sends a sparkling arc of Bordeaux into the darkness beyond the terrace. “Once this shit is over with and all the gruesome details are known.”
“I wish I could disagree, but I can’t. And I can’t forget that I once thought people could be influenced not to believe what’s easy and exciting for them to believe.” She paraphrases a key portion of the by now infamous declaration first delivered in a parking lot and reprised more than once since. “I’m ashamed to admit I was ever that naïve and idealistic.”
“I never thought you were naïve and idealistic. Never. If I thought anything about the stance you took back then, it was that you were quite the most fabulous high-minded and levelheaded creature I had ever met and that impression was heavily reinforced when you went after the press for recycling certain elements of my past.”
“Don’t make me laugh,” she says.
“What’d I miss? What’s funny about that?”
“Not funny, ironic. The recycling. That it’s about to happen again now that I’m retired from tilting at windmills.”
“Yeh, now that you mention it I do see the irony. Rather like your willingness to bend a legal rule or two, now that there’s not so much ridin’ on it.”
“I’m not following.” She shrinks from the veiled reference to her support of Emmet’s extralegal solution to the Rayce quandary.
Impervious, Colin continues. “I was thinkin’ of when you wouldn’t have anathing to do with me unless it was as official biographer lest you compromise your professional ethics.”
“You just had to bring that up, didn’t you?” She grins, grabs the last canapé and washes it down with more wine.
“Yeh, I did, because if I’d known back then that there was some bend to you, could’ve saved me a lot of time, actually. I could’ve had you inside of a week instead of the eleven days it took to win you over.”
Unrestrained laughter—relieved laughter—spills out of her for a good half minute. He doesn’t join in, instead regards her with pure wonderment.
“That’s the quite loveliest sound I’ve heard in I don’t know when . . . I want to remember it,” he says.
“You speak as though there won’t be more.”
“With reason. We’ve a burial service to plan and all these fucking constraints to live with and—”
“Not right now we don’t. We can pretend for a little while longer, can’t we? We can talk ab
out the new music and the new room for Anthony. You can recite the new Jeremiah tale you said you were working on and . . . and we can finish the wine with dinner.”
“Come along then.” He pulls her from her chair and drapes an arm around her. “They’ll be turning on the bleedin’ lights any minute and that’ll play hell with pretending, won’t it then.”
She snatches up the half full bottle of wine and they weave their way across the terrace and into the arcade.
“The rhyme, the rhyme,” she prompts as they approach the door into the kitchen.
“Don’t get your knickers in a twist. I’m barely begun with it.”
“Let’s hear what you have so far.” She shakes off his loose grip and blocks the door.
“Starts out . . . Jeremiah enters Goosemud Road at the wheel of an Eldorado . . . with warning signs just everywhere to look out for the desperado . . . who’s captured all the dizzletwits and fed them avocado . . . rendering them incommunicado . . . in need of an aficionado . . . and a dose of bravado,” he trails off.
— TWENTY-NINE —
Evening, September 19, 1987
On a Sunday night there are plenty of people inside the pub to get acquainted with, but the bartender won’t be one of them because there is no bar. At least not a bar you can sit at. Hoop shifts the rucksack to a less cumbersome position, looks around for substitute seating and picks one of the few empty chairs pulled up to a table no bigger than a serving tray. He sits there unattended for fifteen minutes by his souped-up day-and-date watch, at which time he starts eyeing the other patrons to see if anyone else has a less than lilywhite skin color.
He spots two guys a lot darker complected than he is and they’re not exactly hidden away in a far corner, not exactly unnoticeable in their bulky headwrappings, and they both have drinks in their hands. Another look around discovers a blue-black billiards player in the adjoining room. He’s got a drink too, so the problem can’t be about color. Ten more minutes of watching everything that goes on finally solves the puzzle.
There is no table service. You’re supposed to fetch your own drink from the bartender and put down cash when he hands it over. You’re expected to be quick about it when it’s your turn to order and it looks like it’s okay to buy more than one drink at a time, so there won’t be any hassle over getting a shot and a beer like at the Chink place.
However, nothing says they’ll have Budweiser beer in a longneck or Kessler Smooth as Silk whiskey by the glass, so when he bellies up to the serving bar he figures to do what he did that day at the market in Los Angeles when he didn’t know what to order for breakfast—copy what other people ask for. That’s how he ends up with a half—as they call a half pint—of Newcastle Brown Ale with a tot of Bushmills Irish Whiskey on the side.
The combination’s palatable enough that he makes two more trips to the bar while he uses up the hours till closing time. He keeps himself entertained by watching the locals throw darts because the talk on the television they’ve got going on low volume is mainly about games he’s never heard of, using words he doesn’t understand. And when it’s not that, it’s palaver about a Mrs. Thatcher—whoever that is—and the American president and his stuck-up wife, and even more about this shifty-eyed puffy-haired Princess Diana woman who’s on the cover of nearly every magazine he’s seen on the newsstands.
If that’s the best they’ve got to offer, he won’t mind not having a TV in the room at the guest house. He definitely won’t mind not having a phone in the room, as was brought to his attention when he checked in—when he almost laughed out loud at the idea of him wanting to call anyone from here. Who would that be? The folks at home? The Chinks? Audrey?
