THE PLANE was late leaving and late arriving. By the time the car reached Regent’s Park Catherine was in that state of exhaustion and muddle-headedness that comes from a long day punctuated by wine and ranging emotions, otherwise she wouldn’t have turned down the driver’s offer to escort her up to the door of the flat, wouldn’t have assured him when they reached the lift that she’d be able to manage the rest of the way on her own.
The lift rose smoothly, the doors opened all right, but when she wheeled herself out it was to see strange numbers on the doors of the flats because she was one floor too low. Then, as if her patience needed further testing, on recalling the lift and reaching the door of number twenty, it was to wrench the keys from her bag with clumsy fingers and see them fly from her hand and fall to the floor, where they hit the polished wooden strip beside the runner and slid into a deep corner, the one place she couldn’t reach from the chair.
Early on in this long game of adjustment and transformation, she’d learnt either to laugh at such mishaps, as she’d laughed at her birthday skirmish with the escaping wheelchair and the gutter, or more often to rage, for which she’d acquired a voluptuous repertoire of short sharp swear words; but never, if she could help it, to get upset, not because she was in the least stoic, far from it, but because tears infuriated her far more than whatever had caused them. Nothing was worth the sense of defeat, certainly not anything so measly as a set of keys, because one thing was certain, there were going to be plenty more lost keys and annoyances to come. Tonight, however, she had little energy for exasperation, and certainly none for laughter, and resorted to a muttered commentary that took her back along the passage to a radiator casing, where she removed the armrest from the wheelchair and, hanging onto the top of the casing, swung herself out and down to the floor. Doing a bummer, as it was known in the trade, was like sex, best practised in private. Sliding herself along the floor on her backside, she reached the keys and dropped them in her lap, turned herself round and shuffled back to the flat door. Resting against the jamb for a few moments, she addressed an indifferent world like some bag lady in a shop doorway. “Well, you’ve got this far at least. Well done! Well done! Got something half right.. .”
The answering voice seemed to spring out of the darkness. “Are you all right, Catherine?”
With a gasp, she looked up to see her neighbour from Flat 19. “God!” she cried with a nervous laugh. “You gave me a shock!”
He made a penitent face. “I apologise. I didn’t mean to startle you. How can I help?” he enquired solicitously. “Shall I bring your wheelchair over?”
“Thank you .. .” She couldn’t think how he’d crept up on her. She hadn’t heard his door open, hadn’t heard him approach. As he padded off to fetch the wheelchair she looked at his feet, wondering if he’d be barefoot, and saw battered suede shoes with crepe soles.
Parking the wheelchair at her side, he waited with a grave expression on his long face.
“Thank you, Mr. Latimer.”
“Please call me Fergal.”
“Fergal. You really did give me a bit of a fright there.”
“My apologies.”
“I didn’t hear you come out.”
“I was looking for the cat. One has to go stealthily to have a chance of catching him.”
“A cat? I haven’t seen a cat.”
“A tortoiseshell called Bertie. He’s Maeve’s cat really. And a bit of an escape artist. Likes to roam the corridors unsupervised at night.”
She said, “Rather like me, you mean?” and held up her arms to be lifted. “If you wouldn’t mind?”
He picked her up and sat her in the chair and, unprompted, slotted the armrest back in place as though he were a master of wheelchair assembly. He unlocked the door for her and reached inside to switch on the lights before returning to the corridor to collect her briefcase. “Now, can I get you anything? Tea? Coffee? A kettle for a hot-water bottle? Something a little stronger?”
There was an accent she hadn’t caught before. Matching it to his name she said in a tone of mild accusation, “You’re Irish.”
He dipped his head in acknowledgement.
“But I’ve just been to Ireland today,” she said. “I’ve just come back.”
“Ah. Is that so?” The comment was polite but incurious. “It must have been a very long day for you.”
“Yes.” Voicing it, she felt a fresh wave of weariness.
“Can I make you a drink?”
There was a steadfastness about Fergal, a calm unhurried quality that made her surrender herself to his care without question. “Tea would be lovely.”
