by Simon Brett
‘Vladimir. .? Vladimir. .?’ prompted Carole patiently, hoping to stir Donna’s memory for a second name.
But she was only rewarded by a shake of the head and the eyes reopening. ‘No, it’s gone.’
‘Are you sure you don’t know the name of-’
‘I’ve told you, I don’t know anything. It’s just, as I said, if I was trying to find out what’d happened to Marina, I’d check out the Russian connection.’
‘Right, thank you.’
‘And the other thing I’d check out,’ said Donna Grodsky as she swept up the juices of her steak with the last few chips, ‘is Marina’s Dad.’
‘Iain Holland?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I always thought he was a shifty bastard. And though he treated her like shit, Marina still kind of worshipped him.’
‘Susan said she was as rude and bolshie to him as she was to her.’
‘Doesn’t mean she didn’t worship him. There’s something about fathers and daughters. My dad treated my mum like shit, treated me like shit, and all. .’ The grotesquely long eyelashes tried to flick away tears. ‘Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to see him again. Doesn’t mean I don’t miss him.’
Kyle was now wide awake and crying. Donna Grodsky shoved the last chip into her mouth and swigged down the remains of her third voddy and Coke. ‘Good timing, eh? God knows I’ve had enough practice. Oh, what’s the matter with Mum’s lovely boy then?’
Carole, aware that the last sentence wasn’t addressed to her and that her time was very short, asked, ‘Do you have any way of contacting Iain Holland?’
‘Haven’t got an address or anything, but shouldn’t be too difficult to track him down.’
‘Really?’
‘He’s all over the local paper every week.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he’s a very important local councillor. New squeaky-clean wife, new squeaky-clean kids, new squeaky-clean social conscience. Oh yes, round Brighton, Iain Holland is very definitely a pillar of the community.’
Carole Seddon drove back to Fethering, sedately careful in her Renault, with three strong impressions. One, that Donna Grodsky was an extremely intelligent young woman. Two, that she was also a very good mother. And three, that the prices in the George’s Head in Moulsecoomb were really very reasonable.
And she didn’t at all regret the twenty-pound note she had pressed into the girl’s hand as they parted.
EIGHTEEN
Jude was still in a bad way. She’d had two clients booked in for sessions on the Monday morning, but postponed both of them. She knew from experience that healing required all her focus and energy. When she was preoccupied with something else it just didn’t work.
And she felt bad about what was preoccupying her. The laid-back manner and serenity she displayed to the world were genuine, but they had not come to her without effort. Though the carapace she had built around herself was less instantly visible than Carole’s, she too had created a protective layer to keep her from the worst excesses of her emotions. And one of the ways in which she had shielded herself was by not falling in love.
There had been a good few lovers in Jude’s past — though not as many as her next-door neighbour fantasised that there were. And of course there had been the two marriages. But since she’d moved to Fethering her life had been quieter. She’d indulged in the odd one-night stand, the occasional nostalgic coupling with an ex-boyfriend, and then she had nursed a former lover, Laurence Hawker, till his death from cancer. But that period of her life with Laurence, though painful, had had an elegiac quality to it. Not the heady mania of a new love affair.
But that was what she had tumbled straight into with Piers Targett, and now Jude felt stupid for having been so precipitate. Both of them knew that there were stories from their pasts that must at some point be told. But they were both so enjoying the moment that they didn’t want to spoil it. For Jude and Piers love had come first; getting to know each other could wait.
Not any more. Jude had gone over again and again the scene with Piers and Jonquil Targett. His wife had spoken of ‘the house we jointly own’. Did that mean they still cohabited there? Was that why Piers had hardly mentioned the place to Jude? And why he had made no attempt to invite her there?
On the other hand, the Goffham cottage’s state of neglect did not suggest that it was regularly occupied. So maybe Jonquil Targett’s arrival there on the Saturday had just been a coincidence? Or maybe Piers had summoned her there to have a final confrontation, to get her agreement to his putting their shared property on the market?
