Plender

by Ted Lewis

  “Thank you,” she said. “I would.”

  I buzzed for fresh coffee.

  “What a marvellous view,” she said.

  I turned round and walked over to the window.

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s almost worth the rent.”

  “You can see for miles,” she said. “Look at the curve of the river. Isn’t that Grimsby I can see?”

  She lifted her dark glasses from her face and I saw the faint blue of a bruise below her right eye.

  “Yes,” I said. “Nearly twenty-five miles away. And the other way, over on the right, you can see Brumby, where Peter and I used to live.”

  “Oh yes,” she said.

  “Do you see the church tower?”

  “The church tower. I can’t . . . yes, there it is.”

  “If you look a little to the left, you’ll see a couple of big fields. Can you make them out?”

  “Yes, I can see them.”

  “Can you see a building just above them, standing on its own?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s where Peter and I went to school.”

  My secretary came in with the coffee and put it down on the low table by Kate Knott’s chair.

  I poured her coffee out and got my cup from off my desk and filled it up and sat down opposite Knott’s wife.

  “Well,” I said. “I’m glad you dropped in.”

  “I nearly didn’t,” she said. “I thought you might be too busy. I really ought to have phoned first.”

  “No need,” I said. “Except for one appointment I’m free all day.”

  I sat back and sipped my coffee.

  “Actually,” she said, “the real reason I came straight round without phoning first was because if I’d phoned, I probably wouldn’t have followed it through.”

  “How do you mean?”

  She looked out of the window.

  “I mean that between phoning and actually making my way here I might have lost my courage.”

  “Courage?” I said. “I’m that frightening, am I?”

  She shook her head, allowing a small smile to break on her mouth.

  “No,” she said. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “Well, then I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t expect you to,” she said. “How can you when I haven’t even told you why I’m here.”

  I took out my cigarettes and offered her one but she didn’t accept. I lit up and blew smoke out and watched her.

  “I’m putting you in an awful position by coming here,” she said.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I mean, the fact that you’re a friend of Peter’s, I shouldn’t have come to you.”

  She picked up her coffee cup and began to turn it round in her hands.

  “But you see,” she said, “last night . . . you did say . . . if ever I needed help . . ..”

  The tears came and she put her cup down and gathered her handbag to her and began to search for a handkerchief.

  “And I meant it,” I said. “I thought you realised that.”

  “I did . . . I mean, I do, but it’s difficult for me, you must realise that. I never meant to do anything like this. It’s just that I don’t know what to do. I’ve got to a point I never thought I’d reach.”

  She found her handkerchief and took off her dark glasses and dabbed at her eyes. I looked at the bruise on her face and she saw me looking and so I said,

  “That happen last night?”

  She nodded.

  “So you told him I called, then?”

  “No,” she said. “I kept my promise. This was something else.”

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “I don’t really . . . I mean even now I can’t understand what made him do it. I mean I can’t see what I said that was bad enough or unusual enough to make him so furious.”

  She was talking almost as though I wasn’t there. She even put the dark glasses back on, as if I hadn’t seen what she’d been trying to hide.

  “We had a row, yes. What I mean is, he got in late, and he looked terrible, as though something awful had happened, and I asked where he’d been, what had happened, and he just wouldn’t speak. He knows I suspect him of having an affair, I’ve told him I do, but he just behaves as though I must be mad to suspect him, as though he’s been behaving normally. Anyway, after he’d been in for a while, the phone rang and he jumped up to answer it; it was so obvious that he didn’t want me to get to it first, so I screamed at him while he was holding the phone. I shouted at him to tell me who it was that was calling. And then he put the phone down and walked over to me and hit me. Not just on the face. All over. Punching. He kept punching me until I fell over. Then he went into the bedroom with a bottle of Scotch and locked the door behind him.”

  “Did he come out again?”

  “He must have. I mean, he was gone this morning. He went to the studio. I phoned there, just to make sure. Although I didn’t talk to him.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “But the point is,” she said, “last night was no different to a dozen other nights. I mean, the kind of row it was. But there was something really wrong last night. He was like a madman. But then for a week or more he’s not been himself.”

  “And you’re convinced he’s having an affair, and it’s this affair that’s making him act this way.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I thought you said you were certain.”

  “I am. I mean I was. But now I don’t know. Why should an affair affect him this way? I’ve known him to be unfaithful before, and I know Peter. This is different.”

  There was a silence.

  “And you want me to find out how different,” I said.

  She didn’t answer at first. Then she shook her head.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not sure that I want to know.”

  “Supposing you did know. Supposing you found out what was going on. What would you do?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said.

  Another silence elapsed.

