This hadn’t occurred to her. “Do you think so?”
“Absolutely. When Ben sets his mind to something he doesn’t give up. And Emma’s not the most reliable of people. I wouldn’t tell anyone, if I were you. You’ll be on the mobile, won’t you? Everyone’ll be able to reach you, everyone’ll be able to talk to you. No if I were you I wouldn’t tell a soul. Then you can be absolutely sure of your peace and quiet.”
“Yes, I.. .” She was full of doubt.
“I’ll take you,” he said in a tone that didn’t allow for argument.
“I’ll tell Denise Cox where I’m going,” she decided finally. “And I’ll tell Daddy. I must tell Daddy.”
“Of course.” He stood up. “I’ll wait till you’re ready to come down then.”
She looked at him contritely. “I’ve upset you.”
“No, not at all.” His denial was too hasty; it rang with desperation.
“You’ve been so kind to me, Simon. The best possible friend.”
“It’s an honour.” He managed a thin smile.
“Perhaps .. .” She indicated the papers. “If you would sort a few things out.. .”
It was a peace offering. “Of course. Why don’t I put things into piles, ready for you to look through?”
“That would be lovely.” She squeezed his hand. “You really are very good to me.”
It confused him that she should blow hot and cold in this way; it brought echoes of anguished times. But he forgave her because he’d taught himself that forgiveness was the most dignified way.
He brought up some coffee and, while Catherine went to the bedroom to collect some clothes, he began on the paperwork. The bills made by far the largest pile. A quick tally brought the damage to five thousand pounds or so, and that was just what lay on Catherine’s desk. Listening for Catherine, he crossed the room and took a quick look at the scatter of papers on Ben’s desk. There were documents relating to mortgages and cashed-in insurance policies, lawyers’ and building society letters, but only two bills. One was from Ben’s accountant, who Simon knew from the occasional work he’d done for RNP, the other from a law firm Simon had never heard of, for “Fees as agreed’. Leaving these alone, he went back to the household bills and, coming to a decision, rolled them up and put them in his breast pocket.
By the time Catherine came back he’d filed some of the redundant stuff, had put the papers without an obvious home into a tray, leaving just a handful of letters on the desk top.
“But where are the bills?” she asked immediately.
“I’ve got them. I’ll pay them. You can repay me when things improve.” He held up a hand to forestall argument. “It’s no big deal. I’ve got the cash, I wasn’t planning to use it for anything.”
She cried, “No!”
“The money’s just sitting there.” He laughed it off. “That’s the advantage of no wife, no children, no mortgage I’ve nothing to spend it on.”
She was torn, she began to argue, she fought one way and the other before giving in with a small sigh of resignation. “I’ll pay you back within a month,” she insisted. “I’ve got this commission, a large garden. Starting in a couple of days. I’ll pay you back as soon as I get the money. Oh, how I hate all this bloody debt! It’s so destructive.”
“But fixable,” he said.
He asked her about the garden commission when they were loaded and in the car.
“It’s in Ireland,” she told him.
“Great! Just come up, has it?”
“It’s only been confirmed recently.”
“Near your old home?”
“Pretty near, yes,” she said.
“You’re going there?”
“I’m flying on Thursday.”
“Can I help with transport?”
“No. It’s all being arranged, thank you.”
He wondered how she was going to manage. He also wondered why she hadn’t mentioned the job before.
Following her directions, he made for the Marylebone Road and turned into a small street tucked in behind one of the Nash terraces on Regent’s Park. The flat was in a mansion block with a wheelchair ramp, a porter and a lift. Number twenty was on the top floor with a view over the roofs of the Nash terrace to the treetops beyond. A quick tour revealed a sitting room, two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen with a table and four chairs. The place had the look of a pied-a-terre, well done up but rarely used. There were no photographs on show, no mementoes or waiting mail.
“Who does it belong to?” Simon asked.
“Oh ... a childhood friend.”
“It’s a nice place.”
Catherine stayed in the hall, looking rather lost, as though the enormity of her decision was only just sinking in.
