The Water's Lovely (11 page)

The evening was mild and he was in no hurry. He strolled down the Finchley Road, disappointed because the gin and aspirins had had little effect. The twelve pounds he had stolen from his sister he had originally intended to spend on a slap-up greasy spoon meal, the sardines being inadequate, but the rival claims of lager or skunk competed, and of the two he could get more drink for his money. Three pubs later, with not quite his bus fare left, he set off unsteadily on foot for the dossers' hostel, known to its denizens as Jimbo's, in Queens Park. It closed its doors at eleven sharp. If you
don't make it in time, Fowler, he said to himself, you'll find yourself sleeping in a doorway. It wouldn't be the first time.

In spite of his dislike of the women who frequented it, Fowler was again in Bond Street three days later, loitering outside Lalique's doorway and wishing he had a dog or, better still, a baby. That was a brilliant idea. It was always women who begged with babies but there seemed no reason why a man shouldn't do it. Could he borrow a baby? More feasibly, could Marion?

Rooting through the rubbish bins of Bond Street and Piccadilly was part of what he told Marion was his day's work. Not every day, of course, but three times a week. If, as occasionally happened, he saw someone else with his hand plunged up to the elbow in, for instance, the one in Piccadilly outside the Ritz, he took it as a personal affront. If there were a dossers' union and he a shop steward, it was the kind of thing he'd bring the workforce out on strike over.

The sort of bins you found in the less salubrious suburbs contained too much perishable food waste, burger remains, curry containers and chicken bones. Fowler wasn't fastidious but he disliked bad smells apart from his own and the bins of Harlesden were a bit much. Mayfair was something else. There was a bin in Piccadilly, outside the Royal Academy, in which he had once found a pink satin toilet bag full of freebee cosmetic samples he'd given to Marion for Christmas and on another occasion a watch that only needed a new battery. The bin outside the Ritz had yielded a jar of Fortnum's marmalade – why? – and an umbrella with a Mickey Mouse face on it, while another in Bond Street gave him two stalls tickets for
Phantom of the Opera
for that evening. The watch and umbrella he had sold in
Church Street market, the tickets outside the theatre and he'd eaten the marmalade.

Fowler regarded the bins of Piccadilly, Jermyn Street and Regent Street with Bond Street and its offshoots as his manor, his golden square mile. He particularly disliked seeing anyone else investigating them and made himself unpleasant if there were confrontations. This evening he had caught a more than usually filthy dosser at the Bond Street one
in flagrante delicto
, so to speak. It was no wonder his own probings into that particular bin had been disappointing. The harvest he had gleaned was merely a single badly bruised cigarette in an otherwise empty packet and a condom. To be fair, it was an unused condom still in its pack but an article for which Fowler had no possible use. If he tried to sell it, potential buyers would think he'd stuck a pin through it first out of malice. He had smoked the cigarette in Lalique's doorway, thought a bit more about the baby plan and sat down with half a cardboard carton, once containing porridge oats, beside him on the marble step, hoping for what he had once heard grandly called ‘eleemosynary alms'.

It was there that Edmund passed him on his way to buy Heather a birthday present in the Burlington Arcade. Knowing Marion had a brother but never having seen him, he merely felt that slight pang of guilt we all feel when passing a beggar. But on his way back, carrying the newly gift-wrapped pale-blue cashmere sweater, he saw the man still sitting there with an empty carton beside him and felt in his pocket for change. He had spent so much already that another couple of quid would make no difference.

Fowler said, ‘Thank you very much, sir. You're a gent.'

Ashamed of his warm feeling of righteousness, Edmund went on up the hill and turned into Brook
Street, heading for Bond Street tube station. It was just after seven on a Thursday, late-night shopping evening, dark but brilliantly lit. Ahead of Edmund a taxi coming from the direction of Berkeley Square, pulled into the kerb and stopped. Two people got out and one of them was Andrew. Edmund had ample time to make sure it was Andrew, watching him pay the taxi driver from the pavement. His companion, who he at first thought must be Ismay, was a different girl, fairer than she, just as slender, wearing shoes with golden heels of an impossible height and a fur wrap. And apparently not much else, thought Edmund. They didn't see him, being too engrossed in each other, Andrew's arm round the girl's shoulders as they disappeared down the exquisitely cobbled entrance to Lancashire Court.

