The smell of white chocolate and penny nougat filled the air. I was glad we had not taken the big car, or I should not have been able to face Tony. Cora had a bag of pink sweets shaped like shrimps, and a clutch of white chocolate penknives. She was chewing wetly with her molars, abandoned as an American beauty chewing gum. She was getting careless and sloppy, as pregnant women may. In my pregnancy, I had become immaculate. She seemed to have moved on, to have floated adrift from the wedding and its methodical disembarkation. She had left it as a ghost ship, and was there in her life raft, women and children first, confident of rescue. I was less afraid for her than when I had known she was to marry Hal. Yet I loved her now, and with love goes fear, so the buoyancy of the baby was having to sustain me too.
‘What a disgusting smell,’ I said. ‘It’s like the essence of boiled-down dolls. What’s in the papers? Do you have to put them on the floor? It can’t be clean and then you’ll pick up the papers and wipe all the prawn and chocolate over them and your face . . .’ I was enjoying the intimacy of nagging. You cannot nag people for whom you do not care.
Unlike a real child, she took it as it was intended, lovingly. She began to read the papers.
‘Little ones first,’ she said. ‘I’m getting too thick to read the others.’ ‘If only it were just morning thickness,’ I said. She liked these simple puns. I’ve learnt not to speak them aloud invariably when they occur. Not everyone understands that words have sandwiched meanings, and others, dictionary people, do not like the mess these sandwiches make. I prefer the sideroads of speech. The main roads are too direct. Besides, it is on the byroads that you come upon the important things, closed houses of despair, undiscovered copses of delight just at a dwindling road end.
None the less, today we were actually driving down the unrelieved motorway, going south by the most direct and least lovely route. It was a day of double weather, just the day for a fox’s wedding, black sky and bright light promising rain in large drops.
‘There is rather a lot about Lucas here,’ said Cora, ‘I’m sorry to say. It’s opposite the pin-up. He wouldn’t like that.’
‘He’s used to it. Life-and-death babies and big breasts have always gone together.’
‘This one looks like anything but a wet nurse. She’s got boxing gloves on which look like her bosoms and it says “our christmas box”. You wouldn’t dare call cute Lyn a little right-hooker in case she gave you one there and then . . . shall I go on? Oh Christ!’
‘Cora, what is it? Remember the baby, don’t talk like that.’
Nursery fears about thinking bad thoughts crippling the baby came to me.
‘I wasn’t reading the stuff about Lucas till later, but you know how you read this sort of stuff like an eye test just by looking at it, the letters are so big? Anne, has there been anything much about your furrier in the papers? I’ve got so lazy about reading them. Did you know they thought that it wasn’t robbers, but animal rights people?’
‘Anyone could have guessed that. And what is this to do with Lucas?’ Sometimes when you ask a question it is answered by your own re-dealt pack of memories, a straight solution, the patience out in one.
‘The police have got Dolores Steel.’
‘Dolores Steel? Tell me she’s real, with a name like that.’ I was driving fast. It was not a pleasant outing we were on, and I grudged our pursuit by the hounds of bad news.
‘She is real. I know her. She works in the shop. She is a friend of Angel Coney. She’s been in prison before for assault, but I thought she had put it behind her.’
‘And now d’you mean she’s put it behind Lucas? What are you saying?’
‘She changed her name. At school she was Consuelo Sharp. She kept it Spanish sounding, to please her father.’
‘Not something she can always have had an eye to. Spit it out, Cora, we’re off to have a very uneasy day already.’
‘She has been charged with the attack on Mr Virtue’s shop. Apparently there are accomplices who aren’t named. “She distributes leaflets . . .” Oh Anne. I’ve been addressing envelopes to distribute her stuff. “She distributes leaflets from the exclusive Sloane Street address of a charity shop where she works with the beautiful Lady Angelica Coney, who says, ‘I feel sorry for Dolores. She had a chance and she has blown it. These people are no better than animals.’ The leaflets are printed by a press called ART which stands for Animal Rights Terrorism.”’
