A Clubbable Woman (10 page)

They both laughed.

‘And what the hell’s wrong with your ankle?’

‘I’ve got an itch. Nasty inflammation.’

‘Been putting your foot in it, have you?’

They both laughed again.

‘Still at it?’ grunted Jacko, slamming a tray laden with three tankards on to the table. ‘Like a couple of bloody tarts.’

‘Is that the time?’ said Noolan. ‘I’d better go and convene this damn meeting. You’ll be here for a while?’

‘What do you think?’

‘See you later, then. Cheers, Jacko. See you later.’

They watched him shoulder his way jovially through the dancers towards the door of the committee room at the far end of the social room.

‘A real card,’ said Jacko, dead-pan.

‘He’s been a good help to you, Jacko. Saw you through when many wouldn’t have.’

‘Surely,’ said Jacko. ‘Beneath these pinstripes hang three balls of brass. Did he tell you owt?’

Dalziel shrugged.

‘Nothing helpful.’

It was no use playing games with Jacko Roberts, he thought.

But then it was even less use trying to play games with Andy Dalziel - unless he’d invented the rules.

‘Was she insured?’

‘No. No cover at all as far as we know.’

‘No cover? That’d be a sight for sore eyes with that one. By God!’

Dalziel put down his tankard in mock amazement.

‘Do I detect a note of enthusiasm, Jacko?’

‘There’s plenty as was. Once.’

‘Just once? Nothing lately?’

Jacko scowled.

‘How the hell would I know?’

Dalziel nodded thoughtfully.

‘I’d have heard, too. What about Connie? Has he been having anything on the side?’

‘Nothing said. But he moves without you noticing, that one.’

On and off the field, thought Dalziel. Yes, it’s true. Not inconspicuous, nothing grey about Connie, no blurred edges there. But self-contained. An area of calm.

Like the eye of a storm.

‘Jacko,’ he said.

‘Yes. ‘If you hear anything …’ but as he spoke he became aware of someone standing behind him and Jacko’s gaze was now aligned over his head.

‘I didn’t know you were bringing the wife,’ said Jacko.

Dalziel was startled for a moment and twisted round in his chair.

‘Hello,’ said Pascoe.

‘I’m going for a run-off,’ said Jacko.

He stood up, his lean hunched figure making his clothes look a size too large for him. He leaned forward and said softly to Dalziel: ‘I’ll tell you something. Someone’s fishing in Arthur Evans’s pond. Welsh git.’

Pascoe watched him go with interest.

‘Tell me, sir. Does he always take his tankard to the loo with him?’

‘What the hell are you doing here? I told you, you’d had your go. Now get out.’

Pascoe sat down.

‘Nothing like that, sir. I’m here socially.’

He felt in his top pocket and produced a blue card.

‘Here you are. I’m a paid-up member. The place interested me. I decided to join. I don’t think that your Mr Hope was all that happy, but what could he do?’

‘I’m not happy either. And I can do something, Sergeant.’

But Pascoe’s attention was elsewhere.

‘Before you do it, sir, just have a look at who’s come through that door.’

Dalziel knew who it was before he turned.

Connon, rather pale but perfectly composed, wearing a dark suit and a black tie, stood in the open doorway. His eyes moved swiftly over the scene before him, registering but not acknowledging Pascoe and Dalziel. Then he pulled the door to behind him and moved quickly and efficiently across the floor between the dancers and disappeared into the committee room.

‘I bet hardly a soul noticed him,’ said Pascoe.

‘Why should they? Our interest’s a bit specialized. And half these buggers wouldn’t recognize him if he came in with a label on. Rugby supporters, pah! They know nothing.’

‘And we know?’

‘At least we know where he is.’

Pascoe scratched his nose ruminatively then stopped in horror as he realized who he was imitiating.

‘Yes, where
he
is. But I wonder where his daughter is? He should have more sense than to leave her alone. These letter boys are sometimes persistent.’

Oh do you now? thought Dalziel. Then you should have looked through the door before he closed it behind him. But you worry on a bit longer, lad. Just a bit longer. It’s good for the soul.

Jenny got half way to the bar before anyone noticed her.

‘Well, hell-oh,’ said a large man as she tried to slip by him with an ‘excuse-me’. He was clutching a pewter tankard with a glass bottom. Now he drained it and squinted at her through the glass. He was still a good two hours from being drunk and even then he would probably manage to drive home without attracting unwanted attention.