Sitting in the train, he thought about what he had seen. There was no doubt about it. The girl couldn't have been Andrew's sister (if he had a sister) unless they were committing incest, which, when you came to think of it, also amounted to infidelity. What should he do, if anything? Nothing, of course. Telling Ismay wasn't to be considered. But tell Heather? He thought not. It would only upset her. He had long since perceived how close Heather and Ismay were, how deeply his fiancée loved her sister. She would no more tell Ismay than he would but she might make some sort of row with Andrew, have it out with him. It sometimes amused him to see how much she disliked Andrew. Better tell himself it wasn't his business and try to forget it. He was already learning that his future wife could be fierce and direct as well as calm.

He got to Clapham just before eight. The girls were having champagne to celebrate Heather's birthday. He handed over the sweater and it was rapturously received. It hardly seemed fair that Heather should
cook her own birthday dinner but she seemed to like doing it and she was, naturally, a very good cook.

‘When we're married,' Heather said, smiling at him, ‘Edmund's going to do all the cooking for ever more because I'll be doing it at work.'

He thought he saw a kind of shadow pass across Ismay's face or perhaps it was more a stiffening, a setting, of the muscles into a fixed smile. He had experienced his own face doing that when something painful or embarrassing had been said (usually by his mother). It was accompanied, in his case, by an inward sensation that was close to nausea but not quite that. Was that how Ismay was feeling and why? Was it possible she knew about Andrew's defection?

Within a few moments it appeared not for she was expecting him to phone her. She remarked on this omission with surprise. He wasn't coming round, she said. He had had to work late. But he had promised to phone. Just before Heather put their starter on the table, she phoned him. Or tried to.

‘His mobile's switched off,' she said.

‘He's probably in a meeting,' said Edmund, wondering why he seemed to be furthering that philanderer's deception. But it was to protect Ismay who would soon be his sister-in-law. After all, she might never need to know. It wasn't inevitable that she find out and if she could be kept in ignorance for a while Andrew might get over this attraction and return to her. Strangely, for he had not found this other woman particularly fetching – too pale and childlike – he thought of her high golden heels and glistening wrap before he turned his attention to his dinner.

Ismay, who normally had a healthy appetite, found she couldn't eat much of Heather's avocado mousse with pears and roquette or her roast quails with sweet-sour
orange sauce. She had only once before known Andrew turn off his mobile and that had been on Christmas Day when he was with his parents. If he was working late he should be in Chambers but when she called the number there was no reply. Pamela had given Heather the latest six DVDs of
Sex and the City
for a birthday present and she and Edmund put on the first one of them after they had finished eating. Ismay went into her bedroom and tried Andrew's mobile number again. It was still switched off.

She tried to make herself think of other things but all that came to mind was Heather's remark which began, ‘When we're married.' It had brought her a faint feeling of sickness. Every mention of the coming marriage did that. The only one of ‘the other things' that came to mind was the tape. A plan to find out about safe deposit boxes had come to nothing. It seemed too grand a project and there was a flavour of espionage about it. People like her didn't possess and conceal secret documents – for this was what the tape amounted to. Anyway, she was beginning to think the whole idea of the tape had been rather silly. She was a little ashamed of making it, of sitting there and talking into a recording device about her beloved sister. Especially when, though it was designed for that sister's future husband, she knew she never would give it to him.

She slept badly, waking every hour or two to ask herself why Andrew had turned off his mobile. Next morning, she tried it and got a message that he wasn't available. Strange how every time her glance took in the shelf where the tape was (and the CDs and her iPod and walkman radio also were) the first thing her eyes rested on was that tape.
Rainy Season Ragas
. It was quite safe where it was, she reminded herself. The eyes of others
wouldn't see it or not see it any more than they would see the Mozart or the dangling headset on her radio.