While Fergal padded around in the kitchen, filling a kettle, she
retrieved her mobile from the hall table where she’d left it that
morning and dialled in for her messages, which, according to the
robotic voice, totalled six. As expected, there was the daily call
from her father, dutiful questions first, asking how she was managing,
did she need anything, his tone fervent and anxious, then his voice
warming instantly a list of treats she might like to consider: a glass
of champagne at the American Bar, a trip to the theatre, a dozen
oysters at Bentley’s. She had no interest in such outings, she had
told him so more than once,
but there was no deterring him because for Duncan life without treats was a life unlived.
There were messages from Emma and Alice, both sounding hurt, both wanting to know where the hell was she and what she meant by hiding herself away like this. The similarity of the phrasing made her suspect they had been agreeing tactics.
Then Ben.
Her heart tightened at the sound of his voice, which seemed very close for Poland.
“Catherine? Where are you?” he began coldly. “What the hell’s going on? What does this note mean gone away? Gone away where, for God’s sake?”
She realised then: he was home. Her stomach lurched, she felt she could hardly breathe.
“Are you feeling all right? Has something happened? I mean, this note it sounds like you’ve bloody left home. No address, no nothing. What the hell does it mean? It sounds like There was a sharp hiss. “Christ! I do wish someone would bloody tell me what the hell’s going on. I couldn’t get any sense out of your father. Nothing that didn’t scare the shit out of me anyway. Talked about you being somewhere and he couldn’t say where. What the hell did he mean? Pissed, I suppose. Your father, I mean.” A rapid sigh. “Well, I’m here anyway. I’m back. I got an early plane. Specially.” Another sigh. “And if it’s not too much to ask I’d like to know where you are and when you’ll be back!” The message ended abruptly.
The next message also brought Ben’s voice, but calmer.
“Moggy, sorry if I was .. . angry. It was just a hell of a shock. You know getting back to find this strange note and an empty house. Darling, where are you? Please call me. I’m so worried. This note sounds so .. .” His voice broke. “Moggy, I love you. I’ll be worried sick until you call. Christ, this note frightens me. You will call? Please.”
Fergal appeared with the tea. Wordlessly, he put it beside her and, in the absence of chairs in the tiny hall, wedged his lanky frame into the corner and looked away into a distance of his own making.
The final call was inevitably from Simon. Her keeper, her guardian, who yesterday had taken it on himself to phone four times and drop by in the evening with some food she hadn’t asked for and didn’t need. Hearing his voice she prepared herself for the diligent questions, the request to phone him, his hope of seeing her the next day. Tonight, however, his voice took her by surprise, it was so taut, so urgent. “It’s really very important that you call me, Catherine. However late you get in. You must call me straight away. Please, it’s extremely important! And, Catherine, I know this sounds strange -I can’t explain but trust me, please don’t speak to anyone until you’ve spoken to me. No one at all.” He made
a sound of frustration. “Really, Catherine no one. And it’s nothing to be worried about but don’t open your door to anyone, will you? No one. Not even .. . Just no one!”
“I guessed at milk no sugar,” Fergal said as she switched off the phone.
“Thank you.”
“Is there anything else I can get you?” His voice was very soft.
She shook her head. “Where do you come from, Fergal?”
“Dublin.”
“You go back sometimes?”
“Now and again.”
“You have family there?”
But a part of her had ceased to listen, and sensing this he soon fell quiet again. She was thinking: Who should I call? Ben? Simon? Neither of them? Arguments with Ben demanded energy and agility, and she was short of both tonight. Even when she was feeling reasonably sharp-witted he could usually out manoeuvre her. He had a way of leaving an argument just as she was getting to grips with it, and launching off into another, with no backtracking permitted. And she knew how it would be this time. He would take the high moral ground: the injured party, hurt and bewildered, innocent of all charges, declaring devotion. The expensive dinner would be business or an old friend. The double room at the country house hotel would be booked for a Pole and his girlfriend who hadn’t turned up. If that didn’t work he would cajole, charm, bully, plead with her, and then start from the beginning all over again. He wouldn’t stop wouldn’t allow her to ring off until he’d extracted a promise to return to him. The prospect of such determination might have touched her if she hadn’t suspected it was driven as much by anxiety as love, for though Ben was desperate to do his duty, by far the sharpest and least ambiguous emotion in his soul was the fear of losing control.
