The Water's Lovely (12 page)

‘I was only trying to be helpful.' He went back into the house.

Andrew was back. His mobile was on all the time, he was taking Ismay out in the evenings and spending the nights with her. Perhaps it was his imagination, Edmund thought, that he was less ardent, less
fixed
on Ismay than formerly. It must be imagination, it must be
an illusion created in his mind by what he had seen that evening in Lancashire Court. And the girl in the fur with the golden heels? Someone from Andrew's past, a former girlfriend, a cousin or even a one-off evening's companion, picked up somewhere in a moment of madness, of aberration … You could see he was in love with Ismay – or did he mean you used to be able to see?

When he had first met Andrew, Edmund fancied that he had complained less. Now it seemed that he was always grumbling and mostly that the flat was overcrowded. Without quite coming out with it and saying Edmund wasn't welcome there overnight, he constantly harped on the nuisance of having only one bathroom between four people, of one couple being obliged to go out in the evening so as to leave the other alone, of what he called the ‘chaos' of breakfast eaten standing up or sharing the tiny kitchen table. Edmund discussed it with Heather, even suggesting most unwillingly that he should cut his overnight stays down to twice a week. Or, tired of waiting for the seemingly interminable chain to show its last links, rent a flat somewhere.

Prudent Heather didn't encourage this. She had paid her rent up to the end of April and couldn't ask Ismay to reimburse her. Her suggestion was that they share his room in his mother's house.

‘It will only be for a few months.'

‘It will be hell,' he said.

She said in a very serious tone, ‘We can get married first if you like.'

‘Of course I like. But I know her. I know how she can be. I don't want her breaking up my marriage when it's only just begun.'

Ismay was beginning to see that marriage as inevitable. She was tempted to take the easy option, to relax and let
it happen. But what she had foreseen, that once she had made the tape she would cease to think about its contents, hadn't happened. She dwelt on it nearly as much. And now she began asking herself if she could be quite sure, positive, certain beyond a doubt, that Heather had killed Guy. There was of course the evidence of the wet dress as she came downstairs when they arrived home. The very fact of her coming downstairs counted against her. So did her agreeing with Ismay and her mother when they said she had been out, buying school uniform, with them. An innocent person would surely have denied that. Ismay had expected her to deny it and felt sure of her guilt when she didn't.

But there was – just – an alternative. There was the inquest's version. Enfeebled Guy, taking a bath in water which was too hot, had lost consciousness. Fainted, she supposed you would call it. His head had sunk below the surface of the water and in his weak state he had been unable to struggle out. So the coroner had said. Or there was the fact that, however inaccessible it seemed to be, the door to the balcony had been open. It would have been hard to get into the garden but not impossible. As for climbing up a ladder to get to it, a neighbour seeing that would have assumed it was the window cleaner.

These solutions dwindled into thin theories against the evidence of the wet patch on Heather's dress or the lie Ismay and her mother had told and Heather confirmed, the lie that gave her an alibi. Would she have needed an alibi if she had been innocent? Of course, it might be that she had let Beatrix lie for her because it saved trouble. Seeing how it looked, the wet dress, the wet shoes, her dislike of Guy, she might only have been
relieved
that her mother intended to protect her from police questioning. It was a strange answer to the dilemma of Heather but it was a possible one.

Everyone accepted the coroner's verdict. Pamela had never questioned it. Nor had their mother's brother nor any friend or neighbour. She wouldn't have questioned it – except that she had been there and seen Heather and heard what she said. Perhaps what she should try to do now was attempt to see that verdict as true and right, the way others saw it. The trouble was that, looking back, she saw that she and her mother had modelled their subsequent lives on the assumption that Heather had done it. They lived the way they lived, Beatrix in madness, she watching over Heather, because they had been convinced Heather had murdered her stepfather. Could they undo the structure of that after all these years?

The man in Crouch End who was selling Edmund his flat insisted he wasn't backing out of the deal. He couldn't help it if his vendor wanted a further month's delay on signing the contract for the sale of his house. Edmund couldn't expect him to sign the contract on the sale of his own until he was sure of somewhere to go when he moved out. Edmund, of course, agreed. The alternative was to start again with another property. He and Heather loved the Crouch End flat, already thought of it as their future home and hated the idea of trying to find somewhere else.