In the train she began once more worrying about Andrew. He'd behaved like this at Christmas, true, but Christmas was an exceptional time when the usual rules hardly applied. There had been another occasion, the summer before, when he had seemed to disappear for a few days and she had been frantic with worry. He soon explained that his mother had been ill. He had been in the hospital with her in some remote place in the Scottish Highlands where, for some reason, his mobile didn't work. She had worried then. She always thought of an accident in that fast sports car of his father's he liked to borrow. If he was injured who would let her know? She wasn't Andrew's partner or his fiancée but only his girlfriend. His parents might not even know of her existence. It brought her a shaft of pain to think that might be true. Did he talk about her to other people? She didn't know but she was sure Edmund talked to his friends about Heather.

Now that Edmund was regularly absent from Chudleigh Hill three nights a week, Irene had begun to understand he really did intend to get married. He really meant to move out and buy a flat five miles away. Her making it plain that she disapproved, disliked what she knew of Heather Sealand and believed that ‘anticipating marriage' doomed any subsequent union to failure, had had no effect on his conduct.

She devoted a large proportion of her thoughts to plans for showing him what a grave mistake he was making. Mostly these schemes came to no more than telling him to wait a little longer, that she was not well enough to be left on her own and that he couldn't afford to get married. She even asked him if he knew as much
as a putative husband should about his future wife's background and antecedents but this, as even she could see, had a fatal effect and resulted in his changing his mind about inviting Heather for Sunday lunch. Heather had only twice been to the house in Chudleigh Hill, the first time when she had more or less told Irene outright that Edmund's mother wouldn't be welcome to join them at the cinema and the second when she and Edmund had come home together after work.

Edmund had phoned but only half an hour ahead of their arrival. Naturally, she hadn't been very welcoming to Heather – how could she be after the way the girl had snubbed her about the cinema? – but when she had said she couldn't possibly produce a meal at a few minutes' notice Edmund had chosen to take it badly. He and Heather would go out to eat, he had said, and come back to see her later.

‘I don't think so,' she had said quite reasonably. ‘It's nearly eight now and by the time you get back I shall be thinking about bed.' His shrug annoyed her. ‘You're here so seldom I expect you've forgotten I go to bed quite early.'

Surprisingly, the girl had suddenly said, ‘Why don't you come with us?'

Edmund had probably told her off for her behaviour over going to see that film. That would be it. ‘Oh, no, my dear, that wouldn't do. I don't suppose Edmund's told you but I'm not a very well person. This has been one of my bad days.'

They had gone and not come back. Irene told Joyce, first on the phone, then face-to-face. Joyce was unsympathetic, but that was only to be expected, they had never been close as sisters. ‘That's a game you can't win,' she said. ‘The mother always loses. All you'll succeed in doing is alienating your son. He won't stay away three
nights a week. He'll stay away every night. I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't get an invite to the wedding.'

‘What do you know?' Irene said rudely. ‘You've never had any children.'

She painted a different picture for her new neighbour. ‘My son and his fiancée are always begging me to come with them when they go out but I seldom feel up to it. I've never been strong, you know. Between ourselves, I shall be relieved when he's married and in a home of his own. I shall be left to my own devices at last.'

Barry Fenix was a tall, soldierly-looking man with thick white hair and a small moustache. Every inch the colonel of the regiment, was how Irene saw him, though he had told her in a burst of confidence that while doing his National Service he had never risen above the rank of lance-corporal. Another thing he told her was that he had a unique collection on DVD of films about the Indian Army and the North-west Frontier. ‘You should think about going,' he said, speaking to her over the garden wall. ‘You ought to get out more, a fine-looking woman like you. This could be your opportunity. Your son's wedding, I mean. Seize the day, Irene, seize the day.'

‘Do you mean, go out with them or go out – well – with other people? You seem a bit confused.' She smiled encouragingly, sure he was going to invite her out. For a drink, wasn't that what they said? Or maybe to watch his DVDs. ‘Now which is it?'