The Water's Lovely (30 page)

‘She never gets the chance,' said Edmund.

In Chudleigh Hill Irene made her weekly evening call to her sister. ‘Do you happen to know if Marion Melville still looks after those animals for Avice?'

‘Oh, my dear, she works for her. She gets a wage.'

‘Works?' Irene was in her Lady Bracknell role increasingly these days. ‘In what capacity?'

‘I don't know. Cleans out the rabbits. Does a bit of shopping. Makes her appointments for her, such as they are. She
sleeps
there. Or she does sometimes. Not so much since her father's been so ill.'

‘Could you let me have Avice's phone number? I used to have it but it seems to have been mislaid.' She spoke in a slightly menacing tone as if the mislaying had been done by some servant and retribution would quickly follow. ‘I've got a pencil. I'll hold on.'

As she usually did these days while on the phone, Irene positioned herself in the drawing-room bay window, the better to see comings and goings next door.

Joyce came back with the number. ‘Here it is. Now, how are you? I'm told that the proper answer to that these days is “good”. All the young say it.'

‘I'm not at all good, Joyce. I've just had a panic attack and I've a severe pain in my chest. I think it may be pericarditis.'

‘Oh, dear. If you're meaning to phone Avice now the chances are Marion will answer.'

‘No, she won't,' said Irene. ‘I've just seen her going into next door.'

Marion was on her way to see Barry but she hadn't brought the tape or the halva. She had assembled the ingredients for the halva – honey, sesame seeds, nuts and saffron – and then discovered from a footnote in the cookery book that it was a Turkish sweetmeat. As for the tape, she thought she ought to have a look at it before giving it to Barry. She had taken it out of its perspex case and examined it. Wasn't it rather peculiar to have a plain black tape cassette in a case with a picture of a man in a turban sailing on a blue lake? Maybe it wasn't
Rainy Season Ragas
after all. Typical of Fowler! She had no time to test it now, what with all this running between Pinner and West Hampstead.

No time either to plan surreptitious ways of getting into Barry's house. She would have to trust to luck and luck was against her. Irene was stationed in her bay window, talking on the phone. When she saw Marion she waved and smiled. It was the kind of smile you gave, Marion thought, when you wanted to reassure people but actually intended betrayal. Perhaps Irene had been bad-mouthing her to Barry.

If she had there was no sign of it in his behaviour. She was in his arms almost before he had closed the front door and nestling close to him, she murmured to herself, ‘Ask me then. Go on. Ask me. Propose.'

Avice was sitting on a footstool, grooming Figaro with a comb and a rubber brush with spikes on its back that looked a bit like a sea urchin. The rabbit sat completely still, showing neither pleasure nor distaste, and reacted not at all when Avice had to get up to answer the phone.

‘You
are
a stranger,' she said.

‘Is Marion Melville there, Avice?' Irene knew very well she wasn't.

‘She's a friend of yours, of course. I'd forgotten. Would you like me to give you her mobile phone number? These things are a mystery to me but I understand with one of them you can run someone to earth
anywhere
.'

Inspired, Irene said, ‘Where does she say she is, Avice?'

‘That's a strange tone to use. As a matter of fact, she's visiting her father. He's ill in hospital.'

‘He's dead,' said Irene.

‘That must have been very sudden.'

‘He's been dead for twenty years.'

‘I see.' Avice said an abrupt goodbye and absent-mindedly returned to her grooming. It was Susanna's turn. Unable to concentrate, she pulled out a tuft of fur on the teeth of the comb and Susanna fled through the rabbit flap. After she had apologised profusely to the absent animal, Avice found a pencil and wrote on the phone pad:
Speak to Mr Karkashvili tomorrow
.

Pamela was going into rehab where she would have daily physiotherapy. After a fortnight, if she improved
the way they expected, she could come home. The rehab centre was in Berkshire and it was proposed that Pamela should be taken there in an ambulance, but Michael Fenster insisted on driving her.

‘We can stay on for another couple of weeks,' Edmund said.

‘But you've got possession of your flat.' Ismay tried to keep dismay out of her tone.

‘Not till next Monday,' said Heather. ‘We can move all our stuff in. We can still be here and be with Mum.'

