A City of Strangers

by Robert Barnard

  “No,” said Carol thoughtfully. “Perhaps this time I will go along.”

  When Lynn Packard drove, too fast, down Wynton Lane from the Battersby Road the inscription hit him. He turned very red from anger, and braked. Then he shoved his foot on the accelerator again. As he drove up the dirt path to the back of the houses, the scarlet message looming to his right seemed both to accuse and to mock. The space behind the back gardens of the Wynton Lane houses was common to all, but usually Lynn was very proprietorial about “his” space, drawing white lines around where he imagined it to be, or blocking the exit of any car parked on it. Today there was such a car—he thought it belonged to the woman in the basement flat of The Hollies—but he lacked the stomach for aggressive gestures. He went in through the kitchen, shouted at his sons to keep the noise down, and got on to the phone.

  Adrian Eastlake felt oddly flattered when Lynn Packard suggested that he should host a further meeting of Wynton Lane residents that evening. Adrian was used to being put down, disregarded, or treated as not quite whole. Lynn’s request seemed to accord him full status as a human being.

  It did not occur to him that Lynn was trying to minimize his own role as prime mover in the attempts to keep the Phelans out.

  When he had heated up a portion of frozen stew from the deep freeze for his mother’s dinner, he set to work making sandwiches. It was the end of the week, and he found that there wasn’t a great deal in the larder or the fridge. What it came down to was fish paste, tomato and cheese, cheese and pickle, and luncheon meat. Adrian had learned a lot about housekeeping over the years: He was quite good at cutting thin slices of bread, but he found they tended to disintegrate as soon as he tried to butter them. He was coping with this problem when to his surprise his mother drifted into the kitchen.

  “Mother! What are you doing up?”

  “Let me help, darling.”

  “No, of course not. I can manage.”

  “You should have softened the butter, dear. Let’s put it on the radiator in the hall. We can use margarine for the cheese and pickle and the fish paste. And really they should have given us more notice.”

  “Mother, you shouldn’t be doing this—”

  “Don’t fuss, Adrian. I’m not ill.”

  It didn’t occur to Adrian to wonder what she had been all these years if not ill. He retreated uneasily and let her potter at the kitchen table, putting margarine on bread at first inexpertly, then gaining in confidence, and slicing up tomatoes and cheese. A feeling nagged at his heart, and he realized with a shock that part of him did not want his mother to get well, resume a normal life; part of him had loved having her shut away there, his alone, to minister to. It had made his life orderly, useful, circumscribed—in just the way he would have chosen to have it circumscribed. He repressed the feeling savagely. How selfish could you get? Of course, it would be wonderful, a miracle, if his mother emerged into life again. But he stood there watching, awkwardly, feeling superfluous.

  As she was finishing the neat little piles and was setting them out daintily on two plates, he asked:

  “Are you going to come to the meeting, darling?”

  “The meeting? Oh, no, I don’t think so, dear. That’s men’s business, isn’t it?”

  He smiled affectionately.

  “There’s no such thing these days, Mother. Daphne will be there. . . . I thought you might like to meet people a little. I thought perhaps that now that he’s gone . . . ”

  He found it impossible to put his thought into words.

  “Gone?”

  “Dead. Now that Jack Phelan is dead . . . ”

  She looked at him with beautiful incomprehension and drifted out of the kitchen.

  “Sleate 226458.”

  “Oh, hello. Is Steven there, please?”

  “No, he’s just gone out. Can I give him a message?”

  “Oh, no, I don’t think . . . That’s Eve, is it?”

  “Evie. People call me Evie.”

  “Ah. This is Margaret, his ex-wife.”

  “Oh, hello, Margaret. Nice to be able to talk to you. Well, Steven is at a sort of neighborhood meeting. All the local bourgeoisie being vigilante.”

  “Oh, yes, he told me about that.”

  “You’ve met up—I’m so glad. And he told you about Citizens Against Jack Phelan, did he? I must say if it had been me I’d have kept quiet. Anyway, the whole thing’s blown up in their faces, because the man they were getting all vigilante about is dead, and in rather odd circumstances.”