  “Because you see,” I said, “being a friend of Peter, as you point out, if I were to find out, then . . ..”

  “Yes,” she said.

  I put out my cigarette in the ashtray and lit another one. I pretended to think about things for a while.

  “On the other hand,” I said, “the way you’ve described Peter’s behaviour, it hardly seems as though just an affair alone would make him . . . I mean, there could be something else. Something he can’t tell you. A business problem, something financial . . .”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “If it was something like that,” I said, “then perhaps I could help. If it was worse, more personal, more likely to affect your relationship with one another, well, I’d really rather not be the one to provide the ammunition.”

  “I understand,” she said.

  “At the same time,” I said, “if I found that he wasn’t having an affair, if it was something other than that, then perhaps that would help matters . . . It’s tricky.”

  She stood up.

  “I know,” she said. “I shouldn’t have come. It was wrong of me.”

  I stood up too.

  “No,” I said, “you were right. I meant what I said last night. I’m glad you came.”

  She looked down at the floor.

  “It was just . . . just . . .”

  I reached out and took her hand. Then the tears came again and she let her shoulders fall forward and then I was holding her and her head was resting on my chest.

  “I just wanted to know,” she said. I felt the dampness of her face on my shirt. “One way or the other. It’s just that I’m so unhappy.”

 
The scent of her hair was warm and soft below my face.

  I smiled to myself. Then I said, “Look, don’t worry. I’ll help you, Sus . . .”

  I stopped just in time, although I knew she hadn’t noticed I’d almost called her Susan.

  “Just leave it for a day or two,” I said. “Don’t do anything. I’ll see if I can help. Just leave it with me.”

  She lifted her head and put a hand to her face and took off her glasses so that she could dry her eyes. The movement caused me to drop my arms so that I was no longer holding her, so that she was no longer leaning against me.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “Just leave it with me.”

  KNOTT

  I had to phone Kate. I had to try and make some kind of apology for what I’d done last night or at least the beginnings of an apology. I couldn’t let things continue so badly between us. The worse things got, the more likely it was that I’d lose control and do something foolish, something irreversible. Like what I’d done the night before. God what a bloody fool I’d been to do that. But I hadn’t been able to help it. What had happened . . . that thing . . . touching me, almost close enough to . . .

  I closed my eyes and tried to black out the picture of Camille’s face. And when I’d managed to do that my thoughts flew somewhere equally unbearable—the big photograph of Eileen that had been on the front page of the morning paper under the caption of HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? It had been taken from a holiday snap, enlarged and retouched. Her hair had been different then, and the bright summer sunshine had washed away the sharpness of her features which the retoucher had tried to redefine, and those factors combined with the grain of the blow up to make the picture hardly anything like her. But in death her features had altered too, mixing up like and unlike, and that was what the picture reminded me of, the alteration that her death had caused, the way she’d changed in front of my eyes, the way she was Eileen and not Eileen; the picture was grotesque enough to have been taken in death.

  I looked at my watch. It was nearly ten thirty. Dave was leaning against the edge of my desk, looking at the handbag transparencies.

  “Well, there you are,” he said, turning slightly and dropping the transparencies on my desk. “If you’re turned on by well photographed handbags, then those handbag photographs will turn you on, even if I do say so myself.”

  I picked up the transparencies and put them on the light box and snapped on the switch. It was nearly time for Dave to go out and get the buns while my receptionist made the coffee. I wanted Angela to go for the buns and for Dave to make the coffee because I wanted to talk to Kate without any fear of Angela listening in.

  So I said to Dave, “This group will have to be reshot.”

  Dave slid off the edge of the table.

  “Which group?”

  “This one.” I handed him the relevant shots. This batch with the phony alligator skin.”

  Dave held them up to the light.

  “What’s up with them?” he said. “They’re bloody marvellous, man.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “The texture doesn’t stand out enough. Could be anything.”

  “Stands out a treat,” Dave said.

  “Well as you work for me and not, as yet, vice versa, then I’d appreciate it if you’d get on with it. Starting now.”

  “I was going out for the buns.”

  “Yes, well we’re in a hurry so tell Angela to go and get them and you can be setting up while you’re waiting for the kettle to boil. And tell her to leave me a line open on my phone before she goes.”

  Dave went towards the door, looking at the transparencies as he went.

  “Bloody hell,” he said, closing the door behind him.

  A minute later Angela rang through and told me she had my line for me. I gave her a few minutes to get out of reception then I dialed home.

  There was no reply. I dialed twice more. Still no reply. She must be out shopping. Or visiting, having coffee with one of her friends. But then I realised that Kate wouldn’t be able to do that, not after what I’d done to her the night before. Or just get in the car and go shopping either. I knew Kate too well to have let myself think that. Then where was she?