Meanwhile, a row had taken place with Andrew one Saturday morning. He found himself alone with him while the girls were out shopping. Edmund had no idea what Andrew wanted to say when he asked if he could have a word, but he soon found out.

‘Are you and Heather any closer to moving into this place you're buying?'

‘The vendor keeps delaying. It's not likely to be much before May.' Edmund hadn't particularly liked Andrew's adversarial tone. ‘Why do you ask?'

‘Well, frankly, because there isn't room for four in this flat.'

‘I think that's down to Ismay and Heather, don't you?'

‘Not entirely, no, I don't. It's a matter of priorities. I was here first. From what Ismay tells me you have a
home in West Hampstead which is a considerable size. What stops you taking Heather there until this elusive purchase of yours is available – if it ever is?'

‘That house belongs to my mother. My mother lives there.' Edmund wasn't about to go into reasons why Heather and his mother wouldn't get on. Now, he decided, was the time to clear the air, though air clearing was seldom what a row achieved. ‘I don't see what this has to do with you. Two sisters are the tenants of this flat and you and I are here as in my case the fiancé of one of them and in yours as the boyfriend of the other. On equal terms, in fact.' Because he was growing angry and remembered the scene in Lancashire Court, he said, ‘I at least am going to marry Heather.'

‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘That you', said Edmund, again seeing the girl with the golden heels, ‘are not going to marry Ismay. You're seeing someone else, aren't you?'

Andrew, who had been walking up and down like a lawyer in an American courtroom, stopped and stood very still. ‘Who told you that?'

Almost an admission, Edmund thought. He hadn't intended things to go as far as this but now he thought he had better come out with what he had seen. ‘I saw you getting out of a cab in Brook Street with a girl.'

‘You mean that in your philosophy sharing a taxi with someone who's not Ismay amounts to infidelity? If that's so, God help you.'

‘The way you and she were together amounts to it in anyone's view.'

‘Have you said anything to Ismay?'

‘No, and I shan't. I haven't even said anything to Heather.'

The sudden change in Andrew was shocking. He came over to Edmund and stood over him, pointing
one long finger in his face. ‘You stupid, lower-class, puritanical bastard!' he shouted. ‘You, you paramedic, you
male nurse
. A so-called man who lives in his mother's house till he's thirty-five, a queer, a pansy, who takes up with the ugliest girl he's met because that's all he can get. You make me puke, you fucking mummy's boy!'

Edmund got to his feet, pushed the quivering finger away with his right hand and thought of hitting him. It would make matters worse. He turned and walked away into Heather's room, closing the door behind him and sitting on the bed until he heard Andrew bang out of the flat. When Heather came back she came alone, Ismay having gone to her yoga class. Edmund told her what had happened, leaving out his accusation of infidelity and Andrew's unjust and untrue description of her.

‘Why did he get so angry, Ed?'

‘I suppose because I – well, I suggested that while I wanted to marry you he'd no intention of marrying Ismay.'

Heather laughed, then looked grave. ‘What shall we do now?'

‘It's pretty clear I can't come here again. Not after the things he said. It wouldn't be possible to be in the same room with him.'

‘That means we may be apart for months.'

‘You'll have to let me rent somewhere, darling.'

‘Let me think about it. It's such a waste of money. I could come to you. I wouldn't mind about your mother. Or you could smuggle me in after dark. It might be fun.'

Fun when you were sixteen, thought Edmund, on his way home to Chudleigh Hill. Not now. He wanted Heather, he wanted to go on making love to her but he wanted to eat his meals with her too and sit and talk to
her, and listen to music with her and hold hands on the sofa in front of the television. He wanted to be able to sit in the same room with her, both of them reading but without awkwardness, in close companionable silence. She would sometimes raise her eyes and smile at him and he would sometimes raise his eyes and smile at her. Or she would get up and come to him and nestle in his arms. Of all this he naturally said nothing when he got home and met Irene in the hallway.

‘Hello, stranger,' she said.

If she had heard anyone else say it she would have called them common. Edmund nodded and smiled, though he didn't feel like smiling.

‘I don't suppose you'll be staying.'

‘Yes, I shall. For this weekend.'