  “Yes, I heard about that too.”

  “And today we’ve had a great slogan painted on one of the walls accusing us. Too Scarlet Letter!”

  “Poor old Steven. He does so prefer a quiet life.”

  “Yes, doesn’t he!”

  “Look, Evie, I was going to ask Steven over for a meal—would you care to come too?”

  “I’d love to, but probably I’d better not. Steven didn’t tell me that you two were meeting again. The poor sod’s probably embarrassed, God knows why. Anyway, you two will have private things to talk about.”

  “Actually, decidedly not. I found it difficult to find things to chat about when we had lunch.” The two women laughed. “Probably you and I would have had more to chew over. . . . ”

  They were all in the front room of Willow Bank by five past eight. Lynn Packard had determined to let Adrian as host take the lead, but as he watched him fussing around, pouring tea, putting extra cushions in chairs, handing sandwiches and naming wrong fillings, he realized that it was hopeless. Adrian Eastlake would never take the lead, not in anything. Perhaps the best thing—the most disinvolving thing, so to speak—would be to pretend that this wasn’t a meeting at all.

  “I thought we all ought to get together, informally,” he began, easily and in conversational tone, “to pool our knowledge and maybe . . . decide on a line.”

  “The threat is over, that’s the main thing,” said Adrian, still pottering round. “I know we agreed to say as little as possible about it—”

  “That option is hardly open to us,” said Lynn sharply, “in view of that damned graffiti.”

  “That was what I was about to say,” said Adrian, hurt.

  “Sorry. I just meant to emphasize that that damned thing alters the whole situation. New moves are called for. Of course, the first thing is to have it removed.”

  “That’s not so easy, apparently,” said Daphne Bridewell. “It can be lightened, but my builder and decorator says it’s likely to be visible for years.”

  “Years? That’s ridiculous!” said Lynn crisply. “There’s got to be something we can do. The stone of these houses is feet thick. They can get drills or stonecutters and simply take the top surface of the stone off. Slice the thing away. We can all chip in toward the cost.”

  “Here, hold on!” said Algy Cartwright. He was by necessity and temperament “near,” and was never afraid to speak out where expenditure was in question. “You know why the local council don’t do anything about graffiti, don’t you? It’s because getting it off only encourages them to come back and do it again. As long as the Phelan boy’s at large and has got his paint gun, we’d be throwing good money away, and I’m not going to do that.”

  “Bloody hell!” swore Lynn, by now indisputably in charge of the meeting. “How long is the little bastard going to be at large, then? We all know it was him. When is our great and glorious plodforce going to arrest the little vandal?”

  “Surely they’ll be taking a lenient view,” put in Jennifer. “I expect that’s what he was banking on. They’re bound to, in view of his father’s death.”

  “Lenient view? With all of us standing publicly accused? I must say I don’t take a lenient view. What sort of boy is it who, the moment he hears of his father’s death, rushes off with a spray gun to accuse someone else? Bloody suspicious, I’d say.” Lynn suddenly realized that a braying quality had come into his voice, something that his wife had, to her cost, told him about. He lowered his
tone. “The serious question is, what line should we take with the police?” He looked around him. “It’s damned unfair: We shouldn’t need a line. It was nothing to do with us; we were not in any way involved. And it must be obvious to the merest cretin what sort of crime this was. Fire through the letter box—it’s the working-class way of getting at immigrants. This is a gutter crime.”

  Carol stirred in her seat.

  “As Jesse Jackson didn’t quite say: ‘You may not be born in the gutter, but the gutter may be born in you.’ ”

  Lynn was pulled up short. He didn’t quite understand what she was getting at: Was it some snide comment on his social origins? How did she know about them, the bitch? He spluttered:

  “Yes, well, as I was saying, we shouldn’t need a line, but in view of that damned slogan, accusation, whatever you call it, we’ve really got to coordinate our responses to the police.”

