Virtue

by Serena Mackesy

  He gets to the top, swings a leg up and over and bounds out of sight. Harriet is passing my room now, working her way methodically down: hand, hand, foot, foot, never a pause.

  When she’s at first-floor level, he reappears on the railing, and he seems to be wearing my black rucksack on his back. And when he swings back out, I see that the rucksack is moving. Not just moving: jumping about angrily on his back, wriggling, thumping outwards against the tightly fixed straps like John Hurt’s chest in Alien, evidently throwing him off balance.

  Henry. Oh my God, I forgot Henry.

  Harriet jumps to earth beside me, looks up, rubbing chafed hands together. ‘Has he got him?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes.’ Thank God he’s got strong arms. The bag is now jumping about like – like what? – like a cat in a sack, of course. They used to sell brilliant wind-up toys called cat in a sack on street corners in Covent Garden a couple of years ago: a sack with a big ginger tail sticking out, that rolled and wriggled just like Henry is doing now. As they pass the two-storey mark, a long yellow leg emerges from beneath the flap at the top of the bag, swats a couple of times with the claw at Mike’s ear. Henry’s furious head follows, and a yowl of pure rage pours down upon us.

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ says Harriet. ‘He’s going to jump.’

  Henry breaks free from his confinement, and it’s only when his hindquarters get loose that he seems to realise that he’s not in a position to be fighting. He looks startled, scrabbles at the air in front of him a couple of times, and then a furry tummy and four straight-as-dowels legs are heading full-plummet for my upturned face.

  I duck. He hits my back with a perceptible doof, knocks me sprawling to the ground, bounces, rolls, leaps to his feet. If ever a cat was glad of nine lives, it’s not Henry right now. He stands on tiptoe, tail like a pine cone, back arched in fear and fury, and shrieks the C-word at us through bared and howling gnashers.

  ‘CAAAANT!’ he howls. And then he shoots off as if his tail’s on fire and disappears into the boat sheds.

  Mike clambers down the last few steps, jumps to the ground and, hand clapped over a torn and bleeding ear, lets off a few expletives of his own. ‘Never, ever again!’ he yells, jabbing a finger at Harriet. ‘Next time your cat wants saving, he can fucking burn!’

  I have to say, he looks magnificent. If you ever want to see what a magnificent man looks like, try finding one who’s swearing his head off after saving the life of your moggy.

  ‘And if you ever, ever try to tell me that there’s nobody after your hide,’ he shouts, ‘I’ll come round and set fire to you myself!’

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Safe House

  There are police everywhere. Police in uniform, police with bomber jackets zipped up to the collar jingling change in their pockets, policewomen conducting by-the-book checks on our need for counselling, police swabbing our fingernails, police taking photographs, police writing laboriously in notebooks, police standing with their arms folded in reflective jackets in front of the gate to attract attention to the fact that there’s been an incident behind it, police milling about going ‘sierra tango bravo F-U Roger?’ into radios, police just generally milling about. Burglars throughout the region must be cracking open the champagne.

  It’s a warm night, but someone following form has produced thermal blankets and insisted on wrapping us in them. Every time one of us tries to shed our covering, someone comes along and hitches it back up over our shoulders. The yard stinks of wet cinders and lock-water. The front door no longer exists apart from a few shards of soggy charcoal and some heat-twisted studs that have dropped, one by one, into the pile of ash on the ground. Behind it, the stairway gapes black and oily; there’s been some puzzlement about the volume of smoke involved until word gets around about the popcorn, the tin of varnish and the bag of moulding resin that were sitting on the stairs. Then the post-facto wisdom of the fire service points out that flammable materials are generally best kept stored where they aren’t going to catch fire. ‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘I don’t think we were expecting someone to pour a can of petrol through the letter box and chuck a burning rag in after it.’

  I’m calm in all this milling about: calm but hacked off because no one will let me back up the stairs until the forensic people have finished their stuff, and until I’ve been upstairs I can’t see what that thick black smoke has done to my belongings. At least my credit card was in the side pocket of the rucksack, magnetic strip facing away from Henry’s offended claws.