Ismay argued. ‘But I can easily manage. Now Ed's got Mum taking her pills regularly she'll be in the habit of it. She'll be fine. I can come home at lunchtime. It'll only be for a short time.'

‘Issy, we'll stay. We'll stay as long as it takes. Now tell all about Michael. Has he come back to her? Will he move in here with her? He used to be quite fond of Mum – only she was different then.'

Ismay thought of how different she was and of what had made her change. If Edmund left them alone, could she ask Heather
now
? Take her chance and say to Heather, You were alone here that afternoon, you were in your bedroom, that room that's Pamela's now. Did anyone come into the house? Did Michael come? Or was no one here but you all the time? Edmund wouldn't go. He and Heather were about to sit down and eat their supper. She could say to Heather, Come downstairs later, will you? There's something I want to ask you. Edmund would come too. It was impossible.

It's always been impossible, she thought. I've had twelve years to do it in, thirteen years now, and I haven't done it. I'm never going to know because the fact is I haven't the nerve to ask her. I never have had. I never shall have.

‘I'd better go if I want to see Pam before eight.'

‘Tell her Ed and I will be in to see her tomorrow,' said Heather.

She poured herself a glass of wine and started the tape. Whatever she had expected, it wasn't a human female voice. The woman's first words meant nothing to her. ‘My stepfather's name was Guy Rolland. He was thirty-three and she was thirty-eight when he married my mother.' Marion stopped the tape. This wasn't what Barry had told her was a traditional Hindu musical form. She felt a sharp pang of disappointment. Romantic Indian songs were just what she needed to bring Barry to the point.

Afterwards she didn't know why she hadn't abandoned it. Barry was coming to dinner (‘To see my kitten's little nest') but there were still two hours to go before his arrival, time to get back into her tracksuit and run down to HMV and pick up a CD. They were bound to have Indian music and she could buy it on her Visa card. It was the idea of getting out of that dress and back into it later that stopped her. Full of anti-Fowler rage, she pressed the ‘tape on' button. The voice said, ‘Our dad, Heather's and mine, had died four years before.' Heather. Marion's attention was caught by the name. She stopped the tape and rewound it. She knew a Heather. Just one woman called that and she was sure she'd never met another.

She played the tape again, heard ‘Heather', was given no clue as to the identity of the speaker but then came a name that was very familiar to her. ‘Edmund, I have to tell you this, and this seemed to me the best way to do it.' Marion felt a dizzying adrenalin rush. She took a mouthful of her Sauvignon and listened to the rest of it.

Barry arrived a little early, admired her in the dress and gave her one of his sloppy kisses. Marion thought
he seemed taken aback by the modesty of the flat but perhaps that was all to the good. He would be even more keen to rescue her from it. She had turned down her bed in an inviting way and sprayed the covers and curtains with room fragrance, but it wasn't exactly an invitation. She knew by this time it was marriage or nothing.

The lamb vindaloo was a great success and Barry seemed to believe that the chutney was her own make and not Waitrose's. But Marion couldn't concentrate the way she usually did when she was with Barry. The tape got in the way. Phrases and expressions she had heard kept repeating themselves. This Guy character dying in the bath, Heather in a wet dress, water splashes on her shoes, the woman called Beatrix – their mother? – going off her rocker, the other girl, the sister, not wanting to leave Heather alone in case she did it again. But who was the sister? Marion thought she'd listen to the tape again after Barry had gone and see if there was any clue on it as to where this sister lived and what her name was. Maybe it was enough just to find out if Heather had a sister. But, yes, of course she did. Marion remembered now. It was all coming back to her. Heather had mentioned a sister. Irene had mentioned her at that dinner when Heather had had to ask for a glass of wine and again when she said the sister was having a nervous breakdown.

‘What's wrong, kitten?' said Barry. ‘You're very quiet. Come and give old Barry a cuddle.'

So Marion sat on the sofa beside him, put her head on his shoulder and curled up her legs so that he could rest a hand on her thigh. She had tried to lay her head in his lap but he reacted uneasily and she shifted to a more decorous position. After he had said he loved her and had never known anyone like her she began to be confident that the proposal was imminent but nothing
came and at eleven, rather the worse for drink, he used her phone to order a taxi to take him home.