  As she sat, watching Lynn Packard, against all his intentions, taking control of the meeting, Carol covertly took in the assembled residents of the houses in Wynton Lane. They were all there except Mr. Copperwhite’s girlfriend and two of the people in the basement flats. And what an ill-assorted bunch they seemed! Before this had blown up several of them had hardly known each other: She herself had never spoken to Steven Copperwhite’s girlfriend, and she knew Daphne Bridewell hadn’t either. Yet they were all three “academic” women. Nobody saw Adrian Eastlake’s mother these days, but Adrian himself didn’t seem to know anyone at all well, except Daphne Bridewell. Lynn Packard, she suspected, only knew people whom it was worth his while to know. His wife, though, seemed the nicest of the bunch. Carol could imagine getting friendly with her. Yet she couldn’t for the life of her remember her name.

  She realized that they were all looking at each other—not directly, but out of the corners of their eyes. What they had been like at previous meetings Carol did not know, but at this one they were uncertain of each other, if not positively suspicious. Behind all their words there seemed to lie something unspoken. Surely that could not be because this time she was there? There was something furtive about them, positively ashamed. Was it just the death that had made them so?

  Steven Copperwhite was talking now. He seemed to have thought things through better than Packard.

  “We’ve got to remember that some things are a matter of public record: We spoke to Pickering, I went to the estate agents, you, er, Lynn, phoned round to all the building societies. These things obviously didn’t occur haphazardly, and we’d be foolish to try to pretend that they did. We’ll have to admit—wrong word!—we’ll have to acknowledge to the police that we knew of his intention—supposed intention—to buy The Hollies, and were doing anything we could within reason to stop him.”

  “Ye-es,” agreed Lynn, but with reluctance. “We could emphasize that supposed intention: that we were never quite clear whether or not this was some kind of joke.”

  “And emphasize too,” said Daphne Bridewell, “that we were always quite clear in our minds that, in the last resort, there wasn’t a great deal that we could do. Really we were a bit like politicians raging about things happening in a foreign country, whereas in reality their writ doesn’t extend there, and there’s nothing they can do about it.”

  “Except that it wasn’t a foreign country,” muttered Lynn. “It was on our bloody doorstep!”

  It was at this point that Carol was most aware of something unspoken. Steven Copperwhite appeared about to say it, then seemed to change his mind and say something else.

  “One thing we ought to be careful about,” he said, “is seeming to have a ‘line.’ I take issue with you there, er, Lynn. Nothing could be more suspicious in my opinion than all of us going along one after another and shooting the same spiel to the police, like a lot of parrots. The best idea is for us to be as various and as spontaneous as possible.”

  Steven’s suggestion, when they had considered it, seemed on the whole the most sensible course. It also seemed to remove any point for the meeting. Though Lynn Packard was obviously not entirely satisfied, they all quite soon, in ones and twos, thanked Adrian (if they remembered) and then drifted home, to television, essay making, or feet up with a good book. Carol insisted on staying behind to help with the washing-up. Adrian protested that it was no trouble, there wasn’t much, he had nothing else to do, but in the end Carol stacked everything up on a tray and bustled him through to the kitchen.

  She reflected that what Adrian needed—and would need still more when his mother died—was someone to bustle him through life, possibly bustling him up to the altar first. But it certainly wouldn’t be her.

  It took longer than it should, because Adrian insisted on washing, and then fussed about between kitchen and sitting room in search of missing cups and plates, and all the time, in a desultory way, kept rehashing the meeting.

  “I think the trouble with Packard,” he said (quite reasonably, Carol had to admit), “is that he always wants a united front. Both before, and again now. As if he was some kind of party leader. I don’t see why we should present a united front to the police, or why we should worry about them at all. Obviously none of us would have done that to the family.”

  “Oh?” said Carol. “How can you be sure?”

  “Well, I mean, obviously we’re all . . . well, respectable people. And reasonable ones. And this is a barbaric crime. . . . You’re looking skeptical. Am I talking nonsense?”

