by Lex Lander
Shopping was not my favourite pastime. I only accompanied Lizzy because she needed a guide and interpreter, and in case she ran out of money. We spent the best part of the afternoon in an Andorra-la-Vella boutique called Els Fills d’America, a cramped, sweltering establishment whose only saving grace was the proprietress, a sultry Frenchwoman of about my own age. Out of habit I chatted her up while Lizzy did what her sex excels at, trying on this dress, those jeans, that swimsuit, and failing to make a single decision. She worked through fifty per cent of the stock, from a full-length gown for formal occasions to a swimsuit that made even my jaded eyes bug. It was in white lycra, technically one-piece but with more cut-outs than material.
In my role as surrogate parent a prudish side to my character that I hadn’t known existed was exerting itself. I gave the swimsuit the thumbs-down on moral grounds, only to discover afterwards that she had bought it anyway. The girl had more than a trace of exhibitionism about her.
‘Nobody notices anymore,’ she said when I gave her a ticking off.
Nobody except the voyeur, the rape artist, the sexual psychopath.
And me.
The unusual and experimental nature of my relationship with Lizzy required that hurdles of one form of another be cleared daily. The shopping expedition took place on Wednesday. On Thursday we coped with our first social callers.
My neighbours Docteur Lucien Bos and his wife, Madeleine were in the habit of dropping in for an aperitif about once a month. I enjoyed their company and was mildly flattered that this wealthy, articulate French ex-government minister and his well-preserved wife should have come to regard me as a friend, so soon after I had set up home in Andorra. Their visit was inevitable. The need to explain Lizzy’s presence as co-host was also inevitable. I was as prepared for it as I could be, my script rehearsed and as close to the truth as made no difference. From the propriety angle, I had nothing to be ashamed of.
That Thursday was muggy, the sun softened by skeins of high cloud, and storms were forecast. When Lucien and Madeleine arrived on foot, I was clearing a blocked sprinkler on the lower of the two lawns while Lizzy was up on the terrace, at work with paintbrush and oils.
‘Bonjour, bonjour, cher ami!’ came the cry, and I abandoned the sprinkler at once, glad of the excuse, but in a state of funk about how to convince them it was all perfectly innocent.
This morning Madeleine was walking in her own private patch of shade, cast by a Stetson with a brim as big as a bicycle wheel. We brushed kisses to the cheek.
‘Comment va?’ Lucien said, as we clasped hands warmly.
Madeleine was shading her eyes towards the terrace.
‘Come up and meet Lizzy,’ I said, since concealing her was not an option. At least she was wearing the relatively modest swimsuit from her original wardrobe and not the brazen scraps I had been duped into buying.
‘Lizzy?’ Madeleine echoed, though she must have seen her about the place. Probably through binoculars. ‘Qui ca?’
She may well ask. As we mounted the steps I explained all, sticking close to the literal truth. They’ll never believe it, I thought, as Lizzy abandoned her daubing to meet us, a sultry goddess to the last bronzed inch, with a poise that made nonsense of her age. They’ll take it for granted we’re playing house together.
‘Enchanté, mademoiselle,’ Lucien enthused, beaming through his gold-framed specs. Madeleine, by disposition more reserved, was equally unaffected.
We sat down around the patio table, and Señora Sist bustled out with aperitifs.
‘André ’as told us about your mother,’ Madeleine said to Lizzy in English, her voice husky with sympathy. ‘You poor child. I am very sorry for you. I ’ope she will come back soon.’
Lizzy stared down into her apple juice. ‘Thank you.’
‘If we can do anything to ’elp, André,’ Lucien said, ‘do not ’esitate to ask. Anything at all.’ If the emphasis contained a hidden message it was too abstruse to fathom.
‘I appreciate that, Lucien.’
There, for the present, the subject rested. The chat became inconsequential, and my neighbours took their leave a half-hour later, having invited us to a dinner party the following week.
‘Nice people,’ was Lizzy’s summing up as she went back to her easel. She dabbed a blob of green on the hillside. ‘Is André French for Alan as well, the way it is in Spanish?’
