It was the day after Edwina’s return to her own flat in Packet’s Place.
‘Not too bad, really,’ said Edwina. ‘They’ve even got a new coffee machine that makes stuff you can drink with some pleasure so I could quaff that while I waited.’ She was being brave and they knew it. There had not been good news for her at the clinic. ‘And would you believe it, they now hand out paper robes cut like this when you undress.’ She held up one arm, letting the dark cotton fall away from the wide armhole.
‘Not that colour, though,’ said Alice.
‘No, love, a sort of dirty white. Not bad all the same.’
Alice examined the idea. ‘Be nice pleated.’
‘Yes, it would.… I was pretty miserable about Pickles, of course, so my blood pressure was up. If that was why.’
‘Oh yes, I expect so, nerves.’ Alice was soothing. She was good at this sort of conversation, she got so much practice with her own customers.
‘It certainly wasn’t the baby, poor thing.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘But it’s too small, you see.’
‘Babies are small.’ She gave a quick glance at Edwina who was, in fact, filling out. ‘Minute.’
‘Small for dates, they call it. And that’s bad.’ She got off the sofa and started to pad barefoot up and down the room. She had given them no real reason for her return. Certainly no account of what had happened in Deptford. She had just remarked that she had ‘felt like coming home’. But she thought they had both given her a long, thoughtful look while welcoming her back. And the news about Ginger and Pickles had been what they talked about. ‘I can see the doctors are alarmed and so am I. So would you be.’ The other two made sympathetic noises. ‘ I could do with a drink, couldn’t you?’ Her hand hovered over a decanter. ‘Small for dates,’ she added reflectively. ‘Whisky? Sherry?’
‘Make it coffee,’ said Cassie, ‘and I’m with you. I’ve got to work tonight when I get back.’
‘Alice?’
‘Coffee, too.’ Alice stood up as well. ‘Shall I make it for you?’
‘No.’ Edwina moved away. ‘Prefer to potter round my own kitchen.’
When she had gone Alice said, ‘You sent her off to make that coffee on purpose, didn’t you?’
‘Yes. Wanted a word with you. I’m worried about her. She looks terrible.’
This was true; there were dark rings around Edwina’s eyes, and although her waist looked thicker, her face was pinched.
‘Yes, she does look bad.… I’m worried about this baby.’
‘Everyone is.’
‘Puzzled … I suppose there really is …’
Cassie broke in. ‘ We’ve had this conversation before.… They’ve made strides since Mary Tudor. Science is wonderful, they can tell.’
‘But the mind … It can do strange things.’ Alice shook her head. ‘I just feel there’s something terribly wrong with the whole picture.… Edwina, the telephone calls that drove her away … The man she says pursued her.’
‘She looks shocked,’ said Cassie, following her own thoughts.
‘We’re all shocked.… With her, it’s that and something more.’
‘Such as?’
‘Supposing there isn’t anyone following her, supposing it’s all her imagination?’
‘Well, we know that’s not true.’
‘We don’t, do we? We know the beginning phone calls happened, I saw a man, or so I thought, but how much of the rest has been a kind of hyperimagination?’
Cassie said nothing and Alice swept on:
‘And don’t tell me the police don’t think so as well.’
Cassie still said nothing but that was enough for Alice. ‘So it is what your pet policeman thinks, I’m right.’
‘He doesn’t quite tell me what he thinks.’ That was true enough, he kept a lot back and you couldn’t expect otherwise, but he had ways of letting her see beneath the surface, and what she had seen had been disconcerting. The police were so hard.
The smell of coffee was floating in from the kitchen and they heard the chink of china. ‘ Won’t be a minute,’ called Edwina.
‘There’s something you and I have got to talk about,’ said Cassie quickly to Alice.
Alice raised her eyebrows. ‘Just me? Is Edwina not included?’
‘Not at the moment. Later perhaps.’
‘You are being mysterious. Something you know and I don’t?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Cassie grimly.
