She felt oddly calm, as though all this were happening in another life. She looked away to the pin board with the display of postcards and party snaps. She saw a clipping from the society pages of a Tatler-style freebie magazine, showing Ben and herself at a wedding. Mr. and Mrs. Ben Galitza, smiling confidently into the future.
“Catherine? Do you understand what I’m saying? It was Devlin.
Devlin.”
“Yes,” she said, “I understand.”
Her lack of reaction confounded him, he clutched at her hand, but she was in the past somewhere, thinking about Ben and Maeve.
When she finally focused on Simon again, it was to say, “You look terrible. You mustn’t take all this to heart, you know. It’s not the end of the world.”
But he wouldn’t have it, there was no consoling him.
“Go home,” she said. “Get some sleep.”
“I don’t want to leave you.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“What time’s Ben coming back?”
“He isn’t coming back.”
He gasped slightly. “Then .. . can I guard you again tonight, Catherine? Can I watch over you? It would make me so ... happy.” He said the word gently, as though in the midst of all his distress he were trying it out for size and finding it perfect.
Chapter Fifteen
SHE WOKE to the sound of knocking, so faint it might have belonged to her dream. After a while it came again, a tentative brush of fingertips against wood. In the second or two before she answered, Catherine placed herself in time, and the previous day came back to her in a series of interlocking layers, each lit by a stark image: Maeve bent forward, weeping into her hands; Ben’s eyes staring coldly at her over his drink; and Terry pondering his next move at the massive desk that her imagination had drawn for him silhouetted against a tall window. Truth and lies, but blurring now, and gaining distance. In one of those insights that seem so revelational in the waking hours but always fail to survive the light of day, she decided: The truth is not so important as the leaving of it behind.
She didn’t give Simon any thought until she remembered the knock.
“I’ve brought up some breakfast,” he announced when she called out to him.
The bedside clock said eight; she was surprised at how long and how well she had slept. She ran a hand through her hair and, pulling herself up against the pillows, told him to come in.
His head came slowly round the door. “How are you feeling, Catherine?
Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
Encouraged by this, his shoulders appeared. “Shall I bring the breakfast in now?”
“Why not?”
He put the tray on the bed and when he straightened up his face was empty of all expression. He said, “All safe and sound.” It was a watchman’s report.
“Thank you.”
“I found some cranberry juice is that okay? And a croissant, and some toast.” He was like a zealous waiter running through a difficult order. “I’ve made both tea and coffee. I’ll drink whichever you don’t want.”
There was butter and marmalade. The tray had a proper cloth, and a napkin lay folded on one side. She murmured, “Spoilt.”
“Of course. What else?” His smile flickered uncertainly. He glanced around for a seat, only to change his mind and lean against the door frame, hands in pockets, in a casual pose that succeeded in making him look rather stiff. His clothes were slightly crumpled and his chin was dark with stubble, but his hair was damped down and neatly combed, his spectacles were polished. She had the feeling he’d been up for some hours.
“I’m sorry about last night,” he said in a thick voice. “Coming out with everything in such a rush like that. I must have frightened you. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking straight. The last thing I wanted was to frighten you.”
It occurred to her that if anyone had been frightened, it had been Simon, though incensed might have been a better word.
“It was just the shock the complete disbelief,” he said, as if to confirm this.
“Of course.”
Straightening up, he moved restlessly towards her. “And the powerlessness of seeing it happen under your very nose.”
“Forget it. Really. I have.”
But with Simon, forgetting was never an easy matter.
An evangelical light had come into his eyes, and when he began to talk it was in a rapid insistent voice that echoed the strange fury of the previous night. “You see, I thought I’d hang around after the verdict. I just thought, I wonder, I wonder. It was just a hunch, that was all.
Just a feeling that there might be something to see. Some evidence.
But never, never, did I think that it’d be so absolutely blatant. Latimer was waiting for him right there at the door of the court right there, Catherine! Went up and greeted him, then shook the barrister’s hand. Congratulating him for a job well done, presumably. And Pavlik over the moon, of course. The bastard actually laughed. Laughed. Then they went off together, him and Latimer. Obviously all planned, all set up, because there was a car waiting. Driver, engine running, the lot. Just swept them away. Gone!”
She picked up the coffee and held it out to him. He came forward jerkily, and when he grasped the saucer, the cup rattled. Stilling it swiftly with one hand, he met her gaze and finally seemed to read the message there, that enough was enough, that for her it was too early in the day for all this, or perhaps too late for any day at all.
“Sorry,” he said solemnly. “Here I am worrying you again. I didn’t mean to. Absolutely not.. . Sorry.”
His concern touched her because it was so confused and earnest, but also because it was nice not to wake to an empty house. She hadn’t been brought breakfast in bed since the early days with Ben.
“Take the coffee,” she said.
Settling self-consciously on the edge of the bed, he gave that odd disjointed laugh of his, the small gasp that came out of nowhere. “No,” he smiled, trying to make himself come alive, ‘what I really wanted to say what I came up especially to say was how about going away for the day? I wasn’t planning to do very much work today anyway. Why don’t we go somewhere? Give ourselves time away from the madding crowd! Go somewhere marvelous for lunch. The Manoir, perhaps. And a drive in the country. Perhaps to the coast. Or’ he took a stab at spontaneity “Paris! How about Paris?”
