The Water's Lovely (29 page)

She got up and began to look for the tape. At one point she had put it in a plant pot but she remembered taking it out again. Where had she put it? She looked in all the obvious places – what
were
the obvious places? Were there any? – and ended by ransacking the flat, turning out cupboards and emptying drawers, all of it in vain.

Just before morning, when the dawn was coming and grey light filled the room, she dreamed of climbing the stairs, a much steeper and longer staircase than in reality, up and up to where Heather in her wet dress, stood at the top. But the further she climbed the more the stairs lengthened ahead of her, and though she stretched out her arms, Heather turned away and retreated, disappeared, leaving pools and trails of water behind her.

A little early in getting to Chudleigh Hill – she had been rabbit-minding while Avice went to a matinée of
The Woman in Black
with Joyce and Duncan – Marion was about to slip into Barry's house by way of the side gate when Irene came out of her front door with a pair of secateurs in her hand. ‘You must be getting absent-minded, my dear,' she said in rather a cheerful tone for her. ‘This is where I live.'

‘Goodness, I'll forget my own name next,' said Marion with great presence of mind. She didn't like secateurs. Fowler had nearly chopped off one of her fingers with a pair just like Irene's when she was ten. She still had the scar. Fowler had intended no harm. She wasn't so sure about Irene. ‘I can't stop long, I'll just pop in and out.'

Bristol cream sherry was produced, the secateurs laid down on the table and Irene was off on a long diatribe about her next-door neighbour. He was sulking, she said. Just because she had made it plain she wasn't interested in ‘anything like that'. It was very silly of him to hide himself away just because romance was out of the question. Why couldn't men realise they weren't all God's gift to women? Even worse was Edmund's behaviour. To be fair, it wasn't his fault but that wife of his who had undue influence over him.

‘They've given up their flat and moved in with her mother in Clapham. She's mad, you know. The
mother, I mean. Mrs Rolland, she's called. I suppose Edmund's wife thought she'd get free attention from him, though what he can do I don't know. It's not as if he was a doctor or even a psychiatrist.'

‘Mad?' said Marion. ‘My goodness.'

‘There's a sister living upstairs. Esme or something. Her boyfriend walked out on her and she's having a nervous breakdown. That means nothing these days. She's probably mad too. These things are hereditary, you know.'

Marion made her escape after about ten minutes. Irene came out with her, remembered after they had said goodbye that she needed to dead-head the dahlias and had left the secateurs inside. While she was gone Marion rushed into Barry's garden and had just got inside the side gate when she heard Irene returning and the snip-snip of her decapitations.

‘How's my kitten?' asked Barry above the soft keening of a raga. Marion thought he looked very strange in an embroidered silk coat over his flannels, a kind of turban on his head with a feather and a jewel on it. She lifted up her face for a dutiful kiss. ‘I'm in my best bib and tucker for your birthday, my dear.' He was the only one who had remembered it. ‘I hope you don't think it too much like fancy dress.'

‘Not on you, Barry. You look gorgeous.'

‘The old lady caught you, I see.'

Marion had heard or read somewhere that men like women who are kind and generous towards other women. ‘Poor thing. She's so lonely. I had to go in for five minutes.'

‘Ten,' said possessive Barry. ‘I was counting. Would you like your birthday present now or in the restaurant? I've fixed it up that they're bringing your cake after the main course and one of the waiter-wallahs is going to
sing “Happy Birthday to You”. So shall we save the present till then?'

‘Anything you say,' said Marion, hooking her little hand over his arm and pretending to be enraptured by the music. It was always an oriental restaurant but she was getting used to it.

‘I don't suppose you're going to tell old Barry which birthday it is?'

‘Oh, just somewhere between thirty and death,' said Marion with a giggle.

Pamela was sitting in a wheelchair and she wasn't alone. A man was with her, someone Ismay thought she vaguely recognised, associating him with Guy, though she couldn't place him. Pamela held out her hand and Ismay bent down and kissed her.

‘Do you remember Michael, Issy?'