Irene put down the duster she was holding, approached him in much the same manner as Andrew had done before his outburst and said in the voice of a TV detective who has made the discovery that solves the case, ‘You've quarrelled with her.'

Patience extends only so far but Edmund still kept his. ‘No, Mother. Heather and I haven't quarrelled. I shall see her this evening.'

‘Oh, Edmund, I know you so well. Your mother knows every look on your face and the look I see there now tells me you've had a serious row, perhaps even an engagement-breaking row. Isn't that so?'

Perhaps he was catching it off Andrew but his control broke. ‘For God's sake, Mother,' he said. ‘Be quiet and mind your own business.'

‘Those two are going to be living here till midsummer,' Andrew said. ‘Or beyond.'

A cold note in his voice Ismay found disquieting. ‘May at the latest was what Edmund said.'

‘What that man says and the actuality are two very different things. I'm not sure how long I can put up with it, my darling. I'm used to your sister but her paramour is rather beyond the pale.'

Ismay looked at him in dismay. ‘I'll talk to them,' she said. ‘I'll – oh, I don't know what I'll do, Andrew, but if you've quarrelled with him I'll ask Heather if she can't go to Edmund's place and not bring him here.'

‘He has quarrelled with me,' said Andrew. ‘He has insulted me and drawn intolerable conclusions.'

‘What sort of conclusions?'

‘Never mind.'

Ismay found she couldn't do as she had promised. She couldn't speak to Heather and perhaps she wouldn't need to, for Edmund ceased to come to Clapham and her sister was out a great deal more than she had used to be. But her worry about Heather's part in their stepfather's death had receded. It is difficult to be worried about two things at once and concern as to whether Andrew would be driven away had forced Heather's past into the deeper recesses of her mind. She had even ceased to be troubled about the tape – perhaps the putting of her worry into a box had worked – whether it was safe where it was or should she move it somewhere more secure – even destroy it? Worry about Andrew was more important. It always was and always would be.

After that conversation they had had when he had complained about Edmund and Heather and she had promised to try and alter the situation, she sensed that he had changed towards her. He was less – ardent. He came to the flat, spent nights with her, took her out for the occasional evening, but he often seemed absent-minded, and when he talked to her it was almost exclusively about the awkwardness of Edmund's and Heather's presence,
even though Edmund hadn't been there for the past week. He seemed to have become fixated on it, as if he thought of nothing else, yet Ismay felt, strangely, that his obsession wasn't quite real, was assumed, to cover some genuine preoccupation.

‘Edmund doesn't come here any more,' she protested when he accused her of doing nothing to change the situation.

‘She
does. I still have to put up with her silent presence and those eyes on me.'

‘But you said you were used to her.'

‘Please don't pick me up on every little thing, Ismay.'

The more he seemed to grow away from her the more she felt she must be placatory. She wanted to say that he must know she wasn't willing to separate herself from Heather. Even if it was in her power to turn her out, she couldn't do it. A rift would open between the two sisters that nothing would heal. They would be apart for ever.

‘I don't actually see why you couldn't move her upstairs. They've got a spare room, haven't they? He could be there with her if he can't control his lusts for five minutes. And it would only have to be endured until – when did you say? May?'

She said miserably that she would suggest it but if she did Pamela and perhaps even her mother would have to agree as well. She even came close to the point of asking Pamela but thought she should mention it to Heather first. The prospect made her feel sick and she was relieved when Heather phoned to say she wouldn't be home that night. Andrew asked her, of course, and she said she intended to speak to Heather. She was just waiting for the right time. Andrew phoned next day as usual but she noticed he didn't end their short conversation with ‘Love you' as he invariably did. Then, instead
of daily, his phone calls became more widely spaced. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday went by without the sound of his voice, without a sight of him. She was distraught. Heather was always out – at Edmund's mother's? In a flat borrowed from a friend? Edmund had that friend who was a doctor and Heather had Michelle at work and that Greta whose home she had intended to visit the day Guy died and whom she was still close to. Andrew says he's not here because of Heather but he could be here now, she thought, with me and without Heather. When she tried to phone him his mobile was switched off. On the Thursday evening he arrived without warning. As might a husband who had been married for years, it seemed to her.