Fergal, at ease with silence, waited quietly in his corner perch, his gaze fixed on some inner world.
Catherine said, “How peaceful it is here.”
“For the centre of London.” He produced the closest thing she had seen to a smile. “Now, you’re sure there’s nothing more I can get for you?”
You could get me a hard heart, thought Catherine. You could get me a heart that could shut Ben’s message out of my mind and let me go to sleep without guilt. “No, thanks.”
“In that case .. .” He straightened up slowly. Standing, he resembled a tall stork-like bird, with his long loose limbs and his shoulders raised high around his ears, an impression reinforced by the enquiring tilt at which he held his head. “I’ll wish you a good night. Oh!” He thrust a hand into his pocket and pulled out a card. “I gave you my mobile number before. But for the night perhaps you should have the number next door. Just in case.” He placed it on the table beside her before making for the door. “You’re going to be all right now?”
“Fine, thanks. Good night.”
“Take care, Catherine.”
This time she heard the door of his flat sound as he closed it behind him. She heard a fainter click, which might have been an internal door opening, and then the soft rush of a communal pipe somewhere between the walls. The tea cooled in her hand. At some point she must have put it down, but she had no recollection of it. Her memory was caught elsewhere, in a place she couldn’t name.
Take care, Catherine.
It’s the tiredness, she decided. It must be the tiredness because it makes no sense.
You’re going to be all right now.
She tried to capture the precise sound, word, intonation that had jogged the dark corner of her memory.
Catherine .. . You’re all right, Catherine. You’re going to be all right.
It was the softness of his voice, it was his choice of words. It meant nothing, couldn’t mean anything unless .. . Thoughts seized in her mind, caught on improbabilities, rushed off again, stopped and stalled.
At some point her eyes fell to the card on the table beside her. There seemed no order to events after that; they might have happened all at once or minutes apart. She looked at the number and it meant nothing and everything. Like his voice it belonged to another time, another place. She closed her mind to it; she opened her reason to it: she knew, but refused to know that she had seen it before.
The entry-phone buzzer sounded, and that also seemed to come from another world. She held still as if this might deny the sound, but it buzzed again, and she thought dimly: Simon.
But it was her father’s voice that spoke her name. Then: “Let me in, darling.”
She pressed the door-release and waited for him calmly, with a sense of disconnection. Whatever had happened here, whatever she had begun to grasp in these few minutes were like secrets, to be hidden away until another time.
Before opening the flat door, she folded the card and slipped it deep into her pocket.
At the sight of her, Duncan gave a show of immense relief, a clutching of both hands together, a heavenward roll of his eyes. “Thank the Lord you’re safe, darling! I can’t tell you how worried we’ve been!”
As he opened his arms and stooped to embrace her she saw over his shoulder the dark figure of Simon, caught in the shadows between the passage and the doorway. Her father straightened up and stood aside with a glance towards Simon, who came slowly forward into the light.
“Thank God,” Simon said forcefully, his mouth working with suppressed emotion. Thank God.”
“For heaven’s sake,” Catherine sighed with sharp impatience. “What is it?”
Her father gestured towards Simon.
“Well?” she demanded.
“The nuisance caller,” Simon announced gravely. “I’m sorry to have to tell you, Catherine’ he lowered his voice to a confidential murmur ‘but the phone number belongs to the flat next door.”
There was a pause in which she held his gaze. “Yes,” she said very deliberately, “I know.”
Simon blinked at her. “The flat next door to here, I mean.”
“Yes.”
He frowned at her, before saying, in the manner of a further announcement, “We’ve told the police.”
“What?
“They would have come anyway,” he argued defensively.
“Oh, why did you have to do that? I wish you hadn’t done that!”