My call to Ramouz was the first in a week. I was fortunate to catch the great man as he was tidying his desk before heading home.
‘Even policemen have homes to go to,’ he said, a good-natured grumble, then gave me a rundown on developments, the long and the short of which was that he had called off the hunt.
‘It’s been nearly a month and we are no closer to an arrest than we were in the beginning. There are other cases requiring my attention.’
My expostulations were as arrows on armour plate.
‘It is no use to shout, Mr Melville. You have to accept that Mrs Power is almost certainly dead.’
Dead. So that was it. To have it acknowledged by officialdom was an icy shower on the last feeble flicker of my hopes. I imagined him unconcernedly puffing a smoke ring at the ceiling fan.
‘Are you still there?’ he shouted down the line.
‘I’m here. Look, Ramouz, I’m coming back. I’m going to do your fucking job for you.’
It was a hollow threat.
‘Mr Melville, should you be so unwise as to return to Morocco you will be arrested and, if the pistol we discovered nearby where Mrs Power was abducted means what I think it means, you may look forward to a long stay inside one of our excellent prisons.’
Almost from the moment I disposed of it I had thought no more of the Arab’s pistol. In Ramouz’s cop brain, attuned, as are all cop’s brains, to suspect, such a find would automatically be interpreted as evidence of wrongdoing on my part.
I said no more, but left him listening to the dialling tone. The discovery of the gun was an irrelevance. Clair was my only concern. Clair, who was now written off, officially deceased. Clair, who was doomed to be no more than a fading vacation romance. Boy meets girl, the chemistry clicks, avowals are made, a shared future hinted at. Then, when the vacation is over and the protagonists return to their respective folds, it proves to have no substance. To be like footprints in the sand, washed away by the next incoming tide. Usually the only leftovers are a superficial regret and a sprinkling of memories to reminisce over in the ensuing weeks; nothing lasting. In my case, the regrets were deepened by tragedy and the leftovers unlikely to fade so readily. You can’t consign a real live, sixteen-year-old semi-dependant to the scrapbook of the mind.
While I was pacing away my frustration, Lizzy came into the room.
‘It’s about my mother, isn’t it?’ She had on a flour-dusted apron and hands that were white to the wrists. She looked as if she were wearing gloves.
‘Don’t worry,’ I hastened to reassure her. ‘They haven’t found her … her body or anything. But, well, they’re going to call off the investigation.’
She sank into the low, curved couch, more bewildered than distressed.
‘I don’t think I understand. Have they found the men who did it then?’
Such naivety.
‘Not exactly. What I mean is, no, they haven’t.’ I sat beside her. I felt tired. Tired of cover-ups, tired of diplomacy and making light of disaster. ‘But they’ve stopped actively following it up. From now on they’ll wait until a positive clue or lead turns up before they take any action.’
In my efforts to paint a picture less bleak than the reality, I was over-explaining.
She took it calmly.
‘I see. Or I think I see.’ She tucked her legs under her and fixed me with that steadfast gaze that was so disconcerting. ‘I heard what you said on the phone. That stuff about going back to Morocco and doing their job for them.’
‘Hot air. I can’t go back.’
‘Because of leaving me?’
‘P
artly. And other things.’
A door slammed, and Señora Sist, her daily stint done, called out, ‘Bonne soirée, Monsieur André, bonne soirée, Leezee. A demain!’
A second slam and the house was quiet once more.
‘Tonight,’ Lizzy said, ‘I’m cooking dinner.’ She splayed her flour-gloved hands for my inspection as proof.
Cook dinner is what she did. A Waldorf salad starter, a little heavy on the apple, and a brace of steaks cremated Aussie-style to follow. I’d dined better, but as her first culinary foray since taking up residence it was the right side of edible.
Having complimented the chef, I asked, ‘Why the candles?’
She had unearthed, from God knows where, a long-forgotten candelabra and a pack of emergency candles, and we faced each other through bobbing flames.
‘It’s more romantic.’
I assumed this was an attempt at whimsy.
‘You may not feel much like it,’ I said, ‘but a heart-to-heart discussion between us is long overdue.’