Simon moved the bags into the larger bedroom and taking a closer look at the bathroom saw that it had a special shower for disabled people, one with low doors and a swing-out seat. “Your friend’s disabled as well, is she?” he called to Catherine.
She wheeled herself in and stared at the shower with bemusement.
“No.”
They were both silent for a moment.
“Well,” he murmured, ‘it seems you were well and truly expected then.”
The note was attached to the fridge with a magnet. Dear Catherine, Please feel you can stay here as long as you like -the place would only be empty and likely to stay that way for at least a year. The porter can bring in deliveries, and there’s a nice man next door in Flat 19 who is the best possible neighbour and can be called on in emergencies. There’s a car company (details on the attached card) who will take you wherever you want to go. The car service is my present to you, with love and affection, M. Catherine shook her head when he gave it to her to read. “So incredibly kind.”
On his way to the car to collect more of Catherine’s belongings, Simon knocked on the porter’s door, which was opened by a wizened man in a uniformed jacket with the top two buttons unfastened.
“I’m just moving Mrs. Galitza into number twenty,” Simon said conversationally.
“Ah yes?” The porter smiled, showing stained uneven teeth. “That’ll be your car out at the front then, will it?” he said in the accent of a stage Irishman.
“That’s right.”
“Would you be wanting a hand?” He walked lightly ahead on the bowed spindly legs of an ex-jockey, leaving the reek of stale cigarettes and stout in his wake. “Have to watch the wardens round here. Sharp as they come.”
“I bet.”
“But I’ll keep an eye,” he promised as he lifted some books out of the boot.
“Mrs. Galitza’s not sure how long she’s staying.”
“No, that’s right.”
“She might need help now and then.”
“Oh, and I’ll be glad to give it to her.”
“Your name?”
“Doyle.”
“The owner’s being very kind, to offer the flat.”
“Indeed. Indeed.”
“I feel stupid I’ve forgotten the owner’s name.”
Doyle gave a fleeting smile, as if to commiserate on the state of his memory, before turning away and carrying the books into the building.
In the lift, Simon prompted him again.
“Oh, I couldn’t be sure about the names,” Doyle stated breezily. “Most flats here are company owned. People come and go. Come and go.”
“So which company owns number twenty?”
Doyle affected an air of deep thought. “Now wait a moment,” he mused, ‘maybe it’s an agency that deals with it. Yes, indeed, I believe it might be an agency, and I’m not sure I have the name.” His eyes held steady on the floor of the lift cage, and Simon finally understood that such information was not going to be made available to him.
Emerging from the lift, they passed an open door, the entrance to Flat 19, and went on down the corridor to find the door to Flat 20 also open, and a tall man leaning against the doorjamb, talking to Catherine.
The man turne
d and Simon felt himself appraised by a pair of hooded grey eyes set in a long lugubrious face.
“You are?” Simon asked challengingly.
“From next door,” the man explained softly. “Just saying hello.” He could have been any age from fifty onwards, with a lanky frame, unkempt greying hair and the baggy uniform of an intellectual, shapeless trousers and brown corduroy jacket.
Since he showed no sign of introducing himself, Simon asked his name.
“Latimer,” he said before rooting around in his breast pocket for a card, which he handed to Catherine. “Anything you need, just phone me. That’s my mobile number. I’m never far away. I’m glad to do any shopping, errands .. . I’m usually back and forth several times a day, so don’t hesitate to ask.”
Catherine gave him an open smile, which advertised an immediate liking for her neighbour.
Pricked by doubts he couldn’t name and envies he knew too well, Simon voiced caution as soon as they were alone. “It might be wise to keep to yourself.”
“But he’s just a neighbour!”
“I wish I lived next door to you. I wish I could watch over you.”
She gave a long patient sigh. “Oh, Simon.” But words failed her and with an attempt at a smile she went to unpack her books.