‘Does your policeman still think one of us three killed Luke?’
Cassie gave a short laugh. ‘I believe he would if he was pushed to it, but at the moment he hasn’t quite got the evidence.’
‘And you don’t mind?’
‘I don’t think about it.’
‘I’d mind,’ said Alice.
‘Of course I mind, you fool. I didn’t say I didn’t mind, I said I didn’t think about it.’
‘So it’s serious with him?’
‘I don’t know.’
One more step in their break-up as a group had been taken. They had always been open with each other about love affairs. More or less. Even if they had told little lies (as Alice always had), the others had always known the truth. Now Alice did not know what to think; not about Edwina nor about Cassie and not about herself. She knew better than anyone the trouble she could be in if too much digging around was done. She gave Cassie an assessing look: trouble there too. Alice was a shrewd observer and had known for some time that Cassie had a problem.
Mustn’t be heavy, she thought. Might all work out.
But their three-way relationship would never be the same. The virus had eaten away at it in vital places, weakening what could never be rebuilt. Alice knew this, she suspected Cassie did, and whether Edwina did, or even cared any more, was part of the problem.
‘I wish Lily was here,’ she said aloud.
‘Why?’ asked Edwina from the door as she backed in, carrying a tray set with her best gold and white china. A bad sign; she only used that when her morale needed a lift, otherwise it would have got chipped. Edwina’s family had believed in hanging on to things for generations. They valued chattels, and respected property, anyone’s, but especially their own. ‘Why Lily? Though I miss her myself.’
‘She’s so honest.’
Cassie poured herself some coffee. ‘Sometimes Alice says the weirdest things. It must be mixing with her clients so much. Take no notice of her.’
‘Lily is honest. So honest she doesn’t even have a decent lock on her flat.’
‘Is that the reason you left? Have you told Kit you are back, by the way? You’d better. He’s prowling around like a hungry lion.’
‘Certainly Lily’s locks was one of the reasons.’ Edwina poured herself some coffee, then put it down undrunk. It was no good, she was right off coffee. ‘Rather a nasty thing happened to me while I was there.’
‘Ah.’ Alice looked at Cassie, who dropped her eyes. ‘That man? The one who’s been bothering you on the telephone.’
‘More than that.… You saw him once. Following me.’
‘I thought I did.’ Then, Alice said to herself; now I’m not so sure.
‘It was worse out in Deptford. He came there, asking questions, then he sent me his photograph, through Lily’s door. It was frightening. He’s sick. Very sick. That’s why I ran away.’
‘Show me the picture, Eddie.’ Cassie put down her coffeecup and waited.
‘I can’t do that. I threw it away.’
‘That was a silly thing to do, Eddie.’
‘It made me feel dirty.’
‘It was evidence.’
‘I didn’t keep it,’ repeated Edwina.
Her friends both knew she was lying. Whatever had happened, Edwina had not destroyed or mislaid the photograph. But she might never have received it.
Of course, she thought she had, they could see that, but where was the truth?
‘But Eddie, how did he know where to find
you, where to look?’ said Alice.
There was a pause, and Edwina stood up, defensive, angry. ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’
‘No one knew where to find you, no one knew where you’d gone.’
‘You knew,’ said Edwina. ‘You knew, both of you. You knew.’
There was another pause.
‘Damn,’ said Alice quietly. ‘Damn and damn.’
There had been such a tight, warm bond between them, making a wall with ‘World Keep Out’ written on it. Now the wall was coming down brick by brick, that was how it seemed to Alice. She was surprised that she appeared to be the one who minded most.
Cassie thought: we’re splitting up. Inevitable, I suppose. Adolescent of us to have clung together so long. Still, it was a trademark almost, to be Us Three. Sad. I wonder whose fault it is? Mine mostly, I suppose.
And her mind sped to the conversation she meant to have with Alice. Nothing was going to be the same after they had had that matter out.