  But then something happens to break my calm. Harriet has been the centre of a huddle of men in bomber jackets for the past ten minutes, Mike Gillespie talking solemnly among them, frowning, listening, rejecting. Lost in thoughts of my antique chenille bedcover and the vulnerable brocade on the curtains, it’s only when Mike breaks away and approaches me that I even notice, really.

  And when he gets to me, he says, ‘We’re taking Harriet to a place of safety. Everyone thinks it’s for the best.’

  ‘Okay,’ I reply, and make to follow him, but he says, ‘I’m sorry. It’s just Harriet.’

  And all in a rush, I’m in a panic. It’s like someone’s thrown a bucket of freezing water over me. ‘You can’t be serious.’

  He shrugs. ‘I’m sorry. My superiors are under the impression that she’s the one who’s at risk, and they want to get her out of here as soon as possible.’

  No. You’re kidding. What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do without Harriet? Christ. ‘And I can’t come with her?’ I ask feebly, because suddenly my voice has gone weak, like my knees.

  ‘No. I’m sorry. It’s just her.’

  Harriet is arguing with one of the bomber jackets, shaking her head vigorously and pointing at me as he gestures to squad car parked on the other side of the lock. He tries to take her arm and she shakes it off with the irritation of someone brushing away a bothersome insect, and then she actually stamps her foot. Finally, she marches over in our direction, her attendant reluctantly following.

  ‘Anna, I’m sorry,’ she practically shouts when she gets within five paces. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Where are they taking you?’

  ‘They say I’m not allowed to say.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  She throws a poisonous look at bomber jacket, who looks glumly back.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m not allowed to tell anyone.’

  ‘But this is me!’

  ‘Can’t she come too?’ Harriet pleads to bomber jacket, but he simply shakes his head. ‘Why can’t she come? What’s she supposed to do?’

  Bomber jacket addresses me. I don’t like him. He has a big moustache and little beady eyes like a chipmunk. ‘I’m afraid that Lady Harriet is our primary concern at the moment. We have to ensure her safety.’

  ‘But why can’t you tell me where you’re taking her?’

  I am assailed by an extraordinary combination of emotions: confusion, fear, anger, frustration, a wish to protect my friend. Harriet and I have never not known what the other one was up to for more than twenty-four hours in ten years. We look after each other. That’s what we’re there for.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he replies. ‘It would hardly be a place of safety if we told everybody where it was, would it?’

  Patronising tosser. ‘Why can’t I come?’

  ‘You can’t.’ Blunt, dismissive. He starts to pull Harriet away by the arm. And that’s when I really panic. I start shouting. Screaming, almost. ‘What are you doing? Where are you taking her? Harriet!’

  And Harriet is dragging back against him, wide, frightened eyes fixed on my face. ‘Anna!’ she shouts. ‘Oh, God, leave me alone! Anna!’

  I turn to Mike, realise that he’s not the one with the power, turn to the man in the bomber jacket, start to plead. It feels as though I’m pleading for my life. ‘But you don’t understand! What am I going to do? I’ve lost everything! Everything! I don’t have anywhere to go! What am I going to do?’

>   ‘I suggest,’ he replies, ‘you check into a hotel for the time being. We’ll let you know when we no longer need you.’

  Oh my God. ‘Do you think I’m part of this? Is that what this is about?’

  He looks at me impassively, says nothing. Won’t even commit himself, the bastard. Just leaves me with the mute accusation.

  Now I’m shouting, ‘You’ve got to be joking! What are you thinking?’ and Harriet is shouting too, ‘What are you on? You can’t be serious! Haven’t you paid any attention at all? She’s had as much happen to her as me, for God’s sake. She’s been here all the time!’

  What the hell am I meant to feel now? I’ve been burgled, beaten, burnt and now I’m guilty? This is too much. This is too bloody much. As he pulls Harriet down the path towards the lock, I can’t stop the rage and the horror from hauling itself out. I clench my fists, close my eyes and let out a scream.

  She breaks away from his hand, runs back up the path, throws herself on me. We cling together, thumping hearts, tears bursting hotly, and she cries, ‘I don’t think it! It’s not me! It’s not me! Anna, it’s not me!’