‘I may be retired,' he said obscurely, ‘but still it wouldn't do for someone like me to be over the limit.'

Marion managed quite a passionate goodnight kiss and waved as the taxi moved off. At least Fowler hadn't turned up. She began to wash the dishes. Marion would no more have gone to bed leaving dirty crockery and cutlery about than she would have let Barry know details of Fowler's lifestyle. Washing up wasn't a particularly onerous task. It allowed her to dance about, picking up plates, balancing glasses and stacking cups and, later, stretching upwards to put things on high shelves. The by-now cold remains of the curry she put away into the fridge and saved the cold rice too. It would be tomorrow's dinner. Now Avice had given her the push and taken her out of her will, Marion was starting to feel the pinch. Another couple of weeks and she'd have to become a ‘job seeker', living on whatever the Department of Work and Pensions would allot her.

I wonder if I could sell the dress, she thought. She played the tape once more before going to bed.

Ismay got out of the tube at Clapham South and began the walk home. She thought about the women of her own age who lived in Hammersmith and Acton and Shepherds Bush and who, since Preston's arrest, had felt safer now he was locked up. Even here was west enough to be risky. While he was free she had been conscious all the time while out of the need to be streetwise, to keep to well-lighted places, preferably frequented places, never to take short cuts along alleys or narrow dark lanes. Their street was never thronged with people, only packed with cars, cars lining pavement edges on both sides. Someone (a man) had once told Ismay that if what
he called ‘one of those lowlifes' approached her she should jump on the bonnet of a car and scream. She didn't think she could jump on to a car and if she tried such a safety measure she was sure her pursuer would be better at making the leap. But things really were safer now Preston was under lock and key. She came to the house with the pineapples on the gateposts and climbed the steps under the glass canopy to the front door.

As soon as she let herself in she smelt it, something she hadn't smelt in here for months. Cigarette smoke. No one who smoked came here – except one person. Her heart seemed to swim up inside her ribcage and knock against the bones. Because her mouth had dried the little cry she gave was halfway to a gasp. Her hand shook as she unlocked her own front door.

Andrew was sitting on the sofa, smoking a cigarette and reading the
Evening Standard
.

‘I would have come back before but it seemed – well – unfeeling, with Eva dead in that terrible way. I waited a decent interval.' He held her in his arms. From the moment she came home and found him there he had held her. Eva was nothing, Eva was dead. ‘It was those two being here that made me leave in the first place,' he said. ‘I couldn't stand sharing our home with them.' That old excuse again but all she heard was
‘our
home'. He thought of it as
his
home as well as hers. ‘They're not likely to turn up, are they?'

‘No, Andrew,' she said. ‘They won't turn up.'

They won't turn up because they're upstairs. Don't think of that. She wanted no alloy to her happiness that night. Don't think of them, she told herself. Don't think how they offered to stay on, maybe for weeks. And I was grateful, I was
pleased
. He pulled her down on the sofa and began to kiss her with little soft kisses, whispering how much he loved her, how he had always loved her, and she thought of nothing much any more (except how happy she was) until it was deep night, the mad after-midnight hours and he was fast asleep in her bed.

She got up and did something she couldn't remember ever doing before in the night-time. She made herself tea. Then, for the first time, she saw and smelt the flowers he must have brought with him. Without eyes or sense of smell for anything but him, she had failed to see the chrysanthemums, big, luscious, expensive ones – like
everything he indulged in – stuck in an inch of water in the kitchen sink. She fetched a vase, put them into it because, though she hated them and they reminded her at once of Guy, Andrew had given them to her. Carrying the vase into the living room, she sat down on the very spot he had sat on the evening before when she had found him there. I think too much, she whispered to herself. It would be better for me if I didn't think, if I could just enjoy, live and be happy. But it's beyond my control. Never mind Heather and Edmund upstairs. They're not in
here
. They're not living with me, it's not the same as it used to be. Andrew may never find out or by the time he does they'll be gone. Is he going to move in with me here? I don't know. I only know he said ‘our home'. It's mad to worry about something when you don't really know what you're worrying about.