Edwina tried to drink her cooling coffee, failed to enjoy it once again, and put down the cup. Her friends both frightened and irritated her today. They were children, not fully grown up. She herself had taken a frightening step into maturity. She had a great responsibility now. The silent traveller within her was once again asserting himself.
In an even quieter voice than Alice’s, Cassie said, ‘That’s a rotten thing to say, Eddie. You know Alice and I would do anything to protect you. I didn’t tell anyone where you were.’ And she looked at Alice who silently shook her head. ‘So you see.’
‘But you both knew.’
‘Well, it wasn’t hard to guess. Just guess. I didn’t check, though, or try to find out for sure. It wasn’t my business.’
‘We’re quarrelling, aren’t we?’
‘We’ve done that often enough in the past.’
‘But this is different.’
Alice said, ‘We’ll never leave you alone, Edwina.’
‘Perhaps I’d be better on my own.’
‘Ouch,’ said Alice. ‘This is where I exit.’
Hurt and perplexed, the two walking wounded, Cassie and Alice, left together, walking round to the Garden; Alice to collect her car and drive home, Cassie to work.
Alice said, ‘What was all that about?’
‘Oh she’s in a state. She’ll come round. We were right to leave her. You always leave Eddie alone when she flies off the handle. Remember? Our rule? Let Eddie simmer.’
Cassie was busy trying to paper over the cracks, rebuild the wall, but Alice would not let her.
‘You’re living in the past. That was long ago.’
‘Think so?’
‘Yes. And so do you.… But that isn’t what I meant. I meant: what is it you and I have to talk about?’
They were standing by Alice’s car, that gleaming testimony to her success. She was still proud of it, it was a moving, shining proof of what she had achieved, a potent symbol of success in male and female worlds. Buying it had been a high point in her life. Absently, Alice reached out and gave the car a pat.
‘Come in,’ said Cassie. ‘We’ll talk upstairs.’
Alice hesitated and looked up at the big window where Cassie had left a light shining.
‘It’s all right, the police have all gone.’
‘All the police?’
‘He doesn’t live here, you know.’
‘Pretty well has the last few days.’ Alice still hung back. ‘It’s not that … I think about Luke. Don’t you think about him?’
‘He didn’t die here, thank goodness.’
‘No,’ Alice acknowledged.
‘No, poor old Luke.’ In spite of what she had said, Alice was following Cassie through the front door and up the straight wooden stairs, polished and pale, which led to the floor where she lived.
Over her shoulder, Cassie said, ‘Do you mean that? Poor Luke?’
‘Of course, why?’
‘Just asking.’
They were facing each other at the head of the stairs. To the left was the big living room and beyond it the kitchen; to the right, the entrance to the great room where the wedding reception had been held. Ghosts ought to walk there, Alice thought suddenly.
‘What is this?’ Alice’s voice had suddenly gone hard; the woman who had created her own business in a tough world was showing. ‘What are we really talking about?’
‘Blackmail … Luke was blackmailing me, and I have a pretty good idea that he was also blackmailing you.’
The second accusation of the day had been brought out and laid on the table.
Edwina, left alone at last, was accusing herself. She had attacked her two closest friends, practically accusing them of … Of what? Of being a party to the process of persecution being inflicted upon her? That must be rubbish. She trusted them.
After Lily’s flat, her own place seemed overful of carefully chosen, beautiful objects. Too careful. She looked round it with a critical eye. She should have a clear-out. It was not the sort of home in which to bring up a child.
At the thought of the child, her lips and throat went dry. The doctor and nurse at the clinic had been reassuring and kind, but in that manner which convinces you that something is wrong. Perhaps not badly wrong, she couldn’t be sure, but wrong.
The trouble was, she had lost confidence in herself and in almost everyone else as well. It was almost like a disease. Perhaps it was a disease, a sickness from the unborn striking outwards to her.
As a matter of fact, she would not let that happen. Of one thing she was sure: she would bring this enterprise through to a good conclusion. She would survive, the child would survive.