Chapter Twelve
To APPROACH Morne was to leave the world by stages. First, the small turning off the main road at the signpost bearing the single place name, then, half a mile along a worn and uncertain road, the village. Few tourists ventured this way, and, as the jokers used to have it, those that came were only lost for the way out again, yet coming into the familiar straggle of houses Catherine saw that a bright new craft shop promoting linen and replica Celtic jewellery had been set up in what had been Reilly’s drapery store, while at the far end of the narrow road that passed for a main street Paddy O’DonnelPs pub, which had long sported mouldering wood for its door and window frames, had acquired a fresh coat of vivid green paint. Otherwise little had changed. Catherine was old enough to be glad of this, because she liked the place just as it was, and young enough to be sorry, because people her age still had to go elsewhere for work, albeit in these prosperous times no further than Dublin.
Beyond the village a gap in the high bank marked an unsigned turning onto a single-track road that wound up through hedgerows towards the brow of the hill and the gates of Morne: the stretch known simply as ‘the lane’.
From the moment she’d left the flat, Catherine had experienced the sensation of being effortlessly conveyed. In London, she’d used the car service that Maeve had arranged, in Dublin Bridget had met her at the arrivals gate, accompanied by Pat, the driver, and escorted her to the Mercedes that stood at the kerb, guarded by another man, never identified, who immediately disappeared. On leaving the airport, Bridget had used her mobile phone to report to a nameless presence, who could only be Terry, that they were safely on their way. Bridget had then gone through the day’s itinerary: the expected time of arrival, the lunch arrangements, the departure time, the check-in for the return flight. Nothing had been left to chance, and on this, Catherine’s first solo expedition, she wasn’t quite so brave or so proud that she wasn’t glad of the assistance.
As the journey progressed Catherine found herself thinking: So this is money, this is how it feels. It was not after all a matter of ostentation, though there was an element of that in the Mercedes, but of seamless arrangements, of having people to check and double-check each detail to ensure that everything ran smoothly; people, moreover, who took their cue from those they served, who answered questions when asked, who chatted a little when prompted, but otherwise kept a measured silence.
The lane looked completely different, and this almost succeeded in unnerving her. The hedgerows had been trimmed so savagely that the branches, once tall and overhanging, had been reduced to woody stumps, which let a cold white light flood the road. For a crazy moment Catherine wondered if Terry’s gardener hadn’t been let loose here too, perhaps had blighted the entire neighbourhood. At the last bend, she prepared herself to see the house over a wasteland of uprooted shrubs, even it was too terrible to imagine completely denuded of its cover, whole trees or thickets gone. But when the gates came into view all the trees were standing, and when they turned up the drive it was between wide plantings of lusty new rhododendrons, most over two metres high, leaves shiny with nursery-nourished health and heavy with buds, and hardly a glimpse of the house until the very last turn.
The house looked both strange and utterly familiar, a place she might have left three years ago or yesterday. It was a moment before she understood that nothing had changed since the final months of her father’s occupation, when times had been difficult and gardeners unreliable.
Fragments from Terry’s letters came back to her, snippets that talked of wild tangle woods and rampaging roses and unpruned trees and creepers with trumpet-like flowers unknown to the reference books. Never for a moment had she taken him seriously: she had thought it pure exaggeration, designed to amuse. Though the rhododendrons might have been slain, she had pictured the rest of the place in ruthless order, new gravel on the drive, fresh paint on the windows and all plant life firmly under control. Yet here was the past held still and magnified, the gravel thin and dusted with weeds, the strange mossy stain still clinging obdurately to the foot of the front wall like verdigris, climbers taking light from windows, lichen patterning the roof, and the tulip-shaped yew still sporting a ruff of nettles.
As Pat brought the wheelchair round from the back, a black dog ran up to the car, barking benevolently. It was a mongrel with one crooked leg and a rolling gait that reminded Catherine irresistibly of her own rather singular walk. “Hello, Conn.”