‘More rat than art I’d say. I would give these people a piece of my mind,’ I said. I was alarmed by her fear. It was the infatuated fear Angelica Coney had aroused in Alexander.
‘They’d take a person, Annie, and eat them raw like monkey’s brain. They are merciless.’
‘Go on. What else does it say? Do you want to look it up in one of the big papers?’
‘Not really. I can’t help feeling sorry for her – Dolores,’ she said.
‘For her, for her, what about Mr Virtue? And for the love of God, what about Lucas?’
‘“Some ART leaflets were found beside the near lifeless body of Sir Lucas Salik, who had been left for dead by attackers in the King’s Cross area of London. Police are pursuing enquiries. They are not answering questions from journalists, but our man with his finger on the pulse” – it says that – “says that animals are extensively used in the type of research needed to support work like Sir Lucas’s.” And now the paper hedges its bets. “Who are we to say, when we look into the suffering eyes of a child or of a seal pup, who suffers more?” Make it a nasty smelly old man and a warthog and maybe we could think straight. Oh, the unfairness of appearances. “Police are requesting that anyone who can help them with their enquiries please come forward.
‘“If you know about ART, have a heart for brave Sir Lucas.” The thing is, I do,’ she finished.
‘What?’ I felt the difference in our ages.
‘Well, I didn’t know I did, but I must have, I worked there. Also, something happened, at the very beginning, but I didn’t want it to be anything. I mean, for me in a funny way it was a good thing.’
She told me a story about a raw uprooted tongue lying in Lucas’s car. I felt sick and was silent.
‘And for me in a way it was nice because he had to be looked after,’ she said, poor fool.
‘Did you think that Cupid goes about putting the tongues of dead animals into cars? For goodness’ sake, Cora, what were you thinking of? You must have suspected something. Oh love, don’t worry. I am just frightened by the way these things get out of hand. When I was young it was nations not notions.’
‘Now I see it, but then I did not, because I didn’t want to. If I am utterly truthful I think that I did not want anything to have any connection with me. I wanted, even though I knew it wasn’t possible, him to think me as perfect as I thought him.’
‘That’s not love. It’s calf love.’
‘I’m only just not a calf. We’re all half calf. Wasn’t that what the dreadful tongue was saying?’ she asked.
‘Except they can’t speak. And I think that it is that in the end which makes us different.’
‘Anne. That’s what the note said, in Lucas’s car, there was a note saying “They can’t speak”. I’d forgotten that.’ She sounded as though she spoke the truth.
‘I would say that that was less an excuse for what they do than a reason for how we are – lords of creation, I mean. Though I suppose the people – ARTists, do they call themselves? – are human too, and that must be a bind for them.’
‘Dolores and Angelica are in human guise. They are cats. More beautiful than humans. But is that beauty enough to make them better than humans? And you borrow the coats of beautiful animals to make yourself more beautiful.’
‘Hardly borrow. And even though I have often thought of killing Angelica Coney I cannot imagine wearing her. She herself does it too well.’
We were past Basingstoke. We were driving through the Wallops, Over, Middle and Nether. I thought again of Stone, and longed to take Cora, the baby
and Lucas home and away from all this.
Cora said, ‘I didn’t know you had strong feelings about Angel?’
‘Well, I’ve known her all her life; I feel as though I’ve known you all your life but in fact I have known Angelica. She played with my son.’ If that is playing.
‘Was she ever a child?’ she asked.
‘Always, still is, amoral and powerful. Brilliant at manipulating men. I think that she must have more to do with this than we will ever know,’ I said.
‘But then she has betrayed Dolores.’ Naïve child.
‘Cora, that’s nothing. She probably liked Dolores because she smelt the blood from her wounds, having been to prison once, certain to go again if the need arose.’
‘But they were friends.’ She bleated like a pet lamb who sees the rosemary tied in its little bunch, and the knife lying by it.