Then she did, of course. This was the man who had been engaged to Pamela at the time Beatrix married Guy. This was the man who had left her a week before they were due to be married. ‘How are you?' she said.

‘You were a little girl when I last saw you.'

‘I was fifteen.'

He was looking at Pamela as if he had fallen in love with her all over again. He took her hand, kissed her in a tender way and left, promising to come back next day. Ismay said goodbye and looked enquiringly at Pamela.

‘I know what you're thinking. He apologised for all that.'

‘Bit late in the day, wasn't it?'

Pamela went on as if she hadn't spoken, ‘He said it was partly due to Guy's dying like that. He said he felt he couldn't be connected to our family when he'd actually hoped something like that would happen.'

‘What on earth do you mean?'

‘He said that when Guy had that virus and just seemed to get worse and worse he hoped he – well, he wouldn't get better.'

‘You mean, he'd die?'

Pamela winced. ‘You're not usually so blunt, Issy. But yes, he hoped he'd die and then he'd get his job. And then Guy did die. Maybe he killed himself. He felt so much guilt about that he thought it would be best if he just – disappeared. After all, he was offered Guy's job but he didn't take it.'

‘I don't think he ought to feel guilt about anyone but you,' said Ismay, who thought the story sounded like an excuse and not a very clever one. ‘How did he know you were here?'

‘He ran into Heather at the hospice. His mother's in there. She's dying.'

‘He must spend all his time hospital visiting,' said Ismay drily, and then, on an impulse, ‘When he was with you did he have a key to our house? I mean, did he have access to a key?'

‘Why on earth do you want to know?'

‘Take it that I just do. Did he?'

‘I suppose he did,' said Pamela.

Michael had hated Guy, had wanted his job. He had broken off with Pamela over the guilt he felt for wishing Guy dead. Or because he had killed Guy? Ismay asked herself that question as she went home in a taxi. It was far more likely that he had felt guilt because he had killed Guy than over some tenuous neurotic fear of being associated with the family of a man he had wanted dead. He had a key or access to Pamela's key, which amounted to the same thing. Could she, after all this time, find out where Michael had been on the afternoon Guy died? Could she now take the enormous and frightening step of asking
Heather if Michael had come into the house that afternoon? Or even if he could have come into the house without her knowing?

It was a long time since she had thought about Guy's death and Heather's part in it. Her loss of Andrew had driven all that away. It had returned to her mind because today was the anniversary. Thirteen years ago to the day it had happened and always on the day the memories were stronger. If she didn't dream about it she had a waking dream in which once again she saw Heather on the stairs in her wet dress and heard her say, ‘You'd better come.'

Did her thinking of it now mean she was beginning to get over him? Hardly, for with that thought and its many possible repercussions, Andrew came back into her consciousness so that she was asking herself, what does it matter now? What can it matter after so long who killed Guy if anyone did? All I want is Andrew. I don't want answers. I want him. I can wait. If someone said to me that he would come back in five years, in ten, I would be happy. I would wait, I would be patient. I shall never get over him. But if I knew that one day I would see him again, he would love me again, I would be dizzy with happiness. Sometimes I feel I would die of it.

For all that, when she was back in the flat, had put her head round their door and said hello to Edmund and Heather, she began once more hunting for the tape. She looked in all the places she had looked in before and then it occurred to her it might be in her clothes cupboard, in the pocket of a coat or jacket. It wasn't. She never carried anything in her pockets but in her handbag.

That was where it was, in one of her handbags. Ismay had a lot. She took them out of the cupboard and laid them on the bed, opening each one and removing the
contents. This yielded a lot of receipts and credit card chits from various shops, which she prudently tore into pieces, several dozen tissues and a miscellaneous assortment of paper clips, coins of tiny denominations, ballpoint pens, a floppy disc and a notepad but no tape. Of course not – she remembered now. The tape had been in the bag that was stolen.

She felt a little mild relief. It wasn't falling into the hands of anyone she knew. Any thief finding it would have thrown it away as he had thrown away all the other things in the bag except the money, no doubt, and the credit cards.

