by David Abbott
“It just didn’t seem right,” she had said to a laughing Henry.
12
That morning Jack had entered his café without opening the door. The glass panel had been smashed in during the night and Jack had charged through the gap as though the thief might still be there, his shoulders brushing glass from the door frame. The till had been lifted from the counter and thrown onto the floor and now lay on its side, the cash drawer open and empty. The glass he could get fixed for a couple of hundred dollars, but the till was a nuisance. And all for thirty bucks, the small float he left in the till each night for the following day.
“Jesus, the jerk didn’t even know how to open a till—you push a button, not chuck the bloody thing on the floor.”
“Even thieves aren’t what they used to be.”
There were four of them sitting round the table, Jack, Hector, Will, and Aldo. They met twice a week at 8:30 for a coffee and bagel before playing tennis. The break-in had ignited their morning. Like the loss of the ficus trees, the theft would become part of their folklore, one of those running stories, easily accessed.
“Need any change for the float, Jack?”
They were men with time to be amiable. They liked to laugh and had been around long enough to know that there are worse things in life than a till on the floor with its tongue out.
When Nessa came for lunch, Arlene was theatrically skirting around the two men from BEN’S 2-HOUR GLASS (“If it’s broke, we give you a break”). She held the plates high and stepped over their tool bags.
“If I fall, it’s gonna cost Ben plenty.”
One of the men was from Argentina—dark and good-looking with teeth from a Colgate ad.
“You fall, I catch you.”
Arlene laughed and hoped he had not noticed the bruises on her left thigh. What on earth had made her wear shorts today? On the other hand, maybe the bruises would give him ideas. She realized she would like him to have ideas.
Jack had made two chicken salad sandwiches on rye and had sat down to lunch with Nessa.
“You look tired.”
“It’s not tiredness, Jack, it’s cancer.”
She picked up her sandwich and smiled at him.
“I slept ten hours last night.”
He knew from her smile that his fussing had been forgiven. She was not always so lenient. She had dumped without explanation those friends who had displayed too openly their sympathy. “I can’t be doing with the soft voices and dewy eyes,” she had said. “It scares the shit out of me.”
Jack understood her feelings but found it hard not to show his concern. Back in the fifties, his father had died of cancer.
In those days cancer had been a voodoo disease. In his father’s case, diagnosis to death had taken eleven months and not once in that time did Jack or his mother utter the dreaded “C-word.” Indeed, the doctor had advised Jack’s mother not to tell her husband that he had cancer. It was felt that it would not be good for his morale. Aged nineteen, Jack had been drawn unwillingly into the conspiracy.
Towards the end, when his father weighed less than seventy pounds and they had to give him the morphine by mouth because there was not enough flesh on his body for injections, his mother’s concern for her husband’s morale had struck Jack as ever so slightly irrelevant.
His father had died with his eyes open. Jack had been in the room with him—on the night watch, but asleep in an armchair. Something had woken him. He liked to think it had been filial instinct, but it was more likely the dawn light filtering through the cheap, unlined curtains. No matter, he had missed the final moment. Perhaps only by seconds, for the spittle on his father’s chin was still glistening with air bubbles.
He had wiped it off with the edge of the sheet and closed his father’s eyes. Only then did he call his mother.
“Thank God. He slipped away peacefully in his sleep.”
“Yes,” he had said. One more lie did not seem to matter.
Nessa’s voice broke through his thoughts.
“I have to go—see you tomorrow.”
“Sure, look after yourself. Is it okay to say that—not too concerned?”
“Bye, Jack.”
Back at the house, Nessa put on a jacket and went out to the beach. She headed north, into a steady wind that slowed her pace. Usually she walked up to the Four Seasons before turning back, but today she had to settle for the Ritz-Carlton, dropping down thankfully onto one of the sunbeds lined up on the sand. Strictly speaking, they were for hotel guests, but the beach boys knew her and looked the other way. She could measure her growing weakness by this daily exercise. She had gone from jogging to power walking to walking—and now it seemed she was to become a stroller. How long before she was a shuffler? She closed her eyes and tried to think of happier times. As was happening more and more, she thought of Henry.
On the way to the airport, a crow had swooped low in front of the taxi and had been hit—the muffled thud like a door closing in a distant part of a house. Another day she might have thought it an omen, but not that day. She and Henry were on their way to New York for a delayed honeymoon—five whole days away from the office. They had stayed in a small hotel on 63rd Street between Madison and Park. The elevators had iron gates and the attendants were elderly men with white gloves. They always remembered your names: “Mr. and Mrs. Cage—11th floor. Good night, now.” She said it was like being in a Frank Capra movie.
Nessa had promised to show Henry her hometown but on their first full day it had been he who had set the agenda.
“How about lunch, a film, and then dinner, but shopping first,” he had suggested.
“I don’t need anything,” she had said.
“What’s that got to do with shopping?”