  Hands prise us apart and Mike Gillespie is holding me round the shoulders while bomber jacket and a uniformed policewoman pull Harriet by the wrists. ‘It won’t be for long,’ she yells. ‘I promise. I’ll be back. I won’t leave you!’ and I’m sobbing without let, choking on my anger and my grief. Harriet is helped into the back seat of the car, people get in all around her and she’s driven away, her white face staring at me through the back window.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ Mike says quietly. ‘I promise I’ll look after her.’

  But now I don’t care. I’m crying for myself now. ‘Fuck you,’ I sob at him. ‘Just damn you to hell, you fucker. Screw you into the fucking ground. What about me? What am I going to do? I don’t have anything.’

  He lets me go, comes round to face me and takes my arms. Dips down to look into my face. ‘You’ll be okay. You’ll be fine. Don’t lose it now, Anna. You’ll be okay. I’ll take you to a hotel and get you sorted out, and you’ll be okay.’

  ‘I don’t want you. I don’t want you. You think I—’

  ‘No,’ he says firmly. ‘No I don’t. I’ve seen you and I know you and I believe that you don’t have anything to do with this. They just have to play it safe, Anna. Calm down. It will be okay.’

  ‘Don’t tell me to calm down. You total, total bastard. You’ve done this on purpose, you bastard.’

  And he just takes it, lets me cuss him out and scream invective. And when I start to slow, he puts a kind arm round my shoulders and I let him lead me through the gates to his car, which is still parked beneath the intercom, and buckle my seatbelt obediently when he tells me. An officer in a luminous jerkin looks at me curiously through the windscreen. Oh, look. There goes the suspect. I make a face and he waves us off.

  Mike says, ‘You’ll be fine for tonight. What are you going to do after that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I can’t go home, can I?’

  He shakes his head. ‘That’s going to be out of action for a while. And to be honest, I’m not sure how safe you’d be there anyway. Is there anywhere else you can go? Maybe you should get out of London for a bit.’

  ‘I’m wanted for questioning,’ I say sulkily.

  He makes a sort of pffft noise. ‘Don’t be dramatic. I’ll sort that out. But I think it might do you good, if nothing else. Is there anywhere you can go?’

  In my pocket, my phone beeps. I get it out, look miserably at it. There’s a little envelope in the top left-hand corner. I pull up the text menu. Harriet mob it says. The message is short, left in a hurry.

  I am ok pls b ok 2.

  ‘So is there anywhere you could go?’ Mike asks again.

  I sigh, stare through the windscreen at the passing street lights. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, I think there’s somewhere.’

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  SunnyView

  I’ve been in Poole four days when Carolyn and I finally have The Talk. For four days she leaves me pretty well alone, finds a bowl for Henry, who I found sulking by the boarded-up front door when I went back to look for him and put in a cardboard box, and took him, complaining loudly, first into a taxi, then onto the tube and then onto a train at Waterloo, as Mike instructed me, so that no one could trail us by the car number-plate.

  The British holiday season has already virtually finished its short flowering, so we get the front bedroom at Sunny-View, the B&B she semi-retired to when it became evident that only hubris had justified her wage packet from my family in the previous ten years.

  SunnyView is on the edge of the shallow, muddy part of Poole Harbour, a thirties-built villa with swirly carpets, frilled curtains, and a lean-to sun lounge running the length of the sea-facing wall. Every available surface is covered with pink and white china knick-knacks, all of which seem to have a function that belies their decorative appearance: vases shaped like boots, clocks shaped like milkmaids, pen holders shaped like tulips, letter-openers shaped like fish, ring trees shaped like grasping hands, nail-brushes shaped like Scottie dogs. Whenever I’ve been here, I’ve always found it hard to believe that Carolyn could ever have shared a life with my spartan forebears. Where did she keep all this stuff in the old days? In a suitcase under her bed? In a lock-up garage surreptitiously visited in the wee small hours? Or is it a reaction to all those years of function and restraint, a late flowering like the reds and purples and lush velvets that characterise my bedroom?