When he returns to the guest house and his upstairs room, he looks around for something to read, something to make him sleepy. The booklet he left out for later might do the trick. He reaches for it, thumbs through it piecemeal and doesn’t get far with the rules and regulations of cycling in the United Kingdom when his head wants to explode with being awake. He’d throw this rulebook away if there wasn’t worry that he’d draw attention to himself by breaking some jackassed-fool law having to do with the difference between a footpath and a footway. If there even is one.
Again, he sets the booklet aside for later. At this point he’d read the phone book if there was one. He’s ready to leaf through the white mans’ holy book till the small print puts him to sleep, but a search of the three dresser drawers and the curtained-off closet space fails to produce a Bible.
He strips down to his undershorts, performs his bathroom duties and climbs into bed. He shuts off the light, but his head won’t shut off. All he does for the next half hour is flip-flop and fight with a queer kind of bed-covering that has the top sheet attached to the quilt. A disgusted groan comes out of him when he gives up and turns the light back on.
Without leaving the bed he can reach into the rucksack where the hollowed-out paperbacks holding the money supply are now kept. But when he brings them to the light, there’s not enough left of any particular one to furnish even a chapter of chewing-gum-for-the-mind type reading.
He has to nearly fall out of bed to reach the valise and grope into it for whatever it might give up. He rejects by touch various maps and tourist leaflets he’s mostly memorized by now and another disgusted groan comes out of him when his hand closes around the diary he took from the lawyer-woman’s hidey-hole back there in Glen Abbey.
This disgust is for not having thought to reach for it in the first place. What could be more sleep-bringing than the writings of a young girl? Does forgetting about it till now mean he’s having another attack of thickheadedness? On the other hand, wasn’t it only brought along, like the photo case, to keep his purpose burning bright?
With a fingernail and some thumb pressure Hoop forces the flimsy lock and opens to the title page that says in fancy print that this is a five-year diary. At the bottom of that page, grownup handwriting says the diary was a gift to Laurel Grace Chandler for the Christmas of 1968. “With my forever love, from Mother,” it says in red ink with curlicues and a drawing of a holly sprig.
At the start of the regular diary pages, the writing is about girlish piddling things just as he thought it would be. He gets comfortable on the bed pillows so when sleep comes he won’t have far to fall. But the more he reads the less he feels like sleeping. Some entries are in pencil, others in colored inks; some are bold with underlining, some are so faint he has to squint through his new glasses to make them out at all.
He skips over a lot of bellyaching about her little brothers and how miserable they make her; he pauses over complaints about a grandmother who, according to her, is worse than all the little brothers in the world put together. He looks for examples of why this grandmother is so bad thought of and finds only mention of a stray kitten the family adopted. He plows through more piddling stuff without learning anything else about the grandmother except that she shows up at odd times and barges in like she owns the place.
Then the grandmother seems forgot about when it’s learned the mother is in the family way. That brings worry that the new addition will be another boy to make life even more miserable.
A trip to the seashore rates a special color of blue ink and descriptions of things Hoop’s never heard of, like whelks and ospreys and beach heather and quahogs and periwinkles.
There’s more useless information—pages and pages of it—before an entry about food stands out. Laurel Grace Chandler has a lot to say about a fancy pancake her mother makes on Sunday mornings, about how it’s like having dessert for breakfast. Still no more mention of the grandmother, though. But that could be because the new baby is coming soon—just three weeks away by the girl’s reckoning.
Hoop leafs forward three weeks according to the preprinted dates on the pages and hits another blank section. Nothing’s written for the next few months and when the girl takes up pen again, it’s God she’s mad at instead of the grandmother.
She doesn’t say why about thi
s anger either, and it takes him several more sections of reading to figure out the mother must have died the same way his mother did—of squeezing a baby out and getting tore up in the process.
He’s reading every single word now, the search for sleep a thing of the past. Now he’s seeing mention of a Mr. Sebastian and he can’t be anyone but the legal eagle who was in the wrong place at the wrong time a month or so ago.
The mentions increase. Sebastian is talked about every few pages like he’s the only bright spot in her life. But that brightness can’t stand up to the sorrowing that came down when the mother was taken.
For the next year the girl writes only in black ink or dark lead pencil. After that, there comes another blank section where it can be guessed something else went wrong—something so bad she couldn’t write it down—like before, with the mother. But he’s mistaken. When she got around to it, she wrote it all down. Everything. And the gladness she wrote it with doesn’t go with what she wrote about. Not at all.
Hoop closes the diary, attempts to refasten the forced lock before dropping it into the rucksack along with the other items of high value. After turning off the light and sinking down into the pillows, he resigns himself to not sleeping a wink.
— THIRTY —
Afternoon, September 26, 1987
Stuck on trying to get history to repeat itself, Hoop spends every evening at the pub next door to the guest house. After nearly a week of this, he’s made nodding acquaintance with the two barmen who take turns at the job, but all they ever talk about is the weather and the places he ought to visit while he’s in Kent.
Fact is, he has visited a few of the places high on everyone’s list. That’s what’s on his mind now as he settles in at his usual table with what’s become his usual choice of after supper drink. He did go to the Leeds Castle they all talked up; he did go into the silly dog collar museum, and he did see that there is such a thing as black swans and that they leave slippery green droppings everywhere they walk.