There were faint flickers of real recognition at the back of his eyes, but he preferred the mock-lecherous approach.

‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a joint like this?’

‘I’ve come about the woodworm. How are you?’

Jenny could only judge the effectiveness of her cool self-possessed act from its results. Inside, it felt so phoney that the merest glimmer of amusement would have sent an embarrassed blush swirling up from her neck to her forehead. The stout man, however, was obviously nonplussed. His own opening gambit made it impossible to take offence.

‘Hello, Jenny,’ said a voice from a side-table.

‘Excuse me,’ said Jenny to the man, who now obviously recognized her and was recomposing his face to a rubbery concern. But he couldn’t quite get the mouth right and traces of the leer still showed through. By the time he felt able to add sound effects, Jenny was sitting down at a table with two girls and three youths.

‘Hello, Sheila,’ she said, ‘Mavis. How’s the world wagging?’

‘Fine,’ said Sheila. The other girl in contrast to both Jenny and Sheila was so heavily made up that it was like looking at someone behind a mask. She nodded carefully as though afraid of disturbing it.

The three boys rearranged themselves rather self-consciously.

‘You know these creeps, do you? Joe, Colin. And the gooseberry’s Stanley.’

Jenny smiled.

‘Hi. I’ve seen them around. How’s your dad, Stanley?’

‘Fine,’ mumbled the boy.

Jenny smiled again, feeling a kind of desperate brightness sweeping over her, a need to avoid silences.

‘Stanley lives in our road. It used to be his main ambition to see my knickers. Stanley the Watcher I used to call him.’

She laughed, the others smiled politely. Stanley went very red, then very pale.

‘That’s a lie. That’s a stupid thing to say. I don’t know why you…’

He trembled to a stop as the others looked at him in mild surprise.

‘You mean you didn’t want to see her knickers?’ said Sheila. ‘That’s not very complimentary. Why don’t you make yourself useful, get Jenny a drink or something? You can’t expect her to get them in on a student’s grant.’

Miaow, thought Jenny as young Curtis stood up awkwardly and set off for the bar, turning after a couple of steps to ask, ‘What do you want?’

‘Bitter, please. Pint.’

‘Female emancipation,’ said Sheila. ‘I can remember doing that for “O” level history.’

‘So?’

‘Well, so old Wilson used to tell us that lots of men opposed it because they felt it would lead to women in trousers sitting in pubs drinking pints of bitter. It was one of his jokes. He’d laugh if he could see you.’

‘Perhaps he can,’ said one of the two remaining boys. ‘He’s dead, so he might be watching.’

Something violent happened under the table, and the boy looked startled, then apologetic.

‘Look, Jenny,’ said Sheila, ‘we were all dead sorry to hear about your mother. That was rotten.’

They all nodded agreement, Mavis carefully as ever.

‘Yes, it was. Thanks,’ said Jenny. ‘But life goes on.’

‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ said Sheila.

‘No, that’s two ways of looking at it,’ answered Jenny. ‘One way, my life goes on despite my mother’s death; the other way, someone else’s life goes on because of it.’

‘My, college has made you even sharper,’ said Sheila with a thin smile.

Jenny sensed she was losing a friend, or rather, cutting the last few strands which held their friendship together. She and Sheila had been very close at school up to the Fifth Form. They had both planned to stop on in the Sixth, then at the last moment, half way through the summer holidays in fact, Sheila had announced she was getting a job.

That had all been more than two years before. They’d seen each other fairly regularly since, but more and more competitively as time went on.

Now it didn’t matter who won or lost.

‘Thanks, Stanley,’ she said, taking the pint which had been deposited rather ungraciously before her. ‘Cheers.’

She took a mouthful, coughed and grimaced wryly at Sheila, who smiled back with something of their old affection.

In fact Jenny was really very fond of beer, but she recognized that while an attempt to show off could be tolerated, careless expertize would only antagonize further.

‘What’re you all up to, then?’ she asked.

‘We, that is Mavis and me (or I, should I say?) are being entertained by these young gentlemen. Lavishly, as you can see.’

‘What about you, Stan?’

‘He’s waiting,’ interjected one of the boys quickly.

‘For what?’

They all laughed. Stanley shrugged and tried to look unconcerned. He made quite a decent job of it too.