Jude tried not to dwell on it, but she couldn’t help remembering what Piers had been talking about just before Jonquil’s arrival. He’d said that what made him want finally to sell the house was having met her. Jude. He wanted to ‘close that chapter’ of his life. Did that mean he was looking forward to a new life that included her?
These thoughts circled infuriatingly round and round in her head and she despised herself for letting them. It was so unlike her. This wasn’t the Jude she felt comfortable with, the strong Jude she had so carefully constructed over the years. She hated behaving like a snivelling schoolgirl.
Shilly-shallying wasn’t in her nature. Her instinct was to get everything out in the open, have a confrontation if necessary, but at least not bottle things up. A hundred times on the Sunday she had contemplated just picking up her phone and ringing Piers. But each time she restrained herself, thinking, no, the ball’s in his court. When he’s sorted out whatever he needs to sort out with his wife, then he’ll get back to me.
By the Monday morning the temptation to ring Piers hadn’t weakened. In fact, through Jude’s largely sleepless night it had got stronger. But still she resisted it.
She was hugely relieved, though, when mid-morning the phone rang. She pounced on it, feeling sure it must finally be Piers.
It wasn’t. The voice was the extremely cultured one of a mature woman who had been to all the right schools and moved in all the right circles.
‘Good morning. Is that Jude?’
‘Yes.’
‘This is Felicity Budgen. We met at Lockleigh House tennis court during the Secretary’s Cup.’
‘Yes, of course, I remember.’
‘I’m sorry to trouble you, but it’s in connection with dear Reggie Playfair’s death.’ Felicity Budgen was far too genteel to use the expression ‘poor old bugger’.
‘Oh yes?’
‘Now, Oenone Playfair’s a very dear friend of mine, and I understand from her that you were actually with Piers Targett when he discovered poor Reggie’s body. .’
‘Yes, I was.’
‘I’m so sorry you had to experience that. It must have been a terrible shock.’ She spoke with the practised empathy of an ambassador’s wife comforting the bereaved.
‘Yes, it was a shock, but don’t worry, I’m fine.’
‘I’m very glad to hear that. Now, I don’t know whether you know, Jude, but Reggie’s funeral is on Thursday.’
‘Yes, I had heard.’
‘I don’t know whether you’ll be coming with Piers. .?’
No need for Jude to say that the two of them were currently not communicating. ‘He hasn’t mentioned it. And it’s not as if I knew Reggie Playfair well. Just met him very briefly on that Sunday.’
‘Yes, of course. Well, needless to say, Oenone’s up to her ears with arrangements for the funeral, and I’m trying to take any burdens I can off her back.’ There was a silence, as if the woman was making preparations for her next sentence. ‘Now there is one thing that’s worrying Oenone and, as I say, she’s got more than enough on her plate at the moment, so I’m making enquiries on her behalf.’
Jude had had enough of this diplomatic circumlocution. ‘What’s it about?’ she asked.
‘It’s about Reggie Playfair’s mobile phone.’
That wretched mobile phone. There seemed to be no way of escaping the subjec
t.
‘What about it?’
‘Well, Oenone hasn’t been able to find the thing. She’s checked through Reggie’s belongings that came back from the hospital, and she’s looked through his car. She’d got George Hazlitt to check out around the tennis court. No sign of it. So I was just wondering whether you actually saw a mobile phone near Reggie’s body. . you know, when you. .’ Graciously Felicity Budgen didn’t spell out the details.
‘No, I’m afraid I didn’t see any sign of it.’
‘I thought that would probably be the case, but it was worth asking. As I say, anything that can be done to save Oenone further distress. .’
‘Of course.’ Jude had a moment of hesitation before she went on, ‘It might be worth asking Piers. I wasn’t with him all the time when we were at the court. He might have seen something I didn’t.’