‘Angelica has no friends. It’s why she’s so popular. She is feared. People are at their best with her, because they do not dare not to relax, or they’ll be sent to the knacker, or the exterminator will be called.’
‘I thought Dolores was like that too.’
‘Girls like Angelica always have a consort, whom they ingest. They are kingmakers. They pretend it is rule by two kings like in ancient Sparta, and then they kill the other and raise up a new one, green and fresh, from the old one’s fresh blood. I’ve never known Angelica without her other half, and it has not once been a man. Men narrow the possibilities so, they don’t travel light,’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘With them comes love, or babies at least. And they are bad liars. They do not understand that everything is true when it is spoken or performed, even though it is a contradiction. Women do not have to explain this to each other. Or not Angelica’s sort of woman. Her strength makes her seem straight, but she is twisted, she is a hook, no matter how you struggle the barbs dig deeper.’
‘Was your husband in love with her?’ Cora asked this, though I think she cannot have liked doing so.
‘Absolutely not, funnily enough. I think the reason I dislike her so is that she took Alexander’s childhood from him. If it had been a childish love affair, I would perhaps by now have been pleased that he had that, at least. But she misinformed him unpleasantly, she turned him against himself, and she made him see that nothing, not home, not family, is safe. With Mordred dying, he would have seen it anyway, but she did it in such a grubby way. She smuggled the serpent into his garden. I am certain she has a lot to do with all this. Has she ever asked you about Lucas? Or did Dolores?’
‘Dolores came to hospital. I visited her. He was doing something with her heart. He mended it. They did ask about Lucas,’ she admitted.
‘If a heart can ever be mended. And did you notice how she was with him?’
‘Very cold.’
‘You see, Cora, Angelica would have been charming. Poor Dolores, she is obviously the saddest kind of fanatic, the one with his heart on his sleeve who loses his shirt. Are we getting near?’ I did not know whether I was pleased or not that there was some suspicion as to who had hurt Lucas. I did want to know who had disfigured Mr Virtue’s shop. I wanted a straightforward penalty for the person who had done that, but I did not like to face that if and when Lucas’s attacker was found, I would want him or her to undergo terrible pain. I did not like this in myself. I hate to see animals in pain. I put rabbits, bats, foxes, beautiful screaming hares out of their misery. But I did wish to see whoever had done this suffer protracted pain. Not even animals have this desire. Except, perhaps, the cat playing with its mouse. My desire was not an animal one, it was intellectual. It was all that makes us, supposedly, superior to animals, it was a civilised, refined desire to see another human being suffer. It gave me cousinhood with the worst people who have lived and I was ashamed. I was also exhilarated, like a hunter on the scent.
‘We are getting near. It’s called “Cranford”,’ said Cora.
‘I have seen that on your invitation, fool. You were to have been married tomorrow, remember? Is it this one? You can’t imagine getting homesick for it can you? Poor old Hal.’
A woman was running towards the car. She must be Hal’s mother. I regretted my snobbery. She looked so wretched. I wound down the car window. She was turning and turning her hands at the bottom of her cardigan. Her clothes were the rubbery texture of scrambled egg, the synthetic tweed uncreased. A small marcasite brooch, a sailing dinghy, rocked on her breast. The colour she wore was a colour reserved for bedjackets or re-usable picnic items, a green unreminiscent of grass or trees or sea. It probably washed like a dream. I prefer my dreams dirty. Or is the truth that I do not do my own washing? She was speaking, and making gestures of welcome and apology. I did not see that she should apologise. The years of being a widow have made me able to assume the astringent tone of a man in an emergency; I extended my hand to her, and smiled, calm and slow like a politician with bad news, but not so bad that it cannot be talked out.
‘Bad news, oh bad news, oh, oh,’ she was saying. But my firm frostiness reached her and she calmed down enough to ask us in.
‘The boys are out. All day.’ They would arrive after we had gone to drink strong drink and speak of a merciful release.
‘Cora, dear, how are you?’ Mrs Darbo looked almost happy when she contemplated the scruffy fatso who had almost been her daughter-in-law.
‘As well as can be . . .’ began Cora.
‘. . . expected,’ said Mrs Darbo. We were in the sitting room. It was so comfortable that there was nowhere to sit without being compromised by the chairs’ embrace. I wanted air.
‘A coffee?’ asked Mrs Darbo. I felt as though Cora and I had found ourselves on the set of a television quiz show. The room was full of appliances. Nothing looked old. All the wood that was intended to look old had a vivid, unconvincing richness, like a suntan. There was one flower arrangement, for arrangement it was; it resembled a cauliflower, painted by a Persian, turreted pompoms embowered in straps of green. The ribbons flowing from it had the lemniscous curve of Arabic letters. It was, I was sure, Cora’s wedding bouquet.
‘Some coffee would be very nice, thank you, Monica, let me help,’ said Cora. She looked, thank goodness, more depressed than I had seen her for two days. The expectant radiance was gone.
They returned with a tray of coffee.
‘Biscuit, Cora?’ asked Mrs Darbo. There was a selection. A pink wafer and a custard cream with a ruby drop of jam in its navel would, I knew, tempt Cora.
‘The thing is,’ said Cora, ‘I don’t really like biscuits.’ I wondered to what, then, Mrs Darbo would ascribe her fatness.
‘Horse-radish is what you need,’ said Mrs Darbo to Cora.
I wondered if it was like mandrake. What was its use to those with child? Was it an abortifacient? Could Mrs Darbo see the truth?
‘It does wonders for fluid retention.’ Poor Mrs Darbo, her eyes mauve from crying, she must have been keen to retain some fluids.
She began to chat. Illness and complaints are an area of amnesty in women’s conversations. We boast a little of campaigns waged and won, of corners defended, of ambushes repelled. We were on neutral ground. We did not discuss children, whether on account of some tact for my sake from Mrs Darbo I did not know. Surprisingly, she did not mention Hal, whom Cora had told me I would hear described in hyperbolic terms.
We made play with coffee, milk, sugar tongs. Mrs Darbo gave us each a small mat, embroidered with a posy.
‘French knots for the hollyhocks, quite hard to do but rewarding. It was to be for their’ – no need to ask whose – ‘new home but I thought waste not . . .’
‘. . . want not,’ I said. It was not difficult to converse with Mrs Darbo. One performed an antiphon of platitude. She appeared calmer. Perhaps her coffee had calmed her down, but I smelt menthol on her and it reminded me of a governess who drank, steadily and without subterfuge, during afternoons of teaching me stem stitch and birdsfoot hemming. When she went out for a nip, I suck
ed the silks. Purple was most delicious. At the roots of Mrs Darbo’s teeth was a ridge of primrose yellow and a red thread of blood. I wondered if her husband drank too. I thought of Hal, again, with something which was not sympathy. It was a willingness to share his apprehension of his cosy, airless home and his unhappy mother.
At times of great disaster, there is invariably one get-together which is rich in funny possibilities. When Mordred died, I suppose it was going to the local conservation society meeting that evening. No one knew of his death, and I could not let them down. We passed paste sandwiches and discussed the susceptibility of cowslips to loud noise. Stone, like the rest of Scotland, is often under exploration for oil. The seismic records show that this is knocking the kangaroo of Britain all askew from the waist up.
‘I like to think of the cowslips nodding away long after we are all pushing up daisies,’ said Mr McIver.
‘Uh huh’ – which is the scots for ‘Yes, but’, meaning assent with conditions – ‘speak for yourself,’ said Miss Erskine. ‘I prefer cut blooms. More in keeping with a bereavement.’ And the Scots, so neat in death, do prefer cut blooms, placing them against the weather in glass bells on flat discs of white marble which are handy later for the fresh keeping of the creamier cheeses.
A Case of Knives Page 25