‘Cheer up. She might be along later,’ said Sheila.

‘He fancies Gwen Evans.’ It was Mavis who spoke. Jenny remembered that the joke had always stopped at Mavis.

‘All the men fancy Gwen,’ said Sheila.

But not all the women, eh? thought Jenny. She knew Gwen Evans only slightly, she had seen her at the funeral, and previous to that a couple of times, but the memory stuck.

‘I’d have thought she was a bit old for you, Stanley,’ she said.

Sheila wrinkled her nose scornfully.

‘It’s all in the mind anyway. This lot read about all these teenage orgies and think they’re missing out somehow.’

Joe and Colin grinned unconcernedly.

Now you don’t look as if you’re missing out, my lads, thought Jenny.

‘Anyway,’ Sheila went on, ‘it’s all happening at the universities and colleges, isn’t it, Jenny? The intellectual-sexual bit.’

Here we go again.

‘Yeah,’ said Colin with some enthusiasm, ‘all those wild birds. It’s all wiggle-waggle and jiggle-joggle at those places.’

‘We have our moments,’ said Jenny. She looked around the room. She wasn’t quite sure why she had come here at all, but it certainly wasn’t so she could sit and chat with this lot. They were too young for a start. Whoever it was that was menacing her with letters (a letter, she corrected herself, but feeling certain there would be more), whoever it was that had anything to do with her mother’s death, that person, or those persons, would belong to her father’s age group.

What do I want anyway, she thought. To find out who wrote that letter? To find out if there was any truth in it? He could have denied it, he could have been positive, but all he did was tell me he loved me, that it didn’t matter. Not matter? Something matters. If it doesn’t matter,
that
matters. Miss Freud, that’s me. Shortly to be Miss Sherlock Holmes. But how to start? What do people like Fat Dalziel and Popsy Pascoe
do
to get things moving? On the telly they just talk to people and find things out. But how do you know who to talk to in the first place?

‘There she blows, Stanley,’ said Joe.

Jenny turned her head. Her first impression was of an exotically beautiful woman lightly covered in a very revealing dress. But this was only for a second. Gwen Evans wore neither less nor more make-up than most other women in the room, her skirt was by no means the shortest there, her dress zipped up the front right up to the collar and she had a cardigan draped casually over her shoulders.

It was the way she moved, the animation of her face, the way she held herself that made her presence so electric, not any ultra-daring revelation of flesh.

Her husband was in close attendance at the moment but Jenny knew he was due at the meeting. The man behind the bar said something to him, probably a reminder, for he nodded, spoke to his wife, then with a quick look round the room, he left.

Gwen too was looking round the room, more slowly, deliberately. Her gaze met Jenny’s and paused. Then she smiled an acknowledgment and dropped an eyelid in half a wink. Jenny was surprised to feel herself flattered by this hint of intimacy between them.

‘What’re you waiting for, Stan?’

Stanley stood up awkwardly.

‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some work to do at home.’

He moved across the room and out of the door without a glance at Gwen.

‘My!’ said Sheila. ‘Perhaps he’s got delusions of grandeur and is playing hard to get.’

Jenny suddenly didn’t care for her in the least. She downed the remaining beer in her glass in one easy draught.

‘I think I’ll circulate a bit,’ she said. ‘It’s been nice having a chat.’

‘Suit yourself,’ said Sheila.

‘Cheerio.’

Near the bar she caught a glimpse of Marcus’s round head and began to make her way towards him. When she got a little closer she saw he was talking to the man she’d had the brush with when she first came in, and she hesitated in her progress. Marcus turned at that moment and saw her. His face showed surprise, then pleasure.

‘Jenny,’ he said. ‘Come and have a drink, love.’

She smiled back and squeezed through the intervening people to his side.

‘Are you by yourself?’ he asked, his eyes probing the further corners of the room.

‘Daddy’s in the committee meeting.’

‘Of course. I’m glad he decided to come. It’ll do him good to get out and about. You too. Here, what’ll you have?’

‘I’ll have a scotch if you insist.’

‘Oh, but I do. One scotch. You ready for another, Ted?’

He took the large man’s glass without waiting for a reply.

‘You know Ted, do you? Ted Morgan. This is Jenny Connon, Connie’s daughter. This is Ted. He’s the biggest gossip in the Club so be careful what you tell him about me. Won’t be a sec.’