  We’re in the sun lounge on a Thursday afternoon when she finally brings up the subject of my mother. I’ve told her about the stuff that’s been happening to Harriet and me, and she’s tutted sympathetically and shown no sign of nervousness. Henry, much recovered apart from a tendency to talk loudly and persistently at inopportune moments, has found a sunny spot on a pink and blue rag rug that probably came from a Women’s Institute bring and buy, and is basking with all four feet up in the air and a ridiculous smile of self-satisfaction on his face. And Carolyn says, ‘So have you spoken to your mother?’

  ‘No,’ I reply, rather hoping that this will be the last of it but knowing that it won’t be. ‘The last I saw of her was projected on a back wall at the Brit Awards. Looking as sour as limes, as usual.’

  Carolyn, who seems to have taken up knitting in her dotage as well as alarming quantities of shocking-pink lipstick, clickety-clacks a couple of times, casts off or something that requires her to stick her tongue out of the corner of her mouth and frown, then says, ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why? Have you?’ I ask suspiciously.

  ‘Ooh, no, dear,’ says Carolyn. ‘Her assistant sends me a card at Christmas. That’s about it with me and Grace these days.’

  ‘Well, then,’ I say triumphantly.

  ‘Yes.’ Another go with the tongue. ‘But then again, she’s not my mother.’

  ‘I was rather under the impression,’ I inform her huffily, ‘that she wasn’t mine, either.’

  ‘Well, like it or not,’ says Carolyn, ‘she’s all the mother you’re ever going to get. You’ll have to get used to it one day.’

  ‘No I don’t. She was a terrible mother. She was never motherly to me once.’

  Carolyn throws me a small, sympathetic smile. ‘She wasn’t as bad as all that,’ she says. ‘You’ve got to remember, she did what she thought was best with the equipment she was given.’

  Funny. A sentimental bit of me believed for a long time that most of what I in my deprived way thought of as mothering – the occasional cuddle, the smuggled treats, the comforting words – came from Carolyn. Maybe she was more of a godmother: the person who could spoil you and walk away, whose job was to show you that there were other lives outside that of your family. Grace, shut away in Shropshire, never saw anyone like that.

  I give her a bit of a glare. And she has the temerity to laugh in my face. ‘Besides,’ she says, ‘you’ve got most of your personality from her.’

  ‘I have not!
’ I protest. ‘That’s so unfair!’

  She gives me that look that southerners find so irritating in Yorkshire publicans: that sort of ‘Tha knows th’art fooling thyself’ look that plays around the mouth and makes you want to punch it.

  ‘You,’ she says, ‘are far more like your mother than you know.’

  ‘I am not! Look at me! I’m entirely self-invented!’

  ‘Ah!’ responds Carolyn. ‘And where do you think you got the strength of character to do that? You’re like a terrier once you’ve got the bit between your teeth.’

  Carolyn has always specialised in mixing metaphors in a way that somehow works nonetheless. It used to drive my grandfather potty.

  ‘Most people with your upbringing would have found it very difficult to do what you’ve done,’ she says. ‘Of course, most people with your upbringing weren’t also brought up to think that they could do whatever they wanted if they put their minds to it. I know your mother’s disappointed by the results, but you’ve done exactly what she trained you to do, and you’ve done it brilliantly.’

  ‘Oh, Carolyn, that’s such – ’ I’m about to say bullshit, but remember that, though she’s always coped very well with the eccentricities of our situation, she’s still of the older generation, and of the knitting, china-collecting older generation at that – ‘poppycock,’ I finish.

  ‘And that’s another thing,’ she continues. ‘You’re just like your mother in that. Anything that doesn’t suit you, you just deny it altogether. Flat contradiction. No manners, they would have called it in my family, but I suppose it has its uses.’

  I think for a bit. Say! ‘Well, whatever the truth in that may be, she’s done some stuff that’s pretty unforgivable.’

  ‘I know, dear.’ She lays down her knitting, folds her hands in her lap. ‘But you’re going to have to find a way of putting out the olive branch.’

  ‘Carolyn, no!’

  She nods.

  ‘Why should I make the first move? It’s not me that’s in the wrong.’