  “No. But actually I do find you all—the people here tonight—odder than you say. You don’t seem to know what to call each other. I mean, you seem to know each other and not to know each other, if that doesn’t sound silly.”

  “Well—of course, there are a lot of newcomers—”

  “Only the Copperwhites, in the houses. And yet somehow the rest of you don’t seem to gel.”

  Adrian wiped his hands and turned round, considering.

  “I suppose it’s true that it’s only with this thing that we’ve really got together, had some sort of concerted action. Three meetings within a week! I really can’t remember any time when we’ve all come together before.”

  “Yes,” said Carol thoughtfully. “Three meetings . . . I heard about the first, and I was at this one. What did you actually decide at the sec—”

  “I thought I heard voices.”

  The kitchen door had swung slowly open, and framed in the doorway was a woman. Rosamund Eastlake. Carol had heard about her. She was wearing a short, warm bedjacket over her nightdress. She had that fragile beauty that many elderly actresses have, though at first sight she seemed lacking in that backbone of steel that usually goes with it in the actresses. Carol thought she’d never seen anything so ethereal, like something out of a romantic film. Then she thought that this had probably more to do with Mrs. Eastlake’s reputation than her actual appearance. It struck her that Mrs. Eastlake seemed now to be drifting back into life, just as earlier she had drifted out of it.

  Adrian bustled forward, wiping his hands.

  “Mother, should you be up? It’s getting quite chilly outside.”

  Rosamund Eastlake did not reply, but looked at Carol.

  “Oh, this is Carol Southgate—”

  The two women smiled and shook hands. Mrs. Eastlake’s hand was warm and strong, but uncertain. Carol wondered just how many hands she had shaken in the last few years.

  “Oh, yes, and you are?—”

  “From The Laburnums,” Adrian put in quickly. “The basement flat in Daphne’s.”

  “Oh yes. . . . You really shouldn’t be helping with the washing-up.”

  “That’s quite all right. It’s pretty much done now.”

  “I would have come down to help. I seem to be . . . much stronger these days. Don’t I, Adrian?”

  “You do, darling. That doesn’t mean you should overdo things.”

  “You must come again,” Rosamund said, turning back to Carol. “When I feel up to cooking again. I used to be quite a good cook, didn’t I, Adrian?”

 
“Wonderful, darling.”

  “I must get the old books out, look up things I used to like making.”

  She had drifted back to the door again, but at it she turned and looked straight at Carol.

  “Do be careful, won’t you?”

  Then she went out into the hall, and they heard her slowly mounting the stairs.

  Chapter

  ELEVEN

  The Crays could not decide whether to take Michael Phelan with them when they went back to the Estate on the following Saturday, but the problem was solved by his showing signs of reluctance. Finally he said, “I don’t want to go back, not yet,” and that settled it. They didn’t like leaving him alone, but he was such a self-contained boy, so quietly assured, that they thought it would be all right. Anyway, said Malcolm, it was silly to treat him with a protectiveness he had certainly never known at home.

  So they drove off, hardly more eager themselves. When they drew up outside their old house the acrid smell was still insistent, penetrating. They got out and stood looking at the burned-out wreck of the Phelans’ house—a blackened skull with charred and gaping holes for eyes. It sat perfectly aptly in the chaos of rubbish that was their garden, guarded now by a uniformed constable, to whom Malcolm raised his hand in greeting. Their own house, the other half of the same structure, was not in any way a sentimental object for them, but it held memories of their first months of marriage. They stood for a moment on the pavement holding hands. Then they went in.

  There was nothing damaged, of course. The fire had not been able to spread through the connecting wall, and all the destruction was on the Phelans’ side. But there was a sort of damage in the insidious smell, that smell both stifling and unnatural which Malcolm had met in fighting the fire, and which now seemed to have penetrated their armchairs, the linen cupboard, their clothes.

  “I wish we could get rid of our things and start again from nothing,” Selena said.

  “What, with the mortgage rate going sky-high?” said Malcolm, with a briskness he did not feel. “A lot of dry cleaning is about the best we’ll be able to do.”