“But they traced the number for us. And Denise Cox knows you’re living here they’d have worked it out for themselves.”
“You shouldn’t have gone behind my back, Simon. You should have asked me first!”
Simon appeared to shudder, his cheek danced furiously, for an instant his eyes were very dark.
Duncan touched Simon’s arm to gesture him to one side, and said to
Catherine, “But darling heart, these calls, this place ‘
“It isn’t something for the police, Pa.”
“My dear girl, listen .. . I’m sorry to have to tell you ... it may come as a bit of a shock .. .” He half crouched to bring himself down to her level. “Darling, darling .. .” His expression suggested he would do anything to spare her such news. “The thing is, both this flat and the one next door are owned by this company,” he began unhappily. “And the thing is, darling girl, the company is controlled by I wish I didn’t have to tell you this’ he made a gesture as if to berate the gods ‘well, dear heart, they’re both owned by Terry Devlin.” He paused mournfully, waiting for some sign that she had understood. “This one and the one next door,” he repeated for clarity. Glancing to Simon as if for help, he resumed unhappily, “You see ... this Latimer and his nasty calls the thing is, darling girl, I’m afraid to say it was all a vile way of trying to get at Ben through you.” He took her hand, his face creased with mortification. “I’m so terribly sorry, darling.”
“Get at Ben?” she echoed.
“I’m afraid so.”
“But why?”
“I know it’s hard to take it all in,” Duncan said, ignoring her
question. “I know you thought that nice daughter of Devlin’s was just
being kind. I know, I know how painful and beastly it must be to
realise just how badly
you’ve been taken in ‘
“For God’s sake, Pa,” she protested. “This is crazy! This is madness! Why would Terry want to get at Ben?” She looked from her father to Simon and back again.
Duncan’s eyes slid away helplessly. “Darling girl.. .” He patted her hand abruptly and straightened up. “Best if Ben explains it all, I think. Definitely best. He can tell you.”
“I can tell you,” Simon cut in, his face animated by a strange excitement. “It’s all about money.”
Duncan shot him a reproving glance. “I don’t think it’s for you to talk about this, Jardine. This is something for Ben!”
Simon said directly to Catherine, “It’s very simple. Ben owes Devlin money, and Devlin wants it back.”
Duncan said rather pompously, “Can we please leave this to Ben. He’ll be here any minute.”
Catherine stared at her father. “You’ve told Ben I’m here?”
“I know I promised, darling, but I thought it best ... in all the circumstances .. . The thing is, darling girl, he’s absolutely frantic. Frantic! I can’t tell you! And he can explain everything, you see. Much better than me, better than either of us!” His gaze flittered everywhere but to her face; he was ill at ease with explanations of betrayal. “And we thought, since it’s not safe for you here, that you’d want to go home, you see. We thought he should come and take you home .. .” Hoping the worst was over, he ventured to look her in the eye, armed with his most defenceless smile.
She said, “I understand, Pa,” because there was nothing else to say.
He beamed, his entire face dissolved into an expression of relief. “For the best, darling!”
But she wasn’t ready to forgive the summoning of the police, and Simon must have read this in her face because he said in a voice that quivered with self-justification, “It was out of my hands. Ben’s making an official complaint. He wants Latimer arrested. There was nothing I could do.”
She shook her head obdurately.
Simon’s face was very white. “I would have done anything, anything.. .” But the words blocked in his throat, he seemed almost dazed, and with a strange gasp he turned on his heel and left.
Every night, work-day or weekend, Soho was the same nowadays, crowds of secretaries and traders up from their East End strongholds, armed with bulging pay packets and raucous laughter, spilling out of the pubs to block the pavements, even in late November. Stepping past them, forced out into the street itself, Simon thought: To the coarse and loud-mouthed, the modern world. Only La Rondine retained the flavour of a gentler era. The post-theatre diners were few and soberly dressed and, keen to catch the last trains back to the garden suburbs, were all gone by midnight. From the other side of the street Simon watched the illuminated sign of the swallow fall dark and a waiter hastily relay the last table with white cloth and crimson napkins.
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