Whether by chance or design, Terry didn’t appear until she was in her chair, footrests set up, and ready to move. He came striding round the side of the house, dressed for the garden in ancient grass-stained trousers, a baggy sweater and a battered tweed hat. To complete the picture, he carried a pair of secateurs in one hand, and she couldn’t help thinking that he had chosen both wardrobe and props very deliberately, to strike a casual note no doubt, but also to put her in mind of the days when he had carried out general maintenance for the Langley family at two pounds an hour.
She had rehearsed a pleasant but neutral tone. “Pruning?”
“A desperate and futile attempt to bestow order on the roses.”
The hand he offered was large and warm, which reinforced her impression of a big man grown even bigger and more bear-like.
“There’s coffee freshly made,” he said.
“And then if we could get straight to work? There’s a lot to get through.”
“Of course.” He inclined his head, as if bowing to her professionalism, before flicking the briefest of glances over her head, a signal, it appeared, for Pat to begin pushing her towards the door while Terry went ahead.
On the few occasions when Catherine had bothered to imagine what Terry might have done to the interior of Morne, she had pictured rooms furnished in the country style peddled by department stores, largely floral, largely insipid, and largely bogus. Then, on reflection, she’d decided that Terry would have brought in one of the more esoteric designers, someone widely acknowledged to have seriously good taste, which she knew from her own experience of working for the newly rich was the quality they coveted most keenly, and that the resultant style would be somewhat austere, the rooms painted from head to toe in soft white or palest cream to offset a collection of spectacularly beautiful and expensive antiques. Nothing in her imaginings had prepared her for the sight that met her astonished gaze. Bare floorboards, a scattering of unattractive rugs, skimpy ill-fitting curtains, peeling paint in familiar if faded colours, walls with the ghostly outlines of the long-departed pictures she had known so well. In the dining room, camp chairs around a trestle table, and, visible through the drawing-room door, a strange modern sofa and what might have been a matching chair, looking shipwrecked amid plain wall
s and bare boards.
“I haven’t done too much to the place,” Terry said vaguely.
Catherine could only think he was attempting irony.
“Would you care to freshen up?” he asked rather formally.
In another orchestrated move, the two men disappeared and Bridget stepped forward to offer help, which Catherine accepted as far as the cloakroom door. This room at least was furnished in recognisably country style, with a clutter of fishing rods, waterproofs, battered tweed hats and boots in every state of decrepitude.
When she emerged, Terry was waiting in the hall alone. He had taken off his hat, and she saw that his hair was receding and had begun to grey, and that it wasn’t only his face that had grown rounder, but his waistline too. Again, she was reminded of a bear, though his eyes, which were grey-blue and steady, belonged to an altogether more watchful animal. He smiled. “Where would you like to start?” She said crisply, “If we could look at the plans somewhere?” He directed her to the dining room where coffee was laid out on the trestle table: cafetiere, cups, milk, cream, two kinds of sugar. “Unless you’d prefer tea?”
She would have preferred tea, but she said coffee would be fine because she didn’t want to delay things. While Terry poured, she caught fresh glimpses of the past: a faint damp-stain high on the wall in the shape of a seahorse, an area of chipped paint on the doorframe, the smudge of finger marks around the lightswitch, dilapidations that had gone unnoticed in the last years of her parents’ occupation, but which, like the absent pictures and dispersed furniture, were a source of sharp nostalgia.
As Terry put the coffee tray to one side and sat down, she took the graphics from her folder and began to spread them out over the table. “These are computer simulations of the garden from various vantage points,” she began in a rush, ‘and at different intervals, after a year, two years, five years, and showing the different layouts and options, which I’ve kept to three, though of course they can be mixed and matched a bit if that’s what you want.” She glanced up to find Terry watching her steadily and thoughtfully, with little sign of having absorbed what she was saying. “Obviously these are very approximate,” she pressed on. “They can only give you a rough idea, and the effect very much depends on the maturity of the trees and shrubs that you decide to plant.” As she went through the visuals in detail and explained the various options at some length, she became increasingly aware of his inattention. “Are you clear so far?” she demanded briskly.
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