‘Yes, what a very good idea. I’ll give him a call.’ But Felicity Budgen didn’t sound as if that would be the first thing on her agenda. ‘Anyway, it’s been a pleasure to talk to you, Jude. And I probably won’t see you Thursday. .?’
‘Probably not.’
‘No. Well, hope to see you round the tennis court with Piers on another occasion.’
I wouldn’t count on it, thought Jude bitterly.
The call she was waiting for came through late that afternoon, by which time she had to some extent got her head together. She had done some special yoga exercises, which calmed her, and by the end of them she’d reconciled herself to the idea that she was never going to see Piers Targett again. The thought didn’t make her happy, but at least it was the first broad stroke of the thick black line she was determined to draw under the whole episode.
Then Piers phoned her and her embryonic defences crumbled instantly.
‘“I can explain”’, he quoted ironically. ‘I’m sorry, Jude, but I can’t let the last words you ever hear from me be the cliche response of every guilty husband in every dreadful farce ever written — “I can explain”.’
His description so exactly matched what she had thought of the words when he’d said them on the Saturday afternoon that Jude couldn’t prevent the eruption of a small giggle. It was also relief, relief at finally hearing his voice after the torture of the previous days.
‘But can you?’ she asked.
‘Explain? Well, I can give you some relevant information.’
‘Something which has been rather lacking from you since we first met.’
‘Mea culpa. On the other hand, I don’t think you can be completely exonerated from the same charge.’
‘Fair enough. I agree, there’s a lot you don’t know about me.’
‘Well, maybe we should get together and barter chunks of our pasts. .?’
Two minutes before Jude had been determined that she would never see Piers Targett again. But it didn’t take long for her to say, ‘I think that’d be a very good idea.’
‘Where? Some kind of neutral ground? A pub? A bar?’
‘No.’ Jude felt too emotionally fragile to conduct their next meeting in public. ‘You come round here.’
NINETEEN
‘The fact is that Jonquil is bipolar,’ said Piers. ‘The condition’s kind of contained so long as she takes her medication, but I’m afraid she’s sometimes very perverse about taking her medication.’
‘But are you still married to her?’ asked Jude.
‘Yes. I’ve never denied I am.’
‘I meant, are you still cohabiting?’
‘What, at the house in Goffham? God, no. Neither of us lives there. Surely you could see that from the state of the place?’
‘Then why were you there?’
‘For the reasons I told you. Look, I’m not a liar, Jude. I told you I was down there to get on to an estate agent, to get the place on the market as soon as possible — and that’s true.’
‘All right, let’s change the question a little. Why was Jonquil there?’
‘Ah.’
There was a silence. They hadn’t touched since Piers arrived at Woodside Cottage, not a peck on the cheek or even a handshake, but Jude could still feel the magnetism of his presence. Slowly he answered her.
‘Jonquil, as I say, is very volatile. She can agree to something one day and then totally disagree the next. For a long time I’ve been trying to get her to agree to the sale of the Goffham house. But she’s kept being resistant to the idea.’
‘Is that because she thinks it represents your marriage? That once that’s sold, it will be a kind of acknowledgement that the marriage is really over?’
‘God, no. Jonquil was the one who wanted the marriage over, at least initially. She was the one who kept on having affairs and saying how claustrophobic she felt in the relationship. For a long time I thought I could somehow still make it work.’
‘And do you still think that, Piers?’
‘No. For years now I’ve really known that it was over. But I dithered. Because of her mental state, Jonquil can be very vulnerable at times. I didn’t want to do anything that might push her over the edge.’
‘What do you mean by “push her over the edge”?’
‘I mean: make her do something stupid.’
‘And you’re using “do something stupid” in the traditional sense of attempting suicide?’
‘Yes, I suppose I am. It wouldn’t be the first time.’
‘Jonquil has attempted suicide before?’ He nodded. ‘Genuine attempts, actually trying to kill herself, or just as a means of gaining attention?’