Irrationally anxious, even terrified as she was, she was convinced of this. She was two persons in one and somehow she would drag them both through.
But it might be a struggle.
If the child grew. She looked at herself in the looking glass on the wall; she seemed to be expanding but the child not. Perhaps she would eventually give birth to a fish-sized infant.
But even tiny children, ounces in size, survived now in special units. She did not feel tender to the child, simply determined; feeling would come later. She might get to love it, but at the moment she was simply concerned to bring it to life.
Life and death were hanging around her at the moment. She felt like a beast of burden; a donkey, say, with panniers on either side, and in one basket was death and in the other life. She was carrying both.
Or, if you looked at it a different way, geometrically placed all the dead people in space, marked each spot with an X, and then drew lines to join them, where they crossed was where Edwina stood.
She was a mark on all three death-lines. They might be joined nowhere else, but they joined at her.
The telephone rang, she ignored it. That was rule one in her life at the moment: only do what you really wish to do.
She carried the coffee tray back into the kitchen over which several weeks’ dust and disorder seemed to have settled in a short absence. This was not to her fastidious taste and she set about cleaning it. Last night, after arriving back and almost simultaneously hearing the news about Miss Dover and her neighbour downstairs, she had been too tired and dejected even to unpack.
Then today had been the antenatal clinic. You went in there early and emerged exhausted and late, that was her experience, and today had been no exception. She had no real appointment and had been ‘slotted in’ (that this had been done without protest was a mark of the doctor’s disquiet about her, she judged) but it had meant more hanging about than usual.
When she got back she had telephoned Dougie, Cassie and Alice in that order. The evening’s visit had been the result. Dougie she would see tomorrow.
The telephone did not ring again while she cleaned so she felt triumphant. Silenced that, she thought.
Tomorrow Dougie, and then he had to be faced: Kit. By now, he probably knew she was home. There was, although neither of them would admit to it, a flow of communication b
etween him and Dougie where she was concerned. She knew it, but had never been able to prove it. Just one of those masculine secrets hard to lay hands on. It could have been Kit who had just telephoned.
She went into her bedroom to finish her unpacking.
Edwina’s bedroom had been furnished by her with pieces from her old home, as one of her economies at a time when all her money was going into the gallery. So her problem was how to live with a selection of white-painted and cane furniture she had chosen when she was twelve. Her solution, now some years old, had been to paint abstract designs on the plain panels; these she now regretted, her taste had moved on, and she fancied something more figurative when she had time.
She moved around the room, her mood having taken one of those rapid switches she was getting accustomed to, so that she felt almost cheerful. In a little while she might be happy again.
A flutter of silk over one arm, she opened the drawer set aside for nightgowns. Edwina, product of a stern Scottish nanny, kept an orderly house. Her drawers and cupboards were pleasant to see, a neat harmony of colour and shape.
But today something was wrong. The drawer was stirred up.
Edwina closed it quietly, then went round her room. Now she looked carefully, she could see a lot wrong. All her clothes and small possessions had been touched.
‘I’ve been turned over; I’ve been done.’
But she knew she was wrong even as she hurried round the other, untouched rooms. She had not been burgled. Entered, invaded, yes, but not robbed.
Only her bedroom appeared to have been touched. Inside it all her clothes had been fingered, her make-up opened and inspected by unknown eyes, and a pearl necklace dipped in her own scent. Or it smelt like it.
She held it to her nose as her stomach gave a heave. She closed her eyes while it steadied, hanging on to the cool marble top of the dressing table.
She had had a spoiler in the place; she felt ashamed, dirty.
‘Cassie? Are you awake?’ Edwina kept her voice cool.
‘Of course. I’m working.’ Not quite true. She was pacing up and down, thinking, arguing with herself. She had confessed to Alice some of the truth about Luke’s reason for blackmailing her, but hung on to the crucial information. She imagined Alice had taken the same precaution: she’d have been a fool not to. There had, at any rate, been an interesting vagueness about both mutual confessions.
Death in the Garden Page 14