They had walked up Madison Avenue looking in all the shop windows and by some happy chance, some unconscious harmony, not once in twenty blocks did they have to wait for the traffic lights at an intersection. On subsequent trips she saw how aware he was of the lights, varying his pace to avoid the short delay at the curb, impatient, harried. For him DON’T WALK meant START RUNNING. But on that day, the gods were with them. They crisscrossed the street—from bookshop to bookshop—over to the Frick, then back for the Whitney. The spring weather had beguiled the city. For once, New Yorkers were taking it easy, hustlers turned boulevardiers. As they passed the Carlyle, she knew that on this particular day, the tables would be full for afternoon tea.
She must have fallen asleep for when she opened her eyes the sun was low in the sky and the beach was in shade. It felt chilly. A small yellow airplane flew by at the water’s edge, trailing a banner advertising a bar in Delray Beach. She walked home, the wind now at her back. Inside the house, she went straight to the fridge. It was 6:00. In the bar at Delray Beach they would just be kicking off their happy hour. She poured vodka into a kitchen tumbler, pleased to know that she was not drinking alone.
13
Detective Sergeant Cummings had rung just before 8:00.
“Ah, glad to catch you before you go out. I presume, since we haven’t heard from you, that things have settled down. No more trouble?”
Henry immediately thought of the three Polaroids tucked between the pages of The Collected Poems of James Laughlin—a volume he had judged unlikely to interest the browsing instincts of Mrs. Abraham.
“No, nothing, I’m pleased to say.” His hesitation had been imperceptible; or so he had thought.
“You’re sure, are you, sir?”
“Why—do you think he’ll come back?”
There was a long pause before the policeman answered. Down the line Henry could hear the scratch of a match.
“That’s the second time you’ve made that assumption, Mr. Cage. Well, let’s say that you’re right and it is a man—though I don’t know what the evidence for that is—but let’s say it is a man, then I wonder what’s made him stop. You haven’t paid him off, have you, sir?”
The question was asked with a chuckle and Henry took the cue a
nd let it hang there, unanswered.
“You see, Mr. Cage—this is what worries me; there’s someone out there with a bee in their bonnet about you. They wish you harm, sir. One way or the other. I wouldn’t want you not to take it seriously.”
“I’ll call you if anything happens.” Henry recognized the routine insincerity of his response. “I promise, I really do.”
It was too late. In mid-sentence, the detective had put down the phone.
Walking to the brasserie, Henry had felt uneasy about their conversation; not about its conclusion, but about its timing. Why had Cummings rung so early? And what was it that he had said? “Glad to catch you before you go out.” It was as though he had known Henry’s timetable, the precise moment that he left for breakfast. Henry pushed the thought away. He was being paranoid; the remark had no special significance; it was what anyone might have said at the beginning of a working day. He quickened his step, eager to see Maude.
A week had passed since their first encounter and he had begun to look forward to their conversations. She had still not told him why she had left Henry Cage & Partners, but yesterday she had said in reply to his repeated inquiry, “I’m not working this Sunday—buy me lunch and I’ll tell you.”
When he got to the brasserie, the nonsmoking section was full. He had to sit among the puffers and coughers in the back room. He was irritated that Maude would not be serving him. He had hoped to talk to her about Sunday lunch. She had seen him and indicated that she would come over later. He ordered his usual decaffeinated black coffee and plain croissant (no butter, no jam) and opened his book.
On Sunday he dressed carefully, several times. He was increasingly disheartened by the images thrown back by the wardrobe mirror. In a sports jacket and tie he felt stuffy and saw himself sitting across from Maude like an uncle up from the country. In a suit, he was her bank manager. He took off his tie and opened the top button of his shirt. It was more casual, but when he lowered his chin a vertical fold of skin appeared. His head seemed to be perched on the neck of a turkey. Finally, he settled for a polo-necked sweater and a pair of cords. What did it matter? It wasn’t exactly a date. Or was it?
He had arranged to meet her at the restaurant, a small Italian place where they knew him well. She had declined his offer to pick her up at her flat.
“Believe me, you don’t want to see me on Sunday mornings until you have to. I’ll be at the restaurant at 1:30.”
Henry arrived early to make sure they had given him the table he wanted. It was at the rear of the room by two windows that overlooked a courtyard garden. He asked the waiter to change one of the place settings so that when Maude arrived they would both be looking into the room. He was never comfortable with his back to the action and avoided restaurants that could not offer him a round table and reasonable privacy. He opened his book. He was rereading A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor, a particularly English love story, he had always thought, and one of the best. He looked at his watch—good, he had fifteen minutes before she was due.
And that was how Maude saw him from the door. Head bowed, deep in his book. She noticed the long arch of his back, his shoulders frail without a jacket. It was the first time she had really looked at him.
“Hello, I see you’ve brought some insurance against a boring lunch.”
He stood up and held her chair.
“It was only insurance against a boring wait.”
When the menus came, Maude was decisive: gnocchi to start with, followed by lamb. She accepted with enthusiasm the offer of potatoes and spinach. Henry was amused. For years at business lunches he had sat opposite ladies who had ordered grilled vegetables with monkfish—and an espresso, thank you.