  Perhaps last night had been too much. The final straw. Once before, a year ago, she’d walked out, threatening to leave, and she’d got as far as the gates to her father’s drive before turning round and coming back home. But then I hadn’t done anything as bad to her as I’d done last night.

  She couldn’t have left. Not now. If she’d only stay with me now, forgive last night, see this time out with me, then I’d be able to bear it. But to be on my own, now, would be unthinkable. The madness would spread through me and then there was no telling what would happen. Who else could I turn to?

  Only Plender.

  I dialed the number again.

  PLENDER

  “But you told me I only had to take him there,” said Knott. “You said nothing about anything else.”

  “I know I didn’t, mate,” I said. “I know. It was sprung on me at the last minute. I just didn’t think you’d mind helping out, that’s all.”

  “I told you the situation on the phone,” he said. “About my wife, I mean.”

  “Oh, sure,” I said, “but I didn’t think old Peter Knott’d have any trouble pulling the wool over the old lady’s eyes.”

  “You promised,” he said.

  “Yes, well, situations change, don’t they?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “And I must say,” I said. “You put me in a bit of a spot. Our Mr. Reed was most irate. Mind you, when the pros and cons of the situation had been made perfectly clear, he was rather reasonable about things, but nevertheless, it wasn’t the way I’d hoped that things would turn out.”

  “It was that . . . it was Camille.”

  I laughed.

  “Give you a fright, did she?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “You need another drink,” I said.

  I got up and went to the bar and ordered two more drinks and took them back to the table. I pushed his drink across to him and took a drink of mine and sat back and watched him. Eventually he reached for his glass and while he was drinking I said, “What’s it like round your way?”

  He stared at me.

  “What’s it like?” I said. “I mean socially. Much social life, is there?”

  “Some,” he said, still staring.

  “What sort of thing? Parties? Dinner parties? Get togethers?”

  He nodded, slowly.

  “So you know one or two people around Corella Way and its environs, do you?”

  He kept nodding his head, wondering what was coming next.

  “Know a bloke called Froy, do you?”

  He shook his head.

  “Lives near you,” I said. “Well, when I say near, in your area.”

  “Why?” he said.

  “I wanted to know something about him and I wondered whether you knew him.”

  He kept on looking at me.

  “Funnily enough, he uses the Ferry Boat from time to time.”

  He began to shake his head again, the movement accelerating until it looked as if he was having a spasm. Abruptly, the movement stopped.

  “No,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “Whatever you want me to do.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I can’t do anymore,” he said. “I can’t. You don’t know what’s happening to me.”

  “Listen,” he said. “Just listen. I know what you’ve done. But I didn’t ask you to do it. You may have done it for the best, but . . .”

  “But what? Maybe I should have just let you get on with it yourself. And if I had you can bet yo
ur life that you wouldn’t be sitting here discussing the finer points of whys and wherefores if I’d done just that.”

  He looked down at the table.

  “I’m beginning to think I made a bit of a mistake,” I said. “It’s starting to look as though I should have let you get on with it. I mean, what am I getting out of it? Not even a thank you, and that’s for sure.”

  I finished my drink and stood up. Knott jerked his head back and stared into my face.

  “Where are you going?” he said.

  “Somewhere other than here,” I said. “Somewhere I may even feel a little bit wanted.”

  I pushed my chair back and began to button up my coat. He stretched his arm out and caught hold of my sleeve.

  “Wait,” he said. “Don’t go.”

  I looked at him.

  “You want me to stay?”

  He nodded. I sat down.

  “What do you want me to do?” he said.

  KNOTT

  I didn’t go back to the studio. Instead I drove into the city centre and parked my car in the car park of the first cinema I came to and went inside. It must have been the big film that was showing when I went in, but it wouldn’t have mattered if there had been nothing in front of me but a blank white screen. I just wanted a black womb to sit inside, a soft darkness that demanded nothing from me, an auditorium big enough in which to free my thoughts without sending back any echoes. As it was I stared at the screen and allowed the meaningless shadows to fill my mind. I sat there for over two hours, letting myself be absorbed into the flatness of the lives that were being projected on to the screen.

  At three o’clock I left the cinema and drove home. The Hillman wasn’t in the garage but I knew that wherever Kate had been all day, she would be picking up the kids from school at approximately this time. The only question was would she be bringing them home?

  I went into the house and looked to see if any of Kate’s and the kids’ things were missing, but as far as I could tell everything seemed to be there, and none of the suitcases had been taken.

  I went into the lounge and poured a drink and waited. Eventually I heard the Hillman turn into the drive, and a little while after the front door burst open and then the kids were rushing into the room and jumping all over me.