“It’s a lovely thought, Simon, but I’ve so much to do. Money to earn for a start. Rather urgently, in fact.”
“But it’s just one day, Catherine. The weather’s cleared up a bit. It’s much warmer than it looks. Please.” There was a feverishness in his pleading.
“It’s tempting, it really is, but another time.”
“But tomorrow might never come,” he said with intense seriousness. “We could go on postponing the important things for ever, Catherine for ever and wake up one day to find we’d done none of the things we really wanted to do!”
“Don’t remind me,” she agreed lightly.
“Please, Catherine. It would be so perfect. The whole day together. Please.” Then, with a drop of his head and a quick upward glance: “I do have a slight ulterior motive.” He said it with the air of laying himself at her mercy, but also with a gleam of excitement.
“Oh yes?”
“There’s a house. Just the other side of Oxford. I want you to come and look at it with me.”
She was slow on the uptake. “What house? Why?”
“A place I want to buy.” His eyes were glittering now, he put his
coffee cup hurriedly on the tray. “A stunning Queen Anne house. Would
you come and see it with me? Would you, Catherine? It looks perfect
from the photographs. I haven’t fixed a viewing, but if the agent
can’t arrange anything in time I thought we could see it from the
outside, get an idea, ask if we can at least see the gardens. The
gardens, Catherine they look amazing. Though you might
n’t think so, of
course! You might think they’re all wrong, that they need a lot of
work. But there’s a knot garden and a walled garden and a rose garden,
and a lake and ‘
“A lake! God, it sounds enormous.”
“No, no,” he retreated immediately. “The lake’s really quite small, I think. And the house well, it’s got eight bedrooms, so not too large. Then there’re the outhouses and two cottages. And the grounds fifteen acres in all.”
“And just the other side of Oxford? But, Simon, you’re talking really serious money for a house like that. Two million at least.”
“Quite a bit, yes.”
She made a face of incredulity.
“Oh, I can manage it all right,” he said with a touchy modesty. “I’ve been doing rather well on my own. More than well. Never seem to get round to spending it.” Then, hastily, as though fearing some loss of momentum: “You’ll tell me what you’d like changed, won’t you, Catherine? In the house and the garden?”
Still absorbing the surprise of his new-found prosperity, she missed the reference to the house. “Is this a commission then?” she teased mildly. “Are you signing me on?”
“In a way,” he said enigmatically, and, looking away hastily, wouldn’t be drawn further.
In the terrace off Eaton Square the morning light arrived early, reflected by the immaculate white stucco and sparkling windows. For the rich, even the winter dawn looms brighter.
In the car, Terry sat hunched in the back and thought longingly of home. In his mind even the overdressed house at Foxrock had taken on an emotional appeal out of all proportion to its real place in his affections. He found himself thinking with overt fondness of the heavy da masks and drapes and curlicues, of the Hollywood bathrooms and gilt taps, because it was there, in his memory at least, that he had lived simply with Maeve, and, God willing, hoped to live as simply again. He felt the overblown yearning of the exile stuck in an alien land by an interminable and futile war. With luck he should be back in Dublin by evening, yet each moment he had to stay in London was a moment too long, because his heart had gone out of the fight, and his soul too, and the duties that faced him this morning seemed irksome and repugnant. The campaign had gone on too long, the victory had been short and unsatisfactory. He was tired, but most of all he was tired of the struggle, which for him was tantamount to declaring a tiredness for life.
In the front of the car, Fergal murmured something to Mike then fell silent again, bowing his head contemplatively.
As eight came and went, Terry kept his eyes doggedly on the portico of number fifty-three, waiting for the swing of the black door. A succession of people emerged or gained admittance from the adjoining houses, City men and domestics and decorators, and the occasional well-dressed young woman, bolting off to work. And still Terry watched the one door, with patience, because he knew it was about to be repaid, but also with exasperation, because it was typical of Ben Galitza to make him wait.
It was ten past when Ben finally ambled out and paused on the top step. In the short unguarded moment before Fergal got out of the car and proclaimed their whereabouts, Ben’s mouth was compressed sourly, he wore a troubled frown, and Terry found himself thinking: Good! I hope you’re hurting!
At the sight of Fergal, a mask of indifference slipped over Ben’s face. He sauntered over and got into the back of the car without meeting Terry’s gaze, which was probably just as well because Terry wasn’t attempting to hide anything in his expression just then.
“Charming,” Ben declared sarcastically, without preamble. “But then you have absolutely no shame, have you, Terry? Your instincts automatically reduce you to the lowest of the low because it’s all you know.”
Terry watched Mike close the car door behind him and walk round the bonnet to join Fergal on the pavement.