“You remind me of my ex-wife,” he said.
“Is that good?”
“She loved gnocchi—all Italian food.”
“Did she like it here?”
Henry realized that he had been tactless.
“No, this place wasn’t here when we were together.”
He was back in the lift again, metaphorically staring at his shoes, unable to think of anything else to say. He had steered the conversation into a cul-de-sac.
They were rescued by the arrival of a platter of carta da musica—crisp, paper-thin sheets of unleavened bread, seasoned with rosemary and olive oil.
“This is special. The chef is from Sardinia and … well, you’ll see … it’s completely addictive.”
The awkwardness passed and over the next two hours they began the age-old journey from attraction to involvement. It is always a passage fueled by confession. He talked of Nessa and the divorce, she of the man with the socks.
When it was time to go she invited him back to her flat. Inside the building she had kissed him—encouragement, she said, to climb the five floors to the attic. Once there, she led him by the hand into her bedroom. He was breathless from the stairs and hesitated at the door. She sat on the bed and lifted her shirt over her head. He gave an involuntary gasp. Her skin was olive and her breasts extraordinarily beautiful, unexpectedly full—the nipples ringed with bold circles the color of milk chocolate. Later, he believed he had tasted vanilla in the creases of her body.
14
It felt good to be driving with her beside him.
For Henry, true intimacy in a car had always taken place in the front seats, not the back. He did not mean the head in lap kind of thing, though in his teens he had not been a complete stranger to that. No, the romance had been in the simple act of driving with a woman next to him. There was the obvious togetherness, the common destination, and the pleasure in a shared landscape. He particularly liked driving at night, when the glow from the dashboard mimicked the lighting in 1940s black-and-white movies. At night, all his companions had been beautiful.
But best of all had been the talk. He and Nessa had always had their truest conversations on long drives. In a car you are side by side, not looking directly at each other, warily watching for the minute tics and involuntary gestures that belie the spoken words. The Catholic Church, with its curtained confessional, had always known that face-to-face is no way to learn the truth. Analysts have us lying on a couch, none of that nonsense about looking each other in the eye.
He glanced at Maude’s knees—less distracting now that she had a road map resting on them. At Mildenhall, he had taken a wrong exit at the roundabout and she, realizing his mistake, had found a left turn that would get them back on course. In this manner they had discovered one of the most beautiful roads in England, the kind of road that immediately knocks fifteen miles per hour off a driver’s speed, for no traveler wants to leave it too quickly.
A lesson for our road planners, Henry had thought, composing in his mind a new letter to the Times. Perhaps trees and landscaping can achieve through beauty what speed guns and cameras have failed to do by threat.
The neatness of his argument was undermined by the niggling suspicion that speed cameras might have been effective. Never mind, he could rework the argument to make the point that the advantage of beauty as a deterrent is that it causes pleasure, not a resentment of the forces of law and order. Yes, there was something in that. He would think about it back in London.
He had slowed the car to twenty miles per hour and opened the sunroof. There was no traffic, most drivers preferring the signposted route to Brandon that takes them past the American Air Force base at Lakenheath, with its screaming jets and scruffy golf course.
This slower, alternate route undulates through the edge of the Thetford Forest and seems like a throwback to the fifties, literally, a memory lane. Initially, the forest keeps its distance, recent felling opening up vistas on either side of the two-lane road. After a mile or so, the trees advance—first, strands of Scots pine and birch and then the full canopy of the forest itself arching over the road. Even in mid-April, the architecture of the overhanging trees was thrilling and Maude had temporarily put aside her misgivings about the trip. At first, she had refused to come.
&nb
sp; “Henry, it’s an awful thing to do. You haven’t seen Tom in years and then you turn up with some bimbo girlfriend.”
“You’re not a bimbo.”
“That’s what he’ll think.”
“It will be less awkward if someone else is there—less chance of recrimination. He can’t be angry in front of strangers.”
“You’re wrong. It will be a disaster.”
In Swaffham he pulled into the market square and rang Tom as requested—some culinary timekeeping demanded notice of his whereabouts. Henry had been mostly silent during the call and Maude had grown uneasy.
“All right, I’ll see you in about forty minutes.” He put the phone down and turned to look at her.
“I need some air.”
He did not move to open the door as she expected, but lowered his forehead onto the rim of the steering wheel.
“Henry, what’s happened?”
He looked up.
“It seems I have a grandson.”
She did not answer.
“They have a child. A boy. His name is Hal and he’s almost four years old, for pity’s sake. Four years … and I didn’t even know he existed.”
He opened the glove box, looking for tissues.
Maude sat motionless in her seat, wanting to comfort him, but at the same time repelled by his distress. It made her feel uncomfortable. She noticed the softening line of his jaw, the tears on his cheek. What on earth was she doing here?
“I’m so sorry, Henry.”
The road map was still on her lap.