Her mind returned to Andrew. She sat down and closed her eyes. I didn't like him smoking, she thought. I asked him to give it up. Oh, God, I'd let him smoke all day and all night if he'd come back to me. I love my sister but I'd turn my back on my sister for him. I'd never see Heather and Edmund again if it would mean having Andrew back. I'd give everything to have him back …

Barry had a great many tapes of this Indian music of his and not many CDs. Must be his age, thought Marion, pretending to scrutinise his music library after they had come back from the Maharanee. It was a wonder really he hadn't got it all on LPs, he was so old-fashioned. Her present from Barry she had been given in the restaurant. Not a sari, which she had feared, but a beautiful Indian dress, apricot-coloured, embroidered with crystals and sequins. ‘I want to see you in it,' he said.

She gave a little girlish shriek but she ran away into his bedroom, rather regretting she couldn't give him his reward now. But it wouldn't do. It would put the kibosh (a favourite Barry word) on all her well-laid plans. The dress was very small but not too small for her. Thank
God she was wearing her beige patent shoes with the heels like needles.

He actually gasped when she appeared. ‘Well, you are a beauty,' he said. ‘That must be saved for a very special occasion and I think I know what that occasion will be.'

So did Marion and she went home feeling more elated than she had for a long time. Before driving off, Barry took advantage of his position as dispenser of largesse and organiser of birthday parties by kissing her more ardently that usual, his tongue lightly brushing her teeth. She'd give him something next time and make him some halva. Or wasn't that Indian?

Barry wasn't the only one who had remembered her birthday after all. Fowler had been back again and left her a present. She unwrapped it. Quite a nice handbag, surely not one of his bin finds. Marion examined it carefully. Of course it wasn't new, that was too much to expect. There was a scratch on one side near the bottom and the strap was a bit scuffed. But still it was good leather and a lovely colour. She opened it and saw the Marc Jacobs label inside. Although the bag remained unchanged, in her eyes it was immediately enhanced and increased in value by this label. Nothing inside it, or was there? She rummaged around and brought out a tape.

Rainy Season Ragas
. Just the thing to take over to Barry when she'd made the halva.

The West End Werewolf had been arrested. There was no murder charge but, as is the way in these cases, everyone knew because the newspapers knew that as soon as enough evidence had been amassed, he would be charged with causing Eva Simber's death as well as numerous assaults on young women in the western suburbs. His name was Kevin Dominic Preston from Hounslow. He was twenty-one, an unemployed painter and decorator.

Watching television, Ismay saw him brought to court in a police van, mobbed and threatened as he was hustled into the building with a coat over his head. A woman in the crowd threw something in his direction and a policeman caught her by the arms. Ismay turned it off. She wondered if Andrew had watched it. If he had loved Eva he would have wanted her killer caught. Perhaps he was very unhappy. She understood something. You want your lover to be unhappy if he is unhappy over you, not over someone else. The death of your rival should cause him to rejoice, not grieve, even though this makes him into a monster.

The first time Irene saw her sneak through the side entrance into Barry's back garden she thought Marion had gone to the wrong house. The second time she saw her, on this occasion going boldly up to his front door and calling something through the letter box, she had a
panic attack. Her heart raced, she moaned and choked, laughed and then wept. She phoned Edmund but by the time he arrived it was over and she was lying prostrate, unable to speak above a whisper.

‘Has something happened, Mother? Have you had a shock?'

She wasn't going to tell him. ‘I'm
subject
to panic attacks. You ought to know that after all this time.'

‘Can I make you a hot drink? Get you something to eat?'

‘If that's the best you can offer. I realise it's not as if you were a doctor.'

Edmund went back to Clapham and Beatrix but to Heather as well and she made everything all right. ‘Sometimes I think if we could choose our mothers I'd rather have yours than mine.'

Heather laughed. ‘Mine's never been so calm and – well, happy, since you've been looking after her. And she never sticks her pill on her chewing gum any more.'