‘In retrospect I’d have said the latter. But that didn’t make them any less scary at the time. And didn’t make me feel any less guilty.’
Of course it was going to be true, thought Jude again, that nobody gets to our age without accumulating baggage. And it seemed like Piers Targett had got a serious amount of baggage. ‘You still haven’t told me why Jonquil came to the house on Saturday,’ she reminded him.
‘No. Well, as I say, she’s very inconsistent, but I’d spoken to her when I got back from Paris on Friday evening.’
Jude couldn’t stop herself from remembering jealously that he hadn’t found time to ring her the same evening. God, she was pathetic.
‘Anyway, I was feeling really positive and I said it was daft for us to go on doing nothing about the house and we really ought to sell it. And Jonquil actually agreed with me. She was very calm and rational and she said she couldn’t imagine why we hadn’t put the house on the market years ago.’
‘Any particular reason why she had changed her mind?’
‘She’s got a new chap.’
‘Do you know who he is?’
‘No idea. When we were living down here, in quite a lot of cases I did know who her men were, because they were people in our circle. Since she’s moved to Brighton, I’ve no idea who she consorts with.’
‘But if she’s now in a good relationship, then maybe that’ll take the pressure off you, and she’ll finally get out of your life. .?’
‘Jude, I’ve been here before. Many times. With Jonquil every new relationship is going to be The Big Thing. And so it is for a few weeks, months sometimes, years in my case. . and then she starts getting unsettled and jealous. . and pretty soon she’s off with someone else. It’s a recurring pattern with her, one that I’m afraid never gets broken.’
‘So why did she appear at the house on Saturday?’
‘Because she’d changed her mind. Whatever she’d said on the Friday evening, on the Saturday she no longer wanted to sell the house. She could have told me on the phone but, being Jonquil, no, of course she had to do it in person. She knew I’d be there, so she decided to give me the latest in a long, long line of shocks.’ He sounded infinitely weary. ‘The fact that she found you there when she arrived was. . I don’t know, whatever the opposite of “serendipity” is. Shit, probably.’
‘And what did she say after I’d left?’
‘Basically that she’d never agree to our selling the house. And a whole lot of other
stuff.’
‘Like?’
‘Old stuff, infinitely recycled recriminations. Believe me, Jude, you really don’t want to know.’
She really did want to know, but there’d be time enough in the future to ask those questions. Jude rose from her draped armchair, went across the room and kissed Piers gently on the forehead.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘how about a drink?’
‘Do you know what I’m going to do?’ said Piers Targett drowsily, after their emotional rapprochement had been followed by a physical rapprochement. He turned over in the bed and looked down at Jude. Her blonde hair was spread in beautiful disarray over the pillow.
‘Tell me,’ she murmured.
‘I’m going to fix for you to have a real tennis lesson with George Hazlitt.’
‘Really? Do you think you should?’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, I wonder if I put a jinx on that tennis court. Remember what happened last time I went there.’
‘Hm.’ He was silent for a moment, reminded of his old friend’s death. ‘Incidentally, Reggie’s funeral is on Thursday.’
‘Yes, I heard from Oenone.’
‘Jude. .’
‘Hm?’
‘I’d very much like it if you would come with me to the funeral. I think it’s going to be an emotional strain for me. I’d feel better if you were there.’
‘Well, if that’s what you want I’d be very glad to come.’ But even in the peacefulness of love the small idea formed in her mind that she would see a lot of the Lockleigh House tennis court members at the funeral and might be able to advance her investigation a little.
‘Anyway, this lesson of yours with George. I’ll set it up and let you know when.’
‘All right,’ said Jude softly. ‘Though I don’t think I’ll ever understand that business of chases. .’
‘It’s very simple,’ Piers protested. ‘The chase lines are marked in yards parallel with the back wall both ends of the court. If the ball lands nearer the back wall than the chase, you say it’s better than whatever number the chase is. If it lands further away from the back wall you say it’s worse than the. .’