‘Is that so?’ Beyond the flames her face was shadowy. She had taken her hair back, leaving long ringlets dangling over her cheekbones, and had on elaborate earrings that clinked at the slightest movement. Since I last noticed she had acquired a nose ring. My views on facial furniture tended to be conservative, but I knew better than to air them. She was wearing the ankle-length dress I had bought her in Andorra-la-Vella. It was more daringly cut in front than I recalled, and she had just enough curve in that quarter to justify it. It was hard not to be conscious of the shadow between her breasts, despite my pathetic efforts to look elsewhere.
‘You’re looking very lovely tonight,’ I said impulsively.
The change that came over her was disturbing: her mouth parted, her eyelids drooped, transforming girl into woman. It was like a glimpse into the future. I was confused by it, and even more by its impact on me.
‘Are you trying to chat me up?’ she said, her voice dropping an octave. Her body language told me it wasn’t meant jokily.
‘Let’s get back to this heart-to-heart,’ I said shakily. ‘We have to decide where you’re going to live, in the longer term, that is.’
She received this calmly enough. ‘You have to decide, you mean. I’m in your hands.’
I studied her, wondering if she spoke out of petulance or the reality of her situation.
‘You can’t stay with me indefinitely …’ I began, and that was as far as I got. A shutter came down over her face. It became still, mask-like, hostility radiating from her.
‘We have to sort out the legal position,’ I wallowed on. ‘I’m not your legal guardian. Others probably have a much stronger claim on you.’
‘Uncle Fucking Alistair, for instance.’ So much scorn in so short a sentence.
I had to grin. ‘I think we can eliminate dear Uncle Alistair.’
A moth came blundering into the candlelight, rushing at the flames. The heat forced it back but round it came in a wide sweep for a second attempt at immolation.
‘Silly creature,’ Lizzy murmured, and gently swatted it out of the danger zone. To her, even a moth was precious. Then, looking me in the eye, ‘There is nobody. No blood relative that can be traced. There was some nutty aunt who went native in South America a million years ago. She could be anywhere now. And she’ll be absolutely ancient, I should think.’
‘Your mother mentioned her. But what about close friends?’
‘In Australia?’ She drained the dregs of the solitary glass of wine I had allowed her. ‘No such animal. We had two types of acquaintances, those we socialised with and those we didn’t. After Daddy died and all the sympathy had been dished out, most of them faded away. Some of the guys came pestering Mummy for you-know-what, but she was ripper at seeing them off.’
The occasional Aussie idioms still sounded like transplants in her speech. Out of place somehow, on this side of the world.
‘All right, Freckles. No relatives, no close friends. My qualifications for the job still look lousy.’
The carriage clock on the room divider chimed the hour. The atmosphere was easy, intimate. Two months ago, on an evening such as this, I had probably been sitting at this table opposite Simone, eating a meal cooked (badly) by Simone, and afterwards carrying Simone up the curved staircase to bed. And Simone was only three years older than Lizzy.
Frowning, thoughtful, Lizzy tapped a cocktail stick on the rim of her glass, beating time with the clock chimes.
‘Mummy was going to come here and stay with you, wasn’t she? Where she goes, I go. As far as I’m concerned you can’t have better qualifications than that.’
‘But you can’t be certain she was going to say yes. She was still thinking it over.’
‘I’m certain.’ The stick snapped in her fingers. ‘She talks everything over with me. Involves me in all her decisions. That’s one of the things that make her such a super mother.’ A gruffness crept in. ‘She treats me like an equal.’ The smoky, sultry eyes focused on me. ‘So you see, Alan, you have every right in the world. What’s more, I choose you. Out of all the applicants clamouring to be my guardian, I choose you.’
That was pretty unequivocal. I was in deep without a lifebelt. Nobody was going to haul me out except me.
I glanced at my watch. ‘It’s late,’ I said, though it was only a few minutes past eleven.
‘Okay,’ she said, readily enough. ‘I’ll clear the dishes away.’
‘They can wait. Señora Sist will see to them in the morning. You get off to bed.’
‘Yes, master. Do I get a goodnight kiss?’
