Blood Never Dies

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  There was a tactful silence, until Atherton intoned, in quotation marks, ‘My work here is done.’

  McLaren’s eyes were on the snack plate. ‘Anyone want that scotch egg?’

  ‘Work away,’ Connolly said kindly. ‘Your need is greater than ours.’

  Just as Slider got home, George woke, crying, and Joanna, in the middle of kissing him, broke off to say, ‘I think he’s teething.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Slider offered, but she had already turned away.

  ‘No, I’ll do it. You make us both a drink. I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Oh-oh,’ he said. ‘That sounds ominous.’

  ‘God, why do men always say that?’ she said with mock exasperation, and ran lightly up the stairs.

  She was gone rather a long time, and he carried his drink through to the small sitting room they used as a study, where the computer was set up. He had been thinking about it, for some reason, all day – perhaps just because they had been putting the case to bed. When Joanna came down and came searching for him, she found him looking at a pop video on YouTube, of all things.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked, leaning on his shoulder and kissing his ear. ‘He’s gone off to sleep again.’

  ‘Good. It’s Kara, otherwise Annie Casari, Ben Corley’s girlfriend. I wanted to see her for myself.’

  They watched for a moment in silence. The girl seemed very thin, with sticklike white arms. She clutched the big black mike to her face and bucked her hips and made the other current stampy moves. She was wearing a short sequinny flared skirt of many colours, and various tops in messy-looking layers, and her thin white legs ended in what looked like hiking socks and big laced boots. Her hair was a rat’s nest, but that seemed to be deliberate, and her face was made up witchy white with black smudgy eyes. She had a pleasant sort of voice, small and husky but true, and she sang about lost love: ‘I waited till the break of day. I knew that you had gone away. I don’t know why, what made you go.’

  She seemed rather frail and vulnerable but not otherwise remarkable. He had heard other voices as good, and many more better. She didn’t, in his admittedly uninformed opinion, have anything much about her that would have propelled her to the stars. But Corley had loved her enough to go on a crusade to avenge her, and gone to his death in the process. This skinny girl, who couldn’t keep off drugs, had set all this in motion; it had led to the death not only of Corley but of Tommy Flynn and David Regal too, whom she had probably never even heard of.

  He thought of Corley’s mother and sister, of Danny Ballantine, of the portrait in the hall of the family flat, of the young man full of promise. Was it worth it? Corley wouldn’t have thought in those terms. Maybe he couldn’t have done any differently. Sometimes Slider thought that people’s lives were laid down for them, and they could only follow the trail, with the end implicit in the beginning. But it was a weary thought, born of his tiredness.

  ‘Enough?’ Joanna enquired.

  ‘Enough,’ he said, and clicked it off.

  ‘She seems quite an ordinary girl,’ Joanna said; and he let that be her epitaph.

  They went back to the sitting room. Autumn was coming and it was almost chilly enough to want the heating on, with damp August darkness outside. Fin de siècle. He put on an extra lamp for comfort and sat down on the sofa. ‘What did you want to talk about?’

  She walked up and down a bit, like a cat not sure where to settle, and then sat in the armchair catty-corner to him, perched rather forward, nursing her glass in both hands on her lap. She hadn’t drunk much of it, he noticed.

  ‘I’ve been a bit grouchy lately,’ she said abruptly.

  ‘Have you? I didn’t notice,’ he said gallantly.

  She gave a wry smile. ‘You did. And I’m sorry. But I had something on my mind.’

  ‘The LSO job,’ he said. ‘I know. And you decided not to go for it in the end.’ She hadn’t discussed it with him, but he knew she hadn’t been to the audition, so she must have made up her mind.

  ‘Are you glad?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I mean, neither glad nor sorry. It was your decision to make. I could see points on both sides, but as long as you feel you’ve made the right decision . . .’

  ‘I hope I have. I’m sure I have, really,’ she said. ‘But it wasn’t exactly – it wasn’t straightforward.’

  ‘No, I know. Your career versus home. It would have been a lot more work. You’d have been away a lot.’

  ‘In the end, I felt I’d have to give up too much if I took it. There’s one bit of it you don’t know, you see.’ She was looking at him intensely, and he tried to brace himself. ‘I’m pregnant again,’ she said.

  He had not expected that, and it left him without words.

  ‘How?’ he said eventually, as men do.

  ‘Oh Bill! These things happen.’ She was still watching him for his reaction, but he couldn’t think yet what it was. She said, ‘I couldn’t have taken the job and had another baby. And I know we’re not exactly flush with cash. Thanks to your dad we don’t have a mortgage, but everything’s so expensive, and the house needs a lot doing to it, and George doesn’t come cheap. We could have done with the extra money if I’d taken the job. But to do that I’d have had to – to get rid of the baby.’ He was shocked, and he knew it showed. She gave a wry sort of smile. ‘And when it came to it, I found I couldn’t do it.’

  He came up out of his seat and crossed to her, and had to kneel down to be on the same level. ‘I should think not!’ he cried. ‘How could you even consider it?’

  ‘I had to consider everything. And you said all along it was my decision.’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t know all the facts.’

  ‘We can’t afford another baby, that’s a fact. It’s hard enough with two wages. What happens when I have to stop work?’

  He surveyed her face carefully. ‘Don’t you want it?’

  Tears came into her eyes. ‘Of course I want it, you idiot,’ she said, trying not to cry. ‘And pay no attention to the waterworks. It’s just hormones.’

  ‘If you want it, that’s all there is to say. We’ll manage. We will,’ he added to her uncertain look.

  ‘Do you want it?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, God, Jo, of course I do. I love you. I love George. I’d have ten children if I could, if you were willing.’

  She gave a watery smile. ‘Not ten, I’m not up to that. But two’s a nice number, don’t you think?’ she said hopefully.

  He took her glass and put it aside, and folded her hands in his. ‘Two, three, or any number, our children, yours and mine, they’re precious, and they’re wanted.’

  ‘You’re a nice man, Bill Slider,’ she said, and kissed him.

  ‘You should have told me,’ he said. ‘You should have let me help you decide.’

  ‘You had enough on your plate,’ she said. ‘And I knew what you’d say, anyway.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Exactly what you did say.’

  ‘It’s pitiful to be so easily read,’ he complained. ‘I always wanted to be a man of mystery.’

  ‘No you didn’t,’ she said with some certainty. ‘So it’s all right then? Really? About the baby?’

  ‘Better than all right,’ he said. ‘It’s – magnificent.’

  ‘Nappies and broken nights and no money and all?’

  He stuck out his chest boastfully. ‘Bring it on,’ he said. ‘I can take it. Bring it all on. And any dragons you want slaying. That’s what men are for.’ He flung out a hand in a magnificent gesture, and knocked her glass flying. ‘I don’t know my own strength,’ he apologized.

  She was laughing. ‘How do you think I got pregnant in the first place?’

 

 

 
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