“So, you’ve had me followed and now you think you’ve proved a point,” Ben continued caustically, addressing the windscreen. “You’re going to call in the guarantee and you’re going to destroy my life, and I hope it brings you nothing but misery because you’ll be wrong, you see. Not that you’ll be interested in hearing anything to do with the truth, of course. Oh no, because you’ll have your mind made up. Because you had your mind made up right from the beginning.” He gave a long sigh of disgust. “Christ.”
Terry was silent. His mind was on the call he’d made at seven thirty
this morning to the third-floor flat high above them, and the sound of
Rebecca’s angry hiss as she exclaimed,
“Who the hell is this? Do you realise what time it is?” and then the startled pause as he’d asked for Ben, and it might have been his imagination the intake of breath as she’d recognised Terry’s voice.
“You’re such an arrogant sod, Terry!” Ben snapped, with a sudden display of fury that came from nowhere. “You and your pathetic terras!
I told you at the outset they were completely unworkable and bloody
patronising and deeply offensive ‘
“They were cheap at the price,” Terry interjected quietly.
“Only someone who thought he was God bloody Almighty would try to interfere in other people’s lives the way you do,” Ben scoffed viciously. “You think you can control everyone’s lives the way you control your workers and your minions and your bloody empire and all the people who think you’re God. Well, I’ve got news for you there’re a whole world of people who think you’re a bloody dangerous officious sanctimonious tyrant and won’t put up with it.” In his fury, he spluttered incoherently before delivering his final salvo. “You should take your half-baked Catholic morals back to the bogs where they belong, and mind your own bloody business.”
And still Terry didn’t speak. He was recalling their conversation at The Shelbourne all those months ago. He was remembering Ben’s protestations of devotion to Catherine, of the absolute irrelevance of money in his conduct towards her, of how nothing that Terry could say or do would in any way influence him in what love and duty would have compelled him to do anyway, which was to stay firmly by her side. The very idea that he could be induced to stay was deeply insulting. Only someone who believed that people could be bought and sold would have suggested such a despicable thing. And all the time Terry had reminded himself that you might misjudge a man once, but only a fool did it a second time. This was the man who had set out to cheat him over a deal from which they both stood to make a fair profit, had exploited Maeve pitilessly while he was betraying Catherine, and for all he knew in those confused and tumultuous days was also the man who had brought about the whole catastrophe of Catherine’s accident. This was the man who, despite his protestations, was going to accept Terry’s terms because his outrage was grounded less on scruples than an aversion to having restrictions placed on his god-given freedom to do exactly as he pleased.
“So you haven’t broken the terms then?” Terry enquired mildly. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m saying you’re going to believe what you choose to bloody believe, so what’s the point.”
Try me.”
With a harsh sigh of forbearance, Ben announced in the heavy contemptuous tones of someone who’s wasting his breath, “The situation is that the situation’s out of my hands. Catherine’s decided she needs some space for a while. She’s asked me to move out, maybe for the short term, maybe for ever. So I can’t take care of her because she doesn’t want me to. So you see? The terms can’t bloody apply, because she’s made the decision to leave me, and that’s all there is to it. And before you start thinking precisely what I can see you’re thinking, it was nothing that I did, and nothing that I failed to do. She just wants to be on her own, it’s her decision, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Okay? Absolutely nothing. I’ve stood by her a thousand per cent, I’ve done everything I could possibly do to make her happy everything I would have done anyway, I may add, without your bloody interference but she wants out. All right? And I came her
e to Rebecca’s because I had nowhere else to bloody go.” He rolled his eyes. “Christ, the very fact that I’m having to explain this to you ..
.”
Terry said nothing. He was wondering if this was what Catherine really wanted. If so, he secretly rejoiced for her.
“And if you don’t bloody believe me which you won’t, of course go and ask her yourself,” Ben muttered petulantly. “Or ask the entire world everyone’ll know soon enough, I’m sure. Though of course they’ll go and blame me. Inevitably. So much more convenient to cast me as the villain. I’m not crippled, I just tried to kill the bastard who attacked her. No allowing for the fact that it’s Catherine who wants out, no allowing for the fact that it’s Catherine who’s broken He bit hard on his lip, as if to stifle his despair, before muttering scathingly, “Oh, for God’s sake, what do I care what you believe? Withdraw the bloody guarantee. I’m not going to beg. Do your bloody worst.”
Terry said with the same appearance of great calm, “I didn’t come about that, in fact.”
There was a pause while Ben turned to look at him for the first time.
“What do you mean? You had me bloody followed, for Christ’s sake! You’ve caught me at Rebecca’s. What else is this about if it’s not that?”
“I’ve only had you followed since last night,” Terry remarked wearily.
“And only because I needed to know where to find you.”
And still Ben stared, though now his curiosity was tinged with resentment at the realisation that he had poured out his excuses and aired his humiliation for nothing. “So what the hell is it about then? Why the hell go to all this trouble?”
Terry said unhurriedly, “Rightly or wrongly, I took it on myself to find out who burgled your house and why, and I thought you might be interested to know what I’ve discovered. Oh, and I wanted to ask you a few questions. Yes,” he said carefully, as if correcting a lapse, ‘to ask you to fill in the gaps.”
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