‘Go to bed,’ I said, and the harshness of my voice made her recoil.
‘Yes, master, right away, master, fuck you kindly, master.’ Her resentment put on record, she whirled from the room. I listened to her rapid ascent of the stairs, the rat-tat-tat of her heels on the bare pine boards overhead, the violent closing of doors.
I slumped into the nearest chair and buried my face in my hands. Lizzy had succeeded in expelling the demons of my guilt over the Pavan girl, only to replace them with new demons, no less active, but living rather than dead. No longer did I grieve a young life snuffed out. Now I was merely torn apart by conflicting passions and obligations. Never was a surrogate parent less suited to the job.
Nineteen
The pact of no secrets between us had been easier entered into than honoured, and it came back to plague me regularly through that hot July as it slipped into hotter August. Shit, I had more secrets than a spy ring. For instance, an all-night rendezvous with Simone at the Hotel Coma, in Ordino, when the protracted lack of sex became irresistible. This absence I passed off to Lizzy as an ‘unavoidable business meeting’. For Simone other fabrications were required to justify the hotel venue. Members of my family were vacationing here, was the excuse. The lie to Simone was of no consequence; the lie to Lizzy conscience-rending.
Secrets aside, the major event of the month was a visit to the International School of Paris, high-class place of learning for high-class expat kids. Insofar as Lizzy romped through the entrance test, the expedition was a success. She, however, was less than enthralled about the prospect of going there.
‘Bloody school,’ she grumbled on the return flight, staring gloomily out of the window. Below, the landscape was of the mountains of the Massif Central, sun and shadow alternating on their flanks.
‘So you don’t like the idea.’
‘It sucks.’
‘So why did you agree to come?’
‘To see Paris.’ A long pause, then, almost shyly, ‘And to please you.’
The ability to come awake fast was among my most useful attributes. The yell of ‘Alan, Alan, quick!’ that shattered my dead of night slumber, firstly launched me from my bed, and secondly sent me scrabbling under the edge of the mattress for the Colt Python, my lethal bedmate. Within seconds of waking I was in full defensive mode.
‘Quick!’
I hurtled out of my bedroom and into Lizzy’s wi
th all the finesse of a rampaging rhino. Her light was off. Moonlight streamed through a foot gap in the drapes, projecting a white zone across the bed, now empty. Lizzy herself was by the window, her back to me, staring out across the terrace. Not a panic situation after all.
‘What is it?’ I demanded, uncertain, hovering in the doorway.
Her stare swivelled to me. She let out a squeal and dived for the bed, pulling the sheets over her head.
Bemused but relieved that she was obviously okay, I crossed to the window and stood where she had been standing, wrenching the half-drawn drapes aside to do a sweep of the moonlit terrace. Nothing was stirring, not even the tips of the huddle of elephant grass, planted by Maurice a year ago and already taller than a man.
‘What was all that about?’ I said, perplexed at being rudely awakened for a non-event. I moved towards the bed and contemplated the human form under the sheets. ‘Was it a nightmare?’
‘No … no … I don’t know.’ Her words were muffled. ‘I heard voices outside.’
Convinced it was no more than a bad dream, I sighed and returned to the window. The landscape was bled of colour by the August moon, and lifeless apart from a pair of yellow pinpoints of headlights descending the road into La Massana. At this hour even the crickets slept. A feather of breeze twitched the drapes and chilled my skin. I strained to hear – a footfall, a suspicious rustle of bushes, any hint at all of a presence. The stillness was absolute.
‘Nothing,’ I announced. I closed the shutters and switched on the ceiling light. I considered doing a tour of the house and yards. If Lizzy insisted on it, I would. But when I turned from the window to ask her, she was still under the sheet.
‘It’s safe.’ I told her, jumping to the wrong conclusion. ‘You can come out now.’
‘Not bloody likely!’ came the retort. ‘You’ve got nothing on.’
‘Oh, Christ!’ I cast about for a modesty preserver. A bath towel, draped over the dressing table stool, served. It was damp and smelled faintly of bath oil.
‘